Today I am sick

That is all.

Collision course

Our apartment here in Philly has a single, albeit large, window in the living room. Early this morning, I was awoken by a loud THUMP from the direction of the living room. "Eh," I thought sleepily, "someone must've thrown a snowball at our window." And I promptly fell back asleep. Later, after getting up, I realised that (a) there is no snow on the ground, and (b) our apartment is on the 4th floor and thus not readily accessible to snowball throwing. Curious as to the source of the thump, I started to look closely at the window. In one of the panes, I found a bit of a greasy spot about the size of my palm, in the middle of which was stuck ... a couple of small feathers. I think an unfortunate bird flew right into our window, and pretty hard judging from the sound it made. I hope it was okay.

Not okay.

A lot of people got shot in Philly last year:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/16722878.htm

"Like the city's homicides, the shootings were most numerous in North Philadelphia, West and Southwest Philadelphia, and parts of South Philadelphia." Which leaves what part of Philly...?

Philly.com has a helpful interactive map of shootings in 2006. While I'm at it, here is the interactive map of homicides in 2006.

Ninja squirrel

Rittenhouse Square: A squirrel, chased by a little girl into a garbage can, takes a heroic flying leap from the rim to the trunk of a tree over five feet away with nary a loss of altitude. Landing on all four paws, it quickly scrambled to the other side of the tree trunk, where its little head could be seen spying on the enemy. The little black ninja outfit and the miniature shuriken were perhaps a figment of my imagination.

Road work

There is apparently a piece of road work so urgent that it must be done at 10pm on a Saturday night on the corner of the street where I live.

La Fille Sur Le Pont

Love this scene!

On homicides in Montreal and Philadelphia

So far in 2007, Montreal has had 7 homicides, of which 6 are street gang related. This has fueled a slew of articles about street gangs in Montreal in the Canadian press, and speculation of a gang war quickly quashed by police (links from the montreal city weblog). Just to say, 6 gang related homicides in 6 weeks in Montreal is considered newsworthy, and is considered to be a serious problem.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia has had 47 homicides (this comes out to roughly one homicide per day this year). I've gotten used to seeing the phrase "no arrests have been made, and police are still trying to determine a motive" in these articles. There is a general acknowledgment that Philadelphia has a high homicide rate and that this is a problem, but nothing much seems to be happening to deal with it, other than people talking about it and saying how it's a problem.

For comparison purposes, the population of the city of Montreal is around 1.5 million. The population of the city of Philadelphia is also around 1.5 million. (Note that the Philadelphia metropolitan area is more populous than that of Montreal.) Sure, Philly is a big city, and big cities often have lotsa crime, but this is inexcusable. I find the violent crime rates here in Philly put a serious damper on the quality of life. One big reason why I still pine for Montreal. I'm still looking for violent crime stats (ie. not just homocides) for both cities, and hopefully will post something on that later.

Wine in Philly

Buying wine in Philadelphia is a dicey proposition. In Geneva, or in Montreal, there are fairly knowledgeable people employed by the wine shops (or even grocery stores), who will recommend you a good bottle of wine if you ask for advice. Here, not so much. We were very lucky in that there was a very good guy at the wine store down the street who knew a lot about the wines and recommended some excellent ones at good prices. Then about a month ago, he quit his job. At the time, I did not realise the extent of the tragedy.

Today, I went out to buy some wine. I plan to make a Boeuf Bourguignon tomorrow, so I was looking to buy some bottles of red Bourgogne. I asked the cashier if they had someone who could make wine recommendations. He pointed to an employee walking down one of the aisles. I asked her if she could recommend a couple of bottles of red Bourgogne. She took me down the aisle of domestic wines and pointed out to me the huge 3 litre jugs that are labelled "Burgundy"! Okaaay, I said, maybe we could take a look at the French ones ...? She took me to the section of French red wines, where she picked up a bottle of Côte-du-Rhône and started reading the label to see if it came from Bourgogne! At which point, I realised that this was an entirely useless exercise, thanked her for her help, and told her I would just browse the wines myself.
Not such an easy proposition, you know. The french wines were not grouped by region, so I had to look at each bottle individually. And I discovered that they had very few red Bourgognes in that store - lots of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Bordeaux though. But hey, does it really matter? It's not like anyone cares - except the occasional wine customer. Sorry, I'm becoming a Pennsylvania wine cynic.