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Monday, 31 January 2011 - Good times

Gee they're having some fun over there in Egypt aren't they! This is Tahrir Square in Cairo - just down the road from where Kristina and I were staying three months ago. I love a good party!

Tuesday, 1 February 2011 - 12,000

The odometer clicked over to 12,000kms on the way to work this morning as I arrived at La Défense. I'm doing over 100kms a week at the moment just riding to and from work - bloody good fun!		As I was shooting the speedo on the left these two walked past me having a massive argument in what sounded like Russian or Polish or something. They were really going for it and she was balling her eyes out. There were swarms of people around walking to work - you don't see a couple of Russians yelling at each other every day on your commute to work hehe, and then there was this guy on a bike taking photos of them (me) hahaha!

Thursday, 3 February 2011

Times have been hard for Hagrid of late. This is just another night on the Paris Metro. The whole network is full of homeless folk and various whack jobs, has a constant stench of piss, and never fails to make for an entertaining journey. That's Angelos, my workmate, posing behind this dude who stumbled onboard while we were coming home from the pub hehe.

Saturday - Sunday, 5 - 6 February 2011 - Normandy!
Road trip through the Normandy region of France. Photos to come!

Sunday, 6 February 2011 - Happy Waitangi Day bros!

Welcome to Aotearoa!

Monday, 7 February 2011 - Blue sky!!!

After virtually weeks on end of nothing but gloomy grey skies and bitter coldness, Paris finally had a nice day today! Seriously, it has been miserable - we were happy just to reach double figures and see the sun today! This was the view from my apartment at 8am this morning - lots and lots of contrails.

Tuesday, 8 February 2011 - Bon Voyage Charlie Brown
Photos from the impromptu weekend road trip in Normandy are here :)

Saturday - Sunday, 12 - 13 February 2011 - Loire Valley!

Another weekend away, this time a road trip through the Loire Valley of France. Photos to come!

Monday, 14 February 2011

Wednesday, 16 February 2011 - Hooray for weekend road trips!
Photos from another impromptu weekend road trip, this time in the Loire Valley, are here :)

Friday, 18 February 2011 - Friday lunches!

Oh yeah, gotta love lunch on a Friday! A few of us usually go raid a restaurant around La Défense somewhere and gorge ourselves, and this week it was on this 1.2kg slab of cow, split between three of us. Not bad, not bad ;)		By the way I found this shot of La Défense by night - pretty nice. So yeah this is where I'm working, just outside of Paris. Not bad, not bad :)

Saturday, 19 February 2011 - Science and stuff

What to do on a cold, rainy Saturday in Paris. Here's one idea, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (City of Sciences and Industry) - the biggest science museum in Europe. It's plonked in Parc de la Villette (which is another topic in itself) in the far north-eastern corner of Paris.

This place was the initiative of a former French president with the goal of spreading "scientific and technical knowledge among the public, particularly for youth, and for creating public interest in science, research, and industry." Certainly got my juices flowing ;) There are a myriad of exhibits covering several floors from astronomy to mathematics to sound and images to biology to energies to yada yada yada. You could easily spend an entire day in here if you were interested enough.

		I'm not sure what Kristina was looking at here but she sure looks intrigued hehe.		As does this guy.

Exhibits aside there was also a lot of random stuff scattered about including this thing that makes cool bubbles...		...and a sculpture of the foetus of Yoda. Fucking weird, this was.		Outside is La Géode, an Omnimax theatre (think IMAX but projected on an angled dome). It is fitted with what is apparently the only 12.1 sound system in the world. Unfortunately we didn't have time to check it out.

Sunday, 20 February 2011 - Les Halles

We were woken at 6am this morning by a lot of yelling and carrying on outside our apartment. It happens a lot, both during weekends and during the week, and it's bloody entertaining not least of all because it's in French hehe. Anyway, these two were exchanging pleasantries as loud as they could while a third guy (out of shot) was trying to play peacemaker and keep them apart. Eventually they had enough of talking and engaged in some good ol' drunken fisticuffs before storming off in separate directions. The area where I live is Les Halles, right in the middle of Paris. Apparently less than a decade ago it was a bit of a ghetto until the cops moved in and sorted that out. It's a perfectly safe area nowadays but be that as it may there's no shortage of entertaining weirdoes wandering around at all hours, such as these. I've seen some pretty sweet 3am-girl-fights too :)

Tuesday, 22 February 2011 - Never been so hard to be away
Woken at 2am (Paris-time) by a txt from Mum assuring me they were all ok before I would hear about this on the news and panic. For those elsewhere, recall Christchurch was hit by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake on September 4th last year, and has since had hundreds of aftershocks of varying strengths. This one hit 6.3 on the Richter scale, and wasn't as long in duration as the biggy in September but was very shallow - only 5kms deep and centred 10km southeast of the city centre in Lyttelton. The September quake struck in the middle of the night at 4:35am and as such there were no deaths, however this has struck in the middle of the day at 12:51pm and caused far more extensive damage - there are confirmed deaths and people still trapped in buildings and vehicles. If we thought the city was fucked last time well that was an understatement. Initial news, photos, and videos links here and here. More aftershocks are occurring as I write this (more than two dozen so far up to magnitude 5 as at 9:00am - eight hours after the initial shake).

What's left of Christchurch Cathedral in Cathedral Square, the city's most iconic landmark, after its massive spire toppled from the point I've marked in yellow. There is an observation deck up there that had people in it at the time - I don't hold much hope for them nor anyone who was below it.
What's left of the four-storey Pyne Gould Guinness building - many people are trapped inside.

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