Day 5: DaVinci Code Wanderings

I didn't go into the Louvre, but I did take this picture. Mr. Octopus and the brothers Octopus visited and I thought about coming along, until I saw the line to get in. Instead, I roamed around the city (mostly the Left Bank) with my friend, making like the The DaVinci Code. Sort of.

I don't know if the dotted line in this picture is the 'Rose Line' from the book. But I took the picture anyway. Later that afternoon, we went to St. Sulpice and looked for the Rose Line there. No such luck. In the corner of the church, there was a small notice saying that claims in an 'international best seller' about the Rose Line and the Priory of Sion were untrue.

Sidenote: my pageturner for the trip was Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Same protagonist as in The DaVinci Code. Same overall plot, too-- i.e., murder, mysterious codes, secret societies, religion, art history, pretty European girl. DaVinci Code is better, I think.

Routine Maintenance

I'm realizing that I love having a routine. I love knowing when and how I'm going to do things. For example, one of my favorite things in the whole world is Saturday morning. Not only because it's the weekend, but because I wake up, open the curtains in the living room, let the light shine in (pause), and then do the laundry (may favorite chore-- I love my washing machine) and water my plants (also a fave). All by 10am. I really like that.

The rest of my week isn't nearly as predictable, but I'm hoping it will be. I don't mean that I'm going to be on a schedule every day, every hour (8:05 read book, 8:25 put down book and scratch head). I'm not that weird. But having a routine to me means that things are going to happen, that I'm going to be productive. One of my resolutions is to exercise three times a week, so I'm trying to decide which days will be my work out days. I need some sort of schedule or else I'll just procrastinate.

Pan's Labyrinth

I liked this movie a lot. An Alice in Wonderland for adults, sort of. There are a couple scary looking creatures, but nothing that will give you nightmares.

Thanks Mr. Cup O Noodles

The inventor of the instant noodles, Momofuku Ando, died recently. What would college have been like with cup o noodles? From the LA Times obituary:

Ando's entrepreneurial genius was to shuck off centuries of tradition and realize that noodles did not necessarily have to be cooked fresh and served only after being steeped in vats of boiling water. After tinkering for a year in his backyard shed, he discovered that noodles could be dried, packaged and rehydrated in a bowl of boiling water in just three minutes — and served almost anywhere.

His gamble with flour, palm oil and MSG created a new food that appealed to tastes across Asia and in the United States. He began exporting instant ramen to the U.S. in 1970 and a year later created Cup Noodle — noodles that could be sold and prepared in the same container — inspired by the way American consumers plopped their noodles into a cup and ate them with a fork.

Day 4: Les Catacombs

On our way to the Catacombs. The Cité metro platform.
Jeepers creepers. Not the most uplifting of tourist attractions, but for whatever reason I really, really wanted to go. The Catacombs are a bunch of tunnels in the 14th district. It began as a limestone quarry providing building materials for Notre Dame and other structures around town. In the eighteenth century, the remains of millions of Parisians were transferred here due to overcrowded cemeteries (also, I read somewhere that many bodies were exhumed and moved there because of some disease spreading around Paris). During WWII, the Resistance held secret meetings there. Today, it's an unnerving collection of bones deep underground.

The bones, meticulously arranged.

Hello, you fool, I love you. Come on join the Joyride...

East Coast pal Guardedly Optimistic tagged me. I'm supposed to list five things nobody knows about me. An impossible task without get too personal, so here goes somethin:

1. I once cut my barbie's hair thinking it would grow back.

2. I played badminton in high school and almost got kicked out of game for excessive profanity.

3. When I was growing up my friends and I formed the "Getaway Gang." One day we were roaming around the woods behind our houses and happened upon a bulk size bottle of wine (probably one of those Ernest & Julio Gallo jugs). We knew it belonged to the kid next door. Do gooders that we were, we dragged the jug to his parents' house and told on him.

4. I 've been wearing sunscreen religiously since I was 15.

5. I went to a Roxette concert in 1991. And I liked it.

Day 3: Musée d'Orsay

Lunch, Parisian styleWe started off the day meeting friends for lunch at Au Petit Fer à Cheval (The Little Horseshoe) on nearby rue Vieille du Temple. It was a teeny weeny place with good food and friendly service (yes, friendly!). I had the duck, which was delish (I order duck whenever it's on the menu).

After lunch we crossed the river and took the bus to the Musée d'Orsay (re: transportation, we either walked or took the bus or Metro everywhere; never took a taxi). The museum is in an old train station and is very popular. The top floor has lots of Impressionist work (Van Gogh, Manet and stuff like that). My jetlag hit me like a truck while we were there, so all I could think about was getting back to the hotel.

Days 1 and 2: Flying to Paris

We flew direct to Paris on Air Tahiti Nui. The eleven hour flight felt like forever. We flew during the day and arrived in Paris at 8:30am local time. Once we arrived at Charles de Gaulle, we met up with the brothers Octopus and rode the RER train into the center of town (Chatelet - Les Halles stop). Our hotel was a short walk from there.

Our home for the next six nights was the Hotel Saint Merry. The former presbytery of the St. Merri Church next door, turned brothel, turned gay-friendly hotel, the hotel was small (a dozen rooms), loaded with charm and atmosphere and overall totally awesome. We stayed in room #9, which had-- get this-- a flying buttress over the bed. The medieval, dracula decor was a little creepy at times (especially when my jetlag kept me up late into the night), but I'm happy to say there were no ghosts or other unexplainable phenomena.

Room #9The hotel had the best location imaginable-- in Le Marais, near tons of great shops, bars and restaurants, and a couple minutes walk from the Seine, Notre Dame cathedral, Louvre and Pompidou Centre.

Determined not to let jet lag get the better of us, we visited Notre Dame in the afternoon. There was a line outside, but it moved quickly. There was also a Christmas Tree (it was the day after Christmas). A small, sparse tree, modestly decorated. More like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree than Rockefeller Center's. (I'm told they use a different type of tree in France).

Resolutions 2007

I never do resolutions, but I thought this year I would try. I'm hopeful that posting them here, making them public, will help me stick to them. They're pretty realistic, so perhaps they'll become habits before too long.

1. Eat breakfast every morning.
2. Exercise three times a week.
3. Drink a glass of milk every day.

Bonne Année!

New Year's Eve in Paris
Just got back from a week in Paris with Mr. Octopus and his two brothers. Also there were my very good friend HH and her Parisian boyfriend (also our friend). It was a great, social vacation. We stayed in a fantastic hotel. Visited the usual and not so usual sights. Generally had good weather, except for a couple days of rain. I'll post pictures in the coming days.

Hope you all had a great holiday!

Happy Holidays and See You in the New Year!

If You Need to Be Reminded of How Good You've Got It, Then This Might Help

I was going to blog about Charlotte's Web, which I saw last night, until a friend sent me an LA Times article about a mother from Vietnam who came to the U.S. to search for her son. With nothing but an old address of his, she set out to find him before her visa expired or her cancer returned.

She arrived in Los Angeles with $600 in borrowed cash, a failing heart and arthritis in both knees. She spoke no English. She had not seen her firstborn son, Tuan, in the 20 years since he fled Vietnam for the United States as a teenager.

Judging from the letters he sent home, he had prospered here. He was repairing watches, living in Santa Ana. Inexplicably, four years ago, his letters had stopped coming. Now, Hai Nguyen had crossed the ocean herself, hoping to find her son before she died.

...

Chasing every lead, she took cabs to the Asian Garden Mall and Chinatown and across the San Gabriel Valley. She searched homeless shelters and alleys, parks and strip malls. All through the land of promise, to her astonishment, the concrete was littered with human shapes crouched under reeking blankets.

She went from shape to shape, slowly lifting the blankets off ragged, hollow-eyed faces that smelled of beer, off men with tangled hair and dirty hands. They cursed in words she couldn't understand and yanked their blankets back, many of them, sinking back into their covers. Some just looked at her in bewilderment. She looked into dozens of hopeless faces. There were other mothers' sons, but not hers.

...

Finally, in November, there came an improbable call from a restaurateur in San Jose, a woman named Huong Le who had seen Nguyen's story on Vietnamese-language television. She said Tuan had been living behind her restaurant for the last couple of months at the Lion Plaza shopping center on King Boulevard. He slept on the sidewalk on a patch of cardboard.

I suppose there's a happy ending to this, but I couldn't stop feeling sad. Entire article available here.

Lowest Common Denominator of American Speech

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West   Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Friday Night at the Roller Rink

Where can you hear Xanadu, Last Christmas and Safety Dance with the wind blowing through your hair? Where can you feel four inches taller and twenty years younger? At the Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale!!!

I felt like I was in a time warp. I laced up my rented skates, shuffled to the edge of the rink, leaned over and watched intently as people zoomed by. Eventually, I pushed myself onto the floor. The first few minutes were an exercise in getting some speed, turning without windmilling my arms and hoping that no one knocked me over.

It was seventh grade all over again. There were a handful of teenagers who looked like they'd been born on skates. They went backwards and forwards without any effort. They looked slightly bored as they skated. They knew the people who ran the rink. These kids were probably awkward and dorky outside the rink, but inside they were the coolest people.

Friendster

How many people still do Friendster? I started getting invitations to join Friendster some time in 2003. I had a bunch of friends on it. I started hearing about how you could write testimonials and link to your friends' friends. Eventually I created an account for myself-- submitted my name, my relationship status, location and hometown -- but I never actually logged on. Never created a full profile or linked to anyone.


I think I refused to get into Friendster because it was seemed too popular and time consuming. I also didn't want to include personal, identifiable information about myself, which seemed to be the whole point of it. I suppose blogging is somewhat similar, but at least you can still remain anonymous.

Recently though, I've been going onto Friendster to search for people I know. Current friends, long lost friends, acquaintances, relatives. I found my best friend from middle school who I haven't talked to in ten years. She still lives in the same town and she still looks the same. I found that comforting, for some reason. I'm tempted to friendster her, but I guess there's a reason why we fell out of touch so maybe I should just let it lie.

Hot Hot Hot!

We finally turned out heat on last night. What a difference! HVAC man said we should replace our ducts, but that it was fine to run the heater in the meantime. Now I can look forward to going home again!

What a joy it was to see an article in the NYT travel section on the best Chinese food in LA. Mr. Octopus and I read it and made a beeline for Chung King, a dive in Monterey Park that the author says "puts just about every other Sichuan restaurant in the United States that I’m familiar with to shame." Lovers of spicy food unite!

We ordered our dishes "medium" spicy and it came out spicier than what other places would consider "very, very spicy." From the article:

You know how some Chinese restaurants have little chili symbols next to the hot dishes? Every dish in the entire first column of the menu here, with — literally — one exception, has a little chili symbol next to it. Fully half the dishes are blazingly hot — they must go through a coffee-sack of dried peppers daily — but tamed by the mouth-numbing sensation of floral-scented Sichuan peppercorns. This is a mind-body experience not to be missed: your body, abused with chilies, is crying “Please stop,” while your mind, entranced by the incredible flavors, keeps directing the chopsticks from plate or bowl to mouth and back again.

Hardly any of the staff speaks English, but that's ok. They're friendly (not the snarly sort, if you know what I mean). The resident English expert sized us up quickly and came by to point out the dishes that the article had recommended. We'll be back again...soon.

I Couldn't Care Less About Football

But I have to mention that it was a big weekend for Cal and UCLA grads, with both schools beating their better funded, unlikable crossbay/crosstown rivals.

Weekend Wrapup

Weekends are so great now that I have no fear that I'll spend them at the office. On Saturday night we went to the corporate holiday party. It'd been a long time since I got dolled up. Putting on makeup is tricky business.

Makeup can be fun, if you know what you're doing. If you don't, then chanchow's rule of thumb is that less is more. Less eyeliner and certainly less eyeshadow. Don't try the smoky eye. As I was putting on the bronzer and the lipgloss I began to wonder why women wear makeup. I came up with a very crude theory. When you're a teenager, you do it to look older. In your 20s and 30s, you do it to look better. In your 40s on up you do it to look younger.

Sunday night was a different sort of fun. "Smiths Nite" at the Echo. Eastside Gen-Xers were out in full force reliving their happy memories and dancing to The Smiths and Morrissey.

It's December, and That Means It's Time for My Favorite Christmas Song

Love This Song, Too

Do you remember the names of all these guys?