I'm feeling multicultural

"Rum Punch", apparently an "Indo Tropical Paradise" drink

"Indo Tropical Paradise" dancing and singing

The rest of Jill's pics

Hit up Folklorama tonight. Folklorama is "the largest and longest running multicultural festival of its kind in the world". Basically there are all these different pavillions hosted in schools and community centres throughout the city, with each one devoted to a different culture, and inside you get to sample that culture's food and drinks as well as see shows.

I went with Kevin (back from Toronto like the exact same time as me), Jill, and Florence. I was just talking with Jill and Florence the other day about how they had never met, yet they are the two people, aside from my family, who's vacation plans revolve around Hotel Vince, as they visited me in both Toronto and the Bay Area (though at different times). They did however, miss out on Seattle...

We planned on going to the Cuban pavillion, out in the "North" (aka bad) part of the city. Ok, well, not super North, but we crossed the river, which is always a big deal for us South-enders :p. Jill was driving and it was my first experience with "Truck". I have to say that the "backseat" was not very ergonomic at all, but aside from that, Truck was very nice.

When asked over the phone if Jill knew how to get to the place, she was like "ya..." She didn't know how to get there. We got mildly lost, and being Winnipeg and not many cars on the road, at least in that area, we couldn't even use the "follow that car" approach. Had I known that she didn't really know where she was going, I could have made one of my famous hand drawn maps (3 lines on a piece of paper). It's hard to trust the people from the bad part of the good part of town.

The line at the Cuban pavillion was hella long. We waited and 11:15 pm rolled along, which is when the last show started and we were told that the place had reached capacity and basically that we had little chance of getting in. So, we moved down the street to the pavillion next door.

"Indo Tropical Paradise Pavillion". We were rather confused at what culture this pavillion represented. Our first instict was telling us Indonesia-ish. But, then there was a banner on the wall for "Indian Place" or something like that and one of the singers was introduced as one of Winnipeg's most famous Indian singers.

We eventually figure out that it was the "West Indies" (aka the Caribbean), which makes sense why one of the drinks was from Jamaica. The show was alright, but the rest of the pavillion kinda sucked. They took down the cultural display by the time the show ended, the food was pretty much gone by the time we got there, and the drink selection was pretty bad. There was a dance like thing after the show, but the music was insanely loud. Like my pants were vibrating from the bass (Mike, it's pronouced like "base", as in "all your base are belong to us", not like the fish).

We took off and hit a Mexican pub/restaurant in Osborne. I knew that I had been there before, but wasn't sure when or with whom. Seems like Rob (Carroll) was there.

The exciting bit was when Kevin got drenched by the waitress who was trying to take our orders while holding a bunch of dirty dishes and cups of water. Kevin, being quite mild mannered, took it well and kept his cool. She paid for his bill, which wasn't much b/c he didn't order much and no drinks. He should've ordered everything for us and bought us drinks :p. The waitress apologized like a billion times.

We spent most of the time at that place talking about what you would do if you won the $42 million Lotto 649 that was the current jackpot (and that's $42 million tax free b/c it's Canada ;)). Florence would quit her job immediately, Jill and Kevin would follow suit quite quickly. I think that I'd finish my phd and sit on the money, letting it earn some interest for me. Everyone seemed to agree that they'd want to use that money to travel. But you know, travelling by yourself can get lonely. I eventually decided that most of my big purchases would have to have some social aspect to it. Mutual vacations are a lot of fun, like take a bunch of people on a cruise somewhere tropical. Vacation houses/condos (like on a nice ski slope in the Alps or a beach in Hawaii or a lake in Australia or just buy an island) would be nice b/c you could invite friends over (like how Jill and Flo visited!). I would then need a private jet to fly people to my place. I also decided that I would only invite my current friends b/c any new friends I'd make would only be my friend b/c of the money. The problem of finding a wife came up, as she'd only be in it for the money. I decided that I'd have to leave town like right away, and keep a low profile (like doing a phd in Toronto). Marry for love, and then be like, oh, and I have like $42 million...

Jill has posted her version of tonight's events. Check it out to see how much BS I just fed you ;)