today i was rather surprised when i got a facebook message around 14 o’clock, from a friend i haven’t seen for years, and who moved back to calgary a month before i came here, asking whether i’d like to join her for a hockey game of calgary’s flames, which apparently are known all around the world. they played against the buffalo sabres, which resulted in a very exciting game. first, the flames ruled the playground with 2:0. then, the sabres caught up, resulting in 2:2 which lasted until the end of the second period. then, in the third and last period, the flames scored another 3 goals, making them the winners. well. it’s fascinating how much commercials you can put in such the game.
a thing which was a bit strange was the motto, “salute to the military / we are commitment”. before the game started, the national anthem was played, with a group of soldiers standing on the playground together with the players. apparently, the canadian military also set up a merchandize / information place somewhere in the arena, and during some of the intermedite fun games with visitors, soldiers took part. all this surprised me pretty much, i’ve never seen something similar before.
oh, and harvey was there, too.*

today, i went on a second walk, this time north from my place. here are some impressions.

a beautiful view downwards onto a half-frozen river:

i don’t know how to describe this in words, but it’s simply beautiful. even though i don’t think this picture captures the full beauty the “ice flowers”, here it is:

i think today i experienced the coldest temperatures i had outside in my whole life: -23 degrees celsius. well, and i found a reason why wearing glasses suck: if you try to protect your mouth and nose by putting a scarf in front of it, your breath will cloud your glasses and finally, the water on the glasses will freeze so your view is perfectly blocked. didn’t feel as funny as it sounds, but i survived :)

today, i saw dracula (imdb). the one from 1931. well, you might now think, “so what?” well, i did not just saw the movie on a big screen, but the more important reason – the one which made me pay CAD 52 for this show – was the score. the original movie did only had music played during the intro and the outro. until 1998, when minimalist philipp glass was given the task to write a score. he composed a string / piano piece, performed by him and the kronos quartet, under the direction of michael reisman. well, a philipp glass score together with the movie is still no reason to spend that much money – but a live performance of the score by philipp glass and the kronos quartett themselves, together with the movie, definitely is. the whole thing happend in the context of the high performance rodeo 2009 in calgary; an advertisement can be found here.
this was actually the first time i saw the movie. and probably the first time i saw béla lugosi in a movie not made by ed wood. well, it was quite funny, even though some of the dialogs were hard to follow because of the score.
anyway. this event was definitely worth its money.

since january 4th, i’m living in calgary now. here a few impressions from inside the place where i’m living this time:

and here a few impressions from a walk i took today. also compare them to these photos i took last may, as i ended in the same park i began with in last may. note that the current temperature got up to +14 degrees celsius right now (3 p.m.), this morning it was a bit less but still positive.

some ducks swimming in parts of the river which are not covered by ice:

finally, the place where i’m staying. very easy to recognize due to euler’s identity scratched into the concrete: