...and yet, je ne pas parle francais...

...so why is it that so far this year, I've been to French-speaking regions on three different continents (New Caledonia, France itself, and now Montreal)? Although, the time I have been spending learning Spanish recently does help out with reading French, some of the words do correspond to some extent.

But regardless of my linguistic meanderings, I was there for the once-every-four-years extravaganza which is the World Congress of Chemical Engineering, which brought together almost 3000 often monumentally nerdy engineering researchers in a giant shindig, featuring a guest performance (very very impressive, actually) by Cirque du Soleil at the gala dinner on Wednesday night. And no, I don't have any photos of that, because cameras were strictly forbidden. However, blogging about work and all the things I learnt at the conference would be (a) boring to almost the entire reading public, and (b) completely out of character for this blog. So, instead, I will produce my usual series of random musings, followed by a photo or six...

* Montreal is a city built along a river - and unlike the Yarra in Melbourne, it's an extremely impressive river. There's a full-sized cargo port and a couple of islands, and the water goes absolutely belting along heading ocean-wards from the Great Lakes. They do a bit of jetboating in the middle of the river right next to downtown as well, which is fun to watch.

* They've also got a circuit for auto racing, and I was lucky enough to wander by as one of the practise sessions for the production-car races was happening. They had a few different types of cars running, and I wandered up to the side of the hairpin bend on the track and watched and listened as the cars screamed and howled their way around. Of the cars I saw, there were the usual Porsches with their relatively quiet and refined flat-6 motors, the big growling V8 in the Pontiac GTO (cough - Holden Monaro - cough), and my favourite one of the lot, the banshee shriek of the rotary-engined Mazda RX-8... if you've never heard the scream of one of these in full racing trim, it's a real experience. Not quite in Formula 1 territory, although the RPM count isn't too far short of what F1 motors generate - but the rotary makes a really unusual sound that has to be heard to be believed.

* One of the local 'delicacies' is an offering called poutine, which is the closest thing I have ever seen to an actual plate of coronary disease... take a pile of fairly greasy french fries (yes, Canadian fries are, in my experience, significantly greasier than those found in the US or Australia - and I don't know why), and then cover them with gravy and cheese curds. Now, adding gravy to almost anything meat- or potato-derived is generally a positive step as far as I'm concerned, and I can see why such a calorie-rich concoction would be useful in minus-20 degree winters... but I had it in summer, and that may have been a mistake, as it left me feeling that I didn't really need to eat anything else for about the next 18 hours.

* Qantas premium economy seats are very very nice, particularly when the upgrade is awarded seemingly randomly and for free.... It's basically what I believe business class used to be before they introduced the lie-flat business class seats - so the food is business class style (don't know if it's the same, but it's at least similar), the service is good, and the seats are more recline-y and more spaced out than the regular economy version. So, I made the most of that by sleeping for most of the first 10-11 hours of the 15 hour flight from LA to Melbourne overnight, which is a definite achievement.

* I was absolutely unable to find anywhere in Montreal that sold drinkable coffee. I know that Canadians are particualrly fond of the Tim Hortons chain - but any "coffee" place which appears not to sell anything espresso-derived, and where the staff get extremely confused looks when a customer requests a cappucino that is neither iced nor vanilla-flavoured, is unfortunately short of the mark as far as I'm concerned. The other place I tried was doing a little bit better by having an actual espresso machine and actually using it to produce something vaguely black and coffee-ish... except that it tasted for all the world like it had been made with acetone instead of water. Not good. However, both of these places did better than the coffee supplied at the conference, which was basically a light beige colour, lukewarm, and a little bit sad.

So anyway, here are some photos with scattered comments:

First, a couple of general shots of the city:



The 1976 Olympic stadium is really cool - the tower leaning over the top of it was actually designed to support a lifting-up-and-down style roof, although that had a bunch of technical problems and was eventually replaced by a static version instead. It does still hang from the tower, and the tower has a very nice observation platform at the top. The old velodrome next door has been turned into an indoor zoo called the Biodome, as well.







Left over from the Expo 67 festivities, along with a couple of large artificial islands, was this giant spherical contraption, which has now become the 'Biosphere' and has an environmental museum inside it. I didn't fork out the several dollars to go in, but it does photograph nicely from the outside...



The interior of the extremely impressive main (Catholic) cathedral - and according to the flyers they handed out there, the guy who designed it wasn't actually a Catholic when he started work on it, but converted (from Protestantism) specifically so he could be buried inside the cathedral because he liked it so much. I believe I can see what he was so fond of - it's really quite cool.


And a couple of interesting buildings