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Project 365 – Week 49

It had been a good week. I finally completed my first MOOCs, after sitting through two exams this week, and there will be a couple more to come in the next fortnight. The weather took a turn for the sunnier side and I’ve been enjoying long walks whenever I could muster the time to. The Christmas shopping is more or less sorted. Swimming progress had been a little slow now that we’re working on correcting my techniques but otherwise it’s good to see some improvements, no matter how small. Of course, plenty of socialising time organised so I get to see people before we all leave for the Christmas break. As I said, a good week.

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Harps

2 Dec: These harps reminded me of Ireland, where it is a state symbol, used in official government correspondence, on the coins, coat of arms and more. It is also used as corporate logo for Guinness, just in the opposite orientation as those of official nature. When I first moved to Ireland, I had not realised the extent of use of the harp in govermental letters, so I was rather confused to see so many letters arriving to my aunt’s from “Guinness”. Took me a few days to figure it out that my aunt didn’t (and doesn’t) have vested interest in Guinness… ;)

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Project 365 – Week 25

Summer officially kicked in in the later part of the week but whoever up there who’s supposed to dish out the correct weather condition seems to have missed the memo. We started the week with crazy storm and there were reports that some parts of Ile de France were hit by large pebble-sized hailstones, then we had a bright sunny day, just to get another day of storm, followed by a day torrential rain before clearing up in the afternoon. Trying to fit all the awful weather in before it turned 21 June and really need to get into summer mode?

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Impressionist photo

17 Jun: Paris plunged into darkness today. There was raging thunderstorm all morning that I was pondering if I should even stay online or shut down the laptop. The lightning could be seen running all the way from the sky down to the earth, and this is not a common sight. Right around 11am, barely a slither of natural light remained and it felt like night. I love this shot because it reminds me of the quality of Impressionism. Peer closely, it’s mostly random water blobs. Step away and perhaps you’ll start to see what I saw in my apartment that memorable moment.

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Project 365 – Week 5

As I’ve promised previously, back to normal transmission. I’m glad that the days are getting longer, but I’m a tad frustrated too that I’m rather busy at work so by the time I’m out of the office, it’s dark outside. There’s a limit to how far I can go without being home too late for dinner either. I must try harder to get more variations!

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Musée Curie

28 Jan: The first woman to ever receive a Nobel Prize, Marie Curie was an extraordinary scientist. She won not only one, but a second Nobel, and both in different disciplines (Physics and Chemistry). Her former lab has now been transformed into a small museum and it was also here where her daughter and son-in-law made new discovery that went on to win another Nobel Prize for themselves. The museum is open Wednesday to Saturday in the afternoon from 1pm to 5pm. The admission is free. (I must come back when it’s open one of these days!)

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(Stealthy) free ride

And this is how they ride for free…

Take the public transport often enough and the various methods employed by fare evaders would have been clear. However, as the general consensus holds firm to the principle of “it’s not my business to say anything” it is easy for these folks to get away with it.

Tram

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Day 350: Cultural station – (Headless) Ryaba la Poule

It’s time for a new instalment of cultural station, don’t you think? I happened to be on my way to Madeleine today so instead of taking a bus like I normally would, I took the metro instead so I can photograph this panel of stained glass of Ryaba la poule (Ryaba the hen) by Ivan Loubennikov. Unfortunately, in my hurry (I needed to make it for my tango lesson across town), I didn’t notice that poor Ryaba is now headless, oops.

This is the story of Ryaba as inscribed next to the mural:

Il était une fois un vieil homme et sa femme
Ils avaient une petite poule du nom de Ryaba
Un jour elle pondit un œuf extraordinaire : tout en or !
Le vieil homme tenta de le casser : toc toc ! : rien à faire !
Sa femme tenta de le casser : toc toc ! : rien à faire !
Une petite souris qui passait par là fit tomber l’œuf et le brisa
Le vieil homme se mit à pleurer. Sa femme aussi
Alors la petite poule leur dit : ne pleure pas grand père
Ne pleure pas grand-mère
J’en pondrai un à nouveau, mais pas en or…

My attempt at translating this:

Once upon a time there was an old man and his wife
Who had a little hen called Ryaba
One day it lays an extraordinary egg: it’s all in gold!
The old man tried to break it: toc toc!: nothing happened!
His wife tried to break it: toc toc!: nothing happened!
A little mouse in passing knocked the egg down and broke it
The old man began to cry. His wife too
And so the little hen said to them: do not cry grandfather
Do not cry grandmother
I will lay another, but not in gold…

Ps: spot the egg which is reportedly 80kg in weight!

Day 301: Cultural station – Concorde

At the first glance, the walls of the Concorde station (for métro line 12, not 1 nor 8) seem to contain a whole bunch of decorative and alphabetised tiles, but surely that cannot be. If you take a little time though, words start to jump out, in French, but trying to make sense of it all is quite a daunting task. Without punctuations and spaces, to a non-native speaker like me, after a couple of lines, I was quite lost.

These tiles actually carry extracts from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen), a document dated back to the days of French Revolution. (Back then, however, they forgot women’s rights.) This was put in place in 1989-1991 during the renovation of the station by Françoise Schein.

Day 281: Cultural station – Saint-Germain-des-Près

The métro station of Saint-Germain-des-Près is special, in that, unlike all other (cultural) stations in the city, it doesn’t have large billboard spaces. Just clean, white-tiled curved walls. And glass display panels. Perfect as space of temporary projections of works of art and literature.

I was running late for my friend’s party near Odéon this evening. When I looked out the window of the métro at Saint-Germain-des-Près, there were projections of illustrative works by students of an art school (sorry I forgot to jot down the name). I made a mental note that I must return to this station later, on my way home. I love the vintage Hollywood vibe of these sketches. Think Cary Grant and Gregory Peck. And now go, awwww.

Day 238: Cultural station – Cluny la Sorbonne

I’ve previously blogged about a couple of cultural métro stations, and I think it’s not a bad series of sub-category to write about when it comes to things related to Paris. If I recall correctly from an article I read a while ago, there are some 50 such stations in the network. It would be fun to uncover them as I go along ;)

This work of mosaic on the ceiling of Cluny la Sorbonne was created by Jean Bazaine. Entitled Ailes et Flammes (Wings and Flames), some 60,000 handcut tiles were used to complete the piece that also includes forty-six (mosaic) signatures of Kings of France, politicians, architects, physicians, scientists, philosphers, poets, painters and writers. If you ever travel Line 10 and passing this station, keep your eyes peeled.

Day 233: Eiffel Tower, again

I’m doing a lot of river crossing this weekend.

Today, instead of walking, I was on the métro (Line 6) and between the stops of Bir-Hakeim and Passy, for some reason, the driver decided to go slow when crossing River Seine by way of Pont de Bir-Hakeim. It afforded me a few precious seconds to quickly whipped out my camera and grab this shot. Unfortunately the threat of rain that I mentioned yesterday was making itself known, and the sky looked quite ominous, don’t you agree?

What you can’t see from this photo is that the bridge stands on one end of Île aux Cygnes, a narrow man-made island built in 1827 to protect the adjacent Port de Grenelle. Only one walkway can be found on this isle – the Allée des Cygnes. The walkway connects the bridge to a replica of Statue of Liberty at the other end of the isle. The statue, which faces west towards its sister in the Big Apple since 1937, is scaled at one-fourth of the one on Liberty Island.

Day 231: Métro

It has been said that, in Paris, on average, one can find a métro station within 500m radius of his/her standing point. With some 300 stations servicing the city (and more to come with extensions currently taking place on certain lines), it is by far the most popular mode of public transport among the visitors for its ease of use and the low cost ticketing system (always buy your tickets in carnet of 10, currently costing €12.50 – individual ticket costs €1.90) which allows unlimited transfers for each journey.

An exhibition that tells you all you will ever need to know about the métro is currently running at Musée des Arts et Métiers (until 1 January 2012). It runs through 111 years of history behind the network, from the construction of the very first Line 1 for Exposition Universelle of 1900 to the completely automated Line 14 in 1998, and the near-completion of conversion Line 1 into a fully automated line this year. There are also behind the scene tours, and bound to satisfy the curiosity for any train-buff out there.


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