The Long of It: Montreal

This is my beautiful friend Ranoon, with whom I spent close to a week in Montreal. In this first elegant shot Ranoon is gracing us with the Thou Shalt Not Take My Photo pose:



Moments before she got up and ran away from me, I managed to catch a glimpse of her gorgeous face, which I share with you here:



…her dimple will melt the heart of a lucky man some day.

Until then, she’s busying herself with Bio Genetics (I think I have that right, she will correct me, if need be). You can’t see it, but Ranoon has a massive brain that fills up half of Montreal. She writes and publishes things titled: ”Volumetric Characterizations of Protein Denaturation and Ligand Binding”.

To me, that sounds like something about steaks, leggings and added volume to your hair. But I know that’s not the case and that’s because I'm the girl who once thought that peanuts came from…I don’t know, actually. I had to think about it when asked “Where do you think peanuts come from?” in response to my surprise that they grew ‘beneath’, like potatoes. I guess my mind simply assumed that peanuts grew in cans made by Mr. Planter. So it’s really not a far stretch that Ranoon’s work holds no coherence where I’m concerned…but I am super proud of her when she wins Awards, as she recently did for her ground-breaking work on…something to do with molecules and how they break it down when no one’s looking.

As you can see, Ranoon is a tad shy of cameras. Whereas your blogMistress is anything but, as the following pictures shall illustrate. We spent the better part of our days waking up relatively late and enjoying coffees at home and then at Shaika Café on Sherbrooke. The ambiance of the place is simply: local. It’s obvious that everyone knows the staff, that all locals congregate there for weekend breakfasts and coffees and daily conversation. After my second day there, I expected the staff to call out “Maha!” as I walked in to order my café latte “in a bowl, please”. No one did, so I did it back to myself. Ranoon turned around and left the Café until I stopped giggling.

This is how happy it made me to sit across from Ranoon and drink the yummy lattes:



Our evenings were generally infused with dining out in Le Plateau and Old Montreal and then an early night’s walk around the city or a drive around Westmount and Mount Royal where we ogled homes we can not yet afford.

Amidst our adventures, Ranoon and I learned that I have a nose for rain. It’s weird and it’s new and I don’t know to what I owe the pleasure, but I am your regular Rain-Bee (if there be such a thing) and I can tell you whether and when it will rain. I would come in handy if I could be packaged and sold.

Here’s where I realise I am actually cross-eyed. It’s hot:



(But that’s another story for another entry.)

Every night we watched a movie and I nearly killed myself after watching “The Good Shepherd” which I hear was originally titled “Matt Damon Is A Piece of Wood, Angelina Jolie Used To Kick Small Furry Animals After Shooting A Scene Because She Had To Pretend To Play Passive And Demure, No One Believes That Kid Wasn’t Queer And What’s The Plot, Anyway, Because I Can’t Hear Them?”

I then usually read and fell asleep at the crack of dawn.

I dragged Ranoon into Holt’s in order to play. I played with the hats and we both played with the sunglasses. Here’s the proof (again, please note Ranoon refused to have her picture taken for reasons I am not allowed to mention or else I am not allowed entry back into her home!):




(See: I'm cross-eyed again.)


(I'm not posing here, I was trying to tuck my hair into the hat and I was blinking while trying not to laugh out loud at something Ranoon said.)





& the crazy thing is, I’m considering buying those sunglasses. They’re Tom Ford Margaux. I’m in love and I’ve dreamt of them. I may just do it, even though I was told I looked like a cross between Lisa Bonnet and Michael Jackson in the photos. While in Holt's, we ran into my old friend B. B and I went to high school together and I was the first in our school to know he liked boys. B and I were dear friends and he is Montreal's finest make-up artist. If you're ever in Holt Renfrew, make certain to visit him at the Bobbi Brown counter and tell him I sent you; just look for the beautiful Asian man. (You may call him "Kiki", his stage name.)

It was the perfect week. Relaxed, filled with introspection, laughs, excellent conversation, much love and the occasional “No, that’s not right” as a footnote to "If you were standing outside of yourself".

Good friends are a rare thing and I keep thanking my lucky stars for each and every one of mine. This is how happy I was at the end of that trip:





See the entire lame-o photo stream here. I’ve learned that I have to – from here on in – sneak up on Ranoon and take photos when she’s not looking. Otherwise I’m not allowed. And in case you’re interested, she comes with a portable air conditioning unit that has wheels.

Thanks ya Ranoon! (And p.s. I *was* in Montreal last summer for a couple of days, as the hotel staff mentioned; right before leaving for Beirut. How odd that I forgot.)