Twillight Zone of PHO !

Hello Everyone,

Last time I wrote, I believe I was stopped over in Edmonton en route to Toronto. I landed in the T-dot without incident and the wedding weekend was fun, but is a total blur. I got a great pedicure, landed some new jeans, rocked out with all of my loved ones Friday night, emcee’d a great wedding reception on Saturday. I must say, the wedding was seamless: Everything went off without a hitch. Turtlecat looked gorgeous and so did my bro. Reviews were of the rave variety.

So like I was saying, the weekend was a complete whirlwind. Not having slept on Thursday night, I woke up both Saturday and Sunday mornings feeling like a truck ran over my body. Yesterday we woke up a little later in the morning at 10 and went to a brunch at my aunt’s place. Then Bobcat and I went to the airport to catch our flights. We had booked separate flights out of necessity, but had hoped to change them last minute. No such luck. Air Canada in their generous way, had actually overbooked both of our flights.

But don’t fret, using words such as sitch and frustraish, I was able to communicate with the Air Canada agent, who was in my age cohort. She booked us both on a slightly later flight in business class and sent us to the first class lounge to take advantage of the amenities. We did.

We were already running quite a bit later than our ideal schedule and things were tight because Bob was driving me to Montreal last night so I could shrink heads here starting this morning. Somehow sensing this, Air Canada chose yesterday as the first (but probably not last) time to fuck up my luggage. One bag arrived, the other hung back in Toronto. Apparently they had some sort of falling out. Neither one is talking.

In any case, we had to go back to the airport and pick up my bag an hour later as it had stuff I needed for Montreal. We also had to stop at the Mofo to drop something off, and then we ate the dirtiest food I know of – McDonalds. It was delicious. Unfortunately, we both had night sweats therafter.

Today I started my new elective. It always feels horrible showing up somewhere when you have no clue what the hell is going on. That said, everyone was very nice, and I had a pretty good day. Also, I was able to use predominately Anglophone-ness to help them edit some brochure they had translated. They were talking about it in the team meeting this morning and my heart totally went out to them. It was like the reverse of me trying to write something in French. It sounded atrocious, as though they had entered all of the text into one of those Internet translators. Sook Yin Lee would've been proud. So, I made a few suggestions, and they took kindly to them. I think my time at this hospital will be good. Though I was a little dismayed when I realized that the bulk of my elective is going to be in French (I thought I was purposely choosing an English hospital), Ah ben, c’est la vie.

I am staying in a virtual stranger’s home. With another virtual stranger. who does not live here either. The stranger whose room I am living in, is living at my house. It’s like Wife-Swap, only more like Life-Swap. Anyway, so far it is working out well, and the girl who is here from Winnipeg is quite friendly and well-adjusted. Also, I managed to ascertain that she likes cheese. I welled up with tears when she said she liked blue cheese and immediately started making plans for the rest of our life together. Okay…well…maybe our next three weeks together….drinking wine, eating cheese, baguette, doing CARMS – that last part just made me vomit in my mouth.

One last thing I wanted to share with you is that tonight I had a crazy Twilight Zone – like experience. Hence the title of this entry. I took the bus home, and then decided to tool around in my neighbourhood a little. After all, I am right downtown (in a bit of a ghetto actually), and I frickin' love Montreal. I wandered around for a bit and then started feeling kind of hungry, so I scooted down to Chinatown to rustle up some grub. In much the same way as early man discriminated good food from bad, I used the “if people are eating there it must be good” method of restaurant selection.

I ducked into a modest looking Vietnamese restaurant and ordered a little something. Shortly after I arrived and chubby, older woman (maybe 55-60) came in and sat down very close by to me. We politely ignored each other for some time, but we were both solo and pretty much facing each other.

Our food came and we began eating, when all of a sudden…..

(I will have to finish this tomorrow night. I'm tired, and have to go to bed. Plus this post is getting too long….à bientot mes amis).

Tabs