New house - part 3: better...

Best price so far was 230000$ for a new house (semi-detached in Brossard) which is, a real joke... Last saturday I went farther from my job (and from Montreal...) at St-Jean-sur-le-Richelieu. Now thats much better ;-) First 2 I saw were around 180k for a single house. That's about the price I wanted to pay for a house. The same evening I had dinner with friends who lives there and another girl. We ate "fondue and raclette", it was so good ! We watch the game for like 5 minutes and then start playing cards while having the game in background. At 10pm , everybody left and me and a friend decided to go play pool. It was a "2 hours" of non-stop pool! He won 12-9 I think.

Now back to "My house" project ! Sunday I went to see the 3rd company at the same place. Much better and 15000$ cheaper. The vendor bring me to the new developpment which was like 5 minutes away from the "sales office". I went to see 2 houses. 1 with 2 floor and a basement and another one with only 1 level and a basement. First one had 1 more room, a lot more spaces in the kitchen and living room and is only 4000$ more expensive. Other thing is the basement which is like a big square 26'x26' without any post.. perfect for a pool table and other things I want in there ;-)

Here's a picture of the "default" house:










This is the different front frontage (ok I admit, I took the dictionnary for this one, it's facade in french by the way!) It's an extra 2200$ for one of these. And after that I can choose any color I want of course.













Detailled plan of each level coming soon.

So it's by far the best price I have so far and the house is great in the inside. Like I wanted it ! I still have 2 or 3 places to visit in different city but I think it will be hard to beat... we will see !


During the evening I went to snaky's place to watch the grey cup final. Montreal lost the game in overtime but it was a hell of a game, especially from the second half. Even the girls were on the edge of their seats !!

The power of milk !

Yesterday at work, we made Pratt & Whitney shutdown some of their operations because they were sending us there gaz and strange substance in our building...

Fact is this plant is building huge turbine engines use for all kind of plane, including the new boeing which is suppose to be really big. (They made some test with this new plane and the turbulence created while landing is preventing other plane from landing on the same path for a couple of minutes !) So when these engines are built, they have to do some testing and for doing so, they need fuel and kerosene. In this particular day it was cloudy and there was a lot of humidity so all these odours came right in our building all day long instead of going in the atmosphere.

When we came back from lunch a 1h15pm, it smells strange so by the time we figure out what it was, 2 guys from Pratt&Whitney came in and ask people which were feeling not so well to leave right away. So 30 minutes after that, they stop doing their tests and close 1 of the 2 chimneys. Either we have problem with our ventilation or they have an exceptionnal ventilation in there own building! I'll go with option 1.

Good thing is we all got a rebate a 500$ for our next purchase of a turbine engine ! Nahhhhh just kidding here ;-)

Friday 4h30 pm...

Never answer the phone when you're about to finish your week at work...

It was 4h25, my computer was turned off, I was talking with some people in my office cubicule and suddenly my phone rang... Dring dring dring. I asked the 3 persons with me: "Should I get that call ?". Everyone said "no" of course so I decided to take it; stupid me ! No it wasn't someone inviting me for dinner, it was the helpdesk of the company calling me for a problem in Victoria. So I had to stay like 20 minutes to realize it was a "user problem - code 18". By the time I called back at the Helpdesk to tell them it was ok, surprise, another problem, in Don Mills this time. Arghhhhhhhh another 40 minutes to fix it... Why do problems always happen on friday afternoon. Why it never happens on wednesday morning ? I guess it's just like that !

Besides that, I got my winter tires on wednesday, 1 day after the first snow !! This is one more reason I don't like winter. I have 16" low-profile tire for the summer and small 14" for winter. It's quite a difference but we have no choice in Quebec with all the snow

Hockey game tomorrow Habs vs Washington. It's at my place this time. We will be only 5 but it's ok like that since my kitchen table is not that big !! We should be playing NHL06 from EA Sports during the intermission. I know someone who can't wait to have his revenge after losing his last 6 or 7 games against me ;-)

New house - part 2: OMG !

Oh My God. I went to the "sales office" at Brossard this afternoon. It's a new development with TownHouse and semi-detached ("maison de ville") and the price is starting at 230 000$ !! Some people advise me that the price of the houses were high... I wasn't expecting so high for a small houses in Brossard !
Well I'm kind of discouraged right now. I looked at some houses which are not new and I found 3 at around 170000 which is a lot better for my budget...

New house - part 1: yeah !

I'm thinking about buying a house since 2 years and now i'm really decided... I'm paying 715$ for my apartment and a house could cost the same thing maybe a little bit more... So friday night I checked on the Internet and I'm so glad I found this website (MaisonMax). This site has a list of all the new residential project by region with links to the constructor website. So I printed a bunch of paper with the adress and everything I needed.. Saturday and sunday I went to see those places. I saw 5 developpments of new houses and this is only for Candiac, LaPrairie and Brossard. The one I prefer so far is in LaPrairie. The neighbourhood is very nice with a lot of trees which is not the case of the other places I saw. Also it's not that far from where I currently stay. Monday I'm going to the different "Sales Office" (Bureau des ventes) at all these places to have an idea of the price and the availability. I hope the price won't be too high !! What I'll be looking at the most is the size of the living room and the basement.

The main reason I want a large basement is to be able to use this thing I see every day while going upstairs or downstairs:








Which, once assembled, looks like this:











Yeah I know it's sad seeing a pool table in about 30 pieces everyday but i hope it'll get better days in a near future !


Besides this project, I completed "Brothers in Arm" on Xbox and I'm starting the sequel right away ! This game is great and is not the typical FPS we all know; it's a FPS but you also have to lead 1 or 2 squad (or tanks) to complete the different missions. The first one took me about 15 hours to complete which is not very long. I hope the 2nd will last longer.

Pictures to come

It's soooooooooooo nice to be back home now... Plane was 45 minutes late at Vancouver and then we had to fly around Montreal for 15 minutes before we landed !!

Hey...... here's the pix !!


Totem at Duncan... I'm on the left by the way !










A lot of logs on the river









The thing to get the log out of the river, it was huge!









View from my room at Nanaimo









View from my room at Nanaimo









View from my room at Nanaimo










Someone from our group went to see the trees, he was using my camera for this picture but the batteries went dead after thie one and only shot !





All those pictures are pretty boring it was gray and rainy all week long...



Here's some pix from my previous trip to Calgary 2 months ago for the job again. Difference is we had time to go to Lake Louise on a morning. Too bad we stayed there about 20 minutes only:


Canadian Rockies, on my way to Lake Louise









Lake Louise, amazing view from there









Same here...











... and here !

Almost over !

1 more day in here, I was suppose to leave on thursday, but I will leave friday. They want someone to stay in BC while everybody else is on the plane, so I propose myself to stay one more night! In fact 2 more people are staying another week so I won't be all alone!

Last days were as crazy as the days before. Monday I had to be at the office at 4am for the drivers's first day with there new handheld ! I wnet there open the door with the key but there was an alarm system in there and it went on. A girl from WestGuard came in and disable the alarm for me... Days goes well except for this old guys who has only 2 months to work before he retire... He was so funny... Other than that, I got about 100 questions all day long ! Wednesday I was suppose to go see the sequoias, too bad for me we had a problem with the handheld so I was not able to go there...

Last night I checked-in at the hotel for the 4th time in 10 days got a new room again, had to unpack my stuff and go for a beer with the rest of the group... It was good to speak french again after 3 days speaking only english !

Today is friday and I've got nothing to do except waiting for call from the user. I'm going to have a guided tour of the plant also later today..

Oh yeah... pictures to come !!