Do we have the power, capn'?
Today's first stop was Ottowa, the capital of Canada. Lovely city. But more about that in a few paragraphs: I added to my bastion some PowerBook RAM, a telephoto lense and, through the kind grace of my mother, a surprise birthday present: a 15GB iPod. Perfect, seeing as I only listen to a minority of my mp3 collection. It is beautiful, everything that people claim it is. Sitting on the coach, I hastily took it out of it's box, slipped the FireWire cable inbetween it and my laptop, and marvelled at the brilliance as it commensed to charge from my laptop's battery (thankfully there's a fresh one in my sac a dos). It doesn't seem to be effecting the laptop overly, and the speed of FireWire. Oh the speed. Music literally flies between the two, Buddha Bar III-V vanishing into the slick white box faster than I can watch.
The key thing here?
Merci, mamon! C'est formbidable, tu est super.
Oh and the telephoto lense is great too, a good 10x magnification for all you non-35mm people. But, if I wanted to brag about my shopping, I'd give it a seperate site. I think today's most interesting thing so far is the Gillette Mac 3 Power: a razor with a vibrator in the handle, supposedly to raise the bristles on the face as it passes over, thus causing less irritation due to fewer passes. (As an ardent fan of the straight razor, I don't understand why this is a problem; one, maximum two passes and I'm better shaved than with a disposable. Anyway.) A good shave at 0606 this morning was seriously unnerving, and quite pleasant: I'm not convinced it was closer, but having a face massage after four hours sleep is wonderful. And if that doesn't do it for you, then I'm sure there are other uses.
"Canada day, oh Canada day!"
Toys aside, Canada is still interesting: if you want to move house in Canada, everybody does it on the same day: Canada Day. Or Moving Day, depending on how patriotic feeling. Interesting idea, I'd love to try and rent a van on that day. Even more, I love the idea that it is like musical houses: over tannoy systems across Canada music plays, and people dash out of their garages, vans teetering with possessions and all rush to another house, while one is being secretly demolished. It would explain the low population... And is completely stupid. Moving on...
...to Ottowa. Sticking with it this time. We went in past their Governer General's Residence, and the first thing that struck me was the vehicle stopping systems en place. Where at Black Rod's Gate, Houses of Parliment we have a seemingly ineffectual ramp that raises out of the ground, in Canada there is a solid beam across the road, that has to be rotated down to let a car drive slowly over it. If it's securely held in the ground (and judging from the concrete, it is) there will be no driving past without explosives. Good Stuff.
Visually, Ottowa is very different to Montréal, resembling (in the Downtown area at least) a city more fitting in Spain, with a couple of faux German castles thrown in for good measure. (We had a Celebratory Coffee at Chateaux Laurient, a castle with gold-mirrored windows.) Once you get further into the banlieue, it looks more like you'd expect from American cinema, and only a ten-minute cab ride (had to visit Mac Power there, great people. Actually, everyone here is friendly. Great, but surely they want something..?)
