KatieTheKat

Internet on the Street Corner. So today when I got home from work a man was sitting on the steps of the apartment next door. We exchanged a few words and I soon discovered that he was, in fact, the landlord of the building. I asked him if, by chance, he had wireless Internet that I could use and he said he did indeed and would come by with the password after his wife got home. When he came by, the instructions were fairly long and in large part superfluous, but they made me believe that I needed to do some extra configuration on my side before seeing the network given that I was not receiving a signal with the network name provided. So I fiddled around with settings for some time and was having no luck and eventually realized that although some of the error messages I was getting appeared to be somewhat helpful, they really meant nothing at all since I would get the same error even if I tried to connect to a completely made up non-existant network like "scoobooo". So I began to wonder if the problem was with the signal - even though I believed it to be coming from next door in an area of high-density housing, the walls are made of brick and therefore likely to be quite impenetrable. So I took my computer out to the sidewalk to see what signals I could catch there.. I saw the name of the network I was trying to connect to a couple of times, but couldn't actually establish the connection. Meanwhile, as I wandered around with computer in hand, I heard the landlord calling from above me. He invited me up to see if we could figure out what was going on - as soon as I went into their apartment (which it turns out was not directly next door to mine - there is a hallway in between), I immediately had a solid connection. Turns out the brick wall is a bigger problem than I would have expected. Wifi shielding, apparently. So I can use my neighbour's Internet connection.. I just have to sit on his front step or on the street corner to do so. That was a long and uninteresting story. My goodness.

Xword. I bought a book of crossword puzzles yesterday since I thought it would be a good way to practice some French. French crossword puzzles are hard. At least these ones are. Though, like most crossword puzzle books, I am already finding the puzzles tend to be rather unimaginative. Ok sure there isn't a lot of variety in two-letter words, but the reliance on symbols from the Periodic Table seems to be rather high.

Mannequins and legs. Brenda mentioned to me the other day that she has a mannequin in her.. kitchen, I think it was? Anyhow, she got me thinking about mannequins which led me to realize that I find mannequins and particularly just the legs of mannequins seem to be a particular phenomenon in Montreal. On coming here I immediately recognized the sock/clothing store called Neon from my previous visit because it has 4 mannequin legs in brightly coloured long socks on display in its front. But that is not all. I have seen mannequin legs in all kinds of other stores and also just randomly sticking out of buildings. Is it just me, are plastic legs popular here? And does anyone else find them rather creepy, as I do?

French words. There is a guy going through some of the same training sessions as I who tends to use a lot of slang words in French and also borrowed from English. I found it amusing to note that today he referred to something "cool" saying "c'etait malade!", like my former roommate would say that something was "sick" in English (as in, "that was a sick party, man!" or something to that effect). I wouldn't have expected such an expression to be translated so directly. I have also heard a lot of what we in French Immersion would have called Franglais - I wonder if it is becoming more common here in Montreal with the greater infusion of English into cultures everywhere or if it is more just a feature of Quebecois. In any case I hear a lot of things like adding french verb endings to English verbs, a smattering of English slang and jargon within otherwise pure French, and literal translations of figurative expressions/product names (eg. the brand Camelbak leads to a hydration bag being called a "chameau", though only by the mec in my MEC training group, not most people). It seems like basically anything goes.