Thursday, February 23, 2006
As a general rule I don't talk about business-related things on my blog – I don't see this is as being a good idea, and potentially the sort of thing that can land me I trouble. So I won't go into the business dealing, but I will talk a bit about my impressions of the day.
I awoke to a grey, overcast day. While not exactly grim, it seemed like the sort of day to just stay in bed (and since I slept fitfully that first night, that's what I would have liked to have done.) But I got up, showered, realized I was slightly hung-over as a result of he wine from last night aboard the train, and wished I had remembered to bring some aspirin. But it wasn't that bad, so I ironed my clothes and soon after met my colleague by the front doors of the hotel at 8am. We grabbed a cab and asked to go to our destination, which was an address on Querbe Street. The cabbie we had wasn't entirely sure of the address, and he ended up asking the cabbie in the cab behind him for more information as to where it was. In the end he figured it out and we got there in next to no time. We both got to see some of the sights while on the way there, and when I saw the children trudging off in the snow to school and playing in their respective playgrounds, I couldn't help but think of my own girls, realizing that they would be doing the same thing at this time of day.
Business followed. As did an enjoyable lunch at a nearby restaurant—almost literally a hole in the wall with its existing space stuffed with seats and tables, and, as it turned out, excellent food.
The dinner that followed in the evening was truly memorable. We headed off to a different part of the city, one that I recognized on a previous trip to Montreal, when Bryce and Aggie (who were still living here at the time) took myself and Toby to a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant in the area. I noted that that restaurant has since been replaced by a French boulangerie, but that was not our destination. We ended up having a lengthy and wholly enjoyable sushi dinner at a place called Mikado, one of three such restaurants that exist as a small chain within the city. One of the founders of the company took us there, and it turned out that he knew the owner well, well enough to have attended the restaurant owner's wedding. As a result we were treated to an excellent meal, easily one of the best sushi meals I have ever had. It consisted of several courses, the first few consisting of thin slices of various unidentified fish each garnished with a light sprinkling of some unknown seasoning. They were each exquisite, a true culinary experience to be savoured. The penultimate course consisted of a type of California roll that melted delightfully in one's mouth, a highly satisfying mélange of flavours and textures. Writing about food experiences is akin to "dancing about architecture", in that words (my words anyways) cannot really convey the true experience, but suffice to say the meal was a memorable one, and in our guests we were in good company. The meal easily lasted three hours, but the time seemed to fly so that I was genuinely surprised when I looked at my watch, which is when I felt truly weary.
Watched an episode of Enterprise on Space when I got back to my hotel room, one of those particularly unsatisfying episodes that at its conclusion made me wonder why I bothered watching it in the first place.
Feeling weary but restless I ended up watching the start of a documentary by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins that I had downloaded previously and placed onto a disk that I could play on my computer. I went to bed troubled by thoughts as to how pig-headed people could be when it came to religion and science, and bothered by how much the man formerly known as Cat Stevens has given himself over to extremist Islamic ideology. What stuck in my head was the (to me) absurd accusation that atheists are responsible for causing women in the Western world to be "indecently clothed". The accusation revealing in my mind a basic insecurity about sexuality in the culture he lives within, why this is necessarily a bad thing, and why atheists are the reason why this has come to be. Much of the conversation between Dawkins (whom largely I side with, though I find him sometimes too extreme in the arguments he makes) and Stevens struck me as ludicrous and ultimately profoundly sad, and just underlines a gulf in cultures that needs to be bridged if there is to be any hope of peace in this world.
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