Heard today

Me: So, let’s see if you can count in French.

German Student: un, deux, trois, quatre, cunt…

How Wonder Frog jumped into a ravine full of turd and saved the day

This is a sea-cucumber

So we took a small airplane that moved a lot and got to Ajaccio. Ajaccio, along with Bastia are the only places you could call cities in Corsica, the rest of it consists of a few houses that they call villages hanging from a very steep cliffs, all of it looking beautiful but very sleepy.
We were quite excited about seeing our new home for 8 days. The trailer. Le camping-car. Which was to be renamed Bernard-Le Camping-Car (it rhymes in French). Bernard was to take us around the island and we would be driving furiously along a transparent blue sea, playing very loud music, singing and let our hair flap in the breeze through the rolled down windows. I have no hair left and Favourite Mr. B decided to shave his completely before leaving so there couldn’t be any flapping in the end. Plus, each of us was convinced that someone else would bring the CDs so in the end there was no music. There was a radio but Corsica doesn’t seem to catch any radio program apart from its own, so we had to suffer through Corsican out-of-tune traditional chants throughout the week needless to say we never really listened to the radio.

A votre service

1 year

It all started with Rhino75. My English friend whom I met at a party 2 years ago and who sang a little Swedish aria to me. Rhino, the combination between a fine between gentleman and trendy VIP lives in the heart of Paris Gayland, hangs out with his famous friends and gets invited to the fanciest parties. Backstage, Rhino is one sweet guy who managed to remain cool in spite of showbiz and tends to be a little bit of an ermite with his life-time partner Miss Kitty. Rhino, who masters cat language is the only one who manages to speak to Miss Kitty, one independent soul who will reply to him and no one else. Sometime in 2005, Rhino sent me a mail and incited me to check out his “blog”. First thought was WTF? Second thought was “gotta have one too”. However it did take a few months before I started my blog.

I kept on reading Rhino’s blog and often found comments from some Rob7534 guy. These comments consistently made me laugh hysterically. At that time, apart from Rhino and a couple of distant friend, nobody read my blog. Then one day, Rob7534 himself showed up on my Guest map and said something like Yay! It’s me!
Rob, a hilarious American guy from Chicago whose sense of humor has made us all wet our pants numbers of time has recorded his trips to Gay Camp in such a picturesque manner, his political rants that I don’t read till the end, his love affairs with 20 year-olds (which I read till the end), his genuine kindred and self-distance. I just like everything about this guy. Rob makes me happy, he makes me laugh and the fact that he does not take himself seriously makes him very charming and sexy. Rob has been a faithful visitor since then and I hope he stays a long time.

One morning, in November 2005, a guy named Reluctant Nomad showed up and said something like”so this is the famous frog with blog, if I weren’t so shy I would blush” in my comment box. This applied to a picture I had posted of myself while I was in London last year. The flirt that he is had hit right, compliments were to lead him everywhere. I became a huge fan of the site of this guy who lives in Nottingham UK although he’s from South Africa. His blog is a varied collection of anything from wild sexual encounters with English Hooligans to overviews of Botswana’s history. Nomad – or Alan in real life – is a gay man, married with two children. He struggles between staying in England where he finally could get a decent job that helped him support his family back in Cape Town and moving back to South Africa, where he truly belongs risking not to get a good job.

I discovered Ms. Mac through my never-ending reference in the blog world, Rob7534’s site. I started visiting her and absolutely loved her stuff. No one like her can talk about the simple things of the life of an Australian expat-family in Switzerland. A mother of three and the wife of a hunk, Ms mac tells us how spontaneously her kids talk to their parents and what crazy things they’ve gone through recently. Such as “Dad, was Mom hot when she was thin?”
I got so hooked on Ms. Mac that I decided that the woman just had to be my friend. And I tell you, the day this star blogger added me on her blogroll was the happiest day of my life since Wonder Woman came out on DVD.

One cold winter morning, as I was having breakfast touring my blog roll as usual, I went and checked out my new Swedish friend’s (Scandinaviannova) blog. Scandinaviannova has since then mysteriously disappeared from the surface into the blizzard of northern Sweden. There was a comment there from one crazy woman who swore a lot, talked about her time in jail, etc… well all that saying the rudest but deepest and funniest things at the same time. I’ve always liked such strong personalities and unusual people and was therefore most intrigued by this new character. Babs Bitchin’ was her name. I went to her blog and was thrilled as she both scared and impressed me. I got completely hooked on her, her life, adventures, her past, present, future. Little did I know what a fantastic, fun, generous, full of empathy, outgoing and smart ass soul I had found. Yes, you may claim otherwise if you want to, but one thing is sure: among all of you I found her first!

Since then, Long island’s fiercest bitch has both inspired me and made me wet my pants. I simply adore this woman and have to meet her one day.

Again, Keiran came to me through Rob7534. A 23 year old musician from London who writes songs and is so talented. You can listen to what he does if you’re clever enough to find it on his blog. It’s absolutely brilliant! Additionally, the guy’s a genuine francophile! So, a talented musician mixed with a francophile, how perfect can it be?

It started when a butterfly came from the east and flew over my blog. I don’t really know where she came from (apart from the east) or what it was, but I surely became captivated by her and her background. This Portuguese desperate-expat –housewife in Denmark who lived in various parts of the world until she met her Danish better-half in Eastern Africa. The rest is history. Imagine how terrified I was the day the Eastern Butterfly that she was disappeared and was nowhere to be found. Thankfully and thanks to my fabulous site meter (bless it!), I managed to track her again. The naughty girl had become the Coffee Addict, telling us how much she hates stupid people (the Bush administration is top of her list) or how hooked she is on coffee. There’s always been this mystery around Nyasha (as she became later). She gave so little about herself in her blog at first that I couldn’t resist asking her tons of questions. (The official “à la Nomad” interview is still on its way).
After having changed identity 300 times as she’s moved from country to country, the girl has now decided to move from Blogger to WordPress. Such a restless attitude in Bloglandia and in life makes her the Portuguese female version of myself. Behind the perfect face, the good education and the civilized personality hides a genuine fierce bitch, I can tell you. Can’t get any better!

Di, a woman of mystery, this fun mother from Virginia who loves Cyclists’ legs is a recent read of mine and an occasional commenter I am seriously keeping track of.

Ian Ivy Du Bois, a handicapped bitch in recovery, as he calls himself is a drama queen from Argentina who is going through a tough time but who always keeps on cracking a joke. I’m starting to be quite hooked on the character too. Vivi from Dispatches from France is another of these blog stars in France. A poor American woman who ended up near Troyes (shit hole where some of my folks live) makes the best of the situation by singing in the local choir and rant about the French. Whatalotoffun from Port-Elizabeth, South Africa is a beautiful (so she says, we’re still waiting for the pics) who unfortunately doesn’t understand how her home internet works and has therefore not posted anything for a while. I’ll be checking her out though as I love giving her a hard time.

Many thanks as well to Buddess, the travelling Beaver, Snooze, Chuck, Ms.Bees Knees, Gina, Lucy, Xmichra, Tom Gaylord, Mary B, Bloingo and Marieke for visiting. I’m surely forgetting plenty.

Last but not least, those of you who understand French are welcome to visit Marsoupiote‘s site. A school teacher’s memories who lives in the south of France and who also happens to be my Mom.

Thanks to all of you for coping with the Frog with a Blog and for being a part of my life for one year. So here’s a thank you video for you.

Does Paris Blog?

Please read Rob7534‘s very interesting post about why French people blog so much compared to our European neighbors and what kinds of blogs we usually write on this side of the Ocean compared to our English-speaking couterparts. Rob’s post reminded me of the little event I attended recently. Here it goes.

In late June, I attended my first blog reunion in Paris. What I thought would be some kind of trade fair about blogging, exchanging ideas, looking at new fancy tools to download videos and improve sound (and Lord knows I need it), was in fact just a get together for Parisian bloggers, who all know each-other, have communicated with each-other for years and have absolutely no interest in getting to know any new comer. Well, I must admit that I didn’t have any interest in getting to know any of them either as one quickly gets a complex when one overhears in the background two people say something like that: – Oh I was contacted by 3 publishers who want me to write a book out of my blog!
– Yes, me too. It’s just that they often offer lousy financial compensation. I usually say no to them
Or:
– My stats dropped from 17.000 readers per day to 15.000 last month. I’ve just been really busy at work lately and can’t post more than 3 entries per day.

If you go and visit the sites of the people who were present at the get-together, most of them blog about blogging. I’m not complaining, they all seem to be very professional and master technology like I never will, but their blogs are simply not interesting to me.

The reason I like blogging is simply to get to know other people’s daily lives, concerns, rants, love affairs, what they had for dinner and how they cooked itn whom they slept with and whom they hate today. I’m not too much into blogs that pretend to be a new version of bbc.com or cnn.com, i.e blogs that will give their version of world news and secretly hope that their blog will be your only link to the outside world.

While everyone was chatting, taking pictures of one-another, filming every conversation with their handy and most advanced little cameras, I stayed in my little end of the bar and sipped on the free Champagne and munched on the free snacks generously offered by the Internet operator that hosted the event.

During this little event, I realized that I’m totally disconnected with the Parisian French-speaking blog world. Firstly because I never visit French speaking blogs and secondly because my blog is a totally different ball-game, the game where I play fussball at a cheap diner while the big boys play the World cup in Germany. I have no idea who’s who and my new friend (the only person I talked to during the whole evening) was amazed to hear that I didn’t even know about this guy, who isone of the most read blogs in France with several thousands daily readers.

Another generalization my new friend and I came up with while observing the crowd (200 bloggers): Parisian Bloggers are geeks dressed in Armani suits, who all work in IT or Marketing, Young Urban Professional kind of style and most of them blog at work, as it is part of their job. Many earn money through their site, by hosting adverts or receiving donations and quite a few seem to have their blog as their sole source of income.

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Me who naively thought that blogging was a hobby and a way to get to know other fun people around the world, I soon realized the financial objectives that many have and the lack of personality that most blogs have. By lack of personality, I mean, a blog in which you don’t necessarily get to know the person who writes it, a blog where the person’s life is not the main focus of the site. It feels more like reading a very professional and technically advanced company website or a written petition against this or that political decision.

And yes, I’m a little bit jealous of their command of the various tools. And yes, I’d like to be able to publish such nice videos as they do plus get hundreds of comments every day. But that’s all in theory because I know how freaked out I’d be if too many people read my blog and commented on it and asked me all sorts of questions etc… I can’t even find the time to comment on the comments that are left to me, so imagine. But I know what you’re thinking: Honey, don’t worry, this is not going to happen. You’ll never get that many readers. Your life is not THAT interesting.

Buggers, all of you…

I’m glad such blogs exist though but they’re simply not my kind of blogs, i.e the kind I enjoy reading. I prefer reading about the fate of my desperate expat-housewives, the nightly escapades of my gay fellows and the crazy recordings of my ex-prison inmates. That’s more my kind of blogging.

So the question was: Does Paris blog? Oh it does, more than ever. France is apparently the country in Europe with the highest amount of bloggers. Some say it’s because the French love to write and written expression is valued in this Country. I say it’s because we’re all completely self-absorbed and have such a hard-time communicating “live” that we prefer talking to ourselves (I mean to each-other) virtually.

Next year, I’m not going back.

Nyasha’s in trouble

Thank the Lord, she‘s saved by geography!

Chubby tadpole

What happened to this chubby child? This picture must be from 1974/1975, am not sure, the original color of the sweater is orange, the hair is gone and the chubbiness remains in spite of super skinny years between age 4 and 30.
This is a meme I found on Chuck‘s site (one hilarious guy, I tell ya!). The mission: post a picture of yourself on your blog of a time in your life when you were “bright eyed and clueless” to what lay ahead in your life. Bright-eyed I’ve never been, clueless: I still am.

My sweater is still orange and so is the future.

Part 2: We never went to Morocco either

Yesterday night I quickly cooked some pasta filled with cheese. The cheap version of ravioli. 89 cents per pack. Good deal. I added cream and extra cheese. I really like cheese, you see.

Then My friend J. called and said we should have a drink. So I ran down and had a drink. I left my pasta on the stove after having eaten it and before going for a drink. I turned off the stove before I left, don’t worry. I also left it on the stove all night. Oh and my apartment was just elected warmest place in France (I’m under the roof, exposed to the south and have no aircon, just a fan. I think it’s the only fan I’ll ever have so I named him Stan. Stan the Fan.
This morning, I woke up late and was so happy to discover the rest of my pasta waiting for me on the stove. I had forgotten to put it in the fridge, but what the hell, a little bacteria has never hurt anybody, I thought.
I have been hating myself everytime I’ve sat on the damn toilet today, having several Niagara-like explosions, rolling myself on the floor with stomach pains and throwing up like… Have you seen the movie The Exorcist? You know when the girl vomits green liquid? Well then you get the picture.

So I’m feeling a bit weak today and a bit sorry for myself too. I went to the Pharmacy and the lady who works there laughed at me when I told her my story. She took a step back to talk to me. I’m sure she could feel the cheese left in my nostrils.

This is how I’m feeling today.

Lesson of the day: Use Fridge.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, we never made it to Morocco either. That’s it…
We never made it to Morocco because we thought it would be too hot there in July plus none of us 5 could agree on the final destination in Morocco. Should it be the north with Fes, Tangiers, Meknes, Chefchaouen, Rabat etc… or should it be the south: Marrakech, Agadir, Essaouira? We bought 5 different guidebooks and in the end, the 5 of us wanted to go to 5 different places.
I should also say that my friends and I met every Wednesday during the past 4 months to plan our summer trip. Every Wednesday, we would change destination. It was becoming tiring and scary. The more we met, the more north the destination went. Soon we would be spending our vacation in Belgium, or God forbid, England. Oh dear!

So after having planned trips that would take us to luxurious cabins in the Algerian desert, exquisite ornate and lush Riads in Morocco, houses carved in caves in Southern Spain, fancy hotels along the breeze of the Atlantic in Portugal, a mini-mansion in Northern Italy, we ended up renting a trailer in Corsica.
Why a trailer (le camping-car in French) you are asking? Well, it’s the perfect combination between a hotel and a car, duh! It’s fun, it’s like we’re suddenly hippies on the road, just staying over anywhere we want for the night. Yes! we knew we were going to be so cool and sooo free. We even knew exactly what kind of music we would play while driving. We had the whole picture in our heads, it was going to be one excellent road movie.

Coming soon: Part 3, How Mickelino fell into a ravine trying to empty the trailer’s chemical toilet.

Part 1: We never made it to Algeria

I’m sitting here, with a glass of cheap chilled white in one hand (it’s too warm to drink red) and a cigarette in the other. I occasionally type a word ot two, I can only type with one finger as the cigarette occupies two of my fingers. It’s taken me 5 minutes to type the first sentence of this post.

I re-read what I’ve written so far and find it plain and an uninteresting start to a post. Maybe it’s not a good idea to start posting at 2 am.

I’m completely jet-lagged, not because I’ve travelled to some exotic and remote place lately but because since my vacation started 2 and a half weeks ago I’ve gone to bed even later than usual. And then, there’s the heat. This heat has been unbearable. I can’t move, I speak even slower than usual and my brain is so switched off that it makes my eyes look as vacant as as cheap motel in Nebraska. Where is Nebraska anyway? Probably as far as my inspiration.

However, it’s not like nothing has happened to me lately. On the contrary, I’ve been fortunate enough to go on vacation to wonderful places with great people. Everything went smoothly, and the only one who suffered from it was my wallet.

Where should I start? Oh yes, it all began with Algeria. Well actually we never went to Algeria. It wasn’t safe enough. The official website said: Algeria is entirely safe. However tourists should not travel in the north-east, the south and some areas of the north-west, tourists have been reported to be kidnapped in markets in the big cities, these should therefore be avoided as well. Algeria is a large country but these instructions didn’t leave much space left for a relaxing vacation. Which is sad because I really wanted to go there.

So a few months ago, 4 friends and I decided we would go to Algeria this summer. Well, let’s put it this way. A few months ago I managed to brainwash 4 friends and convinced them to go to Algeria although they all told me what a crazy idea it was. Why Algeria, you’re asking. Well, it’s a long story and there are many reasons for it.
Firstly there’s the “I’ve been there before everyone else factor” it had made me quite popular in the 90’s when I entertained crowds at expats’ parties as I had just returned from Cambodia at the time when Polpot was still alive and when Khmer Rouges were still roaming the woods outside of Angkor Wat.
Then, as you know, Algeria is not the place one would choose to go to on vacation. Algeria belongs to the no-no-places-for-a-holiday-list together with Kabul, Bagdad, Beyrouth and Pyongyang. Still how cool is it to discover a place before everyone else and where there’s sun, friendly and good-looking people who speak my favorite language (Arabic), who cook the most delicious food and who have an amazing Roman, Arab, Berber, French history all of that mixed with a little bit of danger? I don’t know what you’d say but to me, it sounded like the perfect destination.

Moreover, parts of my family used to live there back when Algeria was part of France. It was more than a colony, it was a region, an intrisic part of the French territory. French had a tough time letting go of Algeria. The country reached its independence through a nasty and bloody war and unlike neighboring Morocco and Tunisia (which had become independent in 1956), Algeria finally became a state in 1962. France never really recovered from this and like the USA with Vietnam, the French are not too eager to talk about this defeat, especially not about the various massacres of Algerians that took place because of the French during this period.

My grandparents were born and raised there, my mother was born in Morocco on the other side of the border but they lived in Algeria. They are Pieds-Noirs as we call them. The Black Feet. That’s how the French who lived in Northern Africa are called. This name has throughout the years become a bad word as these Black Feet had to go back to metropolitan France upon Algeria’s independence and nobody really knew what to do with this million of French citizens who suddenly reapeared in the picture after having lived glorious days in the sun being served by underpaid locals. So they thought.
Culturally the Pieds-Noirs had become very different from the Metropolitan French and the latter would make sure this would be understood by the former. Unemployment and racism were not rare towards the Pieds-Noirs at that time and most of these families had lost everything they owned and suddenly ended up in the misery of Parisian or southern French suburbs.
Fortunately, my grandfather was employed by the state and could get a job as he returned with his whole family. But it’s always with a tear in his eye that he would mention Algeria and all the places they had lived in. Algeria was his country. He never went back.
Therefore, going to Algeria felt like the natural thing to do for me. For a long time, I’ve wanted to see the streets they lived in, where they went to school, the square in Tlemcen where my grandparents met 70 years ago. Rest assured, my goal was not to go there out of tacky post-colonial nostalgia, for I do think Algeria should have never been colonized in the first place, but this country is somehow part of my history. It was therefore high time I compared the blurry black and white pictures with today’s reality.

So, I’m afraid I’ll have to wait until it becomes a bit safer there. So in the meantime, Morocco seemed like a better option…

Coming soon: Part 2: We never made it to Morocco.

Monitor Chain

Photograph this blog post (including your monitor and its immediate surroundings), and post the resulting pic on your blog. Then, the next person photographs your blog post and posts it, and so on. Leave your post URL in the comments so people will be able to follow the chain, and link your image to the post you photographed… this way people will be able to zoom into the monitors by clicking.

In & Out

One day in Paris to recover from good food, wine and heat at my parents’ place in Bordeaux and swooosh, gone again. This time to the German capital. Berlin! This vacation is a bliss…
Have always dreamt of going there. Can’t wait.

I’ll be thinking of you. I promise.
PS: Rob, Bitch is the adequate description, I agree…

Hi and bye!

I came back from Corsica this morning and things have already been completely hectic since noon. Met with my friend Miss Lizzy, then coffee with Miss African beauty and her adorable daughters, then picnic in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont with good friends in the evening. Wonderful sunset over Paris and here I am packing again, off to Bordeaux tomorrow to visit my family for a few days and relax from such a stressful vacation…

Will of course update you soon about my week in Corsica which was pure hell, hard work and constant suffering on white sand beaches and picturesque restaurants.

I hope you had a nice week too. (read this last sentence using a very sarcastic tone of voice and a big teasing laughter at the end).

Ouch…

News #1: I’m going to Corsica for a week this coming Friday. Going there with my sporty friends again. So as I’ve been abundantly munching on cookies and sipping wine and beer lately, feeling stuffed each time, I decided to go back to the gym on Saturday in order to not look too scary on the beach among my sporty friends. I worked out for about 30 minutes and I haven’t been able to move since.

News #2: I’ve joined a theater group again. It’s a bilingual group, French and Italian. The director is Italian and doesn’t speak French. By the way, I don’t speak a word of Italian. WTF?
News #3: I’m having an open blog next week so I’d like you to write my posts while I’m away and imagine what I’m doing on hols. I’ll give you a temporary password by email to access my dashboard. Who’s interested?… thought I’d ask before I force you to do it.

Till then I’m praying that the current hot weather can make me perspire a kilo or two.

Nyasha, now it’s you and me, baby…

First, we had to deal with our Latin brothers’ (Portugal) victory over England and now France’s victory over Brazil just took the biscuit. I’m not crazy about football, but it’s hard not to get excited about it today. France beat the world champion and are now meeting Portugal in semi-final. Oooh, it’s going to be good, really good!
I’ve just been down to Bastille square and the whole of Paris is partying, screaming, escalading the Bastille Monument, waving flags, North African, Western African and pale French are hugging, old grannies are waving their walking-sticks and on my way back home I even saw Jews and Arabs hugging and jumping together outside a synagogue! As I’m writing this, I can still hear people shouting.
All of this is puzzling, I don’t know if I dare to be happy about it but in this country where the economy is crap, where people have recently been very depressed and demotivated, where racism has never been higher, I guess there’s a little hope and it doesn’t require much (a bunch of men with a blue T-shirts and a ball) to be happy to live together again.
So Nyasha, it’s France against Portugal now! It’s you and me, baby! See you on Wednesday for the big game et que le meilleur gagne…

And that’s how excited I was this afternoon before the game!

To the psychologists out there!

Tonight, as I was watching a documentary about 9/11/2001, I remembered the spooky dream I had the night before the tragedy took place.

I’m walking down the street. I see a plane. It’s going to crash on me. I know it. It crashes. But I survive and so does a woman who manages to get out of the plane. She complains that her hair is all messed up. She hurries to work.

What does it mean? Should I start charging for my fortune telling skills?

Any wild interpretations are welcome.