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Day 323: War memorial

I took a very long walk today – over 3 hours (in boots, not really advisable) – at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Surprisingly, despite all the trips in and out of Paris over the years, not to mention the months that I’ve been living here, I have never visited this cemetery before. I don’t know what took me so long either.

I wandered randomly without the help of a map, which actually made it slightly tricky, given the vast size of the cemetery. I barely covered about 1/3 of the grounds. Relying on “look where the crowd goes” strategy, that was how I spotted a few famous graves here and there. Not only that, there are also a number of memorial monuments, including this one above, in commemoration of Holocaust victims of Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg.

The cemetery itself is historical, beautiful and calm for most part. A place I should revisit so I can continue my exploration…

Day 215: Il faut se méfier des mots

“One must be wary of words.”

As warning goes, it is not too far wrong from the truth. We often forget how powerful words can be. One careless word, one inconsiderate phrase, that’s all it takes to hurt someone and cut deeply. The scar invisible, yet nonetheless there. Turn to another facet, however, words are all powerful, inspiring and motivational. These have healing power, to lift one’s spirit up. And empty promises, these are perhaps the most damaging of all. They break trust and create wariness.

This 3D installation by Ben Vautier is set up high on a building at place Fréhel, at the intersection between rue de Belleville and rue Julien Lacroix (en route to my favourite Thai restaurant, Krung Thep). It depicts two puppet-workmen who are busy setting up this chalkboard, all oh so casually. For anyone seeing this for the first time, it’s easy to do a double-take, wondering who are up there working on putting this notice board on.

Day 113: Best Coast

When Lih King asked if I would like to go to a concert, I jumped at the chance to get out after holing up most of the day in my apartment, typing away on work documents. An escape? Yes please!

Since I didn’t even have a clue who I’d be seeing at this impromptu night out, Lih King ran a quick band catch-up for my benefits. Best Coast is an Indie Rock band from California which first caught his attention last summer, and their music is characterised as “lo-fi” (the opposite of “hi-fi”?) and fuzzy. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Ah yes, my ignorance in music is showing, but hey, remember, I also gave it a go and checked it out. ;)

The concert was fun and we managed to get pretty good balcony standing place, affording us great view during the gig. I recognised some of the tunes, and I’m assuming I may have heard them from snippets in tv shows? There were also similarities to the sound of The Blue Pills, a fictional punk band featured in Season 2 of Castle.

I should try out more new bands (well, new to me anyway) like this – randomly, at small venues. You’ll never know what you’ll discover!


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