Cool, huh?
Yesterday for dinner, my classmates and I ate at 'O Noir,' the dining craze that's sweeping the nation! (select cities). It was started as a way of raising awareness for blind people (5% of the profits go to charities for the blind, and all the servers in the restaurant are between 50 and 100% blind). We entered a lounge lit dimly by only a few small candles, where we ordered our meals, then we followed our server congo-line-style through a two-curtain lightlock to our table in the pitch black dining room. We were required to leave cell phones, watches, or anything else that might emit light, in the lounge. After we were seated, the server came to our table to offer us dinner rolls and water, tapping each of us on the shoulder to hand us our glasses. Most of us ordered the 'surprise dinner,' (the green beans, asparagus, potatoes, and mushrooms were easy enough to identify, and the veal was clearly something vealish, but for a long time I thought the 3-cheese ravioli in mushroom sauce were mushroom slices). Cutting veal and buttering bread in the dark presented minor challenges, but the main problem was just knowing when you were finished. For several minutes after each of finished our meals, we continued poking, stabbing, or
scraping at our plates, trying to find new scraps of food. Jose and I requested additional dinner rolls to sop up the sauce, just to be sure. In the dark, the smell of shrimp from the next table was almost overwhelming. The room was filled with people talking loudly and shouting – it's amazing what effect not seeing your neighbors has on vocal volume – which just added to the excitement of the experience. It was clear that there was activity all around us, and that the room was full of people, but not being able to see any of it was very weird. Passing desserts around the table provided another challenge – but what desserts! I'm telling you, until you've eaten a double chocolate mousse in the dark, you've never eaten one. At the end, my eyes were starting to become sore from the strain of trying to see (and failing) for an hour and a half. When we finished, the candles in the lounge were blinding. It was really cool. I highly recommend it, next time you're in Montreal, New York, LA, Sydney, London, or Zurich: http://www.onoir.com/en/frames.htmIt's hard to believe that my month in Montreal is over. On Friday, I depart for:
1) Ney (near Toledo), Ohio (Saturday and Sunday) [via bus]
2) Chicago, Illinois (Monday and Tuesday) [via train]
3) Glendale (near LA), California (Tuesday - Thursday) [via plane]
4) San Diego, California (Thursday, Friday) [via bus]
5) The Ocean (Friday, Nov 2-18) [via boat]
6) Beaverton, Oregon (Nov 19-?) [via bus from San Diego]
Whew! I'll be visiting relatives at stops 1-3, then at 4) I'll be volunteering for two and half weeks aboard an oceanic research vessel. Yes, like so many young men before me, throughout history, I am going to sea. I'll be doing mostly chemistry lab work, but there'll be other people onboard doing marine mammal, marine bird, and other biological research. It's a good-sized boat, with space for 16 researchers plus crew, but telephone/internet opportunities are likely to be limited, so I'll be mostly out of contact for those weeks. Check out the program website (http://www.calcofi.org/) and cruise prospectus ( http://www.calcofi.org/newhome/cruises/2007/0711NHProspectus.html ) for more info. I'll let you all know afterwards how it went (barring tsunami and/or kraken attacks of unanticipated severity, of course).
Ciao,
Nathan
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