I was at Disneyland

I always thought that Disneyland was for kids. So whenever someone suggested going to Disneyland, I would say no. This time round, I agreed to go when Irene suggested going to Disneyland. Irene had been to France three times and visited many places. I guess it was not right to let her go Disneyland alone.

We really enjoyed Disneyland. With good preparation, we made the best out of our day. Here I shall share some tips with you.

The tickets are cheaper if you know 5 days in advance which date you are going. I bought the tickets via internet. It cost 29€ for a ticket with a date printed while an open date ticket cost 47€ for a park. Add in 10€ more if you want to visit 2 parks within a day. As each park is big, it is better to concentrate your full day on a park. We chose to visit the Disneyland Park instead of the Walt Disney Studios.

Once the tickets were bought, I printed them myself. Having the tickets printed and sent to your home will incurred delivery fees. At the entrance of the park, we avoided the long queue to buy tickets and also the long queue to validate our tickets. There was a separate queue for internet tickets and only a handful of people bought their tickets in advance via internet.

Avoid going on a weekend or Wednesday if possible. These are the days where Disneyland will be very crowded. We chose to go on a Thursday and as it was during the low peak season, there were not too many people. We usually waited less than 10 mins for each ride and attraction.

There are many restaurants in Disneyland and most of them sell the usual fast food style sandwiches, beverages and dessert. We made sandwiches in the morning and brought fruits, water and titbits. There are benches all over Disneyland. We did stop for hot beverages before the parade and the queue took us 30mins. It seems that everyone had the same idea as us. Have a hot chocolate while waiting for the parade to start. The parade started at 4pm and by the time we had our hot chocolate in hand, we could not find a good position to watch the parade. Suddenly, you would realise that there are really a lot of people in Disneyland. I could not imagine how it would be on a summer weekend. If you like parades and have kids, go find a place along the kerb way, way in advance. If you do not like parade, take this time to go do the rides. There would be fewer queues.

We arrived shortly after the opening of the park and left when it closed with a candle celebration at 7pm. We started at Fantasyland with the boat ride of 'It's a small world' (wished I had the time to do it twice) and continue to discover the Discoverland, Adventureland and Frontierland. For major attractions with high demand, we got a fast pass. It is actually a ticket giving you priority (direct access) at a given hour. So there was no need to queue. We could do other attractions before our fast pass appointment.

At the end of the day, we were dead tired. We were glad that we came by the RER train instead of driving. RER cost about 6.50€ one way from Paris to Disneyland. Car parking for a whole day cost 8€. However, after a long day, none of us would like to drive. Also, there are rumours that traffic is always slow during the rush hour to Paris.

I had fun at Disneyland. There were little girls dressed up as princesses. Robes can be found in the boutiques. They cost around 45€ each. The boutiques sell the usual Walt Disney stuff. Irene got a lovely Mickey in Paris mug. Though the weather was not that great that day, we still enjoyed ourselves greatly. It is really not difficult because there's a kid in every adult.

I have no answer to this question.

Often I have friends asking if I can recommend any cheap accomodation for their friends who are visting Paris. Well, I could not offer any help as I had never stay in a hotel in Paris.

If my friends are coming, they would be staying at my humble place. That is if they do not mind the big sofa bed. However, I decided to offer some websites I found recently regarding alternate accomodation in Paris. There is no big grand hotel mentionned. If you can pay 200€ per night, ignore this entry and just go to Yahoo! or Google and type in "hotel in paris".

I have never tried out any of the lodgement in these sites. You are at your own risk if you choose to contact them. Still, there is no harm checking and deciding for your own. Irene, I hope these are useful for your friend's aunties who are coming in May. And Ivan, I hope this is useful for you too. Sorry, my place is booked already for May.

http://www.paris35.com Low cost Hotels Hostels Apartments Bed and Breakfast in Paris for just35€

http://www.escalea-paris.com/en/ custom apartment rental service for short-term stays in Paris

http://www.paulinesbedandbreakfast.com/Bed and breakfast in the 18th district

http://www.2binparis.com/ Bed and breakfast in Paris

http://pour-vous-paris.com/index.htm Stay with Parisians at their homes. Need to be a member of this site.

Waiting for the King's Bounty

I like to play games. There were a few computer games that I really enjoyed. I loved playing WORMS 2 with my brother. It was so cute trying to kill each other with bazooka, homing pigeon, napalm strike, baseball bat, shotgun, handgun, punch etc.... Yeah, I said CUTE. You really must play it to understand it.

I liked building with SIM tower. I preferred that to SIM city. Recently, I was addicted to Mario Galaxy and had finally rescued Princess Peach with my WII console. With great graphics, Seb had managed to convince me to change our TV set to a flat screen one.

Yet, my all time favourite game is the DOS based King's Bounty (see picture above). I guess it was more for nostalgic seek but I do really enjoy this simple graphics game. From time to time, I would start a game of King's Bounty. Seb would be puzzled. He would recommend me to get new games. But no, I just like it. A new 3-D King's Bounty is going to be in the market soon. I really look forward to getting it. But nothing will replace the original one.

Maid to order

The other day, I was explaining to my colleagues about the family nucleus in Singapore. In an ideal singaporean family, there is a young married couple with a kid and a house maid. Usually they would be staying near one of their parents.

I started explaining the unique situation of having a house maid even for the middle income family. The maid's salary was low and these young girls from under developed countries were often greeted with culture shock. There were cases of girls falling down from high rise buildings while hanging out the clothes or cleaning the windows. I remembered my granny's maid asking for wood to start a cooking fire the first day she arrived. In the newspaper, we read about maids being abused and also abusing maids.

Out of curiosity, I started to search for the low wages of the maids and I found this interesting paper written about the work condition of maids in Singapore. I think the study was rather one sided as it highlighted only extreme cases. I know of a few maids who were really happy working for my friends and my relatives and were treated like a family member. However, as the title said "Workplace Abuses in Singapore", what else can you expect from this report. Read more in: http://hrw.org/reports/2005/singapore1205/6.htm

It is really long but worth reading. It highlighted the working condition and missing labour laws to protect these maids. With no off day for Indonesian maids, with no fix working hours, with no min wages, some maids entered into salvery without leaving the house, without having enough sleep, without being paid. Really sad stories really happening in Singapore.

Fitness Center

I joined a fitness center recently. I never like the idea of running on a threadmill nor having to follow the steps of an aerobics coach. However, I no longer joined the badminton club and I had been too lazy to go swim. With age catching up, I felt weak and lethagic.

A few months ago, a fitness center for ladies-only opened just two blocks from my office. A few of us went on a free trial session and we were satisfied. Now on every tuesday and thursday, my three colleagues and I would head down to the fitness center for 30 minutes of exercise.

In the fitness center, there were a spa machine, a suntan bed and the usual fitness equipements. There was also a TV room where we could do stretching, aerobics etc following a video. What interested us was the coaching class. Each day, there was a different theme. It could be toning, silhouette, slimming etc. We had a pretty coach and during 30 mins, we would be working out on different equipements. Every 1 min, we would change equipement. The coach was not demanding but encouraging. She guided us to tuck in our tummy and reminded us to breathe. She showed us how best to operate an equipement. It was never boring as the music and sequence of workout changed often.

We had been regulars since a month. Each time we did the chest theme, our arms and underarms would be aching the next day. I like this fitness center as it catered only to ladies. I noticed a number of Muslims women in the center.

My goal is to be able to carry the grocery bags packed with milk, juices and fruits.

Chinese New Year

Today is Chinese New Year's eve. This is the year of the Rat.
I am in office working. Seb will be back from Spain tonight and we shall have a simple dinner togather.
On Sunday, we went to Chinatown and it was jammed pack with cars and asians. We were desperate to get out of Tang Féres. There was hardly space to manoeuver the trolley. I grabbed the essentials while Seb joined the parking queue.

These were what I bought from Chinatown.

I wish everyone a prosperous chinese new year. Got to get back to work.

Talk of the town

Remember how Singapore was suddenly made famous by Nick Leeson in the financial market about 12 years ago? Well, someone out did him. That someone was a trader working in the second biggest bank of France, Societe Generale. He made his bank lost $7 billion (5 billion euro) by conducting rogue trading. This is definitely the hot topic in our office. See, we are a financial risk-management software company. And we are trying to figure out how this trader managed to cover and snow-ball his errors until this moment and at this amount. Most of us know of someone who is working in Societe Generale. Well, there goes their bonus as the bank lost a further 2 billion euros because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in US.

On a brighter note, we were really glad that Jo-Wilfried Tsonga made it to the finals in the Asutralia Open. He defeated Nadal in 3 sets. Though I am no big tennis fan, we do have cable TV in the office common area. Everyone was pretending to get water, coffee, orange juice so as to catch a glimpse of the action. When it was the final set, most of us were glued to the TV. Tsonga was not known. His ranking was 38 and he managed to defeat the number 2 guy in tennis. We really hope he would do France proud as it had been many many years since a french made it to the finals of a Grand Slam.

Note: When I mentioned we, I was referring to my colleagues.

Today, there was a strike with the public service workers like teachers, nurses etc..... Against increase cost of living and low pay. Sarkozy promised to increase french purchasing power during election period. Now, he avoided talking about this subject in his speeches. The news were just speculating if he had secretly married his girlfriend. Yeah, the ex-model who had dated men around the globe including father and son. In BBC, there was an article on the dilemma of India for the visit of Sarkozy and his girlfriend. Should they share the same suite? What is the protocol for a visiting president bringing his girlfriend along? The president's communication team did a good job to steer more pressing issues aside for some juicy gossips about the president's personal live.

To end, Singapore Prime Minister came visiting in Paris. Reading from the news site in Singapore (sadly, I did not read about this in French site), he met up the president, foreign minister and prime minister of France. He invited all of them to come visit Singapore. This morning, I read in the free papers given at the metro station that Lee Hsien Long visited the Quai Branly museum with the ex-president Chirac. At last, Singapore is mentioned. How rare to hear about this small country over here.

Endives

In France, there are seasonal vegetables and fruits. In winter, I find that there are less variety of fresh vegetables. Courgettes, aubergines and green beans are mostly imported from Spain or Marocco and they cost much more than in summer. Still, I managed to find a vegetable that is becoming my favourite greens. Okay, it is not exactly green in color. It is called endive. Endives have a bitter after-taste and most of the time, it is served as salade. I do not like raw veggie and prefer to cook them.
My mother-in-law made me discovered endives a few years ago. She baked them with ham and creamy sauce. I like it but find it hard to get the sauce consistent.

Other ways of cooking endives is to boil them in water with sugar to remove the bitterness for 15 mins. Remove them from the pot and dry them. Dash some lemon juice over them, sprinkle some herbs and put them in the oven for about 30 mins. That is a simple way.

Another way is to wrap bacon or ham around the endives after they are boiled. Sprinkle chesse and pepper over them and grill them for 15 mins. Grilled bacon and crispy melted cheese with endives. Yummy!

Both dish taste good and are defintely ideal as a no fuss, no frills week-day dinner.

Of needles and hems

I need to shorten the curtains I bought. As I had no needles at home to mark the length, I went to the supermarket this afternoon to get a pack. Guess the price.

It cost me 5.50€ for a pack of simple needles. I had no choice but to take it. But I am sure that in Singapore, I could have bought 10 packs of needles for SG$11. Well, one pack is enough to last me a lifetime. Sometimes, the things in France are just outrageously overpriced!

Another example is to find a tailor to adjust the length of the pants. In Singapore, I did it for SG$3 in the wet market. Over here, most charge around 10.50€. I am still looking for one that cost around 7€. I know it exists but I forgot where it was since it was 3 years ago that I did it.

Galette des Rois

During the month of January, a special cake can be found in the bakery. It is the galette des rois (King's cake). This puff pastry usually has frangipane filling in it. In each cake, there is a little figurine hidden in it. The person who gets this figurine will be the king of the day. He will have to wear a paper crown for the entire day.

This cake is to celebrate Epiphany when the three wise men paid homage to baby Jesus. In the old days, a bean was used instead of a figurine.

Well, for the whole month of January, we would be eating the galette des rois for dessert. It is like eating moon cake during the 8th month of the Lunar Calendar. When dining with friends, we would have galette des rois. In office, usually a galette des rois party will be organised.

I had mine with my company last week. Each part of the galette had to be randomly distributed. Being the newest in the company, I was asked to name who should get the galette without looking. I had to make sure that everyone was named. We had 5 galettes and ended up with 3 kings and 2 queens. If you do come to France in January, do try one from the bakery. Some bakeries make galette for one person. You will be sure to be the king of the day.

Thanks giving 2007

Looking back on 2007, I count my blessings. God had been good to us. Seb and I changed jobs and had no regrets. We moved into our apartment and our last furniture finally arrived on 29/12/2007. We are very comfortable in our new place. Both of us are in good health though I was recently down with gastric flu and Seb with a big cold. These are annual affairs when our immune system is weaker during winter.

In 2007, we travelled often. I discovered various parts of France and due to work; I discovered Finland and Luxembourg as well. Seb had his share of travelling too. Our lives are pretty much the same as before – still loving each other. We made efforts for each other. We called each other before leaving office to go home. We did grocery shopping together. We shared house chores. Simple things like that should not be taken for granted. Over all, we have no complains for 2007. Thank God!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the first day of 2008, I decided to clear space in the big red box which contained cards I held dear. I would like to throw old cards to make space for new ones I received from the last few years. I was the sentimental kind of person when it came to cards. I kept cards given by friends. As e-cards got more popular, I received fewer cards. I in turn sent less cards too.

So, I spent hours looking and reading the cards. Most were Christmas cards, some wedding cards, a few farewell cards. There were also birthday cards, postcards and of course; cards given by Seb. We gave each other cards on valentine’s day, wedding anniversary and birthdays. It was difficult to decide which card to keep and which card should go. I tried my best. If a friend only sent me a card, I put it back in the red box. Even though one might reasoned that we had already lost contact and this card no longer held any meaning to the friendship. I prefer to think that at one stage of my life, I was good enough to receive a card from the sender. Our paths had crossed and this card was the evidence.

I received the most cards from Claire. Our friendship dated back 9 years ago. We communicated often by emails and phone. Still, it felt so good to receive a nice card with thoughts of the day in it from time to time.

My little possible-to-keep resolution for this year is to send out cards to family and friends. Emails are quick and cheap. But cards filled with hand written words and travelled slowly by snail-mail add delight and surprises to the receiver! Don't you agree? *hint hint*

Strasbourg and Colmar

Seb and I went to Strasbourg by TGV 2 weeks again and we spent 4 days there. Strasbourg is famous for its christmas market though there are many christmas markets in France. Seems like the tradition started from Strasbourg.

The journey took us 2h20min and as we bought the tickets in advance, we travelled by first class. At the price we paid which was similar to second class, these tickets were not exchangable or refundable.

The Strasbourg train station looked newly renovated with an extension from the old building made up of glass. This fusion of old and new complimented each other really well.

During our 4 days, we went to watch a basketball match between Strasbourg team and Toulon team. On this occasion, we took the tram from the uptown to the stadium. We like cities with tram ways. It makes the city looks more ecological and less polluting.

And we saw a Singapore Shop. Looking inside, it was just an Indian bazzar shop.

There were many Chirstmas markets in Strasbourg, each with different themes. This year, some craftmens from Quebec were invited to participate in the Chirstmas market.

Apart of visiting Christmas markets in Strasbourg, we visited the nearby famous city, Colmar. Colmar was also known as the Venise of France. It was a little city full of charm.

We also visited the different area of Strasbourg, like the Petite France.




As it was a very cold week, we had to look for warmth after short walks in the streets.

We visited the Alsacien Musuem and also the History Musuem of Strasbourg. They gave us insights to the lives of the strasbourgeoises in ancient times. We enjoyed the museums a lot.

Each part of France is so different. Strasbourg is in the region Alsace. Alsace itself has its own costume, food culture and language. As it was really near Germany, there were many people speaking German.
I am glad to have finally visited the eastern part of France. I hope to visit the mountains in France for my next short getaway.

WII

We bought a WII for ourselves. :) As there was a shortage of stock this year in France, I was so happy to get it over the weekend.

At the end of the year, our companies gave us gift vouchers as a token of appreciation. We waited to receive this voucher to use it for the WII. So when we finally could buy our WII, it was already out of stock in Paris. We tried our luck in Chartres and there were a few left.

In England, it was selling for about 320£. Some english even came to France to get it since it was much cheaper at 250€. I have no idea what caused such a big success of WII this year since it existed already in 2006.

Anyway, I had fun playing with the games. Seb said that WII is really for the Asian market and I think he is not wrong. I am always an arcade addict in Singapore. Wish my ka-ki Tim was here. We could have a smashing good time boxing each other.

PS: Ka-ki = buddy in Hokkien

End of the year is coming soon!

We are going on a long weekend to Strasbourg tomorrow. Strasbourg is about 500km from Paris. With the new TGV line opened, it would only take us 2h 20 mins to get there. I have never visited the eastern part of France so this will be a great occasion since Strasbourg is famous for its Christmas market (marché de Noël).

The weather is starting to get really cold this week. At least the weather forecast is pretty positive for the next few days. There will not be rain.

When we return, it would soon be christmas. Each year, we bought a bigger christmas tree than the last. We started with a 50cm christmas tree and I am happy to have a 1.2m christmas tree this year. My company will organise an afternoon party next friday. And on Saturday, we will be heading to Chartres to spend our christmas with the family until 26/12/2007. As one of our directors comes from the region Alsace, we do not have to work on Boxing day as it is a public holiday in the Alsace region.

During this festive season, Jessie is here in France to spend Christmas with her in-laws family. She had kindly bought some food stuff for me from Singapore. I am looking forward to meeting her next Tuesday; not just for the food.

And there is also Sharon whom I have never met who is coming to France for the same reason. We planned to meet on 30/12/2007. It would be great to see the real family after reading so much about them in her blog.

That pretty much wraps up the end of 2007. Gosh. It will soon be 2008.

Some photos of the market before it burnt down

Leave benefits in france

It has been more than 5 months since I switched jobs. I do not think I ever wrote about the work benefits in France. I will just mention about the leave benefits here.

In France, the annual leave is 5 weeks. I think this is a standard for all workers. Everyone I know who works here has at least 5 weeks of leave. My company is kind enough to give everyone an extra week. I have 6 weeks of annual leave. On top of that, I have extra days off. In France, the general weekly working hours is 35 hours. Depending on the company policy, workers are compensated with extra off days for extra hours of work. In my present company, we work minimum 39 hours per week. To compensate for the extra hours, we have a day off for every 9 days of work. That is about two off days per month. This day off cannot be accumulated as it is meant to be a day to rest for working extra hard. Of course, there is always an exception for new comer who does not have enough annual leave to go on holidays.

In total, I am paid 54 working days a year for not going to office. This is a big bonus compared to my previous job where I did not have off days even if I stayed back late because I was on 35 hours working week and had only 25 days of leave.

Not everyone has this chance like mine. It is really rare to find such an employee social company. Seb used to work for one such company. But now, he is working for a multi-national company where he has 5 weeks of leave and 12 off days per year.

Days off are really useful in this country where public offices and certain banks are not open on Saturday. Any administrative paper work has to be done during the weekdays and it can take up the whole day just queueing and waiting for your turn. As a foreigner in this country, I do have lots of paper works to be done. Of course, during the strike season, people took a day off to avoid getting caught in traffic.

In my opinion, having so many days of leave does not reduce work productivity and effiency. In contrast, it boosts worker's moral and after a good rest, we are even more motivated and effective in our work.

I remembered that in Singapore, the weekly working hours was 42 hours and yet we worked up to 60 hours when the dateline was near. I had 18 days of annual leave. After we delivered our project, we usually had a day off. I thought I was really fortunate then.

Neverending strike?

I am in office at 7am this morning. I am not an early person but I had no choice. France is crippled by transport strike since a week. On this tuesday, almost everyone is on strike. Teachers, judges, lawyers, France telecom staff, electricity company workers, university students, Air France stewards and hostesses and most important of all, public transport workers. 1 out of 5 metros are working. Suburbs trains are greatly reduced. Millions of commuters in Paris and its suburbs resorted to cars, bicycles or walking. There were 250 km of traffic jams reported last week. Now you know why I left home at 6.20am. To avoid the 1.5 hours I took when we left at 7.30am yesterday.

Last week, I was in Helsinki and did not face the strike. While the temperature there was less than 1 degree, the indoors were always warm. I even found the hotel room too hot. It was nice to have a little snow. The main street in Helsinki had a hot water pipe running underneath it to prevent it from freezing and being slippery during winter. Most of the time, we walked through shopping center and underground tunnel to get from the hotel to the client's office. I was not out in the cold that much. From the month of November, cars in Finland had to change their tyres for the winter. By 1 December, all cars must have their winter tyres fitted.

For the moment, my working trip is confined to Finland. As for Seb, he was in South Africa just a week before me and it was 25 degrees there. When we compared our photos, it was amusing to see the differences. One of green trees and lovely swimming pool with bright sunshine.The other of beautiful lights with a snowing background.

The first family breaking up

Nicolas Sarkozy. If you have never heard of this name, it is okay. I can understand that you are not living in France or you do not care about politics. This guy’s name is everywhere that even the Americans know about him. He is the president of France and a friend of George Bush. He is the guy mentioned DAILY in the local news.

He is also the first president to be undergoing a divorce. Aha, did I get your attention now? Ok. I am doing a tabloid entry here.

Long ago, when Nicolas Sarkozy was mayor of Neuilly (a wealthy commune just beside Paris), he conducted the marriage of Cécilia and Jacques Martin (a TV host). Jacque Martin was in his fifties and his bride was 26 years old and heavily pregnant.

A few years later, Nicolas and Cécilia divorced their respective partners and got married in 1996. The marriage was on the rocks when Cécilia went to New York in the company of another man in 2005.

During the presidential campaign, all the candidates tried to make their family life look good. Nicolas was no exception.

This divorce was not that surprising as Cécilia did not make an effort in her role as first lady. Something was already amiss. Like in the recent picnic lunch with George Bush and family, she was absent and announced sick. However the next day, she was seen shopping in full health. In US, this news might shock a lot of people but in france, the common people did not really care. French tends to keep to their own business. It is the opposition party that criticise Nicolas for creating a fake family image. I think what is important is how Nicolas manages this country where companies get richer but there are 7 millions people living in poverty.

More gossip starts at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9cilia_Sarkozy

Adieu, burnt down market

A while ago, my brother informed me that the market near our old Ang Mo Kio home had burnt down. I just dismissed this news without much thought. Today, I happened to see some photos taken years ago of the hawker stalls. Suddenly, I got awoken. I am a visual person and these photos brought back much valued memories. This market had been a huge part of my childhood and even adulthood. For nearly 20 years, this was the place where we spent most of our family time together. We had breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper there. Food at hawker centers were cheap and when mom did not cook, the most convenient way was to head down to the market for a no frills cheap meal. If going to the hawker center was considered an outing, then it was the place I visited most with my father.

Stall number 1 was the mixed veggie rice stall which used to sell Yong Tau Foo. I love the braised pig trotters there. There was also this white chicken rice stall opposite the community center. I remembered having lunch there on Saturday in between band practise. The last stall sold fish soup with fried fish eggs. Yummy. Beside it was the fried oyster which was heavenly sinful.

For breakfast, we usually shared nasi lemak with prawn mee soup or laksa. Sometimes it was the fried mee hoon with porridge poured over it. It’s not yucky. You should try it. The fresh soya bean drinks was a must despite the long queue. Each of us had our own task to do. One to buy the drinks; the other to queue for the food; another one to grab seats. It was such a normal affair that I never stop for a moment to reflect on this until now. Now that I am no longer in Singapore. Now that there is no hawker center in France. Now that eating out is usually eating in a restaurant on a less frequent basis. Oh what sweet memories of this burnt down market!

For supper, we would get fried hokkien mee and also satays. I better stop talking about local food since there are no plans to go back Singapore for the rest of the year.

The stall holders were hard working people who would start from early morning until late night; sometimes selling different food between lunch and dinner. I wonder how they were affected by this great loss. I read that the government will not rebuild the market unless the stall holders contribute money as well. As the sum was huge, I doubt many would continue. Truly, if the market had not been destroyed, I guess I would never have such strong nostalgic thoughts right now.

I better clear my thoughts fast because I wanted so much to hop on a plane for Singapore and hug my family telling them “I love you all and thanks for the meals we had together at the market.” Bisous.

We have moved.

We had finally moved into our new place. Having professional movers eased our lives a great deal. Still we were kept busy with cleaning the apartments (the new and the old ones); buying the essentials for the apartment; unpacking and organising our stuff etc....

With the coming public holiday on Thursday (All Saints' Day), we will continue with our post-house moving work.- To assemble the cupboard we bought, choose paint color for our coridor, buy a microwave oven, stock up food in the fridge, visit our old apartment for last check before doing a hand-over. Friends had asked me to show them photos. That would have to wait as there are still boxes lying around and we do not have all our new furnitures yet.

As we had some furnitures that we did not bring over to the new apartment, I decided to give them away. There is this interesting website that allows you to publish items to give away. It is a donation/exchange website. You can give almost anything you no longer want. I posted my fridge and immediately got 16 replies. Some were students starting their school year in Paris and needed to furnish their studio. I would prefer this site than eBay. And looking at the replies I received, there are needy people out there who could benefit from things we no longer want.

As for the transport strike, it was over last week. However, this is the season of strike. Lawyers and judges were on strike. So were the staff of ambulances. Even the Air hostesses and stewards of Air France and KLM just ended their strike. On 20 Nov, there would be a general strike. I doubt I will take a day off but I will definately leave home real early to avoid the traffic jam.