Where is Belarus, Angola, Saint Lucia?

I watched the opening of Olympics yesterday. As Athens is an hour ahead of Paris, we were sitting in front of the TV by 8pm. The opening was impressive. I really liked the parade put up by the Greeks. A total of 9000 Greek men and women were involved in this parade.

When it was time for the participating countries to appear, I was anticipating eagerly for the appearance of the Singapore team. Then, Seb started to test my knowledge of geography. With each passing team, he asked me where the team's country was located. Which part of the world is Belarus in? What is the capital of Angola? Where is Saint Lucia; and Nicaragua? I realised that I was in dire straits . Do I only know the major, big developed countries? How many countries are there in the Pacific oceans, South America and Africa? Do you know that there are 202 countries involved in this Olympics? I felt ashamed that I do not know these other beautiful countries where life is simple in the middle of no where. And the thing is Seb knows most of the 'ulu' countries and which continent or ocean they lie in. I do need to find out more and urge the rest of the Singaporeans and Americans to do so too. I realised all too well that when we find out more about another country, culture, people, our minds are widen and enriched.

Now back to the opening of Olympics, we watched and waited for 2 hours before we finally saw the Singapore team passed by our 29 inch box in 8 seconds. I felt so proud to see the Singaporeans though I suspected that few are neutralised citizens. Just check out their names and you will get what I mean. In any case, I do hope we bag something. It will really give me a lunch time conversion to start with my colleagues.

With 4 free channels showing Olympics provided by our Internet provider, I shall stop here and catch up on some sports. For now, it is women basketball time.

Happy National Day

Today is Singapore's birthday. My boss asked me how Singapore got its independance. I replied, we were kicked out from Malaysia.

In Feb, when I was in Delft, Holland for my 3 weeks of job training, I got to know a fellow trainee who is a Malaysian. A man of about 40 years old, he explained to me why Malaysia abandoned Singapore. I tried to record it down now but I cannot remember most of the reasons after 6 months.

History is important to us. I learnt only in my late twenties now. When I was in school, I detested history for all the dates and foreigns names we had to memorise. And then, the history of south east asia was not very interesting to me and pretty shallow.

In France however, history manifests everywhere in the daily life. The architecture, buildings, food, books, music, transport, cathedrales, museums etc all oozed of history.

My in-laws' summer house in Bretany is at least 100 years old with a big fireplace and stone walls.

The Chartres catherdrale is nearly a thousand years old. And over the weekend, when I visited my granny-in-law in Chartres, she showed me the family genealogy of 8 levels dating back to the 1700s. I wish I can trace back my roots of 200 years ago.

I remembered starkly when after visiting the National Museum in Singapore, Seb told me that it should be called a house rather than a museum as he took 15 mins to finish. Over at the Louvre, it is more likely to take 15 hours to cover the whole place.

The Metro system here though is old (not as old as London's subway) and dirty, it boosts an age of a century.

My mother-in-law sometimes goes for history walk in Paris where a guide explains the history and architecture of a particular area.

Recently when the girlfriend of my brother and her friend came for a visit, I showed them Paris. I explained briefly the reason behind building Arc de Triomphe. And that the Obelix at Concorde was plundered by Napolean from Egypt. The Versailles Palace replaced the Louvre as the King's palace due to the vanity of the Sun King, Louis XIV. The ladies were impressed with my knowledge of French history here. In fact, I was merely repeating what Seb told me when he was my tour guide 2 years ago.

I am fervently reading about history of France through biography books of queens and princess of long ago. I do hope very much that one day, I will start to pick up about the history of China where I believe the roots of my family genealogy 200 year ago lies.

Singapore - Newsflash

Interestingly today, I read 2 news articles where Singapore was mentioned. Though I am far and away, I still try to read the interactive Straits Times every now and then. And today, something trival caught my attention. Seb will say I read news that are not 'important'. But hey, I do keep myself updated with current affairs. The thing is, not many people are interested to discuss current affairs with me.

Well, to continue, there was this study on people taking slimming pills in SE Asia. And Singaporeans top the rank. I have no need to pop slimming pills so I was surprised to see this result. If you are interested, click here.

The next article comes from BBC. See, I told you, I do read serious news. Again, there was a study; this time on kids who are more prone to short sightedness. Guess what, it was reported that 80% of 18-year-old male army recruits are short sighted, compared with 25% just 30 years ago. If you are interested to read more, click here.

So, are we in the news for the wrong reason? If I'm not a Singaporean and I do read these, I will conclude that all Singporeans wear glasses and are fat. Tell me if I'm wrong. Maybe I'm half wrong cos though I wear glasses, I never thought of popping slimming pills.

Any comments?

Yeah yeah. I received a few comments today. And the commenters were commenting on my 'mistakes'. Yeah, I know we don't boil durian seeds in Singapore. More likely we do that for jackfruit seeds. But then, I was referencing from www.dictionary.com and maybe there are really other countries and people who boil the seeds of durian.
Still, it feels good to receive comments. At least I know someone out there is reading my blog.

BTW, the durians were all eaten and I already regret not taking Seb's advise of buying 2 packets. I have to add this to my list of 'things to do in Singapore' when I visit next year; eat durians, lots of durians!

Chinatown, j'adore.

About once a month, I will make my pilgrimage to Chinatown in the 13th district of Paris. And today is that day of the month. I need to replenish my mee-hoon, udon noodles, tub of miso soup paste and get myself a little treat of roasted meat.

So, we took Metro line 13 and changed to line 9 and then changed to line 7. You can tell by all these changes that Chinatown is not exactly near where I live.

Today, there were fresh durians on display. I usually see them in the frozen corner. What a nice surprise. It did not end there. I spotted fresh durian pulps wrapped like those found in NTUC supermarket in Singapore. To Seb's dismay, he knew that I had to get my hands on them. After all, I am a true Singaporean and I do miss durians so much. So, I happily chose one pack of 6 durian pulps. It cost 19.50 euro per Kg. And I paid 11.50 euro for my pack. It is no XO or D24 quality but it is good enough for me in this foreign place where Roquefort is to me like durian is to Seb. So every pulp I eat cost me about SG$ 4. That is enough to buy a whole durian of this quality in Singapore.

<>What is durian? What is Roquefort? According to www.dictionary.com,
- Durian = huge fruit native to southeastern Asia `smelling like Hell and tasting like Heaven'; seeds are roasted and eaten like nuts
- Roquefort = A highly flavored blue-molded cheese, made at Roquefort, department of Aveyron, France.

So you can tell that Seb and I have a world's apart taste for food. The differences does not end there. There are others as well but I will stop at that today. I need to go brush my teeth because Seb will not talk to me now.

The customer is always right

I bought a blouse from UCB on my birthday last month. It was the sale's season in France.

After my first wash, I found 3 small holes in my blouse. One at the bottom back, one on the shoulder and one on the left sleeve. What a lousy quality!

Did I just throw this blouse away? Did I just let the matter rest? Did I tell myself how unfortunate I am to get this? Oh course, not. Instead, with no receipt as I had thrown it away with my credit card receipt, I went for an exchange. I have a right after all. Have you ever buy a new blouse and find three holes in them after one wear and wash? This blouse is obviously faulty.

So, did I get the exchange? Of course not. Not on my first visit, at least. The manager sympathised with me. I'm not sure if it was due to my broken french or because I looked really disappointed. He told me that if I can show him my bank statement, I will be able to exchange it. So, last Thurs, I went back to UCB. And this time, I did get my exchange. Isn't it nice?

This friend of mine told me the chances of getting my blouse exchanged is slim. ha Let me share with you what makes me so absolute sure I will get the exchange.

In Singapore, this friend of mine ordered a bed frame for her new home. She wanted a peach color but there was no more stock and so she had no choice but to choose a apple green one. She then re-painted her room to match the apple green bed frame. On the delivery day, guess the colour of the bed frame. It was peach. ha The story ended with the guys from the furniture coming to her place and painting her room back to the original color to match the peach. All complimentary of the furniture shop since they made a mistake. So, tell me now. Isn't customer always right?

A week only and she is back to being bad.

Bao Bei had been really good and nice for the past 5 days since she returned from her adventure. But this morning, she bit me and woke me up. When I tried to catch her, she scratched my fingers. Ouch! It hurts.

Who is Bao Bei? What adventure?

Bao Bei is our black kitten. We had her nearly 2 months ago and we lost her last Saturday That is the adventure I was talking about. We live on the second storey (third floor for Singaporeans readers). On that fateful day, the window was opened. Bao Bei usually sits outside on the window ledge to see the world pass by under her. At 6pm, Seb started looking for Bao Bei while I was cooking dinner. She likes to be in the same room as us so it was weird for me when I did not see her sitting on the dinning table watching me cook. Seb looked all over the apartment and could not find her. After a long search, we decided that she had either jumped out of the window or had accidentally fell down. A police report was done, neighbours questioned but still no news of her. You may not believe but I felt like a loser. 'What kind of a pet owner am I if I lose my cat so soon?' 'Will I ever see her again?' All these thoughts came into my mind. I could really understand how parents feel when their child is missing. That night, Seb and I both had our nightmares. You can imagine what it was about.

The next day, we prepared ourselves to go to church. Our plan on searching Bao Bei has to be continued on Monday where Seb will go to the Lost and Found Pets Association to check if someone brought Bao Bei to the association. Trust me, the French are pretty organised for lost pets. Seems like over here, too many people had their pets gone missing and returned.

So, we left our apartment and was walking to the Metro. We passed by the bakery and Seb noticed that there was a paper sticked on the door. It went like this 'Chaton Noir Trouvé, Avec noir et rouge collier, Appeller ........'. Translation 'Black kitten found, with black and red collar, call ......'

Can you believe our joy? It is Bao Bei. We called immediately. We got Bao Bei back. She is unhurt but she became super gentle and nice. She slept more and did not bite us on our toes while we were sleeping. We thought, hey, maybe the cat of the lady who found Bao Bei taught her a thing or two. Not bad for her little adventure, I thought. It is like from being 4 months old, she became 4 years old overnight.

5 days passed, ouch! She woke me up at 5am by biting my fingers. This morning, she did it again. And I got scratched when I tried to stop her. She is back to normal. Maybe I should leave the window open tonight!

Thank God It's Friday

There are only 5 people in the office today. Everyone is taking 'un pont' since Wednesday was Bastille Day. The French National day. 

What is 'un pont'? Un pont is a bridge. Someone taking 'un pont' means that he is taking leave on the days between a weekday holiday and the weekend. 
 
It is so quiet here. While reading the blog of eternal sunshine, I decided to be a blogger myself. Eternal sunshine has been encouraging me to do it but I felt too old to invest my time in this. So, we shall see how often this blog will be updated. 
 
For now, I'm waiting for my pizza to be delivered. Soon, it will be lunch time. Hungry hungry.