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April 25, 2002, 2300 hrs Hmmm.. it's been an uneventful couple of days since my visit to the Louvre. I've finally cropped and resized some pictures from that afternoon and they follow: Pictures from left to right: 'Bet and Daglen (pronounced "Dow-gli" in Portugese). Elisabet works for a public relations firm in Sao Paulo and Daglen is a federal police officer in Rio de Janeiro (apparently she was one of Mrs.Bush's protection detail on a recent visit to Brazil); the Winged Victory of Samothrace - it's really huge. Don't quite understand why it's on the submarine-looking base, but we all agreed that it was perfect as it was - it didn't need a head; the Venus de Milo - also perfect as she is - didn't expect her to be so big either. For some reason, the photos never give one an understanding of the scale of some of these old statues; I'm really not much into photographing objects of art, so most of these photos were taken with one of the girls wanting a memento. This is some nameless mummy - one of the very few we could actually find in the museum. They found documentation dating his exact age at death (down to the day). A tad over 21 years old, he is also 1.5 meters in height - pretty good sized for someone 3000 years ago; I actually found this statue of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf quite striking. It's not that old, a couple of hundred years at most, but beautiful. So this photo I took for me; this next shot is of Daglen and me on a statue in the Tuileries (after the garden had closed). I'm sure it was quite illegal but you know those Brazilians - quite lawless; the next photo is of my lawless friends on the same statue - note that they are quite cold, even though it's still in the sixties; finally, a really nice sunset on the walk to the Quartier Latin for dinner - that's the Musee d'Orsay in the background (soon to be visited). Oh.. and it's probably sacriligeous to say it, but I can't see what all the fuss is about with the Mona Lisa. I've got to spend a lot more time in the Louvre yet, but I just wasn't impressed with Mona in person. As far as the French elections are going, it looks like the centre-left (Jospin) and the centre-right's (Chirac) people are going to get together to oppose Le Pen. The far south and the north (lots of unemployment) and eastern parts of the country are what voted for him. In the Paris area, the banlieues to the north voted for him (the most depressed, oddly enough). I would imagine the immigrants living in these areas don't vote as they probably aren't citizens so it's the folks who are seeing their neighborhoods changing for the worse who are listening to him. Nothing unusual there. My jaw isn't working too well today, so I'm on a bit of a liquid diet. I have a TMJ problem (same as my sister Krystyna was operated on for) but mine was never fixed.. so my jaw pops out of joint every few months these days and I can't really chew anything. It's very painful really, so I'm confined to eating really small bites (it hurts a lot!) and drinking lots of fluids. Last time it took a whole week to pop back in - one of these days I guess it'll come completely out, rather than partially, and I'll be in a hospital waiting for an operation. Other than that, life is pretty good. Still haven't heard back from the Web firm but I seriously doubt the competency of their secretary so it's not that surprising. The weather here has really turned to summer, with the days approaching 80F and it still being high 60s even this late in the evening. I plan to buy a fan (or two) as soon as I'm in my new apartment next week. In the mean time I've been exploring the arrondisement in which I'll be living shortly, looking for good restaurants and cafes and the like. It's on the edge of a trendy area, so quite a few of the restaurants aren't cheap. I may have to venture towards the Sacre Coeur area or east to the Canal St. Martin (where I was today) to find more reasonable prices. I've found that it makes the most sense to order from the "menu" - which is a fixed price selection of dishes from the restaurants offerings. Much more reasonable in terms of price, though one's choices are dramatically reduced. Some of my favorites (like carpaccio and tomato and mozarella) are infrequently available on the fixed price menu. But then I plan to start preparing a lot of food at home (getting back to my Atkins diet) anyway. I explored the covered passages a bit more today (lots of philatelist shops in them!) and walked up and down the Canal St. Martin (which is a nice area). Apparently the frontage road along the Canal is closed on Sundays for pedestrians (as are a few other areas in Paris) and that should make it quite nice. The local jazz radio station (TSF, 89.9, it's really good!) has got me thinking about my love of good jazz. So I've decided to find a couple of jazz clubs to visit in my area - one of the most famous in Paris - New Morning - is in my arrondisement, spitting distance from my apartment. I think that will make me very happy as summer wears on. I've been thinking about getting myself a set of roller-skates for promenading on Sundays (don't like the blades, but I may give them a try). For the uninitiated, "blades" were developed in California about 12 or 15 years ago and are basically skates with one set of inline wheels (as opposed to the four wheels set in two pairs that we all grew up with). They weren't good then for my ankles, but maybe they've gotten better. Rollerskates are still more maneuverable and stop more quickly but have gotten rarer these days - especially quality ones. Apparently, just as San Francisco has its Friday night bicycle rides, Paris has it's Friday night "rolls", where people come out in droves and skate in a big mass about the city. Friday is my last day of classes at the Alliance and I don't think I'll continue next session. They've actually been very good and I've learned a lot, but I feel the need for more conversational skills and they are taking a more academic route - stressing grammar first before conversation. Right now, I understand the past, present and future simple and conditional and I think that I want to master basic conversational skills before working on the other six tenses. I think I can probably get along pretty well with just these. The current plan is to get together with a couple of other students from my current class and find some French people who want to learn conversational English and have a get together three times a week for a couple of hours. Alternatively, we could hire a French teacher for about 25-35E/hr to guide us in conversation (which I would prefer). Saturday is a planned trip to the Loire Valley in a rented car - that should prove interesting. If I can, I'm going to avoid driving until I'm out of the city! It really doesn't look that bad, as long as one can read the street signs.. :> They are going to muck with the phones here in the residence for the next THREE days - what are they doing, putting in a whole new phone system and so the phones will be out of order for that long, meaning that this is my last post until Sunday I expect. But two or three times a week is probably a much better frequency for most of you anyway! My best to all, and send me email now and then, eh?
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