Jhender

that’s the theme of this weekend. which is a somewhat last minute idea to go for the Geneva Motor Show 2008 (Salon internationale d’auto), coz it’s not that far away (although a little expensive), and it’s the most prestigious car show in the world. the array of cars was seriously fantastic, considering they had many good cars.

here’s the LINK to the photo album, so that i dont have to repost it. [btw for viewing the picasa photos through the blog, it opens as big a size as your window, meaning if you view firefox in fullscreen it is bigger. you can always go to the picasa website to view.]

yes so the cars were great. and i was very happy to see the Mercedes McLaren SLR, and the BMW M3, M6, Z4 Individual series, and sit in them. yeah that was really nice. i dislike the asian car shows coz the photos always seem to be of souped-up rally cars and skimpily dressed girls.

then we were rather pressed for time coz we had to make it back to UN for the guided visit. thankfully we made it just in time. well it’s not bad, although not fantastic, i mean, what can you do with conference rooms. now we’ve got our UN visitor passes. ok.

and then we came out so late, and we were so hungry and tired, and there wasn’t going to be enough time for dinner. finally we managed to find out that our train tickets can be used on a later train, which was like amazing. so we had a slow dinner and then took a very empty TER/Corail train back to grenoble. i wish they used such new trains on the grenoble>lyon route.

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friday. i went up to Chamrousse to ski. im half addicted to skiing. it’s amazingly fun. after the first disastrous day two weeks ago (where i barely ski-ed like half a day, and was so bruised), this time it was simply exhilarating. i spent 1.5 hrs on the baby slope trying to figure out how to turn. watching the kids’ lesson, and trying to do some turning around cones. i did manage to be able to turn, sortof. then i spent the afternoon on the green piste. finally i can like reach a decent speed and slow down and stop and avoid people. yay. even though i still fall once in awhile. the progress is amazing, you’ll go back to the starting areas and find the slopes there sooo gentle you wonder how come you used to be so afraid of it. really. so i was skiing nonstop for the day.

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saturday. went to try the blue pistes, after having so much fun on the green, i decided to go further and make myself fall more. well on the green, you just make yourself turn and usually you can turn okay, but on the blue, the slopes are so much steeper and faster. after some falling and observing and figure-outing, i realised that you’ve got to attack the slope. it’s quite mad, coz you’re afraid of the speed and the height and it’s natural to try to stand back or lean back. but once you do that it’s impossible to turn. so you’ve got to be like perpendicular to the slope, equals to more weight forward, equals to wow it’s so fast, but it’s okay if you do wide zig-zags. it’s just crazy. crazily crazy and crazily fun. i got very high from the speed and the satisfaction of being able to come down a slope without falling. so much so that after awhile i was wondering how come some of those people are so lousy at it. i mean, they are europeans, some/most of them are dressed properly in ski-clothes, they probably have more access or time on the slopes and i can ski better than some of them. odd. in 3 days, alone without lessons, i can already do blue pistes. anyway it’s insanely tiring. my knees were aching from the force of controlling the skis on the steeper slopes. and my pecs are aching from the batons, and im sunburnt. i never expected to be sunburnt, oh well. i guess it was very sunny and the snow was very reflective. skiing is insanely fun. i wish i had my own skis, so cool.

this was at the top of the blue piste. i took the teleski from 1750m to 2070m. it takes 6+mins to get up, and then 11-15 minutes to ski down. 320m. the starting bit is so steep. as you can see, it is a drop. it feels like you’re committing suicide going down the slope. madness. if i ever ski again, im going to take the red-category skis. the blue (débutant) ones are probably too weak for it. wah it’s just so fun to slide around effortlessly. i did 5-6 hours of skiing on each day, just kept going up and skiing down. link to rest of the photos.