The commute, prologue

About 13 months ago I stopped using my scooter to commute to the lab. A flat tire resulted in having to abandon it near the port royal RER station. I only brought it back home after christmas break, by then it was snowing (see photo). By then I had moved to the new apartment, very near many metro and RER lines, walking distance to Bastille, the marché d'Aligre and several nice cafés. The scooter spent more and more time on the sidewalk. In addition it is an old model, running on leaded gas. Having to add the concentrated lead solution to the "green" petrol was not so much fun either, and each time it caused a little pang to that part of me that worries about the polar bears swimming to their death.
So I caved in, bought a carte orange (the monthly metro pass) and began to commute to work by public transport.

kid photo

guess who this is ...

Geek alert !

dear friends, if you know any rich santa for next year, please tell them I would really like to have one of these thingies: the new apple iphone
thank you ! (not eve spock had something this cool)

X-mas cookies

yes, we survived yet another holiday season. sara mitch and I made xmas cookies... one of my favories is the bear that swalled a giant E. coli on the lower left hand corner, mitch made that one.
the whole family came over for new year's, and we did a bunch of entertaining at the house. It was worth investing in a slightly bigger apartment, so that everyone can come over and be confortable, we even lit a fire a couple of times.

New year's eve menu :

mariarosa and rossella's warm apetizers
mitch and sara's salmon and blinis
homemade thick tagliatelle with shrimps, zaffron and red pepper
brasato, gratinéed leeks and endive
chocolate mousse
pandoro with creme anglaise
armagnac

(recipes to follow...)

oh, I finally found the charger for my camera, so there might be more photos in the posts to come. the weather is unusually warm in paris these days, kinda eerie.

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.