The weekend before I had gone skating at beaver lake with my old roommate. I hadn’t done any recording with my gopro in a long time and I had been feeling the urge to be more creative. I charged up my gopro batteries the night before. I had planned to record what it’s like to hike from downtown Montreal to the chalet (cottage) on top of Mount-Royal, then make my way over to beaver lake. The timing was perfect, the city had just finished getting a large snowstorm. It was a little cold so there weren’t many people hiking. It was going to be beautiful to record, a real winter wonderland. Here was the 45 minutes route:
I ran into a problem I really wasn’t expecting. The camera kept shutting itself off. It wasn’t the batteries, I had three that were fully charged. It seemed like the camera simply stopped working. I fiddled with the battery thinking it was the cause. The camera turned on and allowed me to hit the record button again. Then it would stop once more at random intervals. I tried to stop and restart the camera each time this would occur. I thought I had done a pretty good job at ensuring I lost no footage.
When I got home and checked the memory card, there were several sections of my hike missing. This was disappointing. The footage that was captured is really nice. I did some research and found a resources that suggest the most likely cause is a bad mini sd card. After doing some research I ordered a new card. My hope is that we’ll get one more good snow storm this winter that’ll allow me to recreate the hike and footage
Here’s a short example of the clips I was able to save:
There was a last minute opportunity to attend training class offered at work. The class was fun and informative and I also got to meet a few coworkers in person for the first time. I was happy to have gotten the opportunity to attend. It was an unexpected and pleasant opportunity.
On Thursday there was the the annual Anna McPherson public lecture at McGill. Specifically an event put on by the McGill Space Institute. I found out about the lecture via reddit. Yo /r/montreal what’s up! You can find a list of their upcoming events here.
I was at the gym when the notification indicating the event was in a few hours appeared on my phone. I had forgotten about it. The initial invitation indicated to come early because space would most likely be limited. The weather was really horrible. Cold, wet, snow and ice. We had it all. I wondered how early I should arrive.
I’m still catching up on some reading so I decided to grab a healthy lunch downtown and made my way to the hall. This would give me an opportunity to make some progress on the book i’m reading. There was a class finishing up in the auditorium. Once almost all the students had left some of the people waiting for the lecture made their way into the auditorium. At this point there were maybe I half dozen of us. I joined them, sat down and opened my book. That’s when I overheard a pair of students from the previous class say “oh look someone forgot their phone”. They picked it up and from where I was sitting it looked like a really nice phone. A little while later they left the auditorium and I kept reading my book. Perhaps 5 minutes later a young woman appeared, bending down and searching for a phone near where the two earlier students had found one. I got up, walked over to her and asked her if she was looking for her phone. I lent her my phone so that she could call her phone. A few minutes later a young man appeared in the auditorium and handed the phone to the young lady.
Lost and found #1
Free to the public and live streamed on the internet. They gave us a brief explanation of Anna McPherson, the award and our speaker Dr. Wendy Freedman. They had a draw offering a couple of coffee mugs, t-shirts and a tuque to audience members. It made for a great atmosphere prior to the beginning of the actual talk.
As can sometimes happen technical difficulties arose, but the staff and volunteers were able to quickly sort them out. The talk itself was fun and informative. It wasn’t too detail heavy and it also included several great stories along the way. The stream can be watched here.
She discussed several great details about the Giant Magellan telescope. A project that if I remember correctly she leads. You can see a great little summary of it in this video:
The weather in Montreal had been horrible. All our snow had been rained on and some of it had frozen. Our city had actually transformed itself into a real life skating rink, interspersed with large puddles of what we call “slush”: A mix of ice, wet snow and water. So when the speaker at the beginning of the talk mentioned he was impressed with the number of people in attendance he meant it. Imagine the below with more water at every third or fourth step along with ice covering almost everything.
On Friday I met up with some old coworkers. We try to meet up once at month or every two months for supper. It’s a great time to socialize and catch up with friends. All of them work in the same industry as myself, so it’s also good networking. We visited one of my favorite little Korean restaurants, called Kantapia. One of these days I promise to make a post about this great little place.
We were scheduled to meet at 6 pm on a Friday. I knew we would have to wait before we would be seated at our table. This little restaurant doesn’t take reservations, otherwise we would have made one. By the window I noticed a young lady writing some text on beautiful paper. The pages were absolutely covered with writing. She got up, brought her two small plates to the counter and then handed the letter to one of the staff, another young Korean woman. Clearly emotional, she can only what I assume to have been thanking her for something. They exchanged their goodbyes and with tears in her eyes the young lady passed us on the way towards the exit. There were several customers standing just in front of the exit waiting to be seated. I had noticed when the young woman had gotten up that she had left her phone at her table. When I then saw her attempt to leave the restaurant without grabbing her phone I politely touched her arm and said “excuse me, I believe you’ve forgotten your phone on the table”. I seemed to have snapped her out where she was in her mind. The expressions “Uuhh what? Oh shit, thank you” rolled over her face.
Lost and found #2
Twice this week I helped someone locate their lost phone. Twice this week something happened to me that I had not experienced in a long time. I assumed that after the breakup I would be a little sad and emotional for a while. A healthy reaction on the way to moving on completely.
Earlier that day I had been riding the metro when I noticed this young man. Nothing out of the ordinary about seeing a young man on the metro. I was suddenly struck however with an enormous sense of empathy for him. There was just something about the way he was dressed and his expression that made me introspective about his life and his experiences. The struggles he may have faced and continues to face. We all have our own struggles. For all I know he’s perhaps a very happy and satisfied person. It just made me reflect on how lucky I’ve been in my life. I was getting off at the next stop so I didn’t get chance to ruminate too much about it. I still remarked to myself that it had been a long time since I had experience such feelings and thoughts.
As I was waiting for the lecture to start on Thursday, I walked the Mcgill hallways of the Leacock building while searching for a fountain and stumbled upon a bunch of young students in a line for a party. These were typical Mcgill students, young and full of life, most likely from a privileged background. Many of them were carrying their own empty glass to use at the party. It reminded me of when I was their age and doing the same things. Having found a water fountain, I drank and returned to sit outside of the auditorium. Continuing to read while waiting for it to be ready for the talk.
That’s when another young man passed in front of me. Limping on one side, skinny, clearly having some type of physical challenges. He slowly passed, to come sit down on the bench next to me. He opened up his laptop and started working away. I wasn’t able to see his screen but a short while later he was laughing to himself and clearly being happy.
The contrast between what I would describe as the “cool kids” in line for the party and this young man, limping by himself struck me hard. Again I was flooded with empathy towards this young man. No doubt because of all the emotions and introspection I had been going through for the past few weeks. I thought about all the things he had missed out on because of his disability. All the social events he had possibly missed.
As someone who works in IT and grew up with the early internet I appreciate how it can help foster a sense of community. It can help some people feel like they belong when they otherwise might be ostracized or lonely. Twice this week I had helped strangers locate a lost telephone. Twice this week encountering a stranger had caused a strong feeling of introspection and empathy to flood over me. Each time it had reminded me of another post where I discussed struggles. I believe it’s one of my more well written posts. It discusses struggling with life in general, your attitude towards its valleys and peaks. A journey we’re all taking together. Here’s a little sample:
Seeing this young man laugh and smile in front of his laptop lifted my spirits. Despite being dumped a few weeks ago, I find myself being more patient and kind in my day to day exchanges. I’m more thankful than ever for everything I’ve had the opportunity to experience as well as every opportunity that is opening up in front of me. I’ve changed and modified a lot of habits and behaviors over the past months. I’m putting in the actual time towards the objectives I’ve set. I suspect some of them are causing these thoughts, feelings and introspection to occur. I welcome it all.
Lost and found #3
