Jeffrey Vanneste’s Personal Blog

Haven’t been blogging as much obviously. Sending out shorts tweets is so much easier. I figure I should be able to stick to a once every few month schedule.

Just to catch up since the last post, I’ll touch on some of the things I’ve done since the SkyVenture sky diving.

• Travelled to New Brunswick for a friend’s wedding (photos). Being in potato country we went to a potato chip factory and a potato museum. This is us putting on our “potato-faces”.



• Bought Rachel a new iPhone, took her new iPhone and gave her my old one.
• Went to a Titanic museum to see a bunch of Titanic artifacts. Touched part of the Titanic. Smelled part of the Titanic. What else is there?
• Watched Roger Federer play some tennis. Mildly entertained
• My buddies Brent and Devin came and visited me in Montreal (photos). It was 30′C+ and super humid every day. Went to La Ronde (a six flags), got sick on some rides, conquered “The Labyrinth”, walked around the Botanical gardens, and consumed a lot of food
• Went to our friend’s cabin outside of Ottawa (photos). Had the best water skiing experience of my life, wind surfed, played some horse shoes, and saw just how amazing Ontario lakes can be
• Played a lot of new board games at the Montreal board game meetups. Quite liking Neuroshima Hex lately. Just bought my own copy on Thursday.
• Went back to Saskatchewan for a week for Michelle and Hemant’s wedding (photos). Quite jealous of their ceremony. Had an amazing day.
• Tried out for the McGill interclub squash team. Lost all my games. Made the team anyways since they had enough players to make a 2nd team.

Which brings us to October. We had Chris and Kaeleigh come and visit us for Thanksgiving weekend. We attempted to cook our own turkey dinner this year. Well, Rachel did all the cooking, I was just in charge of the pumpkin pie. This is how it turned out:

Mmmm, looks good doesn’t it? It actually tasted good, it just looked more like… puke. Rachel’s meal turned out really well.

Another day we went out with some of our friends in Montreal Alex and Alex (everyone calls them Mr. and Mrs. Alex) to see some of the fall colors in the “Eastern Townships” (photos).

I think we ended up hiking about 10km, about 3km uphill and 3km downhill. We haven’t really explored much around Montreal so it was nice to finally check out one of the provincial parks that is close by.

This last weekend I went to Toronto for a one-day StackOverflow DevDays conference (my review of the conference) and to visit Sean for the weekend. We ended up playing quite a bit of Neuroshima Hex and also went to “The Sound of Music” sitting in the very back row:

I quite enjoyed the show and if you have a chance it’s worth seeing. Well, it’s worth seeing if you can get tickets for <$50.

Rach and I have another busy month ahead of us but after that Rach will be all done her certification exams. I’m eager to find out what she does with all her time when she isn’t studying because she has essentially been in school/studying every since we met 11 years ago.

Sean and Renny came to visit me and Rach for about a week around the Jazz festival. I wanted to have some fun things lined up so we wouldn’t sit around the apartment most of the time (it’s inevitable anyways). The first night they were here we went to Jacques-Cartier bridge and watched the England team put on their fireworks show for L’international des Feux Loto-Quebec which I assume means something about fireworks.

The show was by far the best fireworks display I’ve ever seen. I took quite a few pictures of the event which you can check out on flickr. Apparently there is going to be a fireworks show from a different country for the next few weekends. We can make out some of the fireworks from the apartment so we will likely be watching from there.

On Sunday the big event was heading to the SkyVenture Montreal to learn how to skydive in a wind tunnel. Since Rach would never ever consider going skydiving this seemed like a good alternative. For the 4 of us to go it cost about $250 which gave each of us 2 minutes inside the wind tunnel.

We were all given a very short course on some various hand gestures and what they meant. Bend your knees, straighten your legs, look up, and most of all, relax. I think all of us had some issues with the relaxing part.

After the course we put on our jump suits, helmets and goggles and entered the anti-chamber. The wind tunnel was blowing at around 250-300mph. We weren’t allowed to bring a camera into the anti-chamber so we had to purchase the DVD of us flying instead. All 4 of us are pretty useless for the first minute of flight but I think we all got the hang of it in some manner for the 2nd minute. I put all the videos on youtube (there is no sound on any of them):

Jeffrey at SkyVenture Montreal (I spin in what seems to be out of control around 2:00 but I like to think I was in control the whole time):

Rachel at SkyVenture Montreal:

Renny at SkyVenture Montreal:

Sean at SkyVenture Montreal (Sean takes a tumble at around 1:30 into the clip):

Rich (our instructor) used the last minute to do a bunch of tricks and show us how pathetic we were:

We all had a great time and highly recommend anyone else to give a try at least once. I’m not sure if it’s something we would do it again on our own but I’m sure we will have visitors that will want to try it out.

Hemant and Michelle came to Montreal for an Easter break. The big plan was to head down to New York City for 4 days and spend the rest of the time in Montreal shopping and eating. I think eating was the theme of the vacation.

Their time in Montreal consisted of hitting up a Cabane a Sucre since Hemant had never been to one. This event didn’t start off very well as when we arrived I locked the keys into the rental car. Thankfully with Communauto (the place we get our car rentals from) we get free CAA so all we had to do was call them up and wait 20 minutes to get the car unlocked. I was totally expecting it to take a few hours since we were about 100km outside of Montreal but we were lucky.

In Montreal we went to Chu Chai (our favorite Thai place), l’Avenue twice (our favorite breakfast place), Shodun (for awesome sushi), and a couple random places for noodle bowls. Hemant and I hit some movies (State of Play and Fast and Furious) while the girls shopped. We also had some time to squeeze in some boardgames (Set and Battlestar Gallactica)

The main part of their visit was spent in NYC. It’s only a 6 hour drive away so not that bad. We all bought some New York Passes which allowed us entry into unlimited sights for 2 days so we wanted to hit as many as we could on Monday and Tuesday. We rented a car and drove down on Sunday morning. We checked into our hotel (Barclay) in the middle of the afternoon:

We walked around Times Square:

And by the Empire State Building:

And eventually went for supper at “Kum Gang San” for some Korean BBQ. We met up with one of Michelle’s friends from Japan and one of my friends that I’ve known online for over 10 years but had never met. The Korean BBQ was alright, the sauce on the beef they made was fantastic. After supper we went out to a Korean pub with Michelle’s friend for a few drinks:

The 2nd day was going to be a lot busier. We started off and went for breakfast at the first place we could find which sadly was a Starbucks. After that we went to do a NBC studio tour but once we arrived they were all booked up until the afternoon. Quick change of plans and we ended up at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Hemant and Michelle liked it a lot more than Rachel and I did. We all cruised through the museum in about an hour and a half.

For lunch I wanted to go to the Brooklyn Finer Diner where I had an awesome hamburger last time. Rachel decided to try their giant hotdog and got this:

It was called the “15 bite” hotdog but I don’t think that’s humanly possible.

After lunch we went on the NBC studio tour into the SNL studio and the today show. We weren’t allowed to take any photos. The tour was acceptable. After the NBC tour we had the rockefeller center tour which was my favorite one. A guide just walked us around rockefeller center and told us the history and stuff of all the buildings. After watching a new episode of “30 rock” I can now recognize some of the buildings/statues they show in the intro.

For supper we went to the Ninja Restaurant (which we heard about from the Totally Rad Show podcast). We read some bad reviews on the food but the ninja experience was suppose to be awesome. It turned out both the food and the experience was awesome. When you enter the restaurant you have the choice of going to your table the sissy way (pretty sure they didn’t call it this) or the ninja way which we chose. The ninja way consisted of walking through a pitch black tunnel with some ninja walking around proving that he could kill you by sneaking up on you. Our table was in a little private booth:

At some point during the supper our ninja waiter snuck up behind Rachel and put his sword on her neck proving that he could kill her at any time. I decided to let the waiter live. The food we ordered came out with little gimmicks. Hemant had a dish called the “bombshell” that came out and the waiter lit on fire. It had a little explosion and that was it. I had one where there was a knife in it which I pulled out and then it started to smoke while I ate it.

Michelle and Rachel split their meal which was called the katana:

The ninja restaurant was one of my favorite parts of the NYC trip. I recommend you check it out if you have time in NYC.

After the ninja restaurant we went to the “Top of the Rock” (aka the top of the rockefeller building).

So that was our long 2nd day, surprisingly our 3rd day had even more stuff. Rachel and I started the day heading to the Brooklyn Bridge while Hemant and Michelle went to Ground Zero. Rach and I just walked across the bridge and took a few pictures:

This was my favorite Brooklyn Bridge picture simply because the graffiti says “WTF Kevin Pastashios.” That’s gold.

We met back up with Hemant and Michelle for the Bodies exhibit. “The Exhibition unveils the many complex systems of organs and tissues that drive every aspect of our daily lives and unite us all as humans.” This was pretty awesome too. All the bodies in the exhibit were real bodies that the guy had setup. No pictures were allowed here either.

For the afternoon the girls went shopping and Hemant and I went on the Madison Square Garden tour. This tour was pretty weak. The first half of the tour was watching a DVD of someone giving a tour. After that a Knicks cheerleader came out and gave some brutal speech about what she does. It would have been awesome if the tour stopped there cause it would definitely be the worst tour of all time. The 2nd half of the tour we went through the Knicks and the Rangers locker rooms and then saw the 2 stadiums:

After that tour we met up with the girls again and went to the Museum of Sex. I’m glad that we didn’t have to directly pay for this one since it was my least favorite museum we went to. The best part was the female urinal though:

For the evening Rachel and Michelle went to the Dave Matthews Band concert in Madison Square Garden (I think Rachel has been to more Dave Matthew Band concerts then Dave Matthews now). Hemant and I went to the “West Side Story” musical since Hemant loved the movie. I can’t say I enjoyed this musical very much. I think it’s my least favorite one I’ve seen. It probably didn’t help that I didn’t know anything about it or any of the songs. After the show we had some more time so Hemant and I ran over to the Empire State Building for the quickest viewing of all time. I think we stayed at the top for maybe 2 minutes.

Our last day we went to a place called “Dishes” for breakfast which I enjoyed quite a bit. It was sort of a breakfast buffet but with quality food instead of crap. After that we walked around central park:

Our last item on the agenda was one more musical called “Guys and Dolls” which all 4 of us went to. I liked this one more than West Side Story. After the musical we jumped in the car and drove back to Montreal arriving at around 1am.

The last few days in Montreal we took it pretty easy and recovered from the NYC trip. Rachel and I will be spending the next week resting up for our next set of visitors.

Our New York City pictures on Flickr.

When we moved to Montreal we left my papasan at Hemant‘s place. The papasan was my TV/video game/lounging chair so something had to be done to replace it. I had heard about these new “beanbag” chairs for awhile now and decided it was worth a try. Enter the Sumosac Gigantor.

The chair is around 70 pounds takes up about the same space as a love seat. The chair came in 2 big boxes which contained 3 cubes of foam, a liner and a cover:

The instructions said to open up the plastic cubes and put the foam cubes inside the liner.

After the cubes were in the liner the instructions said to break the cubes apart and then wait 24 hours for everything to expand. Breaking the cubes was not terribly enjoyable. It took quite awhile to break each cube into chunks. Once finished I let it sit over night and when I checked it out the following morning it had grown to what I assume is the proper size.

Rachel and I can both cuddle on the chair comfortably. It’s fantastic for watching TV and playing video games. I highly recommend you check one of these out if you are able to.

[Photos on flickr.]

After 2 years of promising Brent that I would come and visit him I finally took advantage of a 50% seat sale with Air Canada and flew to Dulles airport for $450 return. It’s crazy expensive for how close it is. Oh well. The plan for this trip was to sight-see as much as possible. For Friday night though, Smothers Brothers. You may think you don’t know who they are, but you do. For my generation I think we recognize them from the Shreddies commercials that they did. At their show they showed clips from their old shows and I definitely didn’t recognize any of that. The one brother came out as “Yo-Yo Man” for a bit which was pretty cool. He was quite good at pulling off all his yo-yo tricks. I can (or could) do most of the tricks that he did which made me happy.

Day 2 in Washington we tackled “The National Mall.” I originally thought this was an actual mall. Like lots of shops and stuff. Apparently I’m an idiot. The national mall is actually a national park in Washington, DC where all the museums, Capitol Hill, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and the white house are. Brent lives in Bethesda, MD so we had to take the metro to get to Washington. Bethesda, the metro and everywhere I was in Washington was uncannily clean. I saw 2 pieces of trash on the street and I think they were both unopened bottles of water. Unlike Montreal, all the metro stations looked the same to me in Washington:

What really blew my mind? Escalators that are outside:

Canada would totally own that escalator.

We walked around the national mall and checked out some sculptures on the way to Capitol Hill. We saw this one sculpture that had a sign beside that said “Woman sitting”. Here is the sculpture:

We stared at it for quite awhile and couldn’t figure out why it was called “woman sitting.” Eventually I looked a little to the left and saw this:

This was my favorite sculpture. Everything else was human, but not this one:

So Capitol Hill looks just like it does on TV except you totally aren’t allowed close to it. They had fences setup around it so this was the closest shot:

The Washington Monument was also, exactly what you’ve seen before:

And the Lincoln Memorial was not a giant ape like The Planet Of The Apes would have you believe.

When we left the Lincoln Memorial I wanted to get a picture with Brent and I with the reflection pool behind us. I set the camera up, set the timer and took the first picture:

Since I wanted to make sure it turned out I figured I would do a 2nd shot. As we waited for the timer I heard to my right “Bill, go further. Further Bill!” Bill just kept walking into our shot so I shouted “No Bill, too far Bill. Nooo Bill!” He thought it was pretty funny that some stranger was yelling his name. He ended up walking into our picture.

We had a good time making fun of Bill for the rest of the weekend. Sadly, he never showed up in any of our photos again.

After that we made a quick stop in at the white house to say hello to Obama. He told us to wait outside the fence so we humored him and did what he said.

Our first museum was the Museum of National History. We walked through here pretty quick. There were lots of gems, dinosaurs and mammals but it wasn’t really my thing.

The next museum was the Air and Space Museum. By this point we were pretty tired so we decided to check out some of their IMAX shows. The first one was “Space Station” followed by “Fight Pilot: Operation Red Flag”. Touring the museum had what you would expect. Planes and space stuff.

By this time it was 5pm so we had 30 minutes to run through the American History museum. There was suppose to be a C-3po costume some place in the museum so that was my goal. We saw “The Ruby Slippers” from The Wizard of Oz:

Seinfeld’s fluffy shirt:

And when we gave up all hope when they were kicking us out, we finally saw C-3po.

The next day we decided to drive to Baltimore (only 45 minutes from Bethesda) to check out the Baltimore Aquarium.

They also had a dolphin show there so I guess we couldn’t pass that up.

The aquarium was pretty awesome. The line-ups were crazy to get in. We bought our tickets at 10am but weren’t allowed inside until 1pm. We walked around Baltimore a bit but I wasn’t overly impressed with what I saw. Granted, we only walked around the harbor and little Italy.

The day I was leaving I only had half a day to kill so we decided on going to the International Spy Museum. The museum was setup like you were going through spy training. It starts off with you picking an identity in the first room with a bunch of facts about you. Throughout the museum you were asked different questions about your identity. There were lots of spy gadgets, guns, bugs, and interactive displays. My favorite part was crawling through the air ducts trying to make as little noise as possible to not set off the alarms. No photos were allowed in the spy museum so I’ve got nothing for that.

So that was my trip to Washington. I really liked the city overall. I can see how you could spend a lot more time sight-seeing. Definitely more than 2 days for the museums would be a good idea. All my Washington trip photos are up on flickr as usual.