The truth is out there.. go on, Google it!
It's been three days and I've started becoming slack again.
I spent the weekend "catching up". I met up with the Delia-Martin-Cécile gang on Saturday. We had dinner at the Bastringue, for old times sake. In France, going out for a meal often involves leaving vegetarianism back at home. But the evening was good nevertheless - good company, good food and boozy. We ended up at the Point Ephemère afterwards, and left when they kicked us out at closing time.
On Sunday I met Donna, also an ex-colleague, for brunch at the Bellevilloise. The Bellevilloise have a rooftop terrace where they have a brunch buffet for 18€, or the downstairs area, where they serve a buffet + main course for 25€. Now obviously we always go for the buffet sans main, because a main defeats the purpose of an all-you-can-eat buffet. There is only so much a man can eat, and all the more so if he's a Frenchman. (which I am not and neither is it something that I aspire to, but let's not split hair on technicalities now...). But I digress - the weather not being quite in line with the optimist's expectations, the roof-top terrace was closed and we were forced to have the 25€ brunch indoors.
We walked around a fair bit after this, up and down the lanes and alleys of Belleville and Ménilmontant and had another coffee/beer at La Mer à Boire, at the top of the Belleville park.
I got back home and headed out to meet Aurélie E. We went had a drink and an entrée at the Mère Lachaise, one of our locals.
€€€
Today, I slept in. I had a tinned tuna and pasta salad with an egg for lunch and listened to perestroika-pop and folk tracks. I pondered over embarking on a project where I would photograph each of my meals over, say, the period of a year. Has this been done? Would you be interested if these pictures became the new focus this blog? I mean, you couldn't say it would be more banal than the status quo in all honesty...perhaps in a strange way, a bit more intimate, or exhibitionist at any rate. If the banalities of daily life, exposed in the extreme verge on exhibitionism, then is anything interesting that happens just a construct? A cover, to hide our real mundane selves?
But changing the subject: stalker_p's laboratory director has offered us her beach house in Normandy for the weekend next week, so I'll be going there for about 4 days. I might head back to London after that for the rest of the month, if I'm satisfied with the number of job applications sent out.
I also saw the X-Files film today. Disappointing really. There is an FBI agent who has disappeared and they call in a psychic paedophile priest (Billy Connolly!) to sniff out the corpse. Scully who has shacked up with a bearded Maulder (but tries to dump him under some unconvincing pretexts once he decides to shave), doesn't like paedophiles, and is not about to make an exception with this one, while Maulder trusts his psychic abilities. In her medical practice, Scully decides as a last resort to perform stem cell treatment on one of her patients, much in the same way you or I would go about making vegan macaroni & cheese - by Googling the keywords "stem cell research". One of the Google articles happens to contain information on the baddies - a bunch of foreign thugs lead by a psychopathic Russian homosexual (yes, the remains of that dead horse are still being flogged in certain nooks of Hollywood, it would seem). Putting that together with the religious ramblings of the priest, the psycho thugs are nabbed. Whether the Vegan mac'n'cheese, ehm.. I mean, stem cell therapy on the little boy was successful is a loose end left untied, but it doesn't matter much as the audience isn't really expected to care, one gets the impression.
I spent the weekend "catching up". I met up with the Delia-Martin-Cécile gang on Saturday. We had dinner at the Bastringue, for old times sake. In France, going out for a meal often involves leaving vegetarianism back at home. But the evening was good nevertheless - good company, good food and boozy. We ended up at the Point Ephemère afterwards, and left when they kicked us out at closing time.
On Sunday I met Donna, also an ex-colleague, for brunch at the Bellevilloise. The Bellevilloise have a rooftop terrace where they have a brunch buffet for 18€, or the downstairs area, where they serve a buffet + main course for 25€. Now obviously we always go for the buffet sans main, because a main defeats the purpose of an all-you-can-eat buffet. There is only so much a man can eat, and all the more so if he's a Frenchman. (which I am not and neither is it something that I aspire to, but let's not split hair on technicalities now...). But I digress - the weather not being quite in line with the optimist's expectations, the roof-top terrace was closed and we were forced to have the 25€ brunch indoors.
We walked around a fair bit after this, up and down the lanes and alleys of Belleville and Ménilmontant and had another coffee/beer at La Mer à Boire, at the top of the Belleville park.
I got back home and headed out to meet Aurélie E. We went had a drink and an entrée at the Mère Lachaise, one of our locals.
€€€
Today, I slept in. I had a tinned tuna and pasta salad with an egg for lunch and listened to perestroika-pop and folk tracks. I pondered over embarking on a project where I would photograph each of my meals over, say, the period of a year. Has this been done? Would you be interested if these pictures became the new focus this blog? I mean, you couldn't say it would be more banal than the status quo in all honesty...perhaps in a strange way, a bit more intimate, or exhibitionist at any rate. If the banalities of daily life, exposed in the extreme verge on exhibitionism, then is anything interesting that happens just a construct? A cover, to hide our real mundane selves?
But changing the subject: stalker_p's laboratory director has offered us her beach house in Normandy for the weekend next week, so I'll be going there for about 4 days. I might head back to London after that for the rest of the month, if I'm satisfied with the number of job applications sent out.
I also saw the X-Files film today. Disappointing really. There is an FBI agent who has disappeared and they call in a psychic paedophile priest (Billy Connolly!) to sniff out the corpse. Scully who has shacked up with a bearded Maulder (but tries to dump him under some unconvincing pretexts once he decides to shave), doesn't like paedophiles, and is not about to make an exception with this one, while Maulder trusts his psychic abilities. In her medical practice, Scully decides as a last resort to perform stem cell treatment on one of her patients, much in the same way you or I would go about making vegan macaroni & cheese - by Googling the keywords "stem cell research". One of the Google articles happens to contain information on the baddies - a bunch of foreign thugs lead by a psychopathic Russian homosexual (yes, the remains of that dead horse are still being flogged in certain nooks of Hollywood, it would seem). Putting that together with the religious ramblings of the priest, the psycho thugs are nabbed. Whether the Vegan mac'n'cheese, ehm.. I mean, stem cell therapy on the little boy was successful is a loose end left untied, but it doesn't matter much as the audience isn't really expected to care, one gets the impression.