2009

This year has been totally crazy for me. 2009 must have been the denser, richer and faster year of my life. What are you supposed to do once you had the best time of your life? Sometimes I feel bad because the future won’t be as cool as this year, probably. But right now I’m just enjoying the memories of the great moments I had. I feel lucky and grateful, I guess I’ll try to be a better human being somehow. Here’s a little list of the cool things that happened to me this year:

• Flo & I spent two months in Japan
• Thus, we climbed Mt. Fuji at night and watched the sunrise at the top, then went down using the Gotemba Trail which is basically a 2300+ meters ash slope
• We’ve done an awesome karaoke night in Shibuya with friends until 5am (I could talk for hours about Japan)
• I got a fucking GUNDAM
• We got attacked by monkeys
• I couchsurfed a lot
• I ate the best sushis ever in Nishi-Chiba, like 20 meters away from the station, crazy owner, free sweet potatoe shochu from Yakushima
• I’ve been to Yakushima, there was no rain for 3 days
• I tasted Okonomiyaki
• I have been to awesome places in Japan: Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, Obuse, Matsushima and of course Tokyo
• I had a Full-English breakfast in St. James’s Park
• I saw Hattie again (2 times!)
• I saw Jane’s Addiction live for the second time
• I had the best internship ever working with incredible people on my second favorite topic of research: cementitious materials
• I can now say that I have topics of research
• I graduated, no more bullshit courses
• I moved in my (almost) own apartment with Flo
• I watched the Godfather trilogy over a week-end
• My voice was recorded by a cool Japanese/Londoner artist for a cool project
• I played the coolest board-games ever
• I became a sweet potatoe fries master
• I read pretty good books, including my new favorite contemporary novel: Killing Yourself To Live
• I went back to Mamalina and ate their 5 cheeses pasta
• We got our first Christmas tree
• I played bass during a Deerhunter concert
• I met new interesting people
• blah blah blah

Well, I guess I found my own way, professionally and personally, I feel kind of useful for the first time in my life. Flo is still my favorite person in the world, I couldn’t think of a better partner in crime to spend my life with. If I could wish for things to happen next year, that would be: succeed in my research, go to more concerts, travel with Flo in the US, visit my brother in Montreal, read more books (other than textbooks), play with a band again. Well, long post.

2009 blog me japan list ftw wtf flo

The thing I love the most is spending the week-end with flo in my room on the campus, listening to awesome music, eating cakes and soup and pastries we made, playing games, watching HIMYM, drinking beer, cuddling, planning our road-trip, etc. without being disturbed by anything or anyone. If I wake up every morning, it’s for moments like that.

flo me Happy Things

Roadtrip

It’s now official, Flo and I are going to travel in the US for two months next summer. We will start from Seattle, then Portland, SF, LA, Utah, Denver, El Paso, Austin, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, West Lafayette, Chicago and New York. We will travel mostly by train/bus because it’s cheaper (30 days national pass) but I would really love to go from New Orleans to Chicago by car in late August/early September. We already have places to stay in Portland, SF, LA and NY.

I’m blogging this here because I would love some advice from you guys about travelling through the US, cities or roads we should see, places to go to, your favorite coffee shop in Louisville, KY, where to buy the best vintage guitars, etc. but also if you’d like to grab a beer with us, talk politics, meet a cute French couple, roam with us, we would be thrilled to do so. We’re very nice guests and we would rather like to meet new people than to go sightsee in San Francisco! Anyway, we will probably couchsurf again, as we did during our 2004 Californian trip, but the tumbln nation seems awesomely cool.

Well, any suggestion is very welcome!

roadtrip me flo usa travel tumblr

The little Parisian daily hatred

This is just some typical Paris story. Flo and I woke up early this morning to go see W. at 9am, we took the train to the city and started to talk about stuff. Then, our seat neighbor started to act weird, like exasperated-weird. So I ask the 30 something bitter woman “I’m sorry, is there a problem?”. That’s when she started to insult my gf, apparently we were rude because we were talking in the train about stuff that was pissing her off. That’s always interesting to encounter situations like this one. I mean, how are you supposed to react? I hesitated either to act crazier than her (like ask her if I could take a picture of her for my hall-of-fame photobook) or just stay very calm. But it was Saturday morning, I just wanted to go quietly to the theater, so I picked the second option. It’s just something that I can’t really control, from the moment she started to insult Flo (about her voice and the depth of our conversation, wtf?!), I could just have punched her in the face. That’s unlikely, but I could have. Do you ever feel that way? “Just don’t bother my gf.” you know? Anyway, the movie was good. I just hate when people disturb us.

paris lol movie w oliver stone flo

I like Saturdays

Very cool Saturday, woke up at 10am, received some dvds from amazon, spend two hours with flo in a tiny movie theater in Paris to see ‘The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds’ (1972) by Paul Newman, which was released again a few weeks ago. Then we went for coffee and walked in the 6th, which is still my favorite part of the city. We had some aperitif before we went to La Flèche d’Or for Hopper’s final concert. It was a great performance but the air was filled with some heavy feelings… I’m kinda sad because it was probably one of the 5 best French band I know, and definitely a band you’d want to see live.

saturday the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds paul newman flo paris hopper la flèche d'or movie concert live 2008 1972

Movie update :

Just saw Wackness (pretty good), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody baby!) and Tokyo! (very good) last week. I’m finally using my movie-pass again, yay!

movie wackness vicky cristina barcelona tokyo! woody allen michel gondry flo