Fned's Blog

The Trip

2011-08-29T23:02:00.004+01:00

On our last night in Mexico this summer I passed Hubby my traveling notebook and asked him to write down his thoughts on the trip while we waited for our dinner. I thought he'd protest and whine about the request, but instead he looked at me for a second or two, silently took my notebook and started scribbling away.

20 minutes later he was still scribbling. I started to worry that he would finish all my blank pages and not leave me any room for our coming trip to India this fall when he suddenly stopped, closed the notebook and handed it back to me asking me to promise not to read what he'd written until we'd gotten back to London.

Well, we're back in London and I've read what he wrote. And now I wish to make sure his words are forever cemented somewhere where I and all who recognize themselves in The Trip will always remember what he meant.

August 5th 2011 -- Cancun, Mexico.

Fifth trip to Mexico for me and third traveling across the country along the Mexican highways, from Puebla to the Sureste (south-east). The trip is still as incredible as ever with its unchangeable routines: the departure at dawn (always running late), the descent at Orizaba in the early hours of the morning where we go from the high fresh mountains in to the Veracruz fertile jungle while saying goodbye to the Popo, the heat and the sun of Veracruz, the chaos of Villahermosa, the straight highway on our way out of Ciudad del Carmen, the bridges over the Golfo de Mexico, the pit stop for fresh shrimp cocktails at Champoton, the Yucatan dry jungle, the rest while soaking in the warm summer night and the lights of Merida, the dry concrete highway until Tulum, and then.... at last .... the Caribbean beach and the feeling of having arrived to the end of the world, of reaching Paradise, after all that effort.

Like each trip, this one came with its surprises: the mechanical malfunction under the pouring rain, the overnight stop at a "dubious" hotel in Frontera, the Yucatean policeman more than a little curious about our quirky setup....

Not everyone was able to come on this occasion, some are no longer with us, others joined along the trip. And even though things are no longer the same as before, probably never will be, what matters most is to continue to make The Trip, continue to keep the dream alive and share it with those who count, continue to transmit this passion and this desire to throw oneself in the direction of the Caribe and travel all across Mexico to get there.

Photo by Hubby: Combi Paradise

Fned.

The coincidence factor

2011-08-28T07:42:00.002+01:00

Do you ever think about the coincidence of being born where you are? I find it mind boggling how something so accidental, over which you have absolutely no control over whatsoever, such as the place you are born in, can play such a significant part in one’s life and what it turns out to be.

Why is it that I was lucky enough to be born into a loving family where I was taught the values I was taught, provided with an education and a passion for traveling, given two mother languages and a multicultural background?

Or I could also ask it this way: Why is it that I wasn’t lucky enough to be born into the Hilton family, jet-set around the world by the time I was 12, had a personal translator so that I never had to learn an additional language, be introduced to international cuisine and local customs first hand?

Or I could ask it this way: How is it that I was fortunate enough to not be born in Darfour, becoming someone who’d only ever known a refugee camp, never set foot in a school room or learned to read or write my own language or heard about foreign countries or learned about distant lands?

I’m not talking about the political or economical injustice of it all. It’s just that the more I travel and see the world, the more I realize how, beyond the obvious economical or social reasons, traveling and seeing the world is not something everyone has the opportunity of doing in great part because of, and this is what I find so extraordinary, a simple twist of fate that nobody can control.

This thought came to me when I was walking in the rice paddies in Ubud during our trip to Bali in 2009. We came across a woman who was harvesting rice and it got me thinking of what her life must be like. I don’t want to sound condescending or anything, perhaps I’m completely off in assuming all of this, but it got me wondering if she’d ever heard of my country and made her want to visit it as I had heard about hers which in turn had lead me there. It made me wonder what her weekends or free time were spent on. Did she dream of traveling abroad every free moment she got as I did? Did she imagine tasting strange foods or hearing foreign languages? Would this be something that interested her? And if didn’t, was it simply because she had never had a chance to experiment it in the first place or because her interests were of a different nature (which is also a valid explanation for people choosing not to travel)? Had she ever even left her town? Her village? Her Island?

It hit me how some parts of the world are so secluded, so isolated, be it geographically, politically, economically, socially or even mentally that its population probably doesn’t even ponder on this. And it made me realize how by a simple question of chance I was not born in one of those places.

There I was, on the other side of the world, walking in the middle of a rice field in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, a place where up until a few months ago I’d never in my dreams thought I’d be likely to ever set foot, thousands of kilometers away from home, and all of this because of chance in the universe that had me be born in the place I’d been born in which in turn provided me with chances and opportunities which they in turn provided me with the means and the resources to find myself in Ubud at that very instant in time.

And there she was, by the same chance in the universe that had her be born in that remote place, in the middle of kilometers and kilometers of rice fields, which provided her with chances and opportunities different to mine (not saying better or worse, just different) that put her in that place, in that moment in time.

And how neither of us had been able to control that coincidence factor which, it, in turn had dictated and controlled our lives.

Now, for those born in the US, this perhaps will all sound like a bunch of baloney. After all, Americans are brought up thinking that life is what you make of it and everything is possible if you set your mind to it. And that is probably one of the reasons I am who I am today, because I had the chance of being born into a family that taught me this way of thinking. But what would have happened if I’d been born into a family that taught me I should strive to be married by the time I was 16? Or a family that taught me that I should focus on becoming a lawyer? Or a family that taught me that religion should be my first priority in life? Or a family that taught me that the most important thing in life was finding a well with drinkable water?

Perhaps the woman in the rice fields has had the same opportunities I’ve had (after all, what makes being born in Mexico much better –or worse– off than being born in Indonesia or elsewhere for that matter?) and other factors in life had resulted in her being in that place in that moment in time (again, not going into the politics of the issue itself).

Photo by Hubby: In the rice fields

But the fact that boggles my mind remains the same: how amazing that the first steps in our existence (which in turn influences us in great measure to become who we are) are controlled by a random factor.

Fned.

Per aspera ad astra

2011-08-24T21:38:00.011+01:00

Hubby and I visited Oxford this weekend. The university town in the English countryside, not the shopping street in the city center of London.

Oxford is only an hour and a half train away from London but once you step off that train platform and walk into the university's sprawling campus, which actually is the town of Oxford, you suddenly realize you are in a whole different world. Everywhere you look medieval buildings older that my country are sprinkled around town. The Mayans were still climbing up the steps of Chichen-Itza to pray to the gods of Sun and already students at Oxford were taking lectures in Theology.

The university is over 800 years old and as I walked along the streets, in and out of ancestral college courtyards, medieval chapels and century-old libraries, I wondered what it must feel like for the students currently enrolled to know that within these same very walls Einstein studied science, Halley discovered a comet, Carrol dreamt up an Alice and a white rabbit, Smith toyed with Economics...... that through these walls future Nobel Peace winners and Presidents and award winning writers and poets probably complained about the cafeteria's menu....

I doubt a lot of them studied much History though... what could they have possibly learned back then? History wasn't even written yet !!

I was both fascinated and intimidated by the sheer power and magnificence of those buildings and what they represented, what secrets and stories their walls held, what illustrious names were associated to every possible bench, garden, table, court, window on those grounds...

When I finished high school I didn't really know what I wanted to study nor where I wanted to go so I took a year off to make up my mind. During that year we traveled to Texas to visit my family and during our time there one day my mom drove us to Austin and took us to visit her old alma mater, UT (University of Texas). I remember feeling exactly the same: fascinated, intimidated and fairly certain I did not belong in something so big, so imposing, so huge. I didn't even bother entertaining the idea of applying to UT.

In the end I signed up to and graduated from a University in my hometown with a little over 1,200 enrolled students and a grand total of 17 years of history. And never looked back. I had a grand time there, learned lots, made great friends and still hold that school in a special place in my heart.

But walking in the Bodleian library at Oxford knowing such unique items like the Magna Carta or the Gutenberg Bible were safely kept within those very same walls, and that students holding an Oxford student card had the right to access such treasures, well, I have to admit I did feel a ting of regret... not because I feel I belonged at Oxford (as if!) but mainly because I wondered what it must feel like to know that 800 generation of students probably crossed the same threshold to your dorm room (then again...... eiwww).

I mean, think about it. It must do something to a person's incentive to learn to go do your homework in sixteen-century Radcliff Camera ....

.... or to look out of your dorm room and see the Magdalen Tower, where students were already taking classes in 1264 ....

.... or to take a coffee break in the "vaults" (which probably are real vaults) ....

.... or get from classroom L208 to classroom H204 by crossing the "Bridge of Sighs" .....

.... or to take a short cut through a fifteen-century alley to make it to class in time ....

.... or stay up late at night chatting away with your roommate in your Tudor residence hall ....

.... or work in a science lab that looks something like this .....

As we boarded the train back to London I wondered if my old self, the one who shrank back at the sight of The Tower back in 1997, might have thought differently if she'd know that one day she would go live in a different continent, learn a new language, have the incredible opportunity to travel the globe and see four out of the seven wonders of the world...

... I guess I'll never know.....

Fned.

The image of us

2011-07-17T12:41:00.001+01:00

If you read my blog you know that I often mention my good friend Kyle. For those of you who don't know Kyle, she's a blogging wedding photographer living in Chile and she and her hubby Seba are awesome people and dear friends of ours.

Back in 2009 Kyle and Seba came to stay with us in Paris for a few days and graciously accepted to do a photo shoot of us. We were both pretty nervous and didn't really know what to expect being as how we'd never posed for a photo shoot in our life (even our wedding album is a painful thing to see). But Kyle and Seba did a great job at getting us to relax and, mainly thanks to their talent and great eye, got some amazing shots where we actually look pretty good despite the fact that I vividly recall feeling extremely self conscious the entire time.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from that shoot:

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when again, Kyle and Seba met up with us here in London and again agreed to do a shoot for us. Again, we were feeling pretty nervous and self conscious the entire time and again, the photos came out really great, (this is Kyle and Seba after all). See below:

Since neither Hubby nor I have consciously changed anything in our appearance or lifestyles between the shoots I guess I wasn't expecting to be so shocked and surprised at how different we look this time around.

I can't put my finger exactly on what it is exactly that feels and looks different to me but something does. At first I thought it was just that we must look older in the 2011 pictures, after all 2 years have gone by. But the more I look at them the more I think it's not exactly that.

It's like I can actually see the time that has passed between the shoots but not necessarily because there are gray hairs or eye wrinkles to show for it. It's more as if I can feel what Hubby and I have lived through between the shoots. The experiences we've shared, the trips we've taken, the things we've seen, the mistakes we've made, the highs and lows we've weathered through hand in hand, the ups and downs of our life together.

When I look at both sets of pictures I can very vividly see the Fned and Hubby of 2009 and remember their dreams and goals shining through their eyes and reflecting back at me. And then I look at the Fned and Hubby of 2011 and see the effect that those dreams coming true (or not) has had on us since then. I can see how some of those old 2009 dreams have shifted and become something new, something changed, something different that now shines back from a new set of eyes that are so familiar and yet so different, somewhat wiser, from those of 2009. It's like they no longer reflect the same things but are instead looking at a different horizon, planning a new direction, gazing through a different perspective of things.

I find it very interesting that thanks to Kyle and Seba's magical talent I am able to compare these two slices of our life and it makes me wonder what will the slice look and feel like a few years from now.

After all, this is now starting to feel like a tradition Kyle... you know you'll have to come and photograph us when we move on to our next country, right ?? :-)

Fned.

Invasion

2011-07-15T22:03:00.010+01:00

Hubby and I have only moved apartments a few times in our life, but every time we've each had one non-negotiable request for deciding on a place to live.

Hubby's condition is that the apartment has to have good natural light. Mine is that it has to have a guest bedroom.

When I came to grips with the reality that I was going to settle down on the other side of the world, I knew that I would always want, nay, need, a place where my family, friends and loved ones could come visit and stay for as long as they wished without feeling uncomfortable. Over the years countless of our friends and family have accepted our invitation to come visit and this has brought us so much joy and happiness that I have never regretted the fact that we pay a little extra rent each month for the luxury of being able to provide them with their own space during their stay.

Until now.

Last Sunday we got a call from a friend of a friend in Paris asking us for a favor: the son of another friend had just arrived in London to do a 6 month internship and had discovered upon arrival that the apartment he'd thought he'd rented through an online agency, was actually a scam and nothing was in fact reserved or available. Our friend said that this kid (22 years) was basically out in the cold with his suitcases and without a place to go for the night and since she knew we had an extra bedroom she asked us if, as a special favor, we could put him up for a night or two while he found a new place.

I have to admit the request annoyed us a little bit as we'd never met this person (or his mother or her friend!) and we were already running late to meet our good friends Tara and Stuart for one last dinner before their move to Australia..... but of course we said yes. We waited for the kid to arrive (I'm just going to go ahead and call him the kid for the rest of the post if you don't mind), gave him a copy of our key, showed him where everything was, told him to feel at home and jumped in a cab to make it in time for dessert.

In retrospective we probably shouldn't have told him to feel at home.

Our understanding was that the kid only needed a night or two because he was in a hurry to find his own digs. However, almost immediately we realized that he was in fact in no hurry at all. Monday night we came back from work to find him lazily browsing the online adds to help him make up his mind on the neighborhoods he wanted to explore before he committed to looking there for a flat. Hubby told him that it was no use to look at online adds in London since most of the advertised places are already rented anyway and that his best option for finding something quick was to call an agency the next morning and set up a half day of apartment visits that afternoon which is the way things are done here (for the record, Hubby found our current place during the first half of the first day he started looking).

Tuesday we came home to find that he'd settled on a couple of agencies he was going to call the next day. Wednesday he'd found a place and was going to think about it for the night, Thursday the place of course had been rented out and he had to start from scratch again.

By this time, our patience had grown really weary. It wasn't only that we felt he was taking advantage of the free boarding and food he was getting from us, but mostly the fact that he was taking for granted that he could stay here for as long as he wished, without even bothering to ask us if we minded and in essence, he didn't need to pressure himself to find something quick. Each night we'd come home to hear a new excuse of why he hadn't found something yet ("the agency got our rdv times mixed up", "the place that the agent had set aside for me to visit was actually already rented out by another agency", "I had too much work today and couldn't step out to visit anything", "a friend of mine heard of something so we're going to go check it out tomorrow", "I'm thinking of checking out the student residences down the road tomorrow on my way to work"....etc).

I have to say that I would have tolerated all of this and much more if at least the kid had showed a little consideration towards this "invasion" of our home, but it was all the contrary! We had a couple of previous dinner engagements during the week and each time, we'd come home in the evening to find he'd randomly gone through our pantry, made himself dinner and left the pots in the sink. On the nights that Hubby cooked for us he didn't even offer to help wash up afterwards. And during his stay he kept the door to the bedroom closed without ever asking us if we needed anything from the room (which would have been nice considering Hubby's computer and all our books and DVDs are in there).

It's not like he was ever impolite or obnoxious, quite the contrary. On the whole he's a nice kid. He just seemed to assume that living with us was the same as living with his parents and that it was our duty to take care of him for as much and as long as he needed it. And that's what killed us.

By Wednesday we'd already told him that we were leaving to Mexico this weekend so he had to find something by Friday or else he'd have to go to a hotel. He kept saying "yeah, yeah, of course, don't worry, I'm doing [insert bogus excuse here] tomorrow and it's almost sure I'll have a signed lease by the end of the day"... by the time Friday morning came (this morning), we just rolled our eyes when he said he would keep us informed of how his apartment hunt went.

Sure enough, Hubby got a text this afternoon asking us if he could stay at our place while we were away ("he'd found something but wasn't getting the keys until late next week").... when Hubby said no he asked if he could at least leave his suitcases at our place (and therefore keep our key). Again Hubby firmly said that wasn't going to work out (we have friends coming to stay in our flat while we're away so we need the extra key). When Hubby got home after work, the kid hadn't yet packed and once again asked if we it really wasn't at all possible!

Fortunately for the kid I wasn't there when all this was going on.

Hubby kept a firm no and the kid finally admitted that he had a friend who'd offered to put him up while he waited for the apartment to be free.

When I got Hubby's text telling me he'd just put the kid in a cab and sent him on his way to his friend's house, I have to admit I let out a loud "Whooopeeee!!"

Now, the hard part. What would you have done in our place?

You see, despite this situation getting on our nerves in a gradually increasing level, every night Hubby and I would lie in bed and ask ourselves if we weren't being too harsh, or mean or non-understanding. We felt it was our duty to help him out, after all, I still remember how hard it was to find a place when I first arrived in Paris, (although the housing situation in London is waaaaaay more easier than Paris) but at the same time we felt he was openly taking advantage of us with no sign on his side of gratefulness or even realization of what he was asking from us. At times, we were even sure he was out right lying to us and that made us even more mad and indisposed to help him out.

I've thought long and hard if we would have reacted in this same way if this had happened to us 5 years ago. The thought has crossed my mind that maybe our cranky, inpatient and inflexible behavior is because we're slowly forgetting what it's like to be young and stupid and selfish and self-absorbed.

But at the same time, a part of me tells me that if you've got the guts to go out into the world and move to a foreign country you have to be mature and intelligent and strong enough to be able to take it when someone closes a door in your face, right?

What do you think ? Were we too harsh?

Photo: "San Francisco" by Hubby

Fned.

Greetings!

2011-07-05T23:15:00.007+01:00

One thing I love about moving to the UK is that I finally have access again to a never ending selection of Greeting Cards!

I know, stupid, right? I don't know what it is about them, but I've always loved Greeting Cards. Like post cards, I guess I have a very strong attachment for these simple straightforward pretty pieces of cardboard that convey a message, be it of love, warm wishes, congratulations, sorrow, etc., but that in any case, lets you tell someone you are thinking about them.

I remember in my early days of moving to France I once went looking to buy a nice greeting card for a friend (can't exactly remember what the occasion was, but I'm pretty sure something standard like a birthday). I went to my trustworthy Monoprix and was appalled when I came across the "greeting cards" section. It was more like a standalone booth wedged between the stationary aisle and the pharmacy counter!! There couldn't have been more than 20 different cards, all themes included!!! There I was, coming from the land of Hallmark, suddenly facing a crummy selection of plain, somewhat ugly and completely unoriginal "Heureux Anniversaire" cards!

When I went home (empty handed) I asked Hubby about this. He just shrugged and said that French people don't really seem to give much importance to sending out or receiving greeting cards all together. I couldn't believe it! I've always felt that sending a card sends the message that you care to someone, but according to Hubby, it seemed the French don't really see it that way and instead see greeting cards (the standard, industry made kind) as simply that: an industry made item that conveys no feeling or personal thoughts to the recipient - you buy a card that says what you otherwise wouldn't have thought of saying yourself.

Needless to say, I was very skeptic of this explanation and went out in search for cards in more upscale stores. However, even though I eventually did come upon a wider selection, it never really compared to what you can find in the states. Eventually I came to terms with the truth: in all my time living in France, the only time we really did receive proper and systematic Greeting Cards (and had access to a pretty respectable selection of them ourselves) was during the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Over the years I came to understand what the French meant: if there is one event where a standardized copy-cat message can be used without reserve each year when sending your "Happy New Year" wishes to all the contacts in your address book, that occasion is New Year's Eve (and even then, I had to practically twist Hubby's arm to write something on the cards to personalize them an itsy bit!).

By the time I left Paris I was so used to the lack of greeting-card use or expectations that when my friends and colleagues sent me off with the traditional pot and wrote on blank sheets of paper stapled together their good luck wishes for our new life in London I didn't even think twice about it. And to be honest, I still love and treasure those pages so much that I probably take more care of them than I would have if they'd presented me with a Good Luck greeting card.

So, understandably, I thought I'd been desensitized to the whole Greeting Card thing by the time we moved to London.

Except I wasn't.

In my department there seems to always be an occasion to go greeting-card shopping. Be it a birthday, a leaving party, a maternity announcement, a job promotion, any occasion really, there is always an envelope passed around to raise money for a card (and eventually a gift).

The first few times I ducked the responsibility of actually going out and choosing the card myself being as how I didn't want to be trusted with that delicate task if the offer of choices out there was going to be as meager, limited and quite frankly depressing as it'd been in France. But once I realized that there is actually a never ending selection of cards out there, I instantly reconnected with my long lost love for Greeting Cards.

I once again enjoy being able to go to a greeting card store and spend hours browsing the funny ones, admiring the beautifully decorated ones, memorizing the poems in the traditional ones, imagining where I could use the really wacky or funky ones, matching styles to personalities, finding the right text to go with the right occasion, etc. I love the envelopes too, sometimes shiny, sometimes matching the design of the card, sometimes having a design of their own.

I'm a dork, I know, but I really am glad I live in the UK. This way I get to once again send cards to all my loved ones to let them know I'm thinking about them, be it because they have a new fish pet, or have decided to leave their job to go travel the world, or because it's the Queen's Birthday.

Just because.

With love,
Fned.

Mi ciudad ya no es mi ciudad?

2011-06-26T23:47:00.009+01:00

- My city is no longer my city? -

So Hubby and I went back to Paris last weekend to meet up with potential tenants for our apartment. Because Hubby had to be in Paris before me for work, I traveled alone.

The minute I stepped off the train at Gare du Nord station, I felt like all this time I'd been running an errand and I was now on my way back home. The feeling of familiarity was so powerful and overwhelming I had to look for things that had changed in the station since we've been gone to remind myself that we left over 9 months ago. And came up with nothing. It was still the stinky, dirty, crowded, buzzing-with-energy, grandiose train station it had been all those months ago when I got on the Eurostar with the last of our stuff on my way to permanently settling down with Hubby in London.

As it's only a short walk away and the weather was nice, I decided to walk to our apartment from Gare du Nord as I would in the old days instead of taking the metro. I was back in our old neighborhood in no time and the feeling of belonging there only got stronger and stronger. I passed the street I used to walk every night to visit Hubby at his apartment when we first started dating, I passed the old boulangerie we went to when we'd wake up on Sunday mornings and go buy freshly baked butter croissants, I passed the police station we went to when our credit card was illegally used online for gambling, I passed my old hairdresser with his obnoxious attitude and magic hands, I passed our old apartment building and the Canal St Martin on which I used to jog every morning. Every single building and place had a story, a memory - the road I had walked on hundreds, thousands of times, had not changed one bit.

I was feeling so at home that when I came upon it I had to stop and double check that I was still on the right street.

But I was and there it was: an empty ground slot that had not been there before. It was sitting right in between an old apartment building I'd always wondered what it looked like inside and the gas station we used to fill our car's tank at. Wedged between the two had once stood something that had since been torn down and all that remained of it was an empty sorry looking grass field.

And as much as I tried I couldn't remember what had been there before.

I stood there racking my brain trying to remember and as the minutes ticked away a nasty thought crept into the back of my head: this is how it begins. The first time you're back, it's only one empty slot, everything else is the same and welcomes you with open arms and wonderful memories to be relived. But next time more will have changed and the memories will have started to fade or be forgotten.... a beloved store will have closed down while you were away, and you wont be able to remember if it was at this Monoprix where you got that blouse you love or at the one over at Jaures.

From now on, the city will transform, change and forget you while we are away and from now on every time I'll step off that train I will feel less and less that familiar feeling of belonging here.

Photo: "Paris" by Hubby

Fned.

Los conquistadores

2011-06-24T20:28:00.002+01:00

- The conquerors -

Thanks to Will and Kate's decision to get hitched, Hubby and I were able to travel to Peru recently. The Royal Wedding added an extra holiday in a two week period of time already crammed with two other bank holidays in the UK, so at the thought of being able to take 13 days off for the price of 4, Hubby and I jumped.

Who needs to see Kate's wedding gown live anyway, right?

As you can imagine the trip was amazing. All throughout my eduction in Mexico every year our history lessons always, always, dedicated a large chunk of the year to studying pre-colonial civilizations (go figure) and of course that meant systematically at some point or another talking about the Aztecs, the Mayas and the Incas. I've been fortunate enough to have been able to be in close contact with the cultural legacy and actually touch the ruins of the first two over the course of my life in Mexico, but the Incas had always fascinated me with exotic and mystical tales of Inca princesses and lost cities.

And above all, I wanted to see those famous "terrazas" we always read about.

The first step of the trip was reaching Cuzco, the lovely colonial town high up in the Andes. Cuzco is the starting point for the Inca trail and for me personally it was in my top three highlights of the trip. It has the most amazing cathedral I've ever seen in Latin America and an original colonial atmosphere you can almost imagine Francisco Pizarro and Ines Suarez strolling along its narrow cobblestone streets.

The pretty little town of Cuzco

The main square

Ladies crossing the street

Cuzco at night

Cuzco, is also 3800 mts above sea level, which means somebody had to take oxygen to deal with the altitude sickness (hint: it wasn't me).

Anyway, it was in Cuzco when we started noticing it. Whenever we listened to a guide talk about the city, the history of the region or the Inca people there was a very clear, very loud, very explicit message: the Spaniards came, they infected us with their diseases, they captured our Inca emperor, they tore down our sacred temples to build churches on them, they basically destroyed our civilization and every bad thing that has ever happened to Peru since then is the fault of Spain.

No sugar coating or anything.

In Mexico we've always had mixed feeling about that part of our country's history. Of course it bothers us that the Spaniards conquered us and shipped our gold and silver off to Spain but at the same time we acknowledge the very important contribution mestizaje played in making our country become what it is today. Nowadays, nobody denies or resents the fact that 80% of the population has a last name ending in -ez. That's why when talking about that "sensitive" part of our history, mexican historians are always very careful to use the words "conquistadores" or else make sure to emphasize that they are talking about la Corona Espanola (the Spanish Crown) and not Spain as a country and much less the Spanish people. Although it is always implied that we are of course referring to Spain, it is very seldom referred to as such so openly.

But in Peru I was shocked to see that they have no such inclinations. Guides will blatantly say the Spanish ruined the country, killed the Inca emperor, destroyed the beautiful temples and took apart the carefully constructed political and social structure the Incas had so successfully built. Everyone we spoke to in Peru at some point or another brought up the subject of how Spain's ambition and unquenchable search for gold and treasures provoked the downfall of the Inca civilization. And although from a historical point of view that may be true, it still was quite shocking for me to realize that, so different from my own home country, the resentment and hatred towards Spain is still very much alive in the Peruvian's heart and memory.

During our trip we got to meet several Spaniards also backpacking through the country. When we spoke to them of this they and asked them their opinion they pretty much told us the same thing: although they never for one moment felt threatened or discriminated while traveling in Peru, it did make them a little uncomfortable when guides would not blink an eyelash when blaming the Spaniards right in their faces for the violent history and destruction that was brought on by the Conquista.

I guess I always took for granted the fact that Mexico probably had it better than other countries in Latin America. By the time Pizarro arrived in Peru, Cortez and his men had already pretty much conquered all of Central America and the conquistadores were no longer in it for the adventure and excitement of discovering a new world, they were hungry for gold and glory and cared little of anything else. What initially (and briefly) had been an encounter of two different worlds, by the time it arrived in Peru it was pretty much a story of "yaddi-yaddi-yadda... if we've seen one sacred temple, we've seen them all. Tear it down, build a church and show me the gold people!!"

Thankfully, not all was torn down.

The tiny little town of Aguas Calientes
perched high up in the Andes - last stop to....

... you guessed it....

The amazing Machu Picchu ruins!!

The Condor Temple -- can you see the Condor?
(I couldn't at first glance!)

That little patch of grey in the center..
THAT's Machu Picchu!!

No words can describe how amazing it is to be there!!

Those famous terrazas!!!
Dug right on to the mountain's shoulder,
they were the amazing farmlands of the Incas

All photos taken by Hubby.
You can check out more on his Flickr page here

Fned.

Contagion

2011-06-21T20:55:00.017+01:00

- Contagious -

No, I am not referring to some sort of mysterious epidemic making the rounds or to the frightening e-coli breakout that's scaring the living daylights out of vegetarians across Europe. I am talking about the most common of all contagious diseases expats invariably catch when living abroad.

Accent contamination.

Have you ever thought about it? As a foreigner, does your accent in your foreign language catch the accent of the place you're living in? Does it give away the place where you are not from by belong to? (at least temporarily)

Whenever Hubby speaks in Spanish, people always tell him his accent sounds mexican! I don't really buy it because he can't pronounce "guadalajara" correctly (no Frenchman can), but the fact is he's picked up all the mannerisms of the accent when he speaks: the musicality of the words, the way he constructs his phrases, even some of the slang he uses, all lean more towards the Mexican accent than the more common Spanish (from Spain) tone you hear most foreigners speak in Europe.

When he moved to London last year and I came over to visit during the time I was still based in Paris, I quickly started to notice that his English was picking up a slight British twang. It used to drive me crazy. I'm ashamed to admit I'd impatiently throw him a "stop it! you sound stupid" whenever it happened because quite frankly I was not used to him asking me if "I reckoned" anything!! After all, he's been married to ME all these years, the least he can do is stick to my accent and not drop it like a hot potato the minute I turn my back, right?

But then Kyle and Seba came to stay with us a couple of weeks ago, and every once in a while they'd suddenly interrupt me while I was talking, point an accusing finger at me and yell "you just sounded SO BRITISH!"

Whaa-aat?!?!

Let's get one thing straight people. If there is one thing I am damn proud of is that I have a very strong, very annoying, very authentic American accent. I've got nothing against the British accent, don't get me wrong, I love hearing it, but heck, I am half American! I am famous for over indulging in the uhm 's and the like, you know 's. Americans themselves ask me what part of California I'm from. You can't get more American than the Golden State. NO WAY am I picking up a foreign accent to supersede my own mother tongue accent!!

I decided Kyle and Seba had to get their ears checked and filed their observations under "whatever".

But the question kept looming around in my head and I started to notice that accents are contagious no matter how much you fight against them! My first clue came from my friend Jorge, who is Spanish but who ever since he started hanging out with yours truly (for the past 6 and odd years) sounds more and more like Polo Polo and less and less like Zapatero (don't ask). I used to think he was making fun of me... now I know he's just been contaminated.

And just like Hubby's English got contaminated with the British accent and Jorge's Spanish with the Mexican accent, I soon had to come to terms with the fact that my French accent had always been contaminated with the unmistakably Parisian twist. "That's normal", you say.. after all I learned French in Paris, right? The thing is, I was suffering from local contamination: depending on who I was talking to my accent shifted slightly! If I was hanging around Hubby's friends I would suddenly start to sound more "jeunes" and a bit "banlieu-esque"... but once I was at work and surrounded by my work colleagues I noticed my accent became more "branche"* since this was the way most of the people around me spoke.

Contaminated. Guilty as charged.

To make matters worse, the more I think about it the more I realize you can even get contaminated with a different accent in your very own language!!! When Hubby was living in Bordeaux he told me he picked up the very recognizable french southwestern twang and when he came back to Paris got a lot of teasing as a result.

And when I was living in Yucatan it seems every other word that came out of my mouth was "MA-re". To this day, it only takes me a few hours of being back in Merida for me to start picking up that very recognizable way of speaking and having Hubby roll his eyes at me.

I never really thought about all this before because I guess I was so used to my accent being foreign, period, that I didn't really consider what part of foreign it was.

Here, I figure I am going to have to over stress my "y'all"s and "howdy's" going forward if I want to avoid full blown, head to toe contamination.

I wonder what will happen if we ever go live in Japan.

Photo: "Howdy" by Fned.

Fned.

*
"Jeunes": young crowds
"Banlieu": outskirts of Paris
"Branche": hip and trendy

La distance ne compte pas

2011-06-19T17:02:00.013+01:00

- Distance doesn't matter -

Today I ran a 10K race. And I almost died.

This morning's race wasn't AT ALL like that other 10K I ran a year and a half ago. This was very different on several levels, a sort of wake-up call if you like.

For one thing nobody was dressed as Santa.

For another, running this thing blasted through whatever denial walls I'd set up in my head and cruelly reminded me just how unfit I've become since the previous race. I hadn't trained at all for this event (not even a quick stroll around the park), and quite frankly I haven't set foot at the gym since last Feb. This obviously led to me making the worst time ever on a 10K (1h17m). To add insult to injury, I had to walk several times throughout the course, something I'd always promised myself I would never do no matter how tired I became while running a race. :(

The other thing that was so different from my previous experience, is that this was a race for charity. I don't know how it is in your country but in Mexico or France charity unfortunately doesn't seem to be a big thing. Basically if you wish to volunteer or raise awareness on any given issue, you have to go out there and look for the organizations involved in these subjects yourself. No one is going to go ahead and sign you up without you even knowing about it!!

In the UK the mentality is totally different. You don't have to go out there and look for ways to get involved, they come to you. The possibilities for volunteering your time and money seem to be endless in this country. As an example, my Company gives every employee 2 days off per year for volunteer work and there is always ongoing events to raise money, be it Movember, dress-down Fridays, staff parties where all proceeds go to charity, or in this case, the Macmillan 10K Fun Race.

Macmillan raises money for Cancer Research and this 10K was one of the many initiatives organized towards that goal. As Macmillan is my company's selected charity of the year, several people from work signed up to run this race and when my friends saw that I was dragging my feet at signing up too (because of afore mentioned lack of training), they went ahead and signed me up for it anyway!! :)

So anyway, that's how I found myself at 9am in Regent's Park standing at the start line of a 10K. The cool thing was that although there wasn't a lot of runners (300 at the most) it seems we did manage to raise some serious dough... according to the announcer right before the start of the race, my fellow charity runners and myself managed to raise a little over 78,000 £ which sounds like a heck of a lot of money !!! Yay for us !!

And then the race started.

Of course by Km2 I was slagging behind and waved to my friends to go on without me. With a wave of regret and frustration I resigned myself to keeping a pace no faster than a toddler's baby steps if I wanted to make it to the finish line. At least I was technically not walking....yet.

And that's when I started to notice it. The numbers. Most of the runners around me had written notes on their numbers saying who they were running for. As runner after runner passed me on the road I suddenly started to be aware of all those "For Grandma" or "for my dear Lizzie" or "in memory of Donald". Every single one was hand written, some decorated with glitter or feathers, some with printed pictures of smiling loved ones.... it hit me how these people were probably not even thinking about their fitness condition or worried about in what time they were going to make it to the finish line like I was. They were running for someone they loved. Someone they'd lost.

I was also immediately aware of another thing: the most repeated written phrase on those numbers was "For Dad".

Of course this made me think of my own dad. Although he didn't pass away from Cancer per se, I've always associated the disease to be the root of all his health problems and the ultimate thing to blame for him having left us so young. I suddenly wished I had written down in my own number "por mi padre" or simply his name.

I don't know how much that thought helped me make it to the finish line or even if in the grand scheme of things it matters much, but I do know that this race, however hard, however grueling, however disappointing, was the most rewarding race I've yet to run.

Photo: "The running gals" by Hubby

Fned.

Mi casa es tu casa

2011-06-15T21:48:00.006+01:00

- My house is your house -

When Hubby and I moved to London we had to rent out our apartment in Paris. We'd found a really nice couple who were expecting a baby at the time and wanted to move into something bigger than their one-bedroom apartment. After some of the horror stories we'd heard about on online forums, we thought we'd hit the jackpot with this couple, nice and always paying their rent on time. But helas, it was not to be. A few weeks ago they sent us their notice explaining they were now looking to buy something with a garden (ahhhh... family life !) and would be moving out beginning August.

So here we are again, looking for a new tenant for our little chez nous in Paris. Last time, I had to deal with everything alone since Hubby was already living in London, so we placed an add in the paper and not knowing what kind of response we would get we put in my phone number for inquiries. I got 400 calls on the first day. I had to turn off my phone the next three. The 15 appointments I managed to book to show the place were given to the 15 lucky callers who were able to reach me when I could turn my phone back on in between work and meetings. It was insane. As it was physically impossible for me to personally reply to that amount of phone calls (not to mention the 100 something voice mails left as a result of not being able to reach me) I was left with a sad feeling for the people that weren't able to contact me. I know first hand how horrible and frustrating it is trying to find housing in Paris.

This time around we again placed an add in the paper but only provided an anonymous email address as contact details and the response has been much more manageable. We've gotten 80 emails so far and thanks to Gmail we can categorize inquiries based on potential, reply with automatic messages asking for more information, detect duplicate inquiries and trash false emails (fake inquiries or email addresses or agencies simply posing as potential tenants..).

Better yet, this time around I can make sure everyone will get a reply from us one way or another.

I've spent the evening reading each and every email we've received and I admit that it's quite mind boggling the lengths people have to through to rent a place in Paris. As an almost general rule most send us their income details straight away, without even having seen the place. Some offer to scan and send us copy of their payslips, others do it anyway. Some send us the income their parents make as collateral to rent and others go ahead and send us their employment contracts or tax returns or stock portfolio as proof of their healthy finances.

But then there are those that go even further. The ones that tell us their story. Open their life to us and tell us why they want our place.

Like the young couple, him from a city in the south of France, she from Germany who are looking to at last be able to live together in Paris after 2 years of a long distance relationship. They are hoping Paris will be the start not only of their life together but of their careers and life as adults.

Or the divorced journalist who wishes to move in with his freshman son. He's looking for a quiet place because his son studies some sort of extremely difficult degree and needs a place that will let him concentrate and focus on his studies. His ex-wife is willing to contribute to the rent.

The three best friends that have known each other since kindergarten and are planning on moving to Paris to study fashion and make it in the big city. The have no intention to party as they are planning on focusing exclusively in their studies and becoming the next Karl Lagerfield.

The widow with her teenager son who works for city hall and owns three flats in Paris from which she'll have enough income to pay for rent. Her son is getting ready to graduate from high school and is thinking about studying medicine.

The lady that timidly asks if she can please visit the apartment on a different day from Saturday as she is an orthodox Jew and will not go out of her home during the Sabbath.

The writer who sends us paragraph after paragraph about his life as a writer and screenwriter in Paris. He specializes in nature and our apartment being a few streets from one of Paris most emblematic parks is a match made in heaven for him.

The lady from Australia who has retired and is moving to France to learn French and spend her free time on her passion in life: fine wine tasting.

I sit here and read mail after mail, story after story, and try to imagine who will end up eventually moving into our little home. We will only be able to meet a fraction of these people as unfortunately Hubby and I can only go to Paris one weekend to show the apartment.

However, I will reply to each and every one of those emails and hope that whoever does end up moving in, not only takes good care of our little chez nous and pays their rent on time, I hope that above all our place will be part of their dreams and hopes and expectations coming true.

Photo: "Home" by Fned.

Fned.

Les moitiés

2011-06-11T13:12:00.021+01:00

- The Halves -

Sometimes I wonder if being in a couple for so long has not somehow hindered Hubby and I's capacity to properly function in a social context.

It's like we've been two halves of a whole for such a long time that the stitches that keep his half stuck to my half seem to have eroded with time and blended back into the skin until the part where he ends and where I begin is now kind of blurry. I know this sounds really romantic and all but for this particular blog post let's pretend it's not.

Because sometimes not being able to remember how to act as an individual can get pretty frustrating.

For ages, a friend of mine has been texting me every other week to get together and go for drinks. Although she's met Hubby and likes him well, the underlying message is clear: the invitation is for a girly get together, without the boys, to talk gossip and diets and fashion and Kate Middleton and all other vomit-inducing-topics for the male species.

I am ashamed to admit that I've been ducking her texts.

Not because I don't like her or the prospect of talking gossip and fashion. I do, both. But I don't trust that half of our whole going out there into the world by herself and embarrassing us both. Or worse yet. Being unable to hide what she most obviously is: only a half.

Because I know what will happen when I go meet my friend. Undoubtedly after all the easy fun chatting about shoes and celebrities is up and done away with and we're down to the nitty gritty of catching up, at some point I will flip into "half" mode. I'll either say something completely irrelevant or stupid or incomprehensible (or all three) assuming that my listener will understand what I mean because I'm used to him knowing how to decipher my scrambled mind. But she wont, and sooner or later she'll give me the look you give someone crazy... or pathetic. Or else I'll spend the evening starting every other sentence with the words "when Hubby and I..." or "Hubby says...." or "I told Hubby the other day..." until it is clear to my friend that the bubble that Hubby and I live in is painfully boring and hermetic and it basically involves no one else but us two.

And that's the thing. She'll be probably right.

Hubby also seems to suffer from this condition although in a different manner. He'll be out with the guys but will always be the first to leave. The one to be way less drunk than the rest. The one to always talk about his wife while the others roll their eyes and try to drop the subject of significant others. It's like his half can function by itself, but his heart is not really into it.

I had never really thought about the implications of this "isolation" while we were living in France. Maybe because social encounters were mainly with other friends in couples. Or maybe because they often implied meeting up at home so the presence of the other didn't raise any issues since you are entitled to hang out in the apartment you pay half the rent of.

But living in London is different. People here meet up for drinks all the time, catch up at the pub or after work for a "quick one before going home" and finding yourself in one-on-one meet-ups is much more common than in Paris.

The scary thing is that our inability to function naturally on our own doesn't only apply when we go out there on our separate ways. It happens to us as well when we are together while we are among others.

Take traveling for example. Hubby and I are so used to each other, so in sync with each other's traveling habits that we don't even have to map out what we want to do or see on a trip or how we want to do it. My steps will automatically follow his to the highest point in any city without me even noticing and he will absentmindedly point me towards the history and art museums before I even having to ask which way we need to turn.

Recently we took a long weekend trip to Scotland with our good friends Kyle and Seba. And for the first time since I can remember we were confronted with the reality of having to consider someone else's opinion. Where both of us would have silently and automatically turned left without a second thought, suddenly we had to stop and make sure that left worked for them as well. We suddenly had to consider someone else's wants and needs. And voice our own out loud. It was a strange realization.

And that's when it hit me, how amazingly selfish our little bubble had become. That's where I truly began worrying that Hubby and I being too close might be irreparably damaging us from being able to function naturally as individuals in the world outside of the bubble.

Luckily for us Kyle and Seba are awesome (both individually and as a couple) and are just in sync and in their own little bubble like us. So funny enough, it felt like it was only two individuals instead of four that were having to negotiate "terms and conditions" during the trip and thankfully "those two" got along well, so in the end we all had a fabulous time.

But I do still worry as a general matter. What if we've lost that connection with the world on an individual level? What if we are too far gone to be Fned, period. Hubby, period. ever again? What if I can never go back to that level of comfortableness with people without having to have Hubby holding my hand and vice versa?

Photo: "The Whole" by Kyle Hepp

Fned.

My beef with traveling....

2011-06-05T23:03:00.011+01:00

I am an avid traveler. My husband is an avid traveler. You can fairly say that our aim in life is to travel around this globe as many times as possible and see and smell and touch and hear and taste as much as possible before we kick the bucket.

But I have a confession to make.

There is one part of traveling that I am not good with. The tasting part. In fact, when it comes to food, I am probably the least adventurous person you could ever come across while traveling. I am really messed up when it comes to trying new or different things. It's not only that I am picky about the what that goes into my mouth, I am difficult about how it was cooked, what ingredients were added to the dish before it was cooked and even what is the name of the dish before it is even prepared. Believe me, I am the least fun person to share a bite with in a far and exotic place.

Understandably, this irks Hubby to no end when we travel. He's exactly the opposite to me. He'll try anything. And I mean anything!! While I'll shrink away from even the sight of a non-threatening unagi sushi in Tokyo he'll go straight for the tako-tako balls, the ones where you don't even know what goes into them!! While I'll push away with a shiver the bowl of soup with the floating something in it, he'll happily stuff his face with the steaming haggis in front of him. I never did find out what Cuy in Peru tasted like because the sight of the grilled suckling pig looking up at me from its spread-eagled position on his plate made me wrinkle my nose in disgust and look the other way while Hubby happily chomped away. I have been known to not touch the rest of my salad in the south of France when I discovered a very suspicious looking puddle of water at the very bottom of the plate. I'll even turn down pre-packaged ham and cheese sandwiches if the ham has any sign of containing those icky transparent spots of fat.

Over the years, Hubby and I have come to a mutual understanding, mainly based on the fact that I am know able to quickly scan a menu and pin point the stuff that I will be able to handle just by reading the names of the dishes. We scan out the restaurants that will have a balanced menu meaning the local specialties and exotic choices for him and still provide an option or two for yours truly, the freak. Risotto is always a safe and commonly available choice (as long as there is no meat, squid or any other kind of seashell in it), feta and mozzarella salads are also passable (except when the salad is swimming in anything resembling a puddle of water), grilled meat will do if, and only if, it's not cooked in any kind of sauce whatsoever and is cooked to a safely carbonized state (no sight of pink or it will go back to the kitchen untouched), cheese I have no problem with in any form or matter, so if worse comes to worse, I have been known to just order a plate of cheese for dinner....

The more exotic the place, the simpler the dish has to be for me to try it. I'm ashamed to say I've developed a system where, if worse comes to worse, I can still survive by dissecting a dish and only eating the sides (ie the french fries or the tomatoes that accompanies a good portion of the suspicious looking dish the Portuguese call Bacalao) or else pick out the parts I will be steering clear of, like the squirmy fish chunks in the Ceviche in Lima. Don't worry, nothing goes to waste with the trash compactor I call my loving husband sitting next to me and finishing off anything I wont eat.

Sometimes I find something "exotic" enough that will sustain me for most of the trip. When we were in Israel I ended up eating Hummus 5 times out of 6 and I must have eaten a whole crop worth of steamed rice with veggies (sometimes spicing it up with green curry) during the 2 weeks we spent in Bali and Cambodia in 2009.

However sometimes even that wont do.

Last December Hubby and I traveled to Hong Kong for 10 days. I knew I was doomed from the get-go. On our first day in the city, and after 7 failed attempts at looking at the menus and trying to find something that my messed up mind didn't object to, we finally came across a place that looked promising. How wrong were we. It was a disaster. The rice and mushrooms dish I ordered was covered in a gooey black sauce which made my stomach sink even before the waiter had finished setting down the plate in front of me. The rest of the trip did not improve. As much as we tried, we kept having trouble finding places where I could even look at a menu and find something that would not make my insides churn, let alone go in an sit down. By the third day, we'd resigned ourselves that while in China we would have only two choices: either go for any of the European restaurants serving only european dishes or walk into one of the thousands chinese restaurants ranging from whole-in-the-wall status to dress-code:-you-did-not-pack-nice-enough-clothes-for-this-place high class restaurants; but no matter which it was, I was not going to make it through a whole plate. Even dumplings, the pride and joy of Hong Kong didn't make the cut. Hubby finally convinced me to give them a try though he knows, he knows!, that I can't stomach raviolis stuffed with any sort of meat... It was brutal, the moment that little unpretentious little pouch of pasta hit my tongue, it exploded releasing a sort of scary warm juice and what I suspect was a mix of little chunks of different meats in my mouth. While I stoically chewed and swallowed what would be my one and only dumpling ever, I knew this would be the end of my food-tasting experience in Hong Kong.

As I said, I am really messed up when it comes to food when we are traveling.

Then again...... can you really blame me?

Photo: Fned's iPhone

Fned.

Tall, skinny latte, extra hot, extra shot, to go

2011-06-04T02:46:00.009+01:00

As I stand in line at the Starbucks near my office, like I do every morning before I arrive at my desk, turn on my computer and start pounding away, I wonder for the zillionth time, how did I get here?

It's been over six months since we moved to London and although I don't feel as if things have massively changed for Hubby and me since leaving France, I still sometimes marvel at the little things that have which we never expected would change. And my pre-office morning coffee run is the reminder of the biggest one of them all.

For the record, I didn't use to drink coffee before we moved. Or milk. Ever. Didn't care for the taste of the stuff.

The line inches forward a step or two and the friendly red-head at the counter greets me with a smile and a wink as he takes my order. In a few moments he's going to remind me again, like he does every morning, that I need to register my Starbucks card online to get the free points.

I have a Starbucks card.

I smile back and recite one of the first sentences that comes out of my mouth every morning with military precision: "tall, skinny latte, extra shot, extra hot, to go please". I sound like a pro. I probably have become a pro.

And that's the thing.

As funny as this sounds, saying this sentence out loud is the daily reminder of the amazing transition my life has taken since I started working in the City, as the historical and legendary business center of London is commonly referred to.

For the first time in my life I feel like a professional adult. It feels like I have the responsibilities of a professional adult and that I actually belong in the professional adult world (I bet if you look up "professional adult world" in the dictionary a big fat picture of the City will pop up). In Paris I often felt like I was pretending to be a professional adult. I loved my job and poured my heart into it, but I never really felt like I truly did belong in that world yet, I felt too young, too unprepared, too carefree.

When did I cross over from micheladas and diet cokes to skinny lattes and extra espresso shots? How is it that I now find myself talking about turnovers and headcount budgets and accruals and know what I'm talking about?

I look around me to my fellow caffeine addicts in line. The middle aged man in an impeccable suit and cufflinks, (cufflinks!) already on a conference call via his headphones plugged into his phone while he orders his Venti caramel machiatto to go. I look at the lady in the crisp grey suit conducting a business meeting in one of the corner tables over a cup of what I can guess is a black americano. The girl with the pretty shoes and designer label handbag, frantically typing on her Blackberry in front of me.... "I am one of them", I realize not without wonder, and quite frankly disbelief, as I do every morning.

The line inches forward and I am now waiting for the pretty girl with an eastern accent to call out my order at the pickup counter. While I'm waiting I remember I need to reply back asap to that email from Finance about the ABVs. I whip out my own Blackberry from my purse and curse, not for the first time that our company wont allow us to use iPhones instead of this blasted thing.

I have a Blackberry. I know what an ABV is and worse yet, I can actually read one!

When did I become this person? When did I effortlessly (?) blend in with the rest of the busy bees frantically working in one of the world's most important economic platforms and actually feel like I am not an imposter?

As the girl hands me my glorious paper cup filled with flaming hot, milky liquid a thought hits me: maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe it is simply that I am a professional adult, have been for a long while now, who's been deluding herself until now into thinking that she was not grown up yet?

I take a sip. I need it.

Picture: Google images.

C'est chez nous ou pas ?

2010-10-27T21:00:00.010+01:00

- Is it home yet or not ? -

Believe it or not, the hardest part about moving to London has been getting back into a routine.

I know, I know.... I thought we were leaving Paris because we'd grown tired of the monotony and wanted to try something new... and that is still the case.

Leaving the whole parisian metro-boulot-dodo routine behind us has been so beneficial to both of us and we are so happy living in a new country where every day we walk out our door we see or do something new and different.

But what I'm actually referring to are the little things that go on before we walk out our door and that had become part of our everyday life without us ever realizing how important they were to our daily life.

My bathrobe hook is a good example of this. Back in Paris, when I got out of bed in the morning I would automatically beeline it for my comfy bathrobe which would always be hanging from a hook next to our closet. Even sleepy-eyed as I was my hands would automatically reach for it's velvety material, unhook it and wrap myself in it. It would then keep me warm until I made it to the bathroom and stepped into the shower. Once clean and dry I would step out of the tub and again reach for my bathrobe which would then keep me warm during the rest of my morning activities and all the way back to the bedroom until I changed into my clothes and got ready for work, never catching even a hint of a cold draft on a wintry morning the entire time. Once I was finished with getting ready, my last action before leaving the bedroom would always be to hang it up back onto the hook were it would dry and wait for me the following morning.

Here however, things are quite different... we don't have a hook to hang our towels or my bathrobe and we can't drill holes into the walls since we don't have the permission of the landlord to do so. Therefore, in the morning I usually wake up and have to go looking around for my bathrobe wherever I left it the day before to dry which can be anywhere from hanging on a door or from the back of a chair or on the ironing stool or on a coat hanger dangling from the shower head!

I guess all expats (or anyone who's ever moved house for that matter) go through the same thing... we move things and therefore we change things and it takes a while to adapt to these changes by trying all kind of different new ways of doing the same stuff we used to do without even thinking before, until finally we settle down to a new and once again comfortable little routine.

But until then, it's total chaos.

And my bathrobe dangling off of a door somewhere is only the tip of the iceberg.

Washing dishes is weird in this new kitchen in which I no longer have two small sinks to rinse and wash easily but instead have one big one where soaped dishes mix with unsoaped ones.....

Makeup is currently scattered around three different rooms because one has a great mirror for up close inspection, another good lighting for up and closer inspection and yet another because it has a cupboard perfect for storing makeup in an orderly fashion.....

Shoes can be found lying around all over the place because we haven't yet figured out how and where we'll put them being as we no longer have an entrance closet where we could easily chuck them out of sight....

Laptops never seem to have any battery left because their chargers are plugged to electrical outlets which aren't near any chairs where one can comfortably sit down and type while the laptop is being charged.....

Running late is the norm in this house since the appliances that show the time (microwave and oven) are hidden by the kitchen configuration contrary to our previous home where they would be in plain sight and therefore never prompted the need to buy a clock.

Our dirty clothes are for the time being relegated to the category of "waste" being how they are currently tossed into a wastebasket while we try to come to terms with no longer having a handy built-into-the wall hamper basket in our bathroom and not yet acquiring one as we don't know where to put it yet (the bathroom vs the bedroom is an ongoing negotiation at the moment).

But I think the hardest thing we've had to adapt to so far is the weird place where our dining room table now sits. Basically the only place it would fit when all our furniture was finally delivered last month was is in a corner by the kitchen, which means that when seated at the table both Hubby and I are facing the wall with our backs to the dining / living room. Doesn't sound very enticing, right? And it certainly makes a big difference to us when we compare to our old place where our table used to be right next to the windows facing the street below or else the TV for when we wanted to watch something while having dinner.

Because of this and several other "little" changes in our otherwise insignificant daily routine our apartment is constantly a mess.

Basically it looks like we haven't finished unpacking (which we have), we don't yet have all our furniture (which we do) and basically this isn't our home (which it is...... isn't it?)

Photo: Verigo by Hubby

Fned.

As cas où tu ne le savais pas déjà...

2010-10-26T10:24:00.003+01:00

- In case you didn't know this already -

Today is Hubby's birthday.

I'm always amazed when I read my past blog posts about how much I mention Hubby without really talking about him.

I guess in a way you can say I do it out of respect for his privacy. He really is my best friend in the whole world and I'd hate it if my best friend felt that he couldn't talk to me because he was afraid I'd spill his guts on the internet for the world to read (ok, let's face it, not really the world since I doubt it cares, mostly our parents :)).

I have blogged in the past about his Birthday and mainly the big 3-0 surprise weekend I organized for him a few years ago (yep, babe, you ARE turning 33 today!) but as I was going through some old drafts I'd written but never published over the summer while he was already living in London and I was still in Paris, I came across the following text which I guess I wrote in a moment when I was feeling particularly lonely without him:

I miss my Hubby.

I miss him real bad and it doesn't have to do with the fact that he's not here physically. He's a part of me of what constitutes my space in this world and without him I feel as if some part of me has gone away missing. Him in my life is part of my routine, my everyday, my life.

I miss looking at his dreamy face in the morning when he gets up and hasn't had a coffee or his shower. I miss him handing me my makeup stuff when he knows I'm running late and I miss getting exasperated seeing his towel hanging on a door to dry instead of the hook we put up on the wall specifically for that purpose. I miss seeing him rolling his eyes while he watches me struggle with the decision of what to wear for work and I miss seeing him carefully comb his hair in front of the mirror only to have his curls dry up in a matter of seconds and erase any evidence that a comb was ever used.

I miss our text conversations with a zillionth little messages that say nothing at all but read out as an entire conversation throughout the day. It's not the same now looking down on my phone and seeing his name appear on the screen and know that he really is far away.

It's not only his voice I miss, I miss all that goes with it. The way his nose wrinkles when he laughs or the way his eyes roll when I say something stupid. I miss seeing him smile his goofy grin and I miss seeing him get all red in the face when I piss him off.

I miss leaving the office and no longer engaging in our daily '"leaving d office babe. going 2 supermkt. need anything?" mutual text ritual.

I miss him because he makes me miss us and therefore there is no me.

Yikes! I really do love this man!

Even after aaaaaaaall this time!

Even if he is so oooolddddd now!

I love him.

So Happy Birthday Hubby! It's your 33rd and although I missed out on the first 24, I plan to be around for the rest of 'em so....

..... bon courage to ya !!! ;)

Fned.

Avancez vers le fond !

2010-10-25T06:16:00.009+01:00

- Move to the back! -

I never used to take the bus in Paris. Ever.

Ok, maybe only if I had (a lot of) time to loose because basically hopping on a bus in Paris means you are certainly going to take much much much longer to get from A to B than if you simply got on the metro. Everybody knows that contrary to their name, bus lanes are also used by taxis, scooters, velibs, ambulances, police cars and the occasional (read: every other) private vehicle.... You could fairly say that the bus system in Paris is the ugly duckling in the otherwise pretty efficient RATP family.

But I love taking the bus in London! So much so that ever since I moved here I have barely taken the metro - or tube - at all. The bus system here is well organized, the bus lanes are respected and the huge number of different bus routes that reach out to every corner of the city make it a downright pleasure to hop on a bus, go on up to the second story, sit down and enjoy the ride.

I am really lucky too because our apartment is only 6 bus stops away from my office so in theory it takes me 15 mins to get to work in the morning, stop lights and all, without ever having to step foot in the metro.

In theory.

My only problem with the bus system in London is that the users are too polite during rush hour!

Since arriving here, I've noticed that during peak hours, when a bus is too full and the last passenger is standing next to the bus driver's seat, he wont let more people on. This I completed understand for safety and security reasons and I am happy to wait for the next bus if this one is already full.

My beef is that a lot of the times the bus isn't full, yet people won't walk all the way to the back of the bus or scrunch up a bit in order to let more passengers on.

It's been two months of frustrating trial/error experimenting to figure out exactly how much time I need to factor in my commute to get to the office on time, and so far all I can tell is that it really depends on if the passengers have moved to the back of the bus or not!

Sometimes I'll see the 7th semi full bus in a row drive away with the driver refusing to let more passengers on because there is still people standing next to his seat (while the middle of the bus or the upper deck is relatively empty) and it makes me wish the brits would take a page from the book of the French and not be afraid to push and shove a little.

I mean c'mon!! We all want to get out of the rain and cold in the morning and hop on our commute to be on our way! Yes, I too don't like it when the person standing next to me is breathing down my neck or his briefcase is shoving me in the back, but you don't have to go that extreme and yet it is basic common sense to get on and avancez to the bloody back of the bus so that more people can get on!

I am not kidding when I say this is quite often the case in the mornings. Four different routes stop at my bus stop and take me to work, which roughly means a bus comes by every 2-3 minutes which could potentially pick me up and have me sitting at my desk 15 mins later. And yet, because of the "no shoving and pushing in the red vehicle" unspoken policy, I usually find myself waiting in line (yes, we queue at bus stops here) for 30mins before I get lucky enough to hop on one!

I know what you're thinking... "so just walk to work Fned!!", right? I am trying to get in the habbit of doing that but it's just too tempting in the mornings to know that it wont take long to get to the office and stay a little extra time under the warm blankets, meaning that as those of you familiar with my legendary inpunctuality have probably already guessed, I am usually rushing out the door with exactly 15 mins to spare..... not enough time to walk there, but just enough time for the bus to get me there....

....... si seulement les gens avaient la gentillese d'avancer vers le fond !!!

Photo: Bus Blur by Hubby

Fned.

Ca va être trop facile

2010-10-23T11:07:00.011+01:00

- It's going to be so easy -

When Hubby and I told our family, friends and colleagues back in Paris that we were moving to London the reactions varied depending on the audience. Some people were very happy and excited for us, some weren't. Some didn't understand our decision while others thought it was not going to change anything. And then there were those who simply didn't care (you know who you are ;)).

The one thing that everyone seemed to agree about was that moving to London was going to be really easy for us because we already mastered the language of the country we were moving to...

Ha!

Although it's true that we are not starting from scratch and that it was relatively "easy" (I could debate on this but I'll blog about it later on) to get settled here, the truth is that for both Hubby and me simply speaking English doesn't mean that we are 100% fluent here!

On the one hand there are all these accents! The city of London is way more multi cultured than Paris and we weren't expecting to have trouble simply understanding sometimes what people are saying. I absolutely love this about the city but I confess I had no idea that there were so many different ways to pronounce the same letters of the alphabet within the same language!!! And this sometimes makes it confusing and even hard to communicate at times.....

As an example, Hubby's currently leading a team of about 15 people covering 12 different nationalities and over 3 different countries !!! So he's got people having to communicate over the phone or during conference calls with very different accents ranging from Brazilian to Check, from German to Scottish, from Indian to Italian, from Portuguese to Pakistani.... sometimes he comes home with a dazzled look on his face and worriedly confesses he didn't quite catch everything that was said that day!!

In my case, most of my team is British or Australian so my problems have been of a different nature. I started my professional career in France and this meant that I learned all my technical terms in French. Of course of lot of the times we also had the English version of these terms, but now that I am here I realize that knowing the terms isn't necessarily enough. A lot of the procedures, or organizational methods that are used here are unfamiliar to me because I know how they are said/done/explained in French..... so I find myself wondering if "raising a contract" means writing up a contract, agreeing on a contract or sending out a contract. And asking for clarification is met with an incredulous and somewhat frightening "is this girl really as competent as we thought?" look.

And then there is just the plain old British terms which can vary from the American terms which both Hubby and I are more familiar with. Talking about wellies and trainers instead of rubber boots and sneakers can be funny at first but it can get quite frustrating when you're trying to be serious or fix a problem and the person in front of you hasn't a clue of what you mean. On this issue though, I really liked Garydenness' excellent blog post about how British people speak with the more modernized version of the English accent while Americans actually speak with an accent of Shakesperean times! Made me chuckle and certainly feel.... like more.... like posh! :)

Anyway, y'all might find that we're drowning in a glass of water... "oh... look at Fned and Hubby, whining and complaining on not being able to understand the chap over the phone during a conference call or the difference between "email" and "message electronique" when some people can't even go into a Starbucks in Paris an order a cup of coffee.... what a pair of conceited losers!"....

But the thing is, and Kyle explained it in the exact same way that I had come up with in my head but hadn't written down yet (that doesn't surprise me one bit, we realized ages ago that she and I are twin sisters from a parallel universe separated at birth):

...sometimes, I think that being an expat in Japan or China would actually be easier, because you'd at least be expecting not to fit in. In Chile or the UK, because the culture seems so similar upon a first glance, I think it's normal to expect things to be a piece of cake!....

And that's exactly it! People are expecting us to be completely fluent, not only in language but in culture as well! And the thing is, language and culture go hand in hand.

Yet Hubby learned the language but not the culture and I know the language of another culture!

So basically we find ourselves in a strange situation: we are both starting out new jobs and, as for anyone else, we are trying to do our very best at them. And yet at times we feel like complete idiots because although we speak the language, sometimes we don't understand the language.....

Mais bon, c'est comme ça......

Fned.

Hyper, moi ?

2010-10-18T19:42:00.009+01:00

- Hyper, me? -

I had been working in my new office for a little over a week when one day one of my colleagues suddenly turned to me in the elevator right after coming out of a meeting and said "Fned, are you always this hyper?"

It suddenly felt like I'd been hit with a ton of bricks. I was so shocked I couldn't really think of what or how to answer his question and just looked at him with my mouth open and squealed a little "but I wasn't being hyper!" (which probably did little to convince him anyway).

Hours later I was still irked by the comment and kept replaying the meeting over and over in my mind trying to find what I had done wrong that would give someone such an obviously wrong impression of my personality. But even after a minute by minute reply in my head of the entire meeting all I could think of was that I had just been acting like a friendly and optimistic new colleague, and granted, maybe I had gone a little overboard with the smiles (I tend to do that when I'm nervous of meeting new people) but is that really what constitutes being hyper in the UK?

It wasn't really the adjective itself that bothered me, it was more the fact that I hadn't been able to read the signals correctly, nor send them out accordingly.

In France I would have known exactly how to act and what to avoid doing in order to to not come across as being hyper on my first week on the job. Here, suddenly I felt out of my element, out of my comfort zone and completely self conscious...

I am not going to spit in the soup (French expression) and say that we were better off living in France and that moving to London has been a huge mistake. It hasn't. We really have been incredibly lucky and are both enjoying this new experience immensely and feel incredibly grateful to have gotten this opportunity.

But I do think that neither of us had realized exactly how tricky it was going to be.

I'm ashamed to confess that we were pretty confident that with our multicultural background and this being England and all it would all be relatively easy. I mean, we spoke the language, had come here countless of times before, it was technically still Europe and we'd met loads of British people before... basically it wouldn't be too hard, would it?

What complete and utter twats we are!

Since the "Hyper" incident both Hubby and I have often found ourselves in situations where we feel really insecure of how to read the signs, understand the body language, give the correct impression, say the right thing.....

It's part of the "fun" and we know it... and we usually have a relieved laugh over it at dinner afterwards when we realize it really is an "expat thing" and not us individually being morons with the new people we are meeting.

But I guess I had forgotten what feeling "out of your element" felt like. It'd been so long since I'd had the "uh-oh.... did I just accidentally offend her or not?" question pop up in my head. I can't remember the last time I'd committed an obvious-to-everyone-else-except-me faux pas and I've already committed quite a few of those since arriving here!!

But that's subject for another blog post.

When I'm feeling more hyper.

Cheers,
Fned.

The Expatriated Expat

2010-10-15T18:19:00.003+01:00

So I've been in London for a little over a month and a half now.

Yeah, I know...

The truth of the matter is I've started a zillionth blog posts since I arrived here on the 1st of September, but somehow they never made it to the "publish" stage and I can't tell you why...

Was it because I felt a little overwhelmed by all the sudden changes?

Was it because it was too much and too fast and too different that my typing fingers and slow mind couldn't keep up?

Was it because we didn't have a working internet connection for weeks and writing blogs posts on an iPhone still connected to a french payment plan is probably not a good idea?

I think it was a combination of all of the above, but mainly I think it was just because I was just not ready to jump back into the blogging circuit.... yet again. So my apologies for the long absence and if you're still reading this please know that I am very grateful and very humbled that you are still interested in the not too interesting life of this half-Mexican, half-American gal married to a half-French, half-Roumanian monsieur and living in Par.... wait a sec..... actually, that's living in London now.

London.

London!

Jeez!!! LONDON!!!

I remember my first time around when I arrived in France. In retrospect, you couldn't really call me an Expatriate that time because in all fairness, I sort of built my life in Paris. I arrived as a young, naive and inexperienced twenty-something and over the following almost 9 years I got a husband, a degree, an apartment, a career...a life in Paris. You could fairly say my adult life began in France and it is now that Hubby and I have left that security cushion we built during that time behind us and leaped into the unknown world that is Great Britain, it is now that I finally begin to comprehend what really being an Expat is...

The fact is that I am now an Expatriated Expat.

You may think I'm exagerating... after all, this is an English speaking country and it's only a 2hr train ride away from the place I've called home for most of my adult life, so really... how different can it be?

Very.

And that's what's scary.

And exciting.

And scary.

And it's what this expatriated expat is looking to blog about in the future.

Fned.

In the Beginning - V.2

2010-07-02T21:38:00.004+01:00

Over eight years ago, I left my home, my family and my country to follow a boy and live a new life as an expat.

Tonight, that boy has just boarded a train and is leaving his home, his family and his country to go live a new life as an expat.

And I am still here.

Although we knew this was coming and that I wouldn't be able to follow him to London immediately, it's was still pretty strange to think of Hubby as permanently away from me and our little home. He asked me last night before he boarded the Eurostar if I didn't find it as hard as he was finding it and I have to say that in the moment I didn't. To me it felt like he was leaving for a two week seminar or project somewhere else. I mean, I was still going to go back home to our apartment filled with our stuff and furniture and I knew that I would be seeing him again in a couple weeks when we go visit, it just didn't feel so strange to me as it must have to him, who was carrying all his clothes and personal possessions in a few suitcases.

But then I got home and went to our room and opened our closet and that's when it hit me. He's left. He's never coming back to this house. We are never going to argue about closet space again. Or about making THIS bed. Or about cooking in THIS kitchen. I am never going to snuggle with him in the sofa while watching Dr House in this living room ever again. He's left.

I guess I would have been okay after a little while but all the same, good thing my Car is currently visiting in Paris. Car got here over a week ago and is staying into late July which means I wont be so alone in the coming weeks. Good thing too.

It's been fun having her around and it's even buffered up the days leading up to tonight. Every day, she comes home from a long day of exploring Paris while we (and from now on only I) have been at work. She'll describe her day with huge twinkling eyes and show me her traveling notebook full of notes and bulging with ticket stubs. She's loving the city and I'm really glad, because as you all know, that may not always be the case.

I'm still not trying to think what I'm going to do when Car goes back home and I really find myself alone here. I don't mind being home alone for a few days, but 6 o 8 weeks is something I'm not really looking forward to. The last time Hubby and I were separated that long was, duh... never!

So I'm focusing on trying to find a job in London so I can join him as soon as possible. We decided it would be better if I tried to get transfered from my company to our London offices instead of up and quitting and starting over, even if this meant that I would have to stay behind while this happened. We set September as our time limit and if I haven't found anything by then, then I will quit and go over there and start over, as I told my boss. But hopefully this wont be the case. I really rather stay in the company I work for.

And as if all this wasn't enough, France, Mexico and the United States have all been eliminated from the World Cup!!!!

Life sucks sometimes.

Fned.

The Blue Drama

2010-06-22T20:05:00.004+01:00

Unless you live on another planet, you know that there is a World Cup going on. And unless you live under a rock despite living on this planet, you've probably heard about the absolute soap-operaesque drama that has been going on with France's national footbal team during this cup.

As an avid footbal fan I was prepared to enter this tournament to support my beloved Tricolor, but I shamefully have to admit that lately my interest has been focused elsewhere than on football, it's been on following up with all the drama!

I guess some people might have predicted that this wouldn't be the best of the World Cups for l'Equipe de France, I mean after all, they did sort of qualify to the Tournament by cheating.

Then again, I'm pretty sure NO ONE was prepared for this!!!

It was the loss of France against Mexico that triggered it all, although most agree that the situation had been boiling up for quite some time. That match was just the tipping point. When the game was over almost all the critics agreed that that the team played really bad, not collectively and basically as a group of little millionaire starlets wanting to shine individually and not as a team. They also agreed that it was mostly Domenech's (the much hated coach) fault and that after the World Cup, good riddance!

But that wasn't all that happened during the match. The next day we learn on the 1st page of a national spots newspaper that Nicolas Anelka (star striker for the team) gravely insulted Domenech during half time.

Following an entire day of water-cooler discussions on what should be done, we learn that the FFF (French Federation of Footbal) and Domenech have decided to kick Anelka off the team and send him home. No word from Anelka himself.

That evening, there is a press conference and Patrice Evra, captain of the team, informs us that they are concentrating on finding the locker-room "traitor" who leaked the confrontation between Anelka and Domenech to the press. No word on eventual training and preparations for their last game against South Africa.

The next morning, Frank Ribery (the supposed New Zinedine Zidane) comes out on national TV to ask forgiveness and pardon to the French people for how they have been acting and playing and promises the world that the entire team will work harder and try to make France proud on their last game. He also talks about the importance of finding the "traitor". No word yet on eventual training and preparations for their last game against South Africa.

That same afternoon, we witness (live on national TV) Captain Evra, Coach Domenech and a member of the staff almost get into a fist fight on the field right before the team is supposed to start training. 5 minutes later all the players turn around and get back into their bus and shut their curtains. We are still scratching our head trying to figure out what tha heck is going on when we see the staff guy storm off to the side of the field and throw his chronometer to the bushes. Almost simultaneously on the other side of the field we see the VP of the FFF storm off on his end (there's a lot of storming off going on right then) and when tackled by the press he's barely able to choke out a few words saying he's never in all his life witness such behavior (the team is refusing to train!) and in tears announces that the he is quitting the Football Federation and going back to Paris, then he gets into a to waiting car and drives off!

By now we're salivating... waiting pays off: a few minutes later a totally demoralized Domenech walks up to the press and reads a letter on behalf of the team (and only the team he solemnly informs us) stating that in protest to Nicolas Anelka's unfair dismissal, the players are on strike and are not training that day. Then he turns around and leaves. Good news is, finally there is cohesion among the team, though maybe on the wrong issue....

You can guess the rest.

Two days of total chaos follow, where every little detail, every little comment is decorticated, analyzed and criticized. Everyone gives their opinion, but all agree that France is making an embarrassment of herself. The players are crucified by the press and public opinion. The coach is crucified by the press and public opinion. The Federation is crucified by the press and public opinion. We hang on every press conference (not many), every rumor (quite a lot), every word...

And then finally, finally! someone remembers that it's all about football! The team trains normally. The Coach gives a (sort of) coherent press conference on the game for the next day. The press talks about the opponent team. The word "traitor" isn't mentioned once.

But it's too late.

This afternoon, France lost against South Africa 2-1 in what has to be one of the most excruciating games ever! In a way I guess we all secretly hoped that the French team would somehow pull it together and perform a last minute miracle, play well, rise above the occasion, get an honorable score, be able to leave the field with their head, I wouldn't go as far as saying held high, but at least not hanging so low. I have to admit they did seem to give it all during that game, and granted they were playing 10 against 11 for most of the match (due to an unfair red card) but the fact of the matter is that the World Champions of 98 and Semi finalists of 2006, left the World Cup of 2010 in the bottom of their group, not having won a single game and only managing to score one goal against what two months ago were considered three non-threatening teams.

In a way, it's quite sad that this all happened (and still is, as this is very far from over being as now all the players are vowing they'll be speaking to the press soon on what really happened during those days) but at the same time I guess it was inevitable.

Football is all about team work, respect, pride in wearing your team's shirt, hard work and training and above all: humbleness.

Instead of that the Bleus demonstrated the exact opposite. They neglected to work as a team on the field yet ganged up as one off the field and for the wrong reason; they disrespected their Coach (independently of how they feel about him) and their fans; they showed no pride for the team's shirt and instead kidnapped it while going on strike (!!!!), hard work and training were clearly not as much a priority as "finding the locker room traitor" was; and what can be said of humbleness?

If this were the Tricolor, I'd be appalled and embarrassed as a fan but I would probably continue to support my team, through thick and thin. I'm sure this is the case with France's fans as well, and I'm sincerely hoping I'm right. When you love a team and a game so much you don't care how awful they are, on and off the field. You continue to root for them.

I'm just hoping THEY realize this before it's too late!

Fned.

RSA Animate - The Secret Powers of Time

2010-06-20T11:27:00.006+01:00

My friends Jonna and Mimi over in Merida posted this clip on their blog and I found it to be incredibly interesting, not to mention really fun to watch.

I find it applies to expats and non expats alike. Basically, it's about how our social culture and interactions are changing before our very own eyes and how this affect us as a civilization but also depending our culture. I think this is an interesting subject and one that boggles my mind more often than not. One of the things I've come to understand in recent years is that the hardest thing to change is human behavior. People often complain about how hard it is to adopt a healthier lifestyle, overcome bad addictions, change social patterns, adopt a different corporate culture, implement a greener attitude...... such changes involve a change in human behavior and everyone agrees that this requires a titanic effort.

And yet, this clip shows how slowly yet steadily, human behavior is changing without us even realizing it!..... except is it in the right direction????

If you have 10 minutes to spare and are interested in topics that keep your mind busy long after you've read or heard about them, then I recommend you watch this.

If you don't have the 10 minutes to spare, then you should definitely watch this!!

Fned.

First time in a long time

2010-06-19T14:32:00.010+01:00

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but when I read Andromeda's tag post and saw the questions in her list I thought it'd be fun to do it! So here goes:

1. What did you want to be when you were little?
A Private Detective. It probably has to do with the fact that I've always loved the mystery murder genre. I liked reading everything from Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie and in between and I guess for some reason I felt that the life of a private detective must be fun, exciting and irresistibly chic.

I don't know at what point I gave up on that dream, probably when I realized that living in the itsy bitsy little town of Valladolid didn't provide much in the way of "interesting plots".

2. What one place makes you the happiest being there?
I had to think about this one for a while. At first I was about to write that the place that makes me the happiest doesn't exist anymore because Tulum has changed so much in the recent years that it no longer is that wonderful, fun, filled-with-loving memories-from-my-childhood place it used to be.

But now, I realize that the place that makes me the happiest is the comfy spot on the sofa where my head perfectly fits in a snuggle with Hubby's shoulder and his arm has the necessary space to wrap around my waist while we lay wrapped in each others arms watching TV. Cheezy, but pure heaven.

3. Do you wish your first kiss was with someone else?
No. Although it was not perfect, it was with the right person at the right moment in my life.

4. What's one thing you wish you could tell your 16-year-old self?
That the sooner you start taking care of yourself and your body the easier it is getting into the habit of living a healthy happy life.

5. What movie do you never get tired of watching?
The Bourne Identity. Matt Damon as Jason Bourne makes my body melt like Ben & Jerry's abandoned in the Sahara desert.

6. What movie do you wish you had never seen?
Any one of the Twilight or Harry Potter movies. They just SCREWED the books!

7. How much time do you admit spending on facebook in a week? How much time do you actually spend on facebook?
Hard to say. Not exactly addicted to facebook but I do like checking in every once in a while throughout the day. I only have 47 friends so checking in doesn't take too long... what takes time is typing answers and replies on my iPhone and getting them loaded on the web with a crappy 3G signal!!!

8. Who do you miss most at this exact moment?
Right, right now? Hubby, because he's been in London for a whole week apartment hunting and I've missed him immensely (how are we ever going to survive this summer?!).

On a regular basis? My best friend Alba who doesn't have access to a computer nor internet, who's working hours conflict with a 7 hour time difference and whose cell phone works only when she has money in it (not often!). I miss talking to her as if she was my very own sister!! (who I also miss a lot but who is coming to visit us in 2 days so Yay!!)

9. Where are you going tomorrow? Why?
If you mean tomorrow literally, the answer is Nowhere. Ivory Coast is playing Brazil and Portugal is playing North Corea!!

If you mean in life, then London first, who knows later.... Why? Because the day I'll feel trapped or stagnated in a place is the day I'll die.

10. If you had a gift card for plastic surgery and HAD to use it (witness protection or something), what would you get done?
ahahahahah! I have thought of this one lots of times, as most women probably do. Hopefully it wouldn't have to be for witness protection because that means I'd have to make myself irrecognizable which I don't really want to be. But sometimes I do wish I could wave a magic wand and correct the lower part of my body which is in my opinion somewhat disproportionate to the upper part. *sigh*.... sadly no such wands exists and I'm too much of a coward to consider going under the knife....

So there you go! I've been tagged. I like the way Andromeda put it in regards to others following up:

".... Instead of tagging specific people, I'll leave it open to everyone (plus I can't keep track of who's already been tagged, lol). If you're reading this sentence, consider yourself tagged! And leave a comment if you're going to do it, so I can learn a little more about all of you! ..."

Fned.

The love of the game

2010-06-18T16:00:00.003+01:00

Last Monday morning, as people came in the office they stopped by my neighbor colleague’s desk to congratulate him. Just because he’s German. The German soccer team had played exceptionally well on their opening game against Australia the night before. I too congratulated my colleague (Joaquim Lowe’s men really did an awesome job) but secretly I was a little annoyed too. My colleague doesn’t like football! He doesn’t care about the World Cup, doesn’t know the players of the Manchaft and didn’t even watch the game! And yet, people kept congratulating him for the great way his team had played and it kept bringing a smile to a face and his chest kept swelling up with pride.

I wasn’t annoyed because he got all this attention despite the fact that he can’t tell the difference between a soccer ball and a basket ball. I was annoyed because I wanted to one day be able to feel that same feeling of satisfaction and pride and sheer pleasure of knowing that my home country had entertained the world with 90 minutes of an amazing display of teamwork, technique and courage.

Kyle explained really well how we feel about our home team. Not only as expats but as die hard fans and life long enthusiasts of the game of soccer. Although I didn’t grow up playing the sport like she did, like her I also love the game and feel it in my gut when watching a match, any match, be it the Champion’s League, the Mexico’s liga or plain friendly games. And especially, especially when el Tricolor plays. Just like Kyle, I too have a conflict of interest when my home country (Mexico for me) plays my host country (in this case, France) and just like Kyle I too have absolutely no doubt in my mind of who I’ll root for.

It’s hard to explain to you how I lived those 90 mins last night. Hubby was in London and we had agreed that we wouldn’t discuss the France vs Mexico World Cup match over the phone. I wouldn’t have been in any shape to do so anyway. During that hour and a half I jumped, I shouted, I pounded my fists, I begged on my knees, I kicked in the air, I spat and cursed, I prayed to my dad, I yelled to the seven hells, I frantically twi-facebook-ittered and when it was over, I was spent. I was speechless, I was PROUD. The emails and text messages started pouring in as soon as it was over, but I just looked at the screen in absolute awe.

We beat France in the second game of the first round of the World Cup. We BEAT THEM. We were better on every count. From the way fans painted the stadium in red, white and green and put those vuvuzelas to shame with cries of Olé throughout the game, to the way every single player on the Mexican side showed an impressive amount of technique, courage and class on the field. We were better because we were stronger at our weaker points. We were better because by the end of the game we'd even won over the French commentators. But above all, we were better because we played as a team and because the team played for us, the Mexican people.

I’m not deluded enough to not realize that there is still a long, long way to go and that this is not such a big thing in the grand scheme of things. After all, stronger teams like Argentina, Spain, Brazil could probably beat us in a heart beat if they played to the fullest of their capabilities. And after all, Mexico has always made it to the next round in the recent World Cups so passing this time isn’t such a big exploit.

And yet…. this morning, every single colleague on my platform, French and non French, came to my desk to congratulate me. Even my German colleague. All told me that it had been a real joy watching the Mexican team play ball last night and be reminded of why we love this game so much.

And my chest swelled with pride for the Tricolor and for being a Mexican.

Fned.

P.S. Germany just lost 1 to 0 to Serbia.

The Blue Book

2010-06-16T06:01:00.001+01:00

I had to renew my American passport so I went online to the Embassy's website in France and while I was browsing the citizen services page I came across a little thing called the "Blue Book".

Wow!! I've been living in France for over 8 years now and I wasn't aware such a thing existed!! Basically, it's a 200+ page guide book filled with all the basic information any American seeking to travel or move to France should know about.

There's chapters on all sorts of things, from civil services, to taxes, health, education, clubs and even a list of groceries stores that carry American products!!

I wish I'd found out about the Blue Book a long time ago, it would have certainly saved me a lot of time and troubles and answered several questions along the way. So typical that I would come across this type of thing on the eve of our departure to another country!

Anyway, the chapter that caught my attention the most was the one on Employment in France for Americans. Here's an extract of what the Blue Book recommends to those thinking of moving and earning a living here.

Employment in France
Americans hoping to enter the French labor market are cautioned that it is very difficult to find employment. To be able to work in France, Americans, except for those in special categories (see below,) must have arranged employment approved in advance by the French Ministry of Labor and they must have obtained a long stay work visa before entering France. The Embassy will not intervene with French Authorities on behalf of American citizens seeking a visa, visa exemption or work permit.

Americans who disregard the visa requirement and apply in France for a work permit are required to leave the country to obtain the appropriate visa at a French consular office in the U.S. American citizens should not come to France expecting to find a job and to change their status after arrival. Such expectations are unlikely to be fulfilled and personal hardship may result. Most foreigners are not eligible for French Social Security or unemployment benefits. In some cases, individuals may have difficulties with French authorities and may face expulsion from France.

Geez! Reading this makes it look as if it's extremely difficult for a foreigner to live and work in France.

I've heard several horror stories from expats all over about the difficulties they've encountered when it comes to working permits and visa status (no matter the country), but funny enough and regardless of what the Blue Book says, I have to admit that my visa process in France always went very smoothly.... and believe me, I've had them all!

Basically, my story goes something like this:

2002 I came here on a internship to work for the Mexican Embassy > Diplomatic residence card expedited by the French Consulate in Mexico. No problem there.

2003 I came back to France to study a Licence / Maitrise > Student visa transformed to a residency card upon arrival with allowance to work 20 hours per week during the school year or 3 months full time during the summer. No problem there.

2004 The company I was working for 20 hours a week decided to hire me full time once my studies were over so they requested to change my student residence card to a 1 year working permit. This was done at the Prefecture de Police in Paris and No problem there either.

2005 Wedding. Change of my working permit to a renewable 1 year marital residency card, which I renewed 2 times before getting my 10 year residency card. And again, No problem encountered at any time.

I guess I was just really lucky.

In any case, as I'm getting prepared to face the British visa request process soon I can only hope things will go just as smoothly as they did here in France.

I wonder if the American Embassy website in the UK has a Blue Book?

Fned.

Quit whining girl!

2010-06-15T06:00:00.001+01:00

I realize yesterday's post might have sounded a little too dramatic and depressing. Reading it over it would seem I've spent the past months in my pajama's, moping around, being mean to Hubby and stuffing my face with chips while watching The Hills.

This hasn't been the case, always.

Good things have also been happening. It wouldn't be Fned & Hubby if there wasn't some kind of traveling involved over a period of time. First there was a very fun long weekend in Austria where we got to do some major history, art and museum soaking up. Then, there was a business trip to the US that turned into an impromptu and fun vacation back home in Texas, courtesy of a certain pesky ash cloud. And now, having just come back from a great week in Portugal I realize I definitely should stop whining. Life is good.

Pictures and comments will follow soon, but as a teaser, I highly encourage you to go check out Hubby's pics on his Flickr page -- I swear, looking at his photography sometimes makes me wonder if we were indeed in the same place!!!

Vienna

Portugal

Fned.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life

2010-06-14T07:20:00.000+01:00

This is usually the mantra I repeat to myself over and over again in front of the mirror on Monday mornings while Hubby looks over my shoulder and rolls his eyes.

After all, who can blame him? Every Monday for the past few months or so have been the first day of the rest of my life. And usually the rest of my life lasts until Wednesday when I fall back to that self destructive routine that has become my life lately.

Not self destructive in the harming my body or my health sort of way that is usually associated with the word "self destructive", but self destructing in the I'm-destroying-all-the-progress-on-my-own-self-that-I'd-made-in-2009 sort of way.

I know people say patterns are hard to break and sure as hell I am a creature of habit, but even I recognize that I have to get my life back on track, and fast. It's even on my To Do List of things to do before moving to London:

Point 1 - Get Life Back on Track.
Point 2 - Apply for visa.

So what is it I need to get back on track in my life? Well, for one thing, I need to find that balance again. I need to find that need to feel that I have control over my body and my actions. That I am capable of not succumbing to my own cravings, my own laziness, my own impulsiveness, my own selfishness. That I am capable of making the rational right decisions that affect my self and those around me.

For some reason, a few months ago I woke up one morning and said to myself "you know what? feck it, life has been pretty damn unfair to me lately and I deserve a break. I'm going to let myself go. Relax, think of me, ME, first and foremost. And I'm not even going to bother of thinking of ME in a loving, caring way, I'm just going to give ME every one of MY most rotten, spoiled, unreasonable wants and damn be the rest." And that's exactly what I've been doing ever since.

Little did I care to examine if the "unfairness" claim was really valid (I'm still working on that one) or to think how this would affect that one single most important person in my life who had to share a roof with the selfish creature I became. No, it was all about ME.

So what did I do with this new found ME liberty? Basically, I gave up. I watched lame TV reality shows, I stopped training, I stopped being careful with what I ate, I stopped reading, I even stopped giving 100% at work and lord knows I pretty much left Hubby on his own when it came to running our little household. How that heck does he put up with me, btw? I sincerely don't know. My assumption is that my kind of selfishness translates into me wanting to be left alone most of the times to be able to vegg in peace, which basically means no nagging or bothering him, and he in return has the grace to not nag or bother me with trifle things like who's going to wash the dishes or shop for groceries. He just does it.

So every Monday morning I wake up feeling that today is the first day of the rest of my life. A life that is back on track and that corresponds to the 30 year old I am and not the 15 year old I've been acting like lately.

But see, this is were it gets a wee bit depressing. The moment I realize that I am 30, that I no longer should, no longer can, act like a 15 year old because it's both hazardous for my well-being and quite simply immature for my age, the moment all of this sinks in, I feel like all I want to do is curl into a little ball and push back the deadline, continue to live in that carefree, self-centered way, turning my back on the fact that those days are now over, behind me, forever. Usually, it's around Wednesday when the full realization of this hits me and I tell myself I'll get to it next Monday.

And so the cycle begins again.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of my Life.

Fned.

National Hymns

2010-06-13T12:51:00.008+01:00

Patriotism moves me in ways I can't explain. Not the "We are Better then You" patriotism or the "we are the Strongest, Bravest, Bestest nation in the whole wide universe" kind.... I'm not a die hard fan of military corps nor do I kiss my flag before going to bed every night, but I am highly sensitive when it comes to people showing they are proud of belonging to their country.

Perhaps it's the fact that I'm still struggling to understand where exactly I fit in this world and so watching people brought together around the common thread of their nation touches me.

This is exactly what happens to me every time, every time, I hear a stadium sing a national anthem before a game of any sorts, and with the World Cup in full swing you could say I am giving my tear ducts a major use lately. Hearing people belt out their national hymns, singing at the top of their lungs the words that unite them as a people, it just makes my eyes swell. I'm the first to stand up and start howling out those "Mexicanos al grito de guerra..." lyrics (as the people in a little bar in Lisbon recently found out when we watched the Mexico - South Africa soccer match last Friday) but the hair on my arms still stand up and my eyes still get watery when I hear the meaningful lyrics of the Star-Spangled Banner or God Save the Queen or the Marseillese or any other anthem echo and thunder inside a stadium, being belted out by the power of thousands of throats in unison.

And if you really want to see me bawl my eyes out.... show me the players singing. When the camera shows those athletic faces, with all their might, eyes focused, face strong and decided, hand over heart, pride oozing out of every pore of their bodies my vision gets blurry and my throat clogs up. I'm always a little disappointed when I see players who don't sing their anthem. I mean, I know they are probably concentrating on the game ahead, but dude, this is why you're here!! You're carrying a whole nation's hopes and dreams on your shoulders, they are rooting for you, praying for you, hanging on your every move, every turn, every spin.... they are holding their breath when you touch the ball.... this is why you are here!! The least you can do is sing the words to the thread that unites you to them and them to you.

Fned.

One more go

2010-06-12T10:10:00.000+01:00

I think I am ready to give this another try.

For a while now I've been debating over whether to shut down this blog, start another secret one ("Fned's other Blog") or simply stop writing all together. None of these options seem to satisfy me completely so I've decided to give this another go.

Can't make any promises on how constant I'll be or even if I'll keep this up (some of the reasons I stopped blogging are still present), but for now I feel like this could once again become a very important part of my life. Because it once was. There once was a time in which every thought that went though my head invariably went through the "is this blog material?" thought process just as soon... to this day I still enjoy going back and reading old posts from that golden Fned's Blog era.... this is also why I can't bring myself to completely quit. I really did enjoy having Fned's Blog up and going and having a place where I could express the stuff that was going on around me.

Which brings me to the today, the now... what's been going lately?

Well, for one thing, the biggest, most exciting news is that we're moving! After much debating and dreaming and talking over this for a very very long time, Hubby and I are finally setting sail and moving to.......... London.

I have to admit I was a wee bit disappointed at first. Not because it's not a great city, it is and we have really good friends living there so that definitely adds a plus to the place, but to be perfectly honest, I was hoping we'd go to a more "challenging" destination. A place where we could smooch so much out of it, the way I've smooched so much out of France. A place where we would learn a new language, be drowned in a different culture, start from scratch and find our way..... that was and has always been my motivation in life: to keep extracting and absorbing what this world has to offer in diversity. And at a time it seemed like there could be a possibility to go to a place like that. At different times in the past 7 months, there were possibilities of going to Brazil, Hong Kong or Singapore. For reasons our of our hands none of these options became concrete and when London came up we decided to take it.

In retrospect I realize this is a good thing. Brazil or Singapore would have been fun and exciting, but I think a transition first, before taking such a radical plunge like the one I took in 2002, is a better idea. For one thing, this is going to be Hubby's first expat experience and him being the reasonable and adult one in our marriage, I really don't think he would have handled very well flying off to some foreign, far away place without knowing the language, having a steady situation waiting for him and with some sort of precautions taken ahead. The great thing about London is that it is a good compromise for this first takeoff: it still implies a far away place (for me), a foreign language (for him) and a highly different culture (for both of us).

And I have to be honest with myself as well. I know me well enough to realize there was a good chance I'd get bored or disappointed very quickly in our new home town after a while if we didn't pick it carefully. Paris is a hard city to follow and I am an easily bored person. No amount of shopping malls, restaurants or even sea shores or near nature will keep me happy after a certain amount of time. I need to live in a city I can walk in and never feel I've reached it's limits or seen all there is to see. I need to live in a city where the weight of history is felt in every brick or stone wall and where you know history is still happening. I need to live in a city where the people come from all corners of the planet and from where you can easily take off to all corners of the world as well. I need to live in a city where things are constantly moving, where people get restless, where people are angry, stressed, hurried..... but where they feel alive.

I can only think of a few places like this: Tokyo, New York, Buenos Aires.... London. Not because they are better than other cities, but because they have the same kind of vibe and feel and pull for me that Paris has.

So why are we leaving Paris you ask if it has exactly what we need? It's difficult to say really, but I think I came pretty close to expressing it correctly in my Plain Vanilla post last year. It kind of comes down to that for us.

So London it is. And fast.

Hubby is crossing the channel this week to go find us an apartment. He'll then move permanently at the beginning of July and I'll follow (hopefully) once my visa comes through (though I should probably get going and apply for it first!!). I'm -sort of- crossing my fingers that my company will be able to find me a job at our offices there too though if they don't perhaps this will be a good moment to do some serious career soul searching. Then it will be on to the less fun logistics of renting our place here in Paris, arranging all the bank and insurance crap on both sides of the channel and finally packing up the boxes.

Guess things are moving right now. I suppose Fned's Blog still has some glory days left in store for her.

Fned.

I ran a marathon this week...

2010-03-14T09:15:00.000Z

.... spaced out in four days.

For the first time since I started running, I ran 10 kilometers four consecutive times this week. This is a big thing for me because in addition to it being a good sign of progression in my workout routine, it means I am one (very, very small) step closer to reaching one of my secret new year's resolutions: to run a full marathon. And not just any marathon. I've signed up to run THE original marathon. The one running from the actual, ancient city of Marathon all the way to the gates of Athens.

Yup.

In Greece.

I actually had not choice really. When all the staff at the bank I work for received the following message from our colleagues in the Athens office, it was virtually impossible to say no.

As you know this year, we celebrate 2,500 years from the glorious victory of the Athenian army, that is considered to have preserved, what we know today as western civilization.

The story has it as follows: The Persians (superpower of the time) tried to invade Greece in 490 BC. A handful of Athenians decided to face them, guess where, in the small town of Marathon, which is...42km from Athens. The Athenians totally destroyed the multiple Persian army, and this is believed that have preserved what we today call western civilization. After the battle the Greek generals sent a runner to the city to spread to glorious news (no internet, or mobile phones at the time). They chose Phidippides, who ran all the way to the city, in his full equipment (over 20kgr). As a soldier, it was a disgrace to run without his weapons. The poor guy ran after days of battle, under terrible heat (it was September). He arrived at the city centre (very close to the Bank), he whispered "Nenikikamen" (we won) and he collapsed dead (this is not a great encouragement to run a Marathon!)

The race will take place on October 31st and for the first time there will be a limit in participation. 10,000 people will be allowed to run, more or less the same number as the Athenian soldiers that fought in Marathon.

Our bank is sponsoring staff members who wish to run by paying our registration fees and our colleagues in Athens managed to negotiate pretty awesome hotel and flight rates... all of this, plus the fact that I had secretly been wondering if I have what it takes to run a marathon, made me make up my mind and sign up.

Not that I plan to make it to the finish line. Not by a longshot. Here's a little more info from our Athens colleagues on this particular race:

Please be aware that the Athens Marathon is one of the toughest ones. After a relatively flat first 10k, which takes runners on a detour around the tumulus (burial ground) of the Athenian dead - the Parthians have their own burial ground - the course rises until around 32k. So half the race is uphill. But then the last part is downhill all the way.

Now you understand why running a "virtual" marathon in the space of a week feels somewhat comforting.... :s

Fned.

One lucky mexican

2010-03-12T22:34:00.007Z

Hubby is going to kill me for posting this, but I can't help it.

Email message he sent me on his way to London last Tuesday:

Here I am in the train, still a bit depressed because of the "XXX affair"[work stuff], listening to some mana to cheer me up and I realized I was really missing you... It's strange how it takes to know we'll be separated for just a couple of days to realize I'm really lucky I found you and that as regular workdays pass by i don't realize that anymore. We get completely absorbed by our daily work problems and we forget what's the most important...

How is it that I got so freaking lucky and what that heck did I do to deserve it!??

Fned.

I love ports

2010-03-11T19:28:00.002Z

ANY port. Airports, Boat ports, Bus stations, Train stations.... even rental car agencies.... any portal or building that represents the first phase of a trip to a place far far away, I am immediately fascinated by the place.

Not just because it is the beginning of my own trip, but mainly because it is the beginning of million of OTHER'S trips.

I can spend hours just looking at people and imagine where they're coming from and where they're going. Try to guess what is packed in their bags and who (or what) will be waiting for them at the other end of their trip. If they're sad to be leaving or can't wait to get off the ground, if it's home they're leaving behind or traveling towards. I have to say, this makes for quite a handy pastime when waiting in long lines!

As I start my own trip to London this evening, I can't help but smile as I look around me and see the Gare du Nord buzzing with the expectation of waking up tomorrow morning under another sky.

Fned.

Looking for an expertise

2010-03-07T07:43:00.003Z

I wish I was an expert of something.

I was watching a show the other day on football (or soccer if you prefer). It was one of those shows where a panel of experts sit around a table lead by a moderator and talk for an hour on a common subject. Everyone has their own opinion and they either all agree or don't but the common denominator is they all know what they're talking about. They can belt out dates, names, scores, games, anecdotes, etc.

It made me wish I was an expert at something. I wish I could sit at a table with a round of panelists and be able to hold my own on a subject that I knew by heart. That I could spit out opinions and comments with assurance and confidence and know that I wasn't saying anything stupid. It would be so cool if I could challenge another fellow expert and have the other people around the table nod in silent agreement as I spoke.

It made me ask myself what could be my field of expertise:

fashion? nah... I may know the names of some of the major fashion designers and have read Ana Wintour's autobiography but I doubt very much I could hold the fort when talking about collections and fashion shows.

entertainment then? Movies, music, tv shows... I do have a rather extensive knowledge in the domain being the couch potato that I am but I could never be called an expert. There are hundreds of classic movies I have never seen and I am more interested in a particular type of movie than in the genre itself so I doubt I could ever become the next Dawson. It's pretty much the same with music.

Then what then? Travels: not by a long shot... most of the time I have to go back to the travelers guide of the places we've been to in order to remember the names of towns or places when uploading pictures to the blog.

I do enjoy reading celebrity gossip and could probably put up a decent fight if confronted by a panel of experts, but who wants to be proud of that?

How about what I work at? Shareholding Issuer and Corporate Trust Services??? Are you kidding me?!

.....

....................

Okay, I just realized something. I'm 30 years old and I'm an expert at moping.

Fned.

Help Chile

2010-03-05T07:19:00.003Z

If you want to do something for Chile, please check out Kyle Hepp's blog on how much help is needed down there right now and how you can help!!!

http://www.kylehepp.com/videos-of-severe-earthquake-damage-in-chile.html

Fned.

What's up doc? - shut up.

2010-02-27T08:57:00.009Z

So here's the thing. I stopped blogging because basically it came down to talking about three subjects :

a) work

b) working out

c) being bored or frustrated while not working or working out

And since I didn't want to frustrate you or anyone reading over your shoulder with the oh-so non interesting details of my life I simply hit the "snooze" button hoping that in due course, my life would.... get a life.

Well, it hasn't so far.

I'm still working crazy hours (last time I checked I was clocking in 9am-10pm workdays) and the funny thing is, I'm actually okay with that.

Because the alternative is much scarier.

The other day I decided to leave early. I made myself stop typing at 7pm, I made myself log off my computer and turn off my screen, I forced myself to grab my coat and tell my boss I was leaving "early" for a change. Thirty minutes later I was home. I walked in to an empty apartment and sat down on the sofa not knowing what to do with all that free time. I debated over whether turning on the TV, razing the fridge, or changing into sweats and comfy socks and just vegging out. I did all three. Two hours later, Hubby came home and found me in my pj's with an empty bag of microwave popcorn on my lap, licking the last of the Valentina sauce from my fingers while watching dubbed episodes of The Hills (the one where Heidi thanks God for her outfit while saying Grace at the table).

The next day I came home at 10:30pm.

Because really, what is the alternative? Go out? Have friends over? Watch a movie? Go to the theater? We try to but we can't do that all the time. And the thing is, coming home after a full day at the office, my brain is mush, my muscles are tired, my tummy is hungry and my temper is short. I.don't.feel.like.going.out.again. as soon as I walk in the door. But staying in and having hours to do nothing feels even worse.

So my theory is, work like crazy, feel productive, use up all your energy, interact with as much people as possible and come home ready for a quick meal, a peck on the cheek (if it's a gym day, some exercise) and a comfy bed. And in some bizarre part of my brain, that somehow stands for an accomplished day.

SEE HOW MESSED UP I AM?

Don't worry, I'm not about to jump off a cliff. Hubby is pretty much in the same boat right now... got promoted recently which means a bigger team to manage, heavier responsibilities, more late meetings and last-minute engagements and basically as much a hectic and crazy life going on as me. Both of us cling to each other, sharing our exhaustion late in the evening after work, together enjoying the very basic pleasure of doing nothing while winding down and vegging out watching old re-runs of CSI cuddled up in the sofa for the oh-20 minutes it takes us to fall asleep.

With this rhythm, needless to say, trips were put on hold for a while. We do have plans for 2010 but so far only the smaller ones are booked (a long weekend in Vienna end of March, a quick getaway to Portugal for 6 days in June). Traveling is the one pleasure we had to look forward to, now even that is being slowly gobbled up by work as well. Hubby will probably have to go to Brazil on business in May, me to New York and Chicago in April and possibly to the Netherlands and Luxembourg before then. Fun? Not so much. It only means I'll be doing my 13h day shifts in a different time zone and wearing stilettos instead of converse sneakers.

Why do we put up with this you ask? How come we don't take steps to change it?

There's a very simple answer to that, although I'm not sure it will satisfy you.

We see our life as in "pause" right now. Ever since the end of last year, Hubby and I decided we were going to try to move somewhere else. He's been interviewing with different companies, trying to re-spark his connections and network. He's been having interviews with different companies in Hong Kong, London, Barcelona... nothing yet. But things are in motion and we're hoping that sooner or later it will happen. So we figure our current situation is temporary and if we've been holding up for so long already, we can definitely wait a little longer, right?

I told ya, it's stupid.

Anyway, as I said, I'm still trying to run regularly and that helps to keep me somewhat sane, nothing like an excruciating session with the treadmill to clear my head and zen me out after a grueling day at the office. However, my condition has gone way down in the past two months. First the injury, then the crazy working hours had me skipping training and letting myself go. I am now in worse condition than back in December when I ran the 10K, which is really ironic considering I'm planning on running a 20K in May and a Marathon in October. But I figure I might as well give myself impossible goals to try to achieve, right?

I mean, after all, I'm already doing it in other parts of my life anyway (like trying to achieve the impossible goal of working and having enough energy left to have a life on the side).

Can't say I didn't warn you:

a) work

b) working out

c) being bored or frustrated while not working or working out

Fned.

OUT OF ORDER

2010-01-20T22:46:00.002Z

BLOGGER CURRENTLY UNDERGOING SOME MAJOR
CREATIVE BLACKOUT.

APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE CAUSED.

WE ARE TRYING TO FIX DE PROBLEM AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE
AND APPRECIATE YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

SINCERELY,
Fned.

Flunking P.E.

2010-01-03T22:11:00.001Z

When I was growing up, if there was one subject we loved in school throughout my entire education in Mexico, from elementary all the way up to high school, no matter the teacher, no matter the year, no matter the class mates, that subject was Physical Education.

No, it wasn't because this subject taught us the importance of living a healthy lifestyle nor did it provide us with great lessons on teamwork, or developing a competitive spirit or any other of those rather valuable lessons in life.

Nope. The reason me and my fellow classmates loved P.E. was because it was almost always an hour were nobody taught us anything and instead our teachers would throw a ball at us and tell us to "go play", which would basically mean the boys would split up in teams, set goal posts with old soda cans and break out a "cascarita" (spontaneous soccer game) while us girls would sit on the sidelines giggling and whispering, until the bell rang for next period. It was great!! A free period that came with a good grade (you had to be a real moron to flunk P.E.)! Plus, two days a week we got to wear sweat pants to school -instead of our boring old uniform-.

I've never really thought about all those wasted hours until quite recently. Sure, occasionally I'd be watching an American TV show and let out a dreamy sigh when the characters would come on screen decked out in cute cheer leading uniforms and school basketball jerseys, somewhat regretting that that sort of thing would never happen in my school. And yeah, I'd sometimes wonder what it would feel like to have an actual home-team to root for, complete with cute marketing paraphernalia like sports jackets and windbreakers with the school's "colors", or what fun it would probably be to have a "school's jock" or a "captain of the (insert sport) team" or a mascot.

But to be honest, I never really felt that I was actually missing out on real education during those P.E. hours, like real, actual stuff to be learned.

You might find this appalling and even somewhat pathetic. And yes, I'm hoping that perhaps things have changed in Mexico since then (when I got to college, we did have actual basket ball, soccer and soft ball teams, although, quite understandably, they all sucked big time), but the fact of the matter is that back then, I guess good sports education was probably way down on the list of priorities of the Secretaria de Educacion Publica (the Mexican equivalent of the Public Education Ministry).

And we didn't mind one bit.

But I do now.

Other than the fact that I had to learn the hard way (read: by watching my health go south and my weight go north) how important it is to regularly practice a physical activity, what I realize now is that I lacked even the very basics on how to take care of my body.

The extent of my knowledge in the great vast world of sports consisted of knowing that you don't go swimming until after two hours have passed since your last meal.

I didn't know that good hydration is important before, during and after any sport activity.

I hadn't a clue of what a "warm-up" consisted of, much less a "cool down" and how come these are important.

I had no idea that running could hurt your knees if you don't wear proper tennis shoes.

I had to learn this and much more from scratch when I first began working out, and most of this I had to learn on my own (by googling, reading blogs and signing up in forums) because asking the gym guy what a "rep" is felt pretty damn stupid. Even to me.

So little by little I started to learn the very basics of what probably should have been in my P.E. courses back in the sixth grade; and as my workouts increased so did my education.

Did you know that the "side stich" can almost always be avoided by drinking at least 500ml of water before working out? I didn't. I learned this after getting sick of that damn pain interrupting me in the middle of my workout and I finally posted a question on an online forum. Someone was nice enough to reply back.

Or did you know that blue toe nails are actually common in runners and often come from running down steep hills? I didn't. The first time I took off my socks and noticed my big toes had turned an awful shade of black and blue I freaked out and thought I had contracted gangrene. For weeks I thought my toes were going to fall off until I read in last month's "Runners" magazine that blue toes are actually considered "runner's trophies"!!

This week's lesson: sprain vs strain. This one was a toughie. First of all, when my hip starting giving me trouble a few days ago I shrugged it off (I was still working on the previous week's lesson: the power of the brain over pain). But it kept bothering me and this morning I'd barely run 20 mins when I really had to quit. I hadn't even broken out a sweat.

So I came home and googled "Hip pain" (I find keeping it simple gives the best results). This pulled up a whole new list of interesting vocab: piriformis, iliopsoas, groin pull, bursitis, hip replacement.... Fortunately for me, a little digging further and zooming in on my symptoms lead to the very easy diagnosis: a strain. Basically, I stretched a muscle too far. Not to be confused with a sprain which is stretching a ligament too far (bonus points for learning this). From my symptoms I suspect I have a Grade I type of hip sprain - since it only hurts if I move it in a repetitive way (as in while working out).

By the time I came along the proper treatment for a Grade I Hip Strain I felt I was totally acing this baby. Orthopedics.about.com says that these type of injuries are quite common ("no, you're not going to die" I was relieved to learn) and basically require the RICE treatment: Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevate.

Research grade: A-

So I decided to give my hip a rest, took out the icepack from the freezer, compressed it against my bare skin for 15mins and elevated my leg.

And then I took a hot shower.

And that's how I gave myself a nasty case of frostbite.

Homework grade: flunked.

Whoever said P.E. was an easy subject?

Fned.

A New Year

2010-01-01T13:11:00.003Z

Can it be that it's 2010 already?? Time has flown so fast, don't you think? I still think of the 90s as "a few years ago" when in reality there are now pop stars selling multi-platinum albums who were born in that decade!!!

I remember how I was feeling on this very day a year ago. Not very good. I'd felt 2008 had been a very blah year and that somehow I hadn't grown or bettered myself during those 12 months.

This time around, I should confess I had been apprehending the coming of this end of this year because quite frankly it feels somewhat contradictory.

In 2009 I lost one of the most important persons in my life and me and my loved ones lived through one of the most difficult moments of our lives together. I lost my enthusiasm, creativity and joy for blogging.

And yet, for some strange reason, 2009 feels like one of the best years I've had in a while.

The only explanation I can think of is because, despite all of the above, I feel that in 2009 I took major steps in the direction of becoming the person I think I want to be.

Did I keep all my NYs resolutions. No. Did I fail at them? I guess 2 out of 4 is not that bad a score. Still, I feel that both professionally and personally I won some major battles in 09. Somewhere along the way, I realized that my priorities were a bit off and managed to shift them around mid year.

Professionally speaking, I stopped whining and sighing about the circumstances I'd been "trapped in" and decided it was time I stepped up to bat. In turn I concluded several projects, one of them particularly difficult, strategic and quite sensitive for our department and, forgive me for gloating, but I did damn well. So much so, that by the end of the year I'd been handed over 3 more similar projects and managed to get the attention of different people in our organization. I'm not out for corporate glory, please don't get me wrong... but I do feel mighty proud that I've been able to prove that being a "little person" in our organization still means you can do "great things" if given the opportunity, the trust and the means. I think that was a lesson that some of our big bosses had forgotten and I feel really good I got to be a part of it.

Personally speaking, I feel like I reached the top of several personal Everests. In great part, most of this is due to finally leading a healthier lifestyle. Working out on a consistent basis really helped me in more ways than simply loosing weight and feeling great. By learning how to listen to my body I discovered my own limits and progressively how to surpass them. By constantly finding new ways to deflect boredom, frustration or simple laziness I learned how to stick to my goals. By not giving up when the results didn't turn out to be as I expected or came as fast as I was hoping they would, I learned the virtues of patience, of taking a few steps back and looking at the bigger picture, of shrugging my shoulders and thinking "oh well.. it's ok, it'll come" (and most of the times, it did). By constantly raising the challenges (greater speed, more time, longer distance, bigger race...) I impressed my own self and learned all that I am capable of doing which months before I wouldn't have thought possible.

I crossed into the 3rd decade of my life in '09, and I still remember JJ's comment on my blog saying how even though I may not feel it soon after, my 30s would turn out to feel better than my 20s.... I think she was right.

At least that's how these past 4 months have been feeling so far and how I'm hoping 2010 will feel like in a year's time.

I hope you all had a wonderful New Year's Eve and that y'all are starting 2010 with us much enthusiasm, optimism and joy as I know I am. May the New Year bring us all the great, simple things that truly make us happy: good health, loving memories, great love, true friends, sens of worth and above all, inner peace.

xoxo's
Fned.

Coloring the last chapter in the book

2009-12-28T21:02:00.001Z

Hubby and I were in San Antonio last week to celebrate Poppy’s Day. This was the Hub's first trip to Texas and for years I'd been looking forward to the day I would finally be able to present him the people and places that are part of my family and my history.

You see, Hubby and I, we've known each other for quite some time now (is it really going to be eight years!?), and over time, little by little, we’ve reached a point were there are very few things left about the other's life before we met that we don’t already know about.

I remember the first time I took Hubby to Mexico. It was really exciting to finally introduce him to my family after he’d been hearing about them for so long, and vice versa (introduce him to them). I loved showing him my high school and college grounds and adjoining hangout spots and telling him all the stories of my time spent there. I remember how exciting it was introducing him to my very best and closet friends and all of us boring him to no end with story after story of my life before he met me. Showing him the different neighborhoods I’d lived in, the houses I grew up in, my favorite food stands, markets, restaurants.... everything about that trip was a first for him and through his eyes things that had been part of my everyday life years before suddenly became a first for me all over again.

We repeated the experience a few months later when we traveled to Mérida, Valladolid, Tulum, Mexico City, Palenque.... people I grew up with, family I’d known all my life, places I’d lived in or visited .. all was shown for the first time and it felt like we were finally filling in with colors images that up until then had only been outlined in simple black lines.

Of course, with each trip back home we take together, fewer and fewer people and places are left to be “colored in” and I’m guessing that by now, the next time we’re in Mexico anything new that he will see, will turn out to be new for me too, because it probably will be (new)!

So Texas was the last chapter of the “Fned’s life before meeting Hubby” book that is my life and which Hubby had yet to read.

Sure he’d met most of my closest American relatives at our wedding, (though certainly not all of them since not all were able to travel to France) but even so, it didn’t feel like he’d gotten to really know that part of my life. I couldn’t explain to him the wonderfully homey flavor of “just out of the microwave Poppy’s nachos” or why is it that the “keep Austin weird” catch phrase makes me grin, or how come “let’s watch a movie” is the best way to end a day. No matter how many times I’ve described it, understandably he couldn’t accurately grasp why Poppy’s Day is so special for us, both as children and as adults. Or how it can be that my folks, though scattered all across the country (and even abroad), still manage to remain a tight knit and fun loving family that laughs together over crummy water pipes and silly R-rated movies. How we remain close and feel comfortable with each other even when we haven’t seen each other in years (for some of us).

Like in those previous experiences in Mexico, I’d been craving for Hubby to meet the special people in my life whom he’d seen me address post cards to countless times on our different trips; to take him to my childhood’s official landmarks (the Alamo, the Riverwalk, UT...) and not so official landmarks (my grandparent’s trusted bagel and tamale shops, the Pizza Hut I used to work at, the mall were I bought that sweater he loves so much...). Have him taste the dishes that made my mouth water each summer / winter vacation growing up: BBQ, grilled steak, the afore mentioned Poppy’s nachos, bagels and tamales, pecan pie, direct-from-Houston-home-made-chocolate treats, home-made pickles, Dr Pepper and Root Beer sodas (although granted, these he didn’t like much) and so much more.

More than anything, I wanted him to feel what it felt like to be part of my family, to listen to my grandparents tell the funny stories of “the girls” growing up, hear the parents tell the quirky tales of us cousins, smile at the aunts and uncles while they brag (in a good way) about their kids and grand-kids doing well and making their way in life.

One week was certainly not enough, there was so much I still wanted to show him, people I wanted to spend more time with, things I wanted to do.

But that’s ok. We haven’t put away our crayons yet... the coloring will continue on our next trip.

Photo: Cowboy Boots - Hubby

Fned.

Entries from my travel journal....

2009-12-17T07:35:00.000Z

If you have lost your true self, all phenomena brings you nothing but annoyance. If you discover your essence of mind, you can follow nothing but the true path.
Rankei Doryu's (founder of Kencho-ji)
Kamakura, Japan § May 2nd, 2008

Each day in life is training. Training for myself, though failure is possible. Living each moment, equal to anything, ready for everything. I am alive, I am this moment, my future is here and now. For if I cannot endure today, when and where will I?
(Words for each day) Soen-Ozeki
Kyoto, Japan § May 10th, 2008

Happy people aren't happy because they have the best of everything, but because they make the best of everything they have.
(Irish saying)
Galway, Ireland § August 8th, 2008

Conviene reir sin esperar a ser dichoso, no sea que nos sorprenda la muerte sin haber reido.
(It's better to laugh without waiting to be happy, it would be a shame if death should come about before ever having laughed)
Juan de la Bruyere
Iguazu, Argentina § January 27th, 2009

Fned.

Plug back the unplugged!

2009-12-15T08:36:00.001Z

What ever happened to that awesome show "MTV Unplugged"!!!

This show used to be an absolute must when I was growing up and quite frankly I don't think MTV has produced anything as good ever since. I don't know if it's still on in the US but I sure do miss hearing my favorite bands play "unplugged".

Shakira: No creo

Mana: Cuando los angeles lloran

La Ley: El Duelo

For this post, I tried searching for the universal unplugged classics on Youtube... you know the ones, "Nothing else matters" from Metallica, "Smells like teen spirit" from Nirvana and the ultimate unplugged song: "Layla" from Eric Clapton.

For some unknown reason, all of these videos have been ... unplugged..... from youtube.

Sad.
Fned.

Endorphins high

2009-12-13T05:28:00.006Z

Ok, so I know I haven't been very present lately on the bloggersphere... bad habits die hard and even though my commute has greatly diminished since moving to our new premises, that only means that I stick around the office half an hour later than I used to... which basically means that I'm still getting home at des heures pas possibles... berk!!

BUT today I feel very proud of moi and I just have to brag about it.

I ran a 10K today!!!!!!!

Yup, that's TEN KILOMETERS!!!!!!!
(6.2 miles)

It's all thanks to Jen actually. Ever since running the Parisienne three months ago, the idea of running a longer distance had been zooming around in the back of my mind although I wasn't really sure of how or where to go about it. And then Jen wrote me an email while we were in Asia last month asking me if I'd like to join her and a few of her work colleagues for a 10K race disguised as Santas....

Well, I have to admit I wasn't particularly keen at the idea of making a spectacle of myself by running in red pijamas and a fake beard, but I was very much interested in seeing if I could (literally) go the distance and the idea of doing so during a not so serious (at least it seemed like so to me at the time) race seemed like the perfect opportunity to try this out. So I told Jen to count me in.

I can't really say that I "trained" for the race but I have been pretty strict about hitting the gym 4 times a week and hitting the 8,5km mark on the treadmill each time, so I was feeling good about the distance and even somewhat confident that I wasn't going to pass out right in the middle. In fact, my challenge was actually to make it to the finish line in under an hour because that would mean I'd run faster than my usual times at the gym.

Jen and I decided not to wear the whole Santa gear after all (although her colleagues really did play the game and went all out!) and instead went for more stylish (and easy to run in) golden garlands which we fasten around our necks like sparkling scarfs. Good thing too because it was FREEZING this morning and even paper thin scarfs wrapped around our necks felt better than nothing. It turns out that someone up there thought it would be pretty funny to have it snow in Paris on the day that I was going to run my first ever 10K. Whatever, I decided I was gonna do it and so be it if my fingers froze off while doing it (they didn't though... turns out running gets your body temp up by km1!).

When we got to the place where the race was kicking off there were literally hundreds of Santas all warming up at the start line... it was pretty funny and I kicked myself for not having charged my camera's battery the night before. Hubby came along and took some pics from his iPhone, but unfortunately nothing worth the hassle of uploading to iPhoto and then downloading to Blogger...

Turns out we weren't the only ones that were bending the rules... there were runners decked out in pretty awesome (and not exactly very santa-y) costumes. We saw running Eiffel Towers, running Presents, running Ducks and even running Ghostbusters (complete with proton packs and everything) -- again, kicking myself for absence of camera.

You'd think that all this festive mood would make the race somewhat less serious but nuh-uh... ten kilometers are ten kilometers no matter what you're wearing and I made it a point of honor to not stop during the entire time. Even when we went up that big hill around km4. Even when we went up that big hill again around km 8 and I thought my lungs were going to explode. Not even when I slapped my legs and thought for a second they'd run off without me cuz I couldn't feel them anymore. Not even then did I stop. I made it to the finish line. And even better, I made it to the finish line in under an hour. In 59min and 55sec if you must know which is officially under an hour. Jen did great too, she finished in under 59 minutes... 58mins to be exact... Grrrr! (-- just kidding Jen, congrats girl!! ;D)

So lets recap: a) Freezing weather, b) Awful hill (twice) and c)10 kms in under 1hr

Me proud.

Fned.

The drawback in the draw

2009-12-05T07:47:00.005Z

Ok, as you probably noticed:

a) I sucked at NaBloMo

b) I sucked at Canucka's lovely invitation (aka tag) to write about secret travel places in Paris - that post is coming up by the way

and

c) I am a total flake when I say I'm going to do something.

And then I got a comment this morning from Anonymous that made me jump out of bed and run to the computer with an urge to blog:

Hey Fned. I read your blog, but don't really comment (yeah, I'll get to it...). I don't know how much into, or not That into you and your hubby are into football, but watching today's sorteo from FIFA...I couldn't help but be reminded of you when I saw Mexico and France get selected for Group A. Who are you cheering for? hmmmm

First of all, Anon, thanks for commenting!!! I love that you read my blog and that you thought of me during the draw. Second, you got that right, Hubby and I are TOTALLY into footbal (yes, talking about soccer for US readers) - it's my favorite sport and the only that really gets my juices flowing. I grew up in Mexico and for some reason, la Lucha Libre never attracted me that much, so I shifted to the other big love of our country: FUTBOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's the one sport anyone can play, anywhere, anytime.

When the FIFA announced yesterday that France would be playing in the same group as Mexico during the first round of the World Cup next year, I groaned so loudly everyone on the openspace threw me a worried look and my boss came out of his office to ask me if I was alright. Funny enough, after I anxiously screeched that France and Mexico were in the same preliminary groupe, everyone seemed to think that was cool thing... everyone except my boss. He knows the creature I become during the weeks that the World Cup lasts. He vividly remembers how during the Germany 2006 Cup I was barely interested in anything else that was going on except the results and the games. How I'd be out of the office by 4 in order to get home in time to catch the last of the 2 games playing during the first round and from then on the rest of the games during the quarters, semi-quarters, etc. He still remembers my face when Mexico was eliminated during the second round by Argentina (in the additional time since they'd been tied 1-1 almost from the beginning of the match). And he definetly remembers my day-after non-stop rambling following the infamous Zidane's headbutt that cost France the Final against the Italians.

So I guess it was nice of him to offer to take me to lunch on the day France and Mexico will be playing against each other (June 17th 2010). I'm thinking he's hoping he'll be able to buffer the war that will obviously be coming.

So I'm going to answer your question Anon: I'll be rooting for Mexico of course. There was never any question about it... France is my home country, but el Tri is my home team. Hubby of course will be rooting for France though I think deep down he'll also have a soft spot for "los ratoncitos verdes" as he calls them.

And it's at times like these that having a double nationality can really suck. I wish I could feel the same way about the US team as I do about the Mexican team. But I just can't. I feel like I have followed the trials and tirbulations of el Tricolor ever since my very first Italia 90, and forward through USA 94, Francia 98, Corea del Sur/Japon 2002, Alemania 06 and now South Africa 2010... I've always rooted for them and always will.

Otherwise, I'd have to convert to Lucha Libre.

Fned.

P.S. Btw, did you know that the very first game during the very first World Cup (Uruguay 1930) was a Mexico - France match (France winning 4-1)? Not good for our statistics but definetly a fun fact.

Can’t miss her

2009-11-19T19:30:00.000Z

Since we have now changed offices, my department suddenly finds itself in a different building with plenty of new people all around us. There are over 600 of us where I’m working now so this makes for a lot of new faces, including mine. This morning a girl from another floor came to my desk and told me she’d spent 20 mins trying to spot me and finally had to ask someone what I looked like so that she could find me.

This got me thinking, how did the person she asked describe me so that this girl could indeed find me? I didn’t dare ask her this because it felt pretty narcissistic to do so, but I can't stop thinking about this.... I admit it, I'm curious.

How would someone describe me to someone else who’s never seen or heard me before?

“she’s blond and blue eyed, regular height, regular weight… your average girl – can’t miss her”

or

“she tends to always be dressed in grey, black and/or white, wears pointy high-heel boots and systematically has her hair scruntched up in a half ponytail half chignon – can’t miss her”

or

“right now she has a really ugly pimple under her bottom lip and her nails still show the last remains of a botched manicure she had done two months ago – can’t miss her”

or

“big front teeth, tends to breath really loudly, is the only one in the openspace that can type without looking at her keyboard – can’t miss her”

What are the criteria that people use to describe someone….average? I don’t feel like I have any particular signs that would make me stand out in a crowd. Back home it was easy, I was the blond one. Here I am just another blond. Back home I was the one with the pale pimply skin, here there are at least three of us on the plateau that could use a tan and some clearasil. Back home I was the blue eyed chick, on my floor you’d probably have to ask what shade of blue. I’m not too tall or too short, I’m not overweight or skinny, I don’t dye my hair any particular shade of colour and I don't wear funky makeup. I don’t have a distinctive mole or birthmark on my face and nothing about me screams out foreign American/Mexican (at least I don’t think so).

So what could that person have used as indications for this girl to be able to spot me on a crowded plateau?

Maybe it’s the pink post-its on my desk.

Fned.

Running early

2009-11-18T18:01:00.000Z

Today I got out of bed at 8:15am and was sitting at my desk in the office by 9:20am. Yesterday I walked out of the office at 6:35pm and was home (after a pit stop at the groceries) by 7:20pm….

Did I suddenly develop the ability to teletransport myself, you ask?

Not really. Over the weekend, my offices moved locations and overnight my daily routine went from being a 50min-2-transfers-15min-walk commute (twice a day) to a 20min-direct-4-metro-stops-7min walk commute ….

In other words…. I am in seventh heaven!

Anyone who’s ever lived in a big city and relied on public transportation to get around knows what an incredibly tiring thing this is. Climbing up and down stairs inside subway stations, running from one platform to another to catch a metro transfer, being pushed and shoved inside subway tunnels, standing and sitting inside wagons, going from hot and stuffy to cold and windy, rocking along with the rest of the passengers as the wagon slows down, stops, opens doors, charges and discharges passengers, blasts warning siren, closes doors and slowly takes off only to repeat the whole process again a minute later at the next stop and this for 12 or 15 times throughout the trip…. It is simply exhausting.

I love the metro… I love the concept of it and I love that it gets me from A to B whenever I want to and I especially love how with my simple little metro pass virtually any street in Paris is accessible to me. But when the routine of a metro commute sets in, the same exact route every single day, the changing trains, the waiting on platforms, the standing up to let people on the wagon or sitting down when it empties out, the cramming and jamming of peak hours, when all of this adds up as in twice a day, five days a week, twenty days a month, 12 months a year…. Well, you get to a point where 110 minutes of this on a daily basis seems like a damn long time and by the time you get home at the end of the day your entire body feels like jelly even though you spent the majority of your time sitting at a desk in front of a computer.

Ok, so I don’t have that beautiful view I used to have in my old office. I don’t even have an office anymore for that matter, I am now sitting in the middle of a large empty openspace, my desk wedged in between my boss’ office and the sales team’s platform…

But man, if that’s what it takes to avoid a whole hour of metro zombie riding, then I don’t care!

So be it! I get to lazily get up and out of bed in the mornings right around the same time Hubby is rushing out of the apartment; and I get to be back home early enough to check a show or two on tv before hitting the gym. When the summer comes, I’ll be able to walk to work or ride a velib’… Heck, I might even be able to jog back home and skip the gym altogether!!

Man is it good to have extra time.

Fned.

Wall in New York

2009-11-17T17:17:00.000Z

Fned.

Crying my eyes out

2009-11-15T00:08:00.002Z

Sorry for the tragic title, let me assure you, nothing tragic nor horrible has happened.

It's just that I came across this song while looking for something else on youtube and it just brought me to tears.

I remember hearing it years and years ago back home. I didn't really know who Ismael Serrano was at the time but I loved his music and his voice instantly. I kinda lost touch over the years and then I came across him again this afternoon and I suddenly found myself bawling my eyes out, this song just gets to me.
(English translation at the bottom)

******
Recuerdo
Ismael Serrano

Me levanto temprano, moribundo
Perezoso, resucito
bienvenido al mundo
Con noticias asesinas
me tomo el desayuno

Camino del trabajo
En el metro
Aburrido, vigilo las caras
de los viajeros
Compañeros en la rutina, y en los bostezos

Y en el asiento de enfrente
Un rostro derrepente
claro ilumina el vagón

Esos gestos, en recuerdos,
De otros paisajes otros tiempos
En los que una suerte mejor
me conoció

No me atrevo a decir nada
No estoy seguro
Aunque esos ojos sin duda
Son los tuyos
Mas cargados de nostalgia, quizás mas obscuros

Pero creo que eres tu
y estas casi igual
tan hermosa como entonces
quizás mas
sigues pareciendo la chica mas triste de la ciudad

cuanto tiempo ha pasado
desde los primeros errores
del interrogante en tu mirada?

la ciudad gritaba
y maldecía nuestros nombres
jóvenes promesas,
no, no teníamos nada

dejando en lo portales
los ecos de tus susurros
buscando cualquier rincón sin luz
"agarrate de mi mano
que tengo miedo del futuro"
y detrás de cada huida estabas tu

en las noches vacías en que regreso
solo y malherido
todavía me arrepiento
te haberte arrojado tan lejos de mi cuerpo

y ahora que te encuentro
veo que aun arde
la llama que encendiste nunca
nunca es tarde
para nacer de nuevo
para amarte

debo decirte algo
antes de que te bajes
de este sucio vagón
y quede muerto

mirarte a los ojos
y talvez recordarte
que andes de rendirnos
fuimos eternos

me levanto decidido y me acerco a ti
y algo en mi pecho se tensa
se rompe

"como estas? cuanto tiempo!
te acuerdas de mi?"

y un sonrisa tímida responde

"perdone, pero creo que se ha equivocado"
"disculpe señorita, me recuerda tanto
a una mujer que conocí hace ya algunos años"

y mas viejo y mas cansado
vuelvo a mi asiento
aburrido vigilo las caras de los viajeros
compañeros en la rutina y en los bostezos

***************************
Lyrics, translated to English
***************************

I remember
Ismael Serrano

I wake up early, half dead
Lazy, I resurrect
Welcome to the world
With murderous news
I eat my breakfast

I walk home from work
In the subway
Bored, I watch the faces
of the travelers
Colleagues in the routine, and in the yawning

In the seat in front of me
A face suddenly
illuminates the wagon

Those gestures, in memories,
of other places, other times
in which a better luck
knew me

I don't dare say anything,
I'm not sure
Even though those eyes, without a doubt
are yours
Heavier with nostalgia, perhaps darker

But I think it is you,
and you are almost the same,
As beautiful as then
Perhaps even more so
you still look like the saddest girl in town

How much time has gone by
since those first mistakes
in the question in your look?

The city yelled
and damned our names
young promises,
no, we didn't have anything

Leaving in the arcades
the echos of your whispers,
looking for any dark corner,
"hold my hand
for I am afraid of the future",
and behind every escape, there was you.

In the empty nights in which I return,
alone and wounded,
I still regret
pushing you so away from me

And now that I find you again
I see that it still burns
that flame that you lighted in me, never
it's never too late
to be reborned
to love you

I must say something to you
before you get off
this dirty wagon,
leaving me here to die.

Look into your eyes
and maybe remind you
that before we gave up
we were eternal

I get up, decided, and I walk towards you
and something in my chest tenses,
brakes.

"How are you? how long has it been!
Do you remember me?"

and a timid smile replies

"I beg your pardon, but I think you are mistaken"
"Pardon me Miss
you remind me so much
of a woman I knew some years ago"

And older and more tired
I return to my seat
Bored, I watch the faces
of the travelers
Colleagues in the routine, and in the yawning.

Fned.

Bali - Chillies!!!

2009-11-14T05:00:00.001Z

One thing that I really loved about traveling in Asia was that I found people in that region feel about chile (as in hot food) kindda in the same way mexicans do.

This is something I've never gotten used to while living in France. I find it's really hard for french people to understand that chile for us is not simply a question about food being hot or burning your tongue or giving a spicy flavor to your meal, it goes way beyond that. Chile in Mexico is considered an important, if not central, element in the mexican cuisine repertoire and the only way I've found I can explain this to the French is by comparing it to the way they feel about their cheese.

Which of course shocks them.

But when I spoke to Balinese and Cambodians and Singaporians and Indonesians and even Indians (although their type of "hot" comes more from spices than from chilies, which might seem the same to you, but is a whole different matter for us!) all of them really understood what I mean. That chile for us is not simply a matter of green or red peppers.

There are literally several hundreds of types of chile peppers in Mexico, each one with a different consistency, color, shape and of course flavor. There are so many different ways to cook them and prepare them and eat them that to this day, whenever I go back home at some point I usually come upon types of peppers I've never heard about before.

Like with any other food item with such a wide variety, chiles have quality rankings, traditional combination rules and preparation methods. It might seem to you that the red hot sauce that is served with your burrito is a relatively simple blend of tomato, chilies and lesser important ingredients. To us, it will make all the difference to our taste buds weather that sauce is made from chile Guajillo, chile Ancho or chile Pasilla.

Be it used fresh, dried, dehidrated, in powder, from a can or in perseves.... each type has its use or particular dish and I love that about our cuisine!! I might be in the mood for a few scoops of Pico de gallo (made with fresh small green serrano chillies) with my quesadilla but not for Salsa Macha (made with dried and fried chile de arbol seco)... Chilaquiles made with fresh Habaneros will just taste completely OFF for me, while a cebuche with chunks of can jalapeno chilies will make for a poor dish. Fresh jicamas sprinkled with dry chile piquin is an absolute delight but mango drowned in Valentina sauce tastes aweful (and this coming from a mega Valentina fan).

Anyway, you get the idea.

Although Bali isn't exactly like that as far as I could tell (by which I mean chile is not the central part of most traditional dishes) it is an important ingredient in their cuisine.

Walking in the market I came accross several different types of peppers ranging in sizes, colors and from what I could smell (to the astonished eyes of the vendors), flavors. Several dishes I tasted throughout the trip made me realize that different peppers were used in different dishes which brought on a whole new level of respect for their cuisine... anyone who knows how to adequetly mix chillies into a dish to make the best out of each spicy and different flavor automatically gains the respect of this mexican.

It definetly made me long for a good bowl of Pipian or some Enmoladas or a couple of Tortas ahogadas or ... or.... or.....

Ahhhhhhhhhhh!! Great! Now I've gone and made myself hungry!! :(

Fned.

Some of my fave pics of our trip

2009-11-13T17:36:00.001Z

Y'all know that Hubby is the picture taker in our couple. He's the one with the eye for detail and the knowledge of how to avoid the sky coming out white in pictures.

But every once in a while, I find in the pics I take with my little camera images that bring a smile to my face and make me happy. Here are some from our recent trip to South East Asia.

Boats invading the coastline - Singapore

Palm Tree jungle - Cambodia

Opsie Daisy! - Bali

Three for the price of one - Cambodia

Dinner with friends - Singapore

Don't know where to even begin - Cambodia

My idea of paradise - Bali

The reflection of awesomness - Cambodia

These legs that have taken me places - Bali

Just another day at the office - Cambodia

Beauty times two - Bali

Toothy demon - Bali

Pretty wall - Bali

One of THOSE sunsets - Bali

Traditional vs Modern - Singapore

Bye (or Hi?) y'all! - Cambodia

... and if you want to check out Hubby's pics you can do so here!!!

Fned.

Chillin’ in Bali – Part II

2009-11-12T05:21:00.009Z

Ever since I read the book Eat Pray Love I’d wanted to go to Bali and more specifically to Ubud. I know, it sounds pretty lame to pick your vacation destination from a chick lit book, but I really was curious about what the small village perched up in the middle of rice paddies would be like.

And to be frank, I’m really glad I listened to my chick lit instincts.

Ubud is simply awesome… if Denpasar is the political and industrial capital of Bali, Ubud is definitely the cultural and artistic capital of Bali. The small village is wedged in between low slopes of green rice paddies and deep rivers coming down from the Bantur volcano up north of the island. Normally it would have taken us one hour to get from Nasa Dua to Ubud, but we asked our cab driver (yes, taxi’s are the easiest ways to get around the island in Bali) to stop at certain places along the road so that we could visit some of temples and sights. That is how we came to see the amazing Tanah Lot temple perched on a rocky island by the beach and the pretty Taman Ayun Mengwi temple with its 11 merus.

Tanah Lot - when the tide rises, the temple sits as a completely separate island!

Temples in Bali are pretty tricky to photograph -
they tend to be spread out over several different structures

By the time we got to Ubud it was late afternoon and so we set about to visit the village. Even though I hadn’t imagined it quite that way from the Eat Pray Love book, I was expecting to find it an animated place, and that’s exactly how Ubud feels. There is plenty to visit in town and nearby and the quality of the museums and antique galleries is quite good. There is also a very interesting handcrafts market downtown and several art galleries, good restaurants, shops and boutiques on the main streets of Ubud which makes it a place you can definitely stay in for while.

Ubud - Village wedged in between rice paddies and monkey jungle

These things announce a temple ceremony in the villages -
In Bali, there is always a temple ceremony going on somewhere

Street in Ubud

Main drag in Ubud

Hands down though, my favorite part about the village were the rice fields. We set out early the next morning and it turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip. We walked through the rice paddies for almost 6 hours and never got tired of it. Long strips of land covered in green, velvety, lush rice grass, little water canals running along each parcel, some even filled with ducks, beautiful palm trees on the side of the road and basically a non-stop feeling of nature and peace all around.

Long velvety rice paddies

Duckies enjoying a swim in drowned ride paddy

Hubby with all his gear

As if that wasn’t good enough, just when we were starting to feel hungry by midday we came across a little organic restaurant set up in the middle of the fields right on our path! The tables were set up under an open gazebo sort of structure and all faced the rice paddies. The food was delicious; quite honestly I’ve never really gotten into the whole “organic food” wave thing but I have to say, the lettuce in my salad that day definitely made me consider going “bio” as they call it here in France.

Needless to say, Hubby and I spent a very agreeable afternoon that day.

Fned.

Chillin' in Bali - Part I

2009-11-11T12:54:00.002Z

We're back in Paris now and are in great risk of getting the vacation blues, so I'm posting this which I'd drafted out while we still in Bali and added the pics from our trip. Here's hoping it keeps our spirits up long enough to to make it to the weekend!

****

So we landed in Bali.

After a somewhat frustrating two hours getting past customs at the airport (very slooooooooow lines to get your passport stamped) we finally walked out of the air conditioned airport and out into the warm Balinese evening night.

Our first stop was Nusa Dua in the south eastern tip of the island. This is an exclusive resort beach town lined with five star hotel after five star hotel. Under ordinary circumstances, Hubby and I would have never even thought of setting foot in a place like this, we tend to stay away from anything with the word resort in it when we travel. But we'd been feeling so exhausted back in Paris when we were planning this trip that we decided we'd do something we'd never done before: start out our vacations with three days of doing absolutely nothing but lounge by a pool or lay flat on our backs on a warm sandy beach before hitting the road... and from what we could see of Nusa Dua, it seemed like a great place to do just that.

All I can say is thank God for TripAdvisor and Hubby's knack at finding great deals on the internet, because thanks to this, we were able to book a room in the amazing Laguna Resort Hotel in which rooms typically run in the hundreds of dollars per night price range, but for which Hubby was able to get us a room for the price of an Ibis standard hotel room in Paris.

So picture us parking our sorry, tired-out, white-as-an-aspirin butts along the side of this:

Yeah, you get it. We were in absolute paradise. I'd never been to a high class hotel before and at first I have to say I felt a little guilty. When I was growing up my parents never took us to beach resort towns, and in the very rare times they did (like that time we went to Padre Island in Texas, remember mom?), we never ever stayed in hotels (let alone resort hotels)... it was always a tent or the camper vans for us. Even now, when Hubby and I travel, we usually tend to pick our accommodations in terms of where they are situated on the map instead of the size of their pool.

So staying in a place like this felt a little strange for me at first. It just seemed so... so..... so too much! This place had not only one pool, it had 8! Plus the beach. It had an amazing state-of-the-art fitness center with the fanciest machines I've ever seen, 5 restaurants so we almost never ate at the same place, spa facilities, hundreds of beach beds (so you always, always found one free) and endless other perks. I have to admit, after my initial hesitation I quickly got used to the place, especially the free towels thing. Hands down, the best thing for me was the small hut in the middle of the complex where you could just go and pick up a clean towel whenever you needed one, meaning you never had to think about taking one with you be it to the beach or to the pool. So you could just lounge around in your bathing suit all day long and dip in the pool or the beach whenever you felt like it without having to walk around with your towel under your arm all day long or run back to your room to hang it once it was wet. Now that's luxury people!! (am I a snob or what?)

In case you're wondering, we did step out of the hotel in those three days..... once.

We went down to Uluwatu to visit the amazing Pura Luhur temple, perched high up on a cliff and crawling with monkeys and tourists (I preferred the monkeys).

While we were there, we took in a Kecak dance, which even though we had no idea what was in store for us when we bought the tickets, it turned out to be one of the most amazing shows we'd ever seen. About 50 dancers perform a sort of trance chant while dancers dressed in amazing costumes perform an episode from the Ramayana (the hindu epic story) with the gorgeous sunset over the sea as a backdrop. One word: UhMazing!!

By the time we were ready to leave the Laguna Beach Resort, we'd gotten our mojo back; we felt relaxed, rested and ready to hit the road - even our sickly Parisian pale skin had turned a somewhat nicer (though still a bit embarrassing) shade of pink.

Next stop on our itinerary: the inland village of Ubud.

Fned.

Going back

2009-11-10T05:32:00.001Z

So this is it... the end of our vacations.

We fly back to Paris this evening and quite honestly I am NOT looking forward to this... no matter what Dorothy and her "home sweet home" thing says.

I am NOT looking forward to getting back on that scale and realizing that in 2 and a half weeks I gained all the weight it took me four miserable months to drop.

I am NOT looking forward to going back to the office and dealing with 2 and a half weeks worth of piled up work, plus having to land with my feet running in order to be able to take on what are going to be extremely stressful few weeks as we prepare to move offices, close our budget exercise, finish the compensation season and meet our project end-of-year deadlines.

I am NOT looking forward to logging on to our bank account and realizing that a great chunk of our savings have magically dissapeared (even though we have the tans to remind us of where the money went)

and I am NOT looking forward to the grey, cold, rainy, short-days weather of Paris, after spending 2 and a half glorious weeks in shining, sparkling, warm, sunny Asia.

Arrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg!!!!!!!!

Fned.

S'pore - The Asian Eldorado

2009-11-06T00:51:00.000Z

When our good friends Nico and Aya told us they were moving to Singapore three years ago, we thought they were crazy. After all, they had an amazing flat in London, were both happy and succesful in their jobs and most importantly, they were only a 2 and a half hour train ride away from us! What could they possibly want in Singapore? And
where the hell is Singapore to begin with!?

We were really sad to see them go and grumply promised we would go visit them soon.

Three years and a baby (theirs) later, we made good on that promise and we now get why they made the choice they made. Singapore is an amazing country to live in.

Lets begin with the fact that the city of Singapore is an incredible melting pot. 80%of the population is of either Chinese or Indian descent but English is the predominent language and everybody is perfectly fluent. Good thing too because the remaining 20% population is Expat, making Singapore an incredible mix of Eastern and Western culture.

Of course you could describe Singapore as Modern and you couldn't be more right about that. Everything about the city is as state of the art as you'd find in any other major capital of the world; shopping malls galore, amazing sky scrapper business buildings, efficient public transportation, clean parks and roads, and an endless (and I really DO mean never ending) choice of restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs,
etc with as much a quality as you'd find in Paris, London, New York, Tokyo or Mexico City (I just had to throw that in).

But as an added value, Singapore is also safe. Crime is so low, a mugging on the street (if it ever happened) would probably spike the national statistics rate and drug trafficking is punishable by death(which yes, is a little too extreme if you ask me, but then again, I don't do or deal drugs so I admit I don't feel that concerned) which probably contributes to the peace and calm of the country.

Singapore is also very very clean. As an example, chewing gum was unofficially banned (no store sells it) in an effort to keep sidewalks clean and it works too! Streets are sparkling clean. And yes, you can chew gum in Singapore but you'll get a hefty fine (in the thousands of $$) if you're caught spitting it on the sidewalk.

This might all seem a little too totalitarian at a far glance, but it's not that way at all, I guarantee you. People in Singapore live a good life. There's jobs for everyone, schools are safe for kids, hospitals are top notch, there's a great cultural scene and plenty of nature things to do (in the city or around the country). Plus, traveling to all of Asia is really simple thanks to Singapore's central location and to an efficient and affordable air transport system. Weekends in Phuket or Bali or holidays backpacking in Thailand or Hawai or four-day breaks in Tokyo or Hong Kong or common things for people living here.

And then there is every day life for Singaporians. Living conditions are way better and more comfortable than in other major capitols. Yes, space, like in any other major capital is expensive, but take Nico and Aya's apartment for instance, it's a nice, spacious bright three bedroom, two bathroom, two balcony apt located in a modern complex equipped with underground parking, huge private swimming pool and fitness center, two out door jacuzzies and BBQ pits. Plus, their place is a 10 minute walk from Nico's office and a 15 min drive from Aya's. And from what they tell us, most of these features are the bare minimum in most apartment buildings here!

So what's the catch you ask? Cuz, lets face it, there's gotta be a catch right? No way a place like this can exist without people swimming over the ocean to try to desperately reach it, n'est-ce pas?

Well, a far as I can see there are only three downsides to living in Singapore. One is the weather, average 30C all yeah with a lot of humidity, which makes A/C a must. I don't dig A/C.

The other is of course the remoteness. 7 hour time difference with Europe, 12h with America. That's a very big amount of time difference.

And the third is that vile thing they call Durian. It's a fruit people eat here that has such a strong smell you really can't miss it. Hubby had a try one night and in the eight years I've known him this was the very first time I saw him spit something out of his mouth (and he's tried Carnitas!!). I didn't get near the thing enough to try it, a wiff of the smell was enough to make me hold my breath until the waitress came to take the plate away. I'm guessing Durian is the secret weapon Singaporians use to keep imigrations levels reasonable here.

Fned.

Sent from my iPhone

Bali - The off season

2009-11-05T04:36:00.000Z

"What?! You guys are going to South East Asia end of October, beginning November?!!!

"Uhm..... yeah. Why?"

"Are you crazy? Don't you know it's the beginning of the rainy season over there? You guys are going to spend your vacations soaking wet - I'd pack a rain coat instead of my bikini if I were you"

It's true that all the guide books warn travelers against coming to this region between Oct and March - the "mouson" (rainy season) can really put a damper on your vacations - ha ha. But it was too late for us, we booked our tickets BEFORE reading the guide books (we tend to be morons like that, remember Golden Week in Japan?), so all we could do was resignly shrug our shoulders and pack our raincoats... AND our bathing suits.

It has to be said, there are actually many positives about traveling in the off season. Obviously, prices everywhere are so much cheaper. We were able to find hotel rooms in top hotels for less than what a cheap hotel in Paris costs - no matter the season. This is how we came to stay in a five star hotel resort in Nasa Dua, an amazing villa-like room in the middle of the rice paddies in Ubud, a luxurious bungalow on the beach in Candi Dasa and a pretty colonial hotel in Siem Reap. All of these places are normally out of our price range, but because of the potential "sucky weather" situation, they suddenly ran in the European Youth Hostel price range, meaning, affordable for us.

Traveling in the off season also means we were mosty alone. Of course, this is nice when you're visiting sites that typically make Disneyworld in the summer look empty; all of a sudden you're all alone to watch the Tanah Loth temple at sunset from the front row, or explore Ta Prohm without pesky tourists queing to take their picture in front of the tree that was in the Lara Craft Tomb Raider movie or reach the top of the Angkor temple without running the risk of being accidentally bumped over the edge due to an overcrowd.

It sure is nice to get the first row on the plane and virtually no lines at the airport and almost any at the post office when you're buying stamps. It's so cool that all your pictures come out "tourist-head free" and that shops have no lines at the check-out counter.

And it's ultra mega totally awesome to have the hotel's swimming pool all to yourself. Every day. At any time of the day. Or night.

But of course the flipside to all this means you better be prepared to become the center of attention of a hungry tourism industry, which is the case during the offseason.

And trust me, this can get overwhelming. Like when you go out to eat dinner at a restaurant and you're the only table in the entire place - that can be pretty creepy... or gloomy. Hubby and I found ourselves in this case several times throughout the trip and it just felt weird. It doesn't help either that in these cases the entire waiter staff will stop by your table every five minutes to check that everything is going well with your meal, refill your bread basket, take away finished plates (and sometimes UNfinished!), ask if you want more butter, etc. Call it EXTRA good service, but frankly I could do without most of this - or maybe I'm just too used to French waiters who blantly ignore you until you desperately tackle them on their way to the kitchen in order to get your check.

Still in the 'alone in the restaurant' example, the thing that irked me the most is that everytime you take a sip from your drink a waiter pops out of nowhere to refill your glass from that beer can that's sitting only a few inches away from your hand and which you are perfectly capable of reaching yourself. That's very nice of them (although Hubby says this is done mainly to hurry you up finishing your drink so you'll order another one) but quite frankly it irked me to no end. I eventually started waiving the use of a glass alltogether and simply drinking directly out of the can/bottle, which is not very classy I know, but at least we got some sort of peace in that respect.

Being a single walking-target in places that are used to receiving thousands of foreigners in the high season meant we got ambushed twice as much due to lack of other potential customers; from the endless taxi drivers that line the streets of Ubud yelling at you to take them (even though you just said no thanks to the guy right next to them), to the lady that follows you all around the shop suggesting you buy this and that and that and that (even though you just told her "we're just looking").

So yeah, traveling in the off season can be a really good option though tiring at times. It all depends on your tolerance level and the amount of "calm" you're looking to get from your vacation.

And in case you're wondering, those raincoats have stayed at the bottom of our bags the entire trip so far. Can't say the same about the bikini though. ;D

Fned.

Sent from my iPhone

Cambodia - The joke is on me

2009-11-04T01:42:00.000Z

"Buy from me lady! Buy from meeeeee!!!"

"Lady! You wanna buy magnet? Common lady, only two dollars - two dollars for magnet lady, okay, three for one dollar - common lady"

"Scarfs! Real cambodian silk scarfs, common lady, buy me a scarf, one for two dollars"

By the time the shy little boy comes up to me, I'm sick of being ambushed all day long at the entries and exits of all the temples with practiced sentences in English ('wanna buy', 'only one dollar', 'where you from', 'please lady')....

"Where you from lady?" he asks as I'm mounting the tuk-tuk. He's no older than 6 years old.

"Mexico" I snap back. I've found it's easier to get away by saying you're from a country they rarely hear of (mexicans are not renknown world travelers) rather than mentioning more common places like France or the US.

"I have coin from mexico lady" he tells me just as quickly. Hubby and I both can't help raising our eyebrows as we watch him dig in his short pockets.

Out pops a five peso coin from his pocket which he hold out to me and with the most serious business face I've ever seen plastered on a six year old he tells me "It no work here. can you change?"

I close my mouth which has been hanging wide open and now it's my turn to dig in my pockets.

"how many languages do you speak lady?" he asks me while I'm digging. I manage to croak "Three; French, English and Spanish" I finish as I point to the coin in his hands. Then I feel stupid because I get the strange feeling he already knows they speak spanish in Mexico. "And
you?" I ask.

He cracks a twisted silent smile which something tells me means "wouldn't you like to know!"

As I pull out the bill from my short pockets I feel I better check with him first. "is it okay if I give you a dollar for your five pesos?" I ask. He considers this for a second and then nods a quick,
"it's a deal" nod and hands over the coin.

I watch him run away from the tuk-tuk. Then I turn to look down at the most expensive five peso coin in history in my hans and I can't help it.

Damn! I really deserved that wake up call.

Fned.

Sent from my iPhone

Cambodia - Tourist traps

2009-11-03T00:39:00.003Z

So we're in Cambodia today (I know, these posts aren't coming out in chronoligical order - sorry!) and Hubby says to me "Imagine that in a thousand years Paris looks exactly like this?"

We arrived in Siem Reap this morning and headed straight to the world famous Angkor ruins. Located in a dense jungle, this awe-inspiring temple complex is so huge and so amazing and so incredible that you better buy a three day pass mininum because any time less spent here simply wont be enough to cover the very basics.

So there we were, walking around the Ta Prohm temple which is perhaps the most mysterious of all the temple structures of Angkor. From what we gather, when the european archeological team that discovered Angkor in the mid 20th century came upon Ta Pohm, they decided to leave this immense temple exactly as they found it - no restoration at all- as testimony of how Angkor looked when it was rediscovered and unburied.

So basically you've got half crooked buildings barely standing in the middle of the jungle, invaded by gigantic trees with larger-than- houses-apparent roots and vegetation claiming possesion of the ruins, huge blocks of delicately hand-carved stone resting in the exact same position where they fell off and laying there for centuries... Really, Ta Pohm is what REAL ruins are all about, not that Disneyland cleaned- up-nicely-for-the-tourists feeling you get at places like say Chichen Itzá or the Alhambra.

But back to my story; Hubby turns to me and says "what if in 1000 years this is Paris?", and you know what? I don't find that idea so far fetched. If there's one thing I've learned from traveling is that no single dynasty has ever succeeded in LASTING.

Jerusalem, Venice, Constantinople, the Edo empire in Japan, Rome,The Catholic Spanish Kings, Napoleon, the Ottoman empire, the greeks, the roman, the persians, the aztecs, the incas, the british, the egyptian, the dinosours.... no powerful capital, no invincible people, no unbeattable king, emperor or governor has ever managed to beat that single most powerful force in the entire universe: changing times.

For hundreds of years, the Khmer Empire stood as the single most powerful empire in all of South Asia. Angkor and its mind boggling temples are living testimony of that power and yet, here they stand, centuries later, ruined and abandoned, subjected to the ridicule of 40$-three-day-passes and never ending tourist buses dumping their cargo at the foot of what was once home to the most magnificent, powerful, mythical civilization in the continent.

Changing times, shifting powers, erosion of forces, unbalanced weights.... if those past dynasties which lasted decades, centuries, sometimes even a millenia, if even them were defeated and overpowered at some point in time, what makes us so confident that the powerful dynasties of today, the ruling countries, the developped civilizations, the invincible political structures of this age and time.... what makes us so absolutely certain that they wont become the tourist attractions of tomorrow?

Fned.
Sent from my iPhone

Bali - Post cards

2009-11-02T02:24:00.008Z

Hubby took the picture below of me one night while we were having dinner in a small restaurant in Ubud. We had just finished ordering and were waiting for our drinks when I took out a few post cards, the stamps I'd stood in line for 45 minutes to buy earlier that day and my faithful pen I always carry in my traveling bag for filling out custom forms and writting postcards.

As I sat there scribbling, Hubby suddenly whipped out his camera and started snapping away. Usually, it annoys him when I go into what he calls my "mariposeando" mode -when I tend to shut down and drift away into my own little bubble world and he feels ignored- and I do tend to go into this particular mode when I start on my post cards, but this time he caught that magic instant for me on .jpeg and I'm glad he did.

There is something so soothing I find in sending post cards. It's as if they become the link between my two realities, the one I am living in that instant, in that foreign place far far away and that doesnt even seem all that "real" to me and the reality I'll be slipping back into when I return home.

Does it seem stupid that I can spend long interminable (for Hubby) minutes browsing at rows and rows of postcards in souvenir shops until I find the ones that seem exactly "right" to me? The right image, the right caption (or no text at all), the right quality of carton towrite on the back, and of course the right memory that that particular card will bring up when I receive it in my mail box weeks afterwards.

I love the stamps too, you know. It's corny, but I find stamps are a beautiful thing and I always buy an extra one to stick in my traveling journal with the date and the place of where I got it. I find stamps are miniature pieces of art and maps and kodak instants and calendars and proof of having been somewhere all rolled up into one little 4x4cm piece of unpretentious raggedly trimmed paper. The stamp of the post canceling the stamp makes it even better, more precious.... proof that we really were there.

As for what I actually write on those post cards... it seems funny to admit it, but I never put too much thought into it. Sometimes it will be something trivial like the weather we're having or the things we did on that particular day, sometime it will be more about a feeling or a thought that happened to come upon me while I was "mariposeando". I seldom write really "profound thoughts" (or so they may seem to me) - that's what my traveling journal is for. You see, the post card itself is the captured instant, the frozen memory I will cherish and look back to in the years afterwards... the words sometime only serve as added decoration.

Sometimes I get Hubby to add a line or two at the bottom of the card as well, he likes to write silly things like "Mullets are tha bomb!" (Chile) or "Caution! Stay the f*** away from the
Durian!" (Bali) but that will invariably makes us giggle when we receive the card later. I like it when he does this. He captures those wacky moments of a trip that can't be properly translated on paper, or blog post or picture.

As I insert postcards into mailboxes or drop them off at post offices I always wonder if they'll make it home before us or if they'll take their time and arrive months afterwards, bringing back a tinggy feeling of adventure into the ordinary same-old that invariably sets in a few weeks after coming home from a trip. I know that the time it takes for a postcard to arrive to its destination is usually a sign of the efficiency of that country's postal service (and you'd be surprised which countries are more "efficient" than others!), but that doesn't matter to me really.

Either way, be it early or late, the presence of a post card in our mailbox always brings a smile to my face and a sence of bewilderment of how far away we've traveled.

Fned.
Sent from my iPhone

NaBloPoMo

2009-11-01T03:14:00.001Z

I just saw that Emily over at Don't call me Gringa is doing NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and her post made me want to try it out too. The challenge is to post a blog a day for the next month and I think it's a great idea.

I also think this might be the best way for me to get back into the rythim of blogging, which yes, I have been majorly slacking off these past few months.

I have to say this sudden motivation is probably also the result of the vacations Hubby and I are currently taking is South East Asia. I'm pretty sure the soft waves crashing against the shore only a few meters away and the high full moon shining over us and the tasty cocktail with the pretty rim umbrella made out of cut out watermellon sitting next to me while I look out into the dark night from the small porch of our bungalow on the beach here in Bali probably all had a lot to do with the sudden inspiration I got struck with and with the knee jerk reaction I got to write down the subjects for at least 15 blog posts to come.

Hey, I'm not saying they're all going to turn out to be good, in fact I'm pretty sure they'll mostly turn out to be lame, filled with typos and syntax mistakes (typing on an iPhone is no easy task!) but I wanna give it a try nonetheless.

Also, since we are currently traveling and have very limited access to WiFi I can't guarantee the actual posting a blog a day thing. I will be writing them though and posting whenever I can. When I get back to Paris I'll make sure to go back and fix all the dates and typos and links and pics and stuff (cuz, as you well know, I'm an obsessive compulsive freak when it comes to things like that).

So consider this post my November 1st first post for NaBloPoMo and stay tuned!!

Selamat Tingal
(balinese for "bye now")

Fned.
Sent from my iPhone

Bet you didn't know you could do THAT with a nylon string!

2009-09-26T19:48:00.006+01:00

Hubby and I were walking in Paris yesterday afternoon when in a narrow hidden street, off of the rue de Montorgeuil we suddenly walked past a little beauty salon with a sign of their services posted on the window next to another that said "sans RDV" (no appointment required). For some time now I had been trying to find a new place to get my eyebrows done ever since I found out my old beauty parlor went bankrupt and had to close over the summer and since this place looked nice and clean I figured what tha heck. I turned to Hubby and made a plan with him to meet him at a park around the corner in 20mins and then I walked in.

At the front counter was a young girl taking down a reservation over the phone and no one else to assist me, so I picked up their brochure and started going over the list of services once again while I waited for her to finish up her call. That's when I noticed that under the "sourcils" option (eyebrows) was another line that read "sourcils au fil" which roughly translated to "string eyebrows". This intrigued me as I'd never heard of such a thing and couldn't possibly imagine what it meant other that perhaps a particular look of plucked eyebrows that was so thin it made them look like strings... :s

After I finished reading the brochure for the third time I was starting to get impatient and I looked up at the girl to let her know that if she didn't hurry up I was going to leave... and that's when I noticed the string. Literally, a thin string of white thread was hanging out of her mouth all the way down until it was hidden behind the counter.... for the life of me I could not think of a single explanation for this (even though I admit several crazy possibilities did cross my mind) but it immediately freaked me out. She on the other hand didn't seem to find it weird, even though I was standing in front of her with my mouth open and my eyes glued to the string, she just kept talking on as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

It's not like the thing itself was weird... I mean after all, she could have been caught right in the middle of some mending work when the phone rang and the thread in her mouth was just a spontaneous reflex... but somehow that didn't seem plausible to me... especially since she didn't remove it after seeing my obvious incredulous reaction.

And then there was the enigmatic "sourcils au fil" thing... so was this somehow related to the string eyebrows thing??? If so.... how?!! ...... and eiw?

This was literally freaking me out and I was just on the point of turning around and leaving the shop when the back room door suddenly opened and a little man in his 50s came out and greeted me with a smile. Dang! Too late to bail.

I told him I was there to get my eyebrows plucked and when he confirmed that they could take me sans rdv I gathered up my courage and asked about the string eyebrows thing. By this time the girl on the phone had finally finished her call and gone back into the back room.

The man told me that the "sourcils" option was the classic procedure done with hot wax and the "sourcils au fil" was done with a nylon string...... Okkkkkaaaaayyyyy.... I kinda had that part figured out, thank you very much.... what I really wanted to know was how it was done with a string. I should add that the man had a really heavy accent and it was a little confusing to understand what he was saying but basically he explained that this was a very ancient hair removal method used for centuries by women in Nothern Africa and some parts of India. I still couldn't understand how exactly it was done so I asked the two questions that really mattered to me: did it hurt and were needles involved. At this he laughed and said no, no needles were involved and yes, it "piccotted" (pricked) a bit, but it remained very tolerable. Plus, this method was much less harsher on the skin than wax and the effects much more lasting.

Remembering how nervous I'd been all those years back when I'd first waxed my eyebrows only to realize it wasn't that big of a deal afterwards, I decided to give this string thing a go. Plus, I should admit that by now I had already started mapping out this blog post in my head! *smile*

I was shown to one of the several little back rooms with a long bed and mirrors hanging on all four walls. Candles and pretty flowers were carefully set around the room and a soothing music was playing in the background. The whole effect was quite lovely. As I settled on to the bed a young woman came into my room. She too had a lovely accent and a gentle voice. I told her this was my first time doing the "string" thing and she smiled gently and told she was from Tunisia and back home this was the most common facial hair removal method. She told me to relax and promised me she would give me "lovely eyebrows".

And then she put a string in her mouth.

Dear readers, I sincerely wish I could explain to you how this is done, but as soon as I saw that thread dangling from her lips over my head I shut my eyes and didn't opened them again until she told me it was over. I will say this: no needles were involved, it didn't hurt any more than conventional waxing does (which is to say it is quite tolerable) and it is the MOST freakish sensation EVER!!! I cannot rationally describe this sensation but the only thing that I can remotely associate it with is what I suppose having helicopter propellers yank the hair off my face might feel like.

In any case, I have since googled this procedure and learned that it is quite common, safe, successful and apparently it is even something you can learn how to do it yourself! If you're interested, I found this website with a lot of info although sorry it's only available in French. However, it does have a picture and even a video a the end where I suppose it shows what exactly is involved in the "stringing eyebrows" procedure (I confess I haven't watched the video yet - for some reason the dangling string thing really freaks me out).

As a final note, I confirm, she did give me very lovely eyebrows. =)

Fned.

Backlog Bloggin' - Dating Paris

2009-09-23T19:12:00.008+01:00

Awesome power couple Kyle and Seba came to Paris last week. They are currently travelling through Europe and going from random cities like Oslo to Galway, from Munich to Geneva…. from Milan to Brussels…. (man! it makes me eager to be on the road again!)

So last week they were in Paris and stayed with us for a few days. I’d met Kyle during our trip to Chile at the beginning of the year and was so looking forward to seeing her again and meeting her hubby whom I hadn’t had a change to meet in Santiago. She and Seba are incredibly talented photographers, specialized in weddings, and hands down, they are the absolute best at what they do (just check Kyle’s Flickr page if you don’t believe me). And Kyle is not only an amazing photographer; she is also an awesome blogger and a great observer of things which makes her blog one of my absolute favorites.

Needless to say, I was really looking forward to hearing her takes on Paris in particular and France in general.

Except, alas! Paris and she apparently didn’t “click” (no pun intended).

This is known to happen you know (I can hear all your frenchies out there gasping…. Yes Hubby…including YOU dear!) ‘cuz yes, Paris is not always the glamorous, chic, romantic, gorgeous city-gal she’s usually cracked up to be….

But somehow, in this case, I’m wondering if perhaps the zero-sparks situation between Kyle and Paris isn’t partly (or mainly?) our fault.

Usually, when people come to Paris for the first time they have all these expectations and pre-conceived notions about what the city should look / feel like. I can’t blame them… I had quite a bundle of these myself when I flew over the pond that first time. So of course, pressure is high on Paris to show off her best side in those first few instants the visitors set foot on her sidewalks (remember, you can never make a second first impression!). Even more so, considering chances are this is going to be more of a speed-dating sort of thing since most people wont be staying long enough to establish a mid/long term relationship with Paris.

This makes Hubby and I feel sort of sorry for her and so we try to give her a little hand whenever we can. Whenever friends stay over with us we tend to gently guide them to our favourite spots and preferred hangouts, our trusty restaurants and pretty parks, our favourite streets and beloved boutiques…. show them the good side of Paris and talk her up.

I’m not saying this is enough for love-at-first-sight sparks to start flying between you and Paris (believe me, she can be a tough cookie!) but usually it’s enough for people to get past that initial shock of discovering that not all Parisians are glamorous Dior-cladded individuals and that dog-pooh on the sidewalk is part of the scenery. Usually by the time they have registered this, the mood is somewhat set and we can gently let go of our friends’ hands allowing them to go on that first unsupervised blind-date with Paris as we watch from the sidelines, like anxious parents seeing their offspring go to prom for the first time, with nothing else left to do except stay up and wait for them to come back, crossing our fingers that Paris will turn on the charm during the date.

Only this time, Hubby and I unfortunately weren’t able to buffer up that first impression. Unbeknown to Kyle and Seba (or to us!) it turned out that their arrival coincided with what turned out to be one of our busiest weeks at work. I was so frustrated that I had to work late most of the nights and even attend a stupid two-day seminar away from home, instead of being able to spend that time hanging out with them. That's not to say we didn't spend time with them... we did and an awesome time it was too! K & S are two of the coolest, nicest and funniest people we know and I'm really glad we got to get to know them a little better this time.

But because most of this hanging out time was done from the comfy cushions of our living room sofa in the after hours of those awful work days, I feel like we flaked out on Paris and let them go on that first blind-date with her without adequately prepping them for the occasion. We forgot to tell them that yes, Paris is magnificent under the claire de lune but that if she’s standing under bad lighting you will see her pimples. And yes, she can be a little self-absorbed (she tends to think she’s the most beautiful city in the world) but it isn’t anything intolerable. And yes, her bad temper and impatient attitude can get on your nerves at first and she tends to be a little touchy when it comes to her mother tongue…. But…… but…….

but if you’re able to see past all that…. If you give her a chance, you’ll see that it’s all part of an act she puts on. At some point she must have grown tired of all the attention, the flattery, the unreachable expectations to always be perfect, lovely, gorgeous, chic… She must have grown weary of it all and decided she was going to rebel.. to show off her less attractive side, her cheap cafés and dirty buildings, her rude Parisians and annoying tourists, her bad service and awful weather… like a 12 year old sticking her tongue out the moment her father’s boss is invited over for dinner, Paris decided she wasn’t going to put up with being just another “pretty face” for everyone to come over, take a picture of and dump her just as quickly. No, from now on, if you wanted to love Paris, you were going to have to get to know Paris.

I’m not trying to elevate Paris to ethereal-city status; I’m pretty ready to dump her myself… I’ve grown tired of her childish behaviour in recent years.

But I can’t be unjust towards her. She is a mighty gorgeous Madame once you get to know her.

All photos: Hubby

Fned.

Backlog Bloggin' - The Parisienne

2009-09-19T12:59:00.009+01:00

post I should have posted on Sept 13th.

So I did it. I ran The Parisienne today and I'm really happy I made it to the finish line.

I have to admit that even though I'd decided to run it over a year ago, I didn't start training for it until the end of June and didn't actually sign up to run until end of July!

That's why I say I'm happy I made it to the finish line, because three months before I wasn't even sure I'd make it to the start line!!

I was under the impression that the race was 12km long and I was in such bad shape that the first time I went to the gym I was only able to run 4 km in 45 mins at a very slow speed. I knew I would never make it through 12km of outdoor running in this condition. So I decided I wouldn't sign up until I was able to run at least 3/4ers of the distance. I started to hit the gym after work four times a week and with each passing week I'd add either time or speed to the treadmill; all the time not having yet made up my mind to run or not. Slowly but surely I got my endurance up and by beginning of August I was able to run between 8km and 8.5km in under an hour four times a week. I'd also lost a couple of kilos along the way which as you an imagine was an extra incentive to keep on going. So on the last night before inscriptions were closed, I logged on to the Parisienne website and signed up to run.

And that's when I found out that the race was actually a 6km race !

I have to admit I was a little disappointed at this. I had been wanting to test myself and see if I was able to run a distance I'd yet to reach in my training. Now I was sure I was going to make it to the finish line and somehow the "challenge" didn't seem such a great one anymore. So I stopped training for a week. That's right. I'm a flake.

But something funny happened during that week. I missed working out.

Somewhere along the line, I'd become addicted to those miserable 50 and so minutes where nothing else matters, only the pounding of my feet on the treadmill and the music blasting in my ears and my eyes firmly set upon my own eyes reflected in the mirror in front of me, edging them to go on and on. I never got any side pains anymore as I used to when I'd started out, nor did my legs hurt after 30mins, nor did my body feel jiggly when running and all of these changes somehow told me that all this was about so much more than simply running a stupid race. It was about me. Something inside was changing and it felt so much better.

I hadn't even noticed that I didn't feel sad or depressed anymore until Hubby commented on this one day. I didn't notice that I had switched my (daily six-pack) diet coke addition for bottled water until I opened the fridge in my office one morning and noticed all the stock-up cans I hadn't touched in weeks. I hadn't even noticed that I was loosing weight until the day laundry hadn't been done chez Fned's and I pulled out the last pair of clean pants I had left from the back of my closet which tended to cling unflatteringly to my waist and butt (hence the back of the closet thing) and suddenly they weren't so... clingy!

So what if the race wasn't going to be the grand challenge I'd been wanting it to be? By then I knew I was doing this no longer just for the race. I was doing this for myself and the 3rd decade of my life in which I was now entering. So I went back and kept training. I decided I wanted to finish the face in under 45 mins - which yes, is not such an awesome time considering I was already running 8km in 50 mins, but I'd been training exclusively indoors and wasn't sure what it was going to be like to run on cobble-stoned streets with hills and sidewalks and stuff like that so I decided to give myself some leeway.

My last apprehension was the NY trip. Travelling/Vacations usually tend to disrupt any routine for me (as I've often blogged about in the past) and this trip was happening the week before the race. Fortunetly enough, our hotel had a fitness center and I was able to keep up my 4 times a week routine in addition to all the walking and sightseeing Hubby and I did while there. As a side note I have to add that you know you're in Manhattan when your treadmill has enough knobs and buttons and screens that it looks like a Nasa command centre instead of simple exercise equipment!!

So I made it to the Parisienne's starting line and I made it to the finish line as well. I'm so happy and proud of myself because somehow deep inside me I feel like the real challenge started way before I hit the starting line.

Fned.

My times: 6Kms: 00:37:07 mins
3,194th place / 14,850 arrivals to the finish line

The "Village de la Parisienne" was packed!

The general "vibe" of the place was awesome!!

Can you believe our "starting line" mark?

17,000 of us ladies ran that day!!

And we're off!!

"You shall not pass!"

"WANNA BET KID?!!"

Can you spot Fned?

Yay! The Finsh Line!

All pics: Hubby.

Backlog Bloggin' - The end of the NYC trip

2009-09-18T19:33:00.009+01:00

Thoughts going on in my mind around Sept 5th:

The trip to NYC is coming to an end. After 6 incredible days of walking all over town, Hubby and I are finally on our way back home after a pit stop in Milwaukee to attend Hubby's Best Man's wedding.

As I sit in the cabin, waiting for the plane to take off I already start to think of the standard answer I'm going to give everyone back at the office when they ask me how I liked New York: "It was awesome... I could move there tomorrow!!".....

.... because, really? What else can you say about a city like New York? In the six days Hubby and I spent there we know that we only got to see the tip of the iceberg. The city is like a dormant beast with so many things to be discovered. We walked and ate and shopped and museum-visited, and park-strolled and roof-garden hopped, and celebrity-spied like there was no tomorrow and yet we both agree we didn't get to see a tenth of what the city has to offer....

.......

.....................

..........................................

And yet, deep down inside, as I look out the cabin window, I hear that voice inside of me asking, very clearly and yet very annoyingly, "but, wait, if you did live there, how would your life be any different than it is now?"

As I was walking in that amazing city time and again I couldn't help asking myself over and over again in which way my life would change in regards to our current life in Paris. I know, it's pretty simplistic to compare both cities when obviously the vibe of each is so totally different. Yet, the "vibe of a city" isn't usually what Hubby and I pick up on. In a way Hubby and I don't really take advantage of living in a city like Paris and therefore, we'd probably wouldn't take advantage of living in a city like New York either. We don't go out to party every night, we don't meet up with 200 different friends every night for dinner, we don't go to gallery inaugurations or club openings, we rarely remember to go to the theater once in a while and seldom check out outdoor concerts or spectacles. We do movies quite often though.

So what is left? Our day to day lifestyle.... and how would that change?

As I walked around Wall Street and watched all those power men and women rush their way towards and from offices, grab a quick sandwich to wolf down while checking their BlackBerry, struggle with briefcases and high heels, I felt as if all I needed to do was grab any stupid old suit currently hanging in my own closet back home and I would be able to fade into the crowd. The familiarity with the entire scene made me almost certain that at any moment I was going to bump into someone I knew.

As I walked in the awesome East side and Greenwitch neighborhoods and watched all the cute wacky cafes and cool chic artsy restaurants, I felt like putting on the jeans and ballerinas I usually wear to go brunch at the Marais or in the Saint Germain quartiers in Paris during the weekends and I was sure I would totally blend in with the crowd. I could see myself already sitting at one of those terrasses, like I do back home, sipping my Perrier while Hubby and I people-watch or chat about how our week had gone.

I know already that if we lived in NY I would rarely go to Madison Avenue or Park ave just as I rarely walk on the Avenue Montaigne in Paris.... certain high ends streets simply intimidate me to the point I feel uncomfortable even walking on the sidewalk..... just as other high end streets like the Champs Elysées and Fifth Ave feel ok thanks to all the tourists that, to the stores' utter horror, brazenly cross the thresholds of such luxury names like Louis Vuitton and Tiffany's & Co wearing New Balance sneakers and carrying the Gap and Zara carrier bags.

Hubby doesn't agree with me on all this. He totally loved the city and thinks it would be a great place to move to if the opportunity presented itself. I can see why he says this. New York is to him what Paris was to me 8 years ago. A strange, exciting different place.. a different culture, a different language, a different country, a different lifestyle, a different food.... Different.

I loved New York. Seriously, I did. I know I could live there and I would probably be happy there. But it wouldn't be different to me. It didn't feel different to me at all. It felt the same as the US feels like to me every time I go back home.

It felt the same as Paris feels to me now.

Fned.

P.S. On the other hand, the 6 days we spent there were awesome and if you want to make up your own mind on weather you would like to live there or not, check out Hubby's pics at Got Light.

Thoughts on exploring New York

2009-09-01T07:24:00.001+01:00

Excerpts from my travel journal:

Aug 30th, 2009.
I'm not exactly sure of how I want to go about exploring New York. Sometimes I feel like I want to go and see all the famous spots that for years made me dream of one day coming here. I'm not only talking about the monuments, buildings, streets and museums, but also of all the TV locations, celebrity hangouts, legendary restaurants.....

But then I think, do I really want to spend what little time I have here chasing a dream?

After all, I never eat at Maxim's in Paris, rarely ever walk on the rue Montaigne and in all my years living there I've only been to the top of the Eiffel tower once.

Why not use my time here instead discovering what life would be like if I lived here and set about going/doing to the regular places/things I'd probably go/do in real life. Walk and explore neighborhoods where everyday life is happening (lined with schools, grocery marts, laundry shops, corner cafes...), eat at little unpretentious restaurants with an interesting menu instead of trying to get reservations at Nobu or Cipriani. Shopping at stores that don't make me stand in line 15 mins on the sidewalk before going in (Abrecombie & Fitch on 5th avenue in case you're interested).....Going to everyday places, walking on normal streets, eating at regular food joints... assume I am a local and as such, going to see the Friends' building corner and taking my picture in front of the Seinfeild deli would certainly not be part of my everyday activities....

But then again.... wouldn't pretending to live an everyday, regular life here also qualify as chasing a dream?

Aug 31st, 2009.
As I walk in New York, I keep being confronted with similarities between the city and Europe. This of course is nothing extraordinary considering the history of the foundation of the city, but I can't help having the same awkward feeling I had when we were in Santiago, earlier this year... as if I'm seeing things from a distant yet at the same time quite familiar point of view....

I can't put my finger on it exactly, but I can sort of feel it.... walking in certain neighborhoods with streets lined with what at first glance seem like typical London Victorian-styled houses and yet, upon closer inspection you notice the extensive use of steel and iron (stemming I suppose from the ''boom'' years in the early 20th century); the symmetrical, almost clean cut style in otherwise clearly influenced Haussmannian buildings; the way streets in the lower part of Manhattan are winding and criss-crossed as they are in Europe and yet as you go up north they become parallel and symmetrical... even the large buildings, not the modern skyscrapers of course, but the tall massive buildings you see sprinkled all around town, seem to suggest that their architects had been to Europe and come back to NY with the intention of creating buildings with all the elegant and fancy design worthy of a Piccadilly Circus or Avenue d'Opéra building and yet with cleaner lines, more precise, grander, taller, ..... more modern.

In this respect, New York feels to me like what modern Europe would probably look life if she had at one point decided to give in to Botox. It's as if New Yorkers decided that the city they wanted to build would be one that acknowledged all the beauty and elegance of their ancestor's home countries but at the same time clearly overcame the limitations and shortcomings that its predecessors hadn't been able to, betting instead on modernity, grandness and awe-inspiring.

Fned.

What's all the hype about?

2009-08-28T23:03:00.004+01:00

Blog post I started writing a couple of days ago... :

My metro pass buzzed this morning at the tourniquet.

Normally, this little thing doesn't make me look twice. It's simply a reminder that the end of the month is only a few days away and I should remember to recharge money into it.

But this morning, that buzz meant something else to me. It reminded me that I have 2 days left before I forever stop being a "twenty something".

Am I having a hard time accepting the fact that I turn 30 in a few days? I don't think so. I don't really see in what way my life will drastically change that would merit me worrying about it. I pretty much see and know where I'll be in the coming months.

And it can't be the number that bothers me either, as I was kindly reminded a few nights ago by Hubby, who in response to my whining about becoming a trentenaire simply snorted "didn't you know that that 30 is the new 20?" (I wonder how long he's been secretly reading Cosmo?).

So maybe it's peer pressure. Everyone makes such a big deal about crossing from one decade to another that I guess I'm expecting to see or feel fireworks.... except they aint commin'.....

I just don't feel different. I don't even feel the need to feel different. At first I'd thought that I would want to do something out of the ordinary to mark the occasion... that is why I signed up to run The Parisienne this year (which by the way, I am making good on my promise.. rendez-vous September 13th!!)...

But now I'm thinking... what tha heck? 30 is just another number, right?

... fast forward to tonight, as I sit here, 2 minutes till midnight and the end of "my twenties"...

So this is it... tomorrow (well, technically tonight minus 2 minutes) I'll cross the threshold and enter my third decade. I wish I felt something that made this instant seem all the more solemn than what it currently feels like: just another friday night with the exception that I should be going to bed since I have to be up in 4 hours for our flight to New York (and, as usual, still haven't packed), instead of staying up wikypeding "Queen Mary of Scots" out of sheer curiosity.

Today was a memorable day. My boss decided he wanted to organize a surprise (though technically not really a surprise, seeing as how I have access to all his emails) pot for my 30th. At noon, he marched into my office and summoned me out onto the open space where all my colleagues were waiting with champagne and tarte de chcolate. I hadn't expected so many people to show up, which made my heart swell but at the same time made it all the more awkward since I really have a hard time being in center stage. Furthermore, today was unfortunately the day I had to go and discover that I suck at speaking in public. My boss gave a really nice heartfelt speech about how in all our years working together (almost 5!) he has yet to see me once loose my temper and about how he was really happy about me changing jobs but at the same time sad to think that I will no longer be his P.A., etc, etc. I swear, at one point I was dangerously close to tears. And when he was finished, all I could mutter was an incredibly lame "thanks" and hide my beet colored face behind my hands in an Oscar-worthy performance of Bashful the Dwarf.

I swear, sometimes I'm amazed I've reached the age of 30!

So I guess my conclusion is : I didn't feel different about turning 30 two days ago when my metro pass buzzed, and I don't feel different about turning 30 two minutes shy from finally turn....

.....

oh........

..... wait a second.

I'm thirty already.

Crap.

Fned.

The best job in the world?

2009-08-22T21:57:00.004+01:00

I recently read an article in Vanity Fair written by the Secretary of Bernie Madoff on what it was like working for the biggest crook in history. It's a really interesting piece but I have to admit the article interested me not really because of the fraud issue, but mainly because of my curiosity of what it must have been like to hold an executive assistant job (as secretaries are usually referred to in France) at such a high level.

As I am at the brink of leaving my current E.A. job in a few weeks, I can't help feeling a pang of regret of moving "forward". It's not like I'm not happy that I have been promoted and that my management has recognized a potential in me and showed me their confidence in my abilities to do more than take messages and keep schedules - but the simple fact is I loved being an assistant. I really enjoyed it.

I guess it's probably my maternal side. These people needed me to "take care of them"... they depended on me to put order in their otherwise hectic schedules, shield them from useless or time consuming situations, bring to their attention important issues and basically rearrange their lives in order for them to be able to make the best out of their time and concentrate on the important tasks that their high level positions required of them.

My job was a discreet yet quite indispensable one and that suited me just fine. I remember my boss once telling me that the thing that stressed him the most, even more than the budget season or a client complaint, was my vacations. It seems pretty shallow to say this, but if ever there was an ego boost, that was it.

Another of the things I loved about this job is that it allowed me to know pretty much everyone in the organization. Usually, people working in different departments have their usual contacts and very seldom do they reach out beyond. But I needed to know pretty much everybody in order for me to be able to handle any type of situation that could arise and I liked being on friendly terms with everyone from the IT guy to the the logistics girl to the head of territory to the HR manager, etc. This will sadly no longer be the case when I start working in my new position as slowly but surely whenever I'll need something from a person outside of my "usual contacts", the procedure will be to ask the executive assistant to get it for me.

But the thing that stresses me more than I care to admit is the fact that now people will expect me to to "show off" more. As an E.A. it was part of my job description to not crave being in the spotlight which was fine by me. My work was evident without me having to scream out for people to notice it. When things went on smoothly, people knew that Fned had gotten the job done without me having to write up charts or pin point Key Performance Indicators. But all that will have to change once I start my new job and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I guess I was absent the day they taught "corporate shark techniques" at business school because I've simply never had a burning desire to push and shove my way up the corporate latter. But I've been working in the business long enough to see how it works and I know that once you've crossed over to the functional side, it's everyone for themselves. As an E.A. I never had to worry about this, nobody wanted my job and yet I had access to even the most confidential of issues in the company and a permanent access to the ear of the boss. Basically, I was always in the first row without having to stab anyone in the back to get there.

So am I happy that I'm moving forward? Yes, of course I am. Life would be much too boring if we stayed in our comfort zone all our life. We all need new challenges in life and I love learning new things. Also, it's no secret I've already been working on some projects from my new position for quite some time now and if I had to go back to "just" being an E.A. that wouldn't be so exciting either... so I guess I shouldn't be complaining.

But as I read Eleanor Squillari tell the story of her 25 year job as Bernie Madoff's secretary, I recognized a lot of her in myself and even smiled at a few passages in which her evident pride at the job flared up... I could relate to that sentiment and it made me ask myself if I wouldn't have rather enjoyed to continue along that path... (although hopefully never to end up working for another Madoff!).

Fned.

I wish....

2009-08-21T06:58:00.005+01:00

Usually when I travel, I often imagine what it would feel like to live in the place I’m visiting. How would I adjust to the different culture, the food, the traditions, the architecture, the weather, the fashion, the people, etc. “How would I adjust” being the key words.

This doesn’t happen to me in London.

I know full well that I would easily adjust to living in London. It’s such a melting pot city that the idea of not adjusting is simply ludicrous.

No, when I’m in London, I never wonder about how it would feel to adjust to the place. I wonder about how it would feel to belong to the place.

A few of the thoughts that came to my mind while I was walking in London this past weekend:

I wish I could walk into a Pub and not feel giggly or giddy. I wish I was not even aware of walking into a pub, but that instead it came to me as naturally as coming home or going to the corner store.

I wish I could look at a painting from the Victorian times or read a Jane Austen novel and be genuinely entitled to imagine that my great grandmother was the woman on which the main character in Emma was inspired.

I wish Sunday Roast didn’t mean boiled meat and mushy side dish for me and instead brought back a whole array of recollections of Sundays that had nothing to do with food in the first place but instead was all about memories spent in the company of friends or family.

I wish I could legitimately be entitled to have an interest in gossip about the Royal Family.

I wish that words like “Cricket” and “Royal Ascot” and “Wimbledon” and “The Sun tabloid” and “Commonwealth” were engrained in my DNA regardless of how I felt about the actual item/issue itself.

I wish I could walk along the post-war rebuilt buildings and streets of London and wonder what it must have been like for my ancestors to live in those freighting times, experiencing bombs falling all around them and to witness the reconstruction of the city that came afterwards, watching it become the wondrous place it is now.

I wish I didn’t find the British accent so refined or posh or endearing or anything. I wish I didn’t notice the accent at all. I wish it would just seem to me the normal way people speak.

(sigh)... I realize all these things are so impossibly cliché I must sound like a complete airhead. I am aware that a lot of British people probably don't fit this description either.

But walking in London last weekend, more than once, I wished I didn't have to wish for them.

Fned.

Who needs a flying umbrella?

2009-08-18T19:27:00.009+01:00

Hubby and I were in London this past weekend.

I had to be there on business this Monday so we figured we’d leave the Saturday morning before and spend the weekend there. As it usually happens when I’m travelling, I had one of “those moments”.

But first, a little about our trip.

As you probably know by now, Hubby and I are walkers. The worst thing you can do to us on a trip is put us on one of those “sight-seeing” double-decker buses. We usually like to get our sight-seeing done on foot. No taxis or buses for us thank you very much, and limited amount of subway use will do for us just fine.

Coming out of the "tube" - one of the few times we used it. Photo: Hubby

So Saturday morning, after checking into the nice and convenient Premier Inn hotel near Tower Bridge (very clean, excellent location, reasonably priced – totally recommend it!), Hubby and I set out to explore the city. This isn’t my first time in London, but it sure as heck always feels like it to me. I just love the city, the vibe, the people, the feel of it. So different to Paris. But we’ll get back to this in a little while.

Hubby and I set off towards Westminster Abbey. I’d never been inside before and it was really amazing. As a side note, I’d like to say that I find it really great that the audio guides are free. Had we had to spend an additional pound or two on top of the entrance fee (as is usually the case at high touristy places in most countries) we would have certainly not have used them and would have thus missed out on a lot of what makes the Abbey so incredible and unique.

I also like to think that had I visited Westminster on my first trip to London back in 2002 when I was freshly arrived in Europe (only 4 months earlier!) a lot of the history and the grandness of the place would have certainly been lost on me. This time around however I knew my ABCs on the Edward's, Henry’s, Elizabeth’s and Mary’s, among many other names in the British Monarchy’s (somewhat complicated) Family Tree. And granted, my poetry knowledge is not as precise as my European Monarchy’s gossip’s knowledge, but still, I stood in awe at the memorial sites of the likes of Chaucer and Kipling and Shakespeare and Austen.

But even if I had been as ignorant on the History of Europe’s Monarchy and Literature and Poetry as I was back in 2002, I’m sure I would have still been able to appreciate the sheer beauty of the Lady Chapel’s ceiling and the solemnity of King Edward’s Chair (the Coronation Throne for the British family since 1308!) and the harmony of the Cloisters.

You get the idea, Westminster Abbey rocks.

By the time we came out of the Abbey it was time to grab some quick lunch (Halloumi cheese, I am now and forever IN LOVE with you!!) before going out to visit with our good friends the Graham’s. A quick tube ride (couldn’t be helped) later and we were coming out in the awesomeness that is Camden Town. Away were the pretty Victorian buildings and posh quarters near the Abbey, Camden Town was all about the spiky hair, colourful tattoos and ethnic mix of culture, clothing and food stands. By the time we arrived at the Albert pub near Primerose Hill and met up with our friends, Hubby and I were ready for a nice pint of something refreshing!

Sadly, not the Albert Pub, but one of many we crossed on our road, equally amazing and tantalizing. Photo: Hubby

Primerose Hill (not to mention, the super duper delicious CUPCAKES that Lucy’s dad treated us to!!) it was time for Hubby and I to head down back to the centre of London. We had seats to The Phantom of the Opera musical and factoring in the walk from Primerose Hill down to the theatre, we had barely enough time to make it. But we did and the show was amazing. I had never been to a Musical before and although it took a little while to adjust to the lines being sang out (as opposed to belted out like in a regular play) it was quite impressive. The set, the costumes, the music, the entire production left you razzeled dazzeled. No wonder it’s the longest running Broadway musical of all times.

After the show, Hubby and I decided that there was no point in coming to London if you didn’t sit down somewhere to have some really good, really spicy, Indian food… the kind you simply can’t find in Paris. The real stuff. It was funny, because when the waiter came to take my finished plate of Vindaloo away he asked me how I’d liked it (for some reason my clean plate didn’t seem to clue him in) and if I’d thought it wasn’t too spicy…. Uhm… heeello??? Mexican here! After that he laughed and told me next time I should try the XXX dish (can't &@#ç%! remember the name of the dish!)… spicier still!!!!

Sunday morning, Hubby and I lazily got up and decided it was time to go out and visit the West End of the city. We took the tube to Notting Hill Gate and came out right on the edge of Portobello Road (Bed knobs and Broomsticks anyone?) It was really fun checking out all the old antique shops and stands in both the newer and the older parts of that long winding street.

Portobello Road. Photos: Hubby

When we reached the end we walked all the way back to Notting Hill and strolled around the neighbourhood enjoying view after view of the gorgeous Victorian houses and prim pretty private parks (can you say that three times in a row?) that make this part of town so très chic. Several times I had to pinch myself and remind myself that I wasn’t in a Mary Poppins scene.

Notting Hill. Photo: Hubby

By noon we were bordering on the Kensington High street and decided to stop and have lunch near the pretty Holland Park. Afterwards, it was back on our feet to explore the neighbourhoods and little boutiques near High Kensington, Gloucester Road and Knightsbridge. By mid afternoon we walked into the amazing Victoria & Albert Museum for some tea in one of the amazing cafés within the building. I also had a fun learning experience while peeking in the “Fashion” “Shoes” and “Hats” exhibitions while Hubby explored the “photography” and “futuristic furniture” expos. And people say museums are stuffy and boring!!

Ceiling of Tea Room inside the Victoria and Albert Museum. Photo: Hubby

After the museum, we continued our walk, window-shopping along the fabulously chic street that is Sloan Street down to Sloan square where we hoped on the metro to get us closer to the centre of the city as we wanted to explore a little more around the SOHO district. By the time we arrived near the Seven Dial landmark we were famished. More Indian. More Spice. More Happy faces after our meal.

By then it was getting dark and we decided we should head back to our hotel since it’d been a long day for us. We started out walking and talking and some more walking and some more talking and suddenly we realized that the subway stations were passing us by and we had still to go into one. By this time we were nearing St Paul Cathedral and decided we might as well just walk the rest of the way back to Tower Hill (and our Hotel).

In total, Hubby and I calculated we must have walked over 15 km that day although we didn’t really realize it. We did figure out however that getting Day Passes for the Subway wasn’t such a bright idea.

Needless to say, that night we crashed.

Monday was more laid back as I had to go downtown for my workshop so we took it easy and just hung around the area until the time of my meeting came up. Then Hubby headed on over to the British Museum and we met up afterwards for a quick stroll around Covent Garden before we had to go pick up our stuff at the hotel and head on out towards the St Pancras train station.

All in all, it was a fun weekend and we were both glad to get out of Paris for a little while.

Now, if I could only write a trip report for work as thorough as this one …... :s

Fned.

P.S. As for my “travelling moment”… I guess I should leave that for my next post, since this one has gone for too long already.

Back

2009-08-17T22:20:00.000+01:00

So I'm back.

I've debated long and hard over blogging or not about the past couple of months. I even have a few relatively lame and somewhat incoherent posts saved in my drafts about the why's and the howcome's. As I said, most of it is incoherent gibberish.

In the end, I've decided I'm not gonna write about it. Not yet at least. Let's just say I'm going through a lot of existential crap and I was trying to figure it all out. I still am. And since it's all still pretty fucked up in my head and it doesn't look like it's gonna clear up anytime soon, I've decided I'm not going to bore you all with it and simply move on.

So this is me, apologizing to you all for these long weeks of silence and Moving On.

Sorry guys.

Fned.

Super Fned to the rescue!!!

2009-06-29T20:56:00.002+01:00

Four or five years ago Hubby gave me a pink mini iPod for my b-day. It was one of the very first models that had come out, the cool really pale pink one, and needless to say, I instantly fell in love with the darn gadget. It went with me everywhere and it quickly became my most prized possession.

One day, I was walking to work as usual, listening to music with my iPod fastened to my belt when out of the blue I felt a sudden tug and the music suddenly went dead. I remember screaming and found myself turning around to see a guy running away from me, my sad little pink iPod in his hands. All that I had left were the dangling earphones still suck in my ears and my shaking legs.

The very next day I went to the Fnac and bought myself the same exact model and went back to that street to (symbolically obviously) show that bastard I wasn't afraid of him. Except it wasn't the same exact model. In the time I'd owned mine, Apple had upgraded their mini iPod models and now the pink version came in a much stronger, much fuchsia-er shade.... I still bought it, but it just wasn't the same. I still miss that little pink gadget, even though wherever it is, it's probably too old and too slow, if it still works at all.

I hadn't thought about it in a long time. Until this evening.

My iPhone has currently taken the place of most beloved item in my possession (except over my engagement ring, which still holds the number one slot). So there I was, like any other night on my way home, riding the subway while intently catching up on all the celebrity gossip on my iPhone (this is my way of "winding down" in the evening, so sue me) when out of nowhere a hand flew over my phone and snatched it from my fingers! I remember a half growl/half scream erupted from the deepest part of my throat in the form of a "no!" as I felt my phone slip through my fingers.

Two things happened exactly at the same moment: an instantaneous feeling of immense loss swelled up in my stomach and I heard a soft 'thump' on the floor beside me.

I looked down and saw my iPhone facing down on the floor only a few inches away from my left foot. I immediately looked up and saw the man who'd tried to snatch it from me trying to wiggle his way free from the wagon's doors which had trapped him on his way out. Our eyes met for what surely must have been a nano second but I instantly saw that he was still going to make a plunge for it. And he did. He lunged forward and as his fingers caressed that glossy black case another throaty "no!" rose up from me and I immediately let my foot down over the phone.

It's funny what goes through your mind in moments like this. At that exact moment I remember thinking "crap! now I'm sure I've scratched it!"...

Lucky for me, Apple did a crappy job at making iPhones immune to greasy hands and mine was particularly greasy after a long day of lugging it with me all over the place.

The thief's fingers slipped a second time and this time I simply bent down, picked up my phone from under my shoe where I'd trapped it so he couldn't try a third time and carefully examined it to see if indeed it was damaged.

In retrospect I realize it must have looked really odd to the people sitting in the wagon around us. There he was, a thief caught in between the doors of a metro wagon trying to wiggle his way free seconds after having tried to pry my phone from my hands and there was I, only a few inches away, daintily sitting in my prim suit, with my cute highlights and my pretty ballerina shoes, calmly and carefully examining my precious, retrieved phone.

I didn't give him a second look although I did hear the doors shut behind him as he finally managed to shove his body out of the car and on to the platform.

In all, the whole thing must have lasted no more than 10 seconds and somehow I managed to not freak out while it was happening. I realized later I didn't even move from my sitting position! As soon as the wagon started to move, the woman sitting next to me told me how awed she was at my reflexes while the girl sitting across from me said how it all happened so fast. Incidentally, the guy standing by the pole (and only a few inches from where everything happened) didn't move an inch. Typical!

I admit I did start shaking a little afterward, specially when I saw the red scratch marks on my hands and felt the tingling sensation his sudden snatching maneuver left on my skin. Still, I kept calm and continued to read my gossip tweets as if nothing at all had happened until it was time for me to get off... and I do admit after that, I tucked my phone safely away in my purse and didn't take it out again while I rode the second part of my commute back home.

In any case, it's strange to say this but I actually feel kinda happy.... almost giddy you could say. As if by saving my dear iPhone this time around, I sort of avenged my old pink mini iPod from all those years ago.

Plus, I bet you all those passengers are now sitting down at their dinner table telling their family about that "badass chic in a suit that avoided getting mugged in the subway.... all while not having to move an inch from her seat".

:D
Fned.

Fun weekend!

2009-06-28T22:33:00.006+01:00

Although in the past I've often raved about how much I love "nothing weekends", (the kind you spend both days in your pj's doing exactly that, nothing)... I do enjoy an eventful weekend from time to time... it makes me somehow feel like I didn't waste the precious moments of fresh air and warm sunshine I otherwise rarely get to enjoy when stuck 5 days in between four walls from 9am to 9pm....

And this weekend was a particularly eventful weekend if ever there was one. Friday night set the tempo when I left the office at a pretty decent time (8:30pm) having wrapped up the very last part of one of the heavier projects I've been recently working on. As I set out into the cool evening air, I was feeling pretty good and not only about finishing the project, but especially because I had planned to stop by Ksam's b-day party that night. Ksam had invited a bunch of the Rhum-Rhum gang to the Long Hop and it was fun seeing a lot of them again after such long time. Also, it was so neat to be back at the Long Hop. For those of you who don't know, this is the place I met Hubby at, only 3 weeks after having arrived in France. It was so amazing to be back there and see that it hadn't changed a bit in these past 7 years... I even spotted the exact same table Hubby and I sat at that evening.

I couldn't stay long with Ksam and the gang though because Hubby had received word that morning that his best friend and his fiancée were in town and would be staying with us that evening so he'd made a plan to meet up for dinner with them. They were waiting for me at Odéon and we dined at the Café Les Editeurs, a really neat restaurant just off of the Bd Saint-Michel which Hubby and I had spotted several times but never actually been there yet. It was a nice evening and we had fun catching up with N&I and hearing all about their wedding plans in Milwaukee in a few months (which we are so excited we're going to be able to attend! yipee!)...

Our friends had to leave for Bretagne early the next morning which turned out to be a good thing actually because it had me wake up early to say goodbye and therefore start the day earlier than is my regular custom on Saturdays... this means that by 11am I was up and ready to hit the gym, something which I usually groan at the idea of doing so early on a Saturday. Workout behind me, it was time to concentrate on the fun part scheduled for the day: some selfish pampering and a little shopping. What more can a girl ask for?

I had a 2pm appointment at the hair salon where years earlier the owner had done my highlights for my wedding, which turned out to look fantastic. Unfortunately, soon after the wedding I went back to his salon and found him to be a total snob so I decided to never go back. That was over 4 years ago and ever since, I've been to several different places and never found anyone as good as him. So I decided to swallow my pride and go back again this Saturday. And it was worth it. I swear the guy is a genius! Not only do my highlights look fabulous (if I do say so myself) but he even gave me the exact hair cut I asked for (literally, a first since I've been living here!). And this time, I realized that his "snobbish" attitude makes him actually kind of endearing. We totally hit it off this time around, I promised to remain "faithful" to him from now on and in turn he graced me with a haughty "umph!" and a chocolate macaron!... ;)

Then there was the shopping. I'd like to first point out that the last time I went shopping for clothes was way back in November and only because I had a big client event coming up and needed to get something to wear. Last fall, Hubby and I agreed that we would be really careful about money so that we could do all the traveling we'd planned to do this year and so far we've stuck to the plan and been pretty good about it. But this weekend we both realized we needed to get some "basics" (as in underwear, white tee shirts, etc.) and since the annual summer soldes (sales) kicked off this weekend we figured we'd take advantage. That wasn't counting on a) all the pent-up frustration from all of these non-shopping months and b) the absolutely great sales going on around in all the shops that were just too good to pass up. So we had a little fun and got some pretty cool stuff. My personal favorite is a a long gray summer linen dress which I got at Naf Naf at 50% off and which I absolutely adore. Comfy, pretty and so totally chic!! And Hubby finally succumbed to fashion and got a pair of Convers, something only a little over a year ago he vehemently told me he would never be caught dead in! LOL...

By then it was time to get back home and we decided to somehow make up for the "shopping binge" by eating leftovers... with a twist. We opened the fridge and took out the what we found -not much-... still, Hubby still managed to concoct a delicious dinner of marinated chicken and greek salad with some tasty Proseco wine we'd brought back with us from our trip to Venice. D-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s...

This morning, we decided to get up early and get all the boring house chores over with so that we could enjoy the rest of the (sunny) day outside. By 1pm we were out the doors. We still had a little shopping to do (the day before we'd totally forgotten about the basics we'd set out to get in the first place!) and since a lot of the shops in Paris were open on Sunday, this being the first weekend of the Soldes, it was off to buying underwear and socks. We were wondering what to do next when I remembered somebody mentioning what a great movie "The Hangover" was so we decided to check it out.

If you are in the mood for a funny, and I mean freaking hilarious, movie, this one is it. I can honestly say I haven't laughed this much in months! It's definitely worth the 10 bucks (or whatever the cinema tickets are going for in the US nowadays)... trust me... the movie is effin great!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, so here we are, back at home, getting ready to start yet another hectic week of "metro-boulot-dodo" (subway-work-sleep)... except that for the first time in a long time I actually feel fresh and relaxed, as opposed todepressed and fed up which is how I usually feel on Sunday evenings...

I guess an eventful weekend can have that effect on ya sometimes...

Have a great week everyone!
Fned.