La stupidite des quotas...

I need to speak about something probably unknown in the US, it's content quotas.
It came to me last week when I was scanning the radio spectrum to find a replacement for the radio I used to listen to in San Francisco, KITS Live 105.
In some country or states (France, Quebec,...) government have voted law to insure a minimum ratio of content in the native language for TV or radio.
For example, in Quebec, radios are forced to play at least 60% of french songs.
I really don't like this.
What happens if a specific music style is under represented in a given language? To tell the truth then it doesn't exist in that country. Let's take indie rock, there isn't a lot of indie rock in French, much less good one. The law makes it impossible for a specialty radio to survive because of the lack of content in French. It's the same for metal, or blues...
Instead we get a flood of crappy radio with shitty commercial pop songs, because no matter what crappy commercial pop exist in every language.
I think it's nice to try to save your culture and language, but shouldn't it be by proposing quality content instead of force feeding...
I am going to buy a satellite radio or an HD radio, KITS has a channel on it.

pas bavard...

I have not been really chatty lately...
It comes from the fact that I am pretty stressed right now.
Montreal is not as fun as I expected or wanted. My friends are almost all busy. Most of them are deep into their relationship so they are not going out... It sucks.

I found an apartment but it's not all that I wanted. It is on the small size (800 sq. ft.) and I have to buy all the appliances. It doesn't have a garage so I won't be able to work on the Nova. I don't like that I am leaving just above the landlord and they won't allow to have pets (here goes my kitten).
I thought I could stay at my friend's until I found something ideal, but after 3 days where we have been arguing almost every night, I decided it was time to get find something asap. The place will be free on Sept. 1st though, so in the meantime I am going to suck it up. The place is super nice though and I love the area. It's the kind of area where it's not busy, it's really residential, but you still have a couple of nice mellow restaurants to go out to. Simple places with no fuss and good food. I am 10 mins away from a permanent farmers market and also 10 mins away from 2 subway stations.

Other news, I went to see more movies at Fantasia and I would really recommend No mercy for the rude and to a lesser extent Seven Days.
Seven days is a classic cop movie. It was good but predictable.
No mercy is really cool. The characters are deep and atypical.

I am also a little bummed out, because I just ripped the rear quarter panel on the Nova. It's going to need a replacement, but since it's not just a bolt on (there is welding involved where it meet the roof) I won't be able to fix this until I find a garage of some sort. It's prompting me to buy instead of renting. I am going to be on the lookout for a house or a condo with an private garage...

Recherche appart desesperement

What's going on...
nothing much really. At the same time it seems I don't have a minute for me.
Life is getting pretty stressful. I took the resolution of not talking about work so I will just say I got some news at work that stressed me out (basically, they have really high expectation for me, and I feel I am going to have a huge amount of work).
Aside from this, I am looking for an apartment and at the same time I am looking into buying. Deciding between renting and buying is really hard.
For me getting into a mortgage seems terrible.
I am looking for both I will probably take the first thing that I like, be it renting or buying.

Another thing stressing me out is my car situation. I have to put the Subaru up to conformity and the transporter ripped the nova exhaust. So I am driving the nova open exhaust and it's not really good. I went to a shop but they can't get the part, too old. I will probably store it until I find a garage where I can replace the exhaust on my own.

Aside from that, I got my climbing accreditation in a gym, which means I can start climbing again. So that's pretty good. I also picked up training at the gym at work and training is relaxing.

One of the good thing is the Fantasia Festival. I am really happy about the movies I have seen so far Beautiful Sunday and Adrift in Tokyo.

Condition Physique...

So I had my evaluation for the gym.
Basically, they test how I perform and how fat I am and they compare this to the average Joe in my age bracket and they get a good laugh.
I really like my trainer, she's fun.
So they started by taking my pressure and my weight and figure what: I am fat.
Then push up, abs stuff and jumping.
After that she made me run for a while. I stopped a little bit out of boredom.

I am in a somewhat OK shape, but I need to shape up, son. Specially if I want to run a marathon at some point, though I might not be able to because of work.

btw, I decided from now on to have my titles in French because on my French blog they're mostly in English.

Man, that post was boring...

Festivals...

So the festival season is kicking here.
It started a couple of weeks ago with the Main street fair. It's kind of the Union street fair, except longer and with less booze.
I have actually a pretty funny story about this festival.
It's called in French "le festival de la Main". French word main, spelled the same as main mean the hand (and a couple of years ago they had a hand on their flyer). I vaguely heard of a masturboton, so for the longuest time I though it was a masturbation festival until one day I was talking to a friend about it and I felt really, really dumb.


Then the famous Montreal Jazz Festival kicked in. It's just a clusterfuck with some of the main streets closed at night. I didn't go because it's not really my thing.
Today I saw them preparing for the "Just for Laughs" festival, which never made me laugh. It's stand up/comic festival which is again blocking some of the majors streets.
Since we are on the topic, today is moving day. For some reason, lease in Montreal (perhaps even the whole Quebec) usually run from July 1st to June 30th. So on July 1st, car rentals jack up the price of trucks, gas stations jack up the price of gas and people move.

Aside from all those high profile festivals, there is more underground one I missed very much which is starting in 2 days: fantasia. It started as asian film festival and expanded to include horror/quirky movies/cheap local production... It's awesome because it's the occasion of seeing movies which won't make it to the official theaters. It's also awesome for people who love B to Z movies (some are really bad). Some are also surprisingly good like Mermories of Murder or Running on Kharma, two movies I discovered there and got me into Korean movies.

Anyway if you are in the area, or you like asian culture/movies check out the site and try to see the movies they have selected.