Good Day, Average Night

Today started and I didn’t even notice it, too absorbed doing the presentation of a big paper done in team. I went to sleep at 3:30, which isn’t so good, but I didn’t have any class this morning so I could sleep in a bit. I was meeting a teammate at 12:30 and we went to get it binded and handed it in. Then I had a class at 2:00, but since it was the last class of the semester, it was mostly to answer our questions. It ended at 3:00, so my uni friends and I stayed a bit to chat. It was cool. End-of-term sillyness and fun (and one of my friends started to make Triforces out of torn agenda corners and a Zelda fangirl moment ensued). Then I went to watch hockey at my mum’s and the Canadiens won 5-1.

I’d decided to come back to sleep at my appartment even if it was kind of late (was tired because of the short night), for many reasons that would be too boring to enumerate here. So I took the 10:08 bus. It arrived a few minutes late at the stop – I was afraid I had missed it. There was a lot of traffic on the bridge (I think only one lane was open or something), so I arrived at the station 10 minutes later than planned. Then I walk to the metro – it’s down. Half the orange line isn’t working. How am I supposed to get home at this hour?? A security agent (I think?) gave me some basic directions to walk to the green line. I started to follow them, but very quickly outside I knew I would get lost, and I didn’t want to be lost, alone, downtown Montreal, at 11:30. I went back to the bus station and called home, but my cellphone battery didn’t have enough life. I used the old way – public phone. I thought nobody would be asleep yet – turns out they were, but my brother picked up anyways. He Googled the directions for me. Now, my brother is very, very bad at giving any kind of explanation. I was getting angry at him when we were younger and he was trying to explain a math problem to me. Imagine how good it can be over the phone, when I can’t walk along with his directions (being stuck at the public phone booth), and he’s half-asleep. I think I made him repeat five times. Then I went outside again, and saw that I kind of recognised the place. I didn’t follow my brother’s directions because I wasn’t sure I could walk on a street he’d told me to take, and I was sure I’d already taken another path that was way more welcoming. I ended up finding the other street I was supposed to take after the other one, so I continued from there. I walked. Some places were familiar (Peel Pub!!), but I never pay attention to the directions when I’m with people who know where they’re going, so I had no idea if I was close to the station or not. Then I came across the Cinéma Banque Scotia, where there’s always the midnight showing of the HP movies. I knew how to get to the station from the underground there! I tried some doors by the cinema to the underground and they were locked. Then I went in the cinema, since I knew it would still be open at this hour, to ask for directions. After that, I finally managed to find the station (thanks, cinema guy!). After the ride, there was still the 10-minutes walk to the appartment that I wasn’t particularly looking forward to. I think the neighbourhood is relatively safe, but I’m still very new to this living-in-the-city thing. I was not feeling safe. I tried to make as little noise as possible to be unnoticed. Fall being fall, there were obvisouly a lot of very noise-making leaves on the sidewalk. I was afraid the weird guy from the other day would be there and talk to me again. I think I saw someone sitting in the stairs close to the KFC, but I didn’t want to stare, that may just be my imagination. I also imagined that an electricity post was a person…

I finally arrived here safely. Germain was awake, lights were still on. It was midnight. Not that late, after all. Everything is so much worse when you’re on your own.

~ par Jacinthe le 22 octobre 2009.