I'd Like to be Under the Sea

Sadly, I was only in the sea and over the sea and not diving into an octopus's garden on this occasion. Having left my house in Cambridge at 9:45 am on Saturday, I met meeting my parents at Nice Airport at 2:30 pm local time. 

The landing into Nice is always quite exciting as the runway is right on the seafront so you're never quite certain whether those "emergency landing on water" safety demos are going to be of use. Actually, Hong Kong is more exciting; you come right by the skyscrapers and again the landing strip is on reclaimed land so it's a case of "will we make it?"

Once in Cannes, we headed to Palm Beach with full kit (my dad has a reputation for being over-kitted at times but if it means extra-comfortable beach mats and executive parasols, I'm not complaining too much). 

We had dinner at a trendy restaurant called Maëma, located right on the beach at one end of the Croisette (the opposite end to our aparto). It was turquoise-themed, which suited me fine, and our table was next to the beach. The beach itself was home to an awesome bar, where the seats consisted of massive hammocks and what can only be described as large, wooden beds.

The following day, it was time for a sailing trip, which was good fun. There was almost no wind so for a lot of the time we were using the engine rather than the sails but there was plenty of time for swimming, snorkelling (no diving, sadly) and sunbathing. 

The sea was a gorgeously clear turquoise and other than the odd jellyfish alert (méduse!), it was blissful. I'm not sure I learned much about sailing (the captain would ask me to do something, in French, I wouldn't understand so he would translate into equally cryptic English; when he told me he was going to "do the jib myself" I decided to stay well clear!) but it was a fun day.

Today consisted mostly of shopping (remarkably little for me) and sunbathing, although I also went parasailing, which was fun, as always, and a very Cannes thing to do.

Back to the aparto for mojitos, dinner and being attacked my a sharp ice cube, the cupboard and several particularly vicious mosquitos.

All in all, it has been a pretty awesome mini-break.

First Thoughts on the First Word

While waiting for Steve Pinker's new book to come out, I have at least made a new acquisition: Christine Kenneally's The First Word, which is all about linguistic evolution (or evolutionary linguistics, depending on your perspective). 

Bex and the (Other) City

I'm feeling slightly more coherent than I was when I woke up this morning, having stayed awake for 26 hours and then slept for six. Today has only served to strengthen my love of San Francisco, even though I was mostly just wondering, wandering and shopping.

Circadian Confusion

Yesterday was quite a day. To get to the airport for a 2:15 pm flight I had to leave my house at about 7:45 am and was already tired before I was even on the plane. The annoying self-check-in counter reduced chances of an upgrade to somewhere close to zero, although I did at least have lots of legroom as I was in an exit row.

When I got into SF, it was about 6 pm local time but I was feeling surprisingly awake given that I had been up for about 20 hours so I got the BART into town, checked into my hotel, had a shower and then went straight back out to meet some people from work at a bar near work called 21st Amendment. The bar was pretty nice and I even had a beer (shock horror!), which actually wasn't so bad (shock horror!). 

I hung out there for a few hours and then a few of us went up to a bar in the Castro where we went to a gig. The main act, St Vincent, was amazing; she had a gorgeous, haunting, spine-tingling voice and was well worth the wait (she didn't start playing until midnight). 

By about 12:45 am, which was 8.45 am London Time, I was finally starting to flag, and just to emphasise that chivalry isn't entirely dead (just moribund), one of the guys walked me back to my hotel where I passed out for eight hours. Now I seriously need some coffee!

Posted 8:31 am Pacific Time

Birthday Non-Celebrations

MTV turns 26 today. This feels wrong somehow: MTV can't be two and a bit years older than me. Maybe it feels so strange because I was somewhat of a late bloomer when it came to pop music (unlike so many other things) and other than Oasis, Blur, Suede and Radiohead, I didn't really listen to anything much until I was about 13. I therefore associate MTV with the late 1990s and on.

Then, we got Sky TV at home and I got into pop music (correlation? causation?) in a big way and would frequently record favourite songs from the Top 40 countdown on Radio 1 at least every other week. Years later I rediscovered all of these tapes containing the same songs over and over, which plummeted into the bin. That didn't stop me buying hundreds of singles at £2.99 a pop; looking back now at the obsolete CD singles, I realise I had terrible taste in music way back when.

It took a while to recover from this MTV/Radio 1 onslaught, largely helped by Dawson's Creek (the show had great taste in music) and then later Radio Paradise and The O.C. I can't stand most of the stuff in the charts these days. I hate most pop and R & B, and films, friends and RP are pretty much my only sources of new music. As I tend to listen to my iPod anyway and specifically to the same songs over and over, this isn't too much of a problem.

Anyway, Happy Birthday MTV! I hope I am not as ambivalent towards myself at 26 as I am towards MTV now.