Freezing Rain

We got a bad win­ter sur­prise today when we woke up to heavy freez­ing rain this morn­ing. Yuck.

Freez­ing rain is pretty unique to very cold coun­tries. When sur­face tem­per­a­tures are below freez­ing, rain­drops freeze upon impact with any object they encounter. The result­ing ice accu­mu­lates to a thick­ness of sev­eral cen­time­ters and it coats just about anything.

Holidays Lights

Merry Christ­mas!
Joyeux Noël !
¡Feliz Navi­dad!
圣诞快乐！

Château Laurier

The Château Lau­rier was con­structed between 1909 and 1912 and named after Sir Wil­frid Lau­rier, then the Prime Min­is­ter of Canada. Over the years, it met with his­tory. For instance, the hotel was to be opened on April 26, 1912, but chair­man Charles Melville Hays, who had com­mis­sioned the hotel and was return­ing to Canada fo its open­ing, per­ished aboard the Titanic when it sank on April 15.

The Olympic Torch Relay In Ottawa (2/2)

After shoot­ing the torch relay, I decided to stay down­town and to have a look at the night fes­tiv­i­ties on Par­lia­ment Hill. By the time I got there, I learned from two ladies (pic­tured below) that they would only start after sun­set… I wasn’t going to sit on the cold wait­ing, like them, for a few hours. I headed to Chap­ters and grabbed a hot coffee.

The Olympic Torch Relay In Ottawa (1/2)

Today, the Olympic Torch of the Van­cou­ver 2010 Olympics arrived in Ottawa and it trav­eled all over the city. I walked to Bank Street and waited patiently with the next torch bearer for the cur­rent bearer to arrive.

And... Winter Is Here

It was cold but nice yes­ter­day night and for a sec­ond, I humored myself with the thought that Weather Canada could be wrong. Of course, it wasn’t. It never is. Weather is what Cana­di­ans pre­dict best.

The wind was extremely strong this morn­ing and I could barely keep my head up while wait­ing for the bus. Mind you, I had time to prac­tice — it was 30 min­utes late.

On Campus (Part II)

I have always been fas­ci­nated by North Amer­i­can high schools and uni­ver­si­ties. They seemed to have so many rit­u­als, so many tra­di­tions that I felt we were really miss­ing out in France. Take grad­u­a­tion, for instance. One of the rite of pas­sage in France is the “bac­calau­réat”, the national high school grad­u­a­tion exam. But it quite dif­fer­ent from the North Amer­ica grad­u­a­tion exam.

On Campus (Part I)

My oral exam lasted exactly three min­utes. It may have some­thing to do with the fact I wrote in big bold let­ter “I am French !” in answer to the ques­tion “where did you learn French?” in the pre­lim­i­nary ques­tion­naire. The exam­iner was a nice guy and admit­ted there was no point in test­ing me any fur­ther. Phew, thanks.