Luxurious L’Artisan Parfumeur (Paris) candles and perfumes are back in stock.  Founded in 1976 by renowned perfumer Jean Leporte, L’Artisan remains loyal to traditional techniques and the French values of  ‘art de vivre’. 

The stunning candles are available in two sizes and nine scents, including the limited edition Burberry Wood Embers – designed to evoke the aroma of a burning wood fire (pictured on the right of the image).

We have also received L’Artisan perfumes, in their signature glass bottle designed by Federico Restrepo.  Our most popular scent, La Chase aux Papillons, is a floral and fresh feminine fragrance with a lime-blossom and bergamot accord that evokes summer and sunshine.  A perfect gift, available in 100mL and 50mL.

Herve Gambs’ Automne-Hiver 2009 Collection ‘Mimetisme’ (Mimcry) has arrived.  His black glassware and amazingly life-like silk artificial flowers make gorgeous statement pieces, with this collection inspired by the sculptural shapes of dancers bodies.  We adore this ‘Couture’ green butterfly orchids in the giant black lacquer bowl (pictured above).

Also featured above: Herve Gambs ’Saturne’ large black vase, Herve Gambs ’Tailspin’ calla lilies, Herve Gambs ’Tryptique’ candle sticks, Christian Tortu black ‘Hat’ vase.

Featured above: Christian Tortu ‘Tupi’ and ‘Petit Balloon’ vases.

last weekend was horrid, just like last weekend, and the one before, and i’m pretty sure the following. i need to meet new people. i also need to not spend three days in a row in bed, because my back is slowly becoming molded to the shape of my bed. It’s an awful bed, but I feel weird going out of my room and reading in the living room, for example. the weekend is an evil time, when you’re supposed to be having fun and being productive. instead i go out only at night to have some fun, i sometimes succeed, sometimes i don’t. In the past weekend i have, no joke, watched two whole seasons of how i met your mother, which is a great show (and i would appreciate if everyone started calling me swarley, i already have all my high scores under that name), but it’s ruining my life.

some things that are not that depressive:

it’s raning today (not a good start, laura), and I realize how beautiful paris is when it rains. all the street lamps and other… lights are all reflected in the dark pavement. the city glows twice as much when it rains. point for paris. also, i got was able to catch the train three times this weekend past two o’clock. point paris. and smoke underground. three points. i was propositioned by two different (straight) boys to be my wingmen and YEAAAH. i need wingmen, charming, charming wingmen who will get me hot girls, because i apparently don’t look like a lesbian. in that regard i have many things to say; how does one look like a lesbian? i am so fucking sick of this, i have long hair, deal with it, i am not going to shave it just so i can get puss. i like being pretty, sorry.  I did however, dance to live brazilian music and drank a bunch of awesome cheap beer. got harrassed by men and C. pulled down my dress. at least 4 people saw my breasts. friday was a win, i think.

people, and by people i mean my mom, keep telling me to get out there and do thins. why am i so lazy about this? more over, why am i so scared to do things by myself? i will not get out of the house if it’s not to meet someone to do something or to go to class. it’s quite unsettling, i have always thought of myself as very independent. i guess i’m not… i didn’t go to an awesome concert just because no one wanted to go with me. i also heard that the other day an american girl got robbed at the rer c in the middle of the day. i take this train at least 5 times a week. i am afraid that if i go out alone, i’ll get mugged, raped,  or worse, ignored.

also yesterday: i downloaded rap music from the 90s, including, but not exclusively, pac, biggie, dre, bonez thugs n harmony, master p. my roommate went to watch new moon and i kind of want to go. i went to a bar that totally reminded me of ren and stimpy, which reminded me of the most bizarre things of the 90s that i didn’t include in my 90s blog. so here it is.

this is a picture of ellen page (my wet dream) kissing a girl (drew barrymore), which we will pretend is me.

I met Frenchy 3 days ago in a chat room for fat women and the men who love them (those are chubby chasers, darling).  He really is French and really does love fat women – which, oddly, is rare in those rooms.  Most men in a fat girl chat room are really just guys who believe fat women are inherently desperate because we are fat – not always true (most of the time, yes, but not always.)

Frenchy immediately said something about being turned on and I simply laid it out for him.  I said something to the effect of “I’m not in the mood to talk about your penis.”  I’m already thinking this is the end of the conversation and I’ll never hear from him again – but I was wrong.  The next day he messaged me and asked me if we could talk.  He was kind – and sweet the way he asked me so I said yes.

We started chatting and 4 hours flew by – isn’t it weird how people on the internet always say that one – “Time just flew by!” – anyway, I digress.  We were chatting and he didn’t say a single thing about sex.  We talked about goals and dreams and family… life… whatever.  We got to know each other.

So tonight, he asked me if he could call me on the phone.  He said, “Anastasia, I want to hear your voice.”  Simple enough, yeah, but we all know there’s something behind that.  There are common phrases and words that men use to mean “I want to fuck.”  These include, but are not limited to:

• I’m lonely.
• I just want to hold you.
• Do you want to have fun?
• I just want to cuddle.
• We can just lay here with our clothes on.
• Nothing’s going to happen.
• You can just come over and have a beer.
• I miss you.
• Can I ask you something?
• I wish I could touch you.
• What are you thinking about?
• I’ll come over, we don’t have to do anything.
• I want to kiss you.  Just kiss.
• You make me feel (adjective).
• You’re amazing.
• You’re beautiful… so beautiful.
• I wish my wife/girlfriend was like you.
• She doesn’t know me like you do.
• Why can’t we just hang out?
• Haven’t you ever just wanted to hold someone?

and others too numerous to mention without becoming redundant and silly.

So of course I doubted Frenchy’s motives but still gave him my number – which is totally okay.  We started talking and we laughed and it was fun.  It was innocent and sweet and fun.  Then he started speaking in French.  I was donzo. Seriously, totes.  Just… done.  I said I had to go – it was so beautiful… it sounded like music.  I could almost see French on top of me, with his arms around me tight, pushing that cock inside me and whispering to me in breathy, rushed, fevered French.  almost.

I told him I had to go.  Did he listen to me?  Of course Not.

……………………………..Up Next?  S.18~Frenchy

These vibrant  beach towels from the 2009 Emanuel Ungaro (Paris) Collection are available in a range of elegant and exclusive designs named for the designers’ favourite cities.  Woven using traditional techniques from 100% cotton, these are sure to make a splash poolside or a la plage.

A post I’ve wanted to make for some time is how I came to be doing this at all.

I mean, I know I wrote this, right back at the beginning, which explains the why of it – but the how of it is down to the people who put me in a position even to think that someone like me could sustain a non-native bilingual existence with my first-born for a matter of weeks, let alone the 21 months we have so far clocked up between us, one day at a time (as we say in the After School Club.) 

I have been lucky and had a lot of talented teachers in all disciplines in my life, most of which was (at least, prior to the After School Club watershed) spent in full-time education. But a few of them have given me confidence that I was able to take outside the classroom, confidence which saw me through the lessons of the many rubbish teachers I have also had, and, in a way – though the faults are all my own – helped create the Francophone monster that is Papa et Piaf. 

Here they are. 

Martin was probably the first, though he came on the scene at about the same time as Nadia (see below). The first teacher to make me realise that French was a language that people actually used, rather than a verbal trigonometry. He smoked immensely and, again, his failing made him seem more human. He was a caustic, cynical man in some ways and regularly referred to hapless students as “cretins”, which was one of the many things I liked about him – he didn’t pretend to like everyone just because they were children. This meant that, if ever he did show signs of liking you, you could actually believe it might be true. 

And he was, in other ways, tremendously kind. I remember going to see him once after the lesson because I thought I didn’t understand the perfect tense (yes, I really was that much of a loser.) I ended up actually crying (a loser AND a wimp – hands off, ladies, I’m practically married!) When he saw how distressed I was, Martin spent half his break talking me through it (remember, this man was probably a forty-a-day smoker who self-medicated on Gauloises and must have lived for his breaks. )

Several years later, he also enlivened A-level by actually telling us things we might want to know, and hinting at the dirty bits in Camus. Without him, I probably wouldn’t have bothered doing French past GCSE.

Nadia arrived at our school when I was in what was then called the third year. She came to teach us Russian, taking over from a man who had learnt his Russian spying on Soviet air traffic. She was a real Russian; she was very short; she claimed to have a brown belt in karate; she was clearly mad. Nadia, again, made a language seem much more than lists of declensions (of which Russian has many). With her, we could imagine people actually living, loving, arguing, even doing karate in this then very rare language (perestroika didn’t really get underway until my GCSE year.) When I sat A level, Nadia coached me. When I applied to Oxford, Nadia gave me extra lessons, free of charge, which is basically what got me in. When I wanted to go to Russia, Nadia helped me sort it out, and gave me a few pointers on how to get extra hard currency through customs. When I thought that Chekhov was tosh, Nadia reassured me that I was not alone. And she also said one of the nicest things a teacher had ever said to me. We were flying to Moscow together. Somehow, we were talking about my family, particularly my mum. “Well, she’s done a good job,” said Nadia. It took me a second to realise what she meant and, when I did, I must have been pink with pride. A teacher thinking that I was not only a good student, but a good person? There was hope for me yet.

Mary was the one-woman welcoming committee when I arrived at Oxford. She had given me my place (when my first choice college had, foolishly, rejected me); she had patiently and politely answered some nonsense letter I had written to her before starting (about something nothing to do with her, like bedding or grants – I had so little idea about how Oxford worked that I just wrote to the only person whose address I had on paper, and it was hers, on my offer letter); and she welcomed me, along with my fellow first-year starters, into her North Oxford sitting room in October long, long ago. 

I was not, at that point, studying French. I was at college to do single honours Russian (the English faculty had decided it could struggle by without me.) I was amazed that I was at Oxford, and was liberated by having no idea what to expect. 

The intake that year seemed beyond good. A half-Russian man; a half-Polish woman; a frighteningly gifted man who had taught himself Hungarian for a laugh; and me. And this woman, Mary, was posher than anyone I knew – she had a ‘cello, for heaven’s sake! I almost gave up, there and then.

But Mary did not give up on me. Always quick with praise and measured with criticism; always acting as if my admission had been a considered choice and not a slip of the pen on some long, closely-printed list of names; always taking her students seriously, even when we spoke nonsense. After two terms, I had even started to believe her. 

Colin took me on when I decided that, though I still wanted to study Russian, the particular joys reserved for single honours students – extra linguistics, the Lay of Prince Igor and the Memoirs of Prince Avakkum, these latter two to be read in Old Church Slavonic – were not for me. He found a place for me in his already crowded French group.

As I made the group an odd number, he also agreed to see me individually for tutorials. As I began to develop interests, and as they began to align themselves with his, he would occasionally let me set my own essay title. He even gave me a 10-year-old bottle of home-made white wine, which turned out to be the best sherry I had ever tasted. This, I decided, was what Oxford was about. 

So much so that, after a couple of terms, in the last tutorial before the vacation (it was a hollow joke to call them “holidays”) I diffidently mentioned that I had been thinking of a future in academia. 

Silence. 

If, at that stage, he had turned around and started an awful, mocking impersonation of a deranged simpleton, it would not have surprised me. Of course I had been fooling myself. I was, perhaps not hopeless, but very much an also-ran, and clearly a pretentious one at that.

Instead, he said, quite quietly, “Yes, well. I was thinking of giving you a scholarship, but you don’t work hard enough.”

In a flash, several truths became apparent to me. I was not an idiot; I was not delusional; and, most important of all, the age-old myth fell apart. At school, I had been effortlessly successful. Then I had come to Oxford and had been effortlessly mediocre. I had assumed that my dear old mum was right, that the bar ha been raised and I could no longer clear it. Instead, it turned out, no-one here was effortlessly anything. The people who succeeded did so because they were very bright, but because they also worked exceptionally hard. I started taking their lead. The following term, I worked harder than ever before or since (as well as acting, rowing, and writing at a “jolly good sport” sort of level) and got my mini-scholarship (or “exhibition” as they call it). I went on to narrowly miss a First and come out of that with enough confidence intact to go on to do research at Edinburgh. Without Colin’s quiet honesty, I’d have ended up pretending to want to be a school-teacher and wondering why I hated my life (I did that anyway, years later – but at least I had a go at what I wanted to be.) 

Ian was the last one. Believed by his Edinburgh undergraduates to have it in for English loafers, he nevertheless took on an Oxford graduate, to all appearances a dilettante (it took me about a term to tell him I was working twenty hours a week and that that was why I was a bit behind on the reading) who came armed only with an undergraduate dissertation on Daniel Pennac, an author almost no one had then heard of, apparently word-processed by a five-year-old, and of which Oxford’s examiners could not decide whether it was a work of genius or the ravings of an imbecile. 

Ian gave me the benefit of the doubt and, when he realised I was broke, did all he could to enable me to make some sort of a go of my doctorate. He sent me to France twice; he found me teaching hours (my poor undergraduates, I am so sorry you were lumbered with me); he got me published; and he let me stay round his house once so I could return from Nice to do a conference paper. He also took me lunchtime drinking at the Southsider. Ian made me believe that, not only could I become an academic, but that I could live as an academic, perhaps for my whole life. The question of what the hell I was going to do with this bizarre commodity called life was finally, and to my immense relief, solved

Of course, I went on to piss all that up the proverbial wall, but that was no fault of his. And I did come out of it speaking really rather good French …

So, if any of the five of you end up reading this, thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.

i did this a long time ago (week 37).. it’s one of my fave manis to do >.<

if i had to chose one design to wear all the time it would be this one!!!
lippmann “how far is heaven”
chinaglaze “passion”
LA colors art deco “silver”
covergirl boundless color “disco dazzle” … i have three bottles of this color for backup (: i think i’m crazy for considering buying more.. just in case..

I was making little sandwiches with festive “Thanksgiving” cookie cutters, and it gave me the inspiration to think of a fancy French course, at a five-star restaurant.

I sliced mozzarella cheese, and then cut it in half again. I took some brown sugar smoked ham and put it on top of one half of the cheese. I topped the ham with the other half of the mozzarella. Next, I took a petite cookie cutter and pressed out a mini mozzarella and ham creation.

To complete the French look, I used my culinary imagination, and did little dots of mustard around the plate. Carefully, with a toothpick, I pulled the dots into lines. I then took a little bit of hot relish and dabbed it in between the mustard lines. And, as a final finish, I took two green olives and pushed them in opposite directions on a toothpick, and then placed it on top of the ham and cheese combination.

And here it is!

… Very French!

xoxo Rachel

That’s the French title for The Twilight Saga: New Moon, or if you prefer the full French title, Twilight – Chapitre 2 : Tentation.

(Yes, the titles sound so much better in French! The full books are as follows:
- Saga Fascination, Tome 1 : Fascination
- Saga Fascination, Tome 2 : Tentation
- Saga Fascination, Tome 3 : Hésitation
- Saga Fascination, Tome 4 : Révélation

And if you just say Fascination, Tentation, Hésitation, et Révélation with the French accent, it sounds prettty SEXAHY!!! I kid you not! Ooh, la, la!)

And yes, I did watch it on Saturday. It’s such a comedy and I laughed pretty hard. Especialy at the cheesy moments. Felt quite bad about it because we watched the VOST (version original sound-track) so it’s the English version. I don’t think the whole audience understood what’s going on, and there I was sitting there laughing and making so much noise. Yup, there is a VF (version française) running concurrently. For the French majority of course.

You won’t believe this, but it’s the FIRST movie I’ve ever watched in Amiens because almost ALL the movies here are dubbed in French!! It’s absurb really. I would think the audience will appreciate it more if they watch the VOST with french sub-titles, just like in Toulouse! I mean, why would I wanna hear someone else’s voicing a character? I can just read the sub-titles to understand!! I guess they are weirder here…

But anyways, the movie was quite crappy. I don’t blame it because the story itself is stupid. So, so, so stupid. So why did I watch it? Because I am movie-deprived, it’s the only movie here in English and it’s also a blockbuster. Sort of. Well, the gal is pretty too. So why not?

But yes, it was a stupid story. Well, with exception of the first book, I think the next three are all crap. I didn’t make it past the first chapter of New Moon. Because I really couldn’t take it. I’ve read so much better fantasy series and didn’t wanna waste my time on this. (Can you believe that Book 4 is just devoted to her getting preggers?! Like what the hell!!!?!?)

Edward didn’t get much screen time. It’s ok, because he seems frozen in the movie, or as my friends call him, a POTATO. He didn’t have much expression throughout the movie. He did try his best to smile during one scene though… I think Jake did pretty well. Except the part where he whipped off his shirt to wipe blood off Bella’s forehead. It was a bit out of point, yah. But he stole the movie I think. Although he should really be given more credit from Bella.

Oh yes, talking about the Twilight series, I forgot to mention this here. The Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed video! As per normal, Buffy kicks some major butt here! But I think the more important message from the author of the video is stated under the more information on the right hand side. This video is a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behavior. I guess it’s true for young girls to mistake Edward’s stalker-ish behaviour towards Bella as love! It is quite creepy when you think about it!

But anyways, Buffy is always cool, so it doesn’t matter! I do miss the crazily funny dialogue in Buffy!

“What are you doing? Here? At this table? Talking to me? Like we’re some kind of talking buddies? *raised eyebrows*”

Hehehehehehehehehehehe… Enjoy!

In their attempt to take over the interwebs, one of Google’s most ambitious but least often mentioned side projects has been the attempt to digitize and sell books. They’ve had to revise one contract with US publishers/authors after several groups (including the French, the Germans and some watchdog groups) filed an appeal in the US courts. A judge is expected to rule on the revised contract in February.

Meanwhile, Google is also trying to win the French over in allowing them to digitize French literature and then sell it. But it’s not working. As it is, google has a website up to see preview books with customer reviews and links to other sellers.

A random click on the Clive and Dirk Cussler book, Artic Drift, gives you a good glance at what Google has in mind. The preview option is extensive with what appears to be well over 200 pages of the novel. To the left is a small list of book sellers with their prices next to them. There’s the expected options to review, buy, and change pages. And there’s what could be a devastatingly powerful option to search the text for something specific. Anyone who has had to write a critical paper on a literary work can probably guess at how useful such a tool would be.

This also ties into recent talk of Apple’s bringing out a tablet with a focus on e-literature. If Google can overcome its various obstacles, I have to think it would become a massive outlet for book titles for a non-dedicated tablet style PC that could be used as an e-reader. Rather than buying specialized files from Amazon or wherever, and having your files at the mercy of Amazon’s discretion, google could throw the e-reader business doors wide open to any company able to make a reasonably affordable tablet.

Of course, there will be the continued fretting over piracy (though, here’s a clue, people already pirate books – just do a torrent search) and google’s mass scanning exercise doesn’t do much for HTML or other programming language based texts, but I think the future is there.

Somewhere in the last few days of February early this year my girlfriend and I were sitting on a bed in a cheap hotel in Paris, combing through the 20 or so channels available on the television that, against all odds and expectations, we actually had in the room. Halfway between Parisien CSI-ripoff #346 and an unconvincingly dubbed export of Law and Order: SVU I stumbled upon something magical. I saw a woman dressed in orange, on a stage surrounded by a bunch of overweight, bikini-clad women and men, all furiously dancing, stomping and clapping while she sang until her voice went raw about dollar bills or something like that. It wasn’t until I got back home to my computer and internet connection that I found out what the fuck I had just seen:

The woman’s name is Camille Dalmais, and the song she was singing (“Money Note”) wasn’t about legal tender, it was about belting out a crazy high note and one-upping Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. I also didn’t know when I got her most recent album, here featured, that it was almost entirely devoid of instrumentation, marked instead by a Medulla-esque tapestry of beatboxing, snaps, claps, water slaps, vocal multiphonics and the occasional piano. The result is intoxicating- the kind of music you just laugh to yourself when you hear because it’s so cool.

Camille’s unique offshoot of the French folk genre chanson incorporates sounds and techniques from everything from throat singing to Steve Reich, and it’s because of this absurd range of influence that the virtual instrumentlessness never really gets to you. The music also never takes itself too seriously, either- except when it needs to. Dalmais lays the eerie on thick with “Winter’s Child” and takes a turn for the wordless and introspective on the aptly titled “The Monk”, both providing a fantastic contrast to opener “Gospel With No Lord” or “Cats and Dogs”, one of which features our songstress bursting into laughter as soon as the music tries to take a turn for the stereotypically calm and more serious bridge, the other song closing out with roughly a minute and a half of soulful wailing about the philosophical troubles of domesticating animals drowned out by Camille’s impressive barking and meowing.

In a commerical venture, Dalmais has tipped the linguistic scales in favor of English with this most recent release. This makes for something of a trade-off: her lyrics are more easily understood to those in les États-Unis (and they’re better than you might expect from an ESL’er such as she), but the rhythmic flow of her native French is relegated to more of a supporting role. In a way though, this makes it a more of a confounding surprise to non-Francophone listeners as we are- disguising ominous lyrics in a flurry of heavily accented rapid-fire syllables (“Home is Where it Hurts”), or filling out the texture with some slightly more foreign sounds.

For fans of: Regina Spektor, Bjork

Standout tracks: “Home is Where it Hurts”, “Money Note”, “Sanges Sweet”

Buy

- Julian

1. Compliantia now available in French

The Compliantia interface is now available in French with more languages to follow.    Our customers may create Store Walk-through forms in up to 3 languages allowing a single form to reach different user populations, provinces or countries.

2. More scoring options

The brand Administrator may now check the “section penalty” check box next to each form item.  When checked, if the item is non-compliant during the visit, the section score is automatically set to zero regardless of other items.

3. Built-in visit approval process

A Compliantia visit has an implicit life-cycle.  A visit is first labelled “In progress” while the visit is taking place.   The status is automatically advanced to completed when the visit is completed.    Yet many organizations require the visit to be signed by the store owner or franchisee.   Compliantia’s built-in approval process effectively acts as an electronic signature.  Store owners can now easily and quickly approve a completed visit.  The Audit Trail function displays the complete history of the visit, date and user-stamped, from in-progress, to completed and approved.

Broadway, which stretches through Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, is a place of Mexican food, fried chicken, pizza joints, and Dunkin’ Donuts stores. But tucked between the Myrtle-Broadway and Kosciusko Street J train stops is an exception: Athom Café, a tiny, unassuming French pâtisserie that serves up the most delicious and well-priced baguettes, omelettes, and salads, all made to order by the affable French man who owns and runs the place, as well as croissants and pastries. Athom opened earlier this year, and while it doesn’t look like much from the outside, inside it’s quaint, cosy, and nicely-lit. The meals are made with harmonious ingredients of the highest quality, and the pastries could not be lighter and fresher. Last week, I had my favorite baguette: salmon, brie, and tomato, served with a side of perfectly-dressed salad greens. My friend rates the omelette with fontina, caramelized onions, and red peppers, with grilled potatoes on the side. I find the freshly-squeezed pink grapefruit juice too sour for my liking, but the warm chocolate croissant is the best I’ve ever tasted. This café is a winner.

1096 Broadway (between Dodworth St and Dekalb Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11221

Athom Café

This weekend my husband and I went to this little french cafe called, Vie de France.   is http://viedefrance.com/ We have had the chance of sampling their cookies and brownies at the Reston, Virginia Oktoberfest last month. I was really craving a cookie and a coffee. Anyway, for ten dollars my husband and I indulged in some of the finest bake goods and coffee in the area. I had an oatmeal cranberry cookie, 1/2 of a pumpkin pastry and french roast coffee. My husband had the other half of the pumpkin pastry and a cookie monster shake. The cookie monster shake was freakin’ amazing! They actually take one of their cookies (your choice on the flavor) and blend it into the cold delicious creamy concoction. The cookies and brownies that we have sampled from this cafe are amazing. These cookies look and taste homemade.

The European tend to make items from scratch and the taste is so much different from the U.S. processed fast food nation. I lived in Germany for three months earlier this year and it was also nice to walk into a gas station and pick out a fresh sandwich with a freshly made pretzel for lunch. Unlike America’s prepackaged sandwiches that have a expiration date of 1-2 weeks. I was telling friends and family when I came back from Europe that a lot of food I use to eat just didn’t taste right. The major things I noticed was egg beaters and sugar-free pudding. I even went out to eat a few times and was very disappointed in the quality of some of the american food I knew and loved.

I am not dissing America and their prepackaged foods loaded with preservatives, trans fats, etc. I am just asking my readers of this blog to try something new for one day. Try not to eat anything prepackaged. Try to eat a “clean” diet. This is basically all foods your ancestors would have eaten over a hundred years ago. Hell even if you decide to go to a fancy meal (meals that cost over 20 bucks for one person!) you will completely notice the difference compared to chomping on Ramen noodles for night.

I have never been a massive fan of the German language. At school the rolling consonants of Spanish and French were far more alluring to me than the ichts and the bichts of German and learning it was never really contemplated. Whereas I often fantasize about doing more in Spanish than vamosing al cine, discussing Apollinaire in French with my French superstar-DJ/ artist/ model boyfriend and conversing with the Cosa Nostra or Miuccia Prada in fluent Italian, yearnings relating to German chat have pretty much evaded me. Even during my wanting-to-be-a-spy phase I figured a way round the consolatory five languages without learning German; Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and Dutch. (Was very into Amsterdam at the time.)

In fact only on two occasions have I ever really wished that I spoke German. The first was upon finding myself phoneless and lost on the first night of a German dance festival at around three in the morning. Had I have been able to speak German it may never have reached the point where  I decided that best course of action would be to find the first randomer willing to accept the 5 Euros that I had left one me so that I could call my parents….. who were on holiday in Italy at the time (and FAST asleep,) to cry about being lost. Although….. maybe  I would have done the same even with the power of the German tongue. Who knows.

The other was when I heard this song……

Wir Werden Sehen – Solomun Vox Remix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-ZlTZu2uFs

I want to sing in German…just like her.

Pour son second album IRM, Charlotte Gainsbourg a demandé à l’incroyable, mais malheureusement scientologue, Beck de lui écrire un album. Le résultat sera audible le 7 décembre prochain.
En attendant, la fille de et de nous fait patienter avec un titre éponyme à l’opus, téléchargeable gratuitement sur son site officiel (ici) ou avec le clip génial de son single  Heaven Can Wait signé par l’excellent Keith Schofield. Réalisateur américain, il a fait ses preuves avec une publicité détournée pour Diesel où des scènes de pornos sont maquillées par des dessins animés où les protagonistes font de la musique au lieu de leur activité habituelle (Ici). Il a aussi fait le clip Ladyhawke pour CSS ou Bad Blood pour Supergrass. Après s’être entourée par le gratin pop pour son premier opus 5:55 (les versaillais de Air, Jarvis Cocker de Pulp et Neil Hannon de The Divine Comedy), elle fait appel à Beck connu pour ses bidouillages car suite à ses problèmes médicaux en septembre 2007, Charlotte Gainsbourg garde les sonorités de machines respiratoires, des scanners et compagnie en tête et veut les utiliser pour sa musique. Dix huit mois de travail pour la composition de l’album, IRM semble être éclectique, pensé et très travaillé. Des suppositions qui pourront être vérifiées le 7 décembre 2009 pour la sortie de l’album (le même jour que la sortie de l’EP Hotel Utah de The Rodeo).

Le clip fonctionne sur des scènes du quotidien où Charlotte Gainsbourg cohabite avec des mutants, des robots ou des êtres étranges. Une photo magnifique, une mise en scène exquise, un clip à découvrir de toute urgence. En décembre en attendant la suite (une impression de “déjà-vu” non ?)

As the world rushes home, or off to soccer, or is walking the dog I am sitting here in a lovely breeze at my favourite cafe.

Now I notice others are arriving, for an end of day pause.

Turns out there is a French Class Monday, late afternoon.

Quelle merveille!

Before I go, here is stage one of my garden based on Daisy’s idea

I will be off to the farmers market on  Saturday to stock up on plants. Using the drawers and the underneath area.  I will post more pictures as I proceed with this project.

Réfléchir /ʀefleʃiʀ/ (verb, conjugations)
To reflect, to think.
Par exemple: La mer réfléchit le ciel bleu. (The sea reflects the blue sky.)

I first encountered this word last Saturday, when we started learning about the imperfect tense. Conjugating this word in the present tense is no sweat, but see how it gets unbelievably long with the imperfect tense formula:

je réfléchissais
tu réfléchissais
il, elle, on réfléchissait
nous réfléchissions
vous réfléchissiez
ils, elles réfléchissaient

See, confusing. But with more practice, let’s hope it gets easier!

Today was the perfect way to spend a Sunday in New York. I slept in and read a little Emma until I rolled out of bed at around 10am. I enjoyed an Americano from Starbucks in the comfort of my own apartment (My roommate made a coffee run because we ran out of coffee yesterday). I then met up with my friend Erin (check out her blog here) to see a private screening of An Education at The Directors Guild Theater. I would definitely recommend seeing this movie, and if you want to read a really well written review of An Education, check out my brother’s blog here. Erin and I were feeling inspired by all the Paris scenes and references in the movie and decided to stop by a French bakery on our way to Central Park.

We wandered through the falling leaves and ended up eating our croissant sandwiches while watching who I now call Bubble Man. (Because sometimes I just call it like it is.)

This is where I met up with Erin - on 57th between 6th & 7th Ave

We strolled through some legit scenery...

...and watched Bubble Man create enormous bubbles.

This couple was having their wedding photos taken. I love the down coat over the wedding dress.