It was a beautiful autumn day, last Sunday. I jogged past the Wall for Peace four times that morning, and I walked past it another time that evening after strolling along the Seine. I have missed the colours of the sunset at its most intense but it was nevertheless a beautiful sight. *Camera click*
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Friday the 13th. I don’t have any particular emotion attached to the day, I don’t get superstitious over it, I would even treat it as a good day to buy the lotto just to defy the conviction of some to the notion of unluckiness. Just another day. It is just a day like any other day.
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Time flies; it appears I’ve been charting of (mis)adventures for a good decade now. I started blogging on the suggestion and encouragement of my friend D, back at a time when I was searching for a solution to share (travel) news with my family and friends while trying to limit the use of photo attachments that could easily clog up emails. Remember, once upon a time, we did not have mailboxes with 1G+ storage space nor super high speed internet! With the help of Ed and JC – they are awesome technical rockstars! – I managed to get something up and running in no time.
Of course, there aren’t ten years worth of blog posts on this site. Blog 1.0 was hosted elsewhere, written at a carefree time where I was less concerned about public sharing of personal information. With time came better awareness and the want to protect the privacy of people in my life so when I acquired this current domain name, I made a conscious decision to keep their stories away from Blog 2.0. F does get regular mention because often, it’s our story that I’m retelling.
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Weekend morning, every now and then, I allow myself the luxury of a lie-in. What was different this particular morning was the effort F put in getting breakfast ready. He didn’t just got me any random croissant, he had gone to a rather fancy bakery (where you must not stretch your hand beyond the glass barrier to point at something!) and picked up a selection of goodies. With tea and mandarin juice to complement the pastry.
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At the start of the year, I figured I would start working on self-discipline, a concept that somehow escaped me in the past year or two. Nothing too drastic though. The plan is to identify key things I would like to do each month and then adopt a handful of daily actions that contribute to these goals and be mindful about maintaining them. This way, every month, I will be consciously doing something rewarding, advancing self-development and most importantly, reinforcing discipline.
Reading though a couple of articles (1,2) I came across yesterday, it appears I have gone into the realm of habit forming, even if I had not specifically targetted such an action from the start. I was not even aiming to change my behaviour into automatic deeds per se but the mechanism I’m applying is similar, all for the sake of “focus”.
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I had not realised how significant these photos could be when I took them a few days ago, on a night out with friends to catch a ballet flamenco performance. I thought I was just photographing things that I thought to be pleasing to look at.
Today, millions – French and non-French alike – came out to demonstrate unity against extremism and terrorism, to defend their rights and that of their compatriots, and to mourn the deaths that remind us how fragile life can be if we choose violence against peace.
Anyone who the need to kill, to pillage, to rape, or to strap bombs onto a 10-year old little girl so to make a point, the only point they are making is their barbarism knows no moral nor ethical bound. How sad is that? Sowing fear does not make one a hero, but a coward who fear living a righteous life; the scheming, the plotting, everything in utmost secrecy. How sad is that? Living half a life and mostly lies; nearly loveless and nobody that truly cares. How sad is that?
Please, let peace be your guiding light, no matter where you are, which religion you adhere to, what custom you practice.
Let peace be the core of your being.
Happy New Year! Bonne Année! Selamat Tahun Baru!
I suppose this signals another yearly recap is due. Did I learn and did I make mistakes in 2014? A-plenty! Did I go off (life) tangent and lose sight of goals that I’ve set for myself? Ab-solutely! Did I carry bagfuls of regrets and mutter sorries along the way? Nope!
I refuse to wallow in laments for things I cannot change.
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I pondered about writing a recap of my 2013, but after a few false starts (text typed, deleted, typed, edited, deleted, typed, deleted again etc), I realised my heart is not in it. How could I? Sitting right next to me is a list of things I have to do in the next 2-3 days, largely because F and I will be moving to a new apartment.
Sometimes, things happened at an incredible speed in Paris. Moving is usually one of them. Mind, apartment-hunting is not. My head is still whirling at the timeline involved: apartment viewing (2 weeks ago), verbal acceptance (a week ago), lease signing (yesterday), inventory visit (this evening), moving day (end of the week). Had we not been away from Paris for the Christmas break, everything could well took place even sooner.
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I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to my blog stats, but since I noticed a few interesting questions that landed readers to the blog (and planning to write a post on that soon), I thought, why not make a list of ten most read blog posts of 2013? This should also fall nicely into the end-of-year-listicle phenomenon, so this is my minor contribution ;)
A number of general observations: the posts are mostly Paris-related, the number one post had been read more than the other nine combined (just to show how often it has also been searched for people needing such information), and these posts were mostly published in the first half of the year – I suppose those later in the year haven’t got the equal amount of exposure time thus not as widely read yet.
10. Daytrip: Paris to Amiens
Since I had a little free time on my hand (and I needed to grab some points for my SNCF frequent traveller status) I went to Amiens for the day to see the famed cathedral and to suss out the city in general. With a journey time of just over an hour, it’s a very do-able day trip from Paris. I wished I had opted for a late return rather than one in the late afternoon, for I lacked time to check out the Hortillonnages.
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