Being hungover is like winning the lottery, but they pay you in regret

So, it's about time I get back to writing on the little ol' blog.

Well, as many people know, it was my birthday yesterday. I'm officially in my mid-twenties, which is a scary thought actually. However, referring to a certain episode of Mission Hill, "You should have started to get your life figured out by your mid-twenties," I feel that I'm definitely getting there.

So, I treated myself to une petite vacance in Nice this past weekend. The French Riviera is absolutely amazing, I really enjoyed it. No, I did not go to any museums or historical places. Hell, I didn't even go to Cannes or Monaco. What I did do? I sat my ass on the beach, drank Ricard, and swam in the beautiful ocean. Perfect blue, absolutely amazing. Swimming in the ocean feels so utterly natural, I'm sure it has something to do with evolution. I felt very cleansed afterwards, like my problems and impurities were washed out to sea. If it was only for a weekend, it was exactly what I needed. Just forget everything in my usual life, and go to a new life. On Saturday I sat on a beach with fellow backpackers and we drank wine and played drinking games. It's funny how drinking games are universal. It was also nice chatting with an American guy (pictured) who I could have what felt like a normal conversation with. I haven't been able to discuss the Michael Vick, the social/economic situation in the US, or perspectives on Europeans with anyone in awhile.

I also acted very...North American. Yes, you should buy your white linen clothes in Nice, and get a proper summer haircut (even if it's the end of summer dammit).

So I had a very interesting conversation on the way home from work today. My office mate and I take the train everyday, and he is petrochemical engineer from one of the top oil and gas engineering schools in the world (Delph University in the Netherlands). So after talking about everything geophysics and oil, we got on the topic of migration. For those of you who don't know, probably everyone, migration is the process we actually use to image the layers of the earth in their "proper" location. Everything up until then is to get rid of artifacts and the physical problems of acquiring the data (like the fact the sound takes longer to reach recievers further away, how the cables in the ocean are affected by waves, or how dynamite actually makes the ground "roll"). What migration does is consider the sound wavefield that is associated with the sound and take into account the reflectors structure (whether they are at an angle or not), and put them in the proper place. But in a generalized sense, the algorithms we use are applicable to any wavefield. So if you think about it, they are doing the same things your glasses are doing. The rays of light hit the wrong parts of your retina, and the glasses adjust them to the right position.

What we both realized, and I found super interesting, is the applicability to other means of wavefields. Imagine a line of people, eyes closed and each with one ear plugged. Someone stands perpendicular to them, and yells. How the hell do they figure out where this person is? Each person by themselves cannot figure out, because they only hear a sound at a particular time. So, if they all calculate when they hear the sound, compare them, then they can figure out where the yeller is. However, as we all know, amplitude (how loud something is) is also a function of distance. The further away you are, the more quiet a sound will appear to be, so the people could just record how loud the sound was for them. So the wavefield has 2 properties you could migrate with! Based upon time (which is isomorphic/similar to what I do at work) or they could each tell how loud the sound is! Friggin cool if you ask me! I'll have to ask at work now if how we take into account of the amplitude of events in relation to them, as it could damn well be useful as a complementary method of migration or interpretation.

Working in a corporate world is turning out to be pretty interesting, but foreign. I had to go home early on my birthday because I had a big client meeting the morning after. But that was kind of cool in itself, actually meeting with someone and figuring out what was the nature of the problems we in encounter. It isn't just some abstract thing on the computer I work with, but a record of a history of an event with real physical properties. It doesn't sound like a big revelation, but to me it was.

So yeah, there I go. Hopefully I'll run into more interesting stuff soon here to write about. I hope everything is well for everyone.

Joshy Poshy

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Now playing: Nine Inch Nails - Hyperpower!

Ok, just got back from dinner. Had steak tartare for the first time, and it was pretty damn good. The health concerns regarding it bother me a little, so it probably won't be a regular dish for me. Nonetheless, it is part of my culinary adventure! And yes, I had it with an egg on top, with capers and pickled onions. Very French

So I guess I should do the interesting part of the post now. As some of you know by now, I had an adventure in the catacombs of Paris. So here is the night:

I had met this hippie chick on Tuesday when I went out for drinks with Yann. She mentioned almost immediately that she is a cataphile, and that she was going down to the catacombs that night. As soon as she heard that I had never been, she immediately invited me to come along. Obviously, since I was a little drunk and in work clothes, I figured it was a bad idea at the time. So, we agreed to a Friday excursion.

Being the smart boy that I am, I went out and bought everything that I thought I would or could use for the adventure. Flashlights, wine, cheese, bread, bottle opener (very important!), cigarettes, paper and pens, quiche, and lighters; they all turned out to be very useful! On Friday, I gave her a call and I went over to her apartment. After waiting for quite awhile for her friends, we eventually started on the journey. All the while, people were pumping me up for the adventure, and explaining the history and culture of the catacombs.

So here is near the park we came in.
Everything was now a rush. They quickly unlocked the gate to the park, and we ran in under the cover of shadows. While going to the catacombs is not a huge crime, the police do give you a fine and if they find an entrance they will brick it up. So, wandering through the bushes, we came upon a tiny little manhole. It was opened with a key, and I was the first to go in. It was not an easy way at all. I had to squish through a tiny opening feet first, in complete darkness. My bag was passed and found myself at the top of a spiral staircase. Hearing "Allez! Allez!" being yelled behind me, I stumbled down the stairs. It was covered in dirt, and surprisingly slippery, then we reached the bottom.

My first site at the bottom:
Ok, very cramped. I had to constantly duck, and throughout the night there were a few times I boinked my head. That's why the girl said her catacomb name was Bing. So, on we go! Start walking, almost running through the corridors. Left, right, straight. I had no idea where the hell I was, or any idea of how to get out if I wanted. But Bing was very cool, and kept asking if I was ok, and checked up on me throughout the night. So after what seemed like a half hour, we eventually reached a large room:
So we all sat around a table, opened the bottles of wine and one guy with a stereo put on some thumping techno beats. At this point, my mind was a little blown. The whole idea of being 30m under Paris was pretty wild. Bing showed me around, up a set of staircases to a La Poste location, which had a big steel door that looked like it was 60 years old at least.

Apparently it was locked up, and the room we had been in was used as storage previously. Cool. After sitting around, and drinking for a bit, it was time to move again. The cataphiles don't like to stay in one place too long for several reasons. For one, if too many people stay in a room, then people can inadvertently start destroying some of the older graffiti on the walls. There's also the threat of police, so it's best to keep moving. When they leave a room, they will often set off a smoke bomb. Such as this:
Off once again, only this time in a thick haze of smoke. I was starting to feel a bit more relaxed, the wine was a good idea. We eventually reached a point where the ceiling was about a foot or two from the floor, so it was time to crawl. Pushing my bag in front, hand and foot, I was wondering where the hell we were going. Eventually we reached the end. It opened up, but we heard voices. Obviously, I thought, "POLICE!!!". But nobody else seemed panicked, so I went with the flow. That's what I do best actually. We ran into some excavators. There is a group of cataphiles who make it their mission to uncover what the police have blockaded. So this was a new room, that had only been open for a month, and no one knew the last time anyone had seen it. Imagine that, how old this place is.
I was shown some of the writings on the wall. This is some of the very first graffiti that they know of. Writing that are estimated to have been from the 1860's, signatures of long dead people. But here we are appreciating what they've left us. I felt so lucky.
After chatting for awhile, it was off again. Another smoke bomb, and everybody clears out. It felt good, running through the halls. Hearing people talking, music pumped, putting out my hand and feeling centuries of hard work. Eventually we reached the third room. We stopped here for awhile, and ate for awhile. I was so glad I brought some quiche at this point, smoked salmon never tasted so good. Food was being offered, so I proposed some cheese and bread. Bing's eyes lit up and I let her dig in. Most of the cataphiles are not very rich, and tend to work just to get by with no huge career ambitions. Fair enough, so I was glad I could share my wealth with these people who were being so generous. There were other cataphiles around, we chatted for awhile. Everyone there was in such good spirits and so nice, I was very impressed. They were all very happy that I could come down there and see this part of Paris. But onward! More rooms to be had. As a note, each of the rooms had a name, although I can't remember any of them now hahaha.
Here is a Brazilian fellow who was in our group. At this point, he was getting drunk and really wanted to talk to me. He began to explain the history of the catacombs and what I should start looking for. As you see here the walls are brick like in structure, this is a later development of the catacombs, in the early 19th century. Originally, the catacombs began their existence as the people wanted to use the rock for the houses in Paris. So if you look now at buildings there, this is where a lot of the rock is from. This is also why the catacombs are only under streets because it would cave it otherwise.
In the next room I found this to be next to the makeshift table. I don't know how old it was, but I love it. People leaving messages for each other, and everyone has respect for it. You want to leave it so people can enjoy it for generations to come.

Here you can see the differences of the types of structure in the catacombs. Being next to the bare rock felt very good. Very real. Here is Bing, it gives you an idea of how cramped it was, and that there was always a bit of smoke around.
One of the inscriptions as to the date of inspection. You can tell it was the third inspection, the initials were of the inspector and the year. These are everywhere, and the oldest date back to 1777. Mindblowing.

Another interesting thing I found was that there were only white people for the most part. When I asked about it, they were all fairly adamant that it was something only for Parisians and, well, white people. This bit of racism was the one thing I noticed was what you could consider hateful about the cataphiles. Then again, as the Brazilian(he was part French) said, "Could you imagine eating couscous down here? Never! It's wine, cheese, bread!" hahaha, fair enough. This being said, I felt very safe with all the people and it was more that they wanted to keep it secret and controlled. They only want to bring people who can respect it, who have an understanding of the history. For a foreigner, like me, they call a tourist instead of a cataphile. Tourists are looked down upon generally, but they liked me because Bing brought me. That girl is awesome.

We eventually found our way back to the original room where we hung out. It had been about 7 or 8 hours in the catacombs at this point, so I was getting tired. But my Brazilian friend offered to get some pics of me so...proof!
There were two other cataphiles not from our original group that were leaving, so I joined them. After thanking everyone it was off for the final adventure that night. We walked through and found a ladder upwards. Climbing several iterations of the ladder, we reached a small platform and saw the manhole cover. A huge one too. Must have been 70 kilos at least. One of the guys pushed it out with his feet by holding the ladder (risky!) and onto the street we were. Right in the middle of the sidewalk no less! People walking everywhere, giving us strange looks. Covered in dirt we emerged, I was bleary eyed and seeing the morning sun was strange. I bid the guides adieu, and went on my way home. It was a good sleep, and well worth it.

So there it is, my "official" account of it all. A great time, and I will probably go again to the other section in a few weeks. There are two main catacomb areas, and we went to the "easier" and less known one. The one in the 14em is apparently a lot bigger, and there are some areas with flooded water. So I'll have to get some gum boots for it, but I'm up for a challenge.

I went out with friends from work on Saturday, but it felt like it was a different life. What a strange weekend.

I hope all is well with everyone. Next weekend I am off to Nice, so you'll see some beach pictures with the next update! Until next time...

So after a rather depressing weekend of doing absolutely nothing, I have come around again.

I've continued watching this Human Weapon show, and it's awesome. While it definitely has it's cheesy moments (mostly coming from the former football player saying how he will crush someone with only 2 weeks training), I do enjoy the history aspects of it. The most recent episode focussed on savate, oh how fitting. As most of you probably don't know, savate (or boxe francais) is pretty much French kickboxing. Except they wear shoes, with hard toes, thus the name savate translates to "old boot". Pretty damn cool if you ask me. And as luck would have it I found a gym that you can train in it! Aaand it's like 10 minutes from my apartment. Yeah, that rocks. I can also do muay thai there, and it has a full fledged gym. It also re-opens it's regular hours the day before my birthday, so I think that's a perfect present to myself.

This has also given me reason to actually start practicing French more, as I can pretty much get by on what I have now. Sure, I can't understand the conversations at work for the most part, but I kind of zone out a lunch anyways.

Yeah, not much else to say. I constantly look for things to do at work, but it's a balance. Should I really go bug everyone and prevent them from doing work for my own selfish needs? As a result, I've just been doing little tests of my own, because I might as well.

I've also been researching how to create a database through excel linking word/rtf documents together. If anyone has any good tutorials on this, it'd be most appreciated.

I've also been planning my trip for September/the fall. It looks to be the big decision between either a Greece/Italy/Croatia tour or an Austria/Czech/Hungary/Croatia tour. Decisions decisions, what a pain.

Last night, as I went out for dinner, I ran into some Chinese American girls at the restaurant. At first, I didn't say anything, just casually overheard their conversation. But eventually I had to but in. They were complaining about how weird it was that French guys kiss each other on the cheek. That's how the French are, I explained, it's like hugging in North America. They also remarked how the French take the month of August off for vacation. "But, how do the businesses survive? Don't they want to make money?" The question is, what good is money if you can't do anything with it. Work so you don't have to work is the culture. I overheard some complaints as well about how they didn't get to choose their salad dressing, but I had to shake my head. Americans...sooo ignorant.

Party on everyone.

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Now playing: Amon Tobin - The Killer's Vanilla

Here I am, drinking a rather overpriced wine (terrible for 10 Euros!) and thinking about all the odd things lately goin on in my life.

So I guess first off, I understand now why French people don't particularly like sushi. Because it sucks here. Seriously, I just got home from a so called restaurant Japanois, and I'm severely disappointed. First off, the miso was crap. It wasn't even really cloudy, just warm water, with all of one, yes one, piece of tofu and I think 3 pieces of seaweed. This was served along with what seemed to be coleslaw with onion. So very Japanese...

Onto the actual sushi...le sigh. So I get it, and admittedly it looks impressive until you pick it up. The whole damn thing was rice! Just a thin slice of fish covering this mound of rice! Hell, if the rice would have been good, but it was really sugary. The rolls were just as bad, as they were not actually closed, they just hid the fact that one side wasn't rolled shut by placing them together. Jesus. I have to say that was one thing Houston was great for, the sushi there was amazing. Actually, in general the seafood there was really well done, those yanks know how to do their sea creatures.

The second point, I just had to shake my head and chuckle to myself today. One of the common things to do in my job is setting up a bunch of data to be processed on a Friday afternoon and letting it run over the weekend, as it often takes a couple of days. However, these jobs can crash, and how. It's a big problem, imagine you submit it all to the computer on Friday at 6, go home, and it all crashes at 7. You're boned. What was common in Houston and Calgary, was you would drop in on Saturday or Sunday afternoon for an hour or less, get your jobs back up and running then get on with your weekend. I mean, whatever, it's an hour out of your time and you make life a helluva lot easier for you the next week. Good investment if you ask me. So I asked the people in the office here if that was common practice, as I assumed it would be, and I got shocked looks in return. "Oh no, you can't do that, you have to fill out a form and get it signed by the centre manager if you want to do that. It's a big deal." I guess I should have expected a form to sign, but wow, just wow. French people are just strange sometimes.

Last night I started watching The Human Weapon series that was on the History Channel. Basically two guys (one an MMA fighter and the other a former football player and wrestler) who go around the world learning martial arts. At the beginning of the episode, they meet one of the top masters/trainers/senseis/whatever who says that in a two weeks time (or however long) they are welcome to come to his gym and he will choose one to fight his top fighter. So they go around to a bunch of dojos/gyms and learn some specific techniques of the art and the history of it all, and go fight the champ. While the champ obviously takes it easy on them, it's a fun show to watch. The guys are entertaining and do actually know about fighting, not like the complete idiots they usually have on these shows. For the most part (as far as my knowledge can confirm) they are very historically accurate, and get information from the masters themselves. A very good show if you can catch it, or download it.

On the one show, I was watching them learn muay thai (of course!) and they went to a kru in the jungle who was teaching muay chaiya. This is one of the older forms of muay thai, which the ring sport of today descends from. It is known for the elbow techniques and being extremely aggressive. How do I know this? Well, Mike Miles is the only person in North America qualified to teach it. Watching the fighters fight it was absolutely amazing, it was the most intense fighting I've ever seen anywhere. All the defensive moves were blocking with an elbow (basically an offensive move) and then using that to counter-attack. Imagine two guys going at it the camera can hardly catch it, and they are not landing a single actual blow on each other. I'm going to find a way to edit the scene and upload it for everyone to see, as it is awesome.

Allright all, more interesting tidbits later.

The 101st post. Whew, it's been interesting.

What I started thinking about recently is that when people read this blog (or any blog for that matter) you get to know the writer, on an almost intimate basis. You will read about my ups and downs, and I've had a few people talk to me about it and it kind of surprises me. I guess from the safety of my keyboard, I never realize that this actually gets read! I guess the point of this rambling mess is that it's kind of odd having people know you but you don't know them. This isn't me falling into narcissism (too much anywho ^^) but I hope it encourages people to start their own blogs. If anything, I'll read it!

I have to say that there is one thing I miss about Houston, air conditioning everywhere. There is a total of one room at my office (hell, the one room I've been in Paris) which has a/c. And that's for client meetings.

The other thing I've been strongly considering is moving into sales. I think it would be quite the test to start managing client needs and helping them decide on their project goals that they want from my company. I think this also would be a good way to learn about the oil industry in general, as right now I'm just learning geophysics. Yeah, that was kind of random.

I accomplished 3 of the 5 goals for the weekend, and I think that's pretty good. There were a couple of decent bookshops in Paris that I checked out, although Shakespeare & Co is very much a tourist trap. 40 Euros for a book? I don't think so! I also checked out a cool little park near Chateau Vicennes. Unbeknownst to me, there was a large castle and courtyard there I wandered about, along with a decent sized part. Wandering into the forest, finding a tree and sitting in the peace and quiet was most beautiful. It was the first time I could go into public and not see any other people since I've been here. I also read my book and ate bread with nutella. I've given in.

And I finally got a bank card, it only took a month! Le sigh.

Rock on everybody, more later.

So here I sit, a rainy night in Paris, listening to the Beatles. Life is good, and wine is tasty.

Once again, my thoughts drift towards food. Today, I had andouillette at lunch today, and I have to admit it isn't too bad. All the French people were watching me intensely, waiting for my reaction on my first bite, and hey it was decent. Now, not all of you out there in cyber land will like it, but with a decent mustard sauce, it's an interesting culinary experience. Speaking of culinary experiences, my food goal for this weekend is to find a horse steak as France is one of the few places in the world I could enjoy this delicacy. I've heard nothing but good things.

This brings me to my second point of the post. I think, as being from North America, we think too much about our food in some respects. I say, shut up, eat it, and enjoy it fer chrissakes. I meet almost no vegetarians out here, when I mention the idea, people look at me like I'm stupid. The idea of humanizing animals is utterly foolish. Do we ever see animals with ethics? No, of course not. Mother animals only care for their young because evolution dictates that they do because that results in their genes propagating the best.

But this brings me to my third point, despite the fact that I think it is entirely acceptable to eat animals, we still have to respect what it is we have taken from them for our food. I remember watching a Jamie Oliver show when he was in Italy. The locals had killed a wild boar, and brought it back to the village. They brought the children out and had them watch as they slaughtered and cleaned the animal. As this was happening, one of the adults was talking to the children about how this is life is and this is where your food comes from. I think in Western society we lose touch with this, most people don't really think of the cow which was killed when they go to the supermarket to buy their steak. It is very disconnected, and I really lament this. I still remember being 8 or so, and my uncle taking me to the slaughterhouse where my other uncle worked to get the ingredients for head cheese. While it was a little disturbing at the time, I realize now the importance of such an experience. This is what is required, there is a consequence for the food that you eat. I think that everyone who eats meat should have to go out and see how the process is done for their food. This is life folks, stop hiding behind your televisions and experience and realize it.

So, this brings me to my fourth points (I know, I was really on a roll today!). I was talking with about this a bit with my Finnish friend at work and he completely agreed. He then mentioned to me that he knows a few people that go on wild boar hunts here in France and that he's been on them. So we've tenatively planned to try to go on one in November. Apparently they hunt with spears, how cool is that? They have people who flush the boar out of the bushes (haha, probably me) and then surround it with horse riders who spear it. That would be an utterly European and intense experience. The idea of tracking your food is something really enthralling to me.

Speaking of cool, how cool is Peter MacKay? Pretty damn cool: click! God I love that guy, from the comments on Belinda Stronach to every hilarious comment on politics in general, he's great. I'd love to see him in a leadership position in Canada in a few years.

So this weekend the plan is to go to Harry's New York Bar in Paris where Hemingway used to hang out at so I can have an overly expensive coffee. Take pictures of the Basilica and Panthenon, buy some books and wander parks. It should be exciting.

Oh, and don't drop Nutella containers on tile. They blow up and chocolate with shards of glass go everywhere. Especially not at midnight...after a few glasses of wine. Le sigh.

Party on everybody, and I'll see some of you soon and others, well, less soon.

EDIT: I realized I had one last rant left in me. Click!
Who the hell does MADD think they are? They have no right to start criticizing how much people drink when THEY ARE TAKING THE FUCKING TRAIN! This stupid corporate entity (yes, look it up, it's not a non-profit organization) are trying to retain their relevancy after they have already met their goals. Yes, this is true folks, MADD has done what their original founder wanted accomplished, setting the law for 0.08 BAC level as the legal limit. In fact, they fired the founder and adopted a corporate structure just so they COULD CONTINUE TO EXIST. The government already tells us what drugs they think we can do, they regulate our alcohol consumption, the tax the hell out of our cigarettes, do we really need a proverbial nanny telling us all the time as well? Hell, it wouldn't be so bad if they actually cared about us, but no, they are just doing it so they can make money. The government and corporations especially, should stay out of people's private lives and specifically their private "victim-less crimes". NOTE: I see no victims in enjoying some intoxication with friends and when you aren't behind the wheel of a car.

*breathe out* ok, got that out. Ranting done...for now.