Book of Sakura

There are a few NY resolution. One of which I have shared is to bring my family to Japan. This time, my wife will be following me to help realise one of my dreams. I rem that I need to provide her a book of sakura next time we go Japan - the last trip was cherry blossom Tohoku and we wanted to ID the sakura trees.

There are many species of Sakura trees. As a beginner, I read that we could easily distinguish them by a few simple rules - no. of petals, colour of flowers and the shape of the trees. For petals, there are common 5-petal flower, 20-petal ones and even 100-petal ones. Each type of petal has its own Jap name which I have yet to comprehend and rem. For colours, we saw white, pink and yellow ones before and this also helps differentiate the species. 

There are also shapes of the trees that ID one from another. The weeping ones are quite different from the V-shaped ones. By "weeping", you can image how the shape of the tree look like, tears dripping down in divergence. There are much more to learn and I will try to "teach" my wife and even my family for the coming trip if the sakura season is still on. This time, maybe not the sakura "cake", but more of the "sakura mood". 

~Sakura Sakura~   

恭喜发财

Happy Lunar New Year. This new year a bit different - Visiting relatives in a new status as married persons. New year visiting has changed over the years since I was born. As a child, new year meant to be visiting many relatives and I usually dun like to wear new clothes as they kinda uncomfortable for me. As a youth, visiting became comparing height, studies & acting "cool" in front of all my cousins. As an adult, visiting became a rare get-together, visiting my beloved granny and my papa's auntie. We started to skip CNY visitings on day 1 and 2 and rather go overseas on these two days. Visiting became a chore as relatives tend to ask about when would I be settling down and about work....

As we progress, visiting relatives' places became "consolidated" i.e. all will just gather at a particular place e.g. granny's place and we will just "tumpang" the red packets and request granny or uncle to pass them to our relatives. This year, we did the same. Just that granny had left us and we went to auntie's house with auntie as the "elder" liao. Granny's stuff all kept already, a bit different and strange. Dunno why but I started to miss visiting relatives during CNY. We used to eat sumptous dinner at granny's "Circuit Road" house. All of us would be there, played and made noise whole day. Now, all our next generation are not so close anymore. Perhaps, we dun even recog one another on street. I recalled once when I was on the road, I had to horn the car adjacent to mine to make my eldest cousin realise I was just besides them! I pray and hope our families will be knitted together and sis and family and my wife and our family would have warm and happy lunar new year every year. I will make an effort to knit the family together, with our kids building strong kinship. New year should be memorable for them. The "Chia" tradition of slotting red packet under the pillow will carry on this generation, next generation and many many generations down the line.  Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Avignon - A different side of France

Bridge of Avignon

Sur le pont d'Avignon
On y danse, on y danse
Sur le pont d'Avignon
On y danse tout en rond
After our Paris trip, we headed straight down to Avignon. I have planned this portion to see the walking tours of the famous artist behind the "Sunflower in a vase" works - Vincent V G. We didnt plan much but only on the train ride to Avignon. It was a different side of France - pretty hot like Singapore. I read from the guidebook that there was a very famous bridge in Avignon and hence the Avignon bridge automatically became one of the sites to visit. We went near evening nite to do a picnic there and also to check if we could view any sunset.
It was very nice and beautiful place. There was also a free ferry service to and fro across the bridge. We didnt try as we had missed the last boat across and so we sat on the grass watching the changing colours of the blue sky. It was a lovely evening. Something more lovely on the way.
I read from the guidebook that there was a nursery song about this bridge of Avignon - something like our nursery song London Bridge. Dear mentioned that the French were likely to want to have their own song instead of singing London Bridge.  We wanted to hear the nursery and so we googled and surfed.
It was a very nice song about gentleman and ladies dancing at the Avignon Bridge. The song is still very vivid in our minds. Lucky me that we went into a shop and bought a very cute musical box for my dear. Now it is one of her fav.
Nursery song. Bring out the child of us. Bring out the romantic part of me.

Paris Pyramid

Edited post ~ I liked to draw reference to the big Museum. I dun think I could rem the routes. I dun think I could do so if I was back in the Museum searching for the Mona Lisa Paintings or Vincent's Sunflower paintings. Guess only those who stayed there long enough, just like me in 4-yr-U, could do so without blinking the eyes.

One funny point about the pyramid to share - Recently we caught a French show and one of the scenes was at the Lourve Museum. The "Mummies" joked that there should be a pyramid to be built and not many people caught the joke. To those who travelled to Paris, they should be aware of the "pyramid" they spoke about in the show. This time I was fast and could catch the humour.

It is interesting to re-read this post and I can't rem the emotion then while writing this post. I only rem us taking a photo in front of the pyramid. There were many people right from the start of the queuing downstairs.  Interesting, I could rem a lot of people trying to pose in front of this pyramid. At this point in time, we still dunno if we would be travelling back to Paris again.

I like this pose. Full of excitement.  Can also feel the big structure towering over many of us. 

蒙娜丽莎的微笑

"蒙娜丽莎她是谁
她是否也曾为爱寻觅好几回
她的微笑那么神秘那么美
或许她也过感情的千山万水
才发现爱你的人
不会让他的蒙娜丽莎流眼泪"

I have shared the tips of visiting a huge museum. For the louvre museum, this tip was handy - zoom straight to the paintings that you would like to see.  We definitely wanted to take a look at the famous Mona Lisa. Many people were queuing to see the painting. It was much smaller than what we expected as we saw many huge paintings - even ceiling paintings. I wonder if Mona Lisa was expecting so many people viewing her portraits? Smile is usually associated with Mona Lisa - did we also realise that she should have other less cheerful moments?

I recalled a Chinese song about Mona Lisa when I was blogging this blog. The  title of the song was the other extreme - the tears of Mona Lisa. For me, I thought many people like to see or hear the brighter side of the day. Not many people also choose to hear or see the less bright side of the day. Many times, we wanted to hear good things especially when the day was already very dull and stressful. But it is actually during this time when family talk, close friends gather. Hearing good things is good but sharing not so good things is also good. I recalled Mario once shared that many of us were actually "friends" in name, we didnt really share. To be able to share is actually a step closer. Only close friends share. That's why I like to use the word "share". Of cos, when we are willing to share, we need to take some time to listen too.

Palace of Versailles

Chateau means palace in French. The Versailles have been one of the "must-see" attractions that we have ticked. Frankly speaking, I didnt do much research into the history of France and really knew nothing much except Napolean, French Revolution, LV. Going to the Palace of Versailles would really be an eye-opener for us into the history of the French.
We made our police report on our way to the train station and it took us more than 3hrs to complete the translation and reporting. Rushed to Versailles around noon time and it was a short walk from the train station. The RER trains were better than the normal Metro trains - cleaner and spacious. We bought a package (which included the garden) and it was ex. However, the palace was beautiful and there were exhibits to view as well. The palace is like a museum too and the life of a king and queen could be appreciated when one walks through the palace. The King and the Queen have their own chambers. I was usually interested in their study room/library. I wanted to have a study room in my future house. A place where I could do work or reading. Study room should be separated from living or masterbed room - just like work from life. Or else it would not be balanced.

The garden was not very far from the palace but it was also huge.  I collected back my tripod from the baggage centre and I happily set up my tripod to take couple photos. After I took one, one female security guard came forward and warned me not to use tripod on the ground.  Though there were no notices, I obeyed while my dear felt annoyed at her attitude. Frankly, she sounded aggressive but I have no idea why I didnt piss off. Maybe I was happy that I managed to catch a shot with my wife.
There was a very big pond further down in the garden. Tourists would do boating in the pond and there were ducks waiting for food in the pond too. We sat by the pond for a while until the boating crew came over to advise us to sit elsewhere due to the boating activities.  He was relatively more friendly.

The garden is installed with speakers hidden behind "walls" of greenery. We spotted on the map and there was a place in the garden that sold macarons. Dear mentioned before that macarons originated from France and hence I decided to buy at least one legendary macaron for her to feast. We walked according to the map but we could not find the shop. Instead, we bumped into an ice cream outlet. As usual, I would want to try the ice cream and so we chose ice cream instead of macaron. I wonder how the macaron really tastes in France but whenever we passed by one outlet in Paris, we would "KIV" due to the "higher price tag".  No matter the price, if you like it and if I can afford it, we can dote ourselves at times.
(Afternote - I dun break my promises to my dear dear.  I got a box of 4 macarons at the Airport during my Sept trip and I personally carried it back and delivered to her at T3.)
 

浪漫 Paris

Since young, many people have been saying that Paris is a very romantic place to visit, and proposing at the top of the Paris tower is one of the dreams many ladies desire. Having read and heard so many romantic things said about Paris, we definitely included it in our honeymoon itinerary.  The mere excitement of taking the Eurostar from London to Paris was already amazing already as the train travelled across the English Channel. We looked meticulously at the scenary outsides the train windows to look out for french signages to see that we have indeed arrived in Paris.
Our first encounter in Paris wasnt wonderful, and actually disturbing. Didnt want to elaborate further but we were too helpful and we got pickpocketed right under our nose. The experience was disturbing that we decided to "act stupid" and not to bother with any queries/questions posed by people we met on the street. That's to play safe.
We went to take a look at the legendary Paris Tower at late afternoon and we saw a huge crowd still queuing to get to the tower. It was rainy season in Paris and we were easily wet - the feel was uncomfortable. We decided to queue another day. The first day of Paris wasnt fun, thus not even romantic to say.

The view on top of the tower was nice. Paris is made up of many many short buildings and hardly see any skyscrapers as compared to our hometown. We purposely planned to queue in such a timing that we could probably catch the sunset plus night view. We did see some sunset rays but we were still waiting to see the lights. No lights even after 9plus as the daytime in Paris was really longer. Dear was disappointed why we could not stay till midnight and why we needed to go off around 10pm. This was one regret and I decided to bring her to Effel Tower again next time when we stayed in more convenient place (and safe place). We descended steadily and walked towards the Metro, and we suddenly spotted many people looking towards the direction of the Tower. Amazing as the Tower was lighted up like twinkle little stars in blue for almost a few minutes. It was nice though we could feel the tension of the need to get back to our hostel (the route where we were pickpockted).

It was a safe trip back to our guesthouse. I could feel the disappointment. I didnt like to disappoint her especially we travelled all the way to Paris. I decided to find other route to reach our guesthouse since we were still staying for another night. With the new route, we would rest our mind when we got back to our guesthouse later than usual. We didnt go shop for LV or branded goods but we did walk along the famous "branded goods" street. I wanted to buy a LV for her but I really dunno which one to buy. I didnt want to follow one of the Pastors' experience of buying a very expensive bag for his wife yet his wife disliked it and now it became a story to share during the marriage counselling course. Play safe especially the LV bag not cheap.  We did get a LV purse - a small one - and I was happy to see dear buy. Dunno why.
I supposed to buy her a LV bag on my next trip to Paris in Sept. Bought her a Longchamp which she complained that it was small and "weird weird". I really stressed when I went into such shops and I was like a blur sotong, dunno what to do. But I will buy if I know which one she likes...