La Graine et Le Mulet

It's been a while since I've been to the movies. I was at the Champs Elysees today and couldn't resist stopping by one of my favourite cinemas, Le Balzac.

I saw La Graine et le Mulet by Abdel Kechiche. I recently saw another of his movies, La Faute a Voltaire with Sami Bouajila (one of my favourite actors) which was great, so as soon as I saw this movie was by him I had to see it.

The film is about a man in his 60's who loses his job basically due to his age. He decides to open a restaurant but is faced with a severe lack of funds and the typical nightmare that is the French bureaucracy. His family comes together to help him but he is just so unlucky, nothing seems to go right.

The movie was very long at 2 and a half hours but it wasn't really noticeable, although I do think some scenes could have been cut down. Like one scene at the beginning when the whole extended family is at the table eating couscous and there are extreme close-ups of everyone eating and talking. It really wasn't pretty!

The ending was fantastic though, really amazing. This movie is well worth seeing.

Pilates

A few weeks ago I started doing Pilates at my gym. It's not free like the other classes, which is a bit annoying but at 10 euros it's much cheaper than at other places.

Most of the classes are Pilates au Sol which is done on the floor with mats rather than the machines. I really don't see the point in paying for that. The class I was doing was with the machines though and I really enjoyed it.

The instructor I had has now left the gym and it doesn't look like they have someone else to replace him so I don't know if I'll continue with it, without the machines.  I will give it a go but I'm sure it won't be the same.

The loss of T also means no Monday night stretching which I've been doing for over a year and no one gorgeous to check out, hehe. He's going solo and at 100 euros per hour for personal training I can understand why.

Topaz 13/12/2007

I've missed my cats a lot since being away from Australia and was very upset when I recently got the news that Topaz had died. She was 19 years old and had been frail for a couple of years so it wasn't totally unexpected but it upset me a lot anyway.

She was gorgeous - a grey long haired Persian with a cute squashed face. She was extremely friendly and especially loved to have her tummy rubbed. I'll miss her.

Now there is just Jade left. She is 19 too but is in better health. What worries me though is that she is really stressed about losing her sister. She is crying day and night and has started pulling her hair out. I hope she's going to be ok.

Gad Elmaleh

I've been a huge fan of Gad Elmaleh for a couple of years now so was pretty excited when I got tickets to see his show at the Olympia. I don't have any trouble understanding him in his movies or when I've seen him in interviews but his comedy act is a bit difficult for me to understand due to him speaking super fast and using a lot of slang.

I knew it might be pointless to see him live for this reason but I bought the tickets 6 months ago with the hope that my French might improve enough for me to understand most of what was going on. Well, it didn't.

So I saw Gad last night and probably understood less that half of what he said. Poor Ferbent didn't understand a thing! Everyone there was laughing hysterically the entire time and I only got a few of the jokes. I was so upset! What a waste of time and money.

I don't think I'll ever be able to understand French well enough to see that kind of show. I'm so disappointed.

Albanian News

The second site I created for Ferbent is about Albanian news. F is forever on the internet reading the news. He loves to read about anything to do with Albania, whether in his own language or in English. So I figured he may as well make better use of this time by posting the most interesting news stories on his own blog. He's decided to go ahead and do that with his blog called Tomorri.

Again, I hope he will continue to update it often and won't lose interest. He could easily get quite a few visitors to his site if he works at it so fingers crossed.

Albanian Videos

I've created a blog for Ferbent because he's interested in writing about Albania (his country) and especially to show Albanian videos. Albania is a pretty crazy place with completely mad people so it will be interesting to see what kind of videos he comes up with.

He showed me a video the other day of a guy setting himself on fire which was extremely disturbing. People just stood around watching, it was incredible. I didn't really want him to blog about that kind of thing but then again that is what goes on in Albania. It's pretty sad.

Of course there are lots of Albanian music and dancing videos on YouTube as well as videos with photos of the beautiful countryside which I find much more interesting.

This isn't the first time I've created a blog for F so I hope this time he'll post on a regular basis and maybe even earn a little cash for it.

Still Alive

No I haven't been hit by a bus or abducted by aliens I've just been suffering from a bout of blogger fatigue. I am in recovering so it shouldn't be long before I return to regular blogging. Wish me well!