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Michael Buble

Attented the Michael Buble concert at the Bell Centre last night. This was going to be my third time seeing him in Montreal, each time at a slightly larger venue. In November 2003 Sandra and I saw him at the Metropolis Club with maybe 800-1000 other people. This was 5 months after his first appearance in Montreal at Le Cabaret, a really tiny but nice club on St Laurent during the Jazz Fest. Sandra had bought a CD of his before his first big commercial release a couple of years earlier so we went. It was a great mixture of song and bantering with the audience. The fact that Metropolis is on the small side allowed for intimacy.

The next time I saw him was during my annual birthday/Jazz Fest concert. My birthday falls during the Jazz Fest and I usually buy tickets for the headliner show. In 2006 it was Michael Buble appearing with the Montreal Big Band (I have many friends who play in that band). While we were seated at the top of Place des Arts which does not make for an intimate setting the concert, non the least, was very good. He incorporated some of the schtick he had done at the Metropolis but it was kept to a minimum as Jazz fest concerts are tightly controlled timewise.

So, now he was moving up the the Bell Centre, 18,000 people. Would there be any hope of retaining that closeness with the audience? Well, he managed to do it. He gave a very entertaining concert while interacting with the crowd whether in the front row or answering to the many I love you Michaels from the nosebleed section. He knows how to work a crowd. He sang a good misture of the standards he has been known to cover and some of the contemporary repertoire he has been building up. A very entertaining evening and I wouldn't hesitate to buy tickets again next time he comes to Montreal. BTW, he did don a Habs jersey at the end of the concert despite the fact he's a known Canucks fan so I'm sure that help cement Montreal's love affair with him. I guess he feels somewhat grateful for Montreal as it was a singing gig at the wedding of Brian Mulrooney's daughter that he was noticed by guest David Foster and the rest, as they say, is history....

Irish Stew With Guinness

I usually have a busy week. I have a regular 9 to 5 job then I play in several orchestras and am involved in several committees so I am not home that much during the week. Despite that I still want to have a homemade hot meal every night or for lunch. My usual Sunday routine is laundry followed by cooking something in a large enough quantity to last for several meals. Normally I don't like having the same thing for lunch and dinner although sometimes when I make one of my favorites like roast beef or pot roast I can't help myself, it's just so good!

So, since I had a big baggie of stewing beef (leftover half of a tray from Costco, the othet half was used for beef bourguignon back in December) I decided to make a beef stew. I also thought I would do a variation on my usual stew recipe and make a beef stew with Guinness. A quick search in my favorite cookbook, the internet, came up with what looks like a good one: Irish Beef Stew Recipe.

At the moment it is simmering away with a half a can of Guinness in it (along with wine and boullion) while I drink the other half ;-). I'll do an update to let you know haow it turns out.

Update: Well it's done and it's not too bad. I wouldn't say it's so great that I would make it over my regular stew but it is pretty tastie. I followed the recipe except I also added parsnips because, come on, how can you have beef stew without parsnips. The meat is really tender and the sauce is flavorful. I'm sure it will taste even better tomorrow.

The Year in Review 2007

I have been very remiss in updating my blog. I really need to upgrade my blog software and hosting but have been very lazy about it. Anyway, this is my year in review to bring the blog up to date. So, let's start!

January
On Christmas Day, 2006 I flew to London, England joining up with my friends Bev and Fraser at their house in High Wicombe just west of London. Bev was actually in Aberystwyth, Wales spending Christmas with the girls. Fraser arrived back a couple of hours after I arrived at the house. I took the train the next day to Aberystwyth to join up with bev and the girls then her and I drove back after a couple more days.

On 5 January 2007 Bev, Fraser and I took off for Bangkok, Thailand for two weeks. In Bangkok we stayed at a time share hotel fairly convenient to the Sky Train system. We shopped, we ate, we toured. Pretty mush non-stop for 7 days. Hired a private guide for two days of trips outside of Bangkok visiting such places as the floating markets, the Tiger Temple, Bridge Over the River Kwai and the ancient city of Ayathuya. After a week in Bangkok we took the train to Hua Hin for a week of relaxation by the sea. Again we ate, toured, swam and basically relaxed. On the 20 January we flew back to London where I spent a couple more days before returning home.

March/April
At the end of March I was given the opporotunity to go to Vimy, France with the combined Central Band and Air Command Band for the 90th Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Five others from the reserve band went also. We left to go to Trenton, Ont for three days of rehearsals before fliying to Lille, France on a Canadian Forces Airbus jet along with the rest of the 350 strong contingent. We stayed at a hotel just across from the airport. We spent 5 days rehearsing with a rather light schedule before doing the main gigs over Easter weekend culminating in the big ceremony on Easter Monday with the Queen of England, President of France and the Prime Minister of France in attendance. It was quite the experience. We had five days free at the end before heading back so everyone participated in a scatter drill. Tessa and I took off on the TGV for Paris where we spent 2 nights. When we got back we went with a group on a day trip to Brugges, Belgium before returning to Canada.

Countries Visited

According ti this I have visited 26 countries which represents 11% of the world. Guess I have to visit more "big" countries ;-)

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands
visited 26 countries (11%)

Harry Potter and the Deathly hallows

Need i say more.....

The Dramatic Chipmunk

Checkout one of the funniest 5 second clips you'll see on the internet. On YouTube you'll find all sorts of variations of this.

The Big 5-0

Well, this ending up being a bit of a bust. Didn't plan this one well at all.

My birthday falls during the Montreal Jazz Festival and I usually go to one of the headliner shows that night. Tickets usually go on sale for those headliners at the end of November or beginning of December, True to form the announcement came out the beginning of December, At Place des Arts Pick Martini was was playing. I don't know them from a hole in the wall but over at Theatre de Nouveau Monde Holly Cole was playing. Bingo! I'm a big Holly Cole fan so this was perfect. She was playing on the 28th and 29th. Even more perfect.

The concert that wasn't

I sold my Holly Cole tickets for tomorrow night through craigslist. First time I used craiglist and I must said it was a rather painless operation. These were great tickets, second row middle. Sigh.....

I bought them back in December when they first went on sale. My birthday (29 June) always falls during the Montreal Jazz Festival so I usually buy whatever headliner is playing that night. Holly Cole is one of my favorite singers. I think I've seen her at least 6 or 7 times in the last 17 years including some of her early ones at the Spectrum in the early 90's. For the Jazz Fest the announced dates were 28 and 29 June, perfect. I happened to be at Air Force that day and, being a quiet day, decided not to go to lunch and instead called for tickets. Admission was busy so I called Theatre Nouveau Monde directly and got through right away. Basically had my choice of seats and without really thinking ordered tickets for the 29th. Afterwards I realized I should have gotten tickets for the 28th since this year is my 50th and I might have other things going on. Oh well, it would somehow work out. Later they added two more shows (30 June and 2 July) but I passed those dates by.

The Simpsons Movie

Coming to a theater near you at the end of July meanwhile you can feast your eyes on the trailer and play around on the supporting website where you can recreate yourself as a Simpson's avitar.

Crazy Times

It's been really crazy the past two weeks since I have returned from France. During this two week period I have had six rehearsals, three military mess diiners, three orchestra concerts and a web contract . This is in addition to having a regular 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job.

It should ease up a bit starting this week although I still have a fair anount of things to do it's not as intense as it the past two weeks. I might even find time to post more photos from Thailand. Now that the Flickr Pro accounts allow for nested sets (called collections) it should make it easier to organize my thailand photos. Then I have the Vimy Ridge/France photos to put up. At least I won't be traveling anytime soon so I can catch up on photo organizing

Vimy Ridge

As usual I am behind on my blogging. Have to make a better effort of blogging on a regular basis. I still haven't finished my entries from the Thailand trip and now I have gone off again.

I just got back yesterday from Lille, France where I was honored enough to be part of the Canadian contingent for the 90th Anniversary ceremonies of the Battle of Vimy Ridge and the re-dedication of the monument there. It was a last minute thing as both Regular Forces Air Force bands were participating but were down personel. They put a call into my reserve band (the only Air Force reserve band in Canada) and 6 of us went along.

I took two weeks of vacation to partake. We left to go to Trenton, Ontario on 28 March for a few days of practice with the two bands and the pipe band. On Sunday, April 1st we flew by Canadian Forces Airbus to Lille, France and settled into a hotel next to the airport for the next two weeks. After a day free to aclimatize and explore Lille we started a weeks worth of rehearsals culminating in a military funeral to interre a WWI soldiers whose remains had recently been found and identified, a Sunset Ceremony at the monumnet on Saturday night, a Freedom of the City parade through the streets of Arras on Sunday and the main ceremonies on Easter Monday, April 9th.

Vimy Sunset Ceremony



438 ETAH Band members at Vimy

After that we had the rest of the week off and Tessa and I went to Paris by TGV on Tuesday Afternoon. We spent two nights there exploring as much as we could then came back to Lille on Thursday afternoon. On Friday we made a quick day trip to Bruges, Belgium with a group of others. On Saturday we lazed about, did a bit shopping, packed a bit then went into Lille for one last mussel feast at Aux Moules.

Weather could not have been better. There was sunshine throughout and it got gradually warmer as the days progressed. By Saturday it was up to 26c in Lille and we sitting on a terrace in the afternoon wearing shorts and sipping beer.

It was an incredible experience, one I would not trade. We worked hard but we were treated well. Many anecdotes but have no idea when I will get those out knowing my procrastination with this blog. Also took lots of photos. Have to sort through those, I haven't even finished up my Thailand photos yet.

More Photos

Slowly but surely getting the photos uploaded. Have added another three sets from our third day in Bangkok and and the trip to Bang Pa-In and Ayuthaya on our fourth day.

Bangkok tour 08 Jan 07
Bang Pa-In Palace 09 Jan 07
Ayuthaya Wat Yai Chai Mongkol and Lunch 09 Jan 07
Ayuthaya - Wat Chai Watternaram 09 Jan 07

Still have another set of photos for Ayuthaya to put up before I can move on to the next day. Hopefully I will have everything uploaded by the end of next weekend (famous last words)

Photos Upload

Have started uploading photos. The first couple of days are up.

New sets:
Qatar Airways Flight 5-6 Jan 07
Bangkok 6 Jan 07
Bangkok 7 Jan 07

Bangkok Updates

Have now added most of the Bangkok entries. I've had them all along as I have been writting everyday on the laptop and then putting the entries on my USB key. I was waiting for an opportunity to add photos to the entries but just have not had time to go through all of the photos in order to do that.

Will take care of Hua Hin and the photos when I get back to England. I have a couple of days there so I can sort through things and finish up the Hua Hin diary.

That's all for now, last day in Hua Hin, the beach and the massage places are calling my name....

River Boats, Palaces, Massages and Ping Pong

Our last full day in Bangkok. Today was to be more sightseeing and such but we had to fit it around coming back to the hotel for clothes fitting in the late afternoon. As we were getting ready to leave the hotel the tailor guy came up and asked if we could wait and do the fitting now as his tailor was coming soon. So we hung around the lobby for around a half hour which we didn't mind because it was better to do it now then having to split up the day coming back. That taken care of we hopped in a taxi to go to the Silom District to take in the Jim Thompson House but what had been identified on the map as the Jim Thompson (an ex-WWII GI who popularized Thai silk) House was actually just an outlet, not the Thai Teak House that was his residence. It would have been too much to backtrack so we carried on to the end of the skytrain line where the river is and the central pier. From there we caught a river express boat up to the pier closest to the Grand Palace. After a quick jaunt through the amulet market nearby we headed over to the Grand Palace. The King no longer lives there but parts of the grounds are used for ceremonial functions.

One must be dressed properly when on the grounds so at one of the gates they have Thai pants for guys and wrap around skirts for the ladies avalable for free with deposit. Since Fraser and I had shorts we had to get done up. That taken care of we proceeded to wander about the palace grounds. Add some more about the this later

Lazy Day and Ladyboys

Woke up way earlier than I wanted to feeling like I had been ran over by a tuk-tuk. Attempted to go back to sleep but no go. Bev and Fraser were meeting up with the RCI rep, something that has to be done everytime they use the service, always trying to sell them something else. That was at 10am, Fraser had said he didn't want to waste time on his vacation doing this so had said that they should be done by 11am. I floated down to the restaurant and had breakfast. Returning to my room around 10 I noticed the maid was there so I went up to the pool. ANother lovely sunny warm day in Bangkok, sun felt really good and I was beginning to feel a bit better. I went back down to my room before 11am in case they finished up and tried to call my room.

So I laid there, half dozed, half watched tv. By 1:30 they hadn't called so I decided to hang out by the pool which I did until 4:30. Went back to the room but no messages. Not sure what was going on so I grabbed my laptop and went to the lobby bar. Had a soda and some shrimp rolls and while I was sitting there Fraser popped up. He said they were with the RCI guy until 3:30, he actually di have a good deal for them. When they finished with that they thought they left a message for my room but I never received it. The guy had suggested a nearby place for massages that was way cheaper than the hotel so Bev was there and Fraser had just done a little shopping. Fraser said that he and Bev had taken advantage of the tailor shop in the hotel and had been measured for clothing. He said come on over and he'll have a pair of pants made for me to replace the pants he spilled wine all over on the plane (and to which were now stained). Sure, off we went. Well, I figured what the heck, may as well have another pair of pants and some shirts made or two.

Bridges, food and tigers

Off early today as we had a long drive to the floating market and to Kanchanaburi. Sun was just coming up as we left Bangkok over the bridges heading west. On our way we passed an area where they were producing salt from shallow flooded areas. Alongside the road were stands selling salt. First stop was to a small place that did hand painted Thais porcelaine. We walked through the room were all the painting was being done and walked about the grounds that had an impressive teak house with a porcelain museum in it. Back on the road we made a quick stop where they were burning coconuts. An old lady chopped the top of the coconut with a machete and gave us straws. No coconut milk in these, it was coconut juice nicely warmed. After you could scrape out the coconut from the inside of the shell but we saved some for monkeys later on.

Finally we arrived at the Damnern Saduak Floating Market. Terribly touristy but fascinating all the while. We got our own private rowed boat which was mush preferrable to the noisy car engine powered long tail scooting about the canals. The whole town is a series of canals and life pretty much revolves around the canals. There are three clusters of markets with the boats of merchants fighting for space with all of the touriat boats but we managed to get there early enough to avoid the bigger crush of tourist that we could see toward the end of our visit. As we floated down the canals we bought a few food goodies (what else?) including these, I guess. coconut dumplings steamed in banana leaves and trays of sliced pomelo fruit, a sort of huge grapefruit but sweeter than grapefruit. We made a few stops then toward the end stopped at a boat making fried bananas. Most unloke any fried banana I've had before they were quite delicious and we gobbled them up quickly.

Palaces, Wats and Food

We met up in the lobby at 6:30am to await Ratt, the private guide I had hired after reading praises of her services on various forum sites. After waiting about 20 minutes and seeing no sign of her I went to the front desk and asked to call her. Slight mixup, she hadn't received my confimation email but she would come and would get there around 7:30am. When she came we decided to reverse the order of things and visit Ayuthaya, the ancient capitol of Thaisland that was destroyed by the Burmese in the late 1700s. What is left are the ruins of the city. On the way we were stopped at Bang Pa In, a royal palace.

In the complex are lakes, canals, buildings and towers. Rama V, the king in the 1800s who brought Westernism to the Thais lifestyle, had a fascination for things European so there is an odd mixture of oriental and west.The Thais royal family no longer uses the palace but it is sometimes used for foreign dignitaries.

Temples and Tours

Took advantage of the free temple tour available through the timeshare setup. After a late pickup because the van was stuck in traffic we were finally on our way. Just a small group, two other couples and us. First stop was the Wat Benjamabopit (Marble Temple). It's nicknamed the Marble Temple because it's mad from imported Italian marble. It is one of the finest examples of modern Thai architecture. It was built around the turn of the century (last one, not this one).It has a large central hall with a bronzed Buddha with two side alters. Outside in coutyard is a collection of 53 Buddha statues displayed in the rear cloisters. There are Buddhas from around the world and show artistic development of Buddhas.

So we hopped back in the van and headed to Wat Traimit (The Golden Buddha) located in a corner of Chinatown. It's claim to fame is that it once sat in a neighborhood covered in stucco which is thought to have been applied during the time of Burmese invaders to protect it. Because of the stucco noone realized the value of the statue and it sat neglected for centuries. In the 1950s a company bought the land and was using a crane to move the Buddha. It dropped and the stucco was cracked. A rainstorm that night further weakened the covering and the next morning a resident noticed a metallic glow emanating from the crack and ordered the stucco removed. Underneath was the 5.5 ton golden image. Local monks say that it is 75% pure gold but no scientific tests have ever been done on it.

Shopping, food and massage

Following a great night of sleep we finally got our act together and headed back to the Chatuchak Weekend Market by mid-morning. We picked up some deep fried pork (25 baht, about .80) and then I found those chicken toasts again. This was followed by a fruit shake containing about 6 fruits and ice for 35 baht (1.10) that was oh so yummy. For the next hour or two we wandered through the market picking up little things here and there, shorts, pants, shirts, kitchen things, souvineers. By about 1:30 we had decided we had enough and headed toward the exit. On our way to the gate we decided to stop at a little stall where they were giving foot massages for 200baht (6.50) for a half hour. So for the next half hour we were transported to heaven. On our way out of the market we picked up some more fruit shakes and headed to the skyway station where we bought all day passes for 120baht (4.00) each and took the skytrain all the way to the end.

There was a small mall at the end station. Bev went to go get a leg waxing and Fraser and I went across the street to a little outdoor area and had a beer. When we collected Bev we went back there to munch on some of the food being served. We bought portions of pork on a stick, dim sum, fish cakes done up in banana leaves. Each portion which gave us each one or two goodies costs all of 25 baht each! So we had a great snack. We then hopped back on the skytrain so we could go to the cross over of the other line and take that to the end. It ended at the river. It was getting dark by now so we headed back to the hotel taking the skytrain to the closest station to the hotel then grabbed a tuk-tuk to the hotel.