PK's Halfarsed Overseas Observations: July 2007

So I've just gotten back from a weekend in Paris, nominally to see the Tour de France, but really, well... because I can. Gotta love the Eurostar!
and I thought I'd take the novel approach of writing some thoughts about it whilst the trip is still fresh in my mind (my thoughts have a very short use by date), and I must say that having previously not really thought it was all it was cracked up to be. Now before you all drown me out with a chorus of "but Paris is the city of love!, it's the most beautiful city in the world" etc, etc, let me explain how I came by my previous misconception:
1) the weather when I went previously was shit. I mean really shit
2) as a result, pretty much all I saw of Paris was the Sacre Coeur, the Champs Elysees and Zara (a predominantly female clothing store) oh and lots of dog shit and rubbish on the streets
having been again with reasonably good weather I have now had the opportunity to climb the Arc de Triumphe, check out Notre Damne, Plaza de Concorde, the suburb of Saint Michel, the grounds of the Lourve and take the boat cruise past the other main sites (including that big tower) and I must say that I now agree with the majority of the human population that has had the pleasure of visiting Paris!
However, I do still have a few beefs with the beautiful city, namely:
- in 2 1/2 days all of the meals I ate (except lunch at a delightful Greek gyro house) were shit. Really shit. As shit as the weather was last time I was there.
- the customer service is terrible. Now, living in London, I'm used to poor service, but the places I visited really raised the bar on shit service levels
- the trains were as bad as those in the UK - stopping for no good reason and making things worse was the service announcements in French (to be fair my fault for not learning French)
- the beauty of the walkways by the Seine river and in fact a lot of the city of Paris being rudely interrupted by that most delightful odour - human urine. Now, we've all been caught short at one time or another and I'm as guilty as the next person of just a spot of public urination, but really, I've never smelt public spaces as bad as I have in some of the prettier parts of Paris
- continental breakfasts are generally good unless you're staying in a ridiculously cheap (and inconveniently located) 2 star hotel "near" the Carrefour Pleyel (not to be confused with Carrefour - the French version of Coles) metro station and their version of "ham" is suspiciously similar to "Spam" - complete with that nasty jelly like substance holding it all together
- getting into clubs is generally difficult enough - wrong shoes, wrong haircut, wrong shirt and all that jazz, we've all been there - even in Radelaide, but to be turned away from a club that was already mainly full of girls because there wasn't a girl in our group was a bit of a slap in the face
- for all of it's reputation as a city of high fashion, most of the Parisians we saw were not inappropriately dressed for a night out at the Village Tavern

Now, to the Tour de France.
On a certain level, I'm glad that I can say that I've now seen the starting (in London) and closing stages of one of the most famous sporting events in the world, BUT - not actually being that big a fan of cycling in the first place, on balance, I would rather have been watching it on a big screen either at home or preferably with friends, beer, toilets and most importantly... couches! Rather than spend any time ripping on the experience (which I am glad I've had), I've compiled a few suggestions for those who want to see the Tour up close an personal...
- having seen the Tour come through the streets of Paris I would probably recommend watching it up on one of those hill climbs that they do, so you can get close enough to the riders to push them (over if you so choose) and there's likely to be a reasonably steady stream of them come through over a period of time, as opposed to the whole pelaton cruising past in 30 seconds (admittedly they did a few laps of the Paris street circuit)
- pick a good location - luckily my boss suggested the corner of the Champs Elysees and Plaza de Concorde and that actually worked out quite well for us
- get there early... but not too early. We got to our spot at about 1pm. If you get there too late then the crowd will be six deep and unless you're over 6 foot massive (I'm not) you probably won't see anything
- bring water and snacks - but don't drink too much! if you leave your location, some will steal it and even if you don't people will keep encroaching into your personal space until you just want to start lashing out and hurting someone. I don't have the largest bladder in the world and not being able to go to use the facilities for 4 1/2 hours is not fun
- bring something to sit on - standing in the same spot for 4 1/2 hours is also not fun
- bring some music, a book to read, or someone you can talk shit to for 4 1/2 hours. If you're lucky, there will be speakers set up near you, but those speakers, whilst playing a reasonable selection of music (including Midnight Oil and INXS) may change over to random French commentary at any given moment, which can be confusing
- oh and be prepared for a parade of truly commercial proportions, made amusing by the sheer fact that you won't know half of th products being advertised but tolerable due to the large numbers of pretty girls dancing on fast moving automobiles

So that's it. My weekend in Paris. Photos and a video clip (if I can figure out how to make it work) of the race to come. I can feel the anticipation already...

PK

Well Hello there,

Thanks for taking a few minutes of your increasingly important and busy lives to drop by and see what I've been up to. Hopefully it's not too disappointing and unlike Hans Moleman (bonus points for knowing which episode that came from because if you don't know what show it's from you probably shouldn't be reading this blog) you won't be complaining that I took 5 minutes of your life and that you want it back, because unfortunately, I'm not David Tennant and I don't have a TARDIS (yes, after a year I have become a little bit British and am now hooked on Dr Who, Top Gear, Yorkshire Puddings and school night drinking...)

So to wrap up the past few months I'm starting with a little ditty that some of you may have received on e-mail, and if you didn't I can only apologise and assume that I don't have your e-mail (see how I made that your fault ;?P)...

without further ado here is "And that's all that's making news..."

Having just realised that I pretty much get round to
these every 3 months, I hereby welcome you to the 2nd
quarter of 2007 wrap up of all (or at least most)
that's happened to one of the many friends that you
invariably know on the other side of the world.

So what has happened since we last met like this?

I went to New York and spent a hideous amount of money
but did manage to get to see the New York Knicks
(basketball) at Madison Square Garden, New York
Yankees (baseball) at Yankee Stadium - where we
literally got snowed on - not cool, up to Ellis Island
to climb as far as you can up the Statue of Liberty as
it possible (only to the top of the pedestal -
although we did get a look up her skirt...), Times
Square, Ground Zero, the base of the Empire State
Building (the queue was just too farking long),
Central Park, a club where they filmed an episode of
Sex & the City and we also took in a Kaiser Chiefs
concert - that was probably one of the more surreal
experiences of the whole trip. Being surrounded in
quite a large club that was pretty much full of Poms
singing along to "Oh my god I can't believe it, I've
never been this far away from home". We even managed
to find an internet cafe that sold meat pies and
Coopers Pale Ale - awesome! But most importantly for a
tech nerd like me, I managed to buy myself a shiny
new, black MacBook that I probably didn't really need,
but did REALLY want... in fact I'm typing this e-mail
on it now!

So New York was cool, the fact that we were getting
US$2 to the pound certainly helped, but I was
certainly pleasantly suprised by how friendly the
average New Yorker is and just how willing they were
to go out of their way for you. Their customer service
was also immaculate, and whilst I'm sure that they
count on their tips, the same could be be said for a
lot of customer service positions here in the UK and
it must be said that customer service here is pretty
rubbish.

Let me see, what else has happened? For those of you
that don't know, I got dumped about six weeks ago, so
the dream is over and now I'm trying to learn to cook
for myself.

Since then I've been to Amsterdam for a weekend with
my housemate and some friends. Amsterdam is a
seriously cool place and even without the Red Light
District (not quite as shocking as I expected it to
be), the illicit (in other countries) drugs, space
cakes and "brownies" it'd still be a cool place. The
Heineken musuem was about the only touristy thing we
did (other than sample some of the cakes and
brownies). We'd been told that the Anne Frank museum
was a place to go, but again the queue was just too
farking long, so we bailed on that and found a coffee
house instead. The Dutch really love their bikes and
the bikes pretty much rule the roads which is kinda
cool but really dangerous cos they don't make as much
noise, thankfully we all got through the weekend
unscathed.

Utilising my newfound freedom I've made some fairly
serious travel plans for the next few months - Paris
at the end of July for the end of the Tour de France,
Edinburgh in August for the Fringe Festival, Munich
in September for the opening of Ocktoberfest and back
to Radelaide for 2 weeks at the start of November for
a wedding (I fly in on the morning of the wedding, I'm
going to need a LOT of RedBull methinks) and trying to
figure out where to go for Christmas, I'm currently
leaning to St Petersburg...

Not huge amounts worth reporting on the London front.
Work is going well (I'm pretty sure they're going to
sponsor me to stay over here), going out to lots of
random pubs and clubs. Cameron Dickson came to visit
from Oz before and after his Contiki tour and Caitlin
Hall came to visit last weekend on her way back home.
I'm spending ridiculous amounts of my spare time on
Facebook (www.facebook.com - it's kind of like MySpace
for people over 18 yrs old and aren't Emos) and I
understand (and can see by the numbers of you joining
up recently) that it's just starting to become a
monster in Oz too. Huffy even had an article published
in the Australian about it
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22058589-7582,00.html?from=public_rss
so get onboard, everyone else is! It's kind of cool
stumbling across people you haven't seen for almost 10
years. Oh, also I went to Wimbledon on Centre Court
for a day that did not rain one drop, the famous
Gloucester Cheese Rolling Festival (you know the one
they always show on Sports Tonight where fools chase a
block cheese down a ridiculously steep hill and
hilarity and carnage ensue?) and saw Muse play at the
new Wembley (which was awesome)

I've started compiling a list of all the places that I
want to go eat at when I'm back home (is that just a
bit sad?) and it's looking like I'm going to do a bus
tour to the Barossa on one of the Fridays that I'm
back, so if you're interested let me know (P.S Liam,
can you see what Ralfie's availability is like on
Friday 9th Nov?)

Wow, I think that's the most I've written in one
sitting since university, I guess there's nothing you
can't do when listening to some awesome music!
(Powderfinger, The Killers, Jack Johnson, Superjesus
and the Kaiser Chiefs, Reel Big Fish - too much
information? Probably... I do that sometimes)

Oh, and next weekend I'm having some birthday drinks.
We're going to play some lawn bowls in Hyde Park and
then head out somewhere after that.

So if you've made it this far I do have a bit of a
present for you... photos! I'm told they say a
thousand words, but with most of mine iI reckon
they're only worth a few hundred words at most.

Hope you're all well and hit me back with some news
from your end, cos god knows I've got nothing but time
on my hands now! Oh, and get onto Facebook....

PK