frog legs

so last night i went to a farewell dinner (you know who you are, you will be missed)   at a nice little french restaurant. the wine was flowing and everyone was laughing and being generally loud english speakers. i decided to be adventurous after my recent food poisoning episode in london, and ordered the frog legs as an appetizer, steak and salad for the main course.

the frog legs were cooked well, the texture was ok and the sauce covering them was nice, but the legs themselves were awful. i've eaten just about every part of cattle, goat, sheep, and camel, poultry and seafood but i couldnt hang with this stuff.

school was cancelled, so i hit up the conservatory:

i have found that by playing 15 minutes and then taking a 3-5min break has been doing wonders for my jaw, and i have been pretty regularly putting in 3-4 hours per day this way. it helps that work has been sparse with school being cancelled so much!

christmas market

here are a few photos around the christmas market that i took last night:
the fountain had frozen over

the nativity scene

there were lights strung everywhere

and numerous goodies

and tents of light

old photographs

 one of my best museum experiences ever was being in chicago and stumbling  across a free exhibition of cartier-bresson's works at the chicago art institute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartier-bresson

moreso than any other photographer, i always find something so haunting and gorgeous in his photos. the only way i could think to describe them would be as outrageously beauftiul. i cannot say why, they just are

barthes talks about 3 points of view in every photo, that of the operator (the photographer), the spectator (the person viewing the photogrpah), and the spectrum (that which the photo is taken of - the specter- a word connected at the same time to death and to the spectacle)

a photograph cannot say what is or what will be, it can only say definitively what has been. it blurs the edges of reality  "since the immobility of a photograph is like the result of a perverse confusion between the Real and the Living : while attesting to the fact that an object has been real, it subtly implies that it is living".

none of the people photographed above are living, nor is the man that photographed them. i can't help but wonder about their stories, about his story. aside from being an interesting window into the early to mid twentieth century, the photos speak to me as do the specter of their subjects (and photographer)

health care

one unfortunate part of travelling is digestive problems, and i've had my share of them over the years! one of the problems of living/travelling in comparative hellholes for a few years is that you get a false sense of security when you are in the developed world.

anyways, this past weekend i got food poisoned by something in london, and came back to france sick. of course all the french people laugh when i tell them this, and reply that i need to stick to french food (because english food is so terrible....)


 today i had my intro to the french health system and had difficulties at first - in central beauvais i had a tough time finding a place that could get me in to see them today. i tried four doctor's offices and finally lucked out by getting a number off the internet. i called about an hour and a half  before when my appointment was set for. i had a gloomy walk over to the office, it was cold and lightly snowing, and i didnt feel great. however, things got better when i got to the doctor's office. i did not have to wait. i was seen promptly at my appointment time. the doctor checked me out, wrote a prescription, and commented that i  almost had no distinguishable accent (my limited vocabulary and poor grammar are what gave me away...)

my social security number had not yet arrived, so i paid the doctor in cash right there (he even had change!) i have to send in one form to be re-imbursed for my expenses. the visit was 22 euros, my prescription cost 11 euros. in total i spent 33 euros to see a doctor, and get two medicines. to be honest, i dont even care if i am paid back for this trip. if i were in the states, how much wrangling and paperwork would i have to go through with insurance companies to deal with this? if i were to pay out of pocket, today would have costed me at least one hundred dollars, and the quality of service would have been exactly the same. hell, i may have even had to wait longer too.

my kind of place

this is a bar that i stumbled across in london.

next time i go back i would love to get a drink there, the name is priceless

london

went to london for a thanksgiving weekend - activities included:
                                                          the borough market:

camden market

wandering around by st paul's

radiohead

found this nice brief analysis of one of radiohead's best songs "pyramid song". i love their music, there is always something subversive or fantastical about it(in this case the song breaks down into common time despite the fact that if you count it like a normal common time tune you won't follow it) . i like the way that bob reynolds (a wonderful jazz saxophonist in his own right) draws out the symmetry of the rhythm, which does in fact resemble a pyramid.

http://www.bobreynoldsmusic.com/video/pyramid-song-radiohead/

clear skies...

for the first time in a week there was sunlight in Beauvais and it was wonderful. it is so easy to get used to the drab and dreary rainy weather, where everything seems to exist in shades in grey. in celebration of blue skies and sunlight, i thought i would post a few colorful (blue) pictures from the past few years of travel.i think the large amount of vitamin D from the sunlight made me a bit nostalgic:
                                                         BEAUVAIS, FRANCE:

CHEFCHAOUEN, MOROCCO

ICE LAKE BASIN, COLORADO

CAPADOCCIA, TURKEY

OLYMPOS, TURKEY

striking

so there were several weeks of heavy striking here in france, which made my job very easy (no students to teach)

the first day of student striking i heard loud chanting and the shaking of gates and windowframes on the lower level of the school. it was pretty surreal.
 here is some video that i shot from my apartment window.

this i shot down in the big square near my school

the striking has come to an end for the most part. thought i would post several things this weekend as the teacher who booked me to teach all day today has not shown up for a few days, so i have a long weekend.

nouveau beaujolais

one thing that would never fly at an american high school is a party in the teachers lounge. and by that, i do mean party, complete with  booze, food, and loud middle aged guys flirting with younger employees.

 there were about 6 bottles of nouveau beaujolais consumed, several blocks of cheese, baguettes, etc.

in typical french fashion, they teased me by apologizing for a lack of hamburgers. They also used these napkins

i went out for a stroll and saw that part of the central square had been converted into a fish-grilling/wine drinking area. Grilled herring and a glass of nouveau beaujolais for 2 euro!

jazz robots video

i saw this video via facebook, and thought i would re-post it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1fWJKaUZ_4&feature=player_embedded


you know, this video is pretty accurate, although, at least if it were me speaking, or many of the other jazz musicians i know, it would not take over a minute to say the word "hip".

wine in teacher's lounge

so tomorrow i will be participating in a celebration of the new beaujolais wine (it is a yearly celebration - people  celebrate by opening a bottle that has aged appropriately. )

i will be participating in one such tasting party - which will take place in the teacher's lounge of the school i teach at.
good thing i dont actually have class to teach tomorrow, i fear some teachers are going to get silly. will post pictures tomorrow night.

amiens cathedral

I remember doing a report in high school on the city of Amiens, and talking about this very same cathedral. If you would have asked me in high school if i would ever see it, let alone be living so near it, i would have said you were crazy.
sometimes i look back at notes/journals from years past, and enjoy the mix of  past (fantasies) and present (realities). it has been a wild journey.

 on the level of the studium - this photo could be considered interesting in that it shows a gothic cathedral, with all of its wonderful decor and motifs and symbolism.

for me, although this picture is not one of the best photos (or snapshots i have taken- it is off center, the color is not great), it is not the architecure or history that interests me ; for me, the punctum dominates the picture, overwhlems it - and that is to say -
the imposition of my past self on the image of an ancient cathedral, a nerdy high school kid in kansas with a dream to travel, and  being able to  realise this dream over the past couple years.

Amiens Cathedral

jean-baptiste clamence

my favorite book by Camus stars the juge-penitent Jean-Baptiste Clamence. I have translated a short section of his book-long monologue:

"Paris is a real illusion, with a superb decor and inhabited by four million silhouettes. Close to five million at the last census? Come on, they would have had kids. I wouldnt be surprised. It always seemed to me that our co-citizens had two passions: ideas and fornication. We should be careful, though, to not condemn them, they are not alone, all of Europe is like that. I dream sometimes about what future historians will say of us. One sentence would suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read newspapers. After that definition, the subject will be, I dare to say, exhausted."

(From La Chute by Albert Camus Editions Gallimard 1956 pages 10-11)

simplicity

as much as i enjoy cooking, the vast majority of the time i do not have the will to go through the entire phase of a complicated recipe. i like color, texture, and simplicity

here are two meals i made up today, total prep time was about 10 minutes for both meals combined.

Lunch:

some variety of sweet potato, sprinkled with cinnamon and butter(heavenly). some smoked salmon i had in my fridge from the supermarket. a bit of a strange combination, but hey,  it fit the bill.
total cost of meal -    1.6euro for salmon, .4 euro for sweet potato = ~2 euro 

Dinner:
Salad - Sardines, half an avocado, mixed lettuce, olive oil, oysters. Water to drink.

total cost - 1.9 euro sardines, .5 euro avocado, .3 euro lettuce, oysters 1.2 euro = 3.9euro

la baladeuse

reading an autobiography of barthes, and found this passage to be particularly lovely - so i have translated it into english. i hope that i have done it justice.


La baladeuse

In days gone by a white tramway provided service from Bayonne to Biarritz; in summer they hitched to it a wagon - all open and with no top : la baladeuse. Everyone wanted to ride it : along an uncluttered countryside, they enjoyed the panorama, the movement, and the air at the same time. Today, neither la baladeuse nor the tramway exist, and the trip from Biarritz is a bore. This is not to mythically embellish the past, nor to tell of the regret of a lost childhood while pretending to miss a tram. This is to say that the art of living does not have a history : it does not evolve; the pleasure that disappears vanishes forever and cannot be substitued. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. There is no progress in pleasures, there is nothing but mutations.

(From : Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes, Editions du Seuil, 1975  pages 59-60)

architecture and music

http://www.youtube.com/user/tedtalksdirector?blend=1&ob=4#p/search/1/Se8kcnU-uZw

an interesting summary on how architecture (or lack thereof) influenced music development and style. as an amateur musician who has no fixed place to practice music, i am constantly playing in new practice rooms, and have found that the space i play in can have as much to do with the quality of the practice session as any other factor. it is a convenient thing to blame too, when things go awry (read: i play like shit)

and i tell myself after i record - aww man that didnt sound too great,  there must be bad acoustics...

saturday evening snack

life is lovely here in france. i went to the market this morning and picked up a few nice things to eat, and ended up photographing one of my snacks. it consists of a basil coated goat cheese (rich, creamy, and wonderfully spiced) , as well as a few figs, and a glass of wine that i had laying around my place. the quality of the photo does not do this justice, it was very good.

 total costs = 1.81 euro   - it is not expensive to eat well, provided you look in the right places!

a french friend took me into a wine shop to explain the regions and wine varieties to me, and the shopkeeper led me into a back room and allowed me to have glasses of  various (pricey!) white wines for free. he also offers a course in wine tasting, which i may end up taking starting in january. while beauvais is not the most happening place in France, it is  getting better as i become more involved in the community and make friends. it definitely is strange to travel from egypt (no drinking culture) to france (where drinking is seen as an art)

Introduction

I have decided to form this blog due to an immense amount of free time and wide variety of interests - including but not limited to - languages, travel, cooking/food, music, exercise, and photography.

The name of this blog is a reference to a book entitled La Chambre Claire (or Camera Lucida in English speaking markets) by Roland Barthes. Punctum is a latin word Barthes used to describe one of two elements in analyzing a photograph - la piqûre, un détail poignant - or a wound/puncture, a  poignant detail in a photograph which is at the same time powerful and beautiful, and completely personal. The other element of analyzing a photograph would be referred to as the studium - le goût pour quelqu’un ou quelque chose - the taste for someone or something in the photograph, the historical and societal backdrop of the picture, aspects of the photo which can be studied.

So I arrived at the idea for the name of this blog by referring to it as the punctum, poignant details or elements of my life/elements of life in general that i consider to be beautiful, that have meaning to me, that i would like to share in this blog.