8h30—RAMQ says: “Yes of course, we’ll fax your temporary card to your pharmacy. Ask your pharmacy to call you when they receive it. It might take up to an hour.”
[I gave RAMQ the fax number twice during this call.]
9h00—pharmacy says: “We’ll call you as soon as it arrives.”
12h00—pharmacy says: “No, we haven’t received anything.”
14h15—RAMQ says: “The lady said she was waiting for the fax number. We’ll fax it for real this time. ;) It will probably take 15 minutes to a half hour.”
15h15—pharmacy says: “No, we haven’t received anything.”
15h20—RAMQ says: “No, there’s no note on your file that mentions anything about faxing a temporary card. What’s the number you want it sent to?”
15h40—pharmacy says: “Ah yes, it just came in two minutes ago.”
March 28: I receive letter from OHIP saying, “Remember! You won’t have health insurance after April 30th because your card has expired. Come to a Service Ontario place with proof that you’re an Ontario resident and renew it.”
March 29: I call OHIP and explain that I have no such proof, since I work/study/pay taxes/live in Québec now. I’m actually not allowed to go on RAMQ, since I’m still a full-time student from Ontario. They tell me that in that case, I should just get proof from my school, and OHIP will extend my health insurance again. I say I can’t do that, because I haven’t actually been formally registered for next year.
OHIP’s recommendation: let my OHIP lapse and apply for RAMQ anyway. Just don’t mention that I’m a student. I call RAMQ. They say I can apply for RAMQ once my OHIP coverage ends.
May 2: Finally get instructions on how to apply from RAMQ. Assemble all the documents they tell me to.
May 20: I receive an envelope from RAMQ that does not contain a health card. Rather, it is a letter indicating that RAMQ wasn’t satisfied with the documents that I provided, even though I went to the CLSC in person and specifically asked whether I had submitted everything necessary to make sure that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.
May 30: Go back to CLSC, hand in more documentation.
June 5: Finally shine a flashlight into the back of my mouth to investigate the sore throat that I’ve had for a while that hasn’t gotten better. Tonsils swollen; little white spots on tonsils; headache; high temperature; difficulty swallowing; no health insurance.
I call Info-Santé so I can talk to a nurse. She says I might have strep throat, but there’s no way that I can get any treatment for it until I see a doctor who has to do a culture of a swab of my throat. I call the Montréal General emergency room. They tell me it would cost $750 just to visit the emergency room. I am currently investigating alternate means of obtaining penicillin. Buying traveller’s health insurance and then taking a quick trip to the States has not been ruled out yet.
June 6: As soon as the RAMQ office opens at 8h30, I’m gonna call them and see if I can get a temporary number or something so that I can see a doctor.
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?”
This weekend past, I was invited to a family event in rural Québec—an outing at a sugar shack, or a “cabane à sucre,” in French. It reminded me of when my parents decided to tap the tree in front of our house and boil it down to syrup. The house smelled of maple syrup for weeks!
Anyway, here in Québec, these guys actually built a shed out in the country so that they don’t have to deal with it in their kitchen.
Something that we didn’t do when we made maple syrup, is making de la tire, or maple taffy on the snow.
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.
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.
