Boxing Day

I love the style here in Montreal. People are so well-dressed here.

Surprisingly, financial damages were kept at a minimum. In the end, I dropped 25$ on dark-wash boot cuts, 20$ on a kickass white collar shirt, another 20$ on a tight black sweater, and 3.50$ on a black and gray scarf. My guess is that I would have gotten more had we not been lost for most of the time.

*Note the prices are in CAD, not USD. And then I get my tax money back at the border.

I love Boxing Day.

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I remember my first time in a Segafredo. It was in Tokyo, when we dropped in for a coffee after hanging out on the Promenade. I must say the atmosphere didn't allow breathing; too much cigar smoke. The pastries were thick and crusty, and the coffee was rancid. I didn't enter another Segafredo for another year.

I gradually built up my taste for the Portuguese cafe chain in Lisbon, actually.It was one of the places we frequented for lunch in the Baixa-Chiado before we resorted to an ugly, coach-class Chinese restaurant a block from our hotel that played the same MIDI-driven keyboardist playing cheap riffs over a 20$ drum machine. Every day.

And today, in Montreal, my dad and I went out to pick up a late dinner at the Underground City, but apparently they close early these days. So we went out to St. Catherin Street, a SoHo-like district that cuts Montreal in half between Mont-Royal and the Old City. Most of the pizza parlours were closed, but I spotted...a Segafredo.

And when we walked in, I changed my mind. French house music. Hardwood floors, glasstop bars, walls of spirits, and the white leather chairs. The consumers match the decor; a man on my right wearing a Versace suit and a crisp red embroidered chemise sits down with his friend and pulls out a sixteen hundred dollar Vertu Ascension, one of the world's most expensive cellphones.

I sat down at a window seat and turned on my mp3 player. I made a point of recording the music.

There's a Segafredo that has dignity.

The food came. And the rest of it, as they say, was history.

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Amazing electro-house band:
telepopmusik

Take a look at the song Into Everything, Remix. Takes a while to get into, but it's good stuff.