Banana Yoshimoto Goodbye Tsugumi

Here's an attempt to a book review. (just a little aside before I start, today we had our equipe's xmas lunch at the rungis market, another post about that later, so I am in a postprandial coma and do not dare do an experiment in these conditions, at the risk of contaminating the whole lab). So, Banana Yoshimoto, hugely popular in Japan, and abroad too by now, especially amongst teenager girls as I gather. I had read a couple of hers books a few years ago (probably 10?), enjoyed them, but came away once the pattern became old. Came back to Goodbye Tsugumi because I needed a small paperback to read in the metro and was still under the spell of murakmi haruki's wind up bird chronicles, and was looking for a similar mood, which I did find, and I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It felt a bit like a manga comic, where the figures are delineated and defined with a very thin, clean, black line, the colors pastel, and the ocean is in every square. Less self-involved with sorrow than the past books, a bit more perverse.
Next: lettera aperta, by Goliarda Sapienza, I haven't found it translated in english and it's a real pity.

Sonic Youth in Paris Dec 13th

Here's a first attempt at a music review: Sonic Youth rocked ! No, really, they played in a fairly big venue, (the Zenith about 12,000 max), we, as the old people we've become, did not go and stand right in front of the stage, but it was fine just sitting on the stands (the last few concerts at the zenith standing, dylan twice and the white stripes, came out with a back ache, how embarassing !). Last year we had seen SY play at the small theater at the cité de la musique, just down the street, it was a much more contemplative jazz-like feedback concert, songs that lasted 15 mins. This time it rocked a lot more but it was equally fine. Loved the little shiny golden dress kim gordon was wearing, barefoot, she danced like a banshee and encouraged the pit to do as well. They played alot of the old stuff, not just the last album, like they had done when they were on the NY city ghost and flowers tour at the elisée montmatre (ok, now I am showing off a bit, but that concert was very good as well, and sleater kinney had opened !). Cannot say the same about Dinosaur Jr that opened, they were defenetly rusty, and stopped to tune their guitars in between songs, very annoying, especially bc their songs did not require a great tuneness of guitar.... so the contrast when SY came on was huge.

DNA knots

Knots.... your own DNA could be doing this...eeek!

Thanksgiving in paris

So, had the first International Thanksgiving at my new apart. This International Thanksgiving is now a parisian tradition. It started back in the days when my american friend Karen was here, and eventually the italians, irish, english and even the french got used to it and kept on coming back for the turkey, tha mashed potatoes and the pies. In the past I always have had to rely on the generosity of an old friend with a nice apartment with a big oven, so this was the first time out on my own. I think it turned out really well, a lot of friends came, some of them with their kids, which was a lot of fun, and the main thing is that the turkey was excellent ! (modestly) I was worried because it was much larger than I had expected. I had ordered it at the butcher's, I had asked for a 7 kilo (14 pounds) one... I arrive on sat morning and the two butchers, who are two sweet boys, brothers, who took over recently from their father, handed me a 10 kilo bird ! With a long explanation on how their order in turn had resulted in two small turkeys that they had to send back etc etc. Took the baby home and tried it out for fit in the oven....just barely !
And now from our non-sponsor a short advertising break: SMEG ovens are great ! they will cook a huge turkey in three hours and it's superjuicy and tasty, thanks to the ventilation option the heat is uniformly partitioned in the oven without burning the big bird ! (my old friend's apart. also had a SMEG oven)
Other delicacies on the menu included the sweet potato peanut stew from The Joy of Cooking (another non-sponsor that deserves an ad, or at least a link). It's excellent, don't be afrfaid of all the spicy things it asks for, by the end it's not nearly as hot as you'd imagine, but just enough. And then of course we had greens sautéd in garlic and peperoncino (blettes they are called in french I'll put in a photo bc I don't know the name in english)

the awsome home made italian mashed potatoes by rossella, wild rice, stuffing... we also had two stuffed pumpkins by kathleen, fantastic, and then apple pie, sweet potato pie and pumpkin muffins by yours truly and lots of other cakes !
Of course in the course of all the preparations I forgot to charge my digital camera, so I didn't take any photos, but maybe some of my friends did...

DNA - The Double Helix

Play the DNA game !

DNA - The Double Helix

The very latest SOHO images

What does the sun look like today ?

just look here:
The very latest SOHO images

The New Yorker: Shouts and Murmurs

geek love, woody allen and string theory
The New Yorker: Shouts and Murmurs

Mahna Mahna (By Animal from the Muppets)

du duru du !

La Linea, odcinek 108

la linea

Impact and Influence

Dylan's impact and influence, and fottage from the early years.

I recently discovered google video... most of the stuff that is easy to access is not that interesting, but there are some good things there, do a search for "la linea" a great italian cartoon from the 70s, or for "public domain" to see old movies, there are some good documentaries apparently... let me know if you find something good, it has potential, but requires a bit of digging. I just figured out how to add videos to this blog, let's see if it works:

the renovation: heavenly bathtub

So in the end of the day I decided that while I had workers redoing my upartment might as well redo the bathroom. It meant living on the couch for an additional two months, but it was worthy, here are some picts:






the second to last one is the project that my friend mari and I did. here's how you do it: you take a photograph of the space you want to redo with your digital camera, you print it out, then you can use semitransparent paper to draw a version of the room and add things like the tub and the sink by hand, and if you want some color, then you take a photograph of that and you open it in photoshop, where you can add patterns (such as tiles) and try different color schemes... ta dah ! Some people go directly from the photograph into photoshop without passing through the drawing part.

from the belly of the beast

I'm writing from inside the synchrotron (www.esrf.fr). A synchrotron is a ring of about 200 meters in diameter made of magnets. Electron bunches travel around the ring. Every time they meet a magnet they turn. Electrons don't like to turn, they would rather keep on going straight, so every time they meet a magnet they lose energy, this energy is under the form of x-rays for the most part. The x-rays are collected by mirrors into beams that come out tangentially from the ring, we use the x-ray beams to do experiments, voila !

To be in here it is a bit eerie, I kinda like it, surrounded by lots of electronics, machines covered with aluminum foil (keeps the electric noise down it seems), vacuum pumps, cables everywhere, liquid nitrogen. The soft hum of the ventilators pads your hearing and helps to concentrate, like a sensory deprivation tank. Along those lines, there are no windows on the experimental floor, there is a constant amout of light, one easily loses the sense of time, makes it easier to work 24 hours a day (the machine never stops).

Now in the era of the internet there are lots of ways to keep amused while we wait for the data to accumulate enough to surface above noise, or for the nanometer long fluorescently labled DNA fragments to work their way through the mesh of the gel to the laser, where we can detect them. back in my student days there was no internet, imagine that, what did we do all night ? Sometimes we would go out and hang out with the deer (we were on Long Island) and look at the stars (http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/) not too much light pollution in the middle of nowhere.

geeking delivery

I'm at a friend's house, installing software and talking html, I sure hope the new bathtub will be installed when I get home.

I will not write here how rarely I have showered in the past two and a half weeks since the old space-eating chipped bathtub left my apartment. Suffice it to say the number of times fits on one hand. Add to this the permanent layer of dust covering everything, like living in the middle of a snow-white desert, thin dust which is now engrained in my skin, my apartment and I are becoming one, I have been breathing enough of its paint vapours, even with the windows open at night, that I am becoming an apartment borg !

can't wait to soak.

I might just have to buck down and go to the gym.

the shower will be imperative tomorrow, I don't really care what my coworkers think, but tomorrow evening I am invited to a soirée, and it would be good policy on the singlehood front to appear presentable.

which brings me to the laundry I should have done tonight, sigh ! I am currently laundromat dependent, like in the first months I arrived in paris, almost exactly 8 years ago, it's a bit nostalgic, not nearly as inconvinient and time-consuming as I had remembered (maybe because I know it's temporary), they now have a change machine in the place.

I cannot complain, all of the above, in addition to my personal space being inhabited by strange pakistani men (arriving somtimes before 8 am!), is worth it when I look at the apartment, and I see it improve, albeit slowly, it is much better than what I had imagined back when I had decided to buy.

hitech wonders

so here I am, moving along the big highway in the sky... been talking more and more on skype to my friends near and far, actually for the moment I just write, the microphone is in one of the many unopened boxes adorning my apartment.... in some cases my friends talk and I write, it is a strange feeling, as if I had lost my voice, and I can't type nearly fast enough.

Last night I installed the tnt receiver on my computer, tnt is digital tv over ether, I can now watch tv on the computer, and it is of amazingly good quality, and full screen ! These kind of things can't stop amazing me.

OK, I admit it, I am a geek, a card carrying one at that (just got it in the mail from the french govt, I'll put up a picture of it as soon as I figure out how to transfer photographs from my new phone to the computer). Ah ! And this is another one ! My phone takes good quality pictures ! and it cost only 9 euros ! they throw technology at you these days, trying to convince you to use all the extra things you thought you could live without, but now that I can take pictures with my phone I want to send them too, and that costs extra...

next: how high tech helped my newbe house decorating efforts.....