Jhender

finally i got to Grenoble. oh hindsight I should have flown to France earlier in January and have some fun. but then again, it wouldn’t be good on a 6 month plane ticket and I couldnt decide earlier. oh well.

thanks to jeremy for hosting me and well i intruded on his training schedule and i guess homework too. although the training schedule was more important, heh.

this is a boring photo of trains at Gare de Lyon, Paris. it looks boring, but it is half an adventure getting out at 5+am, wondering why the metro takes to long to arrive, running around in the wee hours, emerging into the cold/cool platform area. it’s amazing, the place is half-lit, even though there are many trains to depart, the train station looks asleep. i dont know why the photo is so bright but it was rather dark. and it’s super cool coz all the platforms are filled with TGVs, long sleek cold metal rods in the darkness, with glowing red eyes. really like some Terminator movie. and then when I walked past, it growled to life with the sound of robot whirring. nvm me, just an obsession.

this is Jeremy stealing food from outside Zhouxiang’s window. ZX put some leftover food outside coz there’s no space in his fridge. super funny. ZX cooks great chinese food though!

and then jeremy brought me to climb up to the Bastille, this fort that’s high up. what a steep and tiring climb up. unlike letch who took her friend up on the telepherique, pah. the photo is of some ppl climbing around, i suppose they were going down, but not bad they’re got unlimited rock faces around. actually can you see them?

this is one crazy guy scampering up the wall. serious. i dunno why is he doing that though.

and then there’s another one trying to balance/move on the rail. eh?

yes there’s the view of grenoble, and the mountains around. nice.

=] it’s nice to be in a city in the mountains. it’s got a different charm from paris the city. i like both. i can never decide which one i like better. but paris is home.

my solo adventure up to Chamrousse. it’s rather scary to go skiing by yourself without knowing anything except How-To-Ski-In-10-Steps.
it’s insanely difficult, it’s absolutely tiring, it’s unbelievable fast, it’s just a heck of an experience.
ok first, Chamrousse, small ski resort at 1650 to 1750m. not too expensive, decent bus transport straight to the resort, has an ESF ski school, has enough shops.
the skiing, is absolutely difficult to start coz the bloody beginner areas are not right at the entrance so i din manage to end up there until later.

first i took the tapis roulant, this travellator thingy, which was stressful enough coz you have to get your skis onto it. it’s not that wide, and it’s not easy to navigate on skis if it’s your first few steps. ugh. but it went well. and they after that you’ve got to push off from the end before you cause a pileup. stressful too. and then after that i ended up midway on a green piste, which is a beginner track. stressful also, coz it’s decently steep. = OMG bloody fast when it’s your first time. wtf how do they expect ppl to start learning. so i managed to move along, without crashing into anyone/anything/anytrees, but i definitely needed some falls to stop myself. and then i reached this telechair place. whoopee. i din dare to go further down the piste coz it seemed like a steep part was coming up.

so i, amazingly, managed to get onto the chair lift, and started flying up the mountain. at first it’s way cool to be floating in the air with your skis dangling and all. it’s cold too, and then we went into the fog coz the weather wasnt very good. and i started getting worried coz it seemed to go rather High up, and the visibility sux, and it wouldnt end. omg. I ended up at this very high up area with only blue and red pistes. no green, oops. green, blue, red, black, in order of increasing difficulty. well after much indesiveness i managed to make my way down the blue and then green. took forever, with plenty of falls, but hell. so tiring!. and then i finally found the Espace Débutant Protégé, which is this nice small area for real beginners. always look for this place!. skiing is so tiring. fighting with the skis makes it worse.

and the weather wasn’t very good. yucks.
tiring.

and then saturday, after attemping to go to Geneva, Chamonix, Mont Blanc, Turin, Lyon, and 10 other places, and hours of searching lousy train websites and bus websites, we ended up going snowboarding at Lans en Vercors instead. lol. alright it was jeremy’s crazy idea that he wanted to try snowboarding, else it wouldnt have crossed my mind at all. anyway dont go to lans en vercors, it’s so ulu and inaccessible and you have to change to another bus to go to the actual ski resort and it’s hard to rent skis. just go somewhere else. still we ended up snowboarding.

but before that we were finding our way around the darn village. and i found this antique ferrari. omg. with popup headlights too.

jeremy’s photowhoring practice.

it’s just so cool to be holding a snowboard and all. absolutely. compared to juggling skis and batons.

the Big (and wet) problem is that you can’t stand to rest, gotta sit. but snowboarding is so fun. it’s supposed to be harder for beginners than skiing, but easier to master. hell it was easier to start. perhaps coz we were at a nice gentle slope and we had plenty of space to fool around.

video of me sliding down slowly. that’s one of the first tries. so it’s very lousy and i couldnt stand. well better than jeremy who slid all the way down uncontrollably once he had his boots attached onto the board. super funny.

and then later on im coming down the slope again, jeremy making stupid remarks.

jeremy tries to go onto the humps. after we were alot more confident. but he crashed out

whee! + oops.

as jeremy says, apres-ski is impt, and fondue is part of the tradition. donc. Tartiflette + Fondue + Charcuterie. yums.

me, roanna and jeremy.

and then we went to, er, dunno-what-name pub, which is a desert coz the floor is filled with sand. that’s my blue drink.fantastic day.
oops a pic of the place where we were snowboarding.

Sunday

[the following huge paragraph details my soppy memory of Lyon, feel free to skip it]
guess where? Place Bellecour @ Lyon. my gosh i miss this place so. All the metro stops were so familiar, the orange trains and lighting in the stations, Guillotiere, Charpennes, Bellecour, Saxe-Gambetta. I even recognised the stairs where the escalator is hiding behind it, heh. i walked from bellecour to vieux lyon. to cross the river. le rhone and la saone. Fouviere up there. the junction where the crazy youths set off fireworks, the macdo where they bought their milkshake, Centre Commercial Part-Dieu where we first discovered the fantastic Quick student meal, which exists encore today. (i suppose i wanted to say “still exists today”) the little streets around bellecour which i’ve explored. i remember the Fete de la Musique route. the Place at Vieux Lyon with the market fair, the musical instrument shops, the icecream shops, the cafe where we bumped into bern and lucien eating and ordering crepe and the waiter teaching them how to pronounce something, the drinking holes there where we checked out world cup 2006 matches, the back alley, the traboules, the lousy cobblestones, the amazing basements of the shops, the museum of little thingies, the music performers, where i saw the marimba and the flute, lol, the thingy that goes up to fouviere. then i went to Gorge de Loup, easy to remember which exit, but i forgot which bus, haha. and then i forgot it’s sunday so you have to wait forever for the buses, but good thing they indicate arrival times and there are many buses to take. Eglise demi-lune stop. the lavender plants, although no flowers now. and the familiar house with the whitewash and blue gate. and the gate that can be unlocked from indoors. and the wonderful Jaillard family as always. =] such nice people. and the Terre photobook at the door, still there. i’ve never ceased to be amazed at how complete the house and family is. it’s got everything, so homely and full. the grandparents were visiting too, ooh. but good thing they were leaving. then i played some boardgame with the kids, decently fun. and then there was cake+nutella for ‘tea’, at 5pm. then we watched Le Parfum. in-te-res-ting movie, although it died halfway and got boring and lousy. trust M. Jaillard to walk by and give comments like “mignon” during a gory scene. then the movie took so long that dinner was late, at 8pm. woops.
and we had ratatouille! i miss complete dinners which starts with the not-very-nice carrot/veggie thing+butter, + bread toujours. oh i forgot to mention the nice napkin rings, napkins, l’eau fraiche, fork, knife, dessert spoon, bread, everything, ahhh. ratatouille for main course. seriously you’ve got to appreciate that it’s a real dinner main course, which contains lovely baked veggies with herbes and spices. c’est tout. that’s just it, veggies. but it tastes great. although not the typically filling dinner. and then it’s cheese, always lots of cheese. makes me want to go and buy a rond of Camembert soon. and then there was tart de pomme for dessert. have to clear table and change plates for dessert. yeah coolness. and it’s a beautiful looking apple tart. Tart = big sized tart. i just love all the little things that they do for dinner, like all the formalities, but done casually. so nice. it doesn’t have to be pompous or anything. and i was sent to Gare Perrache in the new Peugeot car. it looks rather hightech inside, nice. they just have a thing for peugeots and small cars and manual gearsticks. fun. and my TGV train was late by 10mins, tsk tsk. lovely memories nonetheless.

i miss paris, i miss lyon, i miss grenoble and the mountains, i dont really miss singapore yet, nor chinese food. i came back to paris and realised that the metro here is really clanky and noisy, haha.