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 Quebec City. August 2010. Diana Mini. Redscale 100. ( + 8x2 - all over the city ) |
De Marseille à Québec - in redscale
Dec. 1st, 2010 08:19 amThis is what I've been working on. For this one I think I'll post the scans in proper order instead of randomly.  (on the right you can see a Cool Globe that used to be all over Marseille) I always take one blank shot after I insert a new film... and then straight on to the proper shooting. I don't understand how people can respect the customary three blank shots. Don't they want happy accidents? ( +2 or 4, depends on how you count ) Have I already declared my love for the Diana Mini and redscale film? It is possibly the best combination in the world. |
Sunday breakfasts and signs.
Aug. 24th, 2010 08:37 pmWhat do people do on Sundays? Some people go to some random church, others sleep in... I skip lunch and have two breakfasts. There really is a reason why I have a "Gali acts like a grown up" tag. |
 ( 1x2 - the second breakfast involved cookies ) |
Funny thing was that at the place where I got my second breakfast the guy behind the counter would switch back and forth between English and French. It was kind of hilarious. First he took my order in French, then while he was making the coffee he asked in English if it was still raining outside, then he switched back to French. I kind of loved the people in Quebec. Right. And remember what I said about there being degradations all over the place? Here are some examples. |
 Seeing the spelling, I do believe some people are just ignorant fools who try to provoke and only manage to do so poorly. ( 2x2 more of small degradations/stickers + 2x2 photos of random streets ) |
Laval - le campus
Aug. 24th, 2010 07:25 pmI'm kind of behind on my Canada spamming! But I have discovered new things! You can buy milk here in plastic bags... but it's only in a plastic bag if you want a couple gallons of milk. This is so exciting but absolutely not practical, still very, very exciting. How much sugar have I had? Not much. I did have one too many sweet breads from the Chinese bakery. And now on to the spammage. In case someone did not know, I stayed at one of the Laval University residences, about 20 minutes away from the Quebec City center. I made some new friends there. They were shy though and I only managed to capture one of them on camera. |
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I have no clue what those things were, prairie dogs perhaps, castors? Probably the locals were all thinking "just how crazy is she?" while I was trying to approach these guys without them running off. Makes me wonder if there are crazy tourists taking photos of the city bunnies in Helsinki. |
( 5x2 more photos of the campus and bus stops ) |
L'Echaudé and more reasons to love Canada
Aug. 23rd, 2010 11:38 amAs I previously mentioned there are a couple of famous good restaurants in Quebec City and after having tried two of them and listening to what the other patrons were saying, I can understand most online reviews. The other day I went for brunch at L'Echaudé which is by no means a very upscale restaurant but let's say that it's in the classier range of local bistros. For example you get a small mise-en-bouche (alas not pictured because I sometimes suck at taking photos, especially when I'm hungry) and other such things. The prices are pretty reasonable, the food is excellent and I had the loveliest waiter in the world who understood my love of desserts. |
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I even tried some local white wine and I must say it was rather good. I would love to bring some back for my dad but I doubt it'd survive very long in my backpack. Perhaps they'll be selling some at the airport! I had an egg roll with smoked mozzarella, the best thing in the world, served with baked potatoes and salad. And then I had some sorbet because I like dessert, I forgot to ask what brand of sorbet they serve but it wasn't sugary which is my main problem with most sorbets. (BTW, the whole thing wine + mise en bouche + main dish + dessert + tax + tips cost me less than 30 bucks again, not bad if you ask me.) Now on to the stories of the patrons. There were a lot of tourists and I was amazed by what they ordered! They ordered steak. No exception! The menu had such wonderful things and they ordered steak (and then complained that it wasn't properly done just as they liked)! Perhaps they didn't know what the things on the menu were but they could have asked. Then again maybe I have a different perception of these kinds of things because I don't really enjoy meat... but if you're a meat lover why go for steak when there is duck and other good meat on the menu? If you enjoy steak so much, why not go to a steak place where they'll know how to cook your steak just as you like it? I'm a huge egg lover so for me the egg dishes at these restaurants are pure bliss. In normal restaurants you just get eggs. Here you get extremely good eggs with amazing variations and flavours and everything goes together so well. Plus there are flowers in the salad. That gets 123987 extra points. |
( 1x2 more photos - flowers and dessert ) |
Conclusion: if you're going to Quebec City, ask me about their restaurants! Also, ViaRail, you amazing company! You provide me with free interwebs in your train stations and it's rather good! And now if only you could upgrade your wifi on trains so that it would actually work, I'd love you forever and ever and ever. SNCF, please learn from these guys! Right. In an hour or so I'll be in the train back to Montreal... en attendant, I'm eating a bagel and it's the start to "Gali hunts down bagels in Canada". I have four and a half days for this mission. |
Walking through the suburbs from Laval.
Aug. 23rd, 2010 08:51 amOn Saturday I decided to walk to the city from the Laval campus. GoogleMaps told me that it would take 1 hour and 23 minutes going by the shortest route but I took some detours to visit the "suburbs". I also ended up reading and having a morning siesta out in the sun as there was a great park along the way. |
 ( 7x2 more photos - new furry friends, museums and parks ) |
On a completely unrelated note I had a strange dream last night and all I can remember is that somehow my sister knew who Aiba from Arashi was. Who? What? Where? Why? How? I have no idea. But Kso knew who Aiba was. |
I've been asked a few questions a couple of times in the last few months and I've given short replies to the people asking... but here is a more complete entry on stuff related to the photos posted here. The main things that always comes back are "don't you have a life? why do you post so many photos? don't you spend hours editing them and writing the posts?" and similar questions. To put it simply, no, I do not spend that much time editing the photos and writing the posts. I would say that I spend maximum an hour each day but most of the time it's about half an hour while doing other things. Some people have gardening projects, I have this LJ. Here is how typical post-photo taking time goes: - I take the SD card out of my camera and copy the photos taken on my computer. - I look through the photos and delete the ones that aren't good enough or do not really tell a story. - I sort the photos two by two, this way even more photos get kicked out of the lot. - I put those photos together with some slight editing here and there. - I upload them and write the post... with raw html so there is no need to spend hours on the layout of the post. (- Eventually I also upload the unedited photos on Flickr for archiving and backing purposes.) The text in the posts is probably what takes the least amount of time. In my case, a photo is worth a lot of words... I post often because I post about what's going on, I don't wait three days to have enough for a huge post, I like to pretend that my life is so interesting but in reality I just have a terrible memory. This also forces me to go through my photos and sort them. How many people out there take tons of photos and never really do anything with them? Isn't that just a waste of technology and time? Oh and probably I can make a book of my entries and give it as a present to my grandparents for Christmas. Easy peasy! I would do the same for my parents but my mum religiously reads my entries so it wouldn't be as exciting. |
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Overall the thing that takes the most time is actually going out there and find adventures. I should also mention that sometimes I shamelessly inspire myself from the work of others (but I do leave comments on their blogs telling them that I like their work... so it's ok), like for the shoes photos. And I get to play with different settings on the camera and shamelessly spam with photos of flowers. |
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And as a final note I should probably mention that all the edited twoxtwo photos are also uploaded on this Tumblr... because not everyone wants to read entries and some people don't feel like clicking on lj-cuts to see all the photos. I think that covers everything pretty much. Except for the cameras maybe. I mainly use my E-P1 these days with the kit 14-42mm lens but I'm looking into getting a 50mm lens (or possibly a 20mm because the 50mm micro four-thirds lens is extremely expensive and I don't feel like getting a huge lens for a tiny camera). I also take tons of photos with my Diana Mini in half-frame mode so I don't get to develop films often. My on-the-go camera, when I don't feel that bringing the E-P1 is safe or handy, is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX12, I absolutely love that point-and-shoot. Eventually I'll get my dad's Zenith-E (limited Olympic Games edition!) properly looked at... right now the mechanism to release the film gets stuck but otherwise everything works! Did I forget anything? |
I like rainbows and prices... after tax.
Aug. 22nd, 2010 04:55 pmFirst, as always, I went to visit a supermarket in this foreign land. Alas it seems that the number of strange and amazing things decreases when one knows the language of the country. I did find some rainbow Twizzlers though! Rainbow ones! They still have no taste like regular Twizzlers but at least they're rainbow coloured. |
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And second, please some explain to me the stupid concept of indicating the price before taxes? Really what's the point? "Oh the price is 3.99 CAD, that's great, I'll be able to get rid of some of my 2 CAD coins! Oh wait, it's actually 4.XX CAD because of the stupid tax... great, here's a 5 CAD bill and more coins go in my wallet, awesome." Yes, that's me on a daily basis. Probably the argument is that since the taxes are different in each region, indicating the "real" sale price (what the store is getting) without the taxes lets you know if the store is cheating you out of money or not. Still, it's not helping! Heck, why not indicate both prices before and after tax? A bit like two prices were indicated everywhere during the euro transition. Honestly I'm already having a hard time thinking of tips (don't get me started on that!) so trying to remember that the real price of what I'm buying is actually 20% or so higher is horrible. Just how many years does one need to live around here to get used to this? |
The Saint Amour
Aug. 21st, 2010 08:22 pmRemember how I said that the point of a holiday is to have one epic thing happen in each city? In Korea that worked out marvelously well... and now I can say that I've had an epic adventure in Quebec City also. As background, let me say that Canada is full of places to eat. There are plenty of restaurants and they seem to be full most of the time. Canadians seem to enjoy Italian food immensely as there are "Italian" restaurants everywhere... and every single bistro or other food place will try its best to offer "Italian" dishes. I've already been to one "Italian" restaurant and that's quite enough for me (I'm a spoiled child, I have Italian friends who have cooked real Italian food for me). Yesterday I was desperately walking around trying to find a place to eat that wasn't a tourist trap and wasn't on the fast food side. In a side street I fell on a lovely place called "Saint Amour" which turned out to be one of those three star restaurants that have extremely reasonably priced set lunch menus. I'll let you look at the photos and guess how much the meal was (the starter, main dish, dessert and tea). Hint 1: an average pizza costs about 10-15 CAD in the area. Hint 2: I didn't spend all that much. Answer after the photos under the cut. |
 Kir Impérial (not included in the set menu) Salade de quinoa ( 3x2 more photos - main dish, dessert ) |
A travers la ville.
Aug. 21st, 2010 06:17 pmQuebec City, continued. I've had my fair share of seeing strange things. They have a shop dedicated to Christmas stuff and it has the creepiest dolls on display. There is also an urban/tourist golf course set up all over the city. Oh, and there are actually tons of maple leaves! I know it shouldn't surprise me that much but it's been a while since I last saw a real maple tree. The other thing I noticed, also in Montreal, is the fact that there seems to be a lot of graffiti and that some slight vandalism is tolerated. I do understand that graffiti can be seen as art but I'm still trying to get my head around as to the other slight vandalism present almost everywhere... Maybe I'm just too sensitive to that, I've never been able to understand the need some people have to degrade public places for no reason. |
 ( 9x2 more photos - creepy Christmas, maple leaves, urban golf, etc. ) |
Quebec, up to brunch.
Aug. 21st, 2010 04:18 pmThe first major difference I've noticed between Montreal and Quebec is the fact that it's rather chilly in Quebec in the morning. In Montreal I had no problems leaving the hotel without a sweater but here I had to go back to get one on the first morning. In a way, it is refreshing. |
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Now Quebec City... there seem to be three rather distinct parts to the city: the tourist traps, the urban area and the suburban area. The tourist area is mainly made up of shops (there must be at least two souvenir shops per visitor, at least!) and overpriced restaurants. There are also some lovely areas and there is plenty of grass to sit on and enjoy the sun! |
( 8x2 more photos - streets and other amusements ) |
Deer and microwaves.
Aug. 20th, 2010 10:17 pmOn est potes avec cette ville! University dorms wouldn't be the same without shared bathrooms and old microwaves in the hall. And Quebec City wouldn't be the same without deer hanging around the city center. The police were out in full force to try to get the little one back somewhere safe. I felt bad taking photos of the struggle (the deer at one point was chased by a huge dog and ran far away from the police, I'm not quite sure if they managed to catch it in the end), so that's the best one there is. |
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Sometimes life just can't get much more entertaining than this. |
