August 2005 Blog Posts
We fly off tomorrow to Nimes with a couple of friends and their daughter. We're staying at La Nesquiere (near Avignon) for ten days exploring Provence before driving down the coast and staying at the La Sirene Campsite at Argeles-sur-Mer (south of Perpignan) for another ten days. It's a compromise between something for the adults and something for the children.
I'm certainly looking forward to touring Provence. It's been on my list of places to go for a long time. I'm also hoping R* will get a chance to make use of her french and be motivated to learn more. I'm also sure the Languedoc will be pretty interesting as there's lots of activities we can do there like horse riding, climbing and kayaking. I also discovered only yesterday that we'll be very close to Cap de Creus on the Spanish Costa Brava which is reputed to be a great place to scuba dive. Fab! I've packed my dive gear with the plan of getting down there for a day.
I'll be back in September!
A chick flick, the whole chick flick and nothing but a chick flick. Nice fuzzy romantic comedy that explores the idea of two timelines. Decent acting. I particularly liked John Hannah. But I'm really not sure what point the film is trying to make. It's probably not the kind of film one should expect a point from!
Exxon Mobile is one of the world largest and most profitable companies. There's a couple of websites that expose some of the nasty practices behind them. Download a damming report from ExxposeExxon or explore ExxonSecrets to see the influence Exxon has. According to ExxonSecrets, Exxon Mobile has funded the climate change lobbyists with $12,000,000 since 1998.
Give it a thought when you pull into an Esso station.
The Piano Teacher is a french movie. A very french movie. It's deep, intellectual and metaphorical. Haneke likes to create the most emotionally disturbing scenes with the absolute minimum of movement and dialogue.
Erika is a repressed, harsh and icy piano teacher teaching at a famous conservatory. She has no friends or lovers, lives with her demanding mother, and finds relief through various sadomachoistic practices. Walter, a gifted student, enters her life and her world of perverse sexuality that rejects seduction.
To understad the film, you definitely have to listen to the DVD commentary afterwards. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're really into disturbing arthouse films. It's certainly not erotica.
I've become increasingly aware of the stunning chemical stew that we all live in and the lack of governance in controlling the release of chemicals into the environment. U.S. industries use 75,000 different chemicals. Our exposure is pervasive from pesticides, food additives, cleaners, bodycare products, furniture, and numerous other ordinary products. It really can be no surprise that health problems are on the rise and that the majority of us will die from degenerative diseases.
Sadly, a recent report by the Environmental Working Group in the US documents that they found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in the ubilical cord blood of the 10 new borns that they tested. Of the 287 chemicals detected, 180 were carcinogenic, 217 were toxic to the nervous system and 208 cause abnormal development.
Not a great start to life is it?
Isn't it annoying when you try to be healthy and find out it's worse for you? The UK Pesticide Residues Committee reports that "wholemeal bread contains more pesticide residues than any other bread type".
The report revealed that pesticide residues were detected in 53 of the 72 ‘ordinary breads’ tested, which included white (37), wholemeal (26) and ‘other’ (9) bread types.
The pesticides detected in the bread tested were chlormequat (a plant growth regulator used on various crops, including cereals), glyphosate (used as a desiccant on cereal crops), malathion (an insecticide) and pirimiphos-methyl (an insecticide used to control pests of stored grain).
One wholemeal sample was found to contain three residues, while 13 other samples (10 wholemeal, 2 white and 1 ‘other’) contained two residues.
The two organic samples tested contained no residues.
Read more about it at BakeryAndSnacks.com and buy organic bread.
K* had his leg cast removed yesterday. We missed our appointment at the clinic due to the flight delay but Jenny waited around with K* at the hospital and they eventually found time to remove it. K* is still hopping about on one leg as he doesn't trust using his healed leg yet. He managed getting around the yacht just brilliantly this last week.
While reading about casts I discovered some people have a fetish for them. Check out Cast Fetish. Whatever floats your boat!
Avoid flying with Excel Airways! This is the airline we flew to get to Bodrum and back.
As I've written before this trip, we had the problem with K*'s broken leg and their unreasonable insistence that we split his cast.
Check-in at Gatwick was quick. However the agent told us that there was no onboard meal. We bought overpriced airport sandwiches to take onboard but it turned out later that there was an onboard meal after all. We were also misdirected to the ServiceAir desk where we were supposed to get assisted tranport for K* to the gate. At least we did eventually get that service after asking a few people.
On the outbound flight to Bodrum, the leg room was abysmal. The most uncomfortable seats ever! For the onboard movie, they tried to sell us headphones but they turned out to be the wrong type so they just played the movie over the regular cabin speakers.
Flying back to Gatwick was terrible. We got to the airport by 19:15 for a 21:30 flight. The checkin desk was stupendously slow but we made it through the line happy to be heading home. We then learned the flight was cancelled! The ground staff did a very poor job of keeping us informed and directing us to where we should be. We waited for ages. We eventually got our bags back and by midnight we were bussed to a five star hotel back in Bodrum.
We were shattered. Hotel was excellent and we were given a meal after waiting all evening. However, we had no idea when we were going to fly home.
Got a call at 4:45am telling us we had 20 minutes to get to the front of the hotel to catch a bus to the the airport. Goaded the kids out of their sleep and scrambled out the door only to wait around for a second bus. Check-in at Bodrum and the flight went smooth after that. Legroom was cramped again but the plane wasn't full so we could spread out. We didn't get the assisted transport for K* so he hobbled all the way to the car park bus.
So I'm not impressed with the service from Excel Airways. Never did find out what caused the delay.