Party in Paris

It seems that at the moment I update my blog around once per week. Continuing my current trend last weekend I went to a party in Paris with Anna. It was Stacey's birthday so we were helping her celebrate.

Paris for the weekend to go to a party, It sounds a bit JetSet. We went by Eurostar though so does that make us TrainSet? I hope not.

Eurostar is a bit strange to us Brits. Europeans have long been use to jumping on a train to go to another country but for us getting on a train at Waterloo and getting off in the centre of Paris 2.5 hours later is a bit too easy isn't it? It is made stranger I think by the fact that the train doesn't noticably slope down to head under the English Channel(Our channel obviously!(I think the French call it La Manche)). Also isn't it rubbing it in a bit, the French arriving in our country at Waterloo. Funny really, someone in the Channel Tunnel planning had a cheeky sense of humour.

My memories of the weekend are mainly about the food. And drink. We seemed to be either in or travelling between cafes. For the Saturday night we went to what seemed at the time to be a restaurant and then to a club downstairs. Great fun although the beers were around £4 for a quarter liter and a crazy man hijacked the mic and decks for some audio mayhem.

In Paris, I realised that my French, although rusty, wasn't as bad as I think it is. I can generally be understood and I think that a stint in France would do it wonders. I would love to be fluent in French and indeed many languages. In the last month, I have fantasised about being able to speak, Norwegian, Italian, Indonesian, French and Welsh. Infact any time that I hear that someone is learning a language I have a desire to be able to speak that language.

If I was walking along a beach and kicked the cliched 'Genie in a bottle' my one wish would be,
To be able to speak and understand all languages as if they were my own. aka Babel Fish.

Back in Britain it is snowing at the moment and my current fear is that the snow will be gone before I find someone to have a snowball fight with. Random stranger you had better watch out.

This week I have been mainly installing a kitchen for Anna's Dad. I enjoy it as it involves bits of a few trades. Infact I had better go as I have some worktops to cut. Au revoir.

Update

It looks like I will be doing my groundschool in Bournemouth. I have ruled London out as I just know too many people there and will be needing to get my head down for some serious study and not be distracted. However in Bournemouth there are still 2 choices, cheap and ok or expensive and better. A hard call, I think I will have to go down there again to visit the flight schools and see if my bad impression of the cheaper one has improved.

At the moment, I am mainly doing chores for my mum. Adas and I have a work exchange program going on whereby we work on his flat one day and then at Wanbarrow the next. It works well as 2 people work 3 times as fast plus it is more interesting and we can chat about flying (planes and kites).

At the weekend I took Anna for a meal in Brighton. Feeling in the mood for some Turkish tucker, I turned to the relevant section in the yellow pages and rang 'Caspians' only to be laughed at by the guy at the other end of the phone, "you know this is a kebab shop". Oops. We went to 'Cous Cous House' on Preston St. Good Morroccan food. Plus belly dancer entertainment.

Also, Microsoft Messanger. Today I was told I MUST download the new version to continue using it. The new version offers to change the defaulf search-site and homepage to msn. Not too much of a problem, but it ignores you if you say no!!! Bar Stewards.

Just looking online at the moment for a winter wetsuit, but am now considering a drysuit. Of course I would have to wear a tuxedo underneath.

Brass Monkeys

Writing the title, I was suddenly not sure of the plural of Monkey. Monkies or Monkeys. Monkeys I think.

Anyhow Brass Monkeys because I went in the sea at Shoreham today. Cor blimey, it was cold. Well worth it though. I was wearing three wetsuits: 2 shorties(shortys?, shorteys?) and 1 full length. Plus booties and gloves. However, in pure kitesurfing terms, I had a better session today than I did in Florida. I mean it wasn't a sandy beach, there were no girls in bikinis and every time my head was dunked, my 'ice-cream head' felt like I had downed a large tub of vanilla. Bloody good fun though. The problem with three wetsuits was that I was unable to move my limbs properly and infact I think that they cut off my circulation quite a bit so the plan of staying warmer might have backfired a bit.