Next time you have the chance, ask a Québécois(e) to tell you the name of the popular game pictured to the left in this post.
In English, we call it “foosball.”
In French it’s called “baby-foot.” I’m not saying that a literal translation of the French term for “foosball” would be “baby-foot”—the French don’t call it “pied de bébé.” The French say the English words “baby-foot” as their word for “foosball.”
I’m not sure why I expected the French word for “foosball” to make sense. The English word is confusing to me as well.
Everyone gather ’round. It’s that time again! It’s time for me to answer my readers’ questions!
And by that, I mean, it’s time for me to see what strings of words people have typed into Google that brought them to my blog. Then I look through the search keywords that are (more-or-less) well-formed questions and answer them as best I can. It’s the least I could do, since they took the time to visit my site with these questions on their mind.
“Why can’t the space shuttle leave conventionally from an airport?” (July 26)
Mostly because it’s not an airplane. Those booster rockets that the space shuttle normally uses for take-off are not decorative.
“Is a direct entry master of nursing an okay option?” (Aug 12, 14, 15)
That depends on your career goals.
“If I fired a laser beam at my hand would it come out the other side?” (Aug 4)
Yes.
“How to castle in chess with friends?” (July 31, Aug 7, 14, 17)
Begin a chess game with a friend, castle normally.
“How do you move your king and castle at the same time?” (July 26)
You probably meant “How do you move your king and your rook at the same time?”
“Rook” is the name for the pieces that start at the corners of the board.
In chess, “castle” is a verb. It’s the verb that means to move your rook and king at the same time, two spaces toward each other, provided that the intervening spaces are not occupied and that neither the king nor rook has been moved before in the match (and that you’re not trying to castle out of check).
“Cheat on MCAT tips?” (Aug 1) / “How to cheat the MCAT?” (July 30)
Are you really asking me to help you to cheat on the MCAT? Get out.
“Has anyone ever cheated on MCAT before?” (July 28)
No. No one in the history of mankind. No one whose motives were so pure as to aspire to medical school has ever even considered cheating to attain such a goal.
“Grammar is one of the greatest joys in life, don’t you find?” (Aug 8)
Actually, now that you mention it, grammar is the greatest joy in life.
“How do you pronounce ‘couche tard’?” (Aug 18)
“Couch” (like the synonym for sofa)
“Tard” (like the second syllable of “retard”)
“How to avoid getting your bike stolen [in] Montréal?” (Aug 25)
Sell bike, and buy Bixi pass with the proceeds.
“How to get your thesis bound at McGill” (July 27)
You gotta do it yourself, I’m afraid. You can get Acco-Press binders at the bookstore.
Well what do you know? I have to write a French version of my abstract for my thesis.
This means it’s time to go out and buy some Newcastle beers. I have a friend who’s a translator who enjoys Newcastle beer, and if I’m going to exploit my relationship with her for my personal gain, I might as well make it worth her while.
There’s no way I’m going to risk writing my own thesis abstract in French. In French, I’m most confident in my ability to discuss whether pineapples can talk:
Do you remember learning about the Carnaval de Québec in French class?
There’s a particular song that they used to teach us during the unit on the Carnaval. It’s Bonhomme’s theme song, I guess. When I went to Québec this winter, there was a marching band that followed Bonhomme around playing it.
I used to think that the lyrics were, “Bonhomme Bonhomme qu’est-ce que tu fais? Bonhomme Bonhomme qu’est-ce que tu fais? Je vais jouer au violon! Je vais jouer au violon! …”
Translated to English, this means, “Bonhomme Bonhomme, what are you doing? Bonhomme Bonhomme, what are you doing? I’m gonna play the violin. I’m gonna play the violin.”
Turns out, according to a native French-speaker, that is not only incorrect, but also very creepy.
That it was creepy was not at all surprising. I mean, look at him. And I suppose, given the state of French instruction in Ontario, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I got it wrong.
Makes sense to me though. “Bonhomme Bonhomme, what are you doing? Bonhomme Bonhomme, what are you doing?”
Québec is full of wonderful poutine restaurants. Chez Ben is a restaurant in Granby that sells pretty good poutine, and really small hamburgers.
I was very strongly tempted to order the “poutine burger.” And yes, a “poutine burger” is exactly what it appears in the photograph to be: A big aluminium foil pie-plate full of poutine, with a hamburger patty on it.
I love Québec.
The slogan for the restaurant is, “On s’bourre la bedaine,” meaning roughly, “We stuff our bellies.”
Here’s a fun bit of French vocabulary. If you wanted to say that someone is “shirtless,” you’d say he is “en bedaine.”
In the attached video, please note that the big giant figure of “Ben” moves, demonstrating that he is stuffing his “bedaine” in front of the restaurant.
It turns out that the fur trade is still alive and well here in some parts of rural Québec.
I went bowling last night in Granby at Royaume des Quilles and while bowling, a man would, from time to time, call out a number corresponding to the tickets that had been given out for a draw for door prizes. (Regrettably, he did not use “trois-trente” in place of “quatre-vingt-dix,” as I have previously written that I think would be a pretty good idea.)
By some luck, my number was called, and I was handed an envelope, inside of which was a piece of paper that says, “Bon d’une valeur de $100.00 (Cent dollars),” which means “good for $100″ at Denis Hivon Fourrures. I’m going to assume that “fourrures” means “fur-trader” in French. Or, something close enough.
I’ve always got a bunch of great ideas. Seriously. This is even better (and probably more profitable) than my idea for replacing “quatre-vingt-dix” in French with “trois-trente.” (“Trois-trente huit, trois-trente neuf, cent—prêt pas prêt j’y vais!” Anyone who has studied French as a second language will agree that this is a very reasonable first step toward reforming the French language.)
Here’s my idea. I have some candles in my apartment. Smelly candles. Some are supposed to smell like fruits, some like gingerbread. When the candles are burning, they smell wonderful. This is good.
The problem comes when I blow the candles out. Every smelly candle does this: When you blow it out, it smells like smoke and something burning, and all the benefit of having lit a smelly candle in the first place is gone forever. This is bad.
Here is my proposed solution. Someone should invent a smelly candle that doesn’t stink when you blow it out. You could do this through the use of … umm … chemistry. Or maybe some sort of apparatus that contains the smoke and releases it slowly over several hours, so that I don’t notice it until it’s already over. At least there wouldn’t be the swift and dramatic difference between everything smelling good, and then all of a sudden, smoke and burning things. Maybe I just need to get an airtight jar made of a strong kind of glass whose top I can close when I want to extinguish the candle. I imagine that there would be complications because the air would all be burned up inside the glass, but we can let the engineers solve that one.
While I mainly went to see the Carnaval, I also went for a walk around the Old Québec a bit while I was in town. It’s a very beautiful city.
There are all sorts of wonderful old buildings, churches and historical-type things going on.
Not only that, but they have excellent lighting at night, so it makes for some good photos!
You just have to be willing to wait for an opportune moment, when there isn’t a car going past, who will leave streaks of light all through your exposure. Thank goodness for digital cameras.
Celtic cross at night
I think I must have spent about fifteen minutes trying to get this photo of the celtic-looking cross. I’ve got a whole bunch of photos of it with streaks across it, thanks to cars.
After three or four tries, I was almost prepared to set the self-timer and go stand in the middle of the road, just out of the frame of the camera, so that I would prevent any cars from passing through it. I only wanted a twenty-second exposure, and there was only one car every minute or so.
Oh well.
I like the details on the cross, and I think it was worth the wait.
An angel with a globe
Next is an angel with a globe. I’m not sure what his deal is. I guess he’s like a busker, except that he doesn’t really perform a musical instrument.
Not a bad job, I guess.
Unless you don’t like the cold. It wasn’t too bad while I was there, anyway. It was consistently around -1ºC or -2ºC, and in the sunlight, during the day, that’s not too bad.
He seems happy, anyway.
I have also posted a video of a crazy dance rave at an ice castle in front of the Québec parliament, and a videoscreen waterfall at night in the Old Québec.
While I was in Québec City, my path crossed two important people. The first and most important was of course Bonhomme de Neige himself. I nearly missed him, but I happened to arrive just as he was leaving, so that I could snap about a dozen shots of him, paparazzi-style.
Later that day, while I was walking along a road between the Plains of Abraham and the Carnaval, I saw a big SUV drive past me, and I noticed that it had a blue flag with a royal symbol on it.
I remarked that I thought that it was a royal standard on the car that passed, but my friend told me that we would have heard if the Queen was coming. After the first car came a couple other RCMP cars.
This weekend, I went to Québec City to see the Carnaval d’Hiver, starring Bonhomme. I have a lot of photos and things to talk about, so I’m spacing it out over the next few days. To start off with, I’m going to post a bunch of photos of sculptures and things I saw.
The lights in the carousel tent changed all the time, so it was very difficult to get any good photos, but I’m reasonably happy with the way this one turned out. The whole tent was full of ice sculptures of different games—chess, monopoly, etc. I wonder if it’s harder to sculpt in snow or in ice. I imagine that it would be easier to make a silly mistake in the snow, but that ice is less forgiving.
By the way, carousels are creepy.
Creepy snow spider
These are just a few of my favourite things that I saw at the Carnaval d’Hiver. There were lots of other really good ones, but these turned out to be the most photogenic.
The creepy spider is wonderful. I love the eyes on the front, and the way that the light comes from behind it.
I wonder where these people get their ideas for what they will make out of their chunk of snow, and by what means the chunk of snow is delivered there.
An apple with a mouth
The apple with the mouth won the prize for everything, I think. Seriously. There were about a half dozen awards at that one.
It’s really quite well done. I wonder if it’s supposed to represent anything besides just an apple with a mouth. I have no idea how a person would sculpt the inside of the mouth like that. Maybe they did the top of the mouth first so that they could sit on what would become the tongue, and then later went back to fix it. The snow must be very well-packed for it to allow for this sort of thing.
Girl in hood with dragon
I also liked the hooded girl with dragon. Good details on the dragon. Unfortunately, the very night that I took these photos, it snowed, and many of the finer details were covered up forever.
This sculpture in particular did not fare very well through the loss of all the fine details. Look at all the scales along the tail, the teeth and eyes. The little girl in a hood is delightful as well.
I overheard a bunch of French-speakers refer to the girl as “Little Red Riding Hood,” I thought, but I don’t remember a dragon in the English version of that story, at least.
Korean with fish
Apparently, there were teams of snow-sculptors from all over the world who came to participate. I’ve attached the South Korean contribution. It’s a person with a fish.
I also have photos of the Koreans working on this one the whole previous night. They put a lot of effort into it.
There was also a team from Morocco. I didn’t care for their sculpture as much. But then, they probably don’t get too much snow there, so I guess we can cut them some slack.
Plan for snow sharks
Sharks hiding in snow
Another favourite of mine is the sharks hiding in snow. I have both a photograph and a video of that one.
As best I can make out, these are actual living sharks that were imported and then covered in snow. They’re just waiting for the right moment before they start eating the unprepared visitors to the Carnaval d’Hiver.
