Leaving Singapore: At the airport

We are at the airport now, flight is 2340hr. It's been a great 3.5 weeks, quite enjoyable on some points. Jo actually feels that she misses Singapore this time... haha, I think it's because she had time to sleep and catch up with friends and family. I had a good run, it was great to be working, minus point was not being able to catch up (and TK) on fri nights. Not having 24hr internet access was weird too, I felt more apart from friends than in Paris where we could multi-msn.

Jo's sis will be with us for a couple days, enjoying gay paris. that's it, c'est finis.

good night,
Wes

ps: we're back in paris now. finally managed to network the mac to windows xp for 80gb tranx, it's still tranxing about 5+ hours...

No Internets.

We came back 1.5 weeks ago and have settled down quickly in a rented place. It's great but it's got no internets. So surfing/blogging/msn-ing is impossible. Also the McDonald's near our place got no free surfing coz it's down for 2 months (kuakuakua...) I have been busy arranging and doing a smallish photo project that'll end on 23rd or 24th then we'll head back to Paris soon after that.

Wes

rue du Commerce

Every turn of the season, our street will have a french ""pasa malam". The whole street, called rue du Commerce (which means row of shops/businesses) will be closed to vehicles and shops will set up stalls on the street for 4 days. It's really cool, coz for us, we live on one end of rue du Commerce and to get to the supermarket right on the other end, we see lots of stuff on the way!

everyone walks on the road coz there isn't any traffic

this is a regular shop. i looooove the kid's stuff here

This spring, there are special performances by clowns!

They were all along the street, performing and chatting with people and kids

second hand music/dvd store. Check out the cassette tapes!

face painting...and very pro looking results too!

saw some boy scouts too

On our way back, we were just saying how there seems to be less things than last winter when i heard a loud bang. KW grabbed my hand and went, "Wa! Jo, look!" and there was this man on stilts, controlling a puppet ostrich that burst out from behind a large gate.

The highlight

It was a team of 3 clowns. The one on stilts followed and teased people, the one with the pram made lots of funny sounds while the one with the accordian played music and went round asking kids, "Sarkozy ou Royal? Oooh..tu sembles perdu..." (Sarkozy or Royal?oooh...you look lost). That was funny... seeing him tease all the kids who just stared blankly back at him.

Us

So that was fun. Life along rue du Commerce.

Jo

Paris suburbs

Grace, Kristine, Lorelei and me rolling "tang yuan"

Last Monday, a Canadian French family invited some of us from church to their house to celebrate the Cambodian New Year. It was great fun coz it felt like CNY again for us! And they made dessert which looked like our "tang yuan".

It's pandan flavoured! Ha.

The party ended at about 11pm and because the house is in the suburbs, we have to take a train (not metro) back into Paris centre. Ron (our pastor), Lorelei (his wife), KW and I were the last group to leave the house and take the train.

"This stop doesn't look familiar," said Lorelei as she looked out of the train window.

Oh no. One of the worst things that can happen with the french train system is getting lost. The system is great, but the signage is terrible in france. We looked, checked and double checked. Yes, we got on the wrong train even though the sign had said this train goes to Paris.

When the train finally stopped, we were further out into the suburbs, at a train terminal. Carrying a leftover apple tart wrapped in aluminium foil in his hand, Ron asked a nearby frenchman how to get back into Paris and he pointed us to get back into the same train because it would be the last train into Paris. "Oh, so we did get on the right one." That was a relief.

So we got on and talked some more and saw the train pass all the stations that we had previously passed till were back at the station we had gotten on. And just as we were laughing about it, the girl next to us asked us if the train was headed to Cergy.

"Oh no, madam, this train is headed to Paris," said Ron.

Her face turned white because we all knew this was the last train to go anywhere and Lorelei and I immediately felt sorry for her. And KW and Ron took her to the sign board in the train to explain to her where we were headed.

"I don't think I've seen this stop before," whispered Lorelei to me as we passed by the next train stop.

"Ya, this stop doesn't look familiar", said KW and he got up to check the sign board again.

Ron just shook his head and said, "No, we are definitely in the right train."

"Guys, i think this train's not going to Paris. I'm not kidding." said KW as he came back to his seat. I burst out giggling hysterically till I cried. This was too much.

And so it seemed the girl was right and we had gotten ourselves lost with the signs system that probably only the french can understand! It was 1:30am and we were out so far in the suburbs (way beyond JB if you thought in terms of Singapore), we couldn't even call the family we were with coz they wouldn't know where we were either. Trembling in the cold night winds of the suburbs with our summer wear, we got directions to the nearest hotel (which turned out to be a hostel) and tried to get a place to stay but the hotel was full. We must have looked pretty desperate coz the hotel staff allowed us to just hang around the lobby till the first train left near 5am in the morning.

So we sat there and tried to sleep, think how we could have gotten lost twice and finally gave up trying to make sense of it all. So we took some silly pictures of ourselves, ate some chocolates and waited for the time to pass.

us at 4am

By the time we actually made it back home, it was almost 7am in the morning.

I think we won't be going to the suburbs for a while.

Jo

Callwave - Free SMS (for now)

Just found this great widget for the Mac, Callwave. Free local and international sms! Woohoo! but it's in beta and I think they'll make us pay for it in the next 6 months once we are hooked. Next to it is iStat, checks out memory, heat, network, etc on the Mac. Ever since using it, I can safely conclude that Macs have memory leak issues too, although this problem is not about OS X, it's probably the code in the software programs that run on the Mac (happens in XP also hor). This means that opening and closing software over period of time yields less and less free memory. I usually reboot the Mac every few days if I want Photoshop to run well. Both widgets can be found at http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/

Wes

Update 9July07: Found out that only 6 sms-es a day's allowed. :-(

SIA: Internet Explorer ONLY

Booked tix for flight back to Spore today. The seat choosing feature does not work with Safari, Firefox on Mac, Firefox on PC. It ONLY works with Internet Explorer. Anyways, temperature tonight is a balmy 26degrees celcius, getting hotz.

Wes

P.S. We just took out the fan we bought for summer last year. Heat here is like stuffy elevator type heat. Help... Jo

Spring time in Paris

Spring is here and it's hot. Temperature in April feels like last year's June temp. Sky News says that it's likely to be as bad as the 2003 heatwave. Yes, the one where a lot of people died. Anyways, we went for a walk at the Eiffel.


On the way back, we saw a woman with a lot of dogs. They were really well behaved, even better than some kids. No running about and screaming, just sniffing here there and they followed her real close.


Wes

Manhattan Gigolo - actual name of a boutique

This shop is at Rue Du Commerce, about 10 min walk from our apartment.

In other news, Jo has been pretty busy for the last 2 weeks with the Easter thing our church is doing, it's a walkthrough of some of the journey of Jesus to the Cross. She's handling the design and publicity materials. I've been out coz of a bad cold that hit last Thursday, so I am spending most of the time at home helping with the printing. Here's a jpg file that she designed with a photo from iStockphoto.

Have a good Easter holiday! :-)

Wes

All of this for only 0.89€

Monster lettuce!! We had to eat like siao for the next few days.

Paris in winter

This is the warmest winter in the last 20 years or so. Usually at the end of Feb, which is about the time we got back this round, it is really cold (sometimes it snows). But we took some shots and you can see the difference. It feels more like early spring already. And spring doesn't start till late March.

Luxembourg Gardens
Our favourite thinking, chatting, walking place.

Blossoms in Luxembourg Gardens
A lot of the flowers are blooming already.


Pigeons at River Seine
Kar Wai actually stood and waited for this shot.

Jodie

Buying music from iTunes

Jo had a good experience buying music from iTunes, painless and easy. But we were surprised that it wasn't MP3, it was M4P. It's no good right? Does it mean only iPod and iTunes can play it?

Wes

Things I learnt

My 1.5year Razer mouse was a bit wonky coz it won't work after a cold reboot, i had to unplug & replug and lived with it. I casually mentioned it on the hardwarezone.com gameaxis subforum and got emailed by a forumer who turns out to be someone who works at Razer.

I said bye bye to the mouse and airmailed it to HK for $$6.10

and got a new Razor mouse hand delivered to my house courtesy of Razer Singapore!! Razer roxx! I mentioned this to a IT retailer friend and he said that Razer would rather replace a mouse than to lose reputation coz of complaints on the forums. woohoo! people power!

Threw away white wedding shoes. Got pee smell while walking in paris one day and wouldn't come off. So bye bye old shoes... and got me a pair of adidas $25 last-season shoes.


SIA has the cheapest airfare to Singapore from Paris. The new screens on the planes are HUGEMONGOUS, it even has USB ports. But we were assigned to the last window row in economy and the seats couldn't recline fully. Last window row on the new planes are a big NO-NO.

We had to walk past the business class seats to reach the door.

A cheap UPS like APC is better than nothing, the power in the house flickered a few times one day and this baby saved the PC from shutdown or worse, power surges to fry the components.

Wes

Worst case scenario

Today, I woke up and felt courage. No, I don't think it was anything I ate, or anything too spiritual. Rather, I think it's because it dawned on me that I had survived another worst case scenario.

My greatest fear in coming to Paris was not how things would work out here. Rather, it was how far away I was going to be from my family, our families. Should anything happen, it would take us forever to get back. And so I prayed, please keep everyone well.

And of course, worst case scenario happened. I am not talking about how it eventually turned out. I am talking about receiving that dreadful news at 1am in the middle of the night and realizing I am too far to see, to feel, to think straight. That is the worst case scenario.

The thing about worst case scenarios, I suppose, is that they come from one's greatest fears. And regardless of how we are taught to confront our fears or sometimes run from them, some things are not in our control. I cannot decide when the realization of this fear should knock at my door and when it does, it is not in my power either to wish it away. So when my greatest fear appeared at my doorstep, worst case scenario stood right next to him.

And today, I realized that it's over. The much dreaded visit had come and gone. And I had survived it, not without my share of injuries, but still, I survived it.

So what has changed?

I am not sure I can put it in words. I won't call it faith because the moment I do, I risk pointing that faith toward the mortal me, instead of the omnipotent God. So the closest word I can think of, is courage.

Ha...while typing this post, I got an email telling me it's time to renew our visas. Another round of massive administration. Now, I know why courage came.

Jo

Back in Paris

We are back in Paris. Landed this morning and our pastor and his wife came to pick us up and brought us for breakfast. So that was a treat.

Our flight back was on the B777 on Singapore Airlines. I think this plane is new. It's cool, the screen is bigger, seats are wider, etc, etc. As usual, KW and I requested for the back of the plane where the 3 seaters converge into 2 seaters. In the older planes, this is like row 65 or so and it's great coz there is extra space at the side.

So we got our 2-seater but in this new plane, the 2-seater is the very last 2 seats and we couldn't believe when we saw the seats. There is no room to lean back!!! Argh! So we sat upright for 13 hours!! Of course, there were a lot of acrobatic stunts in our desperate attempts to get into a comfortable sleeping position. Siong sia.

Otherwise, it's nice to be finally home where we have our own bed, space, computer, etc etc. Can turn the tv volume to as loud as we want, sleep as long as we like, eat anything we want. Just miss the family a bit though; not in the conscious thinking-about-them-all-day way, but in the i-think-I-left-my-heart-somewhere way.

Ok. Am going to sleep some more..

Jo

Near the end of our 2-month-plus stay

It's been more than 2 months since we got back. We got to meet some people (very very few) and had to miss lots people (a lot a lot). In 4 days, we'll be taking the flight back to Paris and I just know that we'll hit the apartment, take a nap, wake up and go, "woah, what just happened?".

Temperature in Paris today is 13 degrees. Looks like we missed the worst part of winter (which solves my earlier problem about not being able to find a winter jacket my size). So it's back to a slow lifestyle, no mozzies, french tv and lots of body butter.

I'm glad that even though we were apart most of the time, KW and I still managed to do the following:

1. Both eat chwee-kway at Tiong Bahru once.
2. KW had lan parties with his beloved fri brothers.
3. I played with, hugged and kissed my nephews many many times.
4. Both spent time with our families (a LOT a LOT of time)

So to those of you we did not get to meet this time...so sorry. Really really. Here's a little snapshot of us (please note the-yikes-sorry-please-dun-angry look on our faces) to make up for it till we get to see you the next time we are back!





Love
Jo

"Can you do something like this?"

I just had to get this link off mr brown's blog. Last I read, the student that copied the work was getting expelled from NAFA.

Poor Little Singapore Student

How many times have photographers got a brief that went 'Can you do a shot like this image that i've torn out from a mag?' ;-)

Wes

When faith eludes me

Yesterday, I went home and saw my mommy walking without a walker, eating at the dining table and leaning over the fridge door to see what the newly hired maid could possibly cook for the next meal. And deep in my heart, I thank God for this miracle that I see before me - I thank Him because when I got that call in the middle of the night in our little paris appartment, my faith was nowhere to be found and I could not find it in me to believe that God would save or even heal my mom.

So to all of you who trusted God and believed when we could not - a million times "thank you".

Kar Wai and I leave next Sunday for Paris once again. I am not sure how this trip will turn out, or what it will bring. Life has been such a roller coaster ride in the last 2 years, the hills in the track just get steeper and steeper. I try not to think of it all as a divine plan to "grow" us coz that would only make me turn to God and demand that the rides stop. Yet, there does not seem to be any other explanation for the fact that no matter bad things become, they never go out of control - the roller coaster stays on the track and we remain buckled in our seats (screaming and hanging on for our dear lives, of course).

Till the next hill (please let it be a tiny one).

Jo

Jo's mom update XIII

Latest: Jo's mom is off the walker!! And she's able to join the family at the dinner table.

Wes

FPS Games can sharpen eyesight - WooHoo!

Michelle Tang who's a bio teacher in ACJC sent this link to me. At the rate I am going, I should be dumping my glasses pretty soon.

Also, video games make better surgeons!

Wes

Jo's mom update XII

Since her mom's return, the family has settled into a routine now (more or less). She's coping well with physio but it's very tough as she has to relearn many things. She's stronger now and she goes for physio pretty often, Jo and Kai (myanmese ex-ER nurse) goes with her in morning to SGH nearly everyday. Jo then comes in the afternoon, or go for groceries then she makes dinner. She's also transferring some of the family's cooking skillz to Kai so that she can take over when Jo's not around. Handing-over duty seems to be working well so far coz Kai is picking up fast.

Wes

Update: Jo is likely to move back on Sat 10th Feb to stay with me at my parents place. Chinese doc says she's quite tired and needs to pu-sheng (hmm... increase body strength?)