Background

I visited Paris on business, spending some 5 days or so there.

Although I studied several years of French, languages, like many other things, suffer from atrophy by disuse. Therefore, my conversational skills were not that great.

Another cold spell, or rather more deep freeze. Temperature as I type this (Thursday 15 January) is -23 Celsius. With wind chill factor, it feels like -32, with risk of frost bite.When I was leaving work, there was this frost on the inside of the car's windshield. This is very annoying. Had to scrape it off with an old CD that I keep in the glove box for this purpose. I had this happen to me two years ago. It is on days which are very cold, and very sunny.

Smoking of fish, meat and poultry was originally used merely as a method of preserving food from season to season.Only recently did this take a status of delicacy or gourmet that it is considered now

• Historical overview of food smoking.
• A good description of smoking various foods.
• A good overview of smoking fish.
  

You may have heard about Postmodernist Deconstruction? Have you wanted to know more about it?Well, start with the Postmodernism and the Deconstruction articles on the more than excellent free user-written encycolpedia Wikipedia.

Some traditions or customs just vanish over time. Once you are 30 years or more, you start to see this for yourself, reminiscing over how things were like when you grew up, vs. how they are now.These are examples of societies evolving right before your eyes.Let take a few examples from Egypt, related to cooking for example.

Two salted fish specialities that are exclusively Egyptian, are Feseekh, and Melouha.

Last night, the movie Canadian Bacon was on the relatively new cable TV channel (TOR1).This movie is by director Michael Moore, better known for Bowling For Columbine, Roger and Me, and later, Fahrenheit 9/11.Moore is also known for his vocal and severe opposition to President G

Well, the deep freeze cold snap is gone, but today I was surprised to see how much snow was on the drive way! At 3 pm, there was just some snow blowing around. At 9 pm, when we went out to shovel it, there was like 30 cm accumulated! The forecast was only for 5 cm, but this is usually the case (on my drive way, there is 4-5X what the forecast said). Even our neighbor across the street was asking her son : "When did all this snow fall!". Quite surprising.As for the cold snap, even long time Canadians complained that it was cold!More snow is forecast for the next few days, and then another cold snap is expected mid week!

This is something I found on net a while back. With the weather we have been getting lately, it seems appropriate to revive it. I edited it slightly, and removed some expletives.July 1 - Moved to Canada. I am so excited. It's so beautiful here. The scenery is great, the trees are so tall. Can't hardly wait to see them with snow covering them. Oct. 14 - Canada. It is the most beautiful place on earth. The leaves have turned all colors and shades of red and orange. Went for a ride through the beautiful countryside and saw some deer. They are so graceful. Certainly they are the most wonderful animals on earth. This must be paradise. I love it here.

Salma is the latest addition to the family. She was born in 2003.