Club Med - Nabeul - Tunisia

Back from holiday at Club Med - Nabeul (Tunisia) where it ranged from 32 to 42 degrees (Celsius) every day and it rained maybe one night while we were asleep.

The departure was rough as we had to leave home at 04:15 (in the morning) and it was a relatively long trip (taxi, airport wait, plane (2 hours) and a coach trip (2 hours) to the club). Once we arrived however it was Club Med as always and we were welcomed royally.

Although this was definitely my least favourite of all of the Club Meds we have been to (Olympie, Hammamet and Metaponto) it was still a wonderfully relaxing holiday and no worries or responsibilities for 2 whole weeks.





To prove we had been to Tunisia we had to do the classic camel trip which was a great chance to get away for a bit...





The girls were in their respective clubs (8-10 and 14-17) which they participated in whenever they felt like it... mostly for the shows, meals and parties.

Although Alexandra participated in shows both weeks, as well as being the star of the second week's show, she spent most of her time at the beach or by the pool.


Jessica too participated in the shows. She spent most mornings, through to noon, in bed and most nights out on the beach. Most of the time she just danced and partied...


I'm sure we'll have more photos and news in our annual newsletter...

Arlene Was Here

Arlene was here from July 4th through to this morning. Rise and shine relatively early and off to the airport where she is now flying back to NYC as I write these words.

We all had a wonderful time in what breaks down in to 3 trips: pre-London, London and post-London.

Pre-London was a bit of a rush and desperately tring to get over jet lag...

London was a blast to use Arlene's own words and probably the type of trip which will take much more than a few days to get over...


Post-London was basically HOT with temperatures rising up to 32 degrees C. A lot of time spent at home hiding from the sun and the heat and watching a bit of TV or reading books up on the terrace in the shade.

The girls went in to town to the Musée de la Mode et du Textile where they caught the Yamamoto exhibit and seemed to have a great time.

July 13th was spent getting ready for our night out and Asnières certainly gave a great party in the Parc de Robinson with dancing and fireworks until midnight...

July 14th was spent watching the parades on television and just relaxing and enjoying our last day together... all of us... finished with a barbecue on the terrace and Jackie Brown on DVD.

And now... back to reality!

Arlene's vacation ends... and ours begins!!!

In the wrong city at the wrong time

I got in to the London office a bit late as I had been working at the hotel before leaving.

As I started my training session the television was on in the room and there were talks of power surges and problems in tube stations. However before I actually got started with my class the news changed to bombs and explosions and images of the first bus. We all sat there silent and watching as the events happened in front of us.

Eventually we decided to turn the television off for a bit and go on with the class. I continued for about and hour or two up til just about lunch time.

We then decided to put the television back on and found that there had been even more bombings and even more explosions around us.

At this point we decided lunch was a good idea...




The Head of Department decided, most kindly, to take us all out to lunch together. As we got out of the building we found that we had actually been inside of a blocked area. There were police all over us, with machine guns, and police borders around us. We walked up the street and were escorted by police to the closest restaurant.

We had a rather long lunch, especially under UK standards, which was accompanied by rather continuous quantities of wine. We tried to talk about anything else but the definite central point of our conversations was what was going on around us.

One of the women with us has a daughter who was in London on a school trip and she could not get through to her. We were all using each other's mobile phones to try and get through to friends and family as each mobile network would be saturated and others would not. It was a frustrating period of try, try and try again to get through. It appeared much easier to get through with foreign phone calls than domestic phone calls. It also seems that the 3G (IP) network was by far the more stable as one of us with a 3G phone had constantly no problem getting through.


After lunch we headed back to the office. One of us had I.D. which had the office address on it so the police let us through and in to the office.

We did not stay long in the office and left by about 15:30 - 15:45.

I walked up to Oxford Street to perhaps go shopping before heading back to the hotel. Almost all of the stores on Oxford Street were closed. I headed back to the hotel and the safety of my room. I watched the news for a while and finally fell asleep in the early evening...

London 2012

What the f***?

I am in London at my client's office and everyone is listening to the radio on their computers via the Internet or watching the television where possible.

The suspense mounted and mounted...

Paris was the by far favourite and I had bet quite a reasonable amount on Paris (Betfair) and Desney and I were sort of counting on being able to rent out our house during the Olympics and make some money towards the mortgage...

The announcement came out slowly...

The winner is...

LONDON???

London 2012

There are celebrations in the streets, people yelling and screaming, and everyone is in shock. London believed they would win... and they did...

Paris is devastated... it's bad enough losing the competition... but to London and the Brits???

;-|

The aftermath of Jessica's Party

We started cleaning up after Jessica's party today...

The garage was a disaster area but easy to clean...

However...

It turns out they had had a water fight or something and they bust the water barrel in the garden... they also had apparently jumped up and down on our wooden bench and bust that... they also must have knocked down one of the wooden speakers from the stereo as they bust that as well...

We'll be thinking twice before we do that again!

Jessica's Party

Jessica's class (3ème) finished their end of school exams (Brevet) and, as promised, Jessica had a party for most of the class at our place in the garage.

A group of about 40 teenagers arrived, bit by bit throughout the afternoon, to party and dance in the garage. We had spent weeks cleaning out the garage and then installing a sound system and getting food and drinks for everyone.

The party went quite well and the kids all left on time (before 23:00).

Jessica had a few girlfriends sleep over (about 5) and they probably talked to each other all night long...

All went well...

A day of Alex school parties

Woke up early to start the day off with helping with the preparations for Alexandra's Kermesse (end of year party at school). I went back and forth to home to get a wireless drill only to find that another parent had brought one in between...

The kermesse went well as it didn't rain this year and everyone seemed to have a great time... especially Alex.

I worked the basketball stand this year which involved a lot of running around in the hot sun and bending down and picking up balls all morning. The person who was supposed to replace me never showed up so I spent longer than usual, as usual, at the stand.

We finally left at about 13:00, an hour or two before the end, and headed back home to prepare for the rest of the day...

In the evening we headed off to Anne's place for the end of the year party of Alexandra's (Wednesdays) English class group. We had a lovely dinner outside in her garden with all of the other parents, many of whom we had not met before, and chatted until the wee hours...

Fête de la Musique

Yesterday was June 21st also known as the Summer Solstice. This therefore was the 24th Fête de la Musique here in France.

The longest day of the year so musicians are out in the streets, in restaurants and bars, in clubs... all over... playing for free and legally all over France. People roam the streets listening to music and dancing with complete strangers.

Public transport runs all night (normally it closes at 00:30) and with an unlimited ticket for 2.50 € (as many trips as you want on whatever transport (bus, métro, RER, ...) all throughout the system).

It usually is a wonderful night for us and we wait for it all year.

Last year was our first Fête de la Musique in Asnières so we (Desney, Alexandra and I) went to the Asnières City Hall (Mairie) to see what they had to offer and ended up listening to some pretty mediocre local pop-rack bands in the rain. Danced a bit and sang a bit and had a pretty good time.

The year before Jessica and I went out in Paris and spent some time dancing salsa in front of the Brasilian embassy for a while, roamed a bit in the Marais and ended up at Place de la République completely by accident and Simply Red was in concert. I stared in shock and sang the rest of the evening and Jessica was amazed I knew all the words to this group she'd never heard before. It was an excellent evening and we'll probably never forget it.

This year was, unfortunately, forgettable. It was the first time Alexandra came out with us. The girls took forever to get ready and we didn't leave the house until about 19:30. Jessica, Alexandra and I took the car to Porte des Lilas to take a quicker métro to Bastille where we would walk to République. We got to Bastille after 20:30 and had a junk food dinner (Qwick --- long waits in long queues for disgusting pseudo-McDo food). We finally hit the streets after 21:00 and Bastille looked like it was preparing for a huge concert.

We strolled towards République and checked out a young group playing a mixture of jazz, funk, reggae amongst others. They were actually quite good and the ambiance was great. They went from one style to the next, song by song, to see what would happen. A reasonably large group with horns (trumpet and trombone) and woodwinds (flute and sax) as well as the standard electric guitar, electric bass and drums.

A lot of the other groups or musicians were not worth mentioning and there was one singer on a platform stage in front of a café that looked like a stereotypical hooker gone uptown. She had a pseudo-Marilyn Monroe sound to her voice which was most annoying.

As we were walking towards République we eventually realised that everyone was walking towards us and no one was walking in the same direction as us. That meant everyone was leaving République and heading for Bastille rather than the contrary. When we finally got to République we realised why... it was practically dead. There were the odd groups playing in front of the bars but that was the same as we found on the side streets on the way up. Well...

We jumped back on the métro and went back to Bastille which we found was now in full boom with a rock concert going on the stage. The group wasn't bad but Jessica definitely did not want to listen to rock and desperately wanted to find some soul, R&B, rap or regga around somewhere.

As it was already 22:30 we started walking back towards République, again, but this time up a different street. We found an interesting setup with a group of DJs and two phonographs and a group of rappers. The music was a lot of fun and the crowd was amazing. We were dancing in the street for quite some time and everyone was really getting in to it. But the DJs were extremely, extremely annoying in that they never played more than 30 seconds of any given tune. They would talk about what they were going to play, play 30 seconds of it, stop, talk about what they just played, talk about what they were going to play, play 30 seconds of it and start all over again. It got to the point where I couldn't stand it and we strolled on down...

Next we found a trio of ragga hopefuls who were rapping to a DJ who couldn't get his sound system to work...

We hit a bar and got some drinks (it was very hot --- maybe 28) and played some pinball and finally made it to République where we took the métro back to the car. We found the car next to a large reggae concert at Porte des Lilas, got in and got home at about 00:45.

It was fun, enjoyable and a bit of an adventure for Alexandra but it did not live up to our previous Fêtes de la Musique. It also is probably going to be Jessica's last Fête with her Papa as a large number of her friends went out on their own this year and she will most likely be allowed out with her friends next year...

An anniversary dinner worth forgetting

Our 17th wedding anniversary.

Amazing how this many years later and not only do I love her as much but I just can't imagine living without her...

We spent a normal Saturday of doing errands and chores around the house (door closer for her door, mow the lawn, ...).

Then we went out for dinner. I had called 'round to lots of nice and/or 1-star Michelin restaurants but no one was open on a Saturday. There was no way I was going to afford a 3-star this year as well as Club Med. I therefore settled for a seemingly nice reastaurant in Levallois-Perret which is only about 7 minutes drive from home. Unfortunately I was looking in the 2003 editions of Gault-Millau and Michelin.

The restaurant (La Villa) is definitely the worst we've ever been to for our anniversary and possibly in the list of the worst restaurants we've ever been to (right up there with 'Uitr which got the entire family sick twice).

The food was mediocre, the choice was lousy, the wine list consisted of 8 different wines (all under 5 years old) and the service was probably worse. We tried a Jacquart rosé Champagne apéritif and we're not even 100% sure it was Champagne! I had foie gras as a started. We ordered the best wine they had on their list which was an over-priced (50 euros) Savigny (Burgundy) 1999. It was good... but certainly not better than good. I had a steak for my main course which I ordered medium rare (à point). I would not have been surprised if the animal actually squirmed under my knife it was so rare. Desney kept telling me I shouldn't eat it and so, of course, I did. Dessert was a moelleux au chocolat which was about as good as Picard (frozen) gets.

We arrived early for our 20:30 reservation (around 20:10) and we were back home by 22:00!

Enough said...

Paris 2012

Alexandra had seen a poster and an advert on television as regards the creation of a pseudo-olympics stadium on the Champs-Elyées and had to go.

We spent the day on the Champs-Elysées, with literally thousands of other people, supporting the Paris 2012 campaign. An absolutely exhausing day on our feet walking from stand to stand for about 4 hours. If Paris wins we should be able to rent our house out for a fortune and get the hell out of France as it is going to be an absolute madhouse! But also if Paris wins it means that all of the infrastructure around our neighbourhood (métros, buses, etc.) will be fixed up much faster and better as we live in between the country's biggest stadiums...

We got back to Neuilly where we had parked the car. I couldn't find it. Alex and I walked around for half an hour and still couldn't find it. I called both Police departments and the car pound and no one had heard of my car and it had not been towed away. Finally accepting the fact that it was stolen I called a cab to take us home. The cab took off and I realised that the road we were on was going towards La Défense and not towards Paris. We had parked the car on the road going towards Paris... I asked the cab to turn around and slowly drive up the main road towards Paris... and... there it was! We got out of the cab, got in our car and drove home. Unfortunately I had already told home that the car was stolen so they gave me shit for quite some time about losing my own car... The important point being simply that we still have the car!

Barbecue with friends...

Another absolutely beautiful day!

Spent most of the day going back and forth to the DIY store (Leroy Merlin) for a damn toilet seat. The first one was broke when I got it home, went back to return it and the second one had the wrong screws. Went back and returned it and this time opened the box before I left the store...

Put up some very nice white shelves in our new basement staircase alcove just to be able to say I had done something today. Desney has repainted the entire staircase alcove in yellow, white and grey including the floors and it's looking great.

We had a couple of friends (David and Sasha) over for dinner and Jessica invited her friend Mercedes as well. For what is probably the first time Desney was the minority nationality at table as David, Sasha and Mercedes are all American, Jessica and Alexandra are half-American and I am an ex-American looking for any other nationality... especially French.

The meal went well, albeit a bit tricky as Sasha is a vegetarian who luckily eats fish, and the wine went well (Pol Roger Champagne, Fleurie Clos des Dîmes 2002 from Maison de Fleurie and a Moulin à Vent 2000 from them for the cheese). The barbecue was great and the smoke was just about bearable. Desney had made a raspberry mousse which finished everything off nicely.

We finally retired to the living room to talk after the meal... and talk we did! At about 2:30 in the morning, with Desney slowly passing out in one of the chairs and desperately trying to politely stay awake and coherent, we called them a taxi and off they went home to sleep as only single couples with no kids can.

At about 3 in the morning the two of us basically passed out full of food, wine and conversation...

A Hot Friday Night

Just got back after another 3 days in London. A few very long working days...

Spent the day going through mail and office stuff as usual. Of course the phone wouldn't stop ringing...

I was about 18 or 19 degrees when I left London. Today it's almost 30 out! The sun is shining bright and it's a hot and steamy Friday afternoon here.

Our DVD of The Incredibles arrived in the post this afternoon and that's what we spent the evening watching. Pizza thanks to Pizza Hut and a lovely Beaujolais (Régnié) thanks to the Domaine des Côtes des Charmes rounded out the evening just right.

Giggles in front of the new big flat TV and off to bed...

Life is tough!

;-)

Star Wars III

Another long Wednesday...

First I brought Alex to Jess' school to pick up the yearbook ready to go to the printer. Of course they had last minute changes they had not finished yet. We then rushed and picked up Kathleen and took the yearbook to the printer. At the printer's we realised the kids had not put page numbers in so we added those by hand, redid the Table of Contents and added some parents' names they had forgotten on the Thank You page. This all took so long that we missed Alex' doctor appointment.

Lunch back in Asnières at our favourite café (Le Cercle) and off to Alex' English class. The weather was so nice they had their class outside while I walked around Asnères for an hour.

Picked up Alex and we rushed off to the opening of Star Wars III. Of course fate was not on our side and we got stuck in a massive traffic jam due to construction work being done around the cinema. I dropped Alex off at the cinema and went desperately looking for parking thinking we were going to miss the show and have to go elsewhere. Luckily I found a spot not far from the cinema and after about a half hour of advertisements and previews we finally saw the movie.

The movie was just what it was supposed to be. Amazing special effects, mediocre acting from most and absolutely awful acting by Hayden Christensen (again). Most of the story was well written and developed with, however, some incredibly cliché scenes with amazingly stilted dialogue. Lucas can not write love scenes. Overall another great story and a powerful film which mostly shows just what we can do with technology these days... the computer animation (CGI) guys had a field day with this one!

My last prom?

It's prom time again at Jess' school. I helped around with whatever I could in the afternoon and set up my now traditional photo booth.

Just prior to the afternoon I rushed out and bought myself a new Photo Printer which was much, much easier to carry around, slightly faster (1 minute per photo) and serves as both the memory card reader and printer in one. It will go very well in our living room with the rest of the new home media centre...

The doors opened at 19:00 and they were very, very slow to get started this year. The kids seemed to take a very long time to get in to the party mood and the DJ playing 70s and 80s tunes (Kool & The Gang, Saturday Night Fever, Marvin Gaye, Jackson 5, KC & The Sunshine Band), which I quite like in other circumstances, certainly was not helping.

However all of a sudden it burst in to party mode and there were 250 kids dancing their hearts out and a combination of a DJ, a live rock band made up of a group of graduating students who played about 4 songs and a couple of rappers who performed a couple of songs.

The photo booth suddenly exploded and everyone wanted their picture taken. This year's theme was Hollywood and Cannes and we had a pseydo-Oscar ceremony backdrop. It was a lot of fun. However it became obvious quickly that I wasn't going to have time to shoot all the photos, crop and retouch them (red eyes all over the place) and print them out (1 minute per photo) if I kept taking pictures too late. To the great chagrin of quite a lot rapidly becoming obnoxious teenagers we stopped shooting pictures at about 21:45 and I spent the rest of the night retouching and cropping and printing non-stop like a machine.

The prom ended at midnight as planned. However we ended the night with everyone having put everything away and a group of partygoers staring at my printer as it was slowly but surely still cranking out photos until 1:00 in the morning. It was quite frustrating.

As the editor of the yearbook had to hang around until I was completely finished so I could give her a CD-ROM with all of the photos on it she missed the last métro home. I therefore drove her and a couple of her friends home at 1:00 in the morning and was quite astonished, impressed and pleased to see so many people hanging out in the streets and partying on a Saturday night. It's amazing the effect warm weather can have on Parisians... it's been a long time since I was out so late... it felt great.

This is probably my last prom as a participating parent in the "main room" as this is Jessica's last year in collège (Junior High School) and next year she too will be a Lycée (Hight School) student and it will be her prom as well. At our school all of Lycée goes to the prom every year so Lycée students get 3 proms! Generally a parent of a Lycée student is not allowed in the main room with the other Lycée students during the prom party.

I might pull rank if I'm still the President of the Parents' Association... but I doubt it.

Food Force

I read an article about this in 20 Minutes and thought it looked great.

An entirely FREE computer game produced by the United Nations to show people what it's like trying to get food and supplies to poor countries.

The game is a huge download at about 270 MB but entirely free and so far it works great.

Run to Food Force and check it out!

It happens to the best of us...

I had to turn off Norton Internet Security for about 2 minutes this afternoon for a programming problem.

That's all the time it took.

Next thing I know I'm hit with the Cool Web Search adware virus and the Home Search Assistant adware program.

I spent most of the rest of the afternoon and evening cleaning it off of my main computer.

A step in to the XXIst century

Jessica went shopping with Desney today and, of course, lost her mobile phone again. Yes... you heard that right... less than 3 months later she has lost it again.

I therefore had to cancel her phone line and then I had to take her to the FNAC today to get a new one. Nuance: This time she is paying for half of the phone. She got the Nokia 2650 because she absolutely had to have a flip-up phone. We'll see how long this lasts...

While we were there I finally made the great leap and bought an LCD television. Working out the credit options, the technical options and having already worked it out as a client's purchase I got the Samsung 32" LCD TV.

We got the TV home. First I had to do some more fixing up at home and get Alex' bed back together. Then, just after dinner, I was able to unplug the old TV and plug in the new one. It is much bigger than the previous television, it's 16/9 in comparison to the previous 4:3 ratio, and - of course - it's a flat-screen LCD television with amazingly crisp quality. The main pleasure for me, however, came when I plugged my laptop computer in to it and was able to surf the Internet on the big screen... more on that to come...

I've put our old TV on sale on eBay.

A real day off

Today was a holiday in France and the kids are already on a 2-week holiday and Desney has taken this week off (mostly to work on the house).

We therefore decided to jump in the car and get out of town and get outside. Last night we argued back and forth for a long time to decide between Rambouillet with it's forest and farm or Fontainebleau with it's castle and forest.

In the end we chose Fontainebleau. We were very lucky with the whole day. Although we left a bit late, and it was of course a holiday, there was no traffic on the roads and we were at the Fontainebleau tourist office within an hour. We then went to the castle and walked through their museum for a couple of hours. Lunch in a tourist café was disappointing. Back to the tourist office for information as regards the forest and we found out about a sentier balisé which goes in a loop through the forest and rocks. A 5-minute drive later and we were at the entrance to the sentier and spent about an hour and a half walking up and down and up and down through the rocks and trees with beautiful weather above us. A great time was had by all...

Back to the car and back to home, again really lucky with the traffic, and back to our habits and chores.

First barbecue of the year

Weather's beautiful and we finally had our first barbecue of the year.

Actually it was our second barbecue as we had a sort of test barbecue the day before.
We invited Maija, Vincent and their family over for a very informal barbecue. Maija showed up looking impeccable and dressed beautifully, Vincent was casual and the kids were dressed as kids. They were invited 'round for 19:00... at about 19:15 I started cooking the appetizer sausages and at 19:30 we started eating them. At 19:40 I called them to find out where they were and they showed up 5 minutes later...

The barbecue was very good with lots of different meats (lamb, sausages, rabbit and chicken) and Desney did some great summer salads (potato salad / tomato and basil salad) and the kids had crisps and coke of course.

The wine was just our daily Beaujolais (Fleurie - Clos de la Dîme 2002) as it is impossible to get a wine to go with all of the various barbecue sauces. It went down well but perhaps was not special enough for our guests. I therefore took Vincent down to the cellar and we cracked open a Burgundy (Pommard - Les Bertins Permier Cru 1998) to have with the cheese. I quickly decnated it as it had been in the wine storage fridge and it went down well. Pale colouring but an amazing nose. Unfortunately you can't drink the nose and the mouth faded away quickly. Still quite delicious.

Dessert was some vanilla ice cream I had made in the afternoon along with some fresh strawberries and mangos. They didn't hang out for coffee as they left around midnight wanting to get the kids home.

First big day out in the garden

Basically spent all afternoon mowing the lawn, then raking the lawn, then scarifying (ploughing) the lawn and then aerating the lawn with those special long-cleated shoes.

Ready for planting...

I am now one of the few computer programmers out there with blisters around the base of his thumbs from the damn mower, rake and plough!