French Connection (formerly known as London Connection)

For one reason or the other I have not been able to update my blog as of late, so here we go with a summary of what has happened in the last 2 weeks...

Barça got their butts kicked out of the Champions League by an inferior team, well coached defensively, but poor overall, not that Barcelona was any good but still…, a team that made them pay for Valdés’ errors in the first leg.

Celtics put on a winning streak a few days ago (like four consecutive games) which doesn’t lead ANYWHERE and just makes chances of getting either Oden or Durant in the Draft slimmer… ayayay… Seriously, the win against San Antonio, in Texas, beating the Spurs for the first time in a kazillion years, was “ferry niiiiizzzzzzze”, as for the rest, well, shut Pierce down for the season so he recovers completely for next year, give Gerald Green his minutes and let’s pray for the kid out of Texas in June! Please, please… More on this below… The guy has some serious talent, an awesome stroke from outside and there was one play which sums up everything best: he stood with his back towards the rim, defender on him, span around the guy and made a one hand shot from the lane to score an easy two. The thing is, it was NOT an easy shot, not with one hand but you still could sense the ball would go in, I mean, that’s why the kid is special. Plus he knocks down threes like “churros” and with his long arms disrupts quite a few plays on defense… But the most important thing, as usually, and people tend to give too less importance to it, is the feeling… And the feeling with this guy is that he will be kicking a$$ on the top level. I saw a clip of him when he was in High School still, two years and he has such an amazing control of his body and showed the kind of determination that makes a winner. And yep, I have officially jumped on the Kevin Durant bandwagon myself, even though 2 years ago I already thought the kid looked special, but as there’s no proof of that I am just making it sure now…

Talking about the Celtics, I bought tickets to watch their preseason game against the Wolves on the 10t of October in London… :) It’s amazing. I’ve always wanted to see them live, well, I saw’em already in the Open Mcdonald’s, when they destroyed Real Madrid in 1988 but I was too young. Next step will be visiting my mate Nacho in Boston and see an official game! Until then, a preseason might do… I am excited, no, really!!!!!

Then, a few weeks ago Dennis Johnson passed away. I have not seen enough of him but remember my dad used to like him, so Rest In Peace!

And two Mondays ago Al Jefferson received the NBA Player of the Week award. It’s the first time in a decade (or so) that a guy not called Paul Pierce or Antoine Walker (whom I cited as “person you would like to meet” in a job interview the other day, the guy looked at me in disbelief, oh well…) receive the award. And Big Al is a beast in the post!! He has an unbelievable touch around the rim and is an awesome rebounder (currently 7th in the league), plus he ranks already in the top20 in blocks as well. I am telling you, we’re talking about some very serious All-Star material here. And he’s only 22, yet he has doubled his stats from last season. Happy times!!!

I was in Paris again, a few weekends ago. Great city, no, seriously, I know I have said this already like 400 times in this blog but still. And what about the weather? An awesome early spring day that Sunday, perfect for a long walk along the parisienne walkways… Then I arrived in London and it was stormy, which led to flight delays, very windy, rainy, cold… shocking to sum it up! Not to mention that the last Tube from Heathrow into town runs at 11:15pm… How is that even possible in what must be one of the biggest airports in the World, on a Sunday, when like 3 million people come back from their weekends? No, in all honesty, I think the guys who run The Tube are crazy. I got on the train last minute and just because the guy at the barrier started shouting “hurry, hurry…”. Unbelievable.

Have I talked already about Tube failures? Yes, I have, I know, it’s just that it’s really, really bad. People who have not experienced the District Line on a daily basis cannot possibly know but here am I to tell you, failures include the following, and you might ask yourselves “how does he know”, well, they tell you on the speakers, here’s the list, including train failures as well:

- earlier signal failure at “your favorite tube station” (I think they rotate the stations and pick a specific one according to the day)
- person under the train (more usual than one would like… that is scary!! Every now and then the tube reports about casualities where someone pushed a person under a train… ON PURPOSE!!)
- floodings at “your favorite station”
- congestion at… the station ahead of you, miraculously! Wow! If your train is driving through Earl’s Court the odds are at 1.15 to 1 (and sinking) that you will have to wait for at least a few mins.
- driver late (WTF?)
- broken window
- fire on the train ahead of you
- train diverted because there is some sort of failure at the station you are heading to…
- strikes
- (plain) signal failure, not being earlier but just uses to happen when you are travelling that is a classic
- Faulty track, which usually leads to the tube going back to the previous station, where they tell you about a replacemente bus service that doesn’t actually exist… and how do you know it doesn’t exist? Because the same guy who told you there would be a freakin “Bus Replacement Service” comes back 20 minutes later to tell you, you have to take a bus three streets down the road. Thanks for nothing then, mate!
- Trains delayed by 20-30 mins because of some communication problem at “your favorite station”. Here they always suggest “alternative routes”. Don’t listen to them, seriously. It’s better to stand pat sometimes, rather then listening to those guys, I am warning you… because, you don’t want to get stuck in traffic for not waiting for your delayed train, right? Right!

… and there’s also the live updates, which cause havoc at every station, whenever customers spot the “Severe delays” tag… and already make you feel very, veeeeeeeery wary as soon as you see the “minor delays” tag. Oh, and every weekend there’s a few lines shut down for engineering works, just that they never are completely fixed and one wonders if the German model, where they just work their a$$es off, if necessary, and work on Sundays throught the WHOLE DAY, which is important to underline, as it is clearly not the case here!
And no, I am not angry and frustrated because of the Tube… let’s move on…

I´m also a bit worried about the French influx in this World we´re living in... I mean, for some reason... I´ve been going to Paris quite often as of late, I might start working for a French company (whose three bosses are French!!) soon, in the French speaking part of Switzerland and I eat at least one eclaire a week... No seriously, it´s worrying. We´re talking here about the Americans, Imperialism bladibla while the French are quite possibly secretly taking over the World or something and WE DO NOT KNOW!!! What if Le Pen was to win the elections in May? I am concerned, well, not as concerned as if Segolenchen wins but hey... I can see the second comming of the "Freedom Fries" campaign very soon... oh la la! ... And if I ever have a daughter I´ll call her Genevieve, non negotiable!

... Actually, have I told you about Arnaud already? The best wine salesman in the whole wide World? Picture me entering a wine shop (a French one) in Kensington Church Street and all of a sudden realizing that I had no beeep (expletive) clue about what wine to pick because they all were... well, FRENCH... but hey, no problems, because the guy behind the desk showed up to help out. Well, he was as enthusiastic as I´ve ever seen anyone at his profession and eneded up selling me a Cotes-Du-Rhone wine. Really good price/quality reccomendation as it turned out. Now he ranks number 1 in my list of best shop selleres ever. Devoted, friendly and enthusiastic!! Oh, and he says hi whenever I pass in front of the shop now. Did I mention he is French...? Oh well, from Southern France, as he pointed out "people are much friendlier in the South"...

Apart from Wine shops and patisseries, there´s also a few women boutiques in Ken. Church Street, namely L.K. Bennett, probably the coolest one... Well, they have a really nice pair of shoes for this spring/summer season. Just thought I´d let you know, in case there´s someone out there in need of some cool summer shoes. And yep, I have a knack on women shoes, or better said, I think there´s nothing worse on a woman than an ugly pair of shoes... Things you probably didn´t know but that´s what blogs are for, no?

Talking about the summer... it is strange, but the amount of skirt-and-no-pants combinations I was used to see in London has dranatically decreased this season... oh, for those of you who missed out, you see as much short skirts here in London in the winter as you do in the summer. Thing is, I have barely seen none, which is confusing, it feels like going out in Madrid and not spotting a pair of Nauticos (even though the sea is 500 Kms away), you get the point... but hey, maybe I haven´t been out enough as of late, which actually is true!!! Yes, I have been out very few, not getting much of London´s nightlife lately... And I haven´t had a pint in 12 days and counting... I´m proud of myself! Thanks for the props...

... and now I am into this crazy March Madness thing. Which summed up is something like a whole bunch of US college teams competing to be crowned as National Champions at the end of March. They do it every year and the nation goes bonkers! Well, we (Adam, y American mate and his friends) do even fill in brackets and bet money on it (even though we all know betting is illegal in the States, ehem) so after finishing in a very respectable 14 out of like 85 position last year, for this Tournament, after the first weekend, not only am I ranking something like 48 out of 55 but one of my Final Four teams (one team from each Conference that makes it to the Final Round, 4 in total, hence Final Four) already got its a$$ kicked last night: Texas. And this is double-sad because the most exciting college guy since... well since a long long time, Kevin Durant (see above), plays for them. I have Ohio State and the mighty Greg Oden, who looks like he´s my dad, although officially he´s just 19, winning it all but we´ll see... Kansas looks "good good", too... and in case you are wondering about the "good good", it´s just a funny way of the lovely French people to express their satisfaction in English in their always amusing accent. You gotta love´em!
And then there was this college kid yesterday, some guy called Tajuan Porter, (awesome name, now if I have a son I´ll call him Tajuan), who looks like a cross between Brevin Knight and Speedy Claxton, and plays for Oregon... Well, he caught fire and started knocking down three, after three, after three to seal the game for his team. It was amazing because he did it like 4 posessions in a row. Everyone went mental. That´s the fun part about this tournament, at a certain point one guy starts putting on a show and he brings the house down while the commentator is out of his mind and you can see his teammates on the bench chest bumping and jumping up and down... I just checked Porter´s stats and he nailed 10/12 from downtown in one game this season. We are talking NBA LIVE 1998 accuracy here! Wa wa weeeee...

... and this is the sentence that sums up best the start of the week on a cold Tuesday morning, at the traffic light, by an old lady "It's bloody freezing, isn't it?" You gotta love it! She looked as if she had five times more energy than myself this morning, which, now that I think of it, is quite worrying… And yep, it's BLODDY freezin' here... no, seriously, B-L-O-O-D-Y C-O-L-D W-I-N-D!!
I think I might have to move to some nice town at the sea at some point in my life… Southern California comes to mind, maybe the Cote d’Azur… before the light of my youth becomes obscure… I don’t know…

Talking about this morning, I literally bumped into Jeremy Irons walking into the tube at Notting Hill Gate. He wore a biker leather jacket (looked expensive), cowboy boots with his jeans inside, and a cap… and he didn’t look very happy or too good either. Then again, who would look happy on a random Tuesday morning, at 8:45am, when the wind is literally blowing you away… Is Tuesday actually the most boring day of the week or what? I say yes. I mean, has something ever happened to you on a Tuesday, something mildly exciting? I need feedback on this…
Now good ol’ Jeremy has joined the select list of people I have met more than once since arriving in London, after watching him on stage as well last year. No, seriously, it’s not that easy here sometimes… I mean, if you don’t know the locals or people who have been living here for an extended period of time you might find yourself a bit lost... Or well, it might be that you know’em, but that they just use to throw wild parties the whole time, and nothing against wild parties but it´s just not your style… I mean, I think I have been to “2-3” normal events in over 1 year: Once at my mate Phivos´ friends house, in dodgy Hackney, where for some reason we ended up playing a quite wild drinking game, everyone, or at least it seemed like this (beers may have helped the cause) seemed to speak German and one young lady bumped into me (I think) with the excuse of going to a museum together once… Stupidly enough I gave her my number… she called… I elegantly, or rather not so, declined. The lesson as always, or lessons, better said:

- It’s pretty bad when someone bumps into you with the excuse of going to the museum… or maybe it’s original after all; thoughts anyone? Anyhow, it’s pretty bad when you don’t even want to catch up with that person for a museum trip, that doesn’t even qualify as a date, although there’s always this risk of having to go for a coffee…
- Never give out your mobile number if you are a) pi$$ed or b) don’t wanna see the person again… this especially applies to girls!!

But then again, that’s the good part about London, as already stated, you just don’t get to see people again, in most of cases… picture yourself going out and randomly “meeting” Argentineans, Swedes, Suomis, Australians, Kiwis, even in a short time span and in the same places… no problems, even if you let yourself get “carried away”, chances are big you won’t see these ladies again… but then again, who would go for a one night stand, in London, being single... anyways… Good we could sort this one out, let´s move on...

OK, as for the rest of “normal” nights out, one included a night at Paula’s with her 3 female friends, which may sound like a harmless night but three young ladies talking about gossip and fashion for 4(!) straight hours, well, no comments… and then there’s been a few random evenings where one ended at some random place for some late night drinks… but that’s another story… Let´s just not forget Paul, the Scottish bloke and his "let´s all get naked" phrase. For the history books. I think Buitre knows what I am talking about here...

I’ll leave the following points open for the next post, this one has reached biblical proportions already:

- Ben´s cookies
- City Airport and spotting Colin Jackson
- First UK Hairdresser experience with the lovely Shiobane
- People who change formulas in reporting excel sheets should be punched… seriously!
- My knee