Anyway, there’s no real need to talk about it so here are some pictures.

Haroon playing Tetris. Just look at that sweet face.

This is how I stand on boats.

Had to turn Haroon white so we could get into a couple of the nicer places we went.

Last up is Christine. We met a couple years back when she randomly showed up at my apartment and slept on my couch for a few days. Also, she has a lobster fetish and doesn’t think voting is pointless. She’s neat.

2011

2009

The first trip was before this blog existed so let me recap the reason for it here:

I said, “Hey Google, give me a job?”
Google say, “You seem cool, let’s talk”
We talked for a while on phones and whatnot
I say, “Hey Google, enough talking, give me a job”
Google say, “Come down and meet us boy, we fly you down”
I say, “Okay”
I go to California, we meet
I get home and say, “Hey Google, job now?”
Computer says no.
I say, “Poop.”

Fast forward a few years and I’m working at Thrive. The reason for the second trip went like this:

Intuit say, “Hey companies, we’re having a contest!”
Thrive say, “Can we be a finalist?”
Intuit say, “Sure!”
Thrive say, “Yay!”
Intuit say, “You have to come to San Francisco to present”
Thrive say, “We’ll take a plane!”
Intuit say, “Cool!”
And then we took a plane, presented and held our breath.
I say, “We win?”
Judges say no
I say, “Poop”

Anyway, the similarity. Right. Both trips were split between Mountain View and San Francisco. The Intuit campus is right next to the Google campus, and I did a shit-ton of U-turns on El Camino Real, which is Spanish for ‘road that everything is on.’ It’s hard to explain how two things feel similar, so I won’t try. But if you want to experience a similar thing, eat a bowl of red gummi bears for supper tonight, then eat a bowl of green ones tomorrow night. Repeat until you run out of colours then give yourself an enema. Then you’ll understand. Yes, you’ll understand very well.

I won’t bore with more words, but you can check this video:

And there are some photos over on the flickr.

I will point you, however, to two photos that I think exemplify the difference in all things 2006 Angus and 2011 Angus.

2006

And 2011…

• I was frustrated because I was doing a lot of work and work and work and work and wasn’t sure why.
• I was bored because I had temporarily stopped doing all that work.
• I was celebrating because I hit a financial milestone 5 months sooner than expected.
• And I was naked because I was tired of all my clothes. Some shopping was required and shopping in Newfoundland is like trying to sail around in the world using a ship you found in a broken bottle. The logical side of me has no idea how those two things are similar but I’m trying to pay more attention to my ‘feelings’.

Anyway, had it been only those things, I probably would’ve headed to Boston or New York, but I also wanted to visit Haroon. The same Haroon you may remember from my 2nd-last trip to Toronto. Haroon is like one and a half times better than the best chicken piccata you ever had, eaten after a 4-day famine, atop a roof with an ocean view, while on closed-circuit television you watch everyone who has ever wronged you being punched in rapid succession. Yep. He’s that good.

Also staying with Haroon that weekend, in what was a very pleasant happenstance, was Kristen and Grant. They were the folks who got married in Mexico. I’ve seldom got to spend any real time with them, so I’m glad our weekends overlapped. As a couple, they’re like when two neighbouring villages expand outward because of the in-migration of diamond miners to support the nearby mines and the towns meet-up in the middle and using their combined tax bases build a tower in the middle that is greater than either of the towns could’ve done on their own, y’know?

Of course, I could sit here all day and poorly describe my friends, but it’s picture time.

Community on the plane. In a weird coincidence, I watched Community while I was packing, they had it in the plane seat video thing, and it was on in Haroon’s apartment whenever we were there. If you’re not watching Community yet, you is many fools wrapped up in one.

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To quote Veronica Mars, “Wash me is so 2005.”

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Saw this hanging in the change room at Mexx, so I scanned the QR code, signed up for the newsletter and got a coupon code (that I used 2 minutes later) all without pants on!

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We are 23% more handsome upside-down. Fact. This was at Haroon’s friend Cindy’s apartment. I was sure to give her some of the ol’ Newfoundland hospitality. You know, making inappropriate comments until she finds them endearing.

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Butter Chicken at Lahore Tikka House. Amazing food. To quote Grant, “you know it’s going to be good when there’s a wait to get into a giant place that has plastic chairs and styrofoam plates.” (Note that all quotes on this site — and possibly in the world — are +/- a couple words unless otherwise noted.)

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Shoe on an Escalator. Watch the video.

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Matthew Morrison interviewed by Rick the Temp at the Eaton Centre. The best bit was that the girls lined up to meet Mr. Morrison couldn’t see the interview. (I swear I only happened to be walking by.)

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Shopping complete!

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That’s all for this post. Go away now. Oh wait, the title — well, when Haroon and I get together, it’s fi-ur! (Which is caused by lightning, which also happened while I was in Toronto.)

Since that April in 2008 when I started all this foolish travelling, I’ve done most of it in Springtime*. I don’t really have a good reason, that’s just how it works out.

Turns out though that I’ve kinda been conditioned by this. So in my head, I see snow melting and I think “time to plan a trip!” then I urinate on something to mark my territory before trying to put my lipstick in the couch.

Single life aside, I have been getting the itch to travel. Weird thing though, I don’t WANT to travel. Eff that. I decided this was a working year, so the plan was to do nothing but work as much as I could. (It’s good to do that once and a while to save money and hone my office chair sitting skills or whatever.) So dammit that’s what I’m gonna do!

It’s the idea of travelling that makes me go blech also. I’m tired of all the aimless wandering I’ve been doing. Fly here, walk around, gawk at this, try to fornicate with that, come home instead. Repeat.

Still, I like to break up the monotony and it’s April, leaving only three months left in this year.** So I’d like to go somewhere with a purpose. I was gonna go to vegas for a web conference, but it conflicts with some sort of party my brother is having.

Besides an event, another idea I had is some specific, arbitrary, kinda-stupid goal (e.g. visit all 6 continents in two weeks) or insanely detailed itinerary with the plan being to see if I can do it. I want to challenge myself logistically instead of culturally. Logistics are so much more interesting than culture.

This is all sky-pie for now, but I’m open to ideas. Comments below, if you can squeeze some sweet juice from your mind grapes. Think wacky my friends, think wacky.

*Saying ‘springtime’ is part of my campaign to save pointless suffixes.
**I had a fight with Gregory so I don’t use his calendar anymore.

But anyway, Gatineau. After I decided to stop CouchSurfing, I drove east for a while and then checked into a hotel there. It was actually a golf/spa resort, which I thought was perfect for someone who doesn’t play golf or know what happens in a spa.

I got it on the cheap cause it was a last-minute booking and then got a free upgrade to a fancy room. Score! It was quite nice, though it lacked certain obvious standard hotel features. Like towel racks. It didn’t have a single towel rack. Or any way (I could see) to direct the water to the shower head. On the flip side, the pay-for-porn channel was free for almost a whole day. (The titles did not appear on my bill.)

So after I checked in and took a bath and then watched tv and took another bath, I went to check out the city.

I went to the Canadian Museum of Civilization, but much to my disappointment there was not a single mention of the game.

So then I went to Gatineau park which has the best driving roads I found on the trip. Curvy, hilly, smooth and led to a gay nude beach. Awesome.

Here are some photos of a random assortment, much like the boxes of timbits that proved to be perfect eat-while-driving snacks. Enjoy the glazed or coconut-covered or boston-cream-leaking goodness.

1. Buggery

Bugs, bugs everywhere and also my water bottle was empty. After 4000 kms, I had killed a lot of bugs with just my car. Multiply that by the number of cars on the highways and consider those were only the bugs killed and that’s one assload of bugs in existence.

2. Stairs at the top

I went to Gatineau Park. It was 35 degrees. There were stairs and a great view but it was too hot to remember anything else.

3. Old van

There was a postal exhibit at the museum. They had every stamp ever issued in Canada, an orange iBook and an old truck. I’m not sure what the punchline is.

4. Saskatchewan

Walking through the old towns in the museum was very cool and the only reason I went to the museum in the first place. I don’t enjoy them generally but walking through re-built old towns across Canada was something.

5. Parlament

The heat was so intense at this point I thought that was a castle across a lake of fire and I was supposed to rescue some sort of hot sleeping chick. At least that’s what I told the police. When they detained me and took away my sword.

Out of the sweltering heat, I went back to the hotel and took a nice, refreshing bath before starting the long drive east.

See, the idea for the trip was to (finally) get out and couch surf myself. Hosting and attending couch surfing events in St. John’s has had such a positive impact on life, surely getting out into the world and surfing other couches across the country would be grand.

The flaw in this, however, soon became apparent. That is: I hate couch surfing.

It took me four hosts to figure it out, but yeah, I hate it. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed meeting the people I stayed with. It was great to see into their part of whatever city I was in and be introduced to places I would’ve never found on my own. It just wasn’t great to sleep on their couches. Forget for a moment that twice I had cats sleeping on or around me or that I was in a open spaces with no privacy. It’s the being in someone else’s space that I can’t do.

Hating something is a feeling, but if I was to break it down into its most definable parts it would look like this. First, it’s a logistical pain in the membrane to coordinate around someone else’s schedule. Then, when I do get into a host’s place, I can’t get comfortable. I’m always on edge and trying not to offend or impose. And I never think they want me there. Perhaps it’s paranoia, but I always think they think they can’t wait till I leave. This leads me to think that either I suck as a guest or that maybe I have really low self-esteem. Turns out that neither is a comforting thought.

This is all on me, of course. It’s clear that other people wouldn’t have the same problems with it, hence the large number of folks who’ve had wonderful couch surfing trips not unlike the one I had envisioned.

So after those first ten days, I checked into a hotel to regroup. After looking over my options, I made the tough decision to take myself off the road. I (really) didn’t want to, but it didn’t make sense to pay many monies for a trip around lands I’ve already seen.

Once I press this there's no turning back. Unless I wanted to hear 'recalculating' a lot

And so I’m going to head back east, and if all works out I’ll be taking off for another trip before too long.

Not just a comedy show, Conan rocked out on guitar and keys

The only thing I knew I wanted to do on this trip was see Conan O’Brien live. And on Saturday, I did. So how was the show?

Well, I don’t say this lightly but it was the best show / concert / live performance / whatever that I’ve seen. In my life. Could be the best I will ever see. Seriously.

Folks, I don’t know if you know the extent to which I am a Conan fan. I’m not fanatical about much, but I like Conan a lot. A whole lot. I like Conan like large dudes like chicken. I can still remember times before moving to St. John’s (which would have been over 13 years ago) when I would sit in my bedroom waiting until 2am so I could watch his show. I don’t know exactly when or how I started, but I never stopped. I’m sure I spent hundreds of first periods in plenty of grades almost falling asleep in school because of him (and our inconvenient time zone.) Getting TiVo in 2004 meant I could watch all of his shows. Sometimes they would backlog and I’d watch 30 in a weekend. When the writers went on strike, he got even better. No longer hiding behind the funny words of others, he grew his beard and put on even better shows. The man has the funny.

So when this man, whom I have watched for the entire portion of my life that I can remember, walked out on the stage in front me … well, I am not a good enough writer to describe that feeling. There were full body tingles and a smile on a my face you couldn’t remove with a scalpel. An exhilarated rush of emotions. It was a magic potion the likes of which I had never tasted.

I’ve done a lot of things and seen a lot of shows but nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to that single moment in time.

It’s worth nothing that the Second City show I saw in February is still the funniest show I’ve seen, but that was a comedy show. Conan was an experience. An experience that rocked my socks clean off. (I could list all the amazing things he said and did but there were enough video cameras in the audience that you can find it all on YouTube.)

I know what you're thinking: Is that the giant inflatable bat from Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell tour? Yes, yes it is

It was brilliant comedy, great music, but more importantly it was Conan being Conan with no television filter between his face and my eyes. And that’s something I never thought I’d get to see.

Drove 1500 kms in 30 hours • Slept with a cat on me • Retraced the steps I’d taken in Fredericton when I lived there • Watched Iron Man 2 with new friends and Date Night alone (love being free for weekday matinees!) • Slept soundly while 10+ people were having a party in the next room • Wandered around with my camera • Spent a C-note to replace the laptop power cord I left home • Got more of a sun tan in a day in Fredericton than I did in a week in Mexico • Drove another 800 kms in 9 hours • Climbed (walked up) Mont Royal • Watched The Trotsky in Montreal (where it was filmed) • Went to a Sketch Comedy Fest show • Drove around an F1 track in a minivan • Refused the English version of the menu at Montreal restaurants • Slept with a different cat on me • Got a new-development tour of Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles from my real estate investor CS host • Discovered how awesome it is to have an iPhone in a proper city • Saw Xavier Rudd and Justin Nozuka • Got stuck in Montreal traffic • Drove another 600 kms in a lot more than it should’ve taken • Got stuck in Toronto traffic • Paid far too much for parking in one night • Spent an afternoon at a Toronto library • Read Stumbling on Happiness • Ate breakfast at places called Eggspecation and Disgraceland • Finally saw a production of The Last Five Years, a favourite musical I had only ever heard the soundtrack of • Arrived late because of subway delays • Had the worst pad thai imaginable • Tweeted 14 times • Ate a slice of amazing berry pie at a pie shop in Kensington Market • Watched a shirtless crazy man pretend to shoot flares from his butt • Contemplated moving to Toronto • Played Super Mario Galaxy 2 • (And of course…) Saw Conan O’Brien in the pasty white flesh!

This visit simply re-affirmed many of my previously held opinions of the city from my first visit in 2008.

This time, I was staying downtown near Place des Arts in a new building called Loft des Arts. It’ll be a nice building for sure, but they aren’t quite finished yet. The inside of the elevator was still wrapped in a protective layer, there were missing walls and mouldings in the halls and there were still-exposed wall innards in the lobby. The trees outside were laying on the ground waiting to be planted.

My host, an older (not old) francophone real-estate investor named Alain, was still waiting for the rest of his furniture and was even doing some renos while I was there. It was kinda neat to be one of the only a few people staying in an apartment complex under construction, even if there was no AC yet. (Might not sound that bad to someone in Newfoundland, but it was mid-to-high 20s for my stay there.) Also, when I first arrived, Alain took me up to the roof where there was a pool, a lounge and as you can imagine, great views of the city.

Though I didn’t get pictures of any of that.

I only had my camera out on one day, the day I went up exploring Mont Royal. Here’s a few, though none are particularly good.

1. Bixi bikes

They have these bikes all over the city that you can steal and return for some amount of dollars. Genius!

2. So many stairs

So I walked up around Mont Royal. I won’t say it nearly killed me, but it nearly nearly killed me. I think there was a bit too much lounging in weeks leading to my trip.

3. Crazy runner girl

This girl passed me, running up it and was there waiting, reflecting smugly when I finally got to the top.

4. Water show!

This is a water installation outside Place des Arts. The water jumps and shoots and turns different colours at night. Very hypnotic and thirst inducing.

More pictures on flickr, but not a whole lot more for Montreal.

I remember Fredericton as a rather beautiful place. Tree-covered streets, which were all laid out in a nice grid along the side of a hill. The Saint John river flows to the North and some other people live on the other side of the river I think. I would marvel at the different street signs and traffic circles. (Car roundies, as I called them.) Unlike the haphazard sprawl of St. John’s, Fredericton looked like a baby-big-city. Like if you fed it enough, in twenty years it would grow into a full-size, pain-in-the-ass, resents-you-but-still-comes-home-to-use-the-washer, grown-up city.

When I arrived earlier this week, however, that’s not what I found. Instead I found a place that reeked of small town in all the bad ways. It was ugly and small and gross and made me want to vomit up my side-of-the-highway-sourced lunch. This seemed like a harsh description though so I set out with my camera so you could see the ugly for yourself.

1. Faculty of Law

This is where I went to school way back when. I can still remember showing up late, parking in the dirt parking lot and getting yelled at for missing class. Good times.

2. The Church

This is the steeple. I wanted to find the people, but I couldn’t figure out any way to turn it over. It’s also the steeple I saw from my apartment. And if you’ll notice, an empty street in the middle of the day. Sad.

3. Something in the water

Seriously, guys, a pedestrian bridge over the river with views of the city? Who would possibly want to walk across something like that. Also, this useless box was just sitting there in the water like a damn useless box.

4. Stop sign

Two languages on your stop signs? C’mon! You know there’s no one in Fredericton who only speaks French, right? I know you like to think of yourself as biligual, New Brunswick, but you’re ruining the classic asthetic of the stop sign. Stop is fine. Arrêt is fine. Just make up your damn mind! (Not that it matters, I guess. It’s a big red octagon. Write a racial slur on it if you want, people will still stop.)

5. Water fountain

Really, Fredericton? Really? Tree-lined walking paths through your city? With easily accessible water fountains and clearly labeled maps? You’re know you’re only the size of my left thumb, right? If I can’t make it from one side to the other without required immediate rehydration, I deserve to shrivel up and die.

So … in conclusion I had a wonderful time seeing the city again. It vindicated my decision to get the hell out of there when I did.