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Appendix 6: Wrapping up
Mar. 18th, 2007 05:44 pmWhat ho, France followers! I've been in Nantes for the past three days, and lacking internet access, I actually had more to experience the wonder and mystery of France. So, to sum up:
- Galettes = crepes with fillings like bacon, mushrooms and cream, or ham, mushrooms and cream.
- The aforementioned galettes were my delicious dinner two nights in a row
- Then I followed that up with crepes filled with honey and lemon
- The French meal plan: Breakfast (brioche, pain sucree, toast, whatever, all covered with nutella) around 8-9 am. Lunch, anything you want that is not a sandwhich, anytime from 1-3 pm (everything closes for lunch, too!). Dinner, anywhere from 8-11 pm (a dinner party last night: 3 courses, spanning 3 hours, and dessert was served at 11:30!)
- Wine for $1. Better wine than you find for $10 in Canada.
Appendix 3: Of Saxophones
Mar. 12th, 2007 10:18 pmToday I:
- Listened to a saxophone busker play sweet sweet jazz on the bridge by Notre Dame
- Climbed up Notre Dame
- Climbed down Notre Dame
- Watched the Eiffel Tower attempt to induce seizures on passers-by (it does some insane flickering light show every hour after dark)
- Ate Chinese food (cheapest thing in the Latin Quarter besides Greek food)
- Heard "House of the Rising Sun" sung very badly by another busker
- Was accosted by multiple street entertainers/entrepreneurs in one of the seedier Parisian areas
- Took pictures of gargoyles
- Loitered in a park, while listening to cool jazz and eating a croissant
- Enjoyed the sunlight and +15 C temperatures
Appendix 3: Of cheap food
Mar. 11th, 2007 12:53 amToday was an extraordinarily beautiful day, so we made the best possible use of it that we could: we picnicked. In fact we ate our lunch of baguette, camenbert and spanish sausage in front of The Thinker, the centrepiece of the Rodin Museum's garden. It was delicious, and cheap, too! We bought a sizeable chunk of camenbert for €0.85, or just about $1.20, which would be around $4.50 at any North American deli. After our delightful time at the museum, we decided to head to St Chapelle for last light, and we saw some marvellous displays of stained glass projected onto the wall there. Apart from these activities, nothing else has changed: we're happily tired at the end of each day, Paris is full of wonder and surprises, and the food is delicious. And the people here are all beautiful! I think it must be illegal not to be beautiful in Paris!
The metro here is pretty nice, too. Canada should look into copying it.
The metro here is pretty nice, too. Canada should look into copying it.
Appendix 2: Fine Art
Mar. 10th, 2007 09:17 amYesterday we walked through some of the ritziest parts of Paris while trying to find a currency exchange building. We also passed through a shopping mall that was built underneath a 400 year old stained glass dome. Today, we're going to the Rodin Museum, and we're picking up some (lots) of bread and cheese so we can picnic in the garden.
PS. in Paris, everyone is fashionable. Even the babies. Especially the babies.
PPS. French keyboards are insaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane!
Appendix 1: The Beginning
Mar. 7th, 2007 02:37 pmAttention internet: I am leaving for France in five minutes. More updates to follow over the next twelve days.
EDIT: I am now relaxing in the wonderful Air Canada lounge, as my flight's had a teensy delay. PS, life sucks because they just ran out of sundried tomato & basil-flavoured chips >:(
Afraid of robots
Mar. 23rd, 2006 06:02 amAaaaaaah. I'm in the Air Canada lounge. The big TV panel on the wall shows when flights are leaving and tells you when you should put down your free glass(es) of wine. Right now I have no idea what time it is, but the display is telling me that I should be going to Gate 29 for my flight, and it's been saying that for about 10 minutes. Mum isn't back yet. Aaaaaaah.
Edit: And now it says we're boarding. Aaaaaaaah.
Edit: And now it says we're boarding. Aaaaaaaah.
Woop woop!
Mar. 23rd, 2006 05:53 amI'm in the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge. There's free internet access, complementary drinks and snacks (like, really good bags of chips and cheese and fruit and mmmm) comfortable chairs, every newspaper ever published in the world, TV, and two Playstation consoles! This is kind of surreal. Oh yeah, there's beds, too. I need to do this more often.
By the way, XColX and emalkay are super fellows!
By the way, XColX and emalkay are super fellows!
Vikings are the most metal creatures you'll ever meet.
Well, I'm leaving for England tomorrow evening. I'll probably be out of touch until I get back on the 24th, but you never know. For those interested in keeping MZX Radio alive, here's the bot you'll need. It's not hard to figure out, look at bot_start.sh. Source is included if you feel masochistic. I'll be busy taking pictures of dreaming Oxford spires and meeting up with emalkay and XColX to care!
Enjoy yourselves!
Well, I'm leaving for England tomorrow evening. I'll probably be out of touch until I get back on the 24th, but you never know. For those interested in keeping MZX Radio alive, here's the bot you'll need. It's not hard to figure out, look at bot_start.sh. Source is included if you feel masochistic. I'll be busy taking pictures of dreaming Oxford spires and meeting up with emalkay and XColX to care!
Enjoy yourselves!
It's 11:42 PM and I am about to go to bed. That's the first time I've been to bed before midnight in weeks. Months, even! I even did my chemistry homework for once!
In unrelated news, my mum and I are planning to travel to England during March break and an extra week before and after. If all goes well, I shall hopefully be meeting up with emalkay, XColX and ShloobeR. I will also be retracing my steps of 1998/1999 around Oxford, Kennilworth, Hay-on-Wye and Cambridge. This should be a lot of fun!
In unrelated news, my mum and I are planning to travel to England during March break and an extra week before and after. If all goes well, I shall hopefully be meeting up with emalkay, XColX and ShloobeR. I will also be retracing my steps of 1998/1999 around Oxford, Kennilworth, Hay-on-Wye and Cambridge. This should be a lot of fun!
You're not a pirate, Steve
Sep. 4th, 2005 07:58 pmYou know what I hate the most about seeing people for the first time in a year? Neither of us know what to say. The question I'm most frequently asked is, "So, how was your trip?" "Good," I reply. How am I supposed to sum up an entire year in another country in one or two words? Then there's this awkward silence, and the other person says, "Well it's good to have you back," and I make some throwaway comment about how I enjoy seeing familiar faces. Rinse and repeat. I hate it.
I had lunch with Miriam at the City Cafe Bakery yesterday, and the pizza was as good as I expected. I've never had a chance to have one of their crazy pizza lunches before, so I ordered the chicken, pesto and roasted pepper which was mad tasty. Miriam spent September to November of last year travelling around Europe with her family (Europe, Italy, France, the usual), and went to France again during the summer. She's the first person my age that I've come across who can relate to my year away in Australia. Whenever either of us mentions "When I was diving in Fiji" or "Ripe Egyptian mangoes are soooo juicy," we aren't name-dropping. It's just us relating a story, but it sounds like we're lording it over everyone else. It was a fun conversation, because we were actually interested in each others' stories.
I had lunch with Miriam at the City Cafe Bakery yesterday, and the pizza was as good as I expected. I've never had a chance to have one of their crazy pizza lunches before, so I ordered the chicken, pesto and roasted pepper which was mad tasty. Miriam spent September to November of last year travelling around Europe with her family (Europe, Italy, France, the usual), and went to France again during the summer. She's the first person my age that I've come across who can relate to my year away in Australia. Whenever either of us mentions "When I was diving in Fiji" or "Ripe Egyptian mangoes are soooo juicy," we aren't name-dropping. It's just us relating a story, but it sounds like we're lording it over everyone else. It was a fun conversation, because we were actually interested in each others' stories.
Here, in Seattle
Aug. 23rd, 2005 06:24 pmBoom. We flew in a couple days ago (13 hours split between Fiji->Honalulu and Honalulu->Vancouver, then 3 hours driving to Seattle), we're spending 3 days staying with my grandma before finally heading home (another 4 hour plane trip to Toronto, I believe?) First meal in Canada? Tim Horton's chili combo with a Boston Cream donut. It was weird to hear all the flat accents in the airport, and see every sign in two languages. I haven't seen products like "Windshield De-Icer" for a long time, too!
In other news, I sent off postcards for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rossman231, eljhika, exophase and uh... someone else :< gamurgurl? I forget. Anyways, they all went out last Sunday and I know that at least exophase received his, and liked it. Two for two so far!
I'll have a follow-up post to this sometime later today/this week (when I have an internet connection back in Kitchener, we're waiting for an eBay auction to finish so we can buy a modem and then sign up for the high-speed service which will take time to be installed and blah blah blah). The subject of the post will be impressions of Canada/USA after a year being a stranger in a strange land. Or something. I know you can hardly wait.
The best part is that I spent the majority of my time in Fiji either:
All in all it was a great success, especially as I sat in the open-air bar, 10 metres from the beach, with the laptop on the table, playing around in CodeBlocks. I love my life.
In other news, I sent off postcards for
rossman231, eljhika, exophase and uh... someone else :< gamurgurl? I forget. Anyways, they all went out last Sunday and I know that at least exophase received his, and liked it. Two for two so far!I'll have a follow-up post to this sometime later today/this week (when I have an internet connection back in Kitchener, we're waiting for an eBay auction to finish so we can buy a modem and then sign up for the high-speed service which will take time to be installed and blah blah blah). The subject of the post will be impressions of Canada/USA after a year being a stranger in a strange land. Or something. I know you can hardly wait.
The best part is that I spent the majority of my time in Fiji either:
- Reading (Mexico Set and London Match by Len Deighton (A++++ would read again))
- Snorkelling/Diving (A+++++ would dive again)
- Coding (I was extremely productive on a variety of different projects!)
All in all it was a great success, especially as I sat in the open-air bar, 10 metres from the beach, with the laptop on the table, playing around in CodeBlocks. I love my life.
Sign up now!
Jul. 26th, 2005 09:18 pmOk, I have postcards to spare. I've written to everyone that I think deserves one, they'll be in the mail soon. Now I have at least one on hand, and I'm willing to pick up more. Want an Australian postcard? Reply here, send an email with your address to mrlachatte*A*T*gmail.com, I will do my best (within financial limits, each postcard is > $1.50, each stamp is $1.10) to send a postcard to you. Holland, Canada, Sweden, I'm open.
Also I'm really proud of my mzxdj bot which idles in #mzxradio nearly 24/7, despite the fact that nobody except me ever seems to use the actual radio :(
I spent most of today working on some javascript to imitate the mIRC colour selection thing when you press CTR+K. Almost all of that time was spent trying to hack it around Internet Explorer's retarded DOM implementation (or lack thereof) and the rediculous nature of its Events. I'm afraid I'm sympathizing with Nanobot right now, I'm feeling righteous indignation because this guy (who's paying me $5 for it, luckily!) really wanted it to work in Internet Explorer :<
EDIT: I fixed the script up so CTR+K now works in IE and Firefox. If anyone else tells me that the script is broken I will scream. It. is. not. broken. AWEOPFJAEWOFJ
Also I'm really proud of my mzxdj bot which idles in #mzxradio nearly 24/7, despite the fact that nobody except me ever seems to use the actual radio :(
I spent most of today working on some javascript to imitate the mIRC colour selection thing when you press CTR+K. Almost all of that time was spent trying to hack it around Internet Explorer's retarded DOM implementation (or lack thereof) and the rediculous nature of its Events. I'm afraid I'm sympathizing with Nanobot right now, I'm feeling righteous indignation because this guy (who's paying me $5 for it, luckily!) really wanted it to work in Internet Explorer :<
EDIT: I fixed the script up so CTR+K now works in IE and Firefox. If anyone else tells me that the script is broken I will scream. It. is. not. broken. AWEOPFJAEWOFJ
(no subject)
Jul. 16th, 2005 11:56 pm12 hours ago we were staggering into the house after a 2 hour drive, after a 5 hour ride on the worst airline ever. You pay for anything to eat, you pay for blankets, you don't get pillows, the seats are leather, the walls are hard, the windows are small, the plane is cold, need I go on? Seriously, never, ever fly on Virgin Blue (that goes for nps and madtom, as VB is Australia-only) the tickets were $75 less than the Qantas flight and everybody in my family wished we'd forked out the extra. It was a 1:30 am flight, and I got the least amount of sleep out of any of us because all I could do was lean forward onto the tray in front of me, until the person in front leaned backwards. Idiot. It was the worst flight that I can remember.
I did achieve my dream, though. I got 3rd place on Raiden Fighters at the airport, the initials JDM are engraved into the highscore list in Darwin airport. I discovered that a machine was on free play for some reason, so I died as much as I wanted and still won!
I also just saw an ad for the Russian ballet something or other, they're putting on a performance of Romeo & Juliet with "incredibly sensual nude scenes."
I'm still buzzing for some reason, trying to catch up on everything that I've missed in 2 weeks before I go to sleep.
I'm meeting up withmadtom on August 13, anyone else want to come along?
Buzz buzz buzz, I wonder why he does.
nps and madtom, as VB is Australia-only) the tickets were $75 less than the Qantas flight and everybody in my family wished we'd forked out the extra. It was a 1:30 am flight, and I got the least amount of sleep out of any of us because all I could do was lean forward onto the tray in front of me, until the person in front leaned backwards. Idiot. It was the worst flight that I can remember.I did achieve my dream, though. I got 3rd place on Raiden Fighters at the airport, the initials JDM are engraved into the highscore list in Darwin airport. I discovered that a machine was on free play for some reason, so I died as much as I wanted and still won!
I also just saw an ad for the Russian ballet something or other, they're putting on a performance of Romeo & Juliet with "incredibly sensual nude scenes."
I'm still buzzing for some reason, trying to catch up on everything that I've missed in 2 weeks before I go to sleep.
I'm meeting up with
madtom on August 13, anyone else want to come along?Buzz buzz buzz, I wonder why he does.
(no subject)
Jul. 9th, 2005 12:48 pmHey look I'm at an internet terminal in Jabaru for 20 minutes and I check my livejournal! I'm such a meme-thief.
Leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me. It can only be one word. No more. Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.
ps. Uluru is a pretty big rock.
Leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me. It can only be one word. No more. Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.
ps. Uluru is a pretty big rock.
