Where are you from?

It has been a while since I have written a "special note", one of my little philosophical discussion with myself... But a question I was recently asked 3 times in the laps of 3 days prompted it.

 

It is rather frequent when abroad that I am asked where I am from and I never really know what to say! If I'm in Thailand for the WE let's say, I would tend to say that I'm from Singapore (because after all, it's where I came from for that particular WE!) but then people look at me weirdly, apparently my eyes don't look Asian enough...

This time, the 3 questions were asked in Singapore and all of them within the boundaries of the F1 circuit. (Post on F1 coming, R is playing with the photos!)

First while ordering beer, someone heard us speaking French and asked where we were from (in French), he didn't seem very satisfied with the answer Singapore... Neither did he seem satisfied with France, what he was looking for was Lyon/Burgundy.

Then the next day, we were asked to fill a survey at the entrance gate and to the question where are you from we said France, again False! He was looking for Singapore as we live here and have employment pass, he had another question later on for nationality...

And finally, metal detector guy asked me where I was from and this time I got it right, I said France and he was happy!

As you can tell, France is my go-by answer because in Asia people can not tell from my accent! (British people please do not laugh too hard...) and then they are surprised that my accent is not horrendous! :-)

When I was in London, I couldn't answer France to the same question as most people already knew that from the way I speak!

May be to please everyone I should go with:

"I hold a French passport, was born and grew up in Lyon (to be replaced by "Lyon, France" if talking to US citizen, they like attaching state to city!), spent most of the last 10 years in and out of London and currently live in Singapore" but that seems rather extensive knowing that most of the time the person doesn't really care...

So I'm still looking for the perfect answer but may be, as my physics teacher would say: "tout depend du referentiel!" (my answer should be adjusted to the referential!)

Forgotten koalas and kangaroos!

It appears that I had written an article about the penguins but nothing on the koalas and kangaroos!

Back in April, R had to go to Australia for a business trip and I very nicely offered to keep him company... We were based in Fremantle (slightly south of Perth on the west coast), but as we had been there before we didn't want to spend the WE in town so we went north to the Yanchep national park to pay a visit to the koalas and kangaroos et we came back with some rather cute shots!

I believe the koalas could do with a mani pedi but even that would probably be too much work...

Enjoy!

 

Feeling like a tourist in London

I now have to admit it, I am like a tourist in London!

Having left my "home location" (as BP would say) more than 3.5 years ago, I am disconnected with what is London today. In my defense, the Olympic Games happened in between and so many things were done/redone for the games.

With D and A visiting for the weekend, I had made a fantastic plan, we were going to take the train to Waterloo, get on the Boris/Barclays bikes (never tried them), cycle along the southbank all the way to Greenwich, get on the Emirates cable car, cross the Thames, potentially go up the Shard (potentially, as it is atrociously expensive), then head for afternoon tea, take the sun in Hyde park and then go for cocktails and dinner.

But if everything else has changed in London, the British weather is still the same! Guess what, my master plan got disturbed by a full day of rain from start to finish! But after all I'm nearly British by now so I kept calm and carried on! ;-)

Train to Waterloo - Done

Cycle along the southbank to Greenwich - replaced by trip along the Jubilee line, walk around the O2 and coffee at Costa's.

Emirates cable - Done, couldn't see much but anyway spotted, the Excel, London city airport, the O2 and the Thames barrier

Shard - so glad I hadn't booked tickets, we would have wasted them!

Unplanned activity - racing boats in St Katherine dock getting ready for a race around the world with people who have never sailed before (I have to admit that the concept still escape me a bit...) boats were huge, security staff outnumbered public (easily), pub looked beautiful!

Unplanned activity 2 - getting absolutely soaked walking to tower hill station! 3 French girls in London, 1 pair of open toes shoes, 0 waterproof jackets, 0 umbrella... Keep calm, I said...

Afternoon tea at the Lanesborough - Finally somewhere dry!!! We dried our feet in the bathroom, made an attempt at looking presentable despite the wet hair and the soaked jackets! I still think that the guys opening car doors at the entrance were more looking the part than us...

We stayed over 2h, ate a huge quantity of sandwich, cakes, quiche, biscuits, scones, canapés and other delicacies, drank tons of hot tea and listened to the lovely lady playing the harp with music sheets on her iPad (beauty of modern technology!)

Taking the sun in Hyde park - the what?

We decided on making our way back to the hotel, switching the rain for the hot tub! 2h later when we decided to go out again, it was still raining...(the capacity of the sky to retain water sometimes amazes me!)

Cocktail in London got replaced by Tapas in Richmond! Not bad, they even had non-alcoholic sangria! (Thanks for virgin cocktails!)

And that's how you convert a plan for a sunny day in London into a pretty similar plan for a very wet day in London.

Obviously on Sunday, after having dropped A at Heathrow, the sun was out and so were the fancy cars!

(Photo credit goes to D and Instagram!)

D and I were able to enjoy a bit of dry outdoor walk in Richmond park where we met with some gorgeous deers.

Not to worry, as soon as I dropped D at Heathrow, it started raining again! If you can take me out of London, you can not take the English weather out...