Some pictures my brother in law took in Crete. Fourth of a series of 6. Those seeking a context for these pictures can read the Crete travelogue in the May archives.

More of Blue Bear's day at the beach

Europe unites in hatred of French

"Language, history, cooking and support for rival football teams still divide Europe. But when everything else fails, one glue binds the continent together: hatred of the French.

Typically, the French refuse to accept what arrogant, overbearing monsters they are.

But now after the publication of a survey of their neighbours' opinions of them at least they no longer have any excuse for not knowing how unpopular they are.

Why the French are the worst company on the planet, a wry take on France by two of its citizens, dredges up all the usual evidence against them. They are crazy drivers, strangers to customer service, obsessed by sex and food and devoid of a sense of humour.

But it doesn't stop there, boasting a breakdown, nation by nation, of what in the French irritates them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as "chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless". However, the French may be more shocked by the views of other nations.

For the Germans, the French are "pretentious, offhand and frivolous". The Dutch describe them as "agitated, talkative and shallow." The Spanish see them as "cold, distant, vain and impolite" and the Portuguese as "preaching". In Italy they comes across as "snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed" and the Greeks find them "not very with it, egocentric bons vivants".

Interestingly, the Swedes consider them "disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty".

But the knockout punch to French pride came in the way the poll was conducted. People were not asked what they hated in the French, just what they thought of them.

"Interviewees were simply asked an open question - what five adjectives sum up the French," said Olivier Clodong, one of the study's two authors and a professor of social and political communication at the Ecole Superieur de Commerce, in Paris. "The answers were overwhelmingly negative."

According to Mr Clodong, the old adage that France is wonderful, it's just the French who are the problem, is shared across Europe.

"We are admired for our trains, the Airbus and Michelin tyres. But the buck stops there," he said.

Another section of the study deals with how the French see the rest of Europe.

"Believe it or not, the English and the French use almost exactly the same adjectives to describe each other - bar the word 'insular'," Mr Coldong said. "So the feelings are mutual.""


Cock: "The whole world wants to be Frenchified, but nobody likes the French."

Some pictures my brother in law took in Crete. Third of a series of 6. Those seeking a context for these pictures can read the Crete travelogue in the May archives.

This whole post consists of the evil things someone did to Blue Bear when I was trekking through the Samaria gorge.

July Trip
22/7 - Reims/Bayeux


Cathedral


Tau palace

I finished the cathedral 1 1/2 hrs before my next train, but didn't want to eat at a restaurant due to time constraints, among other things (I was still in the city at this point and it'd take a while to walk to the station). So I decided to test the Cock's theory that McDonald's in France was better. I walked in just before 11am - the transition time between breakfast and lunch menus. So why the fries were cold and a bit stale was beyond me (yes, the Cock strikes again).

I also had 'Le p'tit chicken recette Fromagere' (strictly speaking, for a basis for comparison I should've had ordered something available elsewhere, but I like to try new things). The description was very enticing (it must be the language) - 'Son pain aux eclats de mars, son poulet croustillant specialite panee au poulet, son onctueuse sauce au fromage fondu et sa salade croquante'. Too late I realised why it was 'p'tit', and there was also no fromage inside (wth!). Otherwise it was like a McChicken but in a dusted bun (not sesame), with the chicken crumbed rather than battered.

Hell, even the Coke was off; just looking at the dispenser, I knew something was not right, since it usually flowed into the cup in a pure stream but this dispensed an alternating stream of black and white syrup and soda water. Not only was it flat, the carbonation quotient/mix was off. Like the Coke from the RI vending machine behind the canteen when Monty's was in charge.

In their favor, though, contrary to what seems to be the practice in the rest of Europe, they gave me 1 packet of ketchup and pommes-frites-sauce (tartar) gratuit. Also: 'Golden best of - 1 menu maxi best of (TM) Big Mac + 1 cheeseburger' was going for €7. How could they trademark "Best of"?!

They offered a "McCine" - 1 menu best of (your choice of meal except the one with the 280g burger) and 1 cinema ticket for €8,50. Working backwards, it seems a cinema ticket alone (on top of the meal) was worth only €2,70. What sort of films could they afford to screen at that price?!

The McFlurry flavours in France were Daim, Kit Kat and M&M Peanuts.

An information panel infomed me that Cours JB. Langlet was presenting a series of remarkable buildings. I didn't believe them, then I saw this:


'Reconstruction de Reims Marcel Rousseauarchitecte 1927'


Docteur JB Langlet. Maire de Reims 1841-1927

So far I hadn't seen any Malaysian Mannikins in France and was quite pleased. I thought that the French had better not disappoint me.


Automatic store
I thought only the Japs had advanced automation to such a degree. Maybe this is what happens when you can't easily fire people.

When in Paris, the Cock had had all 3 breakfasts in the hostel, which provided a small baguette-shaped roll, a small croissant, jam and butter, and a cup of coffee/tea/chocolate, as well as vile juice. After 2 days, I was sick of it, so I went out and eventually had a croque monsieur. The cock wanted to eat at the hostel because he'd paid for it, and my parents would agree with him. But then that is a sunk cost, and it definitely makes more sense to, since you're already in France, go out and sample local breakfast delights (ie The divine pains et al.). After all, unless he returns with his "future girlfriend slash wife", he will never get to try pastries lighter than any pastry has the right to be. That would be a true waste of money.

I kept seeing a magazine: "Teu". One version labelled "Plage" showed a man's bathroom shots (?) and another also labelled "Plage" showed a man naked and seen from the back. One story went: "Le nouveau Superman est-il gay?"

I sensed the French were better at English than the Italians (though this was a slightly tough call), but they refused to speak it anyway. Bah.

Seen at a newstand in Paris (where I was transfering trains) for €6: 'La vie parisienn magazine'. The cover stories were in French, but in the sidebar I saw: 'Where to go, what to find? Our special tips to meet the sexiest girls! And many more! Hot streets, bars, swinger clubs, massage institutes... Hot Hot Hot... How to find the best spot of the capital'. I was wondering: What spot? There was also FHM for €1,95 (usual price €3) - the competition must've been too intense.

The guy beside me on the train to Bayeux was reading Cosmopolitan. I know girls read male mags but this is the first time I've seen a guy read a female mag. Well, apart from me anyway.

I witnessed foreplay on the train. 1 girl was lying on 2 seats and a guy was on the inner seat. He went down on her (her mouth area) and she started laughing and one leg rose in passion. Maybe he went down in flames that night after having his red meat in the day.

The weather in Bayeux was very good. When I got off the train, I was shocked at how cool it was (the fact that it'd been raining didn't help). The last time I'd felt so cool was in the middle of june, and this was further north to boot. It was even better at night!


Bayeux Cathedral
There's a story behind why it's so opulent for such a small town, but I can't recall.


Portal


Entrance

I arrived at the tourist office just before it closed and after seeing the enormity of what would await me if I tried to navigate the beaches myself, I booked a tour from one of 5 tour companies.


I didn't see any giaks around.
Their napkins had a ship with warriors (a scene from the Tapestry)

Those who go on Eurotrips and only visit capitals miss out on so much and spend so much more than those who explore smaller cities and towns.

As I observed to Andrew, you can tell if tap water is served at an establishment by looking at the prices. If mineral water is available cheaply, tap water will not be served, and the converse applies (except in Bruges, since it was on the town square and was a tourist joint).

I decided on Le Drakkar. They had a €14,50 menu which I decided to go for if they didn't serve tap water, and a €18 menu which I'd have if they did. The €14,50 menu seemed to be insulting, with cheap courses, including a hamburger as one choice for the main course (though someone later informed me that the French hamburger is a specific term).

A thick tourist guide narrated how, at the front of the British Cemetery, there was "the sentence in Latin recalling how, in 1944, the British came to free the Homeland of their victors (sic) of 1066". A section on monastery accommodations described La Joie Saint Benoit thus: "Staying with us will allow you to recover your physical and moral strength". Bah.


The most excellent dinner I had in Bayeux, at Le Drakkar; one of the best meals I've had.
I've had this as a status message for a while and everyone says it doesn't look good. Bloody hell.

My starter was smoked ham. For some reason, I don't know why, I expected thick ham. Instead I got delectable thin ham, and a very generous portion of it too. Unfortunately, someone was not there to advise me on the finer points of haute cuisine (and more importantly, to pay), so I assumed that since I couldn't cut the top layer of the ham with my knife (the layer above the fat - the skin? or wax?), I was not supposed to eat it.

The main course, as seen above, was a generous slab of pork with diced bacon and mushrooms, served with potatoes cubes fried with bacon. The pork was very thick and yet fully cooked, meat thera? (?). I couldn't figure out why it was tied with a piece of string, though. Sit in the park and eat bread? Not on your life!

The dessert was a hot apple tart. I was wondering why there was a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then as I ate the tart I realised why - it was the least sweet apple tart I'd ever had. I would go so far as to venture that there was no sugar in it. At all. I never have chocolate outside if I can help it, but hitherto apple had always been safe. Trust the Frech!

Outside of Paris, some places close during lunch time. In Italy and Greece, they sleep. In France, they have lunch. For example in Villeneuve I was walking through the village and everything was closed except hairdressing salons (don't ask me, I have no idea why they were an exception).

xxoos was disdainful of guidebooks. She said she went where her feet took her, but then "There is a good reason people don't take the roads much less traveled. They're dangerous and it can take you more than twice as long to get to your destination." (The Road Much Less Traveled) If nothing else, they are useful for accommodation information, directions to the hostels and tourist offices and provide preliminary maps of places before you get real ones.

sect (seot?) aug (awig?/aurg?) 45°. not so bad (more scribbled stuff I can't decipher)

Many of us were socialising in the common room of the youth hostel at night, and the elderly male proprietor who spoke no English (though I suspect he understood a bit) suddenly ran in shouting, as he was wont to do. Luckily some people spoke and understood French, so one talked to him and then translated to us that we needed to vacate the room because 50 people would be coming later and the room was needed for "The distribution of the keys". As soon as the liaison uttered this phrase, the whole room burst out laughing (and this was a room of various nationalities, so it wasn't a culture thing). I'm sure it makes perfect sense in French, since that language is so florid and pompous, but in English the direct translation sounds ridiculous, like some ceremony out of a fantasy novel.

Someone: french is a beautiful language
­and i quote the matrix
­cursing in french is like wiping ur arse with silk

Someone else: you mean key party?
­dun get it

Someone (2): Hrm.
la distribution des cles
i suppose i can excuse french being pompous
it's so pretty sounding.

Someone else (2): still very frodo-esque
and considering that i last watched some youtube LOTR orgy thing
that's one kinky hostel

Later, 50 Norwegian schoolgirls turned up and were yelling and shrieking. I wanted to use one bathroom, but when I arrived there I found 5 of them in the queue. Gah.

Something someone sent me:

i know this blog template is so so the gay.. but IM NOT GOING TO CHANGE IT!

"ri is becoming very f*ed up now, thanks to a very complicated political system involving the 'chiefs of staff' and some higher-ranking officials.actually, no. ri is not becoming an army. i think the school is being run more like a corporation, with the ceo and the board, then the employees.

let me disclose a little-known fact - many teachers have already left ri from the time we had a new ceo running the place. these are the teachers i know so far, who have left since 2004: mr johari, gregory goh, ms justina tan, ms cheng fang, mr justin pierre, ( 2005 ) mr liu yong feng, mrs jasbir koh, mrs rosy smith, mrs lim jee nee, mr teo chor howe, ( 2006 ) mr seet, mr azhar, ms wang xiao nan, mr eric lee, ms regina. my eng teacher was supposedly forced to resign by the deputy headmistress because someone from her class saboed her by taking photos of classmates sleeping during her lesson and then he submitted them to the higher authorities. heard it was the prc scholars who did that. cb la, those stupid asses. and regina was 'well-known' for going against the system, because she felt she had to stand up against what wasn't right. too bad the firm is all too powerful.

quote from my teacher, who quoted the headmistress: ( on founder's day ) i still haven't received your letter of resignation. please give me today asap. if i'm not in the office, u can put it under my door.

the raffles programme, i tell u.no o-levels, straight to rjc. many ppl out there think that it's 7th heaven. yea we got tricked too, at one point of time. and the new students too. we were fooled, enticed by the voluptuous programme the school had to offer. and look now, we're all struggling under the new system.

less teaching, more self-learning. that's the case for physics and social studies, i suppose. the teachers can't teach at all. one doesn't know his concepts well and always confuses himself while trying to answer difficult questions and the other just keeps asking us questions without doing much of anything else.

dun forget, we have higher chi o levels. and i won't forget what the hod of chinese told us while we were reviewing our scripts: "if u can't score an a1, dun take the exam. u will be saving ri a lot of face and saving ur time and energy too"...

leadership, ri focuses a lot on this aspect. ccal camps, psl camps. opportunities of leadership come few, as said by the now-gone eric lee. it's very true, but the school isn't making any effort into maximising our fullest potential. u see, whenever there're some special courses, for example, the latest in pe dmp module, they always say only for ccal and psl. then how is the rest of the sch population goin to be educated as well when u just concentrate on this group of ppl who have already gone for numerous courses and training sessions?"

Same Someone: screwed up bcos it's pampering us. as long as we get a 2.0 gpa, we can go to rj. compared to those who take o lvls..getting to rj frm rg is rlly easy

besides the pioneerin batch isnt doing too well i heard
and not too well like most ppl are getting borderline passes for promos. 9 staybacks. and someone jumped down

Some pictures my brother in law took in Crete. Second of a series of 6. Those seeking a context for these pictures can read the Crete travelogue in the May archives.


On the boat to Spinalonga


On the boat to Spinalonga


On the boat to Spinalonga


Taking a picture of my namesake at Moni Arkadiou


Moni Arkadiou


Moni Arkadiou


Rethymnon


Me being nua and someone in Rethymnon


Me being nua and someone in Rethymnon


Me being nua and someone in Rethymnon


Me being nua and someone in Rethymnon

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do." - Dylan Thomas

***

CDTLink: Is Quantitative Student Feedback Useful? - "Student feedback scores often have a direct or indirect impact on the faculty member’s annual performance bonus, and may influence his/her chances of tenure and promotion, especially if the scores are particularly low.... There is a common perception that it is easier to achieve higher student feedback scores when teaching higher level modules. Figure 5 shows the overall feedback scores plotted according to module levels (1 to 6). It is clear that the minimum feedback scores improve significantly for higher level modules, while the maximum remains approximately constant (the average score increases with level)."
Wah, so funky. I didn't know their bonuses depended on teaching. Still, it'd be so much more helpful (and cheaper) if they made us give feedback *after* we got our results. Not least since if their bonuses/promotions depend on feedback, there is a temptation to retaliate against those who give bad feedback. Hell, it's like eBay feedback.

Halal food | The crescent and the canteen - "Entrepreneurs are good at satisfying niche appetites, large institutions often less so. But British universities are changing. Last November students at Leicester University persuaded their union cafeteria to ban pork and go exclusively halal. Sheffield Hallam University now boasts an on-campus branch of Hally Ally's, a halal fast-food outfit. Two further branches of the chain are expected to follow in other northern universities by the end of the year."

Rational, educated and prosperous: just your average suicide bomber -"Suicide bombers are not all poor, uneducated, religious fanatics or madmen, as many people believe. Research on the social and psychological background of terrorists show they tend to be more prosperous and better educated than most in their societies, and no more religious or irrational than the average person. A study of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad suicide terrorists from the late 1980s to 2003 found only 13 per cent were from a poor background, compared with 32 per cent of the Palestinian population in general, according to a New Scientist report."
Ideology does matter, despite the nonsense some spout.

EULAlyzer - "EULAlyzer can analyze license agreements in seconds, and provide a detailed listing of potentially interesting words and phrases. Discover if the software you're about to install displays pop-up ads, transmits personally identifiable information, uses unique identifiers to track you, or much much more."

The trivia king learns something new - "Trivia, notes Jennings in "Brainiac," didn't come by its current meaning -- "questions and answers about unusual bits of everyday knowledge" -- until the 1960s. But, he adds, the interest in those bits of knowledge goes back decades earlier, to at least 1927, when the book "Ask Me Another!" became a best-seller. "Ask Me Another!" was followed by radio quiz shows, which begat TV quiz shows, "GE College Bowl," high school and college quiz bowl teams, Trivial Pursuit, bar trivia games, and all the attendant paraphernalia: the "Guinness Book of World Records," Fred L. Worth's "Trivia Encyclopedia," the Wallace/Wallechinsky "People's Almanacs" and "Books of Lists," Mental Floss magazine and "10,000 Answers," among many other key source materials."

MetaGeek.Net: Home of Wi-Spy - "Wi-Spy™ is the world's smallest 2.4 GHz spectrum analyzer*. Wi-Spy is perfect for troubleshooting interference from the following devices: Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), Microwave Ovens, Cordless Phones, Zigbee, Bluetooth"

University challenge, a starter for life - "As sixth-formers prepare to submit their applications to Oxford and Cambridge universities before Sunday’s deadline, a study of 1,200 students has revealed some of the quirkier lines of inquiry from tutors who interview candidates... Last year’s applicants to study politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford claim to have been asked: “If there were three beautiful, naked women standing in front of you, which one would you pick? And does this have any relevance to economics?” Others applying for places on the same course said that they were asked to price a teapot or compare Tony Blair with a 19th-century politician."

ZUG: Comedy Articles: Electronic Road Signs and Me - "Recently a construction company left a pair of these signs in my neighborhood, blasting out their pointless messages. Being a creative tinkerer, I decided to do something about it... With only a few minutes of road sign hacking, I had programmed an homage to the 1951 sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still, the phrase that was used to stop Gort, the robot in the film, from taking over the world."
Instead of rowing together with the authorities, he shook the book. The nerve. He should be jailed for public mischief.

USB Fiber-Optic Christmas Tree

China warns Zambia - "China will sever diplomatic ties with Zambia if opposition leader Michael Sata wins this month's general elections and recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign state, a senior diplomat has said."
Ho ho. Interfering in another country's internal affairs!

An extract from a reading someone sent me:



"I think Deconstruction appeals to the clerisy of graduate students, who like to feel themselves superior to the laity of common readers, liberated from their shared meanings; liberated, too, from the tedious requirement of meaning as such, the official obligation to suppose that words mean something finite rather than everything or nothing. Deconstruction allows them to think of themselves as forming a cell, the nearest thing the universities can offer in the form of an avant-garde. The wretched side of this is that Deconstruction encourages them to feel superior not only to undergraduates but to the authors they are reading (The New York Review of Books, 41)."

- Ending/Closure: On Derrida's Edging of Heidegger

Some pictures my brother in law took in Crete. First of a series of 6. Those seeking a context for these pictures can read the Crete travelogue in the May archives.

I bugged him to send them to me via YouSendIt, but of course he didn't, and I only got them when I returned back at the end of July. I should've copied them to my laptop in Crete.


Reunited in the cabin of the ferry to Crete. Magiranger is on my laptop screen in the background.


Drinking from a bottle of water at the lousy self-service restaurant on the boat


Arhanes


Dogs creating a racket in Arhanes


On a swing in the semi-abandoned village of Ethia


In a cafe in the semi-abandoned village of Ethia


At dinner in Heraklion


At dinner in Heraklion (next day)


Being led by my guide in Malia