I was listening to Beastie Boys when I heard the above lyric. It made me think of judo. It may be a bit suprising, but in France, some people do go “au naturel”. 金玉ブラ！
Archive for October, 2006
un colis à 8h samedi
It’s Saturday. We had a package delivered at 8 a.m. today. In France! What a surprise!
土曜日なのに午前８時に宅急便だ！
Absentee ballot
I mailed my absentee ballot today. It actually came in the mail a few weeks ago, shortly after I sent in the application for one. It comes with a postage paid envelope, but only within the U.S. Oh well. I was surprised that it comes with bilingual English-Spanish instructions.
Anyways, now that I’ve sent it in and voted, I should stop reading political blogs for a while. The suspense leading up to the election is really getting to me…
Exploding Fromage Blanc
Fromage Blanc. To an American, such as I, it appears as yogurt at first sight. It is however a type of cheese. We buy it by the 500 g container, like a large container of cottage cheese or yogurt one can find in the states. My wife has taken a particular liking to eating with some jam in the morning for breakfast.
Today, we finished one container. There was a tiny bit left in the container but I decided to put the lid on and return it to the fridge. Well, I guess I didn’t know my own strength, nor did I know the weakness of the container. It split open from the side and bits of the remaining fromage blanc sprayed from the fissure due to the pressure. The whole scene must have been quite comic.
Freebox!
On a l’internet à chez nous encore! We have internet now at our new place. Yay! We received the ADSL equipment only two weeks after signing up for freebox online. We were a bit apprehensive about it being properly delivered to us in our new apartment, but it did find its way to us by colissimo. It’s fast and includes TV, internet, and phone for just 29 euros per month. Not too bad, considering that Noos was almost 39 per month for just internet and TV.
Grenouilles
Last night I had frog’s legs for the first time. We had them at a Vietnamese restaurant nearby to our apartment after a long day of cleaning. They were actually a bit difficult to eat as there isn’t so much meat on the little leg bones. Still it was an interesting experience, and they indeed tasted a little bit like chicken (ignoring the sauce).
Eat frog’s legs: We’ll cross that off of our list of French things to do…
A test of Japanese
The Japanese Language Proficiency Test, or the Test d’Aptitude en Japonais, or the 日本語能力試験. I’ll be taking it this December in Paris. I’ll be aiming to pass the level 2 (二級) exam.
Après avoir passé cette examen, je peut practiquer plus de français. Mais maintanent, il faut que je lisse plus en japonais, etudie plus de grammaire japonaise, et parle plus en japonais avec ma femme.
これからも日本語で頑張っていくぞ！
Forwarding mail…
22€, Twenty-two euros. It costs 22 euros to set up mail forwarding in France by La Poste for six months. It had better work if we have to pay for it. However, we have our doubts about it working so well, like many things in France. Afterall, it took a good four months for our landlord to have his mail finally forwarded and even after that we still occasionally received some mail for him.
I think it will probably work like this: If you don’t set up mail forwarding, you won’t get mail sent to your old address. If you do set it up, you might get mail forwarded from your old address.
