Montreal, Quebec, CA

Last week I was in Montreal for work. It's a very nice city, a mix of America and Europe. The city style is very USA while the people and the culture is very European (a bit French as well). I had a couple of meetings to attend.

Well, what happened is that on Monday night we finished the Heineken at the hotel. That's a good way to get rid of the jetlag. On Tuesday night we went for steak. Man, the steak over there are huge. And then we drank a bit more. Wednesday night we had ribs that was absolutely fantastic. It was so tender it practically fell of the bones. We past by Jacques Villeneuve's club called Newtown (Villeneuve, you get it?) and I got a bit trashed. Thursday was a bit chilled but I still managed to down a couple of Margarita Golds at a Mexican place.

Did a bit of shopping as well. Yeah, and a bit of work as well in case you were wondering.

Champs-Elysees

I'm in Paris now. It's supposed to be a nice and romantic city, a shopping heaven, but I just realised that Paris is a bit shit.

I was staying at a hotel close to Champs-Elysees because the Canadian Embassy that I have to go to is situated nearby. So I was put in a three-star hotel for 120 Euros a night. And the hotel turns out to be pretty shit for that price. I've stayed in many hotels and I have stayed in nicer hotels that cost way less. It's just so overpriced.

And then I go walking around after I secured my Canadian visa. You want to go have a look in the Louis Vuitton shop? Go stand in line as if you're going to the hottest night club in town.

Everything is overpriced and not as nice as it should be.

Oh well, it is the capital of France so what'd you expect??

Goodbye and Hello

Well, after 4 years and 4 months, after 77,000 kms, yesterday I had to say goodbye to my beloved black Golf IV 1.8T GTI.

The reason?

Because I think it's time to change. So I got this new (second-hand) car to replace it.

Audi Avant A4 2.4 V6.


It feels like a new era for me...

Germany, Here We Come

And Netherlands has qualified for the World Cup 2006 in Germany after beating Czech Republic 2-0. Edwin van der Sar stopped a penalty and Rafael van der Vaart and Barry Opdam scored the 2 goals.

In the qualifying group Netherlands have won all their games bar one, when Macedonia managed to drew with them. All the rest have been won, with 27 goals for and 3 against.

One more game against Macedonia on Wednesday as a formality...

"Hup Holland Hup!"

Sin City

I finally got around to watching Sin City. Since noone was around last night I popped in the video store and grabbed Sin City as I've been wanting to watch this one. For some reason I didn't make it to the cinema when Sin City was on a couple of months ago.

This is a great movie. Robert Rodriguez loved the original graphic novel by Frank Miller he decided to keep the movie true to its form. He got Frank Miller to co-direct the movie - even if it meant having to quit the Director's Guild. He assembled he best cast available (Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Michael Madsen, etc) and even had buddy Quentin Tarantino guest directing a scene.

The movie is black and white, but not old movie black and white. Here and there we see some colour but you can feel the movie coming straight from a comic book. Apparantly it's all digital and shot in front of a green screen but the effect is amazing and wonderful.

There are three story lines that sort of intertwines, all being original stories by Frank Miller. Hartigan (Willis), an old cop who saved Nancy's live. Marv (Rourke) who is looking for the killer of his love Goldie (Jaime King). And Dwight (Owen) who battled Rafferty (Benicio Del Toro) in Old Town where the girls rule under Gail (Rosario Dawson).

I wish more directors were like Robert Rodriguez and less like Michael Bay.

Anyway, I'm off tomorrow for a weekend in Vienna. Ciao.

iPod Photo 60GB

I told you a couple of posts ago that my iPod is full. It's a real pain for me because I have to manually add new songs to my iPod and deleting songs is difficult (even if I never listen to them). And there are lots of CDs that I haven't ripped yet.

So I listened to my voice of reason and bought a new iPod, a 60 GB iPod photo even though I won't be looking at pictures from the iPod. And my old one is going to be sold for half the price that I bought it for. Seems like a good deal, no?

I just love iPods...