In paris, you could get a lot of free stuff if you know where to look. And fortunately for me, free stuff found me instead of the other way round. :))

1st of all, if you're a student and you happen to bring along a passport, the Mona Lisa and all the treasures of the Louvre can be admired for 0 euros.

And its also free to enter Notre Dame, although you won't see Quasimodo anywhere. Maybe you have to pay to see him.

And of course, the French aren't so greedy as to charge you for taking pictures of the Eiffel tower and the Arc du Triomphe. Although at le tour eiffel there are lots and lots of souvenir sellers, keychains dangling from their whole arm. Tip: if they don't give you a good price, run away. They'll be selling stuff for peanuts.

So that constitutes the whole of my 2nd day in Paris, and covers pretty much all of the famous attractions. Check.

transport?

That can also be free. I got a metro pass for zones 1-3, so the marginal cost of 1 more journey is? Yes, 0. But don't fret if you lost your ticket or you didn't buy any, the Paris train system is perfect for people like you, and I meant that in a good way :) 1stly, there is nobody guarding the ticket gates. 2ndly, you only need a ticket to go in,while the exit is just a door you push, unlike the cheat-proof london underground. What we did when one of us damaged his ticket was:

- leaving the ticket behind for the next person, after you pass thru the gates.
- pushing the exit door open so that person can come through

We're naughty naughty children.

And lastly, eurostar gives out tonnes of free stuff, and that's like winning the lottery. But that's a story for later ;)

fuhh

Its good to be back in London, home of the English-speaking population.

But its even better to be back after everything that happened.

But we'll get to that later.

Right now i just need some sleep.

Gotta hate the white stuff

The second day in Paris was a somewhat memorable one. We woke up, looked out the door, and woooosh, it was snowing! Snow, that beautiful, fluffy, slushy, wet,slippery, horrible white stuff. Sure, when you've never seen snow you're all yahoo!s. But once it becomes the daily weather, -.-

But let's jump to the happy parts first. We travelled to Paris and visited Musee du Louvre, as seen in the Da Vince Code. As is normal for teenagers (young adults, alright alright) the ultimate reason for visiting places like these is to take photos and say 'I've been to the Louvre, and I have photos!' regardless of how priceless your art collection is.

And then we had snowball fights, my first ever. How cool is that? Other people might say 'The first time i played snowballs was in my backyard', i'll say 'the first time i played snowballs, i was at the foot of la pyramide inversee, flanked by priceless art collections and a Mona Lisa'. Apart from being my first snowball arena, the Louvre is a massive museum with all sorts of amazing antiquities which makes your mouth go wide, and your cameras go click. And there's the Mona Lisa, which i until now am still unable to appreciate its value, but since its so famous now i can say 'i've seen the Mona Lisa upfront'.

And then we went to the Notre Dame cathedral, home of Quasimodo. I tried looking everywhere, but couldn't find him. Now I don't believe in Disney movies anymore.

Parlevous Anglais??

Why don't the French speak bloody English??

I didn't understand a bloody word when we got off the Eurostar train at Gare du Nord. And we just depended on Ms. Fatine Nabile to get the Metro passes, l'hotel, blablabla.

As it turned out, our package (115 euros) was like this:
- Metro 3 day pass for zones 1 to 3
- Hotel in zone 4

Hahahaha. Fell for it. But it isn't that bad though. Except for the fact that the red line going to Boissy Saint Leger is on strike. Perfect timing messieurs *swear* so we had to take a different train to Creteil Prefecture, and another 20 minutes bus ride to Boissy. But the bus was like 30 minutes away, and the cold was biting into the bones, so we decided to take a taxi, even those of us who normally eat 40p Tesco breads everyday. The things we do when desperate :P

And then searching for a taxi, we stumbled upon a Carrefour (waaaaa..macam Malaysia) and bought some foodstuff. And then i lined up and paid. As soon as i showed the cashier a Euro note, did i realise the line was supposed to be for paying by card. And the cashier was babbling at me in French. And i didn't understand a bloody word. I was gaping, eyes wide. Even if she was saying the worst swear word in the world, i would just stand there and say 'Pardon? Pardon?' Coz that's the word they use when barging into people on the Metro train. Lesson no.1 : Learn some French.

And then we asked some people where to find the taxi. One of them said 'zero section' which we took to be the ground floor. Urgghhh. In the end we got a cab, but that was the worst part.

The taxi started its rate at 11 euros. Shite. And it was a timed meter, which means it goes up every few seconds (or every few milliseconds if u ask me). That's right. Just like your blood pressure. So i covered my eyes with my bag, because the taxi driver was literally holding a knife to our throats. Ok, lesson no.2: Don't ride cabs. Darn those workers on strike.

But at night, after a much needed sleep, we searched around on Google maps (so tomorrow we'll know where the bus is) and found a KFC!!! wooohooo!!! Someone told me that KFCs in France are halal, so we walked 15 minutes to the place. Believe me, it was so cold your nose might fall off if you jentikked it.

KFC never tasted so gooooood. You don't have to speak English, having a halal KFC is good enough :)

Happy birthday

Happy 1st birthday mynameisikmal.blogspot.com!! :DDDDD

Just a dose of awesomeness

Today i taught my American friend, Nick how to cook Malaysian food.

He said it was awesome :) As for me, it almost felt like home-cooking :)

I couldn't believe how fast you can learn to cook when you're left to fend for yourself. No more lauk magically appearing under the tudung saji. No more self-cooking rice. It's when you're all alone you realise then someone actually works hard to prepare your meals. Really hard.

So we made ayam masak halia and stir-fried braised vegetables. It was actually the first time i had vegetables here. Maybe chickens have all the essential nutrients, just maybe.

So that took a full 2 hours, cooking and eating and washing. The implicit cost of cheap food is a full 2 hours of not doing any readings. Or maybe it would have been 2 hours of facebook. Just maybe.

things that talk

Its really really cold, even as im writing wrapped in my duvet. Now i know what it feels like to be a Good Day chocolate milk *refer to previous post*. If they feel anything, that is. We humans have a tendency to give character to animals/plants/inanimate objects. I learnt that in anthropology. Its called to 'antropomorphize'. Just look at cartoons. The most popular ones are talking animals.

Sewer mice on the tracks of Holborn station? Gross. Talking mouse wearing red pants and white gloves? Nice.

Dressing mirror? Dull. Talking mirror praising your fairness? I'd want that.

And it goes on and on and on.

Which brings me to the Good Day example. Taken to the extreme, you could feel pity for the milk carton, forced to stay in 4 C like, all the time. Then you'd start to fight for the rights of the milk. You'd ban fridges, which would yield unintended consequences like now you've got nowhere to store your milk so you won't buy milk so farmers won't produce milk and so no Good Day.

Now imagine instead of a milk carton, its an actual 'innocent-looking' guinea pig. Awwwwww. Environmentalists use this appeal so that you'd want to fight for the rights of the guinea pig to live in wherever they live, so no cutting down trees. So no more 2B pencils. This is vital so we can conserve animal species so we can do research on them so we know where we come from. Bullcrap. We don't come from mouse. Not even glove-wearing ones.