Cirque du Soleil - Alegría

Today was my birthday present. Desney had bought us tickets for Cirque du Soleil for all of the family for my birthday. Tonight was the night.

We had all gone to see Saltimbanco a few years ago, also for my birthday I believe, and we all found it to be one of the greatest theatrical experiences of our lives. The circus aspect is, of course, breathtaking. But the lighting, the costumes, the makeup, the characters, the language and the simple level of quality throughout were all remarkable. We loved it.

I was a bit worried that tonight's performance of Alegría wasn't going to live up to our rather high expectations. Memories of a good show tend to make that show seem even better in hindsight and I was worried tonight would be a disappointment. Needlessly so. Tonight's show was just as breathtaking, just as amazingly perfect and just as impressive. We all left feeling like we had just lived through something special and I got a wonderful evening out sharing a special experience with my family. What better birthday present could there be?

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes

Most people who know me personally have seen me walking around in my saddle shoes. These are my favourite shoes and the ones I wear most often. They're not easy to find and I have to keep ordering more and more to replace them as they wear out. They don't reshine that well so as they get really dirty they get replaced. I think they last me about 6 months or so. I order them from a specialty store which specialises in saddle shoes: Muffy's. I get them shipped to my mother in Brooklyn who then either ships them to me or brings them on her next visit to France.

For a long time now I have been looking for two-toned wing tips. I wish I can say it was entirely my idea, although it is to a certain extent, it actually comes from seeing Johnny Depp wearing them at some event. I tend to quite like the guy's style. I couldn't find them anywhere in Europe and finally I found some of them online in the States. But I was not willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of shoes. I just am not that much of a fashion victim.


While I was here in America I thought I'd check out Amazon, amongst others, to see if I needed anything that I could have delivered here and take back with me. There they were on the Amazon site and on sale. I had to get 'em! I ordered the shoes last week and had them shipped to my mother with the faint hope that they might be delivered before I left. If not I would have to wait until she could ship them or come back to France. I got the phone call today. Arlene called me to tell me the shoes had arrived. Although I had obviously been planning on somehow seeing her this evening that synched it. We had to have dinner! I am now the proud owner of a pair of two-toned wing tips which I will be wearing in France. This, as usual, will be to the great embarassment of my wife and kids.

Michel Camilo Live at the Blue Note

Just got back from my first night at a jazz club in New York for over 20 years...

My mother and her friend, Hilary, got tickets for the Michel Camilo trio at the Blue Note downtown in the West Village.

The concert was just plain amazing. The kind of night when you come out of the club feeling uplifted. Just plain excellent. The combination of latin jazz, classic foundations and origins, an amazing rhythm section and a pianist that just doesn't stop made for an incredible evening.

The strangest aspect of the evening was there was absolutely no smoking in the club. I have never been in a jazz club without smoke. It was actually quite strange. The lighting was just all wrong and everything was just all too clean. It doesn't go along with jazz...

But it was a wonderful night of great music and great company and an enthralling performance. I left with a Blue Note t-shirt, a Blue Note torch (flashlight) and Michel Camilo's latest disc: Spirit of the Moment.

3D Printer

I was reading on of my favourite blogs (Life of Dave) and found an entry about the 3D Printer.

This is something I have dreamed about for over 30 years and had even started designing the possibilities of such a device back in the mid-80s (along with the PostScript Sewing Machine --- I think someone actually created that one). It's a tad bit science-fiction and to see it actually work is one of those paradigm leaping moments I so love about technology.

In this article from The New York Times they describe the machine which can create three-dimensional physical objects via the computer. The article focuses mostly on the price aspect and the concept that this will one day be affordable to families and homes. I personally am just amazed that the thing exists and works. I especially like the concept that you can replace that little bit of your machine (coffee, toaster, skateboard, ...) by downloading the print output for it and the 3D printer creates an exact replica in plastic.

I so want one!!!

Another double feature

We have so many movies to watch and only one night left so tonight became a double feature.

We started with The Last King of Scotland which is probably one of the best acted movies I have seen in a very long time. Excellent!

We then topped that off with 21 Grams which was directed by the same guy (Alejandro González Iñárritu) who directed Babel which we had seen and loved the other night. This was an earlier film of his and it's easy to see how he evolved and made his flashback, present, flashback style much smoother in Babel than in this film. This was another actor's movie but again with beautiful cinematography.

Not exactly an "upbeat" evening but excellent movies.

I ended the evening by finally hooking up my mother's DVD Recorder in the kitchen. I only did the cabling part, as it was already about 1 AM, before heading off to bed. I'm sure everything will work tomorrow...

Shop till you drop!

I knew today was going to be my only real shopping day. After a very leisure morning I took the subway in to 34th Street and started at Macy's. This major department store on a Saturday when the weather is nice was obviously going to be a mad house and it certainly was. It took me hours to get jeans, polo shirts, knickers and belts. At one point I had to wait 40 minutes to try on a pair of jeans and 20 minutes to try on one polo shirt. I finally gave up after the belts and got out of there.

I decided to head uptown to see if I could find somewhere I could get the necessary cables for my mother's DVD Recorder. Her TV is HD but is old enough to not have an HDMI input so I needed component cables.

I walked from 34th and 6th up and around to 45th and Broadway and back again. I had forgotten how touristy the neighbourhood was and how many "attractions" there were around. 34th Street is full of 'em: Madison Square Garden, Penn Station and, of course, The Empire State Building. Heading uptown was, of course, Times Square and the Broadway Theatre District which felt very much like home. I stopped off and had a Sabrett's hot dog at a stand and about 10 minutes later stopped at another Sabrett's stand for another hot dog (mustard and sauerkraut as always). Although I found hundreds of stores open, and crowds in the stores and on the streets, I could not find a store which sold televisions and audio equipment and such. Eventually, when I had just about given up, I found the Manhattan Mall and in there I found a Radio Shack where I could get my cables.

I practically crawled back to the Subway to take the Q back to Brooklyn where I could finally lie down...

DVD extravaganza

After getting home from the park Arlene started with the DVDs... she'd prepared an entire day's worth!

First was The Departed... which was absolutely excellent... a bit depressing and violent...

Next was Little Miss Sunshine which was a bit quirky...

Finally was Babel which was simply the best movie I've seen this year and probably for quite some time. The story was brilliant; the photography simply breathtaking while still maintaining the over-the-shoulder documentary look-and-feel; the acting was impeccable (underplayed and repertory without any stars); the style independant and just plain wonderful. I'm sure I'll be remembering and thinking about this one for a while...

Sunday in Prospect Park

We spent most of the morning just puttering around and having breakfast...

It was an absolutely beautiful day outside so we went for a stroll in Prospect Park.

I think we were actually both pleasantly surprised with the park. It went on forever and ever with great paths, big lakes, museums, zoo, botanic gardens, meadows and even a special performance of the Universoul Circus (the first all-black circus). We didn't actually go to the circus but it was certainly interesting to walk around it.

Eventually we strolled back to the flat...

Safely arrived in Brooklyn

The trip was wonderful...

I got to travel Business class. I already decided sometime after cancer that life is too short to travel economy for anything over 4 hours. However I am obviously a Business class virgin. I got to the airport and went through the "normal" queue for about 45 minutes to get to checkin. When I got to the counter the woman said to me "You're travelling Business" (in French obviously) and I proudly replied "Yes". She then told me that Business class has a totally separate queue, or lack thereof, at gate 3 instead of gate 5 and I could have avoided all of what I just went through. I laughed and asked if I could still check in here. She giggled and said she'd see what she could do. Off to the Air France Salon where I could get some water for before and during the trip putting some in bag "just in case". The Salon was very relaxing and comfortable.

The extra water was completely unnecessary as the service was excellent. Wonderful seat which reclines fully, 10.4" screen running 6 movies over and over again, good wine (very light Champagne starter and a nice and creamy Burgundy white for the rest), a good meal (foie gras starter; chicken in fennel cream sauce and finally a lovely orange iced sherbert) and sunshine the whole way. It was strange travelling for 8 hours, having left at a little before 16:00 and never seeing the sun go down at all during the flight. I watched La Mome (French movie about Edith Piaf) and a bit of The Holiday (a movie which looks like it was made for TV but made me cry a couple of times which is not a difficult feat these days).

When I got to the airport there was the car waiting for me and off we drove to Brooklyn. I'm sure the driver was a bit surprised as regards the neighbourhood we drove through and to. Mom's neighbourhood in Brooklyn is pretty similar to our neighbourhood in Asnières. We both have a tendency to live where the foreigners live...

As usual mom had food waiting practically when I arrived. Smoked (Scottish) salmon, tomato and mozzarella salad, tortellini with peas and cream sauce... almost enough to make me forget I'm in America.

We sat around watching American television (over 600 or 700 channels!!!) for a while. She's got some amazing televisions (big HD flat screen in the living room and smaller HD flat screen in the kitchen)...

I had purposely not slept on the plane and I actually stayed up until about 23:30 here (05:30 my time) and slept like a baby.

Leavin' on a jet plane

Sunday morning... sleep in a bit... long breakfast...

Then packing and last minute preparations...

Taxi arrived on time at 13:00 and off I go to Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport... next stop New York City!

Back to dance class

Tonight was our first Bebop dance class in many weeks. There was the two weeks of school holidays during which there weren't any classes and then there were at least 2 classes before that which we missed either because I was working or absent or because we had things to do on the house or whatever. I used to miss a class a month due to my monthly London business trip. Now we seem to miss one or two a month for other reasons...

I felt like a complete beginner for about the first 15 minutes trying to remember the steps and everything. Then it started coming back and we progressed nicely. Desney on the other hand appeared to not only have remembered the steps but is rapidly improving upon them developing her own very stylish footwork and legwork. Normally I would be jealous and competitively work twice as hard to dance better than her. But for the moment I just look on in awe and silent appreciation. Tonight's routine involved several new moves we hadn't learned yet but which the others seemed to already know. We picked them up relatively quickly and were running smooth through the routine by the end of class. It was a hot night and we had all worked up a pretty good sweat by the end of the class.

I notice that more and more I desperately need my water bottle around me when making any sort of physical effort. In addition to sweating, which is nothing new for me, my mouth appears to dry out very quickly and completely right down my throat. The coughing gets a bit emabarassing at times.

It was good to be back dancing again and great to be going out just the two of us again. I'm very disappointed we're going to have to miss next week's class as I will not be in the country [work, work, work...]

Technorati

I don't even remember how I found this one. I was clicking on someone's blog and there was this widget in the right-hand bar with a "search this blog" function. I thought to myself: "that's exactly what I want for MY blog". I clicked through and got started.

I created my account, entered my blog config info, created my widget, updated my blog template, tested it out and Voilà!

You'll find Technorati as a widget in the lower right-hand bar in my Blog. I don't fully understand all of the other functions yet. But I like the ability to be able to search my blog directly as well as for others to be able to search and find entries in my blog from elsewhere.

With all of the latest widget editions you may find my blog taking longer and longer to load... my apologies... technology requires patience but I certainly feel my blog is worth waiting for!

Twitter

I was standing at the café bar (Le Madrigal) having my late lunch (sandwich, a couple of panachés and a coffee). I almost always end up eating late, around 13:30 or 14:00, as I have great difficulty tearing myself away from my desk and finishing things up in time for lunch. I inevitably end up going out late and I often go to the bakery around the café to buy the bread for my sandwich, which I bring with me, as they are often out of bread by the time I arrive.

When there aren't any horse races on the television while I'm eating, and even sometimes when there are (especially obstacles or sand races) I tend to read on my Blackberry and eventually play poker on my Blackberry when I run out of the news. My first stop in the morning and then again at lunch is always Engadget which ahs a great mobile edition which I've been reading loyally for over a year now. After I've flipped through the headlines and articles there I head over to my true loyalty stop: Palm 24/7. I've been reading Palm 24/7 daily for years now from back in the days when it was a site dedicated to Sony Cliés. I wish I can say what one element it is that has me coming back so regularly but I can't. I don't even own a Palm any more having replaced it with my Blackberry over 6 months ago. I obviously still work with Palms as my clients use them and I am still a big Palm fan having owned a Palm, and almost every model at one time or another, since the original Palm Pilot. After I've gone through all of the Palm 24/7 articles, who also have an excellent Mobile edition as well, I head over to the International Herald Tribune. I normally am not a big fan of the newspaper itself as it is basically the equivalent of reading the American news elsewhere. I travelled thousands of miles to get away from the American news and the American opinions and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay to read it. However they have a really good mobile edition which reads well on my Blackberry and a pretty reasonable Technology section. Once I've been through that it's generally coffee time and I play a bit of Texas Hold 'Em poker on the Blackberry before leaving.

It was actually while browsing through the IHT Tech section that I found an article on Twitter which looked quite interesting. Anything with technology and "to an extreme" in its title certainly peaks my interest. I flagged this and made note to look it up when I got back to the office. I then spent quite some time in the afternoon setting up my Twitter account to be able to send/receive Tweets through the web, through IM using my GTalk account via Meebo and through texting (SMS) on my mobile phone (Blackberry). It was actually quite fun. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon Tweeting every now and than and adding what I was doing... I agree that it gets quite addictive.

Now, in addition to Stumble Upon which already takes up too much of my online time, I have a new time-eating addiction: Twitter. By the end of the afternoon I had added a Twitter widget to the bottom right of my Blog so that everyone reading my blog can watch me waste my time elsewhere as well as read whatever Twitterer I am following. As that's the next interest of Twitter. Following other Twitterers as they tweet throughout the day. I hit unpon their Public Timeline section and watched the tweets go by and hit upon Justine's visit to the Apple Store (where I hope to go to soon) and clicked through her profile to her blog which I found even more interesting and added her as my first followee. Now in addition to wasting my time tweeting I am following Justine which I have to admit makes me feel more like a stalker than a follower. Oh... I also have to admit the obvious: her photo was not too difficult to look at in the list of public timeline entries either.

Rollerblading in the sunshine

An absolutely beautiful day yet again...

This afternoon I put Jessica's old rollerblades on to Alexandra's feet and off we went to Parc des Chanteraines. It took us forever to park as, obviously, we were not the only ones to come up with the idea of going out to the park on a day like today.

We rollered around for about an hour and a half, including getting lost for half an hour; stopped and had an ice-cream and then headed back home. It was a great break for the day...

I still have my cycler's water bottle system in my backpack which I use(d) for the Friday Night Roller Rando. Although I haven't done the Friday night since I was sick the water system definitely came in handy. Obviously my mouth dries up much faster than before and outside in the hot sunshine is definitely the maximum my mouth and throat can take and requires constant irrigation. The system works wonderfully and I look oh so cool sucking away at the blue tube as I roller by.

Back home and time to prepare for this evening's barbecue out on the terrasse...

Erik Truffaz - Yuri's Choice

This is a pretty good example of the style of last night's concert...

Erik Truffaz - Live at the Salle Pleyel

A night out listening to jazz with a couple of friends... something I've been looking forward to for a long time... Desney even scheduled our holidays so as to allow me to be back in time to go to the concert. Was it worth it? Difficult to say.

The Salle Pleyel is an absolutely beautiful concert hall. It is generally used for classical concerts and it has recently been completely renovated. The décor is quite nice with a certain Art Nouveau feel to it with some very modern touches. However, unfortunately, the seating feels like it has been redesigned by the same people who do the seating on cheap airlines. Where we were seated, although quite well-placed visually (2nd balcony - front row - looking directly over the stage), there was enough leg room for Billy Barty. It was really quite unbearable by the end of the 2-hour performance. The acoustics were surprisingly bad for a concert hall meant for... well... concerts.

The Erik Truffaz Quartet was pretty much as I expected. I have 4 or 5 of his discs and I've listened to them often. I knew what I was in for. The music can probably be referred to as "Space Jazz" although many would call it "Noo Jazz" or "New Jazz". It's a mixture of a lot of different styles, involves a reasonable amount of elecontrica and sampling and mixes jazz backgrounds with hip-hop and pop vocals. I thought I would be asleep by the end of the second song. Fortunately it got a bit better from there on...

The Salle Pleyel has got to be one of the worst placed for a jazz quartet, electronic or accoustic, to perform. The sound was just plain unbalanced and annoying and from where we were the musicians were dots on a blue stage. This turned out to be probably one of the more boring jazz concerts I've been to in a while. But it was still enjoyable. Truffaz mimics Miles' later days in many ways including his stance (head bowed low when playing) and his balladic playing. His breathiness reminds me of Ben Webster. But it doesn't play as well on the trumpet as it did on the sax. When he played he was nice to listen to; nothing overly impressive and his solos didn't get much applause; nice but seemingly lacking for the headliner. The worst part of the evening, for me personally, was the new English singer he's hooked up with, Ed Harcourt, who every time he performed really brought the mood down to a bizarre combination of sleepiness and annoyance. Unfortunately he performed on a quite a few songs. It was great to finally see Nya perform live. I've heard him on several of Truffaz' discs and it was fun to see him performing. He's wonderfully smooth and passionate.


But the real discovery of the evening for me, and what made the whole concert worthwhile (in addition to the company), was the drummer: Marc Erbetta. He was absolutely excellent: kept the night moving; varied his rhythms and styles wonderfully; had solos which didn't sound like drum solos and were not intrusive; just simply a pleasure!

...

However the real purpose of the evening, for me, was to actually go out and listen to some live jazz with a couple who actually enjoy this sort of thing. Desney stayed home as she would have been beyond bored at the sort of music and instead of just falling asleep would probably have gotten up and left so as to spare herself such pain. It's been a really long time since I've met a couple who enjoy jazz and music and it was just simply a great feeling to go out and be with people who enjoyed the same experience as me. They appeared to have enjoyed it even more than I did so it made it even better! I hope they didn't find me too annoying aftewards, as we all know how long my post-event conversation can be after anything let alone music, and that we can repeat the experience some time soon!

...

A bit of after-concert sushi and a a lot of talking (mostly me as usual) made for an excellent dessert of the evening...

Our first barbecue of the year

The weather was amazingly beautiful today and nice and hot. We therefore had our first barbecue of the year up on the terrasse.

I think we're starting at least a couple of weeks earlier than last year. Yet another sign of global warming?

The Wii is in da house!

After sleeping in a bit, having a leisurely long breakfast and getting used to being back home I got to work. I realised I had to install the Wii before I turned on any computers or I would be lost in my computer universe as always.

I took the Wii out of the box, in all it's various pieces, and started plugging in. Within about 15 minutes I was up and running and it looked great on the big flat screen in the living room. The graphics are certainly ridiculously cartoon-like in comparison to an XBox 360 or PS3. But the revolution is in the hands. I played with all the settings, created a Mii for each member of the family, set my firewall to allow the Wii to connect to the Internet, checked out the news, the weather forecasts and the Internet channel (Opera browser) before finally breaking open the Wii Sports game and starting to play. I tweaked the Wiimote so as to be properly recognised by the set and started playing. This was one of those "Wow" moments I so look forward to in what's left of my life. I've played with joysticks for many years (embarassingly too long to specify) and love 'em. I especially remember the release of the Microsoft Sidewinder joystick which vibrated as I ran the cars and trucks off the road or crashed (constantly) my planes in Flight Simulator. But the revolution here is for the first time I found myself getting out of my seat to play in front of a screen.

I played tennis first. There I was leaning left and right and swinging fully at the ball. Wow! Next came bowling. A bit of a let down as it required more precision than I was ready to come up with at that moment. But it still had me leaning down and bowling each time. Next came baseball. This has turned out to be my favourite. There I am in my proper batting stand, which for some odd reason I still remember from my early childhood, and I'm swinging that bat (Wiimote in my hand) for all it's worth. I hit several home runs and the crowd went wild... I almost did as well. Wow!! Finally I tried boxing. This involved using the additional Nunchuck which comes with the Wii and allows one to play with both hands. There I was bobbing and weaving, jabbing and punching with both hands and blocking where I could. I actually worked up quite a sweat! This was just plain physical fun and I felt like a boy again (not that the juvenile feeling is particularly foreign to me {g}) going out to play after school. Wow!!!

I had bought an additional Wiimote and an additional Nunchuck so I could play with at least one of the kids at the same time. I plugged in and set up the second one and I had it working in less than 5 minutes. After playing around with the other Internet options, downloading stuff from the Wii Shopping Channel (including a couple of very old Nintendo games) I eventually decided to play with Alexandra. Alex had already played a Wii elsewhere so she had a bit of an advantage on me. She kicked my ass in boxing and the two of us were hot and sweaty by the time Desney yelled the classic "A table!" which is probably the only phrase known to man which can get me away from a screen at any time.

A great time was had by all!

Home again

We have decided we’ve had enough of English meals, English food, English prices and have accepted the fact that there isn’t really anywhere we particularly want to see or anything we particular want to do here. We therefore drove off for Dover to take the Shuttle home. It was an absolutely beautiful day out and we found a lovely village pub and had what was probably my favourite meal of the entire trip.

Back in France we stopped off at a services stop on the autoroute and had what has got to have been the worst meal of the entire trip. We were very pleased to get home!

Oxford to Brighton

Although the hotel was supposed to have WiFi Internet access in the rooms themselves their entire Internet access system was not working. I had to go for a long walk last night, to a cyber café, to connect to the Internet. Luckily I can carry just about everything I need on my USB key.

Today we walked around Oxford and Jessica decided that she didn’t want to go to Oxford or Cambridge either… too posh, too classical and too traditional. Again it was worth the trip even if only to eliminate!

We had decided in the morning where we were going next and had booked a hotel through laterooms.com at the Internet café. We therefore took a relatively long drive down to Brighton. We stopped off along the way at has to be one of the most amazing garden centres we’ve ever seen (Shoots). It was at least four to eight times bigger than anything of the same type in France! We spent quite some time browsing around and then back on the road. It turns out the hotel wasn’t in Brighton itself but rather a 45-minute walk away. We strolled down the Brighton boardwalk (or cement walk as the case should be) and walked through what has to be the most touristy town I’ve seen in the UK. We had a rather mediocre, but still over-priced, meal at a fish restaurant and visited the Brighton pier simply to be able to say “Been there… done that.”