Musings of a Displaced HK-Aussie

Landed at Charles de Gaulle airport and was disappointed at the airport’s age. Had to disembarked onto the tarmac, then a bus transported us to the terminal. Immigration was a breeze - there was no "Entry into France" stamp in the passport and nobody manned the quarantine section.

My aunt picked us up and shock #1 was the tiny parking spaces and parking lots. Cars were parallel-parked within inches within each other, and alot of cars bump into each other when pulling into/out of parallel spaces.

Shock #2 was that in central Paris, many roads don’t have lane dividers - which gets even more confusing in multi-lanes, big-ass roundabouts like the ones at Arc de Triomphe (9 lanes).

Wendy and I stayed at the Park Hyatt Paris Vendome using my free nights (thank you CADDIS!). Later we found out the rack rate was US$550 per night! This hotel was voted among the top 20 European hotels in Conde Nast. I’ll definitely keep this hotel in mind next time I have to burn some free nights. Got upgraded to a deluxe room courtesy of my Diamond status. The bathroom is something to be seen! Gilles the concierge helped us out heaps with reservations for the overnight rail journey to Madrid.

The hotel is centrally located to many tourist attractions. We took a stroll in the Vendome area with its statue of Napoleon and the fancy jewelers. There’s a posh jewelry shop called Dinh and Van - perhaps an indication of a future partnership between Dinh and Cong’s girlfriend The hotel is also within walking distance to the Opera Garnier, Concord Place (where King Louis XVI and some 2000 people were executed during the French Revolution) and the Louvre. We didn’t sleep much on the flight from DFW to CDG so after a brief walkaround and shower, we crashed at 6pm (and missed dinner as a result).

Day 2 started at the Louvre. I was really pumped after reading "The Da Vinci Code" and headed straight for the Mona Lisa. Unlike most paintings there, the Mona Lisa was fenced off some 2 meters away and was also protected by a glass. I had forgotten the supposedly encrypted secrets of the Mona Lisa when we visited - its time to get back to the book again! Afterwards we jumped on the double-decker tourist bus and went to a ton of the usual tourist spots:

• Concord Place,
• Champs Elysees,
• Arc de Triomphe Etoile,
• Eiffel Tower.

From Concord Place, it is possible to look down Champs Elysees all the way to the Arc. I’d recommend taking a photo from that spot. There is meant to be a tourist bus every 20 minutes, but it didn’t show up at the Eiffel Tower stop for an hour. It was windy, at nighttime and during winter! The positive spin is that we saw the illumination of the tower which only occur every hour on the hour.

Day 3: Went to Notre Dame Cathedral with its famous glass-stained windows and gargoyles perched atop the roof. The wind chill factor was up another notch and it was freakin’ COLD! Notre Dame is adjacent to a tiny island that was the original Paris. Met up with my Aunt and Uncle for dinner in the 13th district for Thai food, then went to Sacre Couer church for more photos.

Day 4: went to Chateau de Versailles, about 40 minutes from central Paris. This was the palace of Louis XIV. There’s a room called The Hall of Mirrors which is covered with ceiling-to-floor mirrors. The room served no purpose other than to show-off the king’s wealth, since large-scale mirrors were $$$ back then. It was also interesting to know that the Treaty of Versailles to end WWI was signed there.

Wendy wanted to shop in the afternoon. I ^%& hate shopping so nothing else needs to be said, except that it was during 1 of the 2 annual sales events so the crowd was overwhelming. For dinner, uncle and aunt treated us to a full-on French dinner at Le Gastroque (a combined word play on gastronomy and pub - meaning a friendly place for eating). The French are really into livers because, according to my uncle, "it’s all about the texture". We had snails-baked-into-pastry, duck liver (cooked and tasted like lightly fried chicken), orange duck and goose cheese.

Day 5: Met up with my aunt for some afternoon tea at Ladurre (its been there since the 1880s). It cost 40 euros! Afterwards we headed to Austerlitz station for the overnighter to Madrid.

Paris was fun and I’ll read up on French history when I get back to the US.

Just got back from a snowboarding trip in Snow Valley and 3 nights in Sin City & Grand Canyon with Uncle Gabriel’s family. Snow conditions were slushy (that shouldn’t surprise anyone as Snow Valley is in SoCal) which made snowboarding crap. Snow accumulated on the snowboard basically melted between getting on and off the ski lifts.

Vegas - not much to tell. Wendy and I got 1/2 price tickets to La Femme at MGM Grand. We stayed @ MGM Grand for 3 nights courtesy of Uncle Gabriel getting a good rate.

Grand Canyon - spectacular view although we only went to the West Rim (home of the Hualapai Indian tribe)  rather than South Rim. South Rim supposedly has better views but its 6 hours drive from Vegas, compared to 3 hours between West Rim and Vegas. Constance and Holman would have been bored shitless if we drove to South Rim.

Broke my personal record of hotel stays/travel this year, courtesy of my first out-of-town project. I’ll see if the record can be broken next year.

Work-related: 135

Leisure: 17

TOTAL = 152

Our accommodation in Europe will pretty much come out from hotel points/promos. I also flew so many times (roundtrip each week) to get a free 1-year companion pass on SouthWest for Wendy. Who said working out-of-town is a bad thing?

Let’s see…plans for the 2005/2006 holidays season are:

Christmas: More snowboarding (at Big Bear) and sinning (Vegas)

January: Paris, Spain and Italy.

Checklist:

• Snowboard clothing [check]
• Lonely Planet Europe [check]
• European language phrase books [check]
• Learning to speak French, Italian and Spainish [ongoing]

Myself and Vivek Man-cherry volunteered for the Junior Achievement program and today we showed up at at Rocklin Elementary school to teach a class of 40 3rd graders about city planning and construction. The kids were very enthusiastic and loved having visitors. They were smart and asked some intelligent questions. The classroom had TWO computers in the back - we didn’t have those luxuries back in our days. Definitely worth doing again next year.

After spending 20+ years in the southern hemisphere where "White Christmas" means going to the beach, this year will really be a white Christmas as we’ll heading to Tahoe with a bunch of my colleagues for snowboarding this weekend to celebrate project roll-off.

Wendy flew up to Sacramento before a bunch of us took the 1.5 hr to Tahoe. Ski resorts are way bigger compared to the ones back home. Anyhow, we took snowboarding lessons on Day 1 at Sierra-at-Tahoe and became "self manageable". Day 2 was at Heavenly, with much better scenery including a view of Lake Tahoe. Thanks to Yan for finding the Amex discounts and providing private lessons.

What’s a more appropriate place to spend your time during Thanksgiving than "Sin City" itself! Yup, Wendy and I went to Vegas during the past Thanksgiving long weekend, staying at the Hyatt Las Vegas resort 20 minutes from the Strip.

Sin City was crawling with people who have nothing better to do on Thanksgiving than frivilous fun and stuffing themselves silly with the famed Vegas buffet lunch/dinner.

We went to see performances by David Copperfield on day 1 and Blue Man Group on day 2. Let me say that both shows are were seeing, especially Copperfield where the audience is seated quite close to the stage. Blue Man is hard to describe, but it was definitely a visual and audio experience. Pics to follow soon!

Went to S.F. 2 weeks ago, mainly to see The Rock. I’m a movie buff and like to visit sites where movies were filmed. Surprisingly, there is no "lower lighthouse" on Alcatraz as portrayed in the Cage/Connery flick from the 90s. It was explained that having 2 lighthouses on a single island makes no sense!

The Rock wasn’t much to see. It’s infamous for criminals like Al Capone and "the birdman". The prison cells resembled the movie scenes, but we didn’t get to see the shower facility where the marines (from the movie) and me (from the xbox game) were ambushed. That section in the game took us 3 hours to get through!

Woohoo! The Socceroos will be going to the World Cup after beating Uruguay last night. Its been 8 years since I went to the World Cup Qualifier vs. Iran at the MCG, when the aussies blew a 2-0 half-time lead to miss qualification. So much for Uruguay’s trash-talking before Game 2!

One advantage of working in a small town like Sacramento is the lack of decent hotels, so visiting NBA teams only have 2 choices - Hyatt or Sheraton. I’ve bumped into some Pistons and Nuggets players this week…they are frickin’ tall when you stand next to them in the elevator haha.

I heard that Sheraton is preferred by the ballers over Hyatt because Sheraton has California King beds. Still, I’d imagine they have to sleep diagonally with the legs left hanging over the bed.