Obiter dictum

Moved to Wordpress

2007-05-18T07:26:00.000+01:00

Well it seems like I've moved to Wordpress. This is another blog hosting group quite similar to Blogger. I actually made a new blog there quite a while ago, and have been cross posting. But now I think I just like it better. The reasons for this are mostly that Wordpress has nicer templates and you can more easily make static pages to expand the blog to a bit more of a full site.

Blogger actually added a bunch of new features just as I was going to make the change permanent some time ago, but the extra features, though nice, were not quite enough to make me change my mind. Also, even though Wordpress doesn't allow scripting whereas blogger does I still like wordpress. The overall feature set of the two services are actually quite competitive, but I think Wordpress is edging out in front. Also, the wordpress.com domain I think looks a little bit more professional and less geeky than the blogspot.com one.

Anyway, my new blog address and RSS feed are as follows:

http://damienbyrne.wordpress.com -

Pleasant wanderings

2007-04-20T14:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was a nice day. Since it was pay day, a glorious day when you're on a lower income, we went into town and bought a fresh juice from Boost Juice (we're VIP members) then we went to an appointment for Annmarie and then off to Glenelg. Glenelg is a nice beach spot in Adelaide that I think I've mentioned before.

We then went and had lunch at my Mum's house. I made some home made a couple of pizzas using pre-made organic dough from a company called Riviera which we bought from a local supermarket. I must humbly say that the pizzas were rather fantastic, especially now that we've learned that ideally the dough should be left to rise before use, something they should probably put on the label (and which hopefully they haven't and I just didn't notice it, which would make this statement rather embarrassing for me).

We had a nice lunch out under mum's back pergola and chatted about her upcoming trip to Paris and Parisian markets. She has bought a rather good book on it called Paris in a Basket. This lists by arrondissement many of the better street and covered markets both food and flea. We had a look through it and found the markets we had visited while we were there.

After lunch we went for a walk down to the beach and on the way we stopped at our favourite organic shop in Adelaide, The Organik Store on Broadway. The people there are always really nice and friendly and they have good range of organic products. A lot of it is imported so it can be a bit pricy, but the products they stock are very good so usually if we can afford it, it's worth it. We picked up some of the essentials we had run out of and continued down the beach and back to Glenelg.

At Glenelg we stopped off at a cafe (Cibo of course, where else would one go) and had a coffee while the sun set over Mosley Square. You can see a photo of it over on the right. The photo is from the Cibo tables looking back over the square back towards the beach. Very nice day. Now back to study...

Start of the holidays

2007-04-13T19:25:00.000+01:00

Well it's the end of the week and the start of school holidays for the kids. I on the other hand, although technically in the middle of my mid semester break, am still in the midst of reading and writing. Also I am currently looking for some kind of part time work so I'm going to be rather busy.

The Monday after Easter (commonly known as Easter Monday) was quite a bit of fun. Annmarie's brother Mark and his family came up to our place. They were up in Adelaide from Mt Gambier for the Easter weekend and had spent Sunday with other relatives. They were all down here for the day and made quite a bit of noise and motion. We all had chocolate and other food, there was a small 'jam' session with some guitars and everyone generally had a very nice time.

The rest of the week we have been fairly inactive. Trying to get some organising and tidying done. On the Wednesday though the cousins turned up again with more noise and activity (though their eldest did try and hide out on our balcony to read in peace). That same day we had another almost visitor to our house.

The people who live in the flats in front of our place both own dog. The ones on the left (facing from our front) have a tiny little yapping dog who would probably be much nicer if it's owner didn't keep yapping at it. The ones on the right have a couple of big dogs. One of them looks a bit like a cross between a Labrador and a Malamute, the other, I don't really know, but something of a similar size. The cross one is quite amusing. It looks quite huge and if angry would probably be quite dangerous. But it's demeanour is quite lovely. It's the kind of dog that gets so excited about being patted that it can't sit down.

Anyway, on the day in question the side fence of these people fell down. Not completely, but enough. It looks like one of the cross beams on the frame of the fence fell down ages ago and someone had put it back together by tying the sheet metal panels together with string. So the string had broken and the dog kept running in and out and round and round. Probably not the safest thing for a large dog, so we chased it back in a few times. The other dog is not quite so friendly, but luckily it seemed on the most part to just prefer sitting put.

The kids quite loved having the dogs run round a bit too, they were very entertained by it all.

Pique-nique de Pâque dans le Parc

2007-04-08T13:57:00.000+01:00

Hello all. We finally have our own Internet connection, so now maybe posting regularly could be a reality. Of course I am very busy with study and my "crazy projects" so I'll just have to see what happens. Unfortunately we only have dial-up, so I now have to come to terms with being back in the slow lane after hitching a high speed ride with my brother for several months while we were staying at my Mum's house. Thanks for that by the way mon frère.

We've settled into the new house nicely in the main. The wiring is a bit dodgy and the light bulbs seem to blow far too often and the plumbing has needed a bit of a look at as well as a couple of other little things. But other than these small issues, it is quite a nice house a good price. Two bedroom and two story, although I think I have already mentioned that. Nice small back yard with some big trees and some big trees out the front too.

Over the summer, which hasn't been too hot, though the temperature did bump up a wee bit, the house has stayed very cool indeed. This is in part because of the house being made from proper solid brick instead of the paper thin varieties of plaster board and thin brick veneers that most houses these days seem to be made from. So the house has retained a cool, fresher air than one of those houses. It's quite a relief when one gets back in from a warm day to meet that natural coolness. We'll have to see if the house keeps warm in the winter though, that can sometimes be a problem with these houses where they feel like an ice box in winter and need constant heating.

I've especially been enjoying having an upstairs mini-balcony just off the main bedroom. We have developed a tendency to sleep with the main door open and the screen door locked. It's quite nice to fall asleep hearing the wind in the branches, very relaxing. Some might say Zen.

Anyway, I might just pop up a few details of what's been going on recently. The most obvious for today is of course Easter (la Fête de Pâque) and we actually went out and spent it with other human beings. French human beings.

The French Benevolent Association of SA held a pique-nique at Hazelwood Park, a lovely park over in the east of Adelaide. This was of course full of francophonic type people as well as francophilic type people. As much as I would love to count myself in the former group, we all mostly fit into the latter. Despite this, the pique-nique was very enjoyable. We got there with our rather French assortment of goodies (well I thought so anyway) consisting of crusty bread, a brie from Normandy called St Siméon (seems to be somewhat similar to a coulommier, but that may not be quite right), some salad and some muffins and stuff. My Mum had come with Joseph and my foster sister Erin, and Annmarie's Mum and Brother Justin had come along as well. We all tried to keep with the French and Easter themes.

The day was very nice, warm and bright so everyone had a good time. There was an Easter egg hunt pour les enfants, Willow and Gabriel enjoyed that very much. We enjoyed being amongst the French speakers but were a bit shy about trying to speak to too many people earlier in the day. Some of the members of the Association came around and chatted-in English-but we mostly kept to ourselves unfortunately.

Later when we had all eaten and packed up our stuff, we played some football (European, not Aussie) and then we started thinking of heading off. Willow had wanted to get some phone numbers of some of the French children and I went along to hold the pen and tell her our number so she could write it. After she had swapped numbers with one of the other families, I dove in and started a chat in French.

Considering my skill level and volume of real experience, I think it went quite well. I went through the basics of introduction and greeting. Was introduced to another, described my Family and my current state of French studies and how much Annmarie had studied. I even added that that we had stayed in Paris for a couple of months last year. This was my only downfall in maintaining the conversation.

I just completely misheard, "Est-ce que vous l'aimez?" after saying we had stayed in Paris. This translates into "Did you like it?". Seeing that I was trying to decipher it, she rephrased to "Est-ce que vous amiez Paris?" or something like that, referring to Paris directly, but I was already lost. She put it in English and the penny dropped and I had one of those moments of "Oh! l'aimez!" and then we continued in French again.

Overall I was quite pleased with my efforts, I was even complemented on my French-and quite forgot to reply with my trained light-hearted rejoinder to downplay the compliment, apparently very common in France. I went through all the basics that we have covered in my Uni course and then added some more. Describing other people, describing the past and other places. It was quite exciting to converse in another language. I could feel my brain rebelling against the fluency concept though and desperately wanting to slow down and translate. Having a person there waiting for an answer does help to spur on the brain though.

So, the rest of today has been eating Easter chocolate (Lindt and Haighs mostly, we do like nice chocolate) and generally getting ready for tomorrow when Annmarie's brother is turning up with his four kids, so there will be much activity then.

As said before, I am looking to keep this blog up-to-date™ from now on.

Cheers.

A slight delay

2007-03-13T18:43:00.000+00:00

Well, today was fun. Sorta. We were all ready to move into the new house. We had packed up our stuff (clothes, kitchen-ware, food - the stuff that was out and being used during our temporary stay), 0rganised some the boxes of stored effects ready to be moved, reserved a rental trailer (a pretty huge one at that) and generally got ready to go. I went down to the real estate agent's office to settle our deposits and collect the keys.

Just before getting there I called Annmarie to let her know that I was just about there when I was informed that there was a problem and we wouldn't be able to move in for another three weeks. Luckily Annmarie had been able to cancel the trailer without any problems and she was on her way into town. We went to see the Agent and he told us that although the property had been advertised with a set move in date, the tenants actually had a lease till the end of October. It seems they had elected to move out sooner, but something must have gone wrong with their plans and they couldn't get out earlier. So we agreed to push back our acquisition till the 31st.

It's quite annoying as we spent some time getting stuff ready and the preparation was quite an interruption to my studies, but I imagine that if I were in their position I would appreciate being given the extra time to find somewhere to go myself. At least we know we have this place when it does come available and we don't have to worry about the looking any more. We just have to put the boxes back away for a while.

Not gone yet.

2007-02-22T07:03:00.001+00:00

Well, it's been months since I last wrote to my blog and much has happened. I'm just getting ready for a new academic year so not much time to post up everything that has been happening. If anyone does still read this blog, we are planning to get dialup again soon so we can have some small level of connection to the world, then I promise I'll start posting again.

Final destination for now.

2006-10-08T11:33:00.000+01:00

Well, after too long a search (almost 5-months), we have found somewhere to rent. This has been a rather difficult thing to find as we are a low income family since I am now a full-time student, but we have found a two bedroom flat in roughly the area we were hoping for. It's very close to the city so we can easily walk there and back, there are an abundance of shops and restaurants around and we are in walking distance of the Adelaide Alliance Française and the Glenelg tram. Glenelg is a rather nice beach spot that we like and my Mum lives very near by to the Glenelg stop. The Glenelg tram route also runs very regularly compared to bus services so it's actually quite handy. Another handy part of being near the city is that my University is located in the city also, so I'll be able to walk to and from Uni very easily. Overall it seems to be an ideal spot. The place is quite nice too. It's a cosy two floor, two bedroom town house in a group of five. It has it's own small yard (both front and back) and it's reasonably modern.

It'll be good getting back to living in a permanent housing arrangement. We've spent a bit too long living in cramped quarters. The Paris flats were are very small and since getting back and staying with my Mum and brother we are all squashed in too much. So having our own space will be good and I'm sure Mum will appreciate getting her house back.

I'd like to add more on about what's going on, but as Annmarie has just pointed out, I need to get on to my studies as I have assignments that need to be completed very soon.

Ooops, better post again - part 2.

2006-10-02T11:38:00.000+01:00

Right. Still haven't gotten back to regular posting. Bad blogger and all that. Still studying and as I started my semester a couple of weeks late—plus having some reading heavy subjects, such as Law and Database Systems—means I've been playing catch up all semester. Added to the fact that we are still trying to find somewhere to rent has meant not much time for some things.

Anyway, more posting and catch up soon, I promise. Unless I get to exam time, in which case there may be a longer pause.

Ooops, better post again.

2006-09-22T16:39:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been months since I've posted anything onto my blog. Very bad form on my part, soon to be rectified. Alot has happened in the past several months, not least a return from Paris to Adelaide. I've also returned to full time study and renamed my blog. Anyway, I'll get back to regular posting and such soon and also get started with filling in the blanks and tell the missing tales from the European adventure.

Cheers, talk to you soon!

A Monday morning

2006-06-05T11:02:00.000+01:00

Well it's Monday morning and I'm back in the internet cafe and doing the job application dance. Still not much in the way of positive responses yet though. I've sent off my application for the antiquities transportation job with a better than usual cover letter so hopefully that should perk up some interest.

The weekend was quite pleasant. On the Saturday we took a train off the Versailles. We got off to a bit of a late start, but the trip out is not that long, about 40 minutes or so on the RER C line. Our biggest problem was getting tickets.

My credit card has not seemed to work once on the automatic machines that let you buy the more expensive tickets and I never seem to have enough change on me to get carnets of tickets or pricier ones. Once I did actually find a machine that took notes, though Annmarie noticed it and I almost missed it. It was one of those amusing situations which went something like this:

Me: "Hmm, my credit card never works in these things and I don't have enough change."
Annmarie: "Why don't you just use notes?"
Me: "These things don't take notes ... hang on ... Oh! I see."

So we needed to go find a ticket counter to get tickets. We found one that was closed checked the machines and went and found another one, that closed for lunch the moment we got there. There was a lady there that informed us that there was another counter upstairs. We had come from upstairs and so it seemed she was telling us to back. We did but they were still closed.

After about ten more minutes of walking around we found our way to yet another desk, that was in the metro section rather than the RER and was up then downstairs. Still, we got the tickets and onto the train and were on our way.

The town is absolutely lovely. Despite being a very popular tourist destination, they all seemed to stay up at the chateau so the town itself was fairly devoid of them. The full tour of the chateau would take up most of the day anyway so I guess there wouldn't be much time for town walking as well.

We took the opposite view and did town walking and collected some supplies for a picnic. Just the basics, traditional baguette, cheese and raspberries to accompany the salad we had brought with us. Unfortunately I didn't find any small bottles of wine to bring along, mais, c'est la vie. We made our way into the outer gardens of the chateau (the free parts) and had our picnic surrounded by other French families doing the same. The bread and cheese was just marvelous.

After eating we wandered into the actual gardens of the chateau. We saw the basin of Neptune and the grille du dragon (gate of the dragons). We then wandered further into the grounds towards the displays of fountains where there was supposed to be a concert of some sort. Both fortunately and unfortunately, it was just coming onto five o'clock at that point. Fortunate as we discovered that at around five access to the gardens became free and unfortunate as the concert finished at five.

The grounds were spectacular and we only saw a very small part of them. We stopped off for a coffee at one of the cafes in the gardens, then headed back to the train station. Overall a rather relaxing day.

The Sunday was a late start with nothing much to do in the morning. After lunch we took another RER train, the A line this time, off to a place called Chatou. It's a spot about 30 minutes west of Paris and is just a quite little suburb that used to be a town. There are some lovely French maisons there and in particular a Steiner school that Annmarie wanted to see. We again took some salad with us and bought baguettes to make a picnic lunch by the river. No cheese or wine this time though, but still it was nice. Less impressive than Versailles, but very relaxing all the same.

Thank God it's Friday

2006-06-02T21:20:00.000+01:00

Well, normally one would say such things after a long hard week of work. For me it's been a mix of job seeking and sight seeing so that is probably not quite appropriate. The last couple of days have been mostly job seeking.

The bakery job sounds very interesting. It's really more of a café kind of kitchen than a real bakery. It sounds like it would get me lots of experience for running a real kitchen of my own, but unfortunately the pay is just too low. So I may have to pass on it.

I have uncovered another interesting job possibility though. It is an administrative position for a company that transports and delivers antiques and art works for collectors. They seem to offer a full service for art and antiquities collectors. They will do custom packaging and organise delivery world wide and will even arrange hotels and limousines for deluxe shopping trips for collectors. Working with them could be really interesting as I have quite a hobby interest in antiques.

Apart from that, we went to see the Musée de l'Orangerie and saw Monet's wonderful paintings, Les Nymphéas which I believe the Musée was originally set up to house. These are truly amazing paintings and worth the cost to go in to see. The rest of the collection is not as impressive, though the Renoirs are very good. Orsay had better paintings, but was much more crowded.

Anyway, this is just a quick check in while checking email. Tomorrow we are going to try and get to Versailles and wander around the gardens as the weather will be nice, I think.

Solemn post

2006-05-31T12:50:00.000+01:00

The last couple of days were not so interesting except for a trip to le cimetiere du pere lachaise. For anyone who doesn't know it, this is supposed to be one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. It has a strange collection of residents, including people like George Haussmann (the architect that designed much of the beautiful buildings and boulevards of Paris, transforming it from a mediaeval maze into the grand city it is now), Camille Pissarro (the impressionist painter whose work we saw in the Musee d'Orsay), Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. Oscar Wilde's grave was bizarre, it was covered in lipstick kisses.

Unfortunately they closed the cemetery to visitors just after we arrived so we only really saw Oscar Wilde and some war memorials. We also managed to walk right past Edith Piaf, oh well. The whole cemetery was stunning though. Many of the family memorials (or sepultures) were just incredible, some almost like little chapels.

We went off the day before and found a Carrefour that was over the motorway from us. This is supposed to be the ASDA or Tesco of France. They have some "hypermarchés" around that are bigger than the regular "supermarchés" you usually find. This one was just a supermarché. It was not bad, especially for us non-super kinda shoppers. We bought a few things including another kids book (this one was a kids picture book that teaches English names for common items) and a copy of the first Harry Potter in French. The copy of Harry Potter is kinda for the kids, but I though that it would also be useful for me to get a book that I knew the story and was written for a young audience. Could be good practice.

Apart from that, we've been mostly just doing our regular daily activities. So that's home schooling for Annmarie and the kids and job seeking for me. I've got a couple of interesting possibilities at the moment.

One is in a tourist shop that is also a bureau de change. Doing bureau de change could be interesting for a while. The other is an English bakery and lunch time restaurant that does weekend brunches. They are looking for an assistant chef to help with the lunches and help make up the menus. Would be challenging to be sure, but could be interesting.

Annmarie has been musing over starting a natural/raw food kinda restaurant somewhere for a while now, so the bakery job could be an opportunity to get some commercial experience. I also have mused on getting a career in finance so the other job could be interesting too. Maybe not...

Anyway, gotta get on, make calls and get things moving.

Après Fête de Mères

2006-05-29T12:33:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was kinda nice. It was Mother's Day here in France (Fête de Mères) and Annmarie slept in till midday. I tried to go out with the kids to do some shopping, but what I thought was a street food market was just a street trash and treasure kinda market. I called my Mum and our friend Luiza called us.

We headed out eventually and walked down to the Bastille. There was another market there, with much nicer stalls that the one down near us. We milled around there for a while, then headed off to our primary destination: gelatti!

We had seen a gelatti shop a few days before. It made up cones of gelatti in the shape of flowers, I believe I have mentioned it before. Annmarie wanted to go out and get one of these for Mother's Day and I felt I shouldn't argue. The gelatti was really nice.

Then we wandered back home and got some groceries en route. Just now, I'm going to go get a falafel for lunch and then call Annmarie to see what she is up to.

Quick post

2006-05-26T20:37:00.000+01:00

Hello all. Just a quick post from an internet cafe late at night to let you know we are still here. I'm doing some job seeking stuff and it's late, so I won't say much here. We've had an interesting couple of days. Last night we went to the Musee d'Orsay, finaly, and saw the exhibition, though it was far too crowded to really appreciate it.

Today we had a picnic at a giant science park. That was quite fun though the weather could have been better. I'll post up a better description soon. Cheers.

More of the weekend and not much else

2006-05-24T11:16:00.000+01:00

Well I will now get on to the rest of the weekend, unfortunatelyI don't have any pictures to post up, so that will have to wait for later. Some of them are really quite good. I keep thinking that I need to post up pictures from other parts of our trip as a lot of them are really worth seeing.

Alors, the Sunday was really quite interesting. We had decided (encore) to try and go to the Musee d'Orsay, which will be our outing this afternoon hopefully. We also were réessayer (trying again) to find falafel, having failed to find some on the Saturday night at our local middle eastern type kabbab shops.

Now falafel is interesting as I didn't actually know it's real origin. In Adelaide, practially every Lebanise takeout that makes yiros, also makes falafel. I always assumed that falafel was either of middle eastern or arabic origin. Maybe Turkish or whatever. I have now discovered that it originated in Syria.

I don't really know the various affinities within the middle east and arab regions so I don't know how it propogated around, but I would have assumed that Turkish people may have been in to it. Not the Turkish people who live round us at the moment it seems. Looking in one of the Paris guide books in the apparment we rented, I found a reference to a falafel house that Bob Marley apparantly claimed was the best in Paris, which is probably pretty high aclaim on the international falafel eating scene. It was called L'As du Falafel and was down in Marias in the 4th arrondisment. That was near Place de Bastile.

So we decided to walk down to Bastile and go have lunch at L'As du Falafel. The walk was as uneventful as a walk through Paris can be. We stopped at a park en route (to make up for not stopping at one the day before) and made our way to Bastile. As we got to close to Bastile we heard a rather loud noise, it sounded like people and horns and drums. It seems we walked right into some kind of street march.

There were tens of thousands at least lining the place and the main roads comming into and out of the place. There were fire breathers and performers and what seemed like at least 10 or more bands on the backs of trucks slowly making their way through the city with the crowd marching along side.

We ended up following some kind of mexican/south american/spanish kinda band that were really good. The had a "Stop Bush" sign up on their truck. There seemed to be other activist kinda posters around, so I guess that this was some kind of social awareness march or something. It was a really good atmosphere in the crowd, very social and amiable.

So we followed the crowd up to near where the falafel shop was and then cut off to the side. We found a small museum of the history of Paris which was free, but we didn't go in, we just had a sit down in their courtyard and had a look at the gardens and an Angel statue. We then headed off to the falafel shop.

It was absolutely packed. There were actually three or four of them all next to each other and they all seemed rather good, but we came for this one, so we lined up for the outside takeaway. It was rather well organised. They had a couple of people who took your order in the line. Then you paid that guy and he gave you a ticket for your order so when you got to the counter (which was very noisy) you just gave the guy your ticket and he got you your food.

The falafel was really good. Definately worth tracking down if you are in Paris and you like falafel. We sat down in the street to eat them, since the whole march atmosphere was just so inspiring, kinda like the old fringe in Adelaide. Sitting around, I noticed that there were a lot of Jewish shops and bakeries in the area. I found this interesting at first, but reading the wikipedia reference I now see that falafel is a hugely popular food in Israel, so that now all makes sense.

After finishing, we had given up on going to Orsee, so we just wandered around Marias for a bit. My Mum has suggested that we go see a little church in Marias, but unfortunatelyI didn't remember where that was or even that we were in Marias at the time so we didn't get round to that. There were a lot of nice little shops everywhere and we had fun looking around. We found filled merangs the size of footballs and a shop that sold Italian Gelati and shapped the cones like tulips or roses (not sure which it reminded me more of). Then we made our way back home and, after another quick stop at a playground, got rained on. Grandement.

The rest of the week has been looking for work and doing shopping. I have had my hair cut here (un peu) and there was a good street market out yesterday which dissapeared today. But my time is running out and I'm off to find a fresh copy of FUSAC and the American Church in Paris (which is meant to have a good tableau d'affichage for work and accomodation ads). A bientot tout le monde.

A longer post

2006-05-23T15:05:00.000+01:00

Well, it certainly is easier to type on a familiar keyboard. My last post took an awfully long time to write so I didn't get much time to talk about what had gone on over the weekend.

The move was rather hectic. Basically I managed to not rent a car for the day, meaning we had no transport to move our stuff out of the flat and into the new one. Luckily we managed to find a "man with a van" at short notice. He was a really nice guy from Shrilanka and we had a good chat on the way over. Being short notice, we could only get him at the last minute so there wasn't much time to co-ordinate switching over.

He didn't help with lifting the bags (he had an injury that prevented it, he told me that if we had needed that, he would have brought someone else) so I had to rush up and down the stairs hefting the bags down. This was made especially fun by the fact that there was painting work going on in the stairwell of the apartment, so there was dust and painting equipment everywhere.

Hefting the bags past all this was a rather difficult task. I spent most of it on the verge of plunging down the stairs. The weight of the bags didn't help either. Annmarie and I have both agreed that next time we travel, we really need to lower the amount of stuff we bring with us.

Unfortunately due to the lack of time, after loading up the van and driving over to the new flat there was still quite a bit of stuff still back at the first flat. I knew there was some still there, but I didn't realise quite how much. So the final inspection ran through with no immediate worries (that may appear when I get the final notice from the rental company) but then I, having gone on my own to return the keys, was stuck with rather too much luggage to carry around. I met up with Annmarie and we made our way back to the new flat.

After that, we didn't really have much enegry for doing much else, so we just wandered round looking for dinner, which we eventually had in a Quick burger restaurant. They are a local French company that runs a MacDonalds esque burger chain. Not too bad, better for salads and they have a nice fish burger.

The next day we didn't really feel like doing much at all. We just planned to go out and get some groceries to stock up on for the week. While wandering around we thought we'd hang out in a park for a bit. Unfortunately all the parks had been locked up. We didn't think this was usual Saturday behaviour in Paris so when we spotted a caretaker in one of the parks, I asked why the park was closed. This went kinda along the lines of:

"Pardon monsieur, le parc est ferme?"

"Oui, tout est ferme aujourd'hui."

"Pourquoi monsieur?"

"Parce-que (something something something) trop vent."

... (me thinking) "Ah, vent. D'accord, merci monsieur."

So I got that it was too windy. Didn't understand most of the rest of that sentence, but the end bit was enough. So we had the picnic lunch we had bought on a bench just outside a park and then wandered round a bit more till we found a little supermarche.

The Sunday was rather interesting too, but I'll write about that later, and post pictures. I've been writing more job application emails at the moment, and I'm a bit out of time. I also have a hair cut appointment to get to. Tomorrow we are hoping to get to the Musee d'Orsay to see an exhibition of Cezanne and Pissarro. I've messed up a couple of our attempts (including today) so we have to make an extra effort tomorrow as the exhibition ends this week.

Still here and still ticking

2006-05-21T20:57:00.000+01:00

Well everyone, we have successfully completed the move to our new flat. The place is quite nice actually, smaller than the previous place technically, but much better laid out so it actually feels roomier. We have a phone, but no internet, so I am posting from a late night internet cafe. I'll have to see if I can get something organised tomorrow for that.

I'm running out of time here, so I'll just make it a quick post. The French keyboard is making typing slower so I'll just finish off for now. A bientôt.

Moving again

2006-05-18T21:43:00.000+01:00

For the second time in two months we are moving again. This time to something a bit less nice but a bit cheaper. Still very expensive as this is temporary accommodation in Paris but cheaper than where we are now. This will be the second month in Paris and if things don't work out we will more than likely move back to Australia. However we are still confident that something will work out. I have two good options at the moment, both being telephone type positions. One is for a start up company as a business to business salesman (not too sure about that one) and the other is a telephone interviewer for a survey and research company. I actually quite like the idea of the second one, so I really hope that I hear back favourably from them.

One big problem of the new flat though is that at the moment, it looks like the place doesn't have a phone. Not having internet access is fine, I was mostly expecting that when we first came. The fact that this place had ADSL thrown in was a nice surprise. However, without a phone, we can't get any kind of dialup internet and nor can we keep in contact with people by phone except by mobiles, which internationally is very expensive.

I've been told that the landlord may be able to get a phone put on for us for the month, so we'll see how that works out, otherwise the agent says we may be able to change to somewhere else. This flat isn't in an ideal place entirely, it's out in the 20th arrondesment, quite out the way. However it is right next to a park, which is useful, and is of course right on a metro line, as everywhere in Paris is. I'd rather not have to move again, but we need to be out of here tomorrow so we'll see how things go.

A localised Blog

2006-05-17T11:02:00.000+01:00

As noted in this comment, my blog is now appearing with a French interface. So all the dates and other navigation texts are in a French format. I had noticed this myself but wasn't sure if it was just for me since I was connecting from France or if it was changed for everyone. I thought it might be because I changed my location in my profile to France. So Bec's comment has confirmed that, vraiment, il a changé pour tout le monde.

Something to fill the gap a bit...

2006-05-15T20:16:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm not in the mood to write a whole history of our trip up here just now, but I thought that I might pop up a few pictures that I have snapped while here. I haven't really posted many pictures of Glasgow, but there seems to be something prompting me to do it here. What is it? Je ne sais pas!

The first image over on the right is of l'arc de triomphe with a rather patriotic French flag draped down the middle. This was quite an impressive sight and was up for the celebration of the fall of Germany and the end of WWII in Europe on the 8th of May.

This next one on the left is another monument adorned with flags pour le 8 Mai. This one is a gold statue of Jeanne d'Arc. As everyone should know who that is I won't go into an explanation. The statues and the buildings in general are quite fabulous. It is one of those places that you can just wander about having a couple of coffees and just appreciate the city.

The last picture I'll put up for now is the one at the bottom right. This is of a building that I didn't know much about before arriving in Paris. It's le Petit Palais. This is a beautiful old building that has been recently restored or cleaned or something and is just (re)opening as a museum. It really is a tremendously impressive frontage. Seeing things like this has really struck home the difference between seeing pictures of some things and seeing them for real. The size and grandeur of this building is rather lost when viewed as a photo. Even if you blew the picture up, it would just not be the same.

Anyway, it's getting late and I have other things to do on the web, like look for work and flats, so I'll leave it there and get back to it later. A bientôt tout le monde!

Something weird happened

2006-05-15T20:13:00.000+01:00

Well something weird has happened on my blog. I had a bunch of posts about being in London and making the move to Paris, but they seem to have disappeared. I'm not too happy about it, but I can't do anything about it just now.

I'll try and run a catch up bunch of posts soon, but at the moment, Annmarie and I are looking for our next place to live. Hopefully it will not present too much of a problem. I'll try and catch up my posting then.

The journey south : Part I

2006-04-13T23:37:00.000+01:00

Well we're off. We have left Glasgow on another bold venture, this time targeted at the pays du dieu. Right now I am sitting by the window of our travelodge room typing this post out into OpenOffice since the only Internet connection is wireless and I haven't got a wireless adapter on this laptop.

Speaking of which, the first thing that I seem to be missing is my old work laptop. It was an IBM thinkpad, and it had wireless networking, it ran games not too badly and it had one of those trackpoint pointing devices. For those that don't know, this is an IBM device (don't know if they designed it, but they seem to be the only company that sell them) that has a dot in the middle of the keyboard, sometimes called a nipple) that allows you to move the mouse pointer around by leaning the pointer in the direction you want it to go.

At first I found it rather irritating, but I've gotten rather used to it and now think that I prefer it over a touchpad. You can just glide around the screen no matter what resolution you have without stopping and starting again because you ran out of touchpad. I also found it was ideal for gaming, particularly FPS.

But enough of that, onto the trip I hear you all cry. Well, getting out of the flat in the morning was fine, last minute cleaning and all. Then there was the first realisation of just how much baggage we had with us. Really, it is/was not much more that when we left Australia in the first place, but I'm not in as good shape as then and the weight seemed insurmountable.

Getting down the stairs was one thing, getting to the train station was another. We hefted the bags all the way down to Argyle Street and the effort was enormous, not a good sign for the trip overall. Once there, I left Annmarie sitting with the kids and the bags and ran down to the real estate office to drop off our keys. On getting back, we quickly debated how long it would take to get to the station and decided that both of us would get taxis separately and meet at the station, a scenario that would repeat itself later.

Once at Glasgow Central, we got a luggage trolley and headed in to find our train. We met Rosy, one of Annmarie's friends from Willow's school, near the platform. She had come to see us off. Funny that the person seeing us off out of Glasgow is an Aussie from Queensland. With her watching the bags we made our way up to the front of the train and stored our larger suitcases, then headed back to Rosy (who was giving the kids rides on the luggage trolley) to get the rest of the stuff onboard. Unfortunately my cousin Caroline couldn't make it to see us off as well, which is a shame.

With the rest of our stuff stored, we got into our seats for a not exactly uneventful train ride, but I'll put that into a continuation later. Right now I gotta get to sleep so we can get to my brother Paul's flat tomorrow. Gnite!

Very late night; very early morning

2006-04-13T00:16:00.000+01:00

It's very late and I am up putting the finishing touches on our packing for the train. It's been a lot of hard work getting ready and now we are as ready as ever for leaving. It will be sad to see Glasgow go, but a new adventure is opening up for us. Next time I post, I should be in London, or at least on the way.

Early morning packing

2006-04-11T06:30:00.000+01:00

It's 6:30 am and I'm just setting off to Tesco to buy some fruit for breakfast. Our big fridge has been turned off and dried out for storage so we don't have much room for anything in the small fridge in the flat.

Our stuff in mostly packed up and ready to be collected by a removal company called Crown Relocations, who are part of a larger logistics company, I think. They seemed to be the cheapest and the most professional, as they use their larger logistics framework to keep the costs down. And they can deliver worldwide, so Peter, if you read this and I forget to mention them, give them a look if you do move to the states.

Well it's now 6:40, so I'd better get going. We're having an early breakfast because the moving people could be coming early this morning and we have to finish sealing some boxes and a couple of other little packing things.

Almost ready to go

2006-04-10T01:46:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been a busy last few days. We have organised and confirmed accommodation, and have just about confirmed the movers, just have to get some contracts signed and back to them. We now have train tickets and accommodation to get us right through to Paris with hopefully no real problems and then there for a month. Now I just need to get a solid permanent job and then permanent accommodation.

Most of our stuff is now packed in boxes and ready for pickup on Tuesday. We've cleared out the kitchen so it's now just the stuff in the furnished flat left, but that will do till we go. It looks like I might not go into work tomorrow, but I will be in on Tuesday and Wednesday to run through things with the new guy who is replacing me. This is interesting, because the new guy is only just putting in his notice at his current work and so will not be joining Integria for a month. In the mean time I have indicated that I am available to do some project work from France if it is needed and I am given enough notice, so I might just get some extra work from them to keep us going.

Anyway, it's getting late and I should be off to bed. G'nite all.