Dining in Victoria as good as it gets #1 · Monday May 26, 2008 by colin newell
To describe the restaurant, Brasserie L`ecole as unpretentious is like pontificating on the genuinely modest nature of the Dali Lama.
Shut up and eat already.
This is one of the reasons I find Eat magazine so amusing – whenever it appears on the stands that is.
They gush and genuflect on restaurants like Brasserie L`ecole, Cafe Brio and Zambri’s…
And others. They back slap. They self reward and worship.
It is a veritable love fest.
But I digress.
Brasserie L`ecole is a great restaurant with some amazing pluses, twists and turns in what should be a stuffy and boring French restaurant.
Starters: It appears that guests can order 2 glasses of wine from virtually any bottle in their cellar. Name one other restaurant in Victoria where this is an option?
We go for the Steak-Frites… Steak perfectly prepared served with a bassinet of skinny Belgian fries, anointed with salt, baptized with truffle oil and parmasan.
Expect to book 2 weeks in advance for a good seating during the dinner hour(s).
In this 1st in a marathon of local restaurant reviews, diner Colin Newell hopes to educate, entertain and reveal some of Victoria’s gems. Bon Appetit!
All in a days work #1 · Saturday April 12, 2008 by colin newell
You might find this funny… or not.
I work at a local University in Technical-Rich Media.
I would tell you the department but we change names almost weekly.
Part of my job involves debugging anything electronic anywhere on campus… on any piece of equipment… excluding fax and photocopiers.
Anyway – I noticed a ticket in our computer based help-desk system for a task over in IMP – the Island Medical Program… in an area that I had a small part in building. But other than some visits to various lecture halls in the last year, I have not been upstairs.
One of the labs on the Upper levels had some issues with a flaky multi-media distribution matrix… and they wanted a 2nd opinion on expediting a solution.
So I exchanged a few e-mail with the lead tech over there, grabbed my doctors bag and some extra cable terminations and the appropriate tools, and away I went.
The issue in question was in G.A. Gross Anatomy…
complete with bags… and people, I mean, cadavers in them.
I should have read the fine print on the work ticket… not that it would have mattered.
So there I was… working in a lab full of bodies… one “bag”
within a few feet…
So I said… after looking in my tool-bag.
“Which one of you knows where my Red Robertson screwdriver is?”
“Anyone?”
Yea. Funny huh?
I felt a bit queasy for a minute or so… but it passed.
I asked the resident Tech there: “Why didn’t you tell me that
I would be in a room full of bodies?”
And he said…
“Because you would not come over…”
And I said.
“You have a point…”
I my entire life, I have seen about 2 bodies one with his head underneath a jacket. I will spare you the details because this is not that kind of web-blog.
But being in a room with 12 sets of human remains in body bags… a room cooled to single digits… well, it was sobering in an odd kind of way. It is one of those experiences that you never know how you will feel until you are actually there.
Ingmar Lee - Tip of the Fedora · Tuesday March 25, 2008 by colin newell
To call Ingmar Lee a professional protester is like calling your dentist a practitioner of pain for payment.
Ingmar, a Victoria area resident and (I am pretty sure) taxpayer, is the darling of University (and College) students, the unwaged, the working poor, and those, it seems, too unworthy of living on Bear Mountain… or in the Uplands… or in any privileged enclave too sacred to house the many (and seemingly teeming) population of unwashed on the lower Island.
Because hey, you are either pro-development or your not…
As if it was that easy to pick one side or the other.
But to dismiss Lee as a professional protester and his associates as Welfare bums and Hippies illustrates the utter contempt that most pro-development types feel for Activists of conscience like Ingmar Lee (and, by the way, anyone that doesn’t drive a Hummer or live on Bear Mountain).
Call me crazy but when was it such a big deal to throw up your hands and say: Hey, hang on a second here! How about some open discussion about what is going on around us?
Protest , the last time I checked, was not a crime.
Anyway – The CBC surprised me with an article on Ingmar this morning. It seems that he has taken out a permit on mineral rights for the Bear Mountain region.
Which for a Bum (not my words) like Ingmar — is utterly brilliant.
And we need to take a moment, regardless of our orientation on the subject of development… and credit Ingmar on his stroke of pure genius.
To put aside our differences… just long enough to think a little more clearly.
And think about… where we live. And remember that big development does not have to be painful, is not always necessary and like the dentist should be something we all attend to… when we need to.
More reading
Mother Nature is your friend · Tuesday March 25, 2008 by colin newell
With Easter comes the tradition of visiting Tofino, British Columbia and the Middle Beach Lodge. And with this adventure comes the risk of strong weather…
Picture at left – A six foot two Blogger stands in a fresh fall of snow… in Spring
And not the kind of strong weather we associate with a mid-March West Coast; lashing waves, wicked winds, driving rains that feel like tornado driven acupuncture needles…
But winter weather; snow, sleet and horizontal hail the size of rosary beads… less forgiving as well.
But this is Spring – albeit early Spring. And the fact that Easter is at an unusually early juncture for this year; March the 23rd… and apparently it has not been this early since 1066 or something. The next time Easter will be this early will be in the year 2030… and hopefully by then I will be piloting a Hover-Honda between Victoria and Tofino…
Because this year, our little Honda Civic was a little life saver on the winding stretch between the West Coast and civilization. It was snowing. A lot.
Between the Tofino-Ucluelet junction at the Pacific Rim highway and Sutton Pass some 1400 feet above Sea Level and 25km from Port Alberni – this neck of the woods can be mighty unpredictable this time of year. And so it was.
Our little Honda sedan cruised confidently through a moderate snowfall, somewhat effortlessly, up to the summit – by which time there were 4’ snow drifts on the sides of the road (about 1’ of fresh powder) and maybe 1/2” of snow on the highway.
With the Honda wearing a fairly healthy pair of All Season Radials (read SUMMER TIRES), it is risky business to attempt this kind of hill climb. But we did it.
And it wasn’t blind driving. Oh no. I was watching the oncoming traffic for signs of a more intense conflagration… i.e. bloated snowmen mobiles… but this was not the case. The cars coming towards us were dusted lightly. So we pushed on and we were rewarded with clearing skies as we passed over the peak.
We arrived in Port Alberni within 45 minutes of the alpine experience and decompressed at Tim Horton’s with Maple dips, black coffee and some much maligned roll-up cups
The rest of the trip was uneventful except, ironically, for one mini-van driving bonehead that we encountered on the approach to the Langford turn-off (near the proposed Spencer exchange and Thetis Lake) who was dodging between lanes and cutting off drivers more unpredictably than a pin ball. He cut in front of us so close and so swiftly as to cause a minor shock wave as he blocked the wind in our path.
This is why people kill each other on our highways.
Anyway – it was a wonderfully romantic weekend at Tofino. We re-experienced the joys of married life – communing with other romantics, people watching, weather watching… and hoping for safe travel in the future.
