daveandsarah.ca

Updates from Sunny Sydney

2012-01-29T01:28:00.001+01:00

It's been two months since I last wrote anything - and it seems that so much has happened in that time. I may try to capture a few of the events in more detail, but to start, here's a very light roundup of what's been going on, and some quick updates from down under.

First was leaving France. It was a whirlwind for both of us. There was a lot to do, and then a baby on top of that. Overall, the move was swift and relatively well executed (not that we had much to do with that). Over the span of three days we managed to go from having an apartment, to being totally packed and living in a B&B, to travelling 25 hours by plane with 8 suitcases, a baby and a cat, to landing in Nevada.

We had a very nice Christmas break with our Family. Winter in Reno is interesting. It's a desert that's high in the mountains. So, it's very dry (no snow), but still very cold. It can change in temperature by about 20 degrees between midnight and lunch time.

The view from my inlaw's backyard

We spent a lot of the holidays eating, and drinking, and shopping. Overall, very therapeutic.

We also managed to fit in a short trip to Vancouver where we got to catch up with some friends, and a lot of family. I even got to say good bye to a few colleagues in person when we were near the old Vancouver office for a drink.

Being able to spend Baby's First Christmas with family was amazing. I'm so glad we got as much time as we did between jobs (three weeks total) to chill with friends and family before travelling out this way. France felt far away; Australia is much further.

This was a lucky shot - most of the time he was chewing on the boxes

As for Sydney - so far, things are going pretty well. The weather down here is lovely - high 20s and sunny most days. Much of the city is a little on the urban ugly side, but the downtown core, the parks, and the waterfront are all great. I haven't learned to surf yet, but it's still on the agenda. At the moment, we are staying in the center of the city, which looks a lot different than Paris.

We have a nice view of Darling Harbour from our hotel window

Oddly enough, I've been hearing a lot of French when I'm walking around the city. It's nice to hear it. I realized in the first week we were away that I'd actually forgotten a lot of English. The first time we went into a Starbucks in Reno I ordered "Un Cafe de la semaine s'il vous plait." The lady just looked at me for a while, until I realized what I'd done. So I instead said "Oh, sorry, I'll have a cafe de la semaine, please." It took me another week before I was ordering just 'coffee' again.

One downside though is that the cost of living is fairly high. To go out is comparable in cost (maybe a little less when you factor wage into the picture). But things at home are higher priced. Beer, for example, is about 7 or 8 dollars in most bars (which is fine), and 3.50 a bottle in the grocery store (about 3x more than I'm used to). Most things are running about a 20% markup, but some items like liquor, makeup or imported large objects (cars, furniture, etc) may be up to 150% more expensive. That said, there are way more options for things than in France, or even Canada. It's definitely more free market than any other place I've been, including the US.

So, there's the roundup. X isn't leaving a lot of time for updates at this point, but I'm going to try to schedule a little bit of time on the weekend for a quick update while he naps.

Tiny Blankets

2011-11-27T15:47:00.001+01:00

Last week I was in Germany again for my final mothership trip before we vacate Europe.

The trip itself was inconsequential. But I did leave with one head scratcher. I've now stayed in every hotel in the city next to our office, and each hotel has the same teeny blankets on there beds.

I really don't understand why you would want a blanket that doesn't at least cover the bed on which you are sleeping. Is this a German thing? Perhaps a government regulation on blanket sizes to encourage population growth?

27 days and counting.

2011-11-15T15:50:00.001+01:00

This week marks two important milestones.

This past Saturday, the clock rolled over on our last month in France.

On Thursday, we will hit our Parisian three year anniversary, and potentially my last day at the office, depending upon what the prefecture has for me.

As of today, my countdown is set to 27 days in France, 19 days left at the office, and 55 days until I start work in Australia. And there is so much to do!!

On the move again.

2011-11-09T10:53:00.000+01:00

A couple weeks back I quit my job and bought 2½ one way tickets to Sydney.

Surprised?

From the people I've talked to in the last few weeks, I guess this was seen as a bit of a surprise, but this was a long time coming. Sarah and I first started contemplating a variant of this plan back in October 2010 (or maybe October 2008, depending upon how far you want to dig).

You see, when we first moved to France, we made a choice to stay here for at least two years, no matter how homesick, down or lonely we may get. We didn't set a max, but the government gave me a three year visa, expiring in November 2011, that seemed to make a pretty good upper boundary.

So, last October we hit our two year mark, and we started asking ourselves how much longer we really wanted to stay. We didn't feel totally done in Europe, but we knew that if we stayed one more year, it would easily cascade into six - in 2011 I would renew my visa to 2014, at which time I could apply for a passport, and in 2016 I would qualify for a French pension. But were we really happy here? Well, kinda yes and kinda no. Once the consumerism withdrawal subsided, we noticed that the quality of life in France is exceptionally high and we came to really appreciate a lot of things about living here. However, not everything was rosy. There were a number of negative things in our lives at that time as well, things that I won't get into publicly - some were due to the environment, some due to work, and some were social. And finally, we really wanted to do the kid thing, and while we were happy to raise children in France from 6 weeks to 6 years we didn't really want them born or educated in France.

So, with all of that, we devised a plan.

Leave my job via a 1 year sabbatical.
Move to an English speaking country (other than Canada, USA, England, or South Africa).
Find a job.
Have a kid.
Find a new, better apartment in France and move back.

We did this. We just did it backwards.

That was weird... blog was broke but now it's fixed.

2011-09-03T18:41:00.001+02:00

Sarah pointed out to me this morning that she didn't have permission to read the blog. Strange. I checked just now and it looks like for some reason blogger had forced my account into a more strict privacy setting, where only specific people (from a list of size 0) have permission to read the site.

Should be fixed now.

Sorry about that.

Know your audience

2011-08-06T22:49:00.000+02:00

Sarah's mom found this on the Vatican's ticketing website. I think they don't fully understand their audience.

Soooo... what's with the funky name?

2011-08-04T14:13:00.004+02:00

Choosing a name is scary, and selecting something that fit our criteria was just about as painful as we had expected. In the end we short listed thirty names. Some were names of family members, others were names of people we found inspirational, and others were just names that had a nice ring to them. Now, surprisingly, getting to thirty was painful, but getting to within the legal limit (three names) and the correct sort order was actually not so bad.

We ended up giving each of the above names a trial run, and tested out which ones stuck. In France, you have to register your child within three days of birth, which didn't leave us with a ton of time so we came up with the idea to change names every time he ate. He'd start as Hugo, finish as Felix, and change to Eli three hours later. This actually worked out really well. We quickly discovered that most of the names either didn't fit the boy, or didn't fit our mouthes. Felix, as it turns out, is actually a bit of a pain to say -- try ripping it off thirty times, and then compare to something softer, like Eli. Hugo was nice, but didn't fit with the last name, and Sarah felt bad saying 'No' to her son every time she called him Noah.

By the third day, we were sifting through the final five:

Theodore - A great name, used by great people. Very flexible in terms of nicknames later in life.
Xavier - Leftover from a Patrick Stewart kick; this name came with French and English roots, but isn't super common in either place.
Augustus - It rolls off the tongue as a middle name, and may lead to world ~~domination~~ leadership later in life. Also, shortens to Gus, in case he needs a more modest version.
Reuben - From my Grandfather, who fought in Normandy. The only French connection in my family until now.
Elliot - An unexpected hanger-on from early spring. Had a nice ring, and shortens to Eli, one of the other options.

A few hours later, when we announced that Baby X was going to be called "Xavier Elliot Reuben" one of our friends very astutely asked 'Is that two middle names? Or two first?" Yeah, it's two first. ;) The final selection was pretty easy actually, we each had a favourite first name, and both agreed that Reuben was a stellar middle name. In the end, the final order really came down to practicality. Xavier suits the region, and is the only name on the list that won't come with pronunciation trouble. At least here, Sarah's Grandma can't quite get the hang of it, so he's Elliot to her.

How was the birth?

2011-08-02T14:48:00.000+02:00

Sometimes people ask you unexpected questions -- sometimes a lot of people unexpectedly ask you the same question. We had prepared ourselves for a lot of "How are you?" or "How is the baby?" but by far the most common question was "How was it?"

For me? Easy peasy.
For Sarah? Less easy.

Having been relatively removed from much of the process, the best answer that I could truthfully give was that things went pretty well. When pressed, I would add: Giving birth is like a 10 step marathon, with an explosion at the end. Things were good up until the explosion, and then there was yelling, and then there was baby, and then there were smiles.

Sarah made it through the first 5 steps with little to no issue (and nothing in the way of pain killers) in a relatively short amount of time. Steps 6-8 involved a lot of yelling, and the last bit was surprisingly short (at most 40 minutes, I think the pushing part was less than 10). The entire process lasted just over 9 hours from start to finish, which I think is pretty good for a first timer.

There are a few more details that I'll record here so that I can remind my wife from time to time. It seems newborn babies emit a short term memory erasing pheromone that causes mom to forget everything that happened in the preceding 5 hours. By writing this down, and regularly emailing it to Sarah, I hope to prevent having to buy a minivan in a few years. Those of you who are less interested in the details can safely stop here. There are no big surprises.

-----

First of all, it's important to mention that the birth was induced. This concerned a lot of our friends back home, as induction is normally only done in North America when there is a problem or when the mother is overdue; in all other cases, they take a wait and see approach. In France, it is much more common for Dr's to intervene directly in the health of their patient. When we asked the Dr's about why they were intervening (French Doctors are not likely to volunteer information) we got two solid answers. First, the baby's weight gain had been slowing down, and the Doctor hoped that the little guy would gain more weight, faster, out than in. Second, the date of the induction was a Friday, the last day before the weekend. By inducing on their schedule, the Hospital could be sure that all of the right people and facilities would be available. Adding to the whole thing was the fact that Sarah was basically ready to go, and had been at that state for about a week. Even though the estimated date was about a week later, the timing was right, so we might as well act.

On Friday morning, bright and much-too-early, we packed a bag and walked the six blocks to the hospital. After arriving, Sarah was given some time to make herself comfortable, and the mid-wife came in to conduct a few tests. At around 11:40, they hooked her up to an IV with a baby-inducing hormone drip.

As a side note, it's worth mentioning that the mid-wife does nearly all of the work in a French birth. A Doctor did come in a few times, but only to confirm an opinion or to see if everything was going according to plan. During the pushing part, the role of the Doctor was really quite limited... all he did was stand back and yell "Allez! Allez!". He should have brought pom-poms.

By noon, the contractions had started, and about twenty minutes later someone asked if Sarah would like her epidural now. For at least three months leading up to the delivery room Sarah had been going back and forth as to whether to do a natural vs epidural assisted birth. The Epidural rate in France is extremely high (over 95%), so it was just naturally assumed that drugs would factor in as early as possible. As the contractions began, she took the Canadian decision: wait and see. The mid-wife assured us that she could choose the epidural at any stage later on, so the risk was pretty minimal. After that, she came back in every 20 minutes to see if Sarah had come to her senses. Each time we said no, she smiled and gave us the 'crazy foreigner' look as she left the room.

So, what happened after that?
Well, like I said, the first five steps were really went by really quickly. It took a few hours, but Sarah averaged about 40 minutes per cm until she hit the halfway point. During this stage, pain relief can actually be managed with some back rubbing and words of encouragement. Sarah was hooked up to a machine that monitored both her heartbeat, and something related to contractions. About 10 seconds before each contraction the beeping from the machine would quicken in a kind of 'grab-something-pain-is-now' alarm. Between back rubbing, and teeth clenching, this part was actually, surprisingly, not so bad.

Part way through this process we realized that I was fulfilling the role of a tens machine -- small electro-pulse massagers that attach to your lower back. When I popped out to the nursing station to see if they had one, a nice English speaking mid-wife explained to me that Tens machines aren't used in France because everyone takes the epidural. And, besides, they are only really useful for the first 5cm, and Sarah was at 4, so there wasn't much point.

Turns out she was bang on with her estimate. Once Sarah made it to the halfway mark, the husband masseuse was fired. You'd have to ask her to confirm, but my impression is that the pain from 5-6cm was roughly equivalent to the sum of the sensation from 0-5cm. No amount of back rubbing seemed to help. It was time for drugs.

There are two really cool things about Epidurals here compared to Epidurals back home. First, when you get one back home, you are toast from the bellybutton down. Here, you are still completely functional (but walking is discouraged). Second, when they give you the Epidural here, they only set it up; they don't actually administer anything. All drugs are self-administered by the patient, with a machine regulated maximum set by the anaesthesiologist in advance. The patient is given a little button, and whenever you push it you get a beep, and a hit of drugs. I think the end result is the same as if the Dr had drugged you up herself, but the aspect of control is nice.

Forty minutes and four beeps later things were calm again. Our pastor -- who has much experience in this matter -- had warned me in advance that Sarah would swear like a sailor through much of the ordeal; hurling vitriolic obscenities at the person who 'got her into this mess'. But, I managed to get off relatively easy. As I texted to a friend during the 7th hour:

Things pretty much stayed that way until just over 8cm. The rest of what happened was very blur like. To put things in perspective Sarah hit the 8cm mark around 8:00 pm. After that, things went sort of like this.

The Mid-wife came to see what was happening, and then called for the anaesthesiologist. She asked if Sarah could feel her legs. Shocked that the answer as yes, she administered one, two, three more shots of whatever liquid magic she had given her earlier in the evening. Then the mid-wife yelled something in French, and people started pouring into the room as if an ambulance shaped clown car had just pulled up in the lobby. The table was lowered, stirrups were raised, tools were pulled from whatever nook they had previously been hidden in, and I think someone may have started boiling water, but I'm not sure.

The drugs started to kick in a little, and Sarah began losing feeling in her legs at the same time that I was losing feeling in my fingers. The nice lady with the drugs gave Sarah another shot and lined up dose number 5 while the pushing began. This is when I noticed that Sarah's sense of rhythm was a little off (not normally something I'd dare comment on) so I asked her a few questions and didn't get much in the way of a response other than something about tomatoes. My first thought was "Oh no! No wonder the drugs weren't working, you've put the thing in backwards and numbed her brain!! What are we going to do?!" I think that I may have vocalized that thought, because the anaesthesiologist stopped talking to me at that point. But, she did seem to agree that a fifth hit of magic juice was probably too much. There was more pushing, and a whole lot of people explaining to Sarah exactly when she was supposed to push, and that she should hold her breath when she does so, and that she she stop holding her breath when she stops pushing, and that she had to breathe in at certain points too, and, and and... of course all of this was coming at her in French, English, and some mixed dialect in between. The Doctor came in at this point to cheer like a football fan, and then everyone started yelling 'Go Go Go', 'Push, Push, Push', 'Allez! Allez! Allez!', 'Attaque! Attaque! Attaque!' and so on. Then yelling, cutting, yelling (from me this time -- I almost hit the floor during the episiotomy. If you don't know what that is, don't look it up. You're better off not knowing.), cheering, pulling, pushing, and finally baby. All was done at 9:02 pm.

At 9:05, she was holding our son.

At 9:06, she asked me to turn on Strauss's Second Horn Concerto. By 9:11, feet still in stirrups, covered in gore, and still breathless from the pushing, I kid you not, she used the words "...for the next one..." and then "...it wasn't really that bad...".

So, there you go. The official verdict right from the mommy's mouth --

"It wasn't really that bad."

Director to the set!

2011-07-30T15:15:00.002+02:00

For my birthday, my most excellent in-laws bought me a camcorder. With the kid coming, this was a pretty sweet gift.

My new toy.

I haven't actually held a video camera for about 20 years or so -- things have come a long way since then. This thing is tiny. Like, kid sized. And very light. Despite that, it shoots 1080i HD video, has a really great zoom, and the stabilization gives me tripod-steady video, even when zoomed, when I'm just hand holding.

The only down side is that the user is a horrible director. I've been thinking for years how I wanted to video tape every awesome moment of my kids first year, but I'd underestimated my lack of skill with a camera. So far I've been shooting a fair bit, but most of my video has been limited to 40 second clips of not much, or cheesy dad videos. I've been looking on amazon for some kind of 'How to take home video without looking like a dad' books, but without much luck. I think this might just be my fate.

Little Mr. X

2011-07-20T00:03:00.000+02:00

Xavier Elliot Reuben Holmes

Born June 24, 2011 in Levallois-Perret, France.

His first weigh in was at 2788 grams, and almost 49 cm.

How's young what's-his-name?

2011-06-19T21:06:00.001+02:00

As we are getting closer to baby time, we keep getting asked some variation of "are you there yet?" (the latest variation: "Isn't it about time for that creature to emerge and start serenading the world with its selection of desperate wailing pleas?!")

Answer: No. Not yet. And we aren't totally sure when he'll be here, but it's going to be soon.

Part of the problem is that we have three different dates depending upon the doctor's country of origin. We've learned that Babies don't really have a due date, but rather a due date range. North American doctors give the first date in the range as the due date. For us, that's June 24. French physicians err on the fashionably late side, and give the last date in the range. That'd be July 1st. British doctors have a totally different approach, and give the 'last date that you are allowed to be pregnant before medical intervention.' That's July 7.

On top of that, Sarah was at the doctor earlier this week and he mentioned that the cooking is done, and Sarah is ready to go. So this might happen sooner than we think. We are at the point now where the baby could come any time between now and early July.

Watch this space for updates. My phone is pretty much constantly in my hand these days, so as soon as something starts happening I'm sure I'll update here or facebook (or I'll pass out, time will tell).

300

2011-06-19T19:04:00.001+02:00

Just a note-this is post #300.

It took seven years to get this far, but I have a feeling that between the pics and baby's-first-posts we'll hit 400 by the end of 2012.

Moved, and almost laundered

2011-06-19T18:56:00.001+02:00

The move is two weeks over now, but the battle for a clean apartment rages on. Getting the old place spic and span was a long, but not too stressful process. It helped that we were able to employ a little familial assistance. Nick, Sarah's little brother, spent some time in Paris on his way to nowheresvillenstag Germany. This was the last two weeks of a three month long downtime that spanned Vancouver, Reno, Hong Kong, London, York and Paris. After three months vacation, I guess the offer to scrub floors in return for French wine and roast duck seemed like a good idea.

In addition to BIL, we also hired someone to clean the WC and SDB to a sparkling shine (I was only able to muster dull and suspiciously off-white). This was a brilliant idea that I plan to re-employ for general cleaning purposes in the short, medium and long term. Maybe just every otter Sunday?

The current challenge is clearing up the new place in time for it's new tenant. Despite the tidal wave of new baby clothes, we've almost vanquished the laundry pile of doom. I'm sitting here in a corner laundrymat to take care of the last of our whites. The kitchen is put together and the general furniture layout is basically settled. I spent Friday pushing all of the remaining boxes into a corner of the apartment, and plan to spend this afternoon cleaning up what's left. Then the remainder of this week will be inertuon-sorting my way to an orderly household.

And then, of course, it will all explode again in a flurry of diapers, burp bibs and empty cans of red bull.

Mostly Moved

2011-05-24T14:00:00.001+02:00

On Saturday, we managed to move just about everything from Apartment A to Apartment B – with a quick pass by two intermediary apartments to relieve them of their furniture.

All in all, things worked quite well. We had two friends, and two hired hands helping us out. This is the first time that I’ve hired someone to help me move, and my back would definitely do it again; although, I’d be a little more careful with our timing… a tight timeline led to a little bit of carelessness with some pieces. For the most part we should be able to buff out the problems, and a little bit of glue or drycleaning should resolve the remaining issues.

In any case, we are just about moved. As our appliances won’t arrive until closer June, we’ve opted to continue living in the old apartment for the next few week or so, after which we will make the switch to the new place. During that first week of June, we may be a little incomunicado, depending upon how long it takes to reconnect our internet and phone lines.

Also, if anyone needs the new address, just shoot me an email.

Moving Day

2011-05-21T10:21:00.000+02:00

Today, we are moving into the new place. Not completely, but mostly. All of our stuff will leave this apartment today (save for a suitcase of clothes, some cereal, and a cat) in a truck bound for Levallois. We managed to score a good deal on a moving sale, and will be picking up an apartment worth of furniture this afternoon. The only thing missing will be the fridge (Coming June 1) and stove.

Once all of the appliances are in place, we'll do the final move from here, and then schedule a day of wall scrubbing. (Truth be told, I'm probably gonna hire a maid. I hate scrubbing walls.)

Baby stuff... stuff and more stuff.

2011-05-09T00:16:00.000+02:00

This weekend we went to a bi-annual 'Bring and Buy' swap meet organized by the English Speaking Mothers group in France.

As we entered the sale room, it was clear that we were in for absolute CHAOS!!

The place was bustling with new and expecting moms, and the parents of toddlers desperately trying to free up space in their teeny parisian apartments. Above the din of screaming children you could hear hundreds of mothers haggling for the best priced booties, prams and nounou's. Clothes and books and blankies were flying everywhere, and this was at a slow period.

I don't think I was ready for this.

But, after some careful dodging and negotiation, we did manage to make a pretty decent haul for the prices. In total, we picked up a feeding pillow, a Baby Bjorn carrier, a Petunia Picklebottom diaper bag, a book on baby's first year, half a dozen (maybe more) organic cotton onesies, a cashmere sweater, 11 packages of curry, and a copy of Charlie Wilson's War. Total cost: 70 euro. Not bad.

But the the best thing we got was a lesson in just how much stuff you can accumulate in a very short period of time. We were talking with one of the vendors who was quite relieved to be going home with only a small pile - 5ft by 18in by 2 ft - of clothes. That's right - 15 cubic feet of clothing is a small pile. It seems she came at the beginning of the day with three times that much.

"Wow! That's a lot of stuff... And how many children do you have?"
"Oh, just the two, a boy and a girl."
"hurk!"

Looking around again we quickly got the sense that children are a great incentive for an un-be-leeve-able amount of useless shopping. We've managed to keep our consumerism relatively in check over the last few years, and the thought of owning our combined weight in baby clothes is just terrifying.

I think, the best trick is to set up a good trickle-down system where you find a parent about 9-12 months out of your schedule, and you can pass things down the line as yours outgrows them. We've been really lucky on the receiving end of this system so far, having received a crib, a pram, a baby carrier, and a few other bigger ticket items. What we really need is the next person down the line. Two friends of ours just got married this past weekend, and were given a nice long speech by the officiant on the duty of newlyweds to further the development of the French nation via French babies. Maybe with that kind of encouragement we might have a hand-me-down channel in just enough time.

Naming Conventions

2011-05-06T11:57:00.002+02:00

We’ve started closing off a lot of the stress items in the last two weeks: Where to live, where to give birth, will we sleep in July (we won’t) but the one that’s still outstanding is what to name our impending son. Names last a long time. Like, pretty much your whole life.
The big problem, of course, is that we hadn’t thought much about boy’s names. For some reason we got it into our heads early on that there was a girl on the way. Both of us were squirrelling away a super-secret list of awesome girls names that we were going to bust out at the second ultrasound. When the doctor gave us the news it took us both by surprise. For the next 3 days my mind struggled to come up with a name, but just ended up stuck in this obnoxious loop.

Jerome has since been removed from the list.
So, we’ve headed back to first-principles, and started by drafting a list of naming conventions by which to judge a name. Every time I’ve heard a male-ish name since then I’ve run it past these checks to see if it can make the short list.
Must be uncommon – but not too uncommon
We both grew up with pretty common names. My wife actually shared her name with 20% of the ladies in her graduating class. My name was common enough to warrant a song. Consequently, we are looking for something unusual, but not so unusual that a pronunciation lesson must accompany every first handshake.
And thus, Dave, Sarah, Bob, Tom and Xobile were struck from the list.
Should have a respectable shortform
Richard is not on the list for obvious reasons. However, we are also striking monosylabic names like John as they aren’t easily shortenable.
Should not imply a future career
Names like Cletus and Bubba come with a big rig license. What if he wants to become a Doctor, or a Prime Minster (Please welcome Prime Minister Leeroy!)
By the same token, Sarah is a little against the grander options, like Augustus and Percival, for fear his feet won’t fill the shoes that came with the name.
Must avoid obvious social memes
One of the really interesting things about baby names, is that there are huge trends in baby names that occur without people realizing. Normally what will happen is that some movie, book or band will come to popularity with an obscure name, and the world collectively thinks “Wow, Brittney is a really unique name. I’m looking for a unique name for baby. I bet no one else will think of this…”
Sadly, this sometimes leads to the axing of really great names. Isabella and Jacob and Edward used to be great names for a kid. But, no longer. Thanks Twilight!
Must avoid less obvious social memes
There’s also a certain set of names that fall into a very specific genre that we are trying to avoid. Nerd-names. And by that, I don’t mean Poindexter, I mean names that implicate the kids parents as openly geeky.
For example – I once worked with a woman who tried very hard to hide her middle name, Arwen, whenever possible. With a name like that, it came as no surprise that her parents were SCA members from a Science background.
This one might be the most difficult though, as these names tend to feel pretty natural for us. We got caught off guard one evening when debating the top three list of Patrick, Xavier and Jean-Luc. Not that there’s anything wrong with any one of those, but we definitely had to re-examine their merits once we found the thread.
Also shed from the list, Logan, Tiberius, Luke, Han, Xander, Fox, and a few others.
The List
The list so far is short, and a little Irish. But, we are managing to make some progress. In the end though, it will be in my hands. The one responsibility that is definitely attributed to the Father is the name registration after the baby is born, as this must be done within 3 days of birth, and the mom is very unlikely to want to stand in line at city hall at that point.
I guess that power is probably tempered a little bit by the realization that at some point, you’ve got to tell your wife.
In any case wish us luck, and feel free to make suggestions in the comments area!

House Hunting in Paris - the great news.

2011-04-30T00:27:00.000+02:00

So, after waiting for 23 days, the landlord that we had applied to out in Levallois has FINALLY called us back. Normally, I wouldn't have the patience to wait this long, but this place is pretty amazing.

It has rooms (two of them!), is 20% larger, and 10% cheaper than the place we have now, and it's six blocks from both my office, and the Women's and Children's hospital. There's a garden view out back, and a balcony that overlooks a park in the front. It'll be a little costly to move into as we will have to buy new furniture and appliances, but we are keeping our fingers crossed that we can find someone who's having a moving sale to keep our costs down there.

We haven't signed the papers yet, but if everything goes well, we should be in a new place before the end of the month.

iPhone and GMail password problems

2011-04-06T11:36:00.002+02:00

This is just a quick note for my own sanity, and hopefully the sanity of others.

From time to time my Gmail password stops working on my iPhone. Seemingly for no reason, the mail application complains that my password is incorrect, even though the I haven’t changed my password, or the settings on the phone.

What’s actually happened, is that Google has locked remote access to the account for some reason. This happens to me about once every three months. A quick search on the internet shows me that a lot of other people have run into this problem too, but very few of them have found the resolution.
If this ever happens to you, all you have to do is go here, and complete the unlock form.
https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha

[edit] You may also have to re-enter you password one time.

House Hunting in Paris - the good news.

2011-04-03T21:00:00.003+02:00

We've been looking for a new place for a long time now, and we're getting better at it. Certainly it helps having some external motivation by means of baby. I think that finding a place really just requires a more French oriented mindset than we had before. That is to say, approaching the problem with a longer view, more patience, better French languages skills and a little bit of flirtatious story telling thrown in for good measure.

So, what do you have to do to actually find an apartment in Paris?

Be patient. There are good apartments in Paris, but they appear rarely, and disappear quickly.
Be persistent. Look at the listings on various listing services every, single, day. Call when something appears as soon as possible, and don't be shy about pressuring the agent on the other end.
Speak French. If you call and are obviously a foreigner you have a very high chance of being hung up on (this is true for most of the French service industry). Expats make great tenants, but they also make for frustrating conversations. Sarah has been calling the agency for every call, which is paying off in spades. Each time she calls her French is better, and she is way more confident.
Save up. It's expensive, there's no doubt about it. The French perform most large financial transactions by saving up for a long time, waiting for the right moment (and the perfect product) to come around, and then making a large one time outlay. The feeling is that it's better to buy the right thing once, than to mess around with several bad options, and that it's OK to save for when that right day comes.
Think about it as an investment - or a vacation. If you are looking for a place for a short time, like a years worth of school, then spend like it's a vacation. Spend more on an awesome place, or spend less on a crummy place that you know you are going to leave soon anyhow. If you are sticking around, then look for a place as if you will live there for 10 years. Don't settle for good enough; invest in something that will last.
Flirt a little. Maybe this means batting your eyelashes, or maybe it just means telling a joke, or a story, but no matter what, it's critical that you make a connection. French people are taught from a young age to distrust strangers (a very broadly defined term), and you need to break that stranger barrier if you are going to have the landlords trust you enough that they will rent to you.
Bring your dossier. Flirting will get you only so far; you also have to prove that you're not a deadbeat. This is where the dossier comes in. A good dossier includes photocopies of your identity cards (or passport photos), previous years income tax statements, last 3 pay stubs, utility bills, references, etc. Many people will also ask for a guarantor (which we don't have) and bank details. It's basically an invitation for identity theft, so it took us a little bit of getting used to before we could be this open with a total stranger. In retrospect, I'm sure that we lost some great apartments in the past because we had a substandard dossier.

I'm sure there other tips, but these have helped a bunch already. We started our hunt formally about a month ago, and we've already been to see three places (well, two, we forgot to bring the address to one of them, so we just had a sandwhich and went home), and put a bid in on one. That might not sound like a lot, but it feels like a big win for me.

To give you an idea on hit percentage, on the first day of searching, two friends and I hit the streets to visit a few agencies and see what they had. Six hours and more than 30 agencies later, I had one listing worth looking at. I offered to leave an information sheet with a few of the agencies, so that they would call me if something came up, but they just looked at my search terms and told me that it was impossible (French for difficult).

On the internet side, I've been searching, and Sarah's been calling, each day for the last three weeks. We started out only looking on the two most popular sites (Seloger, and PAP), but since expanded our search to include a few others, most reliably La Foret and A Vendrer, A Louer. We've been burned a number of times by waiting too long (2 hours) to call. The best places go up and come down within 4 hours. By checking, and calling, a few times a day we are getting much further along in the process.

It's a tough market, but we are making progress, and it's just a matter of time before I get to write about "House Hunting in Paris - the Great news!"

House Hunting in Paris - the bad news.

2011-04-02T21:00:00.001+02:00

Looking for a place to live in the City of Light is, like most things, just a little bit more difficult than in Canada. I should stress the 'little bit more' part of that. It's not that anything is dramatically different, but there are several things that are just that teeny bit more painful than back home, and they start to add up. Here's a few of the more obnoxious things.

It's a hot market. Most listings are just up for a few days so you have to act fast.
It's expensive. When you move into a new place, you typically pay something between three and five and a half times the monthly rent in fees and charges. Add to this the cost of new furniture and appliances (even if you have your own, you'll almost always need to buy one new piece to fit the new space), movers (another months rent), and change-of-account fees for the utility company.
Most of the apartments are privately owned. This, combined with the fact that people don't move often (see above on cost) mean that you are usually dealing with an inexperienced owner. Someone who has had maybe 6 tenants, ever. To their benefit, most of the hard work is contracted out to an professional agency, so this helps a bit.
There's no central listing service. Real estate listings are entirely privatized; if you want good coverage, you have to watch multiple places.
Landlords are very, very risk averse with new tenants. There are a lot of laws in France designed to protect tenants from bad landlords. Probably too many laws. A friend-of-a-friend offered me a place when we first moved here in 2008, "Just as soon as I can evict my tenants. They've stopped paying rent." That apartment hit the market in October last year.
There's a shortage of apartments of a certain size. Most of the apartments in Paris are either small studios for week-day commuters and students, or they are lavish luxury apartments for people with much larger salaries than me.
There's a shortage of apartments of a certain quality. At least 50% of all of the listings I see, or places I look at, have some major flaw. A lot of it has to do with the fact that these buildings are very old. A friend of ours lives in an apartment built around 1740. The building code was less strict back then.
You are limited in how much you can pay. By law, you are not allowed to pay more than one third of your net earnings for your housing. Having that hard cap on your upper rent limit is a little annoying; a few euro more might brighten the apartment landscape a lot. On the other side, from experience, I wouldn't really want to pay much more than this amount.

We've gone apartment hunting a couple times since arriving. Once assisted, and three times since then on our own. It's a pain, that's all there is to it. We are also discovering that there's a reason that most of my colleagues don't live in Paris. There are a lot of commuters in Paris, most coming from the outlying communities where it's quieter, cheaper, newer, and bigger. Although, also further from Paris. A few people have started recommending these places to us, but really, we moved to France to live in Paris. If I wanted to commute to work, I'd move to Central London and buy a Eurostar pass.

Canada Votes!

2011-03-28T14:56:00.001+02:00

So, on Friday the government fell. This means we are up for an off-season election.

This means that in the next 18 months I’ll get to watch three pertinent federal elections: Canada, US, and France. I’m stoked! Politics are my reality TV.

Anyhow, one of the really interesting things that’s come out of the election so far is the Vote Compass. It’s an awesome tool from the CBC and some researchers over at UofT that helps give you an idea of the political party that is most aligned with your personal feelings on a fairly wide spectrum of topics. It covers everything from military budgets, to social programs, to the economy or the legalities of Marijuana.

If you’re an eligible voter, give it a shot and see if it lines up with your default choice.

If you’re not Canadian, it’s still worth trying out just to learn a little more about the Canadian political system, and how it fits into your world view.

Paupiette de Veau

2011-03-14T18:55:00.001+01:00

So, for the record, a Paupiette de Veau is a meatball, wrapped in (a thin) steak, wrapped in bacon, wrapped in fat, with a slice of tomato on top.

It's also a LOT of meat. I consider this to be the French equivalent of Turducken.

An introduction to taste.

2011-03-12T15:32:00.000+01:00

In the last week our baby has grown taste buds and is starting to form as sense of what he likes, dislikes, favourites foods, etc. So we decided that we are going to help the little runt discover new foods now, before he has the opportunity to shut his mouth and throw spaghetti at us.

This morning, as I was preparing to go to the market, Sarah mentioned to me how she thought maybe she should eat a mushroom, just for the purposes of passing on the taste experience. This is a pretty big statement coming from my wife; she doesn't distinguish between fungal varieties, and considers chantrelle's and athlete's foot to be in the same culinary family. Anyhow, she said this to me, perhaps in a short lucid moment in between dreams, and then promptly tucked herself back into bed, leaving me to go to the market on my own.

I'm taking this as free license to rework our standard menu items. So, this week, I tried to avoid our standard fare as much as possible, and try out a few of the things we never order.

On the menu this week:

Paupiette de Veau (Veal, wrapped in bacon, covered with a tomato slice and some olives, and then wrapped in a mesh of fat that holds the whole thing together)
Lobster mushrooms, fried with butter and garlic.
Roast duck leg - Still looking for a good recipe.
A 'mélange de champignons marinés', or mixture of wild mushrooms marinated in olive oil.
Sundried tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella.
Fresh Avacado with an organic lemon and olive oil dressing and a pinch of 'sel guerande'.
A Sweet variety of potato, sort of a mix of yukon gold and turnip.
Mango Lassi, made with sheep's yoghurt.
And then the more standard fare of veggies, fruits, cheese and olives.

I didn't want to totally overdo it, so I drew the line about half way through the market. Assuming this weeks experiment goes well, I think that next saturday I'll move on to artichokes, various terrines (a kind of Pate) and the mysterious knobbly root vegetable that I see from time to time.

Sympathy Weight

2011-03-10T08:23:00.000+01:00

I never expected to get so big during pregnancy. I'm not even the pregnant one!
But, it's finally happened, yesterday I stood up straight, looked down, and saw nothing but belly and floor. With no feet to speak of, I'd officially failed the tubbiness test and moved into the realm of fat guy.

I guess a lot of this has to do with the Sarah's quickened eating schedule, and my portion control being relative to hers. When she's hungry, I make food, and I always serve her about 20% less than I serve myself. It is not wise to compare diets with a pregnant lady. She's saving up for something, I'm just getting fat. I think I'm going to have to start taking some drastic measures and cut back on the butter and beer until I can tell what colour of shoes I'm wearing.

The great Parisian snowstorm of 2011

2011-03-03T19:44:00.001+01:00

It seems that this winter has been crazy this year on a global scale, but especially in our home region.

We've heard stories from our friends in Victoria of a 25cm snowfall inside of a day, while In Vancouver, temperatures plummeted well below the -1 or -2 norm to a frigid 15 below. And from Prince George, one friend captured te essence of the season with a recent facebook post: "You know it has been very cold for a long time when [at] -28 you go out to play." I think in PG the mercury dipped below -40 a few times over the season.

Well, we haven't been totally without our frozen disasters overseas. But I think they might be on a different scale. In early January, Paris suffered through a snow storm that effectively shut down the city for two days. Here's a picture of the scale of the damage.

These are the sorts of pics of snowstorms Vancouver that I used to see as a kid on the news. Growing up in Northern BC one of our favorite past times was to make fun of the southerners running from snowflakes. (This was later replaced by the southern pastime of calling your relatives in March to let them know that you would be at the beach while they shoveled their walk.)

In all fairness, I think most of these low impact shutdowns comes from the fact that the city workers are just completely unprepared for the weather. As we walked around town we watched people attempting to clear the snow. Not one person had a shovel. My favorite was this guy; he is actually pushing a big squeegee on a stick down the street.

It’s a bo(y/mb)!

2011-02-25T16:05:00.001+01:00

This past Monday we went for the second official, fourth actual, sonogram. This is ‘gender’ one, where we get to find out which colour of booties to buy.

I arrived a touch earlier than my wife, and had to push my way past a few agitated security guards and a middle aged couple in order to get into the main office. For some reason they kept pointing at the ground and yelling. Bunch of tourists.

Sarah’s decided that our Doctor’s habit of maintaining a 60 minutes lag is best addressed with a corresponding half hour check-in delay. Had I known this in advance, I think I would have been appropriately delayed as well; instead I got to enjoy the peace and quiet of the waiting room until Sarah called around 3:20 to tell me she couldn’t come in. The door and, soon after, the street, had been barred from access by the Police.

I wanted to see this for myself, so I poked my head out the front door and found myself looking right at a couple of stressed out officers standing where the security guards had been a few minutes earlier. They didn’t have a lot of patience for anyone attempting to come into, or out of, the door. A portly Parisian policeman ushered me back to where I’d come from and made some reference about an issue of paramount security. I asked if I could leave, and he shook his head, and then let everyone else in the building know that the office would be closed indefinitely, and we were not permitted to exit or enter the building for an indeterminate amount of time. Then he said a bunch of stuff in rapid French and left through the front door.

“Qu'est-ce qui se passe?” I asked the receptionist.

“Je ne sais pas.Un problème de sécurité tres important. Une bombe peut-être…” She replied calmly.

“A bomb!?!”

“Peut-être.” She shrugged - of course she would shrug – and got back to work.

OK. Great. I’m stuck in a building, there is potentially a bomb buried underneath the front door and my pregnant wife is trying to get in. Super.

Meanwhile, in the outside world, Sarah had been directed into the next available door on the street, which the policeman had told her was the alternate entrance to the Doctor’s office. She gave me another call and asked what was up. I told her: “It seems there is a bomb in front of the door. There might be a back door on the other side of the building.”

“A bomb?! Should we be concerned?”

“I dunno. I asked the lady. She shrugged.” I really hate it when they shrug. “Where are you?”

“I think the Portuguese embassy. They can’t help me. I’m going to see if there’s another door.”

Anyhow, long story short, Sarah made it into the building around 3:50, just in time for our 3:00 appointment. The appointment was slightly longer than usual, on account of the Doctor leaving us every few minutes to watch the bomb squad, who were working just 2 meters outside of his window, but it was eventful.

After measuring the head, the legs, the arms, the legs again, and so on, he broke the news that ‘C’est un garcon.’ I don’t know how he could tell, the only sure fire sign that I’m aware of having never been visible on the screen. But he was very confident.

So, if you find yourself looking for booties or bonnets, better stick with blue. It's going to be a boy.

For our next trick: coming up with a list of names!

Médecine du travail

2011-02-18T14:03:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I went to my second, biennial visit to the “Médecine du travail”, or Occupational Health Specialist.

My first appointment wasn’t so great. I didn’t really speak french, so the dialog between me and the doctor was very difficult. I understood the basic questions: Does your head hurt? Does your neck hurt? Do your wrists hurt? etc. But when it came to the phrase “Please remove your pants* and stand in the corner.” I was sure that I’d misheard her. The rest of that interaction was a little bit awkward.

This year I was ready. I even considered ironing my boxers for the presentation, but thought that it might lead to a psychological assessment post evaluation. The appointment went smoothly, and at the end she smiled, handed me a piece of paper ranking my state of health, and said “Pour un developer, vous etes sante.”

“For a developer, you are healthy.”

Thanks, I guess. I don’t know how much lower that bar is, but I managed to scrape over it with nothing more than an ‘Ooh la la’ when I told her how much coffee I drink. In any case, I took my certificate of underachievement back to the office, and I’m able to continue my work for the next two years with the assurance that I am, in fact, “Apt”.

This whole ritual seemed totally bizarre, and exceptionally French, when I first went through it two years earlier. Why should I have to prove that I’m healthy? Shouldn’t I be able to work regardless of my ability? After some time to better understand the way of thinking over here, I’m actually really happy to see this kind of system in place.

The real focus of the Médecine du travail is to evaluate the occupational health and well being of an employee, and the relative working conditions that the employer provides. The benefits to all parties actually seem pretty great when I think about them.

For the state, it’s much more economically efficient to invest in preventative maintenance and early detection than to have to pay out higher benefits – either through the medical or the welfare system - only after something goes wrong.

For the employer, it’s nice to have access to state funded occupational safety experts who can provide consulting services on how to better layout your workplace. I imagine that regular check-ups also serve to reduce the number of work related health and safety lawsuits that a company has to deal with.

For the employee, regular checkups help to detect gradual deterioration problems that they might not be aware of. It also provides a way for an employee to privately raise an health issue to someone that has the authority to mandate a change in the workplace. One of my colleagues once told me the story of when he first told his Médecine du travail that he suffered from pain in his neck. Within a week, the employer had purchased, and reconfigured, a new workstation for him to help avoid worsening the problem. He was also prescribed phyisotherapy to help treat the problem before it became debilitating.

After some reflection, I think that my original ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it mentality that I developed in North America has changed slightly. The let’s-make-sure-it-doesn’t-break idea seems like it would work just as effectively, if not more so. Also, speaking as a resource, I prefer the idea that I am considered as something to be maintained and repaired instead of worn out and replaced.

* Note: I have since told this story to many people, several of whom are British by birth. After getting a lot of strange looks, I discovered a small British-ism that I was previously unaware of. Apparently the word pants in North America, and in France, means the “long pieces of cloth that cover your legs”. The British call these things trousers, and reserve the use of the word pants for when they are talking about underwear.

Building on bad habits

2011-02-18T13:28:00.001+01:00

This site… it’s been pretty dead. I know. I am thinking back over the last year or so and I’m pretty sure that I’ve done quite a bit, but you wouldn’t know it by looking here. I consider this site to be a diary of sorts, so I think it’s a sad state of affairs if the only things that show up on the highlights collection over the last 12 months were a trip to Portugal, a trip to Normandy, some Happy Noodles, and a mysterious man with a wooden cart.

At least in the case of the noodles, I can update that we had many more food related adventures. The one following the noodles was definitely eventful; but, perhaps its better left untold.

Sometimes laziness can be a good thing.

As I look back over the last 12 months, I can definitely target a specific point as to when things went black. Back in March I opted to celebrate the 40-days of Lent by taking a break from the internet (and thus this blog) instead of the 6 weeks of Pescetarianism that typifies the season traditionally. As all good brain hackers know, it takes roughly 30-40 days to form a habit, and so my 40 days of lent became a bad habit of non-communication that I am just now about to break out of.

Today marks my first week of non-blogginess-recovery.

In an attempt to get things back rolling again, I’m going to be shooting for 4 posts a week for the next 6 weeks, concluding April 1st – annual “Dave’s not allowed on the internet” day.

Wish me luck. Nag me if I’m lagging. And please feel free to comment!

Bring out yer dead

2010-11-16T10:31:00.001+01:00

This morning, when I left my apartment, I was greeted by a little French man who was standing in the street beside a home made wooden cart. He waved at me as he stood there, loudly ringing a Salvation Army Santa sized bell as loudly as he could.

Other than acting as a community alarm clock, I really have no idea what he was doing. I mean, yes, it's flu season here in Paris, but I don't think we've hit the plague collector stage just yet.

My mind jumped to tinker, or tin collector, but I have a hard time believing that roaming tinkers still come to Paris. People here have a much stronger culture of repairing old items for certain, but in the city, we are still very much consumers. I can buy a kettle for a few euro on the corner, I don't imagine that this poor fellow would get many customers. At least, not in my part of town.

I don't suppose anyone else has any ideas?

Normandy (Part 2)

2010-10-31T16:35:00.001+01:00

We spent this weekend in north-eastern Normandy. We took a bus there and back, which was a nice way to see the countryside. We also got to experience long-weekend traffic madness, and truck stop coffee. Both are largely unchanged from back home.

This area reminds me a lot of Southern Ontario in the autumn, with huge expanses of leafy trees, all painted different shades of green, gold, purple and red. There are more cows here though, and decidedly less snow.

So much of France seems to be geographically similar to the eastern side of the Canadian shield. It's not quite as flat as Saskatchewan, but close. The scenery goes on, and on, only broken up by deciduous trees, farmland or giant metal towers, depending upon what parts of the country you are in. The flatness of the countryside extends all the way into the ocean at Houlgate. In the morning when the tide is low, you can walk straight out into the ocean for about a kilometer, along seashell covered sandy beaches. There's almost no slope to the land at all, so when the tide rises, it doesn't come in high, like it does back home, it comes in long.

This shows the tide about halfway in. Two hours earlier, the land went for twice as long, and by dusk there wouldn't be much left here but the cold, cold water of the Atlantic.

It was a quick trip out an back, and we didn't get an opportunity to see much war history. We found out after we got here that the storming happened a little further west of where we were. Houlgate isn't much of a historical center at all actually. Since the railway came in 1860, it's role has been pretty much restricted to cottage country. Nearly every house you see in the village can be described as a cottage (or villa) by the sea.

We are pretty sure that this is the most perfect house for haunting that we've ever seen. Perfect for Salty Jean-Claude, the ghost of a lonely fisherman.

The one tourist attraction we did find was a Minigolf course in the city center. Everything here was the same as back home, except for hole 9. This is the hole
I always wanted when I was ten. Basically, there is a step on one end, a batting cage at the other, and nothing in between but grass. You just have to wind up and hit the ball as hard as you can towards the other side. Sarah nailed the opening in her first try.

With our shoes full of sand, and our bellies full of cider, we are heading back to Paris again to meet up with Nick. His ship will be pulling into "Paris" tomorrow, which will be a great opportunity to show him the sites. You can tell he comes from the same genetic stock as his sister. When we asked him what Parisian thing he'd most like to do: drink champagne under the eiffel tower, see the art at the louvre, or eat snails and ground beef, he opted instead for the most magical kingdom of all: Eurodisney.

Normandy (Part 1)

2010-10-29T19:48:00.001+02:00

This weekend is the first of two long weekends in November. We will be spending tonight, Saturday and Sunday on the Normandy coast in the city of Houlgate.

I'm not sure how wise it is to go to the beach in November, but between the history, and the cider, I should be able to keep my mind off of the seaside chill.

Pictures to follow, hopefully tomorrow if I have Internet.

Kicked out.

2010-10-27T01:40:00.001+02:00

Tonight marks the first time that I've ever been thrown out of a taxi. I wasn't even drunk/high/stabbing someone in the backseat. What started out as a question led to our cab driver pulling over and making the jerking-thumb motion -- universal symbol for GTFO -- that would leave us standing on the side of the road.

This evening we were saying good bye to a good friend who is heading to New York on Thursday. We caught the metro halfway home, but missed the last train that would have gotten us the rest of the way. Fortunately for us, we bumped into a girl from Fargo that was equally out of luck and heading in the same direction as we were, so we opted to split a cab.

A few minutes later we found ourselves 5 euros and 50% closer to home. We were also at Lauren's stop. "6 euro" the driver told us, "Minimum charge."

I'm pretty sure that's the only english phrase that he could perfectly parrot to his annoyed customers.

A few minutes of arguing got us nowhere, and we agreed to just pay the 6 euro. We were going another km anyway, and would probably finish the night at 10 euro total, so it didn't really matter.

However, this is when he RESETS the meter! Seriously, do they not know how to split a cab?

Anyhow -- our protests were not well received (or maybe just mispronounced?) and we ended up thumbing another car down before actually getting to where we wanted to be.

Sa m'enerve.

Happy Noodle

2010-10-18T23:55:00.001+02:00

A little more than a year ago, we found "The Great Canadian", a Canadian style pub that overlooks Notre Dame from the left bank. Since then, we have maintained a floating invite with anyone interested on Monday nights (chicken wing night) for drinks and some gnosh. We don't always make it, and sometimes we dine alone, but it's been pretty cool having a regular open invite for purveyors of cheap pints in a city with crazy high sin taxes.

What's been less cool is that meeting once a week at the same place has gotten in the way of experiencing the rest of the food that Paris has to offer, and there is plenty. Worse, is that we regularly find ourselves back there on the off nights as well. People keep thinking "oh you're Canadian! We should meet for drinks at the Canadian pub."

So, until the end of November, we have collectively agreed to boycott TGC and try to get out to a few other places instead.

Tonight was the first experiment. Someone had suggested a shanghai noodle bar near the marais called Happy Nouilles where they make their own noodles. There's a video of the Happy Noodlemaster at work on their website: http://happynouilles.com/

This, and the neighboring pub, were both a great first experience into new restaurants. Cheap noodles, good times, and a happy hour that lasts until midnight.

I think next week will be our turn to pick the place. Should be difficult to follow this opening act.

Back and away again

2010-09-06T07:33:00.001+02:00

We returned from July, tanned, rested and ready to get back to normal life. Five weeks of vacation was just what the Dr ordered to slow down our engines.

There are some definite perks to a European contract.

It started off nice. August always does. So many people are gone in the month of August that it's really more like an at home sabbatical than rejoining the rat race. Sarah and I even dared a trip to the busiest place on earth, and were shocked that nobody else was there. Most of the rides had, at most, a ten minute wait, and we actually just walked straight on to the Pirates of Caribbean ride totally unobstructed.

But, it wasn't meant to last. Somebody had greased up the back-to-work on-ramp while we were gone, and our lives quickly careened back to our normal break neck speed.

On my end, I hit the ground running by losing half (3/6) of my dev team within the first few days back at the office (we are now down to two). Couple this with an impending major delivery for the company, the need to do a major IT overhaul, and the threat of doubling our user base within the next six months and you have the makings of a very busy month.

On the other side, poor Sarah got more than she bargained for when she offered to help the Church with some organizing. What started as a revamp of some smallish internal things quickly turned into a complete overhaul of the Church's organizational structure and programming. Additionally, an update of the global address book became a full on CRM implementation. All of which, of course, was scheduled to go live at the end of the month.

Needless to say, we both needed a break again in September and we were very lucky with our scheduling and vacation planning. With the help of our friends, we will be rejoining the world of the budget jet-setter this month. I'm taking the last two weeks this month for a trip to London, and a Mediterranean cruise. Sarah, who has a more flexible employer, has actually already left, and will be spending the next two weeks cruising the western med through Spain, Lisbon and Gibraltar.

Hopefully the next time we come back, we can just stick to the bike lane.

A quick burst and a mild delay

2010-07-29T10:06:00.001+02:00

Tonight is our last night in amarante. This means it's the last night that I will have reliable wireless for a little while. I'm going to try to upload a few different things over the next 9 hours followed by a five day silence.

And then... All ofthe leftover details.

Amarante: Our work (Part 3)

2010-07-29T00:51:00.000+02:00

The last three days on the worksite have been pretty light. Habitat hadn't really anticipated having a group at all during this time, so the planned work was low.

We did manage to finish the tiling, and as much of the painting as they would let us do. The exterior of the house is cemented and painted as well, and the roof is done except for a tiny patch that is being left open until the very end so that people can access all of the wiring.

We also managed to build up some small retaining walls along the exterior, and change the orientation of the entrance a little to allow for a stoop. This is where Sarah spent the better part of her time this week.

Under the cardboard is tile that matches the wall. These are two of the bedrooms and the edge of the kitchen. Below is the rest of the same room.

We will be the last Habitat group to work on the house before it is handed over to it's new owner, Lourdes, and her family. As you can see, there is still plenty of work left to do. The rest of it will be finished off by private contractors, so that the final product looks as good as it possibly can. Habitat's mission is to build cheap houses for people in need, but they also put a huge focus on making homes that people will be proud of.

To close off our time here, we bought a small housewarming gift for Lourdes, and a case of beer for the contractors that had been helping. I think the construction team was trying to hide their mid-afternoon beer breaks, but it wasn't totally succesful. Finding the hidden cooler of beer was a good afternoon game for the group.

Amarante: The Chateau

2010-07-29T00:46:00.001+02:00

Last night we had a nice surprise. One of the sponsors of Habitat Portugal invited us out for dinner at the "Chateau", home to two Michelin star chefs.

For dinner, we had a three course meal with wine pairings. Our first course was giant prawns in orange froth, served over fruit salad and caviar. The main was a roasted pork dish, with a layer of dark meat, a layer of light meat, and a layer of cracklin', served with courgette, mashed yams and roasted carrots. For dessert, we had a trio of orange ice cream, chocolate lava cake and fresh strawberries topped with meringue.

All evening, we also enjoyed bottomless glasses of wine from local vineyards. Our white was light, cold and bubbly, while the red was smooth and buttery, with a faint hint of the sweet taste of port.

Amarante: R&R (Part 2)

2010-07-27T23:50:00.000+02:00

Our third day of rest was originally slated as a beach day; however, Miguel had other plans for us. We were invited to join his youth hostel for a trip to the mountains. But, before that, we would have a night on the town.

In small cities, it really helps to have a few connections. As it turns out, Alfredo's (one of the hired assistants on site) brother owns the local pizza joint, and the best nightclub in town. He hooked us up with private access to the VIP lounge -- a bean bag and couch laden balcony overlooking the ancient church and river -- our own dance floor, and discounted drinks all evening. After three hours out, our total bar bill for Sarah and I was just 18 euro.

The bus to the mountains left at 9 the next morning. The total trip out there ran about an hour and included a generous hike/rock climb. Once at the final destination, there was a bar-b-q and home made bagaço waiting beside waterfall fed lagoons. The rest of the afternoon was to be spent eating, drinking, swimming and lounging in the sun.

At least, this is what I'm told. When the hotel woke Sarah and I up to deliver our towels, the clock read 13:47, and the mountain folk were already sleeping off their meat-coma. We had opted out so that we could try and make up a few of those lost hours of sleep that we had been accruing over the last month.

I have no regrets.

I also didn't need towels that badly.

While our team was in the mountains, we spent the better part of the day in bed watching awful movies. Not wanting to miss all of the action though, we did eventually rouse ourselves for a trip downstream to swim in the river, and for a bit of a walk through the old town.

Our group was reunited again around seven, and we went out for another fabulous Portuguese feast to close off the day.

Amarante: Our work (Part 2)

2010-07-26T18:43:00.000+02:00

Our second stint of work was short, only two days, but it felt more productive. In the last two days we have been priming, painting, tiling and grouting. All things that are more visibly rewarding than mixing barrels of cement.

The outside of the house has changed a lot since we first got here. We applied three coats of concrete to the original brick wall: one to seal the bricks, one to make the wall level, and one to smooth the wall out.

After the final layer, we primed and painted. This is the colour that the house will be in the end. The nice thing about working in this heat is that the paint dries really fast. We can get three coats in eight hours if we time it right.

Inside of the house things have been changing rapidly as well. We've had three teams in there rotating through all of the rooms in shifts. Between painting the roof, tiling the floors and walls, and doing the final grouting, things are starting to look finished.

I'm not sure what our last three days will bring. Hopefuly we will have a chance to do some cabinetry or install the toilet and shower.

Mobile blogging.

2010-07-23T09:12:00.001+02:00

Last year I didn't write much about our Habitat trip. My excuse being that it was a pain to get near a computer, and nigh impossible to upload photos.

This year, iPhone in hand, I'm experimenting with mobile blogging. Both of my previous issues now gone, I am free to write about our travels almost as fast as we experience them. Writing while driving back to the hotel at the end of the day is a nice way to conclude our work, and it helps keep my mind off of the rollercoaster bus ride through the hills.

The only difficulty I have now is getting a wifi signal long enough to actually post something. Amarante has free municipal wifi, but it is extremelly spotty. Consequently, my evenings in Portugal are spent very semaphorically. As I post this, I'm standing on a chair, one leg wrapped around a pole, waving my arms wildly at the sky, trying desperately to avoid the eye of any passing airplanes.

I'm also not totally sold yet on the blogging apps that I've found online. One likes to post everything twice, and the other sort of mangles the layout of text and images on upload. Neither has decent spellcheck. For the time being, though, I'm happy to make the quantity/quality tradeoff if it means I can actually journal some of our travels.

Amarante: R&R (Part 1)

2010-07-22T23:33:00.001+02:00

Part of the Habitat for Humanity Global Village experience is being able to go off the work site for some cultural exploration. During our trip this year, we will have four days of Rest and Relaxation to offset our nine labour days.

Our first R&R day was also our first day in Portugal. Our host for the day, Miguel, drove us out to a hidden swimming hole that's really only known to locals. It sounds pretty, and it was, but what he forgot to tell us about was the hour long hike in and out. It was lacking a bit in Rest, but swimming in the shade with the fish and the frogs was definitely heavy in Relaxation.

In the evening, some of us took a paddleboat down the river that runs through the city.

Miguel concluded our evening with a walking tour of Amarante followed by drinks and music at the county fair.

Our second R&R day was today. The idea this time was to see some other portuguese cities. Our final destination, Braga, was the site that we visited in 2009. Before we arrived, we made a short stop in gumares: the birthplace of Portugal.

As the story goes, there was a prince who wanted to be king, but he wasn't in order down the family line. So, he raised an army, and beat away the competition from the surrounding lands until a new kingdom was created around him. The center of this kingdom was the castle at gumares.

After the visit and a pastry, we drove the last few kilometers to Braga, and it's famous church, the Bom Jesus.

If it looks small in the picture, keep in mind that it's one km from the stairs to the front door.

The afternoon was "free time" in the big city. Some people went touristing, some people went shopping, me and the other two guys on our trip went and found a local watering hole, and exposed our young French companion to the Portuguese drink Bagaço. This spirit, made from the leftover grape product after making wine, tastes very much like kerosene mixed with boot leather and moonshine. Definitely a highlight not to be missed.

We took our chasers in a lounge down the way. This was definitely a fond memory from last year. The patio is unmarked, and almost totally hidden from the road. The atmosphere is very nice. Like someones backyard, but with sofas, a bartender, and soothing trance music. without a doubt, this is the best place for a beer and a siesta that I've found in western Europe.

To close the evening, the group met up again for dinner. The food that we've had in amarante has been gorgeous, but there are a few things that we could only get in a bigger city.

We split our group down the middle, between those that have been complaining that there was too much meat, and those complaining that there wasn't enough.

For the meatatarians, we took a trip to a rib and bar-b-q restaurant; something that is a true rarity in western Europe. Our French worker, Niko, told me afterwards that this is the first time he had tried this kind of food.

The rest of us went to the only vegetarian restaurant in Braga, and the best veg restaurant that I can remember eating at. Vegetarian lasagna, soy stroganoff, and mushroom paella filled our plates and bellies, but left just enough room for spicy chocolate pie.

My evening capped off with a photo.

As we were walking back, a few of us spotted this old guy.

Somewhere amidst the reams of photos taken today is a picture of me, and one of our team mates riding high and ringing the bell.

Amarante: Our work (Part 1)

2010-07-21T19:24:00.001+02:00

This year we are entering the project the equivalant of one week's worth of work after when we left last year, so there is a nice sense of continuity for our team.

Most of the work is in the finishing of the house. It's the kind of work that you might do on a more extreme home renovation. The floors and walls are all up, and about half of the shingles were in place when we arrived. Our work involves tiling the floor, insulating the roof, painting the interior, and installing some of the larger appliances and cabinetry if we have time.

We are high in the mountains this year, with an excellent view; but, it's HOT!! Our first day of work was more than 35 degrees in the sun.

This is the front of the house on the first day. We are working on the middle (where the family lives) and top layers (the roof). The bottom layer will be turned into a root cellar after everything else is done.

And this is our view as we work.

Lunch is held at a campsite further up the mountain. For an extra twist, this year all of our lunch is catered vegetarian cuisine.

So far, I've been spending my mornings on the roof trying to fit large pieces of styrofoam insulation into awkward spaces.

After three days on site, the house already looks very different. We have finished the front and back sides with smooth cement, and tiled about 70% of the floor space. The insulation is done except for one small corner, and we will be filling any remaining gaps with foam on Friday.

Location:N15,Amarante Municipality,Portugal

Arriving in Amarante.

2010-07-18T16:12:00.001+02:00

We managed to make it safely to our Habitat for Humanity build, albeit we had no shortage of bumps along the way.

Let me back track a bit and recount the craziness that was our trip planning process.

A Long time ago, our team took a vote to decide where we wanted to go for H4H 2010, the top choices being Ireland, Portugal and Hungary. As it turns out, Ireland is for US groups only, and the only spot in Portugal didn't fit our team vision. So, we picked a build in Miskolc, Hungary, where we would be building a home for autistic adults.

About four weeks ago, which happens to coincide with the week before my vacation to Canada, I got an email letting us know that the Danube had flooded out the city of Miskolc, and the city would no longer be able to support a build. So, we scrambled to adjust the trip to the other build location in Hungary, Varpolada.

Well, Varpolada was looking good for a while too. It lacked the Unesco World Heritage site of Miskolc, but it did come with a giant inland lake, which means beach time! Unfortunately, roughly 10 days ago, smack in the middle of my vacation, I got another email from Hungary. This time to let us know that the homeless shelter in Varpolada had decided to see other people, and would be hiring a contractor to do their work.

Getting over the "it's not you, it's me" emails from H4H was pretty easy, as we didn't have much time to organize our yet-to-be-determined Plan C. We managed to get lucky, and our friends in Portugal still had a spot for us. A few thousand euro in flight change fees later, and we had the makings of a new trip planned.

With a little extra money, we would be able to make the trip just fine. We hit a bit of a snag with our accountant and his four week vacation, but I can't exactly complain as I'm taking five.

And so, Sarah and I left PG on the morning of the 15th, and arrived (two layovers, three late planes and a missed flight later) in Paris on the night of the 16th where I picked up a giant (7700 euro) wad of cash that would bankroll the trip. As long as I could hold onto it for 24 hours, we would be in the clear.

Did you know there are pickpockets in Paris?

On the way to the airport the following morning, a kerfuffle started up behind me that culminated in a slap fight and yelling match between two older women and a young man. While I didn't catch most of the wording, I did get the idea when the woman pointed at my backpack. Once firmly shut, the outer pouch was now fully open, and the contents were displayed for all to see. Luckily, the thief opened the 'tampon and kleenex' part of my bag, and not the 'camera, iPod and wad-o-bills' compartment.

This little adventure was bad for my psyche, but was a good reminder about the dangers of putting all your bills in one basket.

After this, the rest of the trip was more or less uneventful. Weade our (delayed) flight OK with all participants, and checked in o our hotel in Amarante. The first 12 hours have been great. We had a delicous welcoming dinner for the group last night, including mixed grill, fried octopus, salt cod, wine, "duck fish", baked jalepenos, and the best mushrooms that I've ever had. This morning involved sitting on a sunny terrace and sunbathing by the river.

Tomorrow, we begin our build. It's been a long road to get here, but I'm sure glad we've finally arrived.

The French lessons are paying off; belatedly.

2010-06-08T13:36:00.001+02:00

Sarah and I have been taking French lessons through the City’s Continuing Studies program for the last few months. The progress is slow, but I’m definitely starting to pick up some of the finer details that help to turn a conversation from ‘Quoi?’ to some basic level of understanding.

The details in some cases are truly subtle though – at least, for me – and often come a little too late.

Take this example, Sarah spent a good portion of Friday with a bad bout of dizziness. After I got home, I popped over to the Pharmacy and said:

Ma femme a des vertige. Avez-vous medicaments pour les vertige?

Whatever I had said was clearly wrong. Yesterday our class focussed on medical ailments, and I learned that the correct form is actually:

Ma femme a les vertige. Avez-vous medicaments contre les vertige?

Apparently, instead of asking for pills to prevent dizziness, the small change in words actually meant:

My wife has a fear of heights. Do you have any pills to make her dizzy?

Now, knowing why I got that particularly strange ‘I will not be an accomplice’ look from the clerk, I think I should be better able to avoid the mistake in the future.

Next step: Pronunciation. I really need to get to the point where I no longer walk into a bar and ask for a pint of butter.

Digital Torch

2010-05-07T14:45:00.001+02:00

UVic folks will be familiar with the school’s alumni periodical: The Torch.

It looks like they’ve made the move into the online world, and decided to keep the traditional magazine layout in the process. The implementation is really nice. I think this is the first online ‘paper alternative’ that I’ve seen that still feels like a magazine. (Albeit, the NYTimes Reader does a super good job of Newspaper emulation as well.)

The format replication is definitely appreciable for this months photo-heavy issue. All of the material retains the same stunning look that the paper copy would have and is very easy to flip through.

Very nice.

Hey, where's that guy been?

2010-03-21T15:00:00.000+01:00

This space has been dead for a long time. Normally, I'd chock that up to typical blogger laziness. Searching the blogosphere reveals that this is a common problem, with most sites split equally between over active mommy-bloggers, people who post "I've been gone a while, but I'm really going to blog this time," and pictures of kittens. I've been second tier twice.

But, this is not one of those times!

Actually, I've been offline for the last few weeks on a lent-related internet fast. Sarah and I started practicing lent last year. So, this is only our second time through. For those unfamiliar with the history of the practice, here's a short primer.

In the Christian calendar, the period of time between Fat Tuesday and Easter - not including Sundays - make up the forty days of lent. Depending upon the particular traditions of your Church, you might use this period of time to fast from certain foods, engage in specific activities, or abstain from something. Most non-catholics I've spoken to follow the abstinence part only. On the subject of abstaining, the reasons again fall into one of two main categories. Either it's a form of penitence (I will give this up to invoke some personal suffering for some reason or another) or it's to make room in your life for spiritual reflection. I'm not a big believer in the benefits of personal suffering... but I can see the benefits of making space for things often left undone.

And so, this lenten season, we've both elected to give up some sort of addictive element from our life in order to make room for something better. In my case, that thing is 'wasting time on the internet/computer outside of work.' And hence, I haven't been spending much time here.

What about this post? Well, it's Sunday so that's OK.

Giving up such a large part of my life at home has definitely been a huge challenge. Made more difficult I think in that only one of us actually stepped away from the computer. Although, I've balanced the scales in the number of cadbury mini-eggs I've consumed during Sarah's 6 days a week of 'no junk food'.

It's also been a huge challenge in terms of getting things done. For whatever reason, the tail end of March has a ton of things crammed into maybe a week of real time. But, the pre-planning for this week is intense, and is being made unnecessarily difficult by the lack of weekly computing.

At the moment, the lack of a computer is feeling like less of a spiritual sacrifice, and more of a pain-in-the-neck.

That said, some of the upsides have been huge. For example, during the first Saturday of lent, I managed to kill 2 things from my monthly to-do list, and 4 things from my 'do this before leaving paris' list. Some of these things I'd been procrastinating for 10 months or more. The lack of my normal outlet for free time has really forced me to leave the apartment, and see the city I live in, and to meet real people face-to-face.

Also, I think 40 days away from the time wasting aspects of my computer have reminded me of some of the more valuable things that I could be doing. Certainly during the first few days/weeks I missed surfing youtube, fark and slashdot, but eventually that faded away, and I started thinking more about some of the other things I'd like to do that have real value, but are often overlooked due to procrastination or the perception of a lack of time. There are some professional development activities that I've been putting off for far too long, as well as finishing getting some photos online, backing up old data, and writing about some of the more interesting things we've done so far in 2010 (it's been a really good year, on the whole).

Easter is coming up soon, and I'm definitely looking forward to spending more time on the laptop. But, I think... I hope, that I'll get back into this activity with a renewed sense of balance as to what sorts of things are important, and what things can perhaps be left in 2009.

Assiette de Beurre

2009-12-31T13:31:00.002+01:00

This week, a friend of ours is hosting a high-school-aged family friend from the US. This has given Sarah the opportunity to play part-time tour guide for Aric (that’s the friend-of-friend) during the week, while his host family has been working.

Their time thus far has been split between Versailles, and a shopping/cafe/chocolate tour through the downtown core. Sarah has some experience with the latter, and I think she’s getting pretty good at finding some of the finer choices around town.

I met up with them last night towards the end of their day, just in time to catch a quick dinner before Aric had to run off to Zorro: The Musical. They’d both already had the standard quick bites that the city has to offer (sandwich, panini, kebab, etc.) so we opted for brasserie fare instead. We managed to find a reasonably priced menu that included dinner and dessert and would give our guest some choice in what he’d like to try.

Between us, we ordered one of each of the dishes offered that day...

A Duo of Fish, in a butter and chive sauce, served over ratatouille.
Tortellini Primavera.
Chicken Fricassee (basically roast chicken and boiled potatoes, swimming in buttery chicken broth).

...with Apricot Pie, Apple Tart and a cheese plate for dessert. The cheese plate was a little unusual compared to what we usually find in France. Typically, you’d get either an assortment of three cheeses, or a single type cut very large. Aric’s plate came with two slices – one blue and another cream coloured.

I’m sure if you understand the title, above, you know where this is headed at this point. Unfortunately, poor naive Aric, and his not-so-bright hosts, did not.

Aric dared the blue first, but I don’t think he’d really developed a taste for it just yet, so it didn’t sit well. At this point in the evening we were running behind so we counted out our change for the waiter, and rushed to pull our bags and coats together before running out the door. “Eat the white one then…” we encouraged, “I don’t know what it is, but just cut a big piece and let’s get out of here.”

OK, so that was a bit of a fib. I was actually pretty sure it was comté, a harder cheese that’s a little like a mild cheddar. Or possibly a gouda of some kind. In any case, it had to be tasty, there are very few cheeses that are not worth eating in this country.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked.

“I think…” he quietly started, interrupting himself to take a bite of bread and a large gulp of water, “…that it was butter.”

Fail Whale

2009-12-29T16:03:00.001+01:00

I’ve finally caved and decided to sign up for a twitter account. For a long time, I’d passed on the basis that the platform was unstable and unreliable; then I avoided it on the basis that my preferred user name was taken by someone that doesn’t even use it. Both pretty lame reasons, actually.

Now that I have a shiny new iPhone, I feel the need to be in constant connection with the rest of the world, and so a twittering I go.

The very first thing I saw after account creation made me feel very welcome. I think this is part of the authentic Twitter experience.

Steven Harper can play the piano

2009-12-26T13:38:00.000+01:00

I was browsing the 'Top News Stories of 2009' on the CBC, and found a picture of Harper in front of a Piano. How did I miss this news story?

OK, so it's definitely a publicity stunt ("Look, I can play piano! How can I hate the arts if I can play piano?"), but it's a good one. I hate to admit it but I like the guy a little more after watching this.

(There's a worse version sans advertising over here.)

Pandanggo Sa Ilaw and Filipino Christmas Dinner

2009-12-26T02:03:00.000+01:00

Sarah and I were lucky enough to be invited to a Filipino Christmas party this past weekend, and oh my goodness the mountains of food were absolutely incredible. While I know very little about the Philippines in general, I'm certain that this is a place that never let's you leave the table hungry.

Aside from the food, we got two glimpses into some more cultural events through traditional dances and games that went on throughout the afternoon. The most impressive dance by far was the Pandanggo Sa Ilaw -- in which each dancer balances a candle in each hand and on top of their head. I'd heard about this dance from a co-worker (she does this in her spare time), but had never actually seen it done before.

After the dinner was done, the adults had set up a pinata-like game for the kids. Someone had created a kind of chandelier out of bamboo, and tied pieces of candy to it using small pieces of string. The chandelier was connected to a rope, which in turn was connected to a Filipino woman standing on a chair on the other side of the room.

The way the game ran, the lady would slowly let the chandelier drop from the ceiling and then pull it back to just above the reach of the pirana-children below.

When the chandelier first dropped, it was like the raptor feeding scene in Jurassic park. The kids went wild, and all grabbed candy with both hands at once. The lady in the corner struggled to regain control of the chandelier as it shook violently from side to side, but eventually it rose above the masses, and the lady let the kids have a quick break to unwrap their goodies before starting a second time. She also used this time to get a much firmer grip on the rope.

The second time, she was a little more cautious, but her opponents were a little wiser in their approach. Instead of grabbing for the candy, they all jumped up and grabbed the chandelier itself. The combined weight of the kids managed to send the chandelier crashing to the ground - and the Filipino woman soaring through the air.

The kids, now covered in candy, had no idea that they had just introduced the other woman to the miracle of human flight. The woman, however, was not to be deterred. She dusted herself off, hung another chandelier from the roof, and kicked open a window so that she could dangle outside to give herself extra leverage. That was the last that we saw of that game, but I have no doubt that she gave the kids a good run for their money on the second round. That, or she was launched clear over the building and into the Seine.

The difference a Union makes.

2009-12-23T17:11:00.001+01:00

For five years I've worked for one company. Last year, I moved to a new geography, and with that came a lot of changes. One of these was the addition of a Union.

Sometimes, not always, I really appreciate that this group exists in our office. Typically it's the little things that I notice, like the ability to complain that the new cleaner the janitor is using stinks, and actually smell a change later in the month. Earlier in the week, I mentioned to a Union rep over lunch that the lock on my door had been broken for three weeks, and that my complaints to facilities seemed to be falling on deaf ears. A locksmith came by that afternoon to fix the issue.

Today, we got some great news in a global communication from HR (How often does that happen?). The short version is that due to some outside circumstances a few years ago, the bonus payout for that year was lower than it probably should have been. To compensate, they will be augmenting the payout this year.

Even though it probably doesn't amount to a lot (maybe €100-200 in my case), it was awesome to see that the company's good fortune is somehow related to my own.

Having been through very similar circumstances 3 years ago in a non-unionized office, I'm confident that this new addition to my wallet is in a large part due to having adequate union representation within the company.

What a difference.

Holiday Baking 2009 - Rumballs

2009-12-19T15:46:00.000+01:00

Each year we try to add a new recipe to our Seasonal repertoire. This year, living without an oven, our choices are a little bit limited. So, we hit the books and found a revised version of a previous favorite.

Rumballs!!

Crush 200g of Chocolate Cookies into a bowl.
Add 3 tablespoons of Sweetened Condensed Milk, 1 teaspoon of Vanilla extract, and 1/3 of a cup of Rum. Stir.
Pour 112 grams (4 ounces) of melted chocolate into the bowl and stir.
Chill for one hour.
Roll into walnut sized balls, and roll in sprinkles, cocoa or desiccated coconut.
Ideally, let age one day in a sealed container.

The real secret to Rumballs is in the odour of the presentation, not the actual taste. You get the best reception if you use cheap rum, and keep them in a sealed container.

Rumballs - Smells like a panhandler, tastes like Christmas.

Christmas Tunes

2009-12-14T12:01:00.001+01:00

A friend just sent me a great link to an online streaming Christmas music website.

http://www.accuradio.com/holidays/

They have a huge variety of Holiday related music (Christmas and Hanukkah). Some of the specialty stations are great, like the ‘Nothing but Chestnuts roasting on an open fire’ station.

Gold, Frankenstein and Myrrh

2009-12-14T11:53:00.001+01:00

Saturday and Sunday were caroling days for Sarah and I. She performed in a Christmas concert on Saturday afternoon and evening, that ended with a bilingual sing-a-long. It definitely took me be surprise when we switched languages, but I think I held my own (lyrically, not tonally) during most of the carols, due to some early childhood pageant experience in French Immersion Kindergarten. It’s amazing how that stuff sticks with you.

The following morning, our regular service at Church was taken over by the children. The older kids read the manger story from Luke, while the younger kids acted out parts of the story. The kids were awesome. Most were dressed in the typical Christmas pageant fare: tin foil halos and dish towel headdresses. One kid, who couldn’t find a proper sized robe, was sporting a bright red Superman cape instead.

My favorite part of the service was definitely the, slightly edited, reading of Matthew 2:12, when the wise men came bearing gifts to the new born baby Jesus.

On coming to the house, [the magi] saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and Frankenstein and myrrh.

Travelling in 2010

2009-12-11T10:05:00.002+01:00

Being in Europe is great for travelling. There are so many place so close together that are worth visiting.
One of the strangest things about the travelling, though, is the amount of planning involved. You have the option of either doing everything completely last minute (day of, kind of thing) or 3-6 months in advance. Anything else and you end up paying two or three times the price. Sarah and I are much more accustomed to thinking in terms of weeks, so we’ve been trying to bring a little forethought into our vacation planning. One thing that has been helping is that everyone around us is starting to talk about travel destinations for summer 2010, which is forcing us to think about it as well.
So far, we’ve lined up three trips, and are waiting to confirm on a few more.

Amsterdam – A friend of ours described this as ‘the best vacation you will never remember’. We are very lucky to have friends that live in the city, and will be doing an apartment swap at the end of January.
Canada – We are scheduling a trip back for a family related event in the summer. Probably early July. I’m going to try to swing a business trip in there as well, which will hopefully mean a week in Vancouver.
Hungary – Last year we travelled to Portugal for two weeks to build a house. This year, we will be doing a similar event, but in Hungary (near Budapest). The trip will be either the end of July or the first part of August. If anyone feels like cat sitting during this time, let me know.

It’s also the season for Company vacations. The Comité d'Entreprise (like a Union) plans trips for the employees. Since Tuesday they’ve announced 8 different vacation options. I’ve signed up for a few of them, but won’t receive confirmation until the end of the year. I have my fingers crossed on Venice.

Totally 80's weekend!

2009-11-15T13:50:00.000+01:00

There have been many times throughout our life together where Dave has turned to me and referenced some famous eighties movie, only to have me stare blankly as the reference went over my head. Usually this results in a "that was from such and such movie silly girl" "yeah but I never actually saw said famous movie" "WHAT WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WHO DID I MARRY MY LIFE IS A LIE."

Then we typically go through a list of commonly watched 80's movies with me having watched a tiny fraction of our peers' standard repertoire. For the record, I missed: Ghostbusters, The Breakfast Club, Top Gun, Alien(s), Terminator 2, The Goonies....and that's a very short list. I didn't see Dirty Dancing until only a few years ago. I'd never seen a movie with Molly Ringwald in it.

SO, Dave and I decided that this weekend we'd have an 80's movie marathon! So far, we've seen The Breakfast Club, The Goonies, Sixteen Candles, and we have Ghostbusters, Alien and Pretty in Pink cued up.

These movies are pretty good! Not only that, but now I'll totally get all future references to these movies. Yes! I'll be cool! Finally! I can join in with the rest of my generation! HAHAHAHAHA!

Maybe if I'd spent less time continuously watching Back to the Future, Star Wars, What about Bob, and all those Ernest movies, I'd have done this years ago.

Now, I must learn why one must not cross the streams.

Whatever that means.

On Poppies.

2009-11-12T09:42:00.000+01:00

A discovery that we made this last week is that Poppies and Remembrance Day are not commonly associated in France. Or really anywhere other than the Commonwealth.

Our lapels had an empty spot until the night of November 10th, when Sarah stopped by the Canadian Embassy in the hopes that they had imported some for the expats in town. With our poppies firmly attached to our lapels, we spent two days fielding the common question: Nice brooch... where'd you get it?

To which we were able to share a bit of Canadiana in response.

I'd go on here about it, but I found a nice summary on the CBC this morning that I think is worth putting up.

Why the poppy?

The association between the poppy and war dates back to the Napoleonic wars, when a writer saw a field of poppies growing over the graves of fallen soldiers.

During the Battle of Ypres in 1915, Canadian Lt.-Col. John McCrae was inspired to write the poem In Flanders Fields on sighting the poppies growing beside a grave of a close friend who had died in battle.

The poem was a great inspiration in adopting the poppy as the Flower of Remembrance in Canada, France, the U.S, Britain and Commonwealth countries.

The first poppies were distributed in Canada in 1921.

Today the volunteer donations from the distribution of millions of poppies is an important source of revenue for the Royal Canadian Legion that goes toward helping ex-servicemen and women buy food, and obtain shelter and medical attention.

And of course, the referenced Poem.

In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

-- John McCrae

November 11 in France

2009-11-12T09:29:00.000+01:00

November 11th is a National Holiday in France, but it's not quite the same as it is back home.

In Canada (and other commonwealth countries), we set aside one day of the year to remember those who have lost due to the tragedy of War. In the US, this same idea is captured by Memorial Day, in May.

Here, they have two days in the year that they remember war, but for them, the days are tied to specific events. In France, November 11th is set aside to honor Armistice Day, or the cessation of World War 1. In May, they set aside time to remember World War 2.

Consequently the ceremonies around the city of Paris were much smaller than I had expected. At 10:45 yesterday I walked down a very empty Champs Elysees to Etoille to watch the ceremony taking place at the Arc de Triumph. At around 11 am, a motorcade drove slowly down the boulevard and stopped at the base of the Arch. Out stepped President Sarkozy, and the German Chancellor Merkel. After a quick promenade around the Arc they jointly carried a wreath to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, listened for the Army chorus to sing their respective National Anthems, stepped back into their vehicles and left. While the ceremony carried almost as much somberness of the one I'm used to watching in Victory Square, it lasted only about 15 minutes from start to finish.

I think the most striking thing of the whole event was watching the crowd that turned out. While it was small, the crowd represented many nations. I heard voices speaking in French, British, North American (USA and Canada, I assume), German, and other dialects. No one nationality dominated the event -- this was really a world wide ceremony. And when the last post was played, each person there stopped, waited, listened, and remembered. Together.

House votes in favour of Healthcare Reform

2009-11-08T09:35:00.000+01:00

A vote went through in the US today to pass part of a healthcare reform bill in the US. This is truly amazing. I really didn't think that would ever happen.

More details here, and here.

From the second link...

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide federal subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford it. Large companies would have to offer coverage to their employees. Both consumers and companies would be slapped with penalties if they defied the government's mandates.

Insurance industry practices such as denying coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions would be banned, and insurers would no longer be able to charge higher premiums on the basis of gender or medical history. In a further slap, the industry would lose its exemption from federal antitrust restrictions on price fixing and market allocation.

Forgetting about October

2009-11-07T19:28:00.000+01:00

Some days are worse than others. And sometimes, big batches of those days band together to form months that are better left forgotten. October was one of those times. Some things happened that I'd wished hadn't, and some things didn't that I'd wished had. In all, a bunch of completely unrelated, inconsequential items seemed to fall in steady sequence to make for a generally nasty month.

I'm glad that I didn't write much (anything) during the past 40 days or so. I think it's probably better that October is left as a blank, rather than black, spot on an otherwise great year.

Photowalking in Paris

2009-09-07T17:37:00.000+02:00

On Saturday, Myron and I attempted to go on a Photowalk through Pierre La Chaise, while our wives spent the day looking at purses. Unfortunately, we got lost (read: found adventure) distracted, and hungry along the way. We eventually did find the cemetery we were looking for, but by the time we got there, the night watchman was just finishing closing the gates for the night.

I have some of the better pictures posted on my picassa site (Note, this is a different site than the one we normally use...). Normally, I would come home and edit these a little bit before posting them, but I thought that it would be more to the spirit of the event to leave them au naturale.

Most of these shots were with the macro lens. My favorite one is definitely the one of the white flowers on the black background near the end.

Visiting Vichy

2009-09-06T18:00:00.000+02:00

This past weekend we went on our first intra-france adventure. For the nine months we've been here, we've both left the city only once, and always for other countries, so when a friend of ours invited us to stay for a weekend at her parent's place in Vichy, we couldn't say no.

Vichy is in the middle of France, about 400 km from Paris. Despite having a long history of being a spa town for the rich and famous, it does not have such luxuries as an airport, or even a TGV line (the super fast trains), so the 400 KM ends up being three hours from town by the 'slow' train. Although that seems optimistic in retrospect.

At some point along the trip we noticed that the train had slowed to a stop. Not a scheduled stop, more the sort of stop where you see official looking men with clipboards and funny hats wandering up and down the tracks with confused looks on their faces. In fact, this is the sort where you run for the beer car in hopes that you can beat the rest of the crowd before they realize what's going on. Thirty minutes, and a lager later, the loudspeaker let us know that the train had hit a tree, and that we might be there for a 'while'.

So, this brings the following thoughts.

First - Cool! We hit a tree, that's a pretty interesting reason to be stopped.
Second, how did a tree manage to grow through the middle of the tracks without causing a problem before now?
Third, how did it take half an hour to realize that the train had hit a tree large enough to stop a train. One would hope that this would have been noticed pre-collision, or at the very least would have been obvious within a few moments of inspection.

Perhaps it was invisible...

In any case, this ended up being a 7 hour train ride to Vichy, but we managed to while the time away pretty successfully. Once it became obvious that we were going to be there for an indeterminate amount of time, people popped outside the train to smoke, and started socializing with the other passengers. Our party ended up tossing disc for a while in a farmer's field by the light of the passenger cars. All around, not so bad a way to spend an evening (but it's worth noting that the food car had run out of beer by this point).

Fortunately, this didn't throw off or plans in any meaningful way. The nicest part of the weekend is that we really didn't have much to do at all. Emeline's main mission on this trip was to visit with her folks, and go to a bar-b-q Saturday evening. All around, it was pretty chill.

Saturday morning we slept in until quite late, and grabbed breakfast before heading into town for a tour and a haircut (I got a decent haircut! For those that have not heard the hair cutting horrors of Paris, this is big news.) As we drove through the center of town, Myron pointed out a building and remarked "That's the building with all the dancing old people." This of course, piqued my interest, and was our first, and only real, tourist stop that we made within the city.

The building we found was not, in fact, the Geriatric dance party advertised. In reality, it was basically just a really fancy water fountain, surrounded by a decorative building. Vichy is home to several hot springs, and the water here is supposed to have curative powers. Apparently, the elderly come around in the evenings to sip the mineral rich bubbly water, and then cha-cha the night away having been cured of all that ails them.

That evening, we went to a double-birthday-bar-b-q for two of Emeline's friends. The ladies integrated well into the French conversation, but the three English speaking guys got to play the part of the weird foreign people at the end of the table. Highlights included disagreeing with someone's name (In French: <>; Me: "No, thank you.") and confusing the phrase "You must be hot" with "I'm hot for you."

Sunday we decided to tone it down even further. We started the morning with a 2 hour walk of the village near where we were staying and met some of the local delicacies.

Afterwords, we went back to the house for a traditional 8 course lunch...

Aperitif [Cocktails]
Appetizer [Honeydew Melons]
Main Course [A T-Bone steak the size of a poodle, sliced like a roast of beef]
Salad
Cheese [6 of them]
Coffee
Dessert [Superb!! Basically a Strawberry Tiramisu]
Digestif [Brandy]

This is the kind of meal that really makes me appreciate living in France. It's not often that you get to eat all of these courses - to be honest, I didn't know you could even go past 7 without being celebrating Chinese New Year. But the real benefit is the leisurely pace of the meal. We managed to spread this out over more than three hours while we drank wine and shot the breeze in our best attempts at speaking a language that by no means could be called French.

The one thing that we missed that I'd like to go back for is a closer look at the volcano that fuels the hot springs within this region. It's been dormant for over a hundred years now, and is apparently the third most popular tourist site in France, after the Eiffel Tower, and Saint Chapelle church in Paris.

We've been told that there will be a next time, so this adventure will have to wait until then.

Fête de la Musique

2009-09-06T11:22:00.000+02:00

Each year on June 21st the city of Paris has a giant party. The 'Fête de la Musique' is a celebration of music, and is an absolutely amazing event to experience if you're a fan of live music.

The original idea was pitched back in 1976 as a way to encourage amateur musicians to get out and play, and to celebrate musicality in general. When we were out last weekend, it wasn't so much amateur individuals as it was amateur groups. We did catch one guy by himself with a drum kit, and another lone tap dancer, but for the most part it was smallish groups that I would expect would play at local bars.

The amazing thing though is that there was one of these groups on every corner! Didn't like listening to french covers of Stone Temple Pilots? Cross the street and listen to a French guy that looks like Aragorn performing Gansta's Paradise.

We started in sort of a party district in the downtown core near St Germain and wandered around from 7pm to juts past midnight. The bulk of the shows were set to start at around 8, so things were slow to start. During the peak hours (9-10) there were people elbow to elbow throughout the streets, and everyone was dancing.

My highlight, though, was seeing a guy that looks like my Brother in Law jamming on the Electric Ukelele.

Marvel vs. Disney

2009-09-01T22:44:00.000+02:00

Yesterday Disney announced their intentions to purchase Marvel Comics. This is a weird intersection of my childhood and youth. Somehow, I just can't reconcile the Magical World of Disney with the Amazing XMen.

There are numerous articles critiquing the buyout as well. My favourite quite by far, though, is the re-wording of the 'Small World' song from the Correctness blog.

It’s a world of “Hulk Smash,”
A world of “Thwipp,”
It’s a World of “Bamf,”
It’s a World of “Snikt”

I would love to see the improved dolls.

Portugal, the first four days

2009-07-22T19:55:00.000+02:00

Ahh internet… It’s been four days since I was last online. A lot has happened, and my back is sore to prove it. This might not seem so summar-ary in length, but here’s a shot recap of what’s been going on with us.
Day 1 – Sunday

Sunday was brutal. In order to economize, our organizer booked us the cheapest tickets available with the Portuguese airline. Unfortunately, that meant being at the airport at 5:30, which meant waking at 4:00 am, which meant that most of us were pretty out of it for the actually travel portion of the trip. It’s a two hour flight from Paris to Porto, and another 2 hours from Porto to Braga by train. By the time we hit our hotel, it was around noon, which left us plenty of time to tour the city.

Braga is a city of about 160,000 people. Most of the houses are small townhouse style places with bright colours (either pain or decorative tiles) along the outside. The city center, where we are staying, is quite small (it feels like the downtown core of my hometown) and full of huge open spaces, churches and gardens. There are no sidewalks here, just one cobblestone street that snakes between all of the buildings. Because there aren’t a lot of cars people just walk in the middle of the street, which makes the street feel much wider than it would in most cities.

The other notable thing about this city is the prices. Compared to Paris, it feels like I’ve gone back in time 50 years. Two coffees and a tart? €1.55 (Paris Price: 6.50€). Dinner for two? €12 euro (p.p. 30€). A beer? That will be a €1.20 (p.p. 5€). We later discovered that we paid too much, most people drink beer at about 75 cents a glass. On our first day, we reveled in the prices as we toured around number the “snack” shops of Braga. This is a city that loves having a quick bite. For every Starbucks in Vancouver there is a pastry shop here.

So far, everyone here is loving the trip.

Day 2: Getting down to work

Day 2 marked our first day of work, as well as our first casualty. One of the people on the trip fell ill over night and spent the day sleeping back at the hotel. The rest of us drove about 30 minutes to the work site to get down to work.

The project we are working on is a small piece of a very large tract of land. The entire area is owned by a single family, split between several brothers and their mother. The plot that we are working on is a small percentage of everyone else’s land, donated to one of their brothers who did not have a stake in the farm and was suffering financial hardship.

We met with the receiving family that morning. Jose, his wife and two children (aged 10 and 13) are helping to build the house as well. Habitat requires that the people receiving the donation put in what they call “sweat equity hours” during the project. Jose is working on the site when he can get time off of work. His little boy helps out with some brick laying work when he can, and his wife, daughter and mother are cooking our lunches each day.

Lunch is always home made from their garden, delicious and massive; apparently the people of Northern Portugal are hearty eaters. One of the really cool things that I found out later is that we are actually paying the family for the meals that they cook, which means that they are getting a chance to earn for their work as well. We only pay a little, but for the two weeks we are here it ends up being the equivalent of a months wages at a minimum wage job, or 450€. Considering that the mother would otherwise not be able to work as she has to tend to the farm and kids, I think that this is actually a really great part of the program.

As for the work, well, it was definitely a good introduction to labour.

We are building a 99 square metre brick house. When we got there, the floor, walls, and roof had been roughed out. Our team split into three groups for the days work. The first group spent their morning digging trenches along the back of the house for the second group, who was setting up scaffolding in each of the trenches. The third group was in charge of carrying a pallet of cinder blocks up onto the roof. Sarah split her time between groups two and three. I spent my day digging, and breaking up the people sized chunks of granite that lined the hill.

The hammering work was great as a way to start as it helped remind us of the value of skill over enthusiasm. Our foreman came by at one point in the afternoon and said something to us in Portuguese that roughly translated to “You’re doing it wrong”. After we hammered away at the boulder 12 or 14 times a small chunk would come off. He picked up a hammer and shattered the whole stone in just two swings.

By the end of the day we were all bagged and went home for a shower and an early bed time.

Day 3 and 4: Roofing, flooring and mixing.

We woke up on Day 3 tired, but with still a little energy left. The casualty from Day 1 was feeling much better, but it seemed that the day had claimed someone new. I’m fairly certain that he had just drastically overworked himself – I watched the guy busting boulders for the first part of the day, and Sarah said that he was dead lifting huge bricks over his head all of the afternoon. Between the two, I’m pretty sure he blew out his abs and back muscles. With a little R&R he ended up fine for Day Four.

The rest of the group spent our day building support beams out of bricks on the roof, and pouring concrete flooring into one half of the building, which we finished on the fourth day.

Day four was February-in-Vancouver rainy, and nearly the entire group was inside finishing the floor from the previous day, or applying concrete to the walls. The concreting part was a blast – we picked up a gob of material with a trowel and flung it at the wall as hard as we could so that it would stick. Repeat until done. We were basically having a mud fight with the inside of a box – you’d think it would be no contest, but we all have horrible aim and there were a lot of friendly fire accidents. By noon, we were all covered from head to toe in concrete or freezing rain water. Graciously, the organizer gave us the afternoon off.

That brings us to now… We are heading out for dinner in about an hour with the head of Habitat Portugal. Rumour has that we are going out for Bar-b-q somewhere which will be awesome. Tomorrow is our first day off, and I think we will be heading out to the beach.

More updates to follow at an unknown point in the future.

A Month of Celebrations

2009-07-18T16:35:00.000+02:00

The last four weeks have been full of celebrations.

Fete de la Music
In the second to last week of June, we celebrated the Fete de la Music: An international celebration of Music, with it's roots in Paris. The entire city turned into a huge party, with bands on nearly every corner. At one point, we stood at an intersection with three different groups while a marching band walked between them. I have some short video of some of the acts that I will toss up on youtube at some point.

Quebec
Next, we had Quebec Day towards the end of June. The embassy (Yes, Quebec does have it's own embassy in Paris) threw a giant party, with a rockabilly band flown in from back home, a poutine truck and Unibrou beer. Unfortunately, no one in this country knows how to pour from a bottle, so everyone ended up with three inches of head in their glass, but I can't complain. Good beer is good beer, no matter how much head it has.

The highlight of that night for me was listening to a fight between a French man and a Quebecois girl about whether or not Quebec was a Country.

Movies
The following Saturday marked the beginning of the Fete de la Cinema - the first of two Paris film festivals. Basically the way it worked is you had to pay full price for one movie, and every subsequent movie you saw for the next week, at any theatre and at any time, costs only 3 euro. With every venue participating, it would be hard to find something not worth watching. (A challenge that we were able to meet, mind you.)

Canada
During the middle of the Fete de la Cinema, we celebrated our second national holiday of the season. Canada Day!!! In what I assume was an attempt to play catch up with Quebec, the Canadian ambassador hosted a party at the embassy during the early evening. He did one up Quebec on beer - serving the same Unibrou variety, but at a euro cheaper - but I'm afraid that the food and music didn't quite match up. Chips and candy were the night's gnosh, and the musical guest for the evening was an older French gentleman in a pink shirt singing the national anthem. I think that this might have been our ambassador, but I'm really not sure.

Wil (my cousin) and Katja (his SO) were in town for that week, and were able to make the party. This worked out really well, actually. As the night wore on, people started playing that Canadian Classic Party game 'Do you know Joe from .' Wil, to my great amazement, actually did. I figure since Sarah and I brought him as our guest this qualified as a team win.
Post embassy, we headed out to a bridge for a drink-a-long with some other Canadians, and finished at the Canadian pub. Sarah had met the bartender earlier in the evening and would not be deterred in coming by to say hello.

America
Following just behind Canada day, of course, is July 4th. Surprisingly, the Independence Day celebrations in the city were few and far between, so some friends of ours organized their own event. Along with about 10 other Americans that they had met while in Paris, we headed out to Parc Monceau for a picnic, where we ate delicious flag themed cake. The park closed a little on the early side for our tastes, so when someone mentioned that they knew a fun place with good beer we couldn't resist. As it would happen, we ended up at the other Canadian Bar in Paris; although, for the occasion they had covered their beaver with Stars and Stripes. Most of the rest of the evening was spent appreciating the finer points of Budweiser, teaching drunk teenagers from Alabama how to play Jungle Speed, and shooing Irish men off of our table. (The table jig was popular that night.)

France
Finally, the biggest even of the month, Bastille Day (Or July 14th, as it's known around here). The morning began with a military parade just down the street from us. I'd never seen an all military parade before, it was very cool. It began with a mounted marching band followed by Sarkozy (have video - will post one day). Then each area of the military marched a regiment past, followed by horses, an air fly bye, tanks, trucks, jeeps, and ending with 7 parachuters who used the French flag as their chute. The highest appluase was reserved for the Firemen and Doctors who each count as part of the service. The award for silliest hat goes to the Engineering School, Ecole Polytechnique.

The middle of the day is reserved as a time for people to meet (flirt with) their service men. Troops gather at different spots around the city and show people around the equipment, shake hands, talk, etc.

In the evening, we went out to the Champs des Mars to watch a concert and fireworks. The lead singer that night, Johnny Hallyday, was paid 500,000 euro for his performance - which is a steal, considering there were well over 700,000 people in the park. 70 Cents a head. The sheer number of people was mind boggling. The entire evening concluded with the coolest fireworks and light show that I've ever seen. It combined music, visual images projected onto the Eiffel Tower, and fireworks to represent France's history since the late 1700s.

There have been no shortage of weekend events in July, but I think that things are going to be a lot calmer in August. Nearly everyone has left for vacation, and most of my meetings at work are postponed until October due to everyone being away. It will probably be a nice change to recover.

Burrard Bike Lanes are Open

2009-07-13T14:55:00.003+02:00

The Burrard Bike lane is open as of today!

Vancouver Mayor, Gregor Robertson, made a promise during his campaign last year to open a single lane of the Burrard bridge to bike traffic. I wasn't sure that he would actually be able to follow through on that promise, but it sounds like he has. This should be very nice for cyclists that need to get into the downtown core, or out to the UBC Campus.

Apparently something similar was tried back in 1996, but it was only scheduled for a one week trial, with a followup trial to be scheduled within the following six months. It seems that after the first trial, so many people complained of the congestion that the second one was scrapped. This time around, the city has decided to run the trial for longer. It will run for a full month with a possible 2 month extension. Hopefully during this time people will have a chance to get used to the altered lanes and it will stick around.

One really strange thing that the CBC mentioned is that the eastern side of the bridge (where the bike lane is) has been shut off to both traffic AND pedestrians. This is probably OK, as I imagine that most of the traffic is along the western side of the bridge, but it does seem odd to me to group the cars and people in one lane, and bikes only in the other. I would have figured that bikes and people would have been lumped together.

If anyone reading this is in Vancouver, I'd be interested to hear what the new lane is like.

Retiring in Europe

2009-06-23T13:30:00.002+02:00

We were talking about retirement today at lunch.

Retirement benefits in France are calculated on a point system.

For each year that you work you earn a 'point', with your total number of points maxing out at 40. For each point you have, you get better benefits upon retirement. If you max out, you will earn in retirement some percentage of your best annual Salary (people debated as to whether the number was 40%, 50% or 80%).

Points are earnable any where in the EU, and a certain number of points are transferable from other Countries including America (I'm not sure about Canada). Additionally, you can spend your points in any other country in the EU. This means that it's possible that you could work in Germany your whole life, where wages are quite high, and then retire in France, where wages are low but retirement and medical benefits are high.

An interesting fact that I learned today: You get 3 points for each child that you bear. So, normally a woman can retire with full benefits after 40 years of work. However, if she has three kids, she can retire 9 years early!

The Boat that Rocked, and the movie that may not have.

2009-06-23T00:27:00.000+02:00

I just got back from seeing The Boat that Rocked (or, Good Morning England, as it's known here in France). Despite the generally mediocre reviews that it got, I thought it was outright hilarious, and is the an excellent laugh-out-loud movie; unfortunately, I was the only one doing so. In what was one of the stranger ~~movie going~~ experiences I've had, I was the only person in the entire theatre that laughed at all. There was the odd chuckle here and there when the movie poked fun at the British - but for the most part I was alone in a crowd of a hundred or so people who just sat still and quietly munched on popcorn.

My hypothesis here are three:

They mixed up the subtitle reel before showing the film.
The French have a strange sense of humour.
I have a strange sense of humour.

While I'm willing to conced to Option 3, I'm going to believe Option 1 until proven otherwise. If anyone else does watch it, let me know what you thought, I'm a little concerned at the difference between the crowds perception of the film and my own.

Geoblocking

2009-06-12T09:41:00.001+02:00

There's an excellent post over on the CBC that talks about the practice of Geoblocking, what it is, and why broadcasters insist on doing it. For those that don't know, Geoblocking is a way for a company to limit access to particular parts of their website based upon the physical location of the person coming to the site. For example, I can't watch re-runs of Star Trek on the CBS site because I'm not in the USA (which is annoying; but understandable), and Sarah can't look at Jeans on the Canadian guess website (which is just dumb), presumably because they charge more if you live in Europe.

Without a doubt, my favourite part of the article was this gem from the comments section.

There's a simple way to get around any geoblocking fence. It's called reverse urling. if you are being denied access to a site, just type the url backwards, character for character, eventually ending with :ptth.

What this does is tell the server to come to you rather than you go to it. The only danger is if the website is huge, by inviting it into your computer you stand a chance of overloading your machine, and, under rare circumstances, this can cause the cpu the short out and catch fire.

The best thing to do, should that happen, is to quickly type the url again but forwards. The sudden reversal in direction in the flow of electrons from your computer to the server should bring things back into equilibrium.

Should you find it impossible to type due to electric shocks from the keyboard, very common in pre 2004 keyboards which are not properly grounded against reverse urling, you should try to cut power to the computer. Electrical problems from the short have been known to spread within a house, or sometimes even to a whole neighbourhood., depending on whether the houses are connected serially or not in the powergrid (I never remember which one is bad).

Note to readers, I'm pretty sure this won't work, although I'm not will to test on my laptop for fear of damage to my pants (and the contents thereof).

Horrible product naming.

2009-05-29T18:02:00.000+02:00

Recently, I've started reading some of the spam that comes through my inbox (reading my actual email is much less interesting). It's come to my attention that Spammers have an even worse mastery of product marketing than they do of the English language. This is, by far, the worst ad I've seen yet.

Marketing is (not) exciting!!

2009-05-11T10:23:00.000+02:00

This morning, my inbox was warmed by an email from our marketing team, letting me know that, tomorrow, the company will be launching a 'New and Exciting Marketing campaign,' and asking us to 'keep [our] eyes focused on the marketing website for exciting details.'

I don't know why they send these emails to the development staff. I've never actually seen a marketing campaign that I would consider to be 'exciting'. My excitement levels are elevated by lower compile times and hot fixes; not flash animations and buzzwords.

The best idea I could come up with for something that would get me excited would be the 'Help us help ourselves (to dinner)' campaign. During this campaign, anytime a customer buys a product, a developer gets a steak. Maintenance renewals are paid out in beer; a sixer for each year of the agreement.

I don't know if this kind of campaign would improve the company’s bottom line in anyway - but it's certainly a marketing idea I could get behind.

Canned Chicken

2009-05-01T11:57:00.001+02:00

Should this not be available in your grocery outlet, Amazon.com will deliver. To me, this seems like a bad dare (bet you can't fit a whole chicken in that can!) gone to market.

A WHOLE chicken in a CAN | I Hate My Message Board

Swine Flu returns from Vacation

2009-04-30T23:11:00.000+02:00

So it seems that concerns about Swine Flu has breached the Atlantic.
When I looked on Sunday, there was a reported case in the South-West region, near Bordeaux, but nothing confirmed nearby. But it seems like that could be changing.

Yesterday, a lady in my office came back from a canceled appointment with her Dr. As it turns out, her Dr was under quarantine for possible infection. Earlier that week, a patient had come into the office that had previously been traveling in Mexico on Vacation. He was feeling under the weather, so he did his due diligence by getting checked out. His Dr did her work, and called it into the larger medical body in France (whatever the French CDC would be) resulting in both Dr and Patient being put in quarantine for 15 days!

There's still no word on whether either of these people (or that person in Bordeaux) actually have anything wrong with them, but it's interesting to note how seriously it's being taken here.

Bier, Bitte.

2009-04-30T01:22:00.001+02:00

The trip to Germany was short, but rad.
One of the most pleasant parts about the Country is that they have price controls on Beer, in much the same way France controls the price of bread. Which is good, because, as it turns out, the only words I know how to say in German are 'Bier, bitte' and 'Danke!' Both are of limited use around the office, but invaluable in the restaurants of the tiny town I stayed in.

In general, the trip was a whirlwind introduction to a lot of people and places, and marks the real beginning of integration talks between our two companies. Wish me luck, it's going to be an interesting summer.

For those that are interested, there are some pics up on our photo site.

5 Years of Awesomeness

2009-04-27T01:30:00.000+02:00

Last Friday Sarah and I celebrated 5 years of Awesomeness together. (Prior to getting married, we were both independently awesome.)

To celebrate -- Eurodisney!

From Disneyland!

There should be more to this, but I'm sleepy and should probably go to bed. I think Sarah's still riding the sugar high, so she'll probably be good for stories for the next few days.

[Edit: Fixed a typo.]

Taking the Train to Deutschland

2009-04-21T09:19:00.000+02:00

This morning I'm taking the train East, to Germany. Including an 8 hour haul from Edmonton to Vancouver through the Rockies, this is the second time in my life I've travelled by train. This trip takes about 1/3 the time though, thanks to the high speed TGV line that runs through Western Europe.

In the few minutes that I've been on the train, I've been convinced that this is vastly superior to air travel. There is no line to pass security, no border authentication, and no wait to get on board. I showed up 25 minutes before departure and the guy at the gate told me I was here too early and that I should take a coffee and come back in 10. Awesome. That said, the train left very promptly at 6:58 as the ticket noted, so I don't think I'd push my luck.

The seats are huge and get comfier by ticket price. The lowest class seats are slightly more spaced out than a Greyhound. As you move up in category you get desks, tables or even a private room (which seems to be reserved for Children to yell in and has been, blissfully, sound proofed).

The scenery on this trip is a refreshing change from the grey, grey and grey that I'm used to looking at in paris. Mostly it's grassy hills but there's also a lot of trees and huge fields of yellow, flowering plants (does anyone know what this might be?). It reminds me an awful lot of Rural Ontario.

Wherever I just passed is a tiny town of maybe 100 single story houses with brick or thatched roofs. A river, (which is really just a creek with high aspirations) runs through the centre of town, dividing rolling fields of golden flowers on the West bank from grassy pastures dotted with hungry cows and sheep on the Eastern side. Above the rows of houses stands a single church with a three story steeple, and grassy green hills as far as I can see, to the North.

[Update] I think that we just stopped in the city of Lorraine, which would make sense because I am pretty sure that it's a primary-agriculture region of eastern France.

I would love to share picture of all of this, but unfortunately the pocket camera I brought with me does not have a 300 km/h mode. Most of the pictures come out as a blurry mess. Sarah and I have talked about taking a trip out this way to Alsace, maybe we will bring the beefier camera then so that we can snap some pics of the scenery.

Human Resource Refactoring Redux

2009-04-19T20:19:00.000+02:00

Some time ago I commented that my company was planning job cuts. Since then, a few people have asked around to see if we've been affected so I figured I should probably update the situation here as well.

I'm happy to say that up to this point we are not greatly impacted by the changes.

That said, it could still change. Specifics of the job changes haven't been rolled out here in full force just yet. Getting things done in France is unbelievably time consuming. Here's an example of why:

In my office we have, what is essentially, a Union. The Union has a legal right to express an opinion on any job change (lay offs, promotions, title changes, new manager, etc) before the change is expressed to the employees. The Union doesn't have much power to impact the result of the change, but they do vigorously excercise their right to an opinion. Recently, they've been going through an election of sorts so the job discussions have been tabled until the new group is elected. This means that talks will start around the beginning of June. However, if talks take longer than 5 weeks, it will be July, and people will go on Holidays. No discussions can really happen during the summer, so they will be put off until September. Sooo... I will probably hear the result of the January announcement around October.

Results outside of France have been trickling in, and there has been some indirect impact, to be sure. However, I still have a desk, a chair, a computer and, most importantly, a paycheque. I'm happy with what I've got.

[Note: Comments disabled on this post. Please feel free to email me any comments.]

Unlimited Movies

2009-04-18T12:20:00.000+02:00

While at the Canadian Meetup a few nights ago, someone introduced me to the UGC card. UGC is a theatre chain in France, similar to the Odeon or Galaxy chains in North America. With this card, you can see as many movies as you like in a UGC Theatre for 19 euro a month, or for two people for 35.

This is such an awesome idea!
I wish that this existed for the theatres back in Canada. I most definitely would have picked this up.

Booking a Ticket to HQ

2009-04-17T16:11:00.000+02:00

I just booked a train ticket to one of our foreign offices. The process was fast, but confusing. At one point I got the impression that I had paid for everything, but gotten nothing. So I called a to confirm if I had a ticket.

The lady at the other end said "Hello. Yes. You have a non-changeable ticket; would you like to change it?"

Truth be told, I wasn't totally happy with the ticket, so I said yes.
She said "You cannot." I'm pretty sure I'd played this game before while trying to get my internet fixed.

"OK then, no, I would not like to change the ticket."

She seemed happy with this answer. "That is good." She said, "Now, we need you to confirm that this ticket is the one you want."

"What if I say no?" I asked, sensing that I was close to falling into a French bureaucracy trap. This is a very dangerous thing indeed.

"You cannot, the ticket is already booked, you just need to agree that it is the one that you want so that you can have the ticket."

"So then I have to agree? I cannot disagree?"

"That is correct."

"OK, so I agree. But out of curiosity, why do you have to ask me if you already know the answer."

"We have to ask so that we can issue the ticket." She answered; appending a funny noise that hinted of 'Duh.'

Oh, of course. Yes, I have definitely been here before. Fortunately, with experience comes the knowledge that this doesn't have to make sense any more. With a 'Oui' and a 'Merci' I had a ticket. Maybe it's not the one that I wanted, but C'est la vie.

New Tech at our place.

2009-04-16T03:01:00.000+02:00

Sarah recently picked up an iPhone.
Related to this, she also set up a twitter account. (For those unfamiliar with twitter.)

There are many great apps for a device that lets you be connected to the internet at all times. So far, I think the one that is getting the most usage, however, is the LolCats application. As I type this, sarah is lying in bed checking out the cats.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Canadian Meetup Night

2009-04-16T02:53:00.000+02:00

Tonight was the monthly meeting for the Paris Expat Canadian meetup group. We'd been meaning to go to the group for a while now, but this was the first time that we've actually been able to make it out (for some reason, they have a penchant for selecting nights on which some other awesome thing is happening). I'd been to meetup.com groups before in Vancouver, and while they were always at least a little interesting, they tended to be greater amounts of disappointing.

Brian, a friend of ours from Vancouver who is also in Paris now, made the observation that my prior groups were all interest based and tended to be the sort of interest (Software Development, Board Games, Nerdy Website, etc.) that made no guarantee of social skill. This meetup, however, was very much social based, and made no serious claims of involving Canadians at all. Also, this was at a pub. All in all, I think that it's fair to say that this went much better than the last Vancouver Software Developer meetup group I was at, where I was actually started out of the room by the tinfoil hat brigade of Greater Vancouver. It was very weird.

One of the highlights of the evening was shaking hands with a face that I already recognized from his website. When we started looking at moving to Paris, I did some web research and came up with the Truffles for Breakfast blog, "in which two dreamers simplify their lives and move to Paris." The blog described the work that a couple from San Francisco had to go through to move their lives to Paris about a year before we did, and was a fantastic resource for us as we looked to make a very similar move.

I read a lot about Joe and Morgen's life before meeting Joe this evening, so I knew a lot of his background coming in, and probably knew about him better than I know about many of the people I hang out with here on a weekly basis. That said, I still didn't actually know the person at all, which is a very different thing entirely. This is a weird side effect of the internet. A lot of the social networking and blog type stuff that's out there is wonderful as long as you:
[a] Know the person that you are reading about in Real Life.
[b] Will never meet the person you are reading about.
I still haven't figured out how to breach the third case (Knew them online before meeting them in Real Life) with any sort of social grace. It's only happened to me twice now, but both times it's very awkward.

Me: "Hi, I'm Dave, from Vancouver. This is Sarah, my wife. Sarah, this is Joe, he's a technology writer from San Francisco that moved here two years ago with his wife and cat."
Joe: "Hi I'm... have we met?"
Me: "Nope. But I read your blog!"

OK, so maybe that wasn't quite how it was, but definitely creepy feeling nonetheless.

In any case, he, and the rest of the people we met with tonight, all turned out to be interesting and not the least bit socially inept (I'm looking at you, VanDEV!). This is definitely going to be recurring theme for our stay in Paris.

[Edited for Spelling on 4/17/2009.]

I think I will build a house in Portugal.

2009-03-23T00:52:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, Sarah heard of an opportunity with Habitat for Humanity that's coming up towards the end of July. A group from Paris will be heading out to Portugal, I think to Braga, to build a brick house. I didn't know much about the trip at first; truth be told, I still don't know much about it, but today I signed up to head out.

I think I'm going here.

From what I can tell, the trip should last about 2 weeks in total, and will involve 9 hours a day 'on the job', including time for breaks and lunch. I believe that Monday and Friday will both count as travel days to and from the site, and we don't work the weekend, so really it's just 8 days of labour in total, and a pretty cool experience. For that amount of time, I expect that we will get a chance to see the city from more of a residents perspective than a tourists.

It might sound like a strange holiday, but its the kind of interesting thing I like to spend time on when I get a chance. Manual labor is a surprisingly relaxing way to spend a holiday, especially considering the level of activity in my day to day live. (Today, I sat on a couch and used my thumbs to make a person in a video game excercize for me. If I'm making him run, that still counts as Cardio, right?)

[Inspired Innovation] Car Horn Grenades

2009-03-19T21:22:00.000+01:00

I think that car horns should come with timers.
You get 60 seconds to hold your horn before your car explodes.

This innovation brought to you by Sarah.

Visiting The Ontario Museum of Art

2009-03-14T22:43:00.000+01:00

Between breakfast and the post office, I stumbled across the Ontario Museum of Art. A friend had recommended it the night before, so I figured I'd pony up the 18 CDN and pop in for a few hours to see how we stacked up. I have to say, it was a spectacular collection, and I would definitely go again if given the chance.

As for sharing the highlights, Ontario, or perhaps just Canada as a whole, has ridiculous copyright laws surrounding works of visual art that prevent people from taking pictures of the artwork itself*. While I understand that this in some way protects the artists intellectual property, it also makes it hard for people to share their experiences at art galleries with their friends. Basically, I'm forced to use words to describe things that are, largely, indescribable by their very nature of being great works of art (or just really cool).

Here goes nothin.

There were four pieces that I really appreciated, as well as one collection. Most of this was in the contemporary area on the top two floors of the museum. All of these are unknown pieces by unknown authors because I didn't have a pencil and I was finger-wagged every time I tried to take a picture of a plaque.

The first piece, was actually an installation. Most of the time, I have mixed results around installations, because they involve more interaction than I'm really want to have. While wandering around near the back of the top floor, I heard the fainy sound of bagpipes. I looked around for a bit to try to find the source and caught the gaze of an older woman doing the same. We started a short conversation about where we thought the sound was, and then went to investigate. We wandered over to a window and looked out over the city of Toronto, and chatted for a bit about each of the areas we could see below. We gave up on the bagpipe noises after a minute or two, turned around, and discovered a hidden set of speakers behind a pole. Later that day, I caught other people looking for the sound of a marching band, a protest, and our phantom pipers. I thought that this piece was really effective in how it caused me to interact with my space, and with the people around me.

The next piece falls into the cool category. There was an 8 foot cube sitting in the middle of a large room. The cube was covered in what appeared to be geometrically patterned black fur. Upon closer inspection, I found that it was actually a box with magnets running in patterns along the inside, and it had been covered in a think layer of iron filings. The filings stuck out nearly 4 cm's in places, and gave an almost irresistible 'touch me I'm fluffy' feeling.

The third piece, also on the same floor, was designed to represent the intersection of First Nations culture with Western culture. It was designed by an artist from Fort St John, I believe, and was a set of four totem poles that had been sculpted out of golf bags. I was super impressed with the level of detail you could create for an eagle's face out of a set of club covers.

The fourth piece was actually an archeological dig that was occurring out back of the museum. As the story goes, the museum was built on some land, called 'The grange' and included a heritage home as part of it's property. A few years ago, a collector in the boston area heard that the museum was renovating, and sent up a diary from property's butler from 150 years back. He said that he felt it might be interesting to read before making any structural changes to the building. In the diary was a map of the original property, with 30 odd X's marking something that was never described. After some convincing, the Museum asked an archeologist to look into one of the X's and a small wax ball contain a human blood sample was found inside of the wall. The museum secured some funding to look into more of the map, and has since uncovered 20 or so more items, each carefully sealed in wax and hidden inside of the structure of the building. The person who buried the items was thought to be the Irish maid servant, Mary O'Shea - the most perfect Irish name I've heard next to Patrick O'Malley. The dig is still going on, and the museum allowed tours through the area, the dig, the office, and into Mary's workshop, which was hidden behind a wall in the cellar. No one knows why the items were hidden - perhaps she was just 'touched' - but it's certainly a very cool exhibit to be able to walk through.

In addition to these pieces, the museum also contains a stunning collection of work in the contemporary section from artists in the 80s struggling to represent the feeling in Toronto during the early years of the AIDS crisis. In the case of these pieces, it was the collection as a whole, not any particular piece, that was worth seeing again. As far as 'art that evokes a feeling' goes, this is probably the best collection that I've seen.

Whirlwind wedding in TDot.

2009-03-14T22:07:00.000+01:00

Last weekend I flew out to Toronto on a whirlwind trip to catch a good friend's wedding. Brian had originally asked me to participate in the wedding party, but unfortunately I didn't have my visa when I was asked, and had no guarantee that I'd be allowed back into France if I were to leave it. As soon as I got my carte sejour back in February I eagerly booked the trip at the last minute. In an effort to reduce the late booking premium a little bit, I picked a flight that left Saturday morning, and returned the following afternoon. This meant that I only had to find a place to stay for one night, and could skimp a little on the food. Breakfast and lunch would be provided by the airplane in both directions, and dinner would come during the wedding.

The morning flight out was surprisingly nice. Unlike the 14 hour craziness of going to the west coast, I only had to spend 8 hours, or 3 1/2 feature films (Australia: Fantastic - go see it; Quantum of Solace: OK; Largo Winch: OK; X-Files: meh.) on a plane. My flight left about 10 am here, and arrived around 1 pm in TDot which would have been plenty of time were it not for my perpetually broken internal compass. Somehow I ended up at a hot dog stand, Cafe Crepe and a Tim Hortons well before I got anywhere near to my hotel, which was conveniently (read: cheaply) located in Chinatown above an all asian grocery shopping mall.

With only 15 minutes between check in and the ceremony, I didn't have much time to get ready. Just enough time for a quick shower and I ran out the door with my unwrapped gift. I made it to the wedding with only a few short minutes to go, and located the nearest top-hat wearing wedding authority in the hopes that he could direct me to my seat. We talked for several minutes before I discovered that he was a musician, not an usher, and didn't have much more of a clue about where we were supposed to be than I did. The spot we randomly selected turned out to be a pretty good choice, as it put as both near the only other person that I knew who was not in the wedding party; Annie. I hadn't seen her in at least 5 years, and we caught up over Indian food between the ceremony and reception.

I won't spoil the ceremony by describing it in any level of detail. Needless to say, it was beautiful. The theme was scottish, and included a Kilt for the groom, and 4 red-headed bridesmaids, and matching bride. There was an open bar following, and a good selection of tunes for dancing that lasted well into the night.

The following morning, I got up pretty early, and had to find a post office so I could mail some Birthday gifts Express Post. Nothing was open until 1, so I killed time at the Ontario Museum of Art. More about that later. Breakfast was rad. The upside of having a cheap hotel in Chinatown, is that you are near to the cheap food in Chinatown as well. I popped into a bakery down the street just in time for the hot-out-of-the-oven Bar-b-q Pork Buns. That, and some more Timmies, made up the bulk of my Sunday diet.

Some touristing and travel later, and I found myself on a plane back to Paris. I had specially selected the seat second from the back of the plane so that it would be quiet, and I could recline the seat to sleep. When I got to where I was meant to sit, I found an old french guy snoring in my place. The flight attendant looked a little put out that I wanted to sit in my seat, and carefully explained to me that they had moved the old guy there because his seat, the one behind mine, smelled too terrible to let him sit there. I asked him where I was to sit then, and he looked even more put out. He went in search of a better place for me, and came back with a different flight attendant instead. She sniffed the seat and deigned it worthy afterall, and I was invited to sit in the stink chair for the flight back. All things considered, it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be, and I slept most of the flight back anyhow.

My flight arrive back in paris at 7 am, which left me plenty of time to make it home for a shower, and onto my usual train for work. The trip was quick, but I'm now convinced that reasonable travel can happen in a weekend. This is good, as I think it just opened up all kinds of weekend forays around the Ile-de-france area.

Milk is a 'Sometimes' solid

2009-02-21T11:41:00.001+01:00

One of the strangest things for me to adjust to in France was that Milk (and eggs, actually) are purchased from the grocery aisle. Not the refrigerated dairy section. 95% of the milk sold in France has gone through a process called UHT, or Ultra High Temperature processing, which basically kills anything inside, but leaves the nutrients behind. This stuff can sit on a store shelf for about 6-9 months and really doesn't taste much different. It is weird though, and it does have a slightly strange smell.

The alternative to the shelf stuff is to buy Fresh Milk from the dairy aisle. Fresh milk is a little different than back home. For one, I don't think it's homogenized. This leads to some weird lumpy bits in my coffee. It's always fine for the first week or so, but then I start to see some build up around the top and bottom of the container. It passes the sniff test ('Hey Sarah, does this smell funny to you?') every time, and doesn't taste funny, it just looks lumpy.

My theory here is that it's just milk fat build up. My grandma used to tell me that the milk she used to buy would have solid milk fat floating at the top, and that people would choose their milk based on the amount of fat they could see. In the winter, this became ice cream and people would wake up early to fight over who would get the fat lump. Keep in mind, this was back when milk came from cows, not Safeway. I've never actually seen milk that didn't come in a carton or can, so I couldn't honestly say if the lumpiness is a normal thing or not, and Sarah and I certainly aren't fighting over the lumpy bits. There's a Haagen-Daaz store around the corner.

Ratatouille

2009-02-18T23:15:00.001+01:00

[Posting the recipe for K.]

Truly, this is the only civilized way to eat eggplant.

Ingredients

Equal parts zucchini and eggplant. I usually use two small zucchinis and one moderate sized European eggplant. (Asian eggplants -- the long skinny ones -- are nice if you want to do the movie recipe, but I personally feel they have a bitter taste that detracts from the soup)
One red bell pepper. (I started with green, but red is a nicer colour)
A lot of garlic. I usually use between 1/2 head and a whole head depending upon the strength of the garlic.
About 5-6 average sized tomatoes. There's usually just slightly more tomato than eggplant.
(Optional) One medium yellow onion.
Some fresh herbs. Personally, I prefer some thyme and a sprinkle of basil.
Generous salt.
Some liquid, more about that later.

Crockpot:

Cut everything to about the same size and stir so that it's well mixed.
Add a little bit of liquid. Crockpots need some liquid to start, but only a tiny bit. I usually use a splash of red wine. Sometimes I use faux-chicken stock. By splash, I mean about a quarter cup.
My crockpot had four settings, short, short and hot, long, long and hot.
I had the best results with long, next best with short and hot.

Stock pot:

Chop the onion first, and let it caramelize on a low heat while you cut the zucchini and eggplant.
Turn up the heat to medium, and fry the eggplant/zucchini combo for as long as it takes to cut the tomatoes.
Make a 'hole' in the middle of the mix, crank the heat, and toss in the tomatoes. Stir this for about 3 minutes. I don't know why exactly, but I've always found that my sauces and soups are a little better if you fast fry the tomatoes. I think maybe it lets out the liquid.
Add some liquid to the pot. A regular pot needs a bit more liquid, I used about a half cup give or take depending on how liquidy the tomatoes are.
Add everything else and stir.
Turn down to a simmer and cook for about 40 minutes.

Tips:
I read a recipe recently that suggests adding a bit of cayenne. This is totally awesome, and therefore is strongly recommended.

A french friend of mine, living in Vancouver, serves this dish over rice. I like this as well, but I think that my current coworkers would scoff. If you serve over rice, cut the veggies a little smaller.

Commuting Wookies

2009-02-13T10:16:00.001+01:00

There was a Wookie on the metro this morning.
Why, oh why, do I not have a camera on me at all times?

Checking the Security of the Electric

2009-02-12T14:52:00.000+01:00

A french man just came into my office carrying a large, pointy stick that seemed to be plugged into something in the hallway. He said something in French, and then stuck his stick into each computer in the office. This was very curious, and after he left I asked the other people in my office what that was about. Apparently he was checking for the 'security of the electric.' When I asked what that meant, everyone shrugged and just said that he comes every month to do that.

This can be a very strange place at times.

Human Resource Refactoring

2009-01-29T21:12:00.000+01:00

I try to avoid talking about work here. However, in this case I think it's worth a brief comment. My current employer has recently announced that it will be cutting 6% of it's current work force. If you are familiar with my employer, you'll probably recognize that as a fairly significant loss of jobs.

It's not really a surprise that this is happening. Many employers in my sector are making big layoffs this quarter. That said, we did post some pretty reasonable results on our most recent earnings call, so I'm a little surprised by the severity of the actions they are taking.

There's not a lot of detail about the job losses just yet. I don't know who's getting cut, where the cuts will be, or when they will happen. All we know is that they will happen, and happen sometime in 2009.

Nothing to do now but keep doing what I'm doing until I hear more.

[Note: Comments disabled on this post. Please feel free to email me any comments.]

Mistaken Identity

2009-01-26T23:17:00.002+01:00

Tonight whilst browsing the internet, I clicked on the NY Times front page to see what was up with the world.

Dave looked up and said "Who's that a picture of? It looks like Slater!"

I replied, "It's a picture of a child. Dying of malaria. In Cambodia."

In other news, we have great optical coverage here in France.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Gigantic Turkey Roast in Abbotsford.

2009-01-26T21:54:00.000+01:00

CBC is reporting that the cull of 60,000 turkeys at B.C. farm may begin Monday.

So what do you do with 60,000 Turkeys?
The answer's obvious: Turn that old barn you weren't using into a giant crockpot.

CFIA officials were preparing to euthanize the birds by sealing the barns and flooding them with carbon dioxide. Workers will then mix the carcasses with organic material in the barn to raise the temperature as high as 50 C during decomposition.

It's a good thing they are near Cranberry country. Just sayin'.

PingMag Goes Dark

2009-01-23T22:24:00.000+01:00

Ping Mag, one of the blogs that I read regularly, has gone dead for 2009. The blog was an interview-style, journalistic site that focused on people that 'make stuff' in Japan, with a pretty big focus on small manufacturing businesses.

The blog was especially interesting because of the attitudes of the people that were being interviewed. These were people that had dedicated their lives, oftentimes going back several generations, to things that I never really think much about, such as making soap, rice boxes, or sandals.

Another common thread in their articles was that even though you might want to be a businessman, electrical engineer, or graphic designer, your true calling might really be making kites. This thread was brought up many times, and usually came up when exploring how people ended up in the job they had. Some people followed their hearts into a new career, some changed jobs to follow where their talents were, still others took over the family business and used new skills and education to shape their grandfather's or father's company into something of their own.

Reading about people that take tremendous pride in their work, while also being very humble, was really refreshing when compared to many of the other business and marketing sites that I follow. The articles always made for an interesting read, and a nice change from the business culture that I'm familiar with it.

Search Engine Energy Consumption

2009-01-21T09:43:00.000+01:00

Until now, it was a rarely pondered question: Between the virtual bookends of someone searching for revealing pictures of Lindsay Lohan online and a search engine producing said pictures, how much energy is consumed?

The answer: Not Much.

The Globe and Mail ran this interesting colour piece on the energy consumption of performing an internet search.

The 12th day of Christmas

2009-01-07T08:45:00.000+01:00

I finally figured out what the Twelve Days of Christmas are. I always thought it was about the last 12 shopping days before Christmas (the song seemed like more of a shopping list than anything else). Turns out, it's actually the 12 days following. The 12th day, which is celebrated as Epiphany here in France, is intended to commemorate the day on which the three wise men met with Baby Jesus. In honour of this event, we get to eat cake. Gallete des Rois is an Almond flavoured Frangipan with a bean in the middle. Whoever gets the bean, gets a crown that they have to wear for the rest of dinner.

Will Smith

2009-01-06T09:04:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we left the house to go buy some groceries and heard some very loud music playing from around the corner. We followed our ears to the premiere of Sept Vies, the new Will Smith movie that was opening at the Gaumont (the theatre down the street).

After a few moments of craning our necks over the crowd we saw what the commotion was about; Will Smith and Rosario Dawson were actually there! It was definitely cool to watch the stars come into the theatre.

For a celebrity he had a surprisingly familiar face. I think it's because we spent so much time listening to the story, all about how, his life got flipped - turned upside down. Rosario was less familiar; she definitely stood out as a celebrity of some kind, but we weren't really able to place her until a few minutes later.

After we got home, I took the camera from the bookshelf and put it back into my coat.

A step closer to Internet

2009-01-02T12:12:00.001+01:00

So just before Christmas I made a comment about my internet working. As it turns out, the internet, and thus my post, was full of lies.

The box blinked happily on the evening of the 24th, but went dark on Christmas morning. Unfortunately this means that we were without reasonable internet for the Holidays. Which means we were also without phone, skype, ichat, facebook, etc.

There's a coffee shop across the street that we've been stealing internet from, but it's unreliable at best.

On Tuesday, I was grumbling to a co-worker that my internet was hosed, and she kindly offered to call tech support for me. The ordeal lasted nearly three quarters of an hour and involved much yelling, jumping and waving of arms. I'm glad she's so animated (Probably a result of being Italian, or just living with Parisians) as it let me vent vicariously. I still don't know what she was yelling, but I'm sure it echoed my frustrations.

Anyhow, we just had a technician from Free come by and he thinks that my line is good, but the box is toast. He'll be sending someone else by on Monday with a new box that should work by Tuesday.

So, if it does work on January 6th, that will be 19 days of internet-lessness where I've still been paying. I don't think I have much of a chance of a refund, but maybe it's worth writing a letter. I think that > 50% of the month being dead is worth asking about. The sad part is that this timeline seems about par for the course here.

New Years in Paris

2009-01-02T00:46:00.002+01:00

I asked around and it turns out there there are really three places to spend New Years in Paris.

Partying it up on the Champs-Élysées.
Watching the Fireworks from the base of the Eiffel Tower.
Watching the Fireworks from Trocadero, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.

We opted for #3. Fireworks are cool, and I think the atmosphere of the Champs-Élysées would have been a little lost on two out-of-place Canadians. We figured that we'd get a better view from the other bank, and hoped that we would encounter less people that side as well.

We hopped over to the Metro station at the end of our block, passing dozens of Police Officers on the way. The metro was packed, and we were herded through the passageway like people waiting for a rollercoaster. When the metro finally pulled up it was packed fuller than I'd ever seen it, people's faces, hands and other body parts were pressed up against the glass. Still, it was a party train. People were singing, kissing, yelling and generally having a great time. As packed as it was, people made room for us as best they could and we somehow managed to squeak on to the car.

Trocadero is only three stops from us, so the ride was pretty short. When we pulled up, the stop was all but empty, maybe 4 people there. Once the train came to a complete stop though, it literally exploded with people, nearly all of whom were singing soccer cheers, national anthems, or general party songs.

We made it outside without incident and managed to secure a pretty clear spot for watching the evening's events. The Eiffel Tower was already light up, shining blue in the night sky. Around the base are 12 stars that are representing the EU. I think, not sure though, that this has something to do with France's place in the EU for the latter part of the year. As the countdown began, the lights started going dark, counting down the last 12 seconds of 2008, and of Sarkozy's reign as the head of the EU.

The crowd cheered, champagne flowed freely, and we toasted each other from tiny yoghurt containers that we'd packed along for the trip.

The fireworks were... lacking. But, people had a healthy DIY attitude and brought along their own. Roman candles were being lit all around us, and the best light show was actually coming from behind instead of ahead of us. One guy got a little bored I think towards the end and started aiming at the backside of the horse statue that was between us and the tower.

When we were ready to go, we decided that the Metro was probably not the best way home. We didn't really know where we were, but one of the nice things about our location is that it's a huge people magnet for special events. So, we just followed the largest pack of people and it eventually led us back to our street. We grabbed some Haagen-Daaz from the store around the corner, and headed home for the evening around 3.

Happy New Years everyone!!