Thirtieth day of work

Thirty (work) days ago I posted a picture from outside my office window of my first day of work. It was winter then. Now it's "spring" but basically summer. In that picture there was even a little bit of snow on the ground. Now there are little purple flowers instead:

And instead of the trees being bare, they now have some nice white flowers:

I just spent literally five minutes trying to get that picture to be centred but it really didn't want to so now I'm giving up. So, if you were wondering why it's too the left, now you know.

After our bike ride on Saturday we went to this crazy concert/play/festival in the big park near our place. They called it a "bal". And it was WEIRD. Like The Who's Tommy-with-Elton-John weird. Or like those people that want to become animals so they get strange surgical implants and full-body tattoos to look more like lions or reptiles. It sure was interesting though. They had a ton of pyrotechnic effects and at one point one of the guys in the show had his sleeve catch on fire and we had to push his way through the crowd to get to the medical tent (or somewhere) while his arm was LITERALLY burning (well almost literally -- I guess it was more like the sleeve of his jacket was burning [as I said] but it was definitely nuts). The "band" (or whatever) was playing some music and then at a soft part they released all these burning balloons into the air. It looks really cool but I think it's (a) very unsafe; and (b) very bad for the environment. They seem to be giant white garbage bags that fly because there's a fire burning inside of them. I actually saw one that had crashed and it really is a giant white garbage bag and it looks like some of them fly really far away probably to land in lakes, rivers, oceans, etc. for the fish and other assorted wildlife to eat. And as for the unsafe part, TONS of them (like at least 10) got caught in a tree on the way up! I was sure the tree was going to burn down but since there aren't that many leaves yet (or none in some cases) it seems like the fires just burned out eventually and no harm was done.

There's another park in Grenoble that seems to be dedicated to John Lennon. It has these big monuments that have the words and music to "Imagine" all over them several times. It's pretty cool but who knows why it's there???

This is me with a tree with some pink flowers on it in the John Lennon park:

Today we finally went to the Prefecture to become real French residents (well I don't know if that's the proper terminology but if they accept all our paper work they won't kick us out of the country next month when our initial 3-month visas expire). After we got that done it was so hot that we had to get ice cream cones.

The end for now!

Market, Randonnée des écureuils

Hello faithful readers. While there is another blog that exists with much more mundane content, and is only superficially different from this other blog that is the current leader in readers (mostly from the West and the suburbs, I guess), and people probably cared about the values of this blog and it was finally resonating with people and this was more than clear the last time there was a "popularity vote" for blogs, with the aim of becoming more popular, this blog is going to shift directions, move away from its original purpose, and simply aim to become that other blog that is really only superficially different from that other other blog so that we can attract more readers and maybe one day be the leader in readers. Never mind that to do this we'll be moving away from the foundation and original purpose of this blog. The name of the game is votes -- I mean readers -- so we've got to move towards the centre -- I mean away from social democratic principles -- I mean be more like the Liberals -- I mean, well, I actually lost the metaphor a while back. So anyways...

We went to the market yesterday (just as I said we would -- now you can trust my musings with respect to future events more readily than perhaps before) and it was fun as ever. Here's Sandi choosing something (maybe a grapefruit?). This is maybe 1/150th of the market right here. A lot of it is outside (like in this picture) but then a lot of it is inside as well. We got cheese, fruits, vegetables, meat, raviolis, quiches, and maybe some other stuff as well.

After the market we (as I said, again) went on the randonnée des écureuils. It was really fun and the sights were quite amazing. We rode up up up up mountains and through some villages and farmland. We rode with this French man who knew the route and he was really nice and we ate the lunch that they give you at the end with him and it was good to practice our French. Here I am in front of a stream going down a mountain.

Here's Sandi almost at the top of one of the big climbs. Some of them were 12% grade or more! (most people here seem to have altimeters on their bikes and at the top of the biggest climb they were all going on about how it was 12% or more for most of it wow wow wow). If you can see the village behind Sandi in the distance, we rode through that several kilometres before so you can get some idea of how far up we went...

On Sandi's birthday she walked up to the bastille (previously we had taken the cable cars) and she took some pictures. Here's a really nice one (Grenoble):

And finally, here's Sandi with her new flowers and her new birthday scarf!!!

Our stuff that we sent on the boat is finally arriving this Wednesday.. pretty exciting but who in the world knows where we'll be able to put it all!?!?

Nous sommes vraiment chanceux...

Grenoble...

We are really really lucky. Every day we wake up and we're living in a postcard. Plus the weather seems to be perfect all the time. Not bragging.. just pointing out that we realize how lucky we are.


Also, welcome (from France) to the newest member of our family: Emily Rose Darling. We look forward to seeing her through FaceTime (and real life) soon.


I have lots of pictures to put on here from last weekend and Sandi's birthday but I don't have them with me right now so at least it's something that will be coming. For Sandi's birthday we went to a really fancy restaurant in Grenoble called l'Auberge Napoléon. It has this name because Napoleon spent the night there at the beginning of his 100-day reign that ended at the Battle of Waterloo.


Today we'll go on a bike ride organized by the FFCT -- Fédération Française de CycloTourisme. You pay 5 euros and they give you a map of the route (you can choose between 40 and 90 km) and there's support on the way and you get snacks and things like that. It should be good for finding some good cycling roads and seeing some sights as well! First, though, we'll go to the market again because it's right by our house and is pretty cool with lots of good food.


Last night we watched a French film -- Jeux d'Enfants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeux_d%27enfants). I don't really know what to say about it without giving it away but it was really good. Well, it's about these two kids who start off when they're really young daring each other to do things and the dares get progressively more ridiculous/crazy as they get older and it pretty much makes them nuts. But it's a good movie!

Annecy, my birthday, St. Patrick's Day !!!

"with a pint of green chartreuse ain't nothin seems right, you buy the sunday paper on a saturday night" -- Tom Waits

We have Internet! And TV! And video games! And a home phone (well, we have the line but we probably won't actually buy a phone to go with it). But we're not paying any extra for it, it just comes with everything (like the built-in video games and the 200 TV channels) that is included with our internet. So, here's the long-awaited Annecy post. But it also includes some St. Patrick's day pictures! How exciting!! Oh ya -- we also get all the French radio stations on this thing!

So, on Friday March 9 we took the train to Annecy. We made it to the Gare with plenty of time to spare (see picture below...)

We arrived in Annecy around 1:30 pm and though the weather wasn't as warm as it had been (and as it was this past week) it was still really nice and sunny and not too cold. We walked along the lake and around the old town and went to the castle. Annecy has some canals just like in Venice (though of course not as extensive) and we walked along them and had coffee in some cafés on the canal and it was really cool.

The next day was my birthday! As I said in my last 'post', Sandi got me some new bike shorts and they're really nice. I don't have a picture yet though. On this past Saturday (St. Patrick's Day) we went for a 50 km bike ride along the river from Grenoble towards Lyon (but only probably got about a quarter of the way there.. a couple months from now though we'll have to be pretty much biking there and back for preparation for the Ironman!). Anyways, Sandi also got me a bottle of Chartreuse which (quoting Wikipedia) "is a French liqueur made by the Carthusian Monks since the 1740s. It is composed of distilled alcohol aged with 130 herbal extracts. The liqueur is named after the Monks' Grande Chartreuse monastery, located in the Chartreuse Mountains in the general region of Grenoble in France. The liqueur is produced in a factory in the nearby town of Voiron." Cool eh? So it's like the Grenoble drink but we hadn't tried it yet. And we didn't try it on the weekend either but we did have some this past weekend for SPD and it fit perfectly because it's green.

After I got my presents we went around the town, by the lake again, went for lunch, and then in the afternoon we did some shopping. I decided to also get myself a present so I got a new jacket and a scarf (so I'd fit in with French people). We also bought a bottle of champagne (not very expensive here! -- and I think actually only the second time I've ever had 'real' champagne). Here I am showing off all 3:

We had the champagne in our hotel which was a really cool small 'boutique' hotel in the city centre and we somehow lucked out and got the very top floor which has a really cool sky light. Anyways, after that we went for my birthday dinner to a French restaurant where I had steak with many many many potatoes (see picture below) and Sandi had salmon (very original in the streak/salmon choices [not])...

Finally, (bored yet?), on Sunday we (what else?) walked around, had some food, had some coffee, and I modelled my new birthday clothes. Below I'm standing in front of the old prison that's its own little island in the canal! We took the 2:30 train home and when we got back we went for a run...

On Saturday we celebrate St. Patrick's day which is quite the event in France it seems. Especially because we live right above an Irish Pub. Well, not RIGHT above as in it would be the same building, but pretty much right above as in it's across the street and if you jumped out of our window you'd pretty much be there. We went to the Irish Pub ('The Shannon') in the afternoon and had some Irish beer and watched some of the England-Ireland rugby game and cheered for Ireland with everyone else. Then in the evening we hosted our first party! Well, not really a party party but more like a get-together but we had people over so that was fun. Only Sandi and I dressed up for the day though (Sandi is wearing the Guinness shirt I got her in Dublin and a green hoody and I'm wearing the Ireland shirt that mom/dad got me when THEY were in Ireland)...

In this picture we're on the street in front of the Irish bar by our apartment. The whole street was completely filled with people and it was pretty cool.

It was really exciting when the tram went by because the tram goes right down this street so everyone would have to move out of the way and we really wanted a picture with the tram in the background and we finally succeeded but that's why we look like we're in a rush:

La fin.

Fire Drill!

It's been a while since my last post. We've moved and are slowly trying to figure out all the problems with our apartment and get them fixed. We've ordered Internet but it takes between 10 days and 3 weeks to get (can you believe it?) so it's harder to write on here but I know there are eager readers (i.e. Mom 1 and Mom 2) so here is a small post for you!

We went to Annecy for my birthday weekend from the morning of the 9th to the afternoon of the 11th. It was a really nice weekend in a really nice city. We have lots of pictures from there but they're on my computer at home (with no Internet) so once we get that set up we can put some of them on.

For my birthday Sandi got me new bike shorts and we've had two chances this week to try them out. We went biking after work on both Tuesday and Thursday (yesterday) -- both of which were sunny and above 20 degrees! Today is 24 and really nice out. In fact, we just had a fire alarm/drill for the sole purpose of forcing everyone to go experience the nice weather (note that the weather was not necessarily the reason for the fire drill happening this afternoon [could also have been that it's Friday afternoon] but I like to think maybe that's behind it). While waiting outside I took this picture of the chateau at Xerox:

I should have maybe taken a picture where all the people were congregated (just to my left) but here you get to see the chateau and it's pretty nice looking in the sunshine!

Tonight we'll go swimming (not outdoors yet) and tomorrow is still supposed to be sunny and above 20 so we'll go for a bike ride in the afternoon and to the market in the morning. Sunday should be a little less warm so we'll do our run then (now that my ankle seems to be improving... hopefully.....)

Happy St Patricks Day weekend!!!

Have your cake, but don't tweet it, too

Who knew that Ivor Tossell, "Technology Culture Columnist" for the Globe & Mail, would be so influenced by our humble Grenoble photo blog? My post on "French" cuisine affected him so much that it drove him to write an entire article on why you should never post pictures of your food online: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/digital-culture/ivor-tossell/have-your-cake-but-dont-tweet-it-too/article2359740/

"It is time that we had a talk about taking photos of our food. The act isn't merely an extension of this documentary compulsion; it's a phenomenon unto itself. Dishes parade across the social networks like the stars of a drive-in concession commercial: Stacks of pancakes; pork served however you like; Eggs Whatnot; wine bottles and smudgy wine glasses. Things people stewed. Things people fried. Things people ate. Sure enough, there's a group on Flickr, the photo-sharing site, entitled “I ate this.” People have contributed more than 400,000 photos of things they ate. People do eat a lot of things."

[...]

"So, I beg of you: Stop tweeting your food. Stop Facebooking your food. Stop Instagramming your food with a vintage-yellow filter, so it looks like it's been solidifying in a display case since 1981. You'll be doing a favour for both the food photography that comes with purpose, and for the rest of us, adrift on this sea of indistinguishable cupcakes, shortbreads and omelettes. Brunches, brunches everywhere, and nary a bite to eat."

He even spoke against my beloved (see two posts ago) Instagram! Sorry, Ivor.


[Update: later today I was reading some research papers that ultimately led me to the original publication of Google's PageRank algorithm that forms the basis of its search engine technology ('The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web', January, 1998). In the introduction and motivation section, Page, et al. note:


More importantly, the web pages [on the Internet] are extremely diverse, ranging from "What is Joe having for lunch to day?" to journals about information retrieval.

So, it looks like talking/posting about what you eat is nearly as old as the Web itself!]

le café

Quand j'étais plus jeune (même plus jeune que maintenant), mon petit frère a versé une grand tasse de café sur mes genoux. Ça à brûlé comme vous ne le croyerez pas. À cause de cet accident, mes parents ont dû me prendre à l'hôpital immédiatement. Dans la voiture (une ancienne Renault Alpine rouge) j'ai crié au sommet de mes poumons:

-- Maman! Merde que ça fait mal!

-- On arrive Guillaume, t'inquiète pas!

-- Mais je pense que je vais mourir!!!

-- ...

On a arrivé à l'hôpital vers 15h. Le café (celui dont les restes étaient sur ​​mes genoux) avait appartenu à la petite amie de mon frère aîné, Vanessa (la petite amie). J'ai adoré Vanessa. Ses cheveux, sa voix, et surtout la façon dont elle a bu son café. C'était pour ça -- même plus encore que le fait que j'avais probablement perdu la capacité d'avoir des enfants en raison de son café -- que j'étais si bouleversé. Cet acte simple de mon petit frère -- dans mon opinion -- a tout simplement insisté sur le fait que mon petit frère et moi étions enfants. Et ce -- comme un enfant -- serait toujours comment Vanessa me verra.

Deux semaines plus tard, la douleur physique avait disparu. Mais les cicatrices émotionnelles allait rester avec moi pour toujours.

Plus tard cet été-là, mon frère a rompu avec Vanessa. Je savais qu'elle travaillait au café du coin, mais je ne pouvais pas laisser mon frère me voir là. Donc, j'ai commencé à y aller aussi souvent que je le pouvais, quand il n'était pas là. Et voilà comment j'ai commencé à boire du café.


(pas vraiment)...

Summertime (in early March)

It is summertime in Grenoble. Yesterday reached 24 (!!!) degrees celsius and today it's about 20 or so. We took advantage of this weather (despite my currently poor ability to walk due to ankle issues) by strolling around the city centre, eating lunch, drinking coffee, reading in the Place Victor Hugo (or writing! if you were Sandi), etc. We were hoping to go to Annecy today but since we decided at the last minute all of the hostels and cheap hotels were booked already and we need to save our money since right now we only have one income and we need to pay our first rent, the deposit (a month's rent) and an agency fee that is almost a month's rent for when we get our apartment this Wednesday... Anyways, so we didn't go but we'll go soon hopefully -- maybe for our birthdays or something if it's still nice out. Oh ya, in addition to it being so warm it's also been completely sunny with no clouds to speak of for weeks. It's rained just once since we've been here (more than 3 weeks) and that was like a sprinkle around 2 weeks ago. Anyways, instead of going to Annecy (we could have still gone by taking the train at 7 in the morning and then taking the last train back which is at 7:30 pm but that didn't seem like a GREAT idea because it's not that much time there and it's kind of dinner time that the train leaves for home and in addition to being really nice in the day it's supposed to be quite the place at night) we decided to take it easy here (see above).

There's this rad iPhone app called Instagram (http://instagr.am/). You take photos on your iPhone and then you can choose one of about 10 or so filters to apply and then you it automatically shares the photo (if you choose to participate) with the Instagram community and you can also automatically have it posted to Facebook or Twitter or some other crazy young-person sites. But -- thankfully -- you can also just save it. So it seems that you can end up with some pretty cool pictures. Directly below is the place we ate lunch -- some tasty sandwiches. Delicious. Really. In fact, I wish I was re-eating my sandwich right now (but a different one of course because the original one is probably like pretty gross right now and re-eating THAT one would be disgusting. But if I were a cow I would do that all the time. But they mainly eat grass and already-eaten grass is probably better than already-eaten French sandwich even though the first time around the sandwich is probably better. So the grass has more staying power -- if you will -- but the sandwich is better the first time around. But actually I don't even know that for sure because I've never actually tried already-eaten grass.. I'm just imagining here). So they put your sandwich on a baguette (natch).¹  Then, you get to choose what to put on it. So far this sounds a lot like Subway, for example, but it's pretty much a whole different category of food. But anyways you choose stuff but their stuff is not like "white or orange" plastic cheese like at Subway, but like huge thick slices of fresh goat cheese or blue cheese or camembert or whatever. And so we had these sandwiches and they were good. Got it?

After eating lunch, we continued walking around a bit. We went in Les Galleries Lafayette to look for some cool stuff but we didn't find much. We ALSO went in a book store and I bought three French (language) books. One is Une fantaisie du doctor Ox by Jules Verne, one is Gatsby le magnifique by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and one is La Légende de now pères by Sorj Chalandon. The first one is quite short so I figured it would be a good one for me to start doing some French reading. The second one is of course the Great Gatsby translated and thought it would also be good because I know the book and won't be lost while reading it if I don't understand some stuff, and the third one is another actual French book (a new one) and it was in the section where the staff or whoever suggests some books and I think it one some prize for young French authors so I thought that one would be good. Below is a picture of some statue in a square in the city centre.

After some more walking my ank was bothering me so we decided to sit down in the Place Victor Hugo. There is where Sandi wrote in her journal and I started reading my Jules Verne book. After a while we were a bit tired since we stayed up late-ish last night and woke up early because I guess now that I'm a worker my body is used to getting up early so we had to go for coffee. There's this awesome thing in France called Café Gourmand that pretty much any restaurant has where you get a coffee with three random mini desserts. Maybe I've mentioned this before. Or maybe you know this already. In any case, we got those and sat outside in the sun and they were pretty darn(ed -- ?) good. In the pictures below it kind of looks like we have two coffees each but the second cup is actually just Chocolate Mousse. And the randomness came in where Sandi got some tiramisu-like dessert and I got an apple pie but it was actually pear I think but I said apple pie first cause then you'd have a better idea of what it was. The first picture below is Victor Hugo and you can just almost see the Bastille in the background on the Chartreuse mountain.

This is quite the long post, eh? If you've made it this far I'm quite impressed. So after that we made our way back home for a siesta which was followed by (and is currently still being followed by) posting some of these pictures with some rambling commentary. On the way home (our last weekend in Adagio!) we walked a little bit in the park that will be right across from our new place that we move into on Wednesday! In this park there is a big tower -- the significance of which I'm not sure. But it looks like (as you can see in the bottom-left of the picture) they also have the cauldron or whatever you call it where they probably had the Olympic Flame back when Grenoble had the Olympics in the 60's. Anyways, it's a pretty sweet park and for this picture (as with the café gourmand pictures) I didn't use Instagram -- just the regular iPhone camera -- and you can therefore see how I'm totally telling the truth when I say it's full-on blue sky with no clouds. Also, I just looked at the weather page and the past two days Grenoble has hit the record highs! I looked this morning and I think before it was like 19.7 degrees in the 1970's or something and now I looked again and it says 20 in 2012 (obviously today). Cool I'd say. But it's supposed to start getting a little cooler next week and there's a 30% chance of rain on Monday! For our moving day (not that we have that much to move) it's supposed to be nice and sunny again though...

1. Naturally.