Tina & Farah’s Montreal Weekend Photo Essay

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Farah Ng @ Broken Penguins

I had the great pleasure of visiting my friend Tina in Montreal. Tina and I have been friends since university and she moved to Montreal last year to work a tres sexy job in the clean energy sector.

Day 1: I get into Montreal after a ridiculously long bus ride from Toronto. Tina takes me to the gorgeous Hotel Nelligan rooftop patio where we dreamt about living in one of these fancy condos in Old Montreal:

Old Montreal

Day 2: Tina uses her magic powers to get us seats at L’Avenue brunch where they bring us real maple syrup in a can. Why does Quebec eat real maple syrup while the rest of Canada eats Aunt Jemima? I’d take the real stuff any day.

Tina’s brunch at L’Avenue + maple syrup in a can

We spent the after going through super dusty thrift stores on St. Denis. Oh and they never taught us the French word for thrift stores in fourth grade. It’s “les fripperies”. Someone should teach a “Hipster French” class complete with mime workshops.

Unfortunately, les fripperies leads to les allergies so we took an obligatory caffeine break at Flocon Espresso. It smelled SO good here that I wished my room could smell like coffee every day. Maybe I can spray my boyfriend in coffee scented cologne.

Tina enjoys fine dining but when I mentioned that I just really, really, really want to go to St. Hubert’s, she had to oblige. St. Hubert’s makes Swiss Chalet look like garbage. All the classiest people drink cocktails at chain chicken restaurants, I swear:

Day 3: We go to the Biodome to watch penguins only to discover that they were more interested in watching us.

We also went up to Montreal Tower which is scarily built on a slant and seemingly held up with wires. Here’s Montreal Tower:

Montreal Biodome & Tower.

Here’s us going up the tower:

Scary ride up Montreal Tower

We also watched the craziest show in the newly built Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium. They spent $48 million dollars building this thing! Part one of the show is very artistic while part two is more educational. Unfortunately, lots of people slept through part two. One man was heard snoring while his son was curled up napping.

Here’s how part one starts:

Beginning of Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium Show

After that, you are hurled into asteroids while travelling faster than the speed of light. The best part is that you get watch lying down on giant beanbag chairs.

Day 4: Horrible Greyhound trip back to Toronto.

An overall beautiful weekend in Montreal. Conclusion: Farah should visit Tina more often and every Broken Penguin blog post should feature penguin videos.

Broken Penguin Returns

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Farah Ng @ Broken Penguins

As promised, I have returned from my trip around Asia and will be staging the greatest, grandest return of Broken Penguins. I am slowly getting back into the groove of blogging regularly along with getting over severe jet lag.

Here are a couple photos I took from my trip! I ended up going to Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan. I loved every second of it:

Panda Playground, Hong Kong

“Crossing Under the Elephant” at a Buddhist temple in Chi Am, Thailand

Taipei National Theatre, Taiwan

Dragon’s head for sale in prep for Chinese New Years, Hong Kong

More photos to come!

Beautiful Book Sighting: Gypset Travel

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Farah Ng @ Broken Penguins

Ever wonder how modern day bohemians live? Perhaps off rich parents. But I’d sure like to see what they’re seeing. Gypset Travel by Julia Chaplin is all about beautiful photographs of these so-called wandering jetsetters in some seriously awesome spaces around the world.

There are also first hand accounts from them which aren’t nearly as exciting as the visuals. But it would be nice to know who they are (musicians or groupies?).

Gypset Travel will either satisfy your wanderlust tendencies or severely aggravate them. At the very least, it will inspire you to put on a long, wavy skirt and buy a new rug.
GYPSET GYPSET3

GYPSET1 GYPSET2

Dr. Brinkley’s Tower finds charm in a tough town

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Farah Ng @ Broken Penguins

When things get snowy, my brain starts to wander to sunnier places where people aren’t miserably shovelling snow off their driveways. It’s hard to remember that some places get sun all year round. And that’s why I picked up Dr. Brinkley’s Tower by Robert Hough.

Dr. Brinkley’s Tower takes place in a fictional Mexican town named Corazon de la Fuente which is situated just along the border of the U.S. and Mexico. Much of the town’s misfortunes are blamed on the fact that it is on the “wrong” side of the border.

After being ravaged by mindless civil wars, Corazon is a pretty grim place. But everyone in the town has their respect, their dignity — right from the mayor to the town’s prostitutes (hilariously, they’re all named Maria). I loved this book simply because you knew the characters so well. You felt for them when things didn’t go their way. As the reader, you too become part of this town.

And along comes Dr. Brinkley, an American doctor who wants to build a radio tower in their little town. This doctor’s specialty is curing impotence by implanting goat glands. Suddenly, the town is full of opportunities. But like a famous rapper once said, “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”.

As first glance, Dr. Brinkley’s Tower sounds like a pretty sad story but it’s also hilariously funny. Hough has managed to describe the misery of poverty in a “c’est la vie” manner. In that the inhabitants of this poor Mexican town make do with what they have and that’s what their children will do, and their children’s children will do.

Dr. Brinkley’s story is based on a true one but he is a relatively minor character. If anything, he’s the catalyst for what happens to the town and all its inhabitants. In the e-book bonus content, Hough writes about his love for Mexico and it definitely shows throughout the story. I also loved all the Spanish words thrown in. I had a lot of fun trying to pronounce them out loud but also had to look some up (my Spanish vocab doesn’t stretch past Ola and banos)”.

Dr. Brinkley’s Tower is a bit of a cautionary tale but with lines like “…it was often said that when you are no longer moved by the last stages of dusk in the Mexican desert, it is time to shake the hand of your maker”, it’s mostly a celebration of beautiful people and places.