had to say my first goodbye last night.. to my brother.. for most people i'll be leaving for 11 months, but that wasn't enough for him! he had to leave a month before me to make it a full year without seeing me!
so anyway we partied one last time at cecile's last night and it was fun.. (that dog knows how to party!)
i'll miss you bro!
Everyone knows about that "strikes" culture we have in france; any time of the year, if there's not someone on strike, you're probably in the wrong country!
But what people may not be aware of is that we're trained for it from school!.. every year students find a good new reason to go out and yell in the streets, occupy universities.. and if there can be some confrontation with the police, then comes the real fun: may 68 reenactment!
'Cause that's what it's all about: no matter what the new topic is, each year, as sunny spring days come, comes the ritual time of going out and fighting with the police to celebrate holy may 68.. americans have their spring break, we have our spring strikes!
Oh i'm not blaming! I did my share as a student! high school, university, i did them all! can't even remember what i was so eagerly fighting for or against (some type new youngsters contract probably, the CPE of the time) but at least i was happy to miss some classes and sit in the sun instead.. and what good is school if doesn't train you for your future work life anyway!
Not like there was any.. but this time i ordered my plane ticket to my first destination: Berlin. (I know i said "no plane", but well.. that should start after berlin!)
Anyhow, I'll take off with EasyJet on tuesday morning, april 11th, at 6:45 am!.. i must get used to low budget life, which explains the early flight.. and since there are no trains at that time, i already booked a night on the appartment floor of my dear friend and colleague Bertrand.. thanks mate! :-)
Got it!
In the end it was more scary than painful..
I used visatorussia.com to get my invitation (the cheapest one i could find). $30 for the invitation letter and $20 for the detailed bullshit program of what i'll be doing there each and every day for a month.. all received by fax
Just so you don't get as confused as i was: http://visatorussia.com/, http://waytorussia.net/ and http://www.intelservice.ru/ are all one single agency!
I also had to call VISA (the credit cards.. tel: 01 41 85 88 81) for them to send me an insurance certificate.
A photo and the offcial form that i downloaded off http://www.action-visas.com/
54€ to the embassy and a week later (which is this morning) i got my one month visa..
In the process you also get to visit the beautiful ambassy of russia in paris, which pretty much resembles a huge concrete bunker where people welcome you with a warmth approaching siberian temperatures.
In sharp contrast, the embassy of mongolia is nice suburban pavilion. No one is standing in line two hours before it opens. You just ring the bell like when you're going to your friend's house. Basic but nice decoration, carpets and real wood furniture and they even smile! "you don't have your insurance certificate with you? it's allright, you'll bring it along when you come retrieve your visa!"
Only in the end i didn't get the visa.. it's only valid for 3 months from the date of issue so i should just wait a little and get it just before i leave..
May I introduce you to the official website of the ambassy of Mongolia in France...
http://www.ambassademongolie.fr/
I'm not sure wether it made me sad or scared yesterday, when I was visiting a beautiful photo exhibition about the Seine at the Conciergerie de Paris, and I overheard a guide talk of "the time of film photography"...
In many people's minds, the time is already long gone...
I just set up a new version of my photo website..
I'm trying things out.. the idea is to create a facade where i can put forward a few selected pics, keeping the old version as an archive..
Please check it out and tell me what you think..
http://joune.free.fr
http://www.visatorussia.com : 50USD for invitation + fake trip plan
http://www.homevisas.com/Dossier/russie.html : 75€ for invitation + fake trip plan
http://studyrussian.com/MGU/visa_application.html: 70USD for invitation + fake trip plan
http://www.gotorussia.net/visasupport/russian_visa_support.htm: 29USD for invitation and i'm not sure what else
http://www.realrussia.co.uk/visa/tourist_visas2.asp : £75 VISA included ?
http://www.waytorussia.net/Travel/VisaSupport.html : 30USD for invitation valid for 30 days stay
... i even had a guy on the phone who was ready to sell me the invitation only for 190€!! (and the VISA for 220€ on top of that!)
There are so many of these agencies out there and the prices are so different it gets really confusing..
Has anyone out there already -successfully or not so successfully- used any of these services? you may even make the list longer if you whish.. but please share valuable experience.. Am i cool with a 30 bucks invitation? if not, why?
Thanks people!
Hey, i made a little intro for my Shanghai pictures.. check it out and tell me what you think!
well, you don't ride a train at 431km/h every other day.. at least i don't!
..quite a change from indian trains i must say!
Wow! this new year thing is no joke down here! As my Virginia friend Dustin would put it "That was some MAD fire cracking i'm tellin'yall!!"
Streets filled up with smoke banging and flashing solid for hours.. 'thought we'd be deaf by dawn! (i just wanted to throw in "deaf by dawn" cause i thought it sounded cool! maybe for a movie title or something! ..any producer out there??)
So here's how it looked up in the sky..
.. but down in the streets it was straight up Bagdad!!
.. but it didn't prevent Richard, Tao and i to do our little new year celebration in my hotel room!
Due to technical difficulties related to pictures upload and other timeout issues, you may please be so kind to wait a little longer for the last few posts from Shanghai..
In the meantime you may want to go outside and exercise a little, for sitting in front of your computer may not be the healthiest thing to do. But do not forget to come back!
Happy new year to all!
As one of the landmarks of Shanghai and amongst the highest buildings in the world -with an observation deck at 340 meters- i thought it would be worth throwing in a few pics!
.. from the outside..
.. from inside out..
.. and inside.. this giant spiral is the column of balconies of the 30 floors of the Grant Hyatt hotel!
.. oh, and by the way, if you were wondering where she was hiding, Cheng Yue Hui, the most beautiful girl in China works as an elevator operator in the Jinmao tower!..
You know, the hotel maids..
..cause the first time you go to wash your hands, and only when they're wet you realise you forgot to open the tiny soap bar in that plastic wrapper that's just impossible to open with wet hands.. so finally you open it and wash your hands and leave your brand new soap bar by the sink so you can use it next time..
but then you come the next day to wash your hands, and there you are with your wet hands and damn! the soap bar has gone! your brand new soap bar that you barely used once, they threw it away and gave you a brand new neatly wrapped soap bar that you can just open again so they can throw it away the next day!
Help us saving the environment!
Join the movement at http://www.swtthsba.org
The Stop-Wasting-Them-Tiny-Hotel-Soap-Bars Association
Just a little compilation of building facades i shot this morning.. thought it looked funny.
One intruder has slipped into this series of chinese caracters.. will you be able to recognize it?
..and so i woke up at 4am on saturday to catch the train to Hangzhou, with a terrible hangover!
Once upon a time, in the peaceful county of Zhejiang, lived Bei Suzhen the beautiful fairy..
And Bei Suzhen the beautiful fairy fell deeply in love with Xu Xian the poor simple dude because he let her borrow his umbrella -chicks were a lot easier to pick up in these early days!
But Fa Hai the evil bastard magician priest disagreed with this love between a beautiful fairy and a poor simple dude and although it was none of his business, wouldn't let them mary and live happily ever after!
So beautiful fairy Bei Suzhen got super mad and started breaking all kinds of shit (you know how girls are when they get mad) and she launched a war campaign against evil bastard magician priest Fa Hai.
Great magical powers were unchained, the earth trembled and as a result of all this mess, the region got flooded. And that is how this war gave birth to the west lake as a symbol of the love between beautiful fairy Bei Suzhen and simple dude Xu Xian...
Now it seems that naughty -yet beautiful- fairy Bei Suzhen had not quite been a good girl all the way as she already had a baby in her womb when she launched the magical attack!
As a result, her magical powers were diminished and Fa Hai the evil bastard magician priest was very powerful so he defeate naughty beautiful fairy Bei Suzhen and to punish her, emprisonned her inside the Leifeng tower, by the newly created lake..
And this would be the first fairy tale i know of where the bad guy wins in the end, if -god knows how, and don't ask me cause nobody seems to remember!- the tower didn't somehow collapse years later, freeing beautiful fairy Bei Suzhen and her grown up son so they could meet again with the old beloved simple dude Xu Xian -who never did anything in the story except for lending his umbrella (and maybe a little nick-nack-pushy-pushy-whack with beautiful fairy Bei Suzhen, but who'd blame him!)- and finally live hapilly ever after... it was about time!
You can go to sleep now children!
There was a company party on friday for the chinese new year.. about a hundred people in a restaurant yelling "chi'nye how" (or something like that!) and of course you have to finish up your glass every time!
..needless to say i got back to my hotel completely drunk!
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