France 2012 - Day 3-7 - Rambouillet (Part 2)

France 2012
Day 3-7 - 15th October-19th October - Rambouillet (Part 2)


"How to sleep in France"
But it's not only in France where you sleep in between sheets (for hygienic reasons)


Chateau
Annoyingly the chateau - normally open on weekends - was closed this weekend due to a private concert. Ah well, this would give me more time for Paris.


The Sale is open on Sunday, so you know it's special


"Pedestrians must follow this route"
The old lady in front didn't care. Me neither.


I really liked the windows in Rambouillet.


"Doctor Bertrand Bazin. Neurologist
Former medical intern in Parisian hospitals
Former clinic head of Parisian hospitals"
And now he's in the small town of Rambouillet.


More windows


"It's useless to come and break the box. It is emptied every evening"
It was quite depressing to read this in the laundromat.


French 1-for-1 pizza (for takeaway, anyway). I wonder if it beats Canadian.


"Using the service for VOIP, P2P and newsgroups is forbidden"
I finally got my SIM card from Orange: €23 for 400M of data (vs SFR's €34,90 for 1G). Unfortunately, they are not supporters of net neutrality

I'd left some Orangina in the communal fridge and in 1 day it went from being unopened to 1/4 finished. I'd also put 5 cartons of puddings and only 2 were left. I complained to others and they suggested putting my stuff in a plastic bag to reduce the chances of theft. Grr. Interestingly when I left pudding on my window sill (I was on the ground floor) it didn't get taken.

There was a drinks machine which dispensed a frothy milk drink. Unfortunately it tasted like Nespray.

I observed to my class that women were more into languages than men. One girl said that was because guys are lazy. I didn't get to give my suggested answer: men have to work so they have less time for their hobbies.

Every day I took a walk after class ended (at 4pm). This was partly to stretch my legs, but also partly because there was nothing to do. Perhaps the most important reason was that it was nice weather to walk in


Even funerary service providers have deals.


Presumably you need an appointment with the Shiatsu practitioner since there's a large "No Entry" sign


"Time passes. Beauty remains"


This lady does both homeopathy and acupuncture. How appropriate!


I don't know why even midwives get medical specialist-esque plaques


"Fanta Chateau Grokiff. Lemon-Elderflower flavour. Batch of 2010. Bottled in an inflatable castle"
Special Fanta flavour


Bad pun : "Alors, on chine ?" (I think it's a play on "Alors, en Chine ?", which means "So, in China?")
This Monoprix house brand soya sauce was €1,21 for 125ml and imported from Thailand (presumably repackaged in France)


How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?


Rice/semolina pudding. It was hard to choose but I got the latter as it was more exotic.


"Tiramisu with speculoos. The dessert with a bilingual flavour"
Speculoos is Dutch gingerbread


Orientalism: Restaurant Istanbul (kebabs) and The Good Chinese (Chinese food)


More nice windows


"Firemen"
"Nursing student"
Serving people seems to run in the family

Au pairs came for lessons for half a day a week. One day, there was a Chinese au pair which surprised me, since everyone else was either from the US or Europe. I thought the Chinese were too practical for such pursuits.

It takes 30 years to get an artist permit for Montmartre and each time there're 15-20 people vying for each spot.

If your shop is open on Sundays you must pay a tax, and you can't force people to work on Sundays (and they must be paid twice as much). Exceptions are made for tourist places. However you still need 2 consecutive days of rest for employees. I suppose this explains why many places are closed on both Sunday and Monday.

In Europe you can't find instant cosmetic masks (the sort you apply and then peel off).

Ironically in Israel it is easier to have an abortion as a single mother than if you're married. This is for religious reasons. Meanwhile in Mexico the morning after is legal but not abortion (and some places give free condoms).

The morning after pill is free in French schools, but you will only use it once because it makes you feel like shit.

Apparently there's no Nobel Prize for mathematics because Nobel's wife ran off with a maths professor.


Park. This should be Le Rondeau

I went to Paris on one night to meet people. Unfortunately one stood me up with a lame excuse about not getting my call, but I met another.

Parisians are really rude. Some didn't return my Bonjour greeting, most didn't reciprocate my Au Revoir. And one even ignored me when I was trying to ask him something. Grr.


"Brioche Dorée. Pleasure and health on a plate"
Somehow I don't think brioches (and the other pâtisseries they sell) are very healthy


Cheap C&A office shirts. The €19 ones even came with free ties (the €12 ones didn't).

Annoyingly you couldn't open and try stuff at C&A. One had to pick from sample clothing on the rack outside the changing rooms - but could one shirt really represent regular fit, wide fit and slim fit?


"You have a large family? C&A offers you a 5% rebate on all your purchases, even those on sale"
Aww!


No photography in the Galeries Lafayette. Bah.


Shop for men. Their slogan: "Suppression of womanly rays/aisles"


It cost €13 to ascend the Tour Montparnasse. I had just under an hour before my next appointment so I skipped this; the light was not good and it'd been raining.


Paris has a half price ticket booth to


La Forge - where I had very good flammekueche in 2010


€5 shawls, but they felt quite nice. I saw some S$7.90 ones in Sinapore but they felt like shit, so these were better value.


"Natural pleasures. To be consumed without moderation" (play on junk food advisories)
I wanted to buy something from Yves Rocher but arrived a few minutes too late. However their bad joke was still visible in the window.

The 5 books in A Song of Ice and Fire each got cut up into 3, so there're 15 books in French. Hah. Doubtless this is to make more money.

There were 3 French soldiers patrolling Montparnasse station. The woman had no assault rifle unlike the men but her hand was on a holstered pistol. Tsk.


Lamb. This was a bit tougher than expected but the sauce was very nice.

The area around where me and my contact had dinner was filled with adult shops.


"New channel surfing for 1€. Personal and total control over the films of your choice. All genres and styles... Very luxurious salons and cabins. Mirror game. Light game"


A more discreet shop which didn't explicitly say what it sold


Another place offering porn channel surfing


"Clean Video"


"Lingerie for her and him"
Ooh


Complicated Rambouillet parking

I was quite silly. When I'd been in Lyon earlier in 2012, the dryer had shrunk the string in my shorts, making them uncomfortably tight. This time I used the dryer on the same pair of shorts, and I couldn't put them on anymore (so much for pre-shrunk).


According to one teacher, casinos in France are only allowed in places with hot springs.

Happuku (repeated stabs) is even worse than seppuku (one blow).

Rules for housework for women:
1) Never do everything
2) Never tell him "you must do it" but find some other way. Encourage him "like a dolphin"
I suggested treating women like cats and I met agreement: "you must caress them"

Cultural tidbit: you cannot give French subordinates instructions. You will get a dispute where he justifies his existence. The Israeli lady said it was the same in Israel.

One of the Japanese girls said all the Japanese guys at Rambouillet were super weird, and they were the weirdest Japanese guys ever. If they're weird to Japanese, I can't even imagine...

It seems you don't really get a bulk discount at Rambouillet. A Danish girl paid €4,481 for 9 weeks.

In my last few years of travelling the only place I've seen a lot of kick scooters is France (I saw one once in Darwin, and I can't remember anywhere else where people used them). And a lot of the ones using them are adults too.

The Korean girls, besides bringing their own sandwich bread, also dug out the centre of baguette slices to eat, leaving just the crust. Ugh.

The Columbian girl had an American accent when speaking English, because she went to the US a lot. This was quite funny.

Apparently it's not just Europeans who don't wax - Latin Americans don't either, despite the most famous procedure being called "Brazilian". It's very popular among Asians though.

The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed

The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed
Bertrand Russell

ONE of the persistent delusions of mankind is that some sections of the human race are morally better or worse than others. This belief has many different forms, none of which has any rational basis. It is natural to think well of ourselves, and thence, if our mental processes are simple, of our sex, our class, our nation, and our age. But among writers, especially moralists, a less direct expression of self-esteem is common. They tend to think ill of their neighbors and acquaintances, and therefore to think well of the Sections of mankind to "which they themselves do not belong, Lao-tse admired the "pure men of old," who lived before the advent of Confucian sophistication. Tacitus and Madame de Stael admired the Germans because they had no emperor. Locke thought well of the "intelligent American" because he was not led astray by Cartesian sophistries.

A rather curious form of this admiration for groups to which the admirer does not belong is the belief in the superior virtue of the oppressed: subject nations, the poor, women, and children. The eighteenth century, while conquering America from the Indians, reducing the peasantry to the condition of pauper laborers, and introducing the cruelties of early industrialism, loved to sentimentalize about the "noble savage" and the "simple annals of the poor." Virtue, it was said, was not to be found in courts: but court ladies could almost secure it by masquerading as shepherdesses. And as for the male sex:

Happy the man whose wish and care
A lew paternal acres bound.

Nevertheless, for himself Pope preferred London and his villa at Twickenham.

At the French Revolution the superior virtue of the poor became a party question, and has remained so ever since. To reactionaries they became the "rabble" or the "mob." The rich discovered, with surprise, that some people were so poor as not to own even "a few paternal acres." Liberals, however, still continued to idealize the rural poor, while intellectual Socialists and Communists did the same for the urban proletariat - a fashion to which, since it only became important in the twentieth century, I shall return later.

Nationalism introduced, in the nineteenth century, a substitute for the noble savage the patriot of an oppressed nation. The Greeks until they had achieved liberation from the Turks, the Hungarians until the Ausgleich of 1867, the Italians until 1870, and the Poles until after the 1914-18 war were regarded romantically as gifted poetic races, too idealistic to succeed in this wicked world. The Irish were regarded by the English as possessed of a special charm and mystical insight until 1921, when it was found that the expense of continuing to oppress them would be prohibitive. One by one these various nations rose to independence, and were found to be just like everybody else; but the experience of those already liberated did nothing to destroy the illusion as regards those who were still struggling. English old ladies still sentimentalize about the "wisdom of the East" and American intellectuals about the "earth consciousness" of the Negro.

Women, being the objects of the strongest emotions, have been viewed even more irrationally than the poor or the subject nations. I am thinking not of what poets have to say but of the sober opinions of men who imagine themselves rational. The church had two opposite attitudes: on the one hand, woman was the Temptress, who led monks and others into sin; on the other hand, she was capable of saintliness to an almost greater degree than man. Theologically, the two types were represented by Eve and the Virgin. In the nineteenth century the temptress fell into the background; there were, of course, "bad" women, but Victorian worthies, unlike St. Augustine and his successors, would not admit that such sinners could tempt them, and did not like to acknowledge their existence. A kind of combination of the Madonna and the lady of chivalry was created as the ideal of the ordinary married woman. She was delicate and dainty, she had a bloom which would be rubbed off by contact with the rough world, she had ideals which might be dimmed by contact with wickedness; like the Celts and the Slavs and the noble savage, but to an even greater degree, she enjoyed a spiritual nature, which made her the superior of man but unfitted her for business or politics or the control of her own fortune. This point of view is still not entirely extinct. Not long ago, in reply to a speech I had made in favor of equal pay for equal work, an English schoolmaster sent me a pamphlet published by a schoolmasters' association, setting forth the opposite opinion, which it supports with curious arguments. It says of woman: "We gladly place her first as a spiritual force; we acknowledge and reverence her as the 'angelic part of humanity'; we give her superiority in all the graces and refinements we are capable of as human beings; we wish her to retain all her winsome womanly ways." "This appeal" that women should be content with lower rates of pay "goes forth from us to them," so we are assured, "in no selfish spirit, but out of respect and devotion to our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. . . . Our purpose is a sacred one, a real spiritual crusade.

Fifty or sixty years ago such language would have roused no comment except on the part of a handful of feminists; now, since women have acquired the vote, it has come to seem an anachronism. The belief in their "spiritual" superiority was part and parcel of the determination to keep them inferior economically and politically. When men were worsted in this battle, they had to respect women, and therefore gave up offering them "reverence" as a consolation for inferiority.

A somewhat similar development has taken place in the adult view of children. Children, like women, were theologically wicked, especially among evangelicals. They were limbs of Satan, they were unregenerate; as Dr. Watts so admirably put it:

One stroke of His almighty rod
Can send young sinners quick to Hell.

It was necessary that they should be "saved." At Wesley's school "a general conversion was once effected, . . one poor boy only excepted, who unfortunately resisted the influence of the Holy Spirit, for which he was severely flogged. . . ." But during the nineteenth century, when parental authority, like that of kings and priests and husbands, felt itself threatened, subtler methods of quelling insubordination came into vogue. Children were "innocent"; like good women they had a "bloom"; they must be protected from knowledge of evil lest their bloom should be lost. Moreover, they had a special kind of wisdom. Wordsworth made this view popular among English-speaking people. He first made it fashionable to credit children with

High instincts before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

No one in the eighteenth century would have said to his little daughter, unless she were dead:

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year
And worships't at the temple's inner shrine.

But in the nineteenth century this view became quite common; and respectable members of the Episcopal church or even of the Catholic church shamelessly ignored Original Sin to dally with the fashionable heresy that

. . . trailing clouds of glory do we cone

From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

This led to the usual development. It began to seem hardly right to spank a creature that was lying in Abraham's bosom, or to use the rod rather than a high instincts "to make it "tremble like a guilty thing surprised/' And so parents and schoolmasters found that the pleasures they had derived from inflicting chastisement were being curtailed and a theory of education grew up which made it necessary to consider the child's welfare, and not only the adult's convenience and sense of power. The only consolation the adults could allow themselves was the invention of a new child psychology. Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils not theological demons inspired by the Evil One, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the Unconscious. They are, it must be said, far more wicked than they were in the diatribes of the monks; they display, in modern textbooks, an ingenuity and persistence in sinful imaginings to which in the past there was nothing comparable except St. Anthony. Is all this the objective truth at last? Or is it merely an adult imaginative compensation for being no longer allowed to wallop the little pests? Let the Freudians answer, each for the others.

As appears from the various instances that we have considered, the stage in which superior virtue Is attributed to the oppressed is transient and unstable. It begins only when the oppressors come to have a bad conscience, and this only happens when their power is no longer secure. The idealizing of the victim is useful for a time: if virtue is the greatest of goods, and if subjection makes people virtuous, it is kind to refuse them power, since it would destroy their virtue. If it is difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, it is a noble act on his part to keep his wealth and so imperil his eternal bliss for the benefit of his poorer brethren. It was a fine self-sacrifice on the part of men to relieve women of the dirty work of politics. And so on. But sooner or later the oppressed class will argue that its superior virtue is a reason in favor of its having power, and the oppressors will find their own weapons turned against them. When at last power has been equalized, it becomes apparent to everybody that all the talk about superior virtue was nonsense, and that it was quite unnecessary as a basis for the claim to equality.

In regard to the Italians, the Hungarians, women, and children, we have ran through the whole cycle. But we are still in the middle of it in the case which is of the most importance at the present time namely, that of the proletariat. Admiration of the proletariat is very modern. The eighteenth century, when it praised "the poor," thought always of the rural poor. Jefferson's democracy stopped short at the urban mob; he wished America to remain a country of agriculturists. Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and airplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age. Considered in human terms, it has as little in its favor as belief in Celtic magic, the Slav soul, women's intuition, and children's innocence. If it were indeed the case that bad nourishment, little education, lack of air and sunshine, unhealthy housing conditions, and overwork produce better people than are produced by good nourishment, open air, adequate education and housing, and a reasonable amount of leisure, the whole case for economic reconstruction would collapse, and we could rejoice that such a large percentage of the population enjoys the conditions that make for virtue. But obvious as this argument is, many Socialist and Communist intellectuals consider it de rigueur to pretend to find the proletariat more amiable than other people, while professing a desire to abolish the conditions which, according to them, alone produce good human beings. Children were idealized by Wordsworth and un-idealized by Freud. Marx was the Wordsworth of the proletariat; its Freud is still to come.

On paying for software vs blocking ads on websites/in software

Me: I gifted a US$1.49 game to the guy who never pays for anything he can pirate
459 ratings, 5 stars
king of dragon pass
gotta e good
my note was "this may just possibly be the first digitally available game that you own that has had money paid for it"

Someone: ask your... friend
if he thinks software developers are subhuman and do not deserve to be paid for their work

Me: I think it's similar to your "my bandwidth, my rules" rule for blocking ads

Someone: ha
ads are not quite the same as stuff being made and sold directly by the same person

Me: eh
you think there's a direct link between the developer and the purchase meh
developer is paid by game company
game company is paid by publisher
publisher is paid by store/online platform
website is paid by ad company
ad company is paid by advertisers depending on views/clicks
so the link is shorter for ads even

Someone: when it comes to apps
developers paid directly by google
and do you honestly think writing an app for users is the same as advertising
i'm all of blocking ads in apps
there's a difference between providing a service
and brainwashing

Me: how are ads brainwashing
ads are an alternative way of supporting a product/service
it's the same as a list price. just a different model

Someone: using an app without paying for it and blocking ads is different

Me: when you write an app for users you either sell it and get $1 upfront from user X
or you make it adware and get $0.01 a month (assumption) from user X

Someone: yes,
and i think adware is scum

Me: then dont use it

Someone: i don't
but we aren't talking about this
why do yuo keep changing
i am saying
your friend who doesn't pay for his ads
er
apps

Me: well I was talking about downloading games

Someone: does he think the people who writes them don't need to be paid for their work

Me: it's all the same
ars technica wrote something on this
I'm sure you know

Someone: ads
is not the same
as writing a program
good god
if yuo honestly think it's the same
then let's just agree to disagree
i'm not trying to sell you someone else's product when i write an application
i don't try to change your perception of anything
when i offer you my service as an app developer

Me: no they're not the same
ads <- way to get paid writing an app <- service ads are to the price of an app as writing an app is to maintaining a website err. like that when I talk to you about this issue I'm also trying to change your perception of the issue Someone: yes, but it's a two way discussion

Me: you seem to view advertising as coercive

Someone: advertising is coercive
????

Me: no it's persuasive
there's a difference

Someone: a very fine one
and if you let htem have their way
it would be coercive
so don't
compare my living
with advertising

Me: anyway if you don't like apps with ads, don't use them
if you don't like websites with ads, don't visit them

Someone: we aren't talking about whether i like apps
or use htem
if they're supported by ads
for the last time
we are talking about your friend
paying app developers
for their apps

Me: and I am using the same principle in a different context

that's like saying it's not ok for A to kill B with a chainsaw
but it's ok for C to kill D with an axe

Someone: but we aren't discussing that context

i am saying
that writing an app and putting it on sale
is not the same as writing an article on the net and showing it with ads
do you hoenstly not see the difference

Me: nope

Someone: the second one involves the premise that your content is freely accessible
it's like giving out newspapers
the app itself is not accessible without paying for it unless you pirate
or if it's ad supported
it's a all or nothing thing
if you want the app you buy it
and at no point in this process do i say, hey, i think you need to buy these products from some 3rd party
it's just, do you want this app?
yes? give me some money
and you can use it
there are apps that are ad supported
by all means block those ads

Me: ad-supported websites are like places which require an admission fee to enter
but there's no ticket control, just a box for you to deposit your admission fee

Someone: no, yuo don't need to deposit any admission fee...
sigh
when you enter
someone gives you a flyer that says
buy this shit
at no point in this do you give anyone any money
also they take your photograph and fingerprints
enough for lousy analogy yet?

Me: well in that case it's wrong to kill someone with a chainsaw because it's motorised
but an axe is okay because it's human powered

Someone: your latter analogy i completely do not understand whatsoever
how is killing people got anything to with this

Me: if you don't want to get the flyer or be photographed or get fingerprinted, don't go in
dont break in

Someone: it's not breaking in
no one loses anything
digital media
is not the same as traditional media

Me: if you break in without breaking locks, doors etc no one loses anything either

it's an opportunity cost in both senses
killing people <-> paying people for their work
axe <-> paying for apps
chainsaw <-> ads

Someone: there are different penalties for theft and murder...
haiya ok i want to play game
but you should think about this a bit more

Me: yes it's different for new media
so it's ok to pirate apps also
I have thought about this
that's why months (years?) after you told me you block ads I'm talking about it

Someone: no it's not, the fundamental difference is
i don't try to sell you
someone else's product
and i don't give you my app for free
blocking ads is not because
i'm opposed to giving websites my money

Me: yes so as I've said if you philosophically disagree with the funding model just dont use the product
instead of using the product without paying
while condemning those who use products without paying in other instances

Someone: i honestly can't believe you think advertising and revenue sharing from appstore are the same
i think you are far mroe intelligent than that
and you are being contrary for hte sake of being contrary

Me: the issue is not whether they are the same
the issue is whether pirating paid apps is the same as blocking ads on ad-supported websites
it may be faster to kill someone with a chainsaw than an axe
but in both cases the person ends up dead

Someone: and i'ts not
sigh
yeah okay look
we clearly fundamentally disagre about this

Me: yes
just go play your game
just accept that intelligent people can disagree over issues without being contrary for the sake of being contrary

Someone: i do

Me: well you just claimed that I was being contrary for the sake of being contrary
I suspect people think I;m trolling when I say I support incest

Someone: but you haven't rebutted my point about selling someone else's product either

it's not the same, is it?
we're talking about different things
you're talking about how the website is being killed
i'm talking about differnet kinds of revenue streams
but somehow
you have conflated both topics
i'm only interested in the appstore

Me: so dont use ad supported websites/apps

Someone: yesw
yes i agree w
don't use them w

Me: so why do you have an ad blocker?

Someone: because i can't get away from ads
can i?
it's not as easy as don't use them
do you see the difference?
i try my best
not to use ad supported software
and websites
and i pay for those that i do
btu i can't
stop
myself
from seeing ads
even then
again
my use of an adblocker
is not because i'm opposed to giving websites my money

Me: so in that case it's more of a practical issue than a philosophical one
like a vegetarian will eat meat if the alternative is death

Someone: and what about the sites that have no alternatives?
facebook doesn't let me pay to get rid of ads
that's pretty lousy, isn't it?

Me: ok. so the we have found the root of the disagreement

PSI

If the PSI now (or at 9am, anyway) is 131, what would 321 (from last night) look like in the day? Rolling fog?

Friend's theory: if the real PSI is released, construction sites would grind to a halt and BTOs would be delayed.

Links - 18th June 2013

New IU study: 'How' often is more important than 'why' when describing breakups - ""It wasn't until after I had collected many breakup stories that I realized my students had told me something quite revealing that would come up time and time again. ... American undergraduates focus on the 'how' of a breakup when describing their breakups, not the 'why' or the 'who,'"... "The medium used for the conversation mattered enough to be almost always mentioned," Gershon said. "People would invariably mark when a different medium was used, explaining when communication shifted from voicemail to texting to Facebook and then to phone." Her results differ from other ethnographic research done elsewhere, such as in Japan and Britain, where the story often focuses on justifying why the relationship had to end. Character was the emphasis overseas, not the method... In many cases, the young people Gershon interviewed were looking for validation that it had been a bad breakup and the medium was crucial evidence."

Hey Danish tourists, stop pissing on our roads! : Shanghaiist - "How very dare they! Don't they know that only locals are allowed to piss and shit in public?!"

Your Instagram photos may be hurting the feelings of the Chinese people - "some Chinese users feel "upset and betrayed" when she'd post photos "they thought didn't represent China in a good way." Users especially objected to her focus on hutongs, while they make for beautifully gritty images of old China, the odd garbage man or demolished house seems a far cry from the lightning-paced modernization in downtown Beijing and Shanghai."

Parents in Singapore love extra tuition - "Madam Teo has signed her daughter up for tuition six days a week. The girl's classes start after school at 4pm and end at 9pm. But more than just time, Madam Teo has also invested a considerable amount in her daughter's tuition - $3,000 per month. Kiasu? She's not the only mother worried about her child's grades. Parents here collectively spend US$680 million (S$840 million) on tuition in a year, a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) showed. The ADB report, quoting 2012 figures, said the amount spent on private supplementary tutoring has been on the rise and has doubled from just a decade ago. Close to one in two Singaporean parents spend on tuition for their children, MasterCard's latest survey on Consumer Purchasing Priorities - Education showed"

Gif's inventor says ignore dictionaries and say 'Jif' - "The OED told the BBC that it was beyond the software engineer's control to determine how the word should be said... The Gif Pronunciation Page has long catalogued evidence that Gif sounds like Jif. The site suggests the reason for this was to make it sound like a popular brand of American peanut butter - "one of the principal three programmer foods (the other two being Pepsi and nacho cheese Doritos)"."

'Ghost Tits': Olivia Munn Loses Her Cleavage In Horror Movie Parody From Paulilu Mixtape (VIDEO)

s/pores » Blog Archive » Imaginary Frontiers and Deferred Masculinity: Singapore Working Class Men in Batam > Terence Chong - "In light of their subordinated masculinities, working class men generally speak of two things when they travel to Batam for sex. Firstly, they talk of being pushed or squeezed from the metropolis... Secondly, they speak of seeking new spaces – both territorial and cultural – as necessary to regain their sense of self... It is Batam, an imaginary frontier away from the unforgiving metropolis, where the deferred masculinity of these working class Singaporean men can be articulated heteronormatively. In short, sex in Batam is “an escape into the fantasy of men-as-men and women-as-women, an uncomplicated distribution of roles which provide a refuge from life, because nobody has to step outside the prescribed exchanges and dialogues”... Dan’s feelings of friendship suggest that the sexual encounter, though premised on economic power, may be characterised by more than just “libidinal bonds”... The imaginary frontier has allowed the sexual encounter to develop into a more socially complex relationship where money purchases the opportunity for men like Dan to display certain traits like care and concern which may otherwise not be required from his emotionally-distant wife or busy teenage daughters... The imaginary frontier is thus a space for the men to play out certain emotional needs and familial desires while the sex worker may willingly subject herself to such male imaginations, either because of the rewards at stake, or because her own imagination of a caring, perhaps even lovelorn, boyfriend offers a comforting counterbalance to the uncertainties and dangers in her profession... Sex is part of a collective experience and cannot be simply isolated as an act of hegemonic masculinity or exploitation of women. Interestingly, Khairun’s ability to treat the girl to meals, drinks and cigarettes in Batam is a simultaneous reminder of his inability to do the same in Singapore"

How The Human Face Might Look In 100,000 Years - "Kwan based his predictions on what living environments might look like in the future, climate and technological advancements. One of the big changes will be a larger forehead, Kwan predicts – a feature that has already expanding since the 14th and 16th centuries. Scientists writing in the British Dental Journal have suggested that skull-measurement comparisons from that time show modern-day people have less prominent facial features but higher foreheads, and Kwan expects the human head to trend larger to accommodate a larger brain."

Photographer captures daily life inside the lonely legal brothels of rural Nevada - "What he saw was shockingly mundane. The sex trade raises moral and political hackles and evokes an emotional response in most Americans. But, McAndrews often captured women preparing for just another day of work."
The women don't at all look like what you'd expect them to

Egypt Islam Center Freezes Dialogue With Vatican - "The Islamic Research Council of the University of al-Azhar, the highest authority of Sunni Islam, is freezing dialogue with the Vatican in protest of Benedict XVI's defense of Christians in Egypt... Last week, Egypt recalled its ambassador to the Holy See, Lamia Aly Hamada Mekhemar. This came after the Pope on Jan. 9 and 10 referred to the Alexandria attack... Thursday's announcement of a dialogue-freeze from Al-Azhar follows a protest from the great imam there, Ahmad al-Tayyeb, who took the Holy Father's references as an "unacceptable intervention in Egypt's affairs"... al-Tayyeb will not be attending the Assisi interreligious meeting convoked by Benedict XVI for October. The Pope announced Jan. 1 that he would personally participate in the Assisi gathering, which marks the 25th anniversary of the first interreligious prayer for peace event held there by Pope John Paul II. "These meetings, ultimately, are not bringing any good to Muslims, and they don't do good to the East but only to the West," declared al-Tayyeb. "And in all the conferences in which we took part in the past, we said clearly that the West is not serious in its way of approaching the nature of Islamic civilization and the civilization of the Middle East and of Easterners." "We hold ourselves to our relationship with the Vatican, but we also have the right not to be in agreement with the Vatican," he added, "and we hope that Benedict XVI, as a religious who appeals for peace, will address a word to Muslims apologizing for the Crusades and acknowledging the richness that the Islamic civilization has contributed to European civilization.""
Islamophobia!

The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar criticises Pope Benedict double standards - ""I disagree with the pope's view, and I ask why did the pope not call for the protection of Muslims when they were subjected to killings in Iraq?" he said at a news conference. The Vatican immediately rejected the accusation, saying the head of the Roman Catholic Church had shown solidarity with the Coptic community as well as concern for the consequences of the violence for the Christian and Muslim population. "Therefore we cannot see how the pope's approach to bring everybody to accept non-violence can be considered meddling""

58 seconds of white people getting dunked on - YouTube - "An in-depth look at the United States' pursuit of isolationism in the early stages of World War I, though the footage has been slightly altered to look like a bunch of white guys getting clowned in the NBA."

BANNED Adam and Eve, the gay version - YouTube

Did men create menopause by chasing after younger women?

SYABM — Michael Legere: Do you even know what feminism... - "Michael Legere: Do you even know what feminism is?
Bernd Jendrissek: Sure, it’s that thing that when you are one, you can’t be Scottish, because no true Scotsman would be a feminist."

David Jones - Google+ - In The Netherlands a few days ago I thought of the… - "Richards apparently thought 2 guys at a conference were being inappropriate when they made a joke of the word 'dongle'. Perhaps this neo-prudery originates in 60s separatism; but the claim that very mild innuendo and joking is a no-no in the workplace just hasn't been my experience in any company I've worked at, anywhere, ever. And it seems the amusing dick jokes date back quite some way and really can be found everywhere. While I was hunting out the misericords in the cathedral I noticed these decorations on the choir stalls. Long-necked creatures on their haunches, obviously. Is anyone offended? I doubt it, if they notice. Are they inappropriate? Well, this is where we might not want to let humourless po-faced ideologues define what's appropriate. These choir stalls date from the 16th century and no member of the congregation has yet taken an axe to them and nobody's tweeted the Bishop demanding their removal"

Liz Hurley 'safety pin' dress voted the greatest dress

Prosthetic Fingers for Ex-Yakuza Members - "If you can get out of the yakuza alive and want to live a normal life, how can you avoid the stigma of missing fingers and all that they imply? Dr. Shintaro Hayashi's solution was to construct highly realistic prosthetic fingers"

Kinder crime: Why a traveler was busted because of a chocolate egg - "Marmite and Vegemite, Denmark
The preferred yeast-extract spreads of Britons and Aussies were banned in Denmark on the basis that Marmite and Vegemite are products that contain “enhanced vitamins.”"

British Tabloid Apologizes to Aliens for Linking Them to Scientology

Elles nous emmerdent avec ses corps nus

- Ouvrez-moi, dit M.Jo, très doucement. Je ne vous toucherai pas, je ne ferai pas un pas, simplement je vous regarderai, ouvrez-moi.

Suzanne s'immobilisa et fixa la porte de la cabine obscure derrière laquelle se tenait M.Jo. Aucun homme ne l'avait vue vraiment nue, sauf Joseph qui montait quelques fois se laver les pieds au moment où elle prenait son bain. Mais comme ça n'avait jamais cessé de se produire depuis qu'ils étaient tout petits, ça ne pouvait pas compter. Suzanne se regarda bien, des pieds à la tête, regarda longuement ce que M.Jo lui demandait de regarder à son tour. Surprise, elle se mit à sourire sans répondre.

- Rien que le temps de vous voir, soupira M.Jo, Joseph et votre mère sont de l'autre côté. Je vous en supplie.
- Je ne veux pas, dit faiblement Suzanne.
- Pourquoi ? Pourquoi ma petite Suzanne ? J'ai tellement envie de vous voir, à force de rester près de vous toute la journée. Rien qu'une seconde.

Immobile, Suzanne attendait toujours de savoir s'il le fallait. Le refus était sorti d'elle machinalement. Ç'avait été non. D'abord, non, impérieusement. Mais M.Jo suppliait encore tandis que ce non lentement s'inversait et que Suzanne, inerte, emmurée, se laissait faire. Il avait très envie de la voir. Quand même c'était là l'envie d'un homme. Elle, elle était là aussi, bonne à être vue, et il n'y avait que la porte à ouvrir. Et aucun homme au monde n'avait ecore vu celle qui se tenait derrière cette porte. Ce n'était pas fait pour être caché mais au contraire pour être vu et faire son chemin de par le monde, le monde auquel appartenait quand même celui-là, ce M.Jo. Mais c'est lorsqu'elle fut sur le point d'ouvrir la porte de la cabine obscure pour que pénètre le regard de M.Jo et que la lumière se fasse enfin sur ce mystère, que M.Jo parla du phonographe.

- Demain vous aurez votre phonographe, dit M.Jo. Dès demain un magnifique Voix de son Maître. Ma petite Suzanne chérie, ouvrez une seconde et vous aurez votre phono.

C'est ainsi qu'au moment où elle allait ouvrir et se donner au monde, le monde la prostitua. La main sur le loquet, elle arrêta son geste.

- Vous êtes une ordure, dit-elle faiblement. Joseph a raison, une ordure.

Je vais lui cracher à la figure. Elle ouvrit et le crachat lui resta dans la bouche. Ce n'était pas la peine. C'était la déveine, ce M. Jo, la déveine, comme les barrages, le cheval qui crevait, ce n'était personne, seulement la déveine.

- Voilà, dit-elle, et je vous emmerde avec mon corps nu.


--- Un barrage contre le pacifique / Marguerite Duras

La pire séduction de l'histoire (The worst seduction in history)

(they come with English subtitles as well)

"Je vous aime, Suzanne. Je vous aimerai jusqu'à la fin de mes jours.
Tu as de beaux seins."

"Et mes jambes, comment sont-elles ?"

"Aussi très belles. Je t'aime"


--- Un barrage contre le pacifique (The Sea Wall), 2008

Monsieur Jo (Randal Douc) faille séduire Suzanne (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey) dans sa voiture / Mr Jo fails to seduce Suzanne in his car

Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas

"Dans la sphère économique, un acte, une habitude, une institution, une loi n'engendrent pas seulement un effet, mais une série d'effets. De ces effets, le premier seul est immédiat; il se manifeste simultanément avec sa cause, on le voit. Les autres ne se déroulent que successivement, on ne les voit pas; heureux si on les prévoit.

Entre un mauvais et un bon Économiste, voici toute la différence: l'un s'en tient à l'effet visible; l'autre tient compte et de l'effet qu'on voit et de ceux qu'il faut prévoir.

Mais cette différence est énorme, car il arrive presque toujours que, lorsque la conséquence immédiate est favorable, les conséquences ultérieures sont funestes, et vice versa. — D'où il suit que le mauvais Économiste poursuit un petit bien actuel qui sera suivi d'un grand mal à venir, tandis que le vrai économiste poursuit un grand bien à venir, au risque d'une petit mal actuel.

Du reste, il en est ainsi en hygiène, en morale. Souvent, plus le premier fruit d'une habitude est doux, plus les autres sont amers. Témoin: la débauche, la paresse, la prodigalité. Lors donc qu'un homme, frappé de l'effet qu'on voit, n'a pas encore appris à discerner ceux qu'on ne voit pas, il s'abandonne à des habitudes funestes, non-seulement par penchant, mais par calcul.

Ceci explique l'évolution fatalement douloureuse de l'humanité. L'ignorance entoure son berceau; donc elle se détermine dans ses actes par leurs premières conséquences, les seules, à son origine, qu'elle puisse voir. Ce n'est qu'à la longue qu'elle apprend à tenir compte des autres. Deux maîtres, bien divers, lui enseignent cette leçon: l'Expérience et la Prévoyance. L'expérience régente efficacement mais brutalement. Elle nous instruit de tous les effets d'un acte en nous les faisant ressentir, et nous ne pouvons manquer de finir par savoir que le feu brûle, à force de nous brûler. À ce rude docteur, j'en voudrais, autant que possible, substituer un plus doux: la Prévoyance. C'est pourquoi je rechercherai les conséquences de quelques phénomènes économiques, opposant à celles qu'on voit celles qu'on ne voit pas."

--- Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas / Frédéric Bastiat

Links - 10th June 2013

"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten." - Anonymous

***

Race The Dead - Singapore First 5k Zombie Obstacle Run

Dutch Question St. Nick's Sidekick - "Sinterklaas, the Dutch inspiration for Santa Claus, does things differently. He travels to the Netherlands by boat, not by flying reindeer. He lives in Spain, not the North Pole. He is white-bearded, but not necessarily fat or jolly. Perhaps of greatest importance to his clients, Sinterklaas always delivers three weeks early--on the eve of St. Nicholas, which this year is Sunday. These are among the many Christmas traditions here, but much more remarkable is that Sinterklaas is always accompanied by one or more dark-complexioned helpers known as Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter. Black Peter has for centuries terrified Dutch children as the ultimate boogeyman of nightmares and parental threats. He is Sinterklaas's dark alter ego, his enforcer and his bagman. If you have been a good child, Black Peter will give you goodies from his bag. If you have been a naughty child, Black Peter will put you in his sack and take you away--to Spain!... "People say, 'Why Black Peter?' I say, 'Why not Black Peter?' " said Marvin Tuur, 31, a bartender born in Suriname, the former Dutch colony in South America where the population is almost entirely black-skinned. Tuur said the Sinterklaas-Black Peter tradition is still very strong in Suriname. "A White Peter wouldn't work," he said. "What's scary about that?"

Miss Korea contestants reveal faces without makeup to prove NO plastic surgery used - "Just a few days ago when the photos of Miss Korea contestants stir controversy over the internet because of their similar look. And plastic surgery has been blamed for creating look-alike candidates. Soon after the 20 contestants who dress in normal attire and wear light makeup prove us that they are not the products of plastic surgery...but makeup and Photoshop"

Meguro Parasitological Museum in Tokyo, Japan - "this veritable parasite safari will probably encourage you to cut back on your sushi intake. Although there isn't much English signage, you'll still get a kick out of the rows of formaldehyde-preserved critters, which are labelled with their Latin names (don't miss the 8.8m-long tapeworm!)"

Historical hipsters: Shakespeare and Elizabeth I get makeovers from modern artists

Can Singapore's hawker food heritage survive? - ""We have this culinary prejudice where we are willing to pay S$20 for a pasta carbonara but will complain when the price of a plate of Hokkien Mee [fried noodles] increases from S$3 to S$3.50. So we do need to place our own Singaporean heritage and hawker culture on a higher level." In other words, if Singaporeans want to continue eating the street food they love in the future, they may need to put their money where their mouth is - either by paying more, or changing their perceptions of the hawker industry."

Perfect Ice Cream Sandwich - How To - YouTube

Ten Types of Shitty Coworkers and How to Not Murder Them
11. The Passive-Aggressive sort who rages about everyone else

Sex-for-grades trial: Judge has harsh words for Tey - "Tey had also "played the lead role" in the two sexual encounters he had with Ms Ko, he said, and his "callousness" was evident as he had asked Ms Ko to "get rid of the baby", while claiming he had no money to pay for the abortion. As he caused her to lose her virginity and took a life through an abortion, Tey deserved a harsher sentence of three months each for those charges than the prosecution's suggestion of six to eight weeks per charge, he said. "The scourge of corruption, which causes untold misery and human suffering, must not be allowed to take root in our tertiary institutions," said the judge."
Apparently abortion and deflowering virgins are crimes in Singapore

Day of week of procedure and 30 day mortality for elective surgery: retrospective analysis of hospital episode statistics - "The adjusted odds of death were 44% and 82% higher, respectively, if the procedures were carried out on Friday (odds ratio 1.44, 95% confidence interval 1.39 to 1.50) or a weekend (1.82, 1.71 to 1.94) compared with Monday."

Why does France insist school pupils master philosophy? - "The purpose of the philosophy Bac is not to understand the history of human thought but to leap into the stream that is the actuality of human thought... one of the effects of having such an ideas-based vision of society, and elevating ideas to such heights, is that people actually start believing in them, and then maybe they start thinking the ideas are worth fighting for, or perhaps dying for, or perhaps even killing for. And then what? A few days ago, for example, a man shot himself dead in Notre Dame cathedral... In his last blog post he quoted Heidegger saying the last second of a man's life had as much significance as all that went before. Here was a man, arguably, who fell so in love with his own ideas that he decided to take his life. How very French."

1: Mos Espa | A Photographer Rediscovers The Crumbling Remains Of Tatooine

TV time 'does not breed badly behaved children' - "Spending hours watching TV or playing computer games each day does not harm young children's social development, say experts. The Medical Research Council (MRC) team who studied more than 11,000 primary school pupils says it is wrong to link bad behaviour to TV viewing. Although researchers found a small correlation between the two, they say other influences, such as parenting styles, most probably explain the link. But they still say "limit screen time". This cautionary advice is because spending lots of time in front of the TV every day might reduce how much time a child spends doing other important activities such as playing with friends and doing homework, they say."

Japanese Vending Machines "Used Panties" - YouTube - "Here is a quick vid of the vending machine corner not too far from my friends' apartments. Including the porno vending machines and one stocked with used panties. These are not fake!"
Despite noisy denials, they are real!

Classical music calms 'rowdy' Paris commuters - ""From now on, when our employees identify a group of young people that gives the impression of creating trouble, they can play classical music. Imagine, it works! Subjecting these persons to tunes they are not familiar with has the added benefit of making them flee," the statement added"

Are Associations Attitudes? - "I’d like to discuss the IAT (implicit association test) today; specifically, I’d like to address the matter of how well the racial IAT correlates (or rather, fails to correlate) with other measures of racial prejudice, and how we ought to interpret that result... Unfortunately, many psychological researchers and laypeople alike have taken a unwarranted conceptual leap: they assume that these differential association strengths imply implicit racist attitudes. This assumption happens to meet with an unfortunate snag, however, which is that these implicit associations tend to have very weak to no correlations with explicit measures of racial prejudice (even if the measures themselves, like the Modern Racism Scale, are of questionable validity to begin with). Indeed, as reviewed by Arkes & Tetlock (2004), whereas the vast majority of undergraduates tested manifest exceedingly low levels of “modern racism”, almost all of them display a stronger association between white faces and positivity. Faced with this lack of correlation, many people have gone on to make a second assumption to account for this lack, that assumption being that the implicit measure is able to tap some “truer” prejudiced attitude that the explicit measures are not as able to tease out... quicker associations between whites and positive concepts are capable of being generated by merely being aware of racial stereotypes, irrespective of whether one endorses them on any level, conscious or not. Indeed, even African American subjects were found to manifest pro-white biases in these tests. One could take those results as indicative of black subjects being implicit racist against their own ethnic group, though it would seem to make more sense to interpret those results in terms of the black subjects being aware of the stereotypes they did not endorse... the results of the IAT do not test whether there is a negative association towards any one group; just whether one group is rated more positively than another. While whites might have a stronger association with positive concepts than blacks, it does not follow that blacks have a negative association overall, nor that whites have a particularly positive one either. Both groups could be held in high or low regard overall, with one being slightly favored. In much the same way, I might enjoy eating both pizza and turkey sandwiches, but I would tend to enjoy eating pizza more. Since the IAT does not track whether these response time differentials are due to hostility, these results do not automatically seem to apply well to most definitions of prejudice. Finally, the authors make the (perhaps politically incorrect) point that noticing behavioral differences between groups – racial or otherwise – and altering behavior accordingly is not, de facto, evidence of an irrational racial biases; it could well represent the proper use of Bayesian inference, passing correspondence benchmarks for rational behavior... a final point worth considering is that this test measures the automaticity of activation; not necessarily the pattern of activation which will eventually obtain. While my immediate reaction towards a brownie within the first 200 milliseconds might be “eat that”, that doesn’t mean that I will eventually end up eating said brownie, nor would it make me implicitly opposed toward the idea of dieting. It would seem that, in spite of these implicit associations, society as a whole has been getting less overtly racist. The need for researchers to dig this deep to try and study racism could be taken as heartening, given that we, “now attempt to gauge prejudice not by what people do, or by what people say, but rather by millisecs of response facilitation of inhibition in implicit association paradigms”"
Even African Americans are racist!

Why Are They Called “Spoilers”? - "a hardcore Star Wars fan would probably not have enjoyed someone leaving the theater in 1980 blurting out that Darth Vader was Luke’s father; by comparison, someone who didn’t know anything about Star Wars probably wouldn’t have cared. In other words, the subjects likely have absolutely no emotional attachment to the stories they were reading and, as such, the information they were being given was not exactly a spoiler. If the authors weren’t studying what people would typically consider aversive spoilers in the first place, then their conclusions about spoilers more generally are misplaced. One of the other issues, as I hinted at before, is that the stories themselves were all rather short. It would take no more than a few minutes to read even the longest of them. This lack of investment of time could cause a major issue for the study"
Addendum: This is about the story which showed that spoilers increase enjoyment

France 2012 - Day 3-7 - Rambouillet (Part 1)

France 2012
Day 3-7 - 15th October-19th October - Rambouillet (Part 1)

This week I had lessons at l'Institut International de Rambouillet. Unfortunately this was low season, so there were no activities and only two classes. The town of Rambouillet was half an hour from Paris by train, but having been there a few times I didn't really feel compelled to go there.

I wanted to watch La Fille du Régiment and Les Noces de Figaro, which were playing in Paris, despite the lack of surtitles and thus risking violating my rule of only watching operas if there were surtitles in a language I understood. Unfortunately tickets were sold out by the time I arrived in Rambouillet; so much for wanting to assess the ground (train schedules, class timetables etc) - I should just have bought tickets and skipped classes if necessary. So I missed Natalie Dessay in the former.

There were a lot of Japanese students there, and almost all of them were girls (indeed, I was one of the very few male students - and the only one in my class). We were discussing strange aspects of Japan, and it turned out the Japanese have a word for the area between a woman's hemline and her knee, which Japanese men have a fetish for. Then an Israeli woman complained that when she talked to Japanese they stared at the area between her bust and her neck, and she wanted to slap them. According to the Japanese girls, it would be impolite to look her in the eye.

All 3 Japanese girls in my class had that ubiquitous handheld translator device.

It seems people in Kyoto are not nice beause tourists annoy them.

Apparently many Japanese are allergic to alcohol. On this subject, an American girl was allergic to wheat flour but the Israeli to alcohol, and the former preferred her allergy.

Japanese use a lot of water and leave the lights on 24/7. This is a problem when Japanese students homestay. Incidentally I suspect it's only in Europe (including the UK) where you have motion-activated lights, or lights where a button will turn them on for a while but they will later turn off.

As expected the rooms were generally overheated (at least for my tastes), so I drank a lot of water and sat near the door in the classroom. The situation in my room was more annoying: despite fiddling with controls I was unable to turn down the heating, so my room became a sauna in the day. In the end I had to open the window to let all the hot air out, which was very wasteful.


Street sign for "Le PUNJAB", an Indian restaurant


"Bel-Air" kindergarten. Hurr.
Also the Arbouville farm must be very famous


Rambouillet street
Notice that the Orange store almost faces its competitor SFR. SFR didn't have an attractive pre-paid mobile phone deal: €9,90 for the SIM and €35 for 1G of data, so I held out for Orange which was closed on Monday.

The town was bigger than I thought. There was even a Carrefour City, open from 9-1pm on Sundays.


Lingerie - behind bars


Their pride in their history - Henry IV (strangely, spelled the English way) granted them letters of patent in 1595


"Everything rolls [functions] cheaper with Ada"
This is a bad pun


Hôtel de Ville, 17th century. Naturally, Rambouillet is yet another "Ville d'art et d'histoire", and this building is certainly one reason. I'm surprised that there're only 167 cities in this category.

I then went snooping in Carrefour.


Tea. Note that little is black tea - there were 1.5 shelves of plain black tea and Earl Grey: Lipton Yellow Label and Darjeeling. The rest were Green Tea, Infusions, Fruit Tea (technically Earl Grey is probably a Fruit Tea but it's in the canon so we let it pass)


"Carrefour prawn fritters, which are crunchy and melt in your mouth, are a great accompaniment for your apéritifs and Asian meals. These prawn fritters lack colouring, preservatives and are made from fresh prawns"
Keropok never sounded so good
Surprisingly it was only €0,73 for 50g, which was okay. It's an Indonesian recipe, but uses sunflower oil - FAIL!

BJ was more expensive than I expected: €5,92 per pint. Haagen-Dazs was a few cents more. Of course, the cheapest wine was €1,50 for 750ml.

Cookies were cheaper than in Singapore (not Malaysian crap - one cannot compare to that) and so was pasta, but 150ml of Kikoman was €4,12 (discounted from €4,82). There was also "sauce for nems".


Bread on shelf???

Since I was going to be in one place for a week (really rare for me), I could do grocery shopping. Well, if I'd had a car I could've done that too.

They had bread marked "longue conservation". Presumably this was full of preservatives like in Singapore.


A shop open on Sunday! Even if only for 3 hours (9 hours on other days).

Really, shops should coordinate so they don't all close on Mondays. Grr.


Normal price for movies: 10€
One thing that is still cheap in Singapore - movies. This is called Bread And Circuses.


Tanning salon - open 7/7 days: 10-8 on Sundays too. Priorities!


One road, many names. 8 names in 239 years is quite extreme


"Rue du Général de Gaulle"
They gave up on putting its old name, just writing "Ancienne Grande Rue" (former Major Road)


This hair salon had a list of prices for male hair - but they were smart enough to specify "short hair"
If you're under 20 you get a 20% discount

Walking in the Centre-ville (town centre) I counted 5-6 pharmacies. The French are really hypochondriacs.


"Restaurant Sourire de Saigon [Smile of Saigon]. Thanks for your confidence"
That's a great "we've closed down" sign

2 Korean girls were at the Institute to study French for 6 weeks. They wanted to take makeup courses with just 6 weeks under their belts. I was skeptical about how that would work, but the Israeli lady, after 5 weeks, was able to speak quite well when she couldn't previously. Meanwhile one Japanese girl couldn't speak it 3 month before... and now had a French boyfriend (okay, maybe that's not such a good measure).

In the 70s people were told to throw their rubbish in gullies by the road.

According to one teacher, the Paris métro is not 24 hours to ensure people are not up and about 24/7. Ahh, social engineering.

A German woman said she saw Wagner without surtitles and was unable to understand it.

I was told that cat tastes like rabbit.

In Rambouillet, if your garden is too small you cannot grow food for your family. This was very puzzling.

There are cities/towns in France where one cannot be topless. Hah.


I wasn't terribly impressed by the food (even considering it was school food; I swear I'd taken pictures of the meals on some days, but I can't find them), but I was told this chef was new and took pride in cooking (he'd come out to watch us eat), and the old one was really terrible - there were insects in the vegetables and they were too salty, the chicken was overcooked and had no salt or pepper.

Dinner was from 7-8pm which was short enough, but from 745 we were chased out. I guess the staff wanted to go home.

I actually took some photos of the food (and some miscellaneous other things) but it seems all the non-foursquare pictures I took disappeared, probably due to accidental deletion. Ah well.

We got budget pudding which was so plainly packaged (like combat rations), even pet food looked more appealing (externally).

I saw a Korean eating her own sandwich bread instead of the provided baguette. She found it too hard, hard. At the Japanese table no one brought their own bread, but only half were eating baguette.

The Israeli woman found taking pictures of food strange. Someone suggested that I say it was how we said Grace in my country.