Hello everyone, here’s a quick update on my whereabouts in Montreal during the last 3 days.
This week-end I tried to kill some time by walking around in my neighborhood. First on saturday afternoon, I went for a quick walk on Ste Catherine (as always). Just like this summer, the problem in my apartment is that the Internet jack on the wall is pretty far away from my bed, and as I really enjoy my laptop in bed, especially during the week-ends, I decided to take care of that issue for good. Instead of buying a very long ethernet cable (10 m) like this summer, I spent a bit more and bought the cheapest Wifi access point I could find and it’s working now perfectly. No more cable crossing the entire room :)
After that I met up online with my friend Jean-Sebastien, from my former team in Ubisoft Montreuil. He’s the globe-trotter of the team and is actually on a mission on Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction. We decided to meet on St Denis to grab some drinks and eat there. This is where I experienced my first snow fall here in Montreal ! This week-end the weather was nicer than I expected and the temperature was around 0 (hence the snow) and I didn’t even have to wear my big “doudoune” !
We went (totally randomly) in a very nice Shezhuan restaurant where we enjoyed a very nice meal. We chose the special menu where the chef decided what we were going to eat ! Very good and pretty cheap too (25$ the whole meal).
We then headed to a bar on Duluth I knew from this summer called “Le reservoir”. I really like this place. Cheap, good drinks, good french electro music. This summer I heard the whole Ed Rec Vol. 2 compilation there, and saturday some Kavinsky ! We had a really good time, and took a cab back home both a bit joyful from the drinks we had.
Kavinsky - Testarossa Autodrive
Sunday was the typical sunday. In bed till very late in the afternoon, checking some TV shows (Lost and Nip/Tuck this time) and I managed to watch the Africa Nations Cup Finals on TV5 (too bad Cameroon lost…). I then went outside to try to buy some food for the week but couldn’t really find a grocery store near my place so I went back to Ste Catherine again, entered Pharmaprix and brought some supplies back home. I then met with my friend Jerome (Matt’s older brother) and his wife on St Denis as they wanted to take me to “Juliette et chocolat“, a place where you can DRINK hot melted chocolate. Very enjoyable, check the link for more informations. They gave me a lot of advices about the life here since they’ve been living here since October (they actually arrived the day before I left).
On to my first day at work. I woke up early today as I was a bit stressed about not wanting to be late (as usual). I checked some weather websites to check the temperature and OH MY GOD. -12, -25 with the wind ! I took everything I got with me, wooly hat, gloves, scalf, big parka and headed outside. Well, I have to tell you, it’s no good to be a smoker by -25. I first tried to smoke taking off my right hand glove. I couldn’t stand the cold for more than 30 seconds and I had to switch constantly. I finally learned to smoke with my gloves on and it’s a lot better now !
I didn’t wait for the bus at all (lucky me !) but got super early at work (8:15). I was supposed to be here for 8:45 when the “newbie tour” was supposed to start. So I waited in the cafeteria with a nice orange juice and the morning paper :)
We (me and some other newcomers) then proceeded to the visit of the studio and as you know, it’s REALLY huge. 1900 employees at the moment, second biggest video game studio in the world. We were then briefed about the security policy, the internal websites and some administrative stuff. I then met Francois Ringuette, associate producer on my project, who introduced me to my new team. After that I started to configure my work station to try to be ready to work as quickly as possible. It’s a long process but well, you have to do it (can’t talk much, NDA…). I had lunch with Jean-Sebastien and Laurent in a very cool TexMex restaurant where I ate an excellent Burrito ! And at the end of the day (17:30) I went for a drink with David in my loved “Helm” bar. I really like this place, especially during the week, because it’s big, yet peaceful and relaxing. Nothing better than a Whisky-Coke in a nice bar after work :)
Tomorrow, I’ll meet with a girl working at Royal Lepage Relocation. She will pick me up directly at my place and will help me with all the paperwork and formalities (social security, bank…) and I think I will even visit some apartments too. That’s why I won’t be going back to work till wednesday. My lead is on holiday and I think my work station and development environment are already correctly set up anyway so it’s no big deal.
Oh by the way, I decided to scrap Flickr for my photos as it’s a pain in the ass to maintain both iPhoto on my laptop and Flickr. I gave the .Mac web galleries a shot and I really like it. So here are my galleries:
http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier
My photos of the flight: http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100069
My appart-hotel: http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100079
And some various pics from Montreal (I suggest you bookmark this one as I will update it regularly): http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100083
That’s all for today folks. That was a very long post isn’t it ?
