fresh baked

this morning before work I stopped by a bakery to get some croissants and chocolatines (chocolate croissants). Initially I wanted to get a couple of each, so i could share some with my co-office dwellers. Once I made my order the lady at the counter started telling me something, but I couldn't understand the words coming out of her mouth. I think it was about a special they were having where you buy x items you get 1 free. I say I think because the combination of my sleepyhead-ness and her fast talking+semi-accent made things a little hairy for the few braincells that were already awake. So I just mumbled "yeah, sure" and she asked me for 3€50 and I got a bunch of croissants and chocolatines back. Overall not a bad deal, but I gotta say that speaking fast to the customer in a foreign accent (honestly I have no idea where the woman was from, maybe Romania ?) is a top-notch sales technique. I mean, maybe 5% of people will throw a hissy fit if this happens, but I'm guessing most people feel too sheepish at 8am to do so and will just have the same reaction I had.
Of course this sales method is not universally applicable. Try this at a bar with drunken patrons and you're bound to be met with more hostility than Mel Gibson at a Bar Mitzvah. Then again, when drunk people get into a fight, there's a 64% chance they're gonna end up hurting themselves and not you, so you might have a good strategy after all, if you're into that sort of thing.

brown bag it

As part of my continuing search for financial improvements (subtext: it’s all small stuff), I’ve recently started bringing my own lunch to work. Nothing fancy, as I prepare it in the morning, which isn’t my favourite time to operate, just enough so I don’t feel hungry 14 mins after having eaten it. My usual fare consists of some sort of salad (carrots, tomatoes, parmesan…), a sandwich (turkey and swiss on whole wheat, how I love thee) and a fruit. A few months back I used to not eat lunch at all, so this is almost like an all you can eat buffet compared to then, but still much more rationed than the big portions you get when you buy lunch at a take-out place. And of course, it costs much less to do so. One such trip to the sandwich place costs me around 8-10 euros, whereas here I spend 2 euros (at most). Ka-ching !
Now I only have to find a way to stop spending so much dough on the other “frivolous” expenses, like CDs and magazines, and pretty soon I’ll be able to buy myself a house. Or a DVD, whichever comes first.

creepy

every morning while going to work, i go past a building which has bright pink neon lights in its lobby. Gives me a very Kubrick circa-Clockwork Orange vibe, even though the overall neighborhood is as bland and -probably- safe as a butter knife. Some people just have the weirdest tastes, not that there's anything wrong with that. Or maybe that the neon thing is going to come back in style soon, and this is just a harbinger of things to come, in which case, I gotta find those tennis compression shorts (influence Agassi '91 baby) I used to rock oh so proudly on the courts.

liquid confidence

had a nice little weekend for myself. Highlights include drinks on Friday (Le Reflet, a bar near la Sorbonne), drinks on Saturday (around Duroc), and then drinks on Sunday (Great Canadian Pub at Saint Michel). So yeah, drinks all around. Not a bender or anything of the sort mind you, just enough lubricant to add a little fun to an otherwise normal weekend. I don't like drinking to the point of having a hungover the following morning, but a few beers and shots of Jack with good friends can be the perfect relief after a tough workweek. Although I will say this : happy hour sucks in Paris.

drop it like it's hot

remember the nano I bought, oh, one week ago ? This morning I was in a bit of a hurry, and while taking it out of my pocket to choose a track, I dropped the thing on the pavement. Then as I was picking it up to inspect the damage, I dropped it again. As the saying goes, "d'oh!".
Fortunately the thing has a flash-drive, so it's meant to be pretty resistant to such accidents. It does have a few scratches on the corners, but nothing major. Since it's so small I was meaning to buy a sillicon-cover, like an iskin, to protect it against such events, but the new models aren't out yet. Until that happens I'll try to tone down on the crash testing.

lost

in three short years the TV show Lost has become a global phenomenon. I've watched all the episodes thanks to the wonders of the internet since the very first one, and I'm hooked to its great mix of mystery, drama and action.
Season 3 is set to start in the US on Oct. 4, and to prepare myself for the event, I decided to catch up on the previous seasons. I already own the season 1 DVD boxset, and ordered season 2 (which should arrive anyday now), so my goal is to watch a bunch of "relevant" episodes to remind myself of the main plot points in time for the first ep. Last night I watched the first episode from season 1, and it's funny how many details I'd forgotten. Guess that's what these DVDs are for.
Since this is one of my top current TV shows (with The Office (US) and The Wire), I'm even considering watching it live via the Internet. Which means getting up at 4am, something I haven't done since I used to regularly do it for NBA games back when I had the energy to do so.
To paraphrase the one and only Barenaked Ladies, "sleep, who needs it ?"

good and the bad

mea culpa: I'm usually pretty good at containing my junk-food cravings, but today was one for the loss column in that area. Two packs of Mentos, a (small) bag of chips... Guess now I have to go running, which isn't my preferred motivation. Well, I'm sort of exaggerating. I was planning on going running tomorrow, so I'm just adding one insurance run (giving me two for the week), in case I'm unable to go later on this week.
Which makes me wonder: Could it be that...I actually like running ?

covers

I recently found two great Boys Don't Cry covers, thanks to the iTunes store :
Grant Lee Phillips (of Grant Lee Buffalo "fame")
Victor Malloy (of "just randomly found his song on iTunes" fame)

Check them out if you enjoy indie pop/softronica aesthetics

cry me a river

This past weekend we noticed a leak in our toilet (located on the second floor). Yet, since me and my roomies are a bunch of lacadaisical 20-something guys, we thought nothing of it, put a rag on the floor and kept on living ("You just gotta keep on livin', man. L-I-V-I-N"). So last night I got back from a typical 12-hour day, and I found both of my roommates upstairs, trying to figure out how to cut off the water. Apparently the leak had gotten pretty bad, with a bucket full of water underneath the toilet, and we had to actually do something about it. After a few minutes of searching we concluded that the culprit was a broken joint on the toilet's main pipe. Took us geniuses a while to figure out where the faucet to cut off the water to that was, but we did, and so had no more water on the second floor (where the bathroom and toilets are), with water still on on the first floor.
Anyway this morning I get up, and in my infinite 7am-wisdom, decide I'm going to turn on the water "just for a couple of minutes", so I can take a shower and shave. Needless to say as soon as I turned the water back on I heard a weird noise, turned it off immediately, and saw that the toilet floor was drenched. I'll tell ya, ain't a better sight in the morning than a -thankfully clean- water-drenched toilet floor. It's either that or finding out that the girl you brought back home from that wild party the night before is actually Chewbacca's sister. Thus twas back to the old old school this morning at la casa, like 1912-style, having to use the kitchen sink, where I somehow managed to "clean" myself and shave (having the reflection of the faucet as only mirror).
The moral of the story ? There's fun, there's buckets of fun, and then there's dealing with water leaks in the morning before work.

GQ

I've recently noticed that my clothes are very mono-branded. What I mean is that for a specific item, when I find a brand/model that I like, I'm not hesitant to get a bunch of it. That is all the more true ever since I had to renew almost my entire wardrobe, after having lost a lot of weight. Since I didn't want to wait to wait to buy more expensive/trendy items, I tried to find cheaper solutions that I could buy in "bulk" while still retaining some modicum of cool. It's fun to wear your old too-marge clothes at first, but after a while you feel like you don't have to dress like you got hand-me-downs from your big brother.
Therefore I now have mostly all American Apparel tees, all my suits are from H&M and my jeans come from Topman. Funny I'd never noticed this before.

currents

music: Alexi Murdoch - Time Without Consequence
movies: Little Miss Sunshine
TV: The Office season 2

healthy

though I'm not following a diet in the strictest sense of the word, there are some things I look out for (like eating enough fruit/veggies and not too much refined sugars), but also the occasional "lapse", which almost always happens on weekends. For instance this Sunday I went to Mickey Ds at 4 pm to get some lunch/dinner/afternoon delight. I knew I was going to go running in the evening, so in a way those Big Mac and chicken nuggets were a form of pre-compensation.
Yet I still try to limit those events, because for one junk food ain't that great. Honestly, it feels good to have some on occasion, but eat it too often and you'll get bored with it pretty fast. And mostly, I want to go running because I want to, not because I have to.

temptation

just like I predicted, I bought the iPod nano 8 GB yesterday. Initially I went to the Fnac (Champs-Elysees, which is open late) to get some RAM for my macbook, but as soon as I saw they had some of the nanos in stock I didn't think about it too much.
This thing is amazingly small, and with the color screen, looks very spiffy. It's actually almost too small: once it's in your pocket, you even forget you have it with you !
My iPod mini has served me well for those 18 months, but it's about time for it to retire. Although I'm sure he'll be of use from time to time.

little things

there's this gas station that I go by everyday just before arriving at work, that's on the side of the road. It has a sign on the way in saying "thank you and please drive safely", and another on the way out with "treat yourself" (with a picture of a young woman eating some sort of chocolate bar). Seems pretty logical to me that it should be the other way round, yet it's been that way for at least a year. Maybe one day I should go in and tell them about it.

nanopod

well, well, well, just like I thought, Apple has unveiled a new iPod nano. The product line is expanded with more colors, and the player itself will now come in a iPod mini-like aluminum body, which is great because I tend to drop mine kinda often.
The nano now comes in 3 capacities : 2 GB, 4 GB and 8 GB. Currently owning a 6 GB mini, I'm highly tempted by the 8 GB one, which comes in black (the 2 GB coming in silver and the 4 GB in a variety of colors). One of the reasons is the player itself is very snazzy, but another is that it can be used with the iPod+Nike kit, which enables you to track your running stats online.
I was semi-anticipating this release, so in a way I was already considering whether to purchase it or not, but having it official means I'm faced with the choice of buying it now or in a few months. Something tells me it's gonna be sooner rather than later...

the way we were

Most of the stuff I've written on this blog so far has been pretty frivolous. Not necessarily because I'm that way, but also because my writing is already shaky enough for those posts, let alone trying to tackle serious subjects.
However, as you probably know, yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York City, and a lot of the news was dedicated to that fateful day. Many bloggers are reminiscing too, and some of them have written very well about it.
Anyway, I didn't really think about all of this yesterday, in part because that day, though clearly discussed in the media here, hasn't been the focal point of discussions around town as much as before. But on the bus back from work I finished the extraordinary book by Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, about a small boy living in New York who goes looking for the solution to a mystery left by his dad, who died in the attacks. The writing is funny and inventive (like the little boy himself) and never grating, which can happen when it comes to young "hip" writers. And most importantly it made me realize that to me the real story of 9/11 wasn't about all of the politics and stuff that came afterward, but simply about thousands of heartbreaking (and sometimes miraculous) personal stories, iilustrating the connections that people build with others while going through their lives. When I got home I pulled out my copy of Here is New York, an incredible book of amateur 9/11 photographs and browsed some of the pictures, reminiscing about my time in the great city of NY. Though we can't turn back the clocks of tim and go back to those relative carefree days, I hope there are still enough people that will remember some of the good that came out of that day: courage, solidarity, friendship and a common bond. Please set aside discussions about war and terrorism to another day, because Sept 11 is about the people that were there, through their stories, pictures, and our memories.

carry-on

Apparently I have a thing for Gap messenger bags. I already own three, and last night I bought a fourth one. I like their messenger bags because they can go well with pretty much any type of attire. I can carry one with a suit or with shorts and tee-shirts when I'm going grocery shopping (you might be surprised, but I don't wear a suit to go to Franprix, although I'm sure it would make an already classy experience that much more stellar).
Recently I've thought about getting one of those old school briefs or some sort of leather shoulder bag, just to carry my stuff (book, umbrella...) when going to the office. But I stopped by the Gap on the Champs last night, and I saw this sorta sporty bag, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for...until the next time Gap comes up with a new model...

cheftastic

just like I predicted, I ended up making a pizza on Friday night. Stopped by Monoprix on my way home where I bought some pizzalicious ingredients, even some shredded mozzarella, which I'd never seen in France. And the end result still wasn't worthy of the stuff I loved in NY, but I'm getting better at it. My issue is how to make the toppings (cheese, tomate sauce and whatever else I've added) and the dough feel "as one". As it is they separate too easily. Maybe more olive oil ?

pizza pizza

when food cravings start, there's no fighting back. For instance right now i'm craving pizza, but I'm at work, so I've decided to make some tonight (i've got some pre-made pizza dough I picked up at Picard). The only issue will be getting through the rest of the workday without being overcome with delicious pizza thoughts. Go.tta.fo.cus. And I hope the final result will turn out better than the first time I tried making pizza myself :

bottle-rocket

so I guess I could be considered a grown-up. I mean, I'm 28, I got a job, pay taxes and stuff. But then I just spent 15 mins of my lunch-break looking at Diet Coke+Mentos videos on Youtube and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it very very much.
The goodness

the kid is back

the new Bob Dylan album is great. With last year's Johnny Cash revivalfest and now this, I guess rockabilly's back in the new millenium.
If you want to listen to one song in particular, check out Someday Baby. So so fresh !

sonic truth

favorite songs to listen to while :

walking in the streets of New York City: The Von Bondies - C'mon c'mon
laying in a field: Iron & Wine - Sodom, South Georgia
suffering from a toothache: Townes Van Zandt - (Quicksilver dreams of) Maria
driving the empty highways of Western Australia: Red House Painters - Trailways
making dinner: Ennio Morricone - On Earth As It Is In Heaven

forza les bleus

tonight France takes on Italy as part of a Euro 2008 qualifier. The media are branding this as a rematch of the WC finals, but with Zidane (retired) and Materazzi (suspended) not playing, I'm guessing there won't be that much drama.

sartorial

today i'm wearing this new H&M suit I picked up during my vacation. I recently realized all my previous suits were way too big for me, and as a result am now the proud owner of a slim-fit black suit (size 48).
H&M makes a lot of poor quality items, that degrade very quickly, but their Modern Man line seems much better in terms of durability. It's still very affordable, with super-100s wool suits going for €150 (and cotton ones for €140), shirts for €30 and semi-cashmere sweaters for €60. For this price I'm not expecting to still be wearing the thing in ten years, but I'd rather buy that type of suit with a trendy, slim cut than the lower-priced (at best €200 for reasonable quality) suits you find in regular stores.
One day I'll make enough money to afford a great suit by Zegna or some other high-end brand, but right now putting €600 or more into a suit just doesn't sound reasonable. Or maybe by then I'll have made so much dough that I won't even have to wear a suit anymore, think about that.

Btw, if you're interested in seeing how stylish and elegant people dress on an everyday basis, check out the sartorialist

Kofi, this is how it's done

uniting the world through hip-shaking

guess who's bizzack

came back from my 2 1/2 week vacation on Saturday, relatively refreshed from a week's stay in the country. It felt too short but I guess it always does. Anytime I feel like that I am reminded of these two Japanese girls I met on the train to Versailles, who told me they were in Paris for 3 days, and that they had 6 days total vacation days during the year.
So back to the grind it is for me.