I really really had a GREAT time, not only with my daughter (who was my partner along with another girl from her class – every parent got 2 kids to watch over and partner with) but with the other parents and I truly learnt a lot. I was practically the only parent who asked questions on this trip, questions that were not talked about by our guide who, rightly so, adapted her presentations to 4 years old.

The farm is located on the Macdonald campus of McGill University in the west island of Montreal (Ste Anne de Bellevue) and is a studying farm where students who study to become vets, agronoms etc work daily with the animals. It was built in 1905 and some of the things there like barns and tractors are about that age (and still well maintained).

They raise chicks, cows and pigs and have horses too. We visited only the chickens and cows.

I learned some fun facts about chicken and cows that I didn’t know before yesterday and never really thought about or cared but now I find interesting:

Fun facts about chickens:

Brown hens lay brown eggs and white hen lay white eggs.

• Every hen lays one egg a day. On the farm they have 3000 hens (mixed: brown and white) and so they have 3000 eggs every day.

Fun facts about cows:

• Not all cows are fertile. The ones that are not are used as surrogate mothers for embryos implantation that are done on the farm from great fertile cows.
• A cow is pregnant for 9 months and usually it is a singleton pregnancy. If the cows has twins than the female (one or both) will not be fertile as the genes mix and spread too much.
• It takes with their machinery about 15 minutes to milk a cow whereas by hand it would have taken 3-4 hours per cow! Think of the old days when they had to milk the cows by hand. My grandparents had back in Romania a cow and other animals – poor poor them – such intense labor!

The pipes that lead the milks from the cows to the container (filtering the milk from hay on the way):

• I kind of wished I had such a powerful machine pump when I was nursing – when I tried to pump I never could pump a lot even with the electronic double-sided Medela pump in style one or with hospital like pumps that I had rented. I am sure this one would have done the trick
• 

• Cows do not have teeth – they don’t need them to chew the hay.

• A teenage cow is from 6 months to 2 years.
• A cow gets pregnant for the first time at around 2 years.
• A cow has 4 (!!!) stomaches. This cow has a window into her tummy:
• 

• The milk from this farm is turn into cheese by Quebon in a cheese factory in Ontario.

• Cows drink milk too for about 10 weeks and then they are weaned cold turkey and gradually transfer to hay by starting with a sweet mixture of milk powder and cats cereal.

It was a great day. They are open weekdays in the summer and admission is (I think) 7$ for an adult and $5 for a child (includes a guided tour). They have a lawn with picnic tables and toys for the kids and a small petting zoo.

The kids even got to “milk” a (pretend) cow and water came out from the udders:

All in all it is really a nice place to visit with the kids  BUT be prepared for the smells in the barn and the mosquitos outdoor on  the lawn only so you better bring a spray like “off” and “after bite” just in case. I didn’t know or thought about it and both my sweet (double meaning) daughter and I have huge bites all over (me: arms, palms, thighs, legs, her: face, legs, arms) that are still red and itchy, even a day later.

The only bad part is that I got dehydrated (I kind of blame the school a little who didn’t go around distributing water). I shared the 2 bottles I had brought with my gorgeous 2 (thirsty) partners and it was gone fast as it was hot. So even though I tried to hydrate myself after we returned a lot it didn’t help as the damage was done and I ended up with such a migraine I could not concentrate at class (and I didn’t have a pill with me), almost threw up and then I took a pill at 9:30 p.m. which till 10 p.m. took effect.

So to get back to my story from last night – one of my friends was pretty sure that the waiter gave her back change more than she gave him money (she gave him $40 for a $20 meal and he gave her back $39).  I told her that if she would have been with my hubby he would have made her give him back the $. It happened to me too on a few occasions, when I noticed the error was in my favour and I gave it back. Poor them, I think if they make these mistakes they have to literally pay for them (put the missing money out if their pocket).

Then I flashed back to 6 months ago. It was a rainy Friday night (about 9 p.m.) and I was in a rush to go visit my dad in the hospital – I took him earlier that day to the ER with chest pains. I get out of my house and right in front of my house, where my car parked, I see, under the car a white iphone that was taking refuge under my car and enjoying the rainless night.  Most people on my block are religious and with Shabbat coming in so early in the winter there was no one on the street. The phone was locked and I was in a big rush to get to the hospital as the Dr told me earlier that day that he will come at around 930-10 to tell us what is going on with my dad (my mom was away and my siblings too – they were all in Israel as my grandmother had  just passed away the night before and I was supposed to fly too and join them on the next day to the funeral but I was very nervous to leave my dad alone in the city with chest pains, a serious heart condition that he suffers from and without anyone but my hubby who isn’t even the next of kin, legally speaking).

Anyways I get to the hospital, see the Dr. He wants to run more tests. I go to the waiting room and try to unlock the phone or take out the sim chip to figure out whose phone it was. Didn’t have any reception, couldn’t take out the chip that was stuck or something and couldn’t do anything really, so I put it back in my bag.

I finally get home just before midnight and show what I found to hubby. He immediately started to play around with it and make calls to cell phone carriers to find which company the phone belongs to. Turns out it was a Rogers iphone. Rogers knew who the owner was (by that time the owner reported the phone missing so they disconnected the line) and all hubby was trying to do was give Rogers his details and tell them to call the customer and have him/her call him back to come and get the iphone back. They refused saying that they can’t initiate a call to the customer or give us the details (which we never asked) as it would violate the customer’s privacy. Stupid Rogers – we, the Good Samaritans, wanted to return a $500+ iphone to its owner, one of their customers and they wouldn’t care. I left them (Rogers) 2 months later after 10 years with them but that is a story for another post.  Hubby was furious. He kept explaining them that he doesn’t want them to violate that person’s privacy but wants them to give the customers OUR numbers so they can call us. No. No reasoning with them. It was almost 1:30 a.m. I was so exhausted, almost drained both emotionally (The night before I had my 4th  and last midterm, that same night I lost my dear dear grandmother who I was so attached to and, as if that wasn’t enough already, I was also worried about my dad and whether or not the baby and I would make our next day flight and the funeral. I was so tired physically as I had run all day long with my dad to hospitals, come home and take my kids and feed them and I had a 4 months old baby and my daughter (3.5 years old at the time) was with me all that day as it was a holiday in her school. I tried to catch a little sleep in between nursing (my baby would nurse constantly at night with almost no breaks, or very short ones). I wake up an hour later and hubby is still in the kitchen on his computer. I ask him what is he doing and he tells me that he is writing Rogers threatening lawyer emails to tell them how disgusting they are for not caring ir calling their customers who lost their phone. I am like: WHAT??? You are wasting so much time on that. How come you have time to write this letter and not others that we need to complain that our 2 years old freezer is leaking or that our external hard drive died less than a year after we bought it or so many other things that we REALLY need??

He really took the Good Samaritan routine to a different level. Sure, I did it too many times, different things (I fed homeless people both from my home and at my parents’ old restaurant, I returned credit cards, charged (with money) students id cards, wallets, a computer that was forgotten at the library etc). My siblings and I were raised like that – my brother once returned a wallet that was left in my parents’ depanneur (the wallet not only had a few hundred dollars in cash money but also a winning lottery ticket for $20.000 or $30,000). My grandfather once returned a box full of jewelery and diamonds that someone he had never met left behind at his work place. My dad returned an iphone a few weeks before I found this one (someone dropped it on his lawn).

On the other hand, not everyone is like that. I lost twice wallets here in Canada and no one ever returned them to me (forget about the money and I did have a lot, around $700 there, I just wanted all the documents and cards that I had to redo and pay again and stand in line for). Only once of out these 2 times a nice woman located my parents’ home phone number and told them how she found the wallet on the same street where it fell out of the diaper bag and so my dad went to take it. The cards were all there (even though I cancelled the credit cards) but no money was there (da!!) And I don’t think she took it, someone else must have first  found the wallet, emptied it and dropped it on the other side of the street where she found it.

But wasting so much time and efforts as well as losing sleep over – all on idiots who don’t care about the customers and then writing them the lawyers letters was just too much.

I wasn’t even thinking at that time that I could keep it for myself. Mine was still amazing back then. He sent the letter and went to sleep.

He wakes up the next day and Rogers wrote him back, scared of his lawyer letters that they will call their customer. A few hours later we get a call and a young girl (maybe 17 years old) comes to claim her brand new birthday gift iPhone 4S (she got it the day before) and she hands me a $20 bill as if to remunerate me for my finding, I refused. She asks me if she could buy me something for the kids (what could she buy for $20???) I politely refuse. She said “I should have gotten you a gift certificate” and goes on her merry way with her ($600, new) iphone SO SO happy. She should be happy. But I am not so happy now thinking my phone is dying on me and I don’t have my could have been brand new white iphone 4S (still with warranty for any necessary repairs). Oh well, I guess now I have to go buy myself one.

I did make my 5 p.m. flight and the funeral, my dad was discharged the next day at noon and my sister-in-law (my brother’s wife), who is an M.D. (she is a radiologist) drove from Ontario with her 2 older kids (all of them were almost exactly my kids’ ages: 3.5, almost 2 and a 3 months old baby) to stay with him and take care of him while we were all away at the funeral and the shiva.

I once had a single (female) friend who went on a first or second date and when the guy was too busy with his computer or bbr/iphone (I can’t remember) she got up and left never to see him again. Well, I think that was a tad too drastic but I could definitely understand when she was coming from.

The clip says it all!

Please click on all the hyper links to learn more about the people behind the names and the wonderdul things they did for all man kond, esepecially the Jewish people of Europe during World War 2.

A couple of weeks ago I saw this song that was composed from a poem for a Righteous Woman (the song is in Hebrew with English sub titles). I wanted to learn more about her so I googled her and this is what I learnt from the Yad Va’Shem website on Andrée Geulen - Herscovici.

I wrote my friend who forwarded me the clip and cc(ed) my mother in law that: “I found the story very touching and that it reminded me of the story of how my mother-in law, Lee’s 2 first cousins were saved in Paris by a non-Jew Neighbour one day. He took them first to his parents’ house and later, because his parents lived in an apartment in the city he felt was not safe. He took them to the country where they were hidden throughout the war in a non-Jewish home.  Maurice went back the next day to take the 2 other younger siblings but he was too late - a neighbour told him that the rest of the family (parents and 2 younger siblings) were taken away to the gas chambers that same night”.

Please look at this short clip from the Yad Vashem site of Virtual Tour of Avenue of The Righteous Among the Nations 

The one good thing that came out of the holocaust is the State of Israel. A country of which I am very proud of its accomplishments and sheer existence.

This picture is very symbolic: it represents the past, the future and the state of Israel.

We will NEVER forget!! We will NEVER let it happen AGAIN. We will defend ourselves, no matter what.

AM ISRAEL CHAI.

Who ever came up with this was and is very smart!

These are the shoes:

I was thinking: who wears these shoes? And worse, who designed them?

I clicked on the link to see the shoes in a bigger image and lo and behold there is an entire page dedicated to crazy weird shoes. Holly macro! Check them out:

My questions from before are even more relevant now that I have seen this “crazy shoes fest”. Who designs them? Who buys them and who wears them???

I packed up a mini backpack with work booklets, crayons, arts and crafts, juice, bamba (israeli cheeses snack) and her stuffed froggy and off we went. I explained to her that she has to use her inside voice and she must be quiet so that the other students can study. She was very excited to come with me to my school (as she calls it). She has been asking me for months if she could come. Well finally the day she could have come had arrived. Over the last few days several different people, on different occasions, have commented to me that her reasons and reasoning, the way she is always talking on behalf of someone else (usually her brother), advocating for him and  defending him - all of that are attributes of a lawyer, and they suggested that maybe she will be a lawyer in the future and follow her parents’ footsteps. Who knows? All I want for her is to do something she loves, like we do, and be happy and content with.

At the beginning she was very patient while the librarian was showing me how can I find all but one (UNBELIEVABLE) online from the library’s data base, even using from my home after I log in with my id and password. That was insane! I LOVE LOVE this era where everything is on the internet. I am really having a hard time imagining how we managed before. When I did my degree (1993-1996) computers weren’t that in and I don’t recall many of my friends owning one or using one for their studies. We did everything with books, library and papers. Today, we have all grown so dependent on the internet, computers, smart phones and tablets that when we have a power failure, a circuit shortage or a router problem, I am sure many, like me, practically feel naked (that was my boss’ analogy which I liked a lot), useless and unable to move on with our day and work till the power returns or the problem fixed.

While I was looking for my book, she said she was hungry and thirsty (not even 30 minutes after we left home – lol) so I sat her down in the students’ tables area and she took off her coat and hat and sat down to a feast of juice and bamba: practically a mini picnic at the library. She waited for me to find my book and then she said she wanted to go play upstairs and back downstairs in the huge library. When I explained to her that she can’t she said that she has had enough and she wanted to go home. So I photocopied the one resource I needed that wasn’t online with her in tow. While I did that she was admiring the papers coming out of the huge photocopying machine. And then we took some pictures of her, went downstairs to the law faculty’s office where they always have lollipops on a dish, they gave her one and she was thrilled. And that was our trip. She was so tired that after a meal she fell asleep, with me (I was still tired from last night) till we had to go pick up the boys from their daycares. Tomorrow she has plans with my cousin’s daughters who are her age so at least I could study in peace, as I am planning to do now.

Before she went to sleep for the night she came out of her room, after I tucked her in, and said she wanted to tell me that she loves me and she had a great time in my university today. I am melting here.

Hope you have a great evening!

This is the third, and thank G-d, last paper in this course I am taking. This time I have to write (in French of course) a legal opinion about medical negligence of a Dr that his alleged act caused the death of my client’s husband. I haven’t studied Tort law yet in the civil law system yet and I have plenty of readings to do: both case-law and doctrinal books. That in itself is a lot. To add to that, I have to make up a plan called plan cartésien and meet my teacher on Saturday to discuss my plan with him and then if he approves of it I will have to develop it into my legal opinion. If he will not approve, then i will have to re-do and change it.

I hate plan cartésien. it`s origine comes from France and was copied here in Quebec, the other place where civil law rules. I have always hated it, ever since I lived in France for a year on an exchange program in my law school and had to write many of my exams and papers in this plan cartésien method. It’s always a guess for me if I will “hit” or “miss” (and mess) it. This plan calls for the topic to be divided into two major parties and each major party has to have two sub-parties (in France, each sub-party has to have 2 more subpart, I guess I should consider myself lucky that my prof didn’t ask for that). It sounds way but believe me, it is not! I studied in 4 systems in 4 countries and I like this French method system the least (like the least is putting it very mildly). I usually adapt very fast to new places, systems & people but this is for me something I can’t figure out. Like I said, sometimes I get how to do the division and other times I don’t. Don’t know why it happens.  

To top it all, my professor is anal (or maybe it’s this subject that requires him to be like that?) and every point, comma, footnote etc that are missing or misplaced he is taking off points (even for repeated errors).  He has been warning us from day one of the course, that his course is time-consuming (which it is) and that many of his former students have dreams/nightmares about him personally. I laughed it off, it never happened to me, not even before my bar exams. But, by golly, he was right. I don’t have dreams about him but rather about this class and contents. It started a couple of weeks ago, the day I had to and in my previous paper (when I got the computer virus), that morning I took a shower and all of a sudden I saw my Dove soap had the word “atrium” on it. Atrium is the legal data base of the law library of UdeM.  I rubbed my eyes as I thought: atrium in my shower? I am surely going mad” Then I realized it said nutrium on the soap bottle (see the pictures below).

It went on last night, where ALL night long I was thinking about my plan and how will the division and sub-division go, which will be the headings and I will I develop and elaborate on them. I woke up several times and each time the “dream” sort of continued almost where I last left it off. ouuuffff. I swear I feel like I didn’t get a free second of NOT thinking about it and getting a complete (much needed) rest. I feel so tired now.

my daughter is off school this week and yesterday she went to play with a friend and then my parents watched her. I still have to see what I can do with her today. I am waiting to hear from a friend, if she will go to the library to revise one course for the exam next week then I would meet her and will have to see who can help me with my daughter (watch over her) for a few hours). If I don’t have to go then she can stay here with me. She is usually well-behaved and can keep herself busy with arts, games and DVDs.

We shall see how the day goes on. Have a good one!

As if to make it worse, I used my husband`s old laptop yesterday morning and I guess the virus came from my email because it caught the same virus (and that computer also have Norton). I am usually very careful not to open any emails from people I do not know, or if it comes from someone I know but it is not likely that the person will send me such an email (like big penis delicious sex life email) I write them to let them know of the virus and delete it right away. I actually did that 2 weeks ago with a friend and then again last year with a colleague.

But, I do love to open attachments with funny stories, jokes etc. My husband says it is that who has caused the virus and he blames his mom who send me a lot of these emails, which I love.

Anyways, I am in university now with a French computer, and I am not sure the English spell check will work so forgive the typos (I have a class soon and can`t look into it from here). I took both computers to have them fixed and cured but this store, not far from my house, not only works from 12-6 (oh, what a good life) but they charge a flat fee of $70 per computer. I don`t really understand in prices but it seems pricey considering that 1) a brand new computer could start at $350 and go up to $700 and 2) I need to fix now 2 computers!!!

I am also afraid I might have lost school related documents (class notes etc) that I need to start studying for my final exams that are coming faster that I understand or would like to accept.  Which causes another problem, as here in UdeM, most people do not like to “share their notes” with anybody, so I am doubtful that I can get someone`s notes. It is so weird! I have lived in 4 countries (Israel, Canada, England and France) and this is the only place where students are like that. This = UdeM. In McGill everyone was nice to me and did not hesitate for a second to share their notes. I even found several students who sent me their notes.

In UdeM, on the other side, not only the Quebec students  are not like that. At best, they could tell you that they would give you the recordings of the class if they have them, but not the notes themselves. I don’t have time to re-listen to all those hours and hours of lectures from the beginning of the semester and transcribe them again to French – that`s CRAZY!). Also, I heard from people last semester that some teachers encourage NOT to share notes!

Like I said, I have lived in 4 countries and I have never seen such attitude. I have always shared my notes with anyone who wants, needs or asks. In fact, ever since elementary school all I do is take notes in class and share them with my class mates. Once, in high school, no one except me and this other guy, listen to that one teacher. We were the only 2 who were taking notes. The rest of the class would either sleep, leave the class on one excuse or another, or be disruptive. But at the exams, almost everybody got higher grades, with my notes, all because the teacher thought I was smart mouthed (I challenged her anf=d the things she taught, I found them inconsistent) and wanted to get back at me (but we all wrote the same things in the exam and the source was mine).

Anyways, i hope I could resolve this one way (fix my computer and pray that I didn’t lose any docs or data) or another (convince someone to give me their notes???!!!). i will pray and keep my fingers crossed for both!

7. If you’re looking for IP computer software, there’s alwayswww.ipanywhere.com

8. The First Cumming Methodist Church Web site is  www.cummingfirst.com