A Brief Update

So here’s an update on what I’ve been up to since my arrival down under. This time I even have pictures!!!

January 26^th – Australia Day

Today ended up being a day of fruitless searches. We didn’t make it down to the Darling Harbour (just beside Circular Quay which hosts the Opera House), until 11am. One would think that this should be early enough to make the big festivities, but sadly… no. We had already missed the surfboard races, boat races, etc. We were left to wonder around looking for some entertainment and soaking up the atmosphere. There were lots of people about dressed from the everyday to the red, white and blue extreme! Not to mention those in Australia’s other official colours, green and gold. Odd, I agree.

As I mentioned before, the day of fruitless searches. The first involved a series of overhead flybys that google earth were doing. The flight plan had been published in the paper the day before so one would know where and when the plane would be throughout the day. In theory the picture quality was going to be good enough that you could pick yourself out of a crowd; as long as you were wearing something recognizable.

Ash was determined to be visible for the plane when it flew by Darling Harbour. This involved an intense operation of calls back and forth between us and his parents over near the opera house. Sadly, we missed it at Darling Harbour; the plane was over the Opera House ahead of the originally scheduled time. I have included a reconstruction of what this must have looked like!

We spent the rest of the day searching for a relocated ice cream shop that no one had ever been to. Our quest took us all the way to Chinatown, where decidedly they do not serve very much specialty ice cream.

With our needs gone unfulfilled but spirits uncrushed, we headed to a friend’s house to play some board games. And finally headed to one restaurant of the only Mexican restaurants in Sydney… Montezuma’s. The menu choices were good, but Aussified, and they say ba-JA instead of ba- HA. But hey, I would still go back.

Stick close, there is much more to come… just so little time to write it! But rest assured I will be back and near my comp in about 3 days… and notes are being kept on everything else I’ve done so far. I’ve included these and will definitely elaborate when I get a chance.

Now off to the Blue Mountains!

As a side note…. I also got my first sunburn! Just though I should throw that in for those who may be feeling a tad nippley.

Weekend - Fishing

- penguin in the harbour!

- Nothing caught

- Church at Hillsong that night

Jan 29^th to 30^th Night in the city

- stayed at the intercontinental with a view of the gardens

- out to see Kaidan at the opera house

- dinner at opera bar

- next day wondering through the city

- bats in Royal Botanical Gardens

- Lindt chocolate coffee shop

- good luck boar at Sydney hospital

- "Happy Feet" in the evening, oh my mister mumbles

Settling in...

My flights from New York to Dubai than Dubai to Sydney were great. I would definitely go that way around with emirates again. It felt much shorter than Air Canada. One of the best parts was the lighting. Now I know I have told a number of you about my excitement for the stars inset into the roof... but it was even better. They dim the cabin lights to slowly phase into night. Going through afternoon, dusk, evening, etc. Check out the lighting system. Not to mention the entertainment that definitely speaks for itself.

Finally arriving in Sydney was a great relief. I was so excited that I was shaking. Customs was quick and the luggage came even quicker. Finally seeing Ash was great; it was bizarre too, I hadn't seen him for so long. Now my new life can begin!

Sydney's been nice. Warm, a little too humid, but warmer than home :P I got a mild cold and been rather jet lagged for the past few days so we haven't done too much. I have however gotten a new mobile number, which I feel solidifies my presence here. Today we even bought dishware and a few other things for the apartment. Very productive!

Sadly I have no pictures as of yet, but they will be coming. Tomorrow is my first big day out meeting people and seeing the sights. It'll be Australia Day! We are even going to try to be near the Opera House when google takes a very high resolution picture. Aparently it will be of such high quality that you could easily find yourself. Please note, I will be standing under my infamous red McGill umbrella.

That's all for now, I'm off to battle the urge to sleep until at least 10pm.

Only one regret

After a long few weeks filled with too many good-byes, I have finally started my long journey.

Leaving my parents and grandmother at the airport was rather difficult. As with any big trip like this I have had to say goodbye to too many good people who have really been a part of my life. Understandably so though, saying goodbye to my close family was the most difficult of them all. Luckily I didn’t shed too many tears, and the momentum of this trip rushed me away to my new life.

The first leg of the journey has not been too difficult. In fact I learned a little about myself that I never knew. Most notably, that I am still prone to motion sickness; particularly while traveling in small commuter planes. I feel it may have had something to do with my severe lack of sleep from the night before, however these are only suspicions.

Strangely my BIG thought as the plane was finally taking off had nothing to do with the good people I left behind, or the statistics of the chance of crashing during take-off. My thoughts dwelled on a regret that I hadn’t anticipated. I never ate any snow during the last snowfall. It’s one of those luxuries that many of us probably take advantage of. Do you remember back when you were a child, diving into the pile of freshly fallen fluff? You always swallowed a little, and happily let the airy flakes of ice melt quickly on your tongue. Or if you were lucky enough, you could crunch a mouthful into a denser version of itself, before it too quickly melted away. The whole act itself being a carefree self indulgence that almost contained a somewhat sensuousness facet, shared in your own private bubble. I won’t be able to do this again for a long time. Even if I do encounter snow down under, I fear it just won’t be the same. When I was in the Antarctic the subtle difference I had never expected, was that the snow contains a different quality. I was more similar to Styrofoam or what one might expect from fake snow. Since many of you have grown up in a culture that knows the distinct difference between wet, sticky snow, dry, loose snow and the perfect combination of these that result in packing snow this may come as no surprise. As a matter of fact I later learned that, like almost everything else tangible in life, there is a scientific reason. The snowflakes there melt in slightly different shapes, resulting in a different settling pattern. The closest approximation I can think of is the difference in bonding structure between carbon molecules in a piece of coal versus a diamond. Admittedly the strength of bonds do not vary amongst snowflakes (that would just be silly), but they layer on each other ever so differently causing a strikingly different result. What if this is also true of Australian snow?! It exists, I know it does. What will I do if it’s second rate? I’ll let you know whenever I ever get the chance to discover.

Appropriately, as I sit here in JFK for my next flight, the song “Land Down Under” is playing. I think you are now sharing my moment of realization with me. The immensity of my journey is just now settling in. Every feeling associated with such a move is now rushing at me; fear, anxiety, impatience, happiness, sadness, and most of all excitement. Excitement to see Ash for the first time in months, and to start the next stage of my life in Melbourne.

As a side note, I want to make a big thanks to everyone who were able to come out over the past few weeks, and those who were unable to, but would have come if circumstances had allowed. That includes all the great people in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto Hamilton and Burlington – not to forget anywhere else as well. And to Lena for letting me enjoy my last night in North America chilling in Brooklyn. Going out in style I think.

I love you all and everyone will be greatly missed.

Booth love to all!

Mr Guay

Knowing Dom (top), I am not surprised to find him at Octoberfest (bottom). However, since I lived with him in October 2005 and am in good authority that he has been in Montreal for October 2006; I wonder how he could have made it there for the filming of Beerfest. This scene was in the first 10 minutes of the movie. Domers, you make me (and probably many others too) proud!

My Christmas Wish

Welcome back to the masses. I know I have been long neglecting this tired blog. I could even make up numerous excuses; maybe even cite how passe such personal webpages are, and just pack up shop and move onto myspace. However, I am an old school soul. So here I remain. Why move onto something different when you already like where you are anyways???

This isn't really an update, I have been trying to write one of those for months now. I was going to turn this into an apology, but who really wants to read those? So on with a quick personal remark, then I will just dive back into the days of old.

I haven't been able to keep in touch with anyone very well since my return home. To be perfectly honest, much of it is because I work almost everyday of every week. The days that I don't work, are filled with hours of catch-up sleep. Although I have been able to use some of those spare moments to catch up with some of you that are close to B-town. Even though I haven't been able to keep in touch with you nearly as much as I would ever like, I just want you to know one thing. Wherever life has happened to take you, I miss you all very much and the Booth love is still strong. As far as I'm concerned, down the street over a continent, an ocean or the otherside of the world have all felt the exact same. If my luck holds out, and Super7 is mine, I'm renting a plane and picking every last one of you up!

Phew, I flew through that without too much sap. So the countdown to the big day is on.... 10 days. Making me more and more fearful to approach the shopping malls. At least this year I will probably spend more time in line than actually looking for the presents. In an attempt to alleviate all of your Christmas shopping and travel pains I am posting a wintry picture. I took it with my webcam so admittedly the quality could be better.... I also wanted to wear a Santa hat, but times are tight, so a genuine Nana toque will have to do. But note, it even has a pom-pom! Perhaps I will make this my picture for my very first round of Christmas cards. Speaking of which... send me your addresses. Well if you'll be in the same place next Christmas season. Which I assume for most of you won't be the case, but hell a girl's gotta get a head start on these kinds of things. Welcome back to the blog of Boothie!
Much love all, much love.

p.s.: All I want for Christmas is widespread happiness and a green earth. I had to through it in somewhere.

For John, with all my love

As printed in the Globe and Mail....

MUNRO, John Christopher Passed away peacefully on Sunday, July 23, 2006 at Ian Anderson House, Oakville in his 71st year. John leaves behind his loving wife Lynne and his brother Jim (Vancouver), sisters Barbara (Oakville) and Margaret (London) as well as nieces and nephews. He will be sadly missed and lovingly remembered by his step-children Nicola Booth of Burlington, Tony Wachmann (Tracey) of Vancouver and Ian Wachmann (lately deceased) (Kathryn) of Georgetown. Cherished and adored grandfather to Sara, Kristine, Jennifer, James, David, Michael and Alena. John was born in Oakville and was a proud lifelong citizen. John helped to found the Big Brother's Association of Oakville and served as its President and was also a member of the Oakville Hamilton Advisory Committee. John started sailing at the age of six and in 1949 joined the Oakville Yacht Squadron (OYS) and became its Sailing Director in 1973 during which time he established an Olympic Circle Course. He was also involved in developing the OYS into one of the best and most active racing clubs on Lake Ontario. He was a volunteer with the Ontario Track 3 Ski Association, CNIB, and enjoyed his Tuesday nights at the Oakville Scottish Country Dance Group. Funeral service will be held at 11:00 am Friday, July 28, 2006 at St. Jude's Anglican Church, 160 William Street, Oakville. Private family interment. For those who wish memorial contributions to Ian Anderson House would be appreciated. Email condolences may be sent to kopriva@eol.ca please place MUNRO on the subject line.
With you for mast and sail and flag,
And anchor never known to drag,
Death's narrow but oppressive sea
Looks not unnavigable to me.

Not so star struck

What else would complete a night out but running into Ben Mulroney on St. Laurent... He smokes de Maurier. If only I had that stack of free Nicorettes, that would have truly made my night. I'm glad that Idol assignment is treating you well Ben.
Aside from that, shout out to Heidi for coming out to the fireworks and continuing the trend. We have never finished a night together sober... at least in beloved Montreal.
One final question... why do so many bars NOT have air conditioning? It makes them smell like B.O. and urine. Even the waitress told us it was a bad idea to drink anywhere indoors!

College Pro

While going through my pictures I noticed a number that represented one of my most interesting summer work experiences. It made me feel like a true starving student...

After only a few days of painting Meghan and I had mastered the art of body painting.

It's hard to describe how haltingly tired your first few days of painting makes you. You become too lazy to even bother washing off all of the paint coating you.

10 hours of grinding black rusted wrought iron makes us look hot. Remarkably, when I washed my face it was very difficult getting rid of the dirt right around my eyes. It made me look like I was wearing perfectly applied eyeliner.

I have never laughed so hard as I did when Meghan sat on the lid to a can of black paint. Now her ass matches her shorts!

My Jetta can carry a lot of paint... Almost too much paint. The milage on this baby was great though.... even though she didn't start or stalled at times.

Note the plastic on the window. Dwight a Louer was broken into the second week I had her. My first question was why. My second question was why take my precious headlamp?!

A final modelling shot of Dwight. This is her good side.

Tepid return

After a long departure from the land of blog I have decided to make a timid step back towards my more openly expressive ways. Much has happened in the months since our family comet started to break-up. Most of which are medium to large in effect on a personal time scale.

Before May could even start I had landed myself a job. It wasn’t glamorous, or paid all that well. Actually, there were times when you were lucky you got paid at all. I didn’t even need a degree to get it. But I had fun, got a car to drive to jobsites and was paid at a rate slightly higher than some of my fellow workers. I took the route of many a student before me and painted for a College Pro Painters franchise. We worked mainly in the Montreal boroughs of NDG, Hampstead, and Rosemont, but sometimes wondered as far south as Verdun. The experience was fun and frustrating while it lasted. I did meet many good people during my two month work term. However, a new job was offered which paid more and allowed me to work less and so I took that instead.

Speaking of new jobs… Over the next couple of weeks my work will be divided over a couple of areas. Before anything major will get up and running I am going to be painting the interior of my apartment building. Yet again not a glamorous job, but let us stress the word JOB. The big one that resembles something more along the lines of thought provoking work is for my cousin Paul.

Let me start by congratulating Paul and his colleagues for work well done in starting up their new business. I won’t say much now because they are still in the process of releasing it, but when it starts it’ll be great. I can just about guarantee it as a matter of fact. I will be doing some selling of their service myself, so a small piece of their success rests on my shoulders.

Now I have to do a little bit of back tracking. Mid May a certain gentleman reappeared in my life after a much too extended absence. Yes, the infamous Ash has come to Canada. He got off the plane groggy and understandably jetlagged; Australia is a tad of a time difference. The first week of adjustments were of course didn’t go perfectly. However, I expected as much because of the enormous change that was jolted into both of our everyday lives. Now things are chugging nicely. Believe it or not, my apartment is looking clean these days too! While I was working I even got spoiled by having dinner ready for me after 10 hour days of physical labour.

Years of papers, exams, and assignments have finally yielded results. On the sixth of July I graduated with an undergraduate degree; B.Sc. (Agricultural and Environmental Science) in Wildlife Biology. Both of my parents came for the event, along with my great aunt and uncle Brenda and Kotik, and of course Ash. If you're truly an eager beaver you can watch the entire ceremony online - it's at the bottom of the page.

Outside of the ceremony there was the typical restaurant lunch with the family, and a number of celebratory cheers. That night, Meghan, Ash, and I headed back to good ole Ste Anne de Bellevue for some drinking at the pier. Those of you who know about the pier know how appropriate such an act is. For those who don’t know… we had a limited supply of bars in Ste Anne. The end of the day left me satisfied on two fronts. First, the world did not come to an end on 06/06/06; only a minor stressor to the day. Secondly, I have a degree longer than my name.

With Ash around I have been doing a little bit more traveling than I would usually do in a summer of work. We’ve seen what there is to see in a day in Toronto. Ridden the Maid of the Mist near the base of Niagara Falls, and finished the night off with dinner in the skylon tower, and gambling away a small amount of money to the government. We even went to Parliament in Ottawa to see the sites, and activities that were loaded on over the Canada weekend. You can find pictures from all of these in my photo album; link on the right hand side of the page. We are still looking forward to side trips to other popular and characteristically Canadian destinations. If anyone has suggestions please feel free to make them!

I have chosen to finish off this entry on a very sad note. Much of my traveling lately has been between Montreal and Burlington. These trips have had shared a central purpose. Late last year my grandfather John fell ill. What we thought was originally just a bad case of pneumonia ended up being lung cancer. Since then John’s condition has been worsening quickly. Because of this I have been back to Burlington to firstly visit him in his final few weeks. On the small upside to the whole thing those he is in a gorgeous hospice and is in no pain.

As for the status of the comet, I hear they are relatively robust – so your guess is as good as mine.

On a side note, I would like to wish an incredibly happy belated birthday to one Miss Oriana Nierojewski. I am so sorry for having missed it, and I hope you had a great time. Hopefully I can make it up to you sometime in the near future.

Blackhole Gang Bang

This picture recently released by NASA is undeniably cool. It shows the trail made by 'grumpy' neutrons while two massive black holes collide at the center of galaxy cluster Abell 400.
Black holes are one of those things that have remained a continuous mystery for many. Because they suck everything up (space and time included) they are incredibly hard to detect. Realistically you can't even see a black hole, they area spot of more or less non-existence that exist. However, those smart shiney pennies of the scientific world have learned to look for the tell tale signs black holes make. They look for things like a bend orbital paths and light emitted by stars (the light looks like it's coming from a different direction than it really is, the path has been changed by pull of the black hole causing everything to change course).
As a matter of fact we have our own black hole in our universe, and yes, it is pulling at everything. Though to lie in the constellation Sagittarius at the centre of the Milky Way is a super-massive black hole. Here are a few basic facts you can work into today's conversations to make everyone pause and go, WOW!

Distance: More than 25,000 light-years.
Mass: About 4 million times more than the sun.
Size: About 14 million miles across.
Rotation: About half the speed of light, or 335 million mph.
Age: Perhaps 10 billion years or more.

Source: NASA, University of California-Berkeley

Not that you need any encouragement but I suppose you Sagitarians could use this as support that you ARE the center of the universe; just don't talk to me about it.

A picture like the one above results when two black holes pull eachother in, leading to a super-massive blackhole. This as I have said earlier is way too cool for words. Such a scenario was proposed by the king himself, Einstein. According to Albert, when two black holes collide there is a wiggle in the gravitational pull. This causes a corresponding shake in all of the dimensions that are being affected already, space and time. These wiggles are yet to be detected but scientists are working on it. Success has been fostered through a computer program which has modelled such an event. To find out more about this collision and the program just check out the article attached below.

Simulation Breakthrough: When Black Holes Collide from PhysOrg.com
NASA scientists have reached a breakthrough in computer modeling that allows them to simulate what gravitational waves from merging black holes look like. The three-dimensional simulations, the largest astrophysical calculations ever performed on a NASA supercomputer, provide the foundation to explore the universe in an entirely new way. [...]

Sesame Street will live forever

For a show running since 1969 Sesame Street isn't doing too badly. I can remember the days when C was for Cookie and Cookie was for C. Alas, those were the carefree days, before I knew the words carbon, cancer, caustic, and career. But time goes on and the Street is entertaining and educating an entirely new generation of kids. Teaching them Spanish and how to count the apples in a bucket. This past Saturday the Street won 7 Day Time Emmys, an impressive feat by any account. To commemorate I coloured in a picture of the big man himself.
p.s.: In Canada we no longer have Sesame Street... the CBC has been airing Sesame Park since 1996. No worries though, you can still catch the Street on PBS if you start to feel a little nostalgic.

A sigh for 4/20

I missed it.. I really missed it. This is sad moment folks. Fortunately things can still be rectified in the up coming days, and all hope is not lost. On the other hand I did spend the day in Ottawa sleeping at Ashley's house and having an incredible home cooked meal. I feel that happens less often than 4/20 so really, you win some, you lose some. Overall I feel I won out.
For those of you who remembered the relaxing holiday I hope you had a good one. The chill was thick in the air ;)