Breakfast at Nicole's...

Breakfast today is smoked salmon and scrambled egg, with coffee.

Perfect, especially with the sunshine we had earlier. It's clouding over now, sadly, but you can imagine it's a view a bit like this. (It's not, but that photo wasn't taken far away from here, and I like it, so there you go...)

I love living here...

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Telemarketing - mobile phones

Dear mobile phone company,

Yes, I have indeed been a loyal customer of yours for several years now. Do you know why? Let me tell you.

It's not because I don't know about other mobile companies, or because I think your offer is amazing. It's not because your advertising sways me.

It's largely, in fact, because your offer is good enough*, and you haven't pissed me off enough to make me want to move.

So what on earth made you think that getting telemarketers to call me, in a foreign language, at dinner time was a good idea? What made you think that trying to sell me products I neither want nor need, over the phone, when I can barely hear your telemarketer in his call centre anyway, was going to work?

If I want any other products from you, I have the internet: I can find them and purchase them, all by myself. (I have, in fact, just done this, if you'd check your records.)

Calling me just annoys me. I don't like phone calls, particularly not from strangers, particularly not when I've switched off from work and stopped thinking in French.

More calls like this will not make me expand my use of your products, it will make me change my service provider. I cannot be the only one - in fact, I can't imagine why telesales generates enough income to offset the previously-neutral-now-actively-pissed-off customers who will suddenly be inspired to start looking at alternatives.

Good job, guys.


* Read: no worse than anyone else's - all French mobile phone tariffs are crap.

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Test post from my new toy

Do ignore this post - it's largely for me to see how typing on my new and shiny Nexus 7 works, and what the blogger app is like...

In case you're interested, the app seems to be fine (except that it doesn't let me add pictures from drop box like it says it will) but if I'm going to be doing anything more than very, very short posts, I have got to get me a wireless keyboard. The onscreen keyboard is accurate enough, but I haven't been a hunt and peck typist in 20 years; this is driving me mad!

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Brunch in Nice

Hello!

So, January was a bit of a black hole of work and more work. But hopefully things will be better now...

I'm back down south, it's sunny, it's Sunday. My plane back to Paris is at an awkward time, making lunch near-impossible.

The only solution is brunch.

The internet suggests a couple of places that do brunch in Nice. We shall pick somewhere and I'll try to remember to let you know about it afterwards!

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I can walk!

Well, so, I'm not rendered unable to walk. This is a good thing, after all of yesterday's walking.

And I managed to wake up in time to pack and get to the airport in plenty of time.

And I got through security with only mild hassle - the key seems to be wear flat shoes and a sweater not a coat. You'll still get groped, but it will be much less hassle for you then taking off your shoes and  a coat and a scarf and all that, and still ending up setting off their alarm for a "random check".

And now I have coffee and a pain au chocolat, and the bakery woman amuses me greatly - she's going on holiday later today and is very clearly looking forward to it. Her colleagues, not so much.

I hate going back to Paris, though, and every time it seems to get worse. However, since miracles and lottery wins are equally unlikely to happen, I'm going to have to find a way to get used to it. Any suggestions?

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Today, I walked.

When we woke up, we decided to go for a walk this morning. From Monaco to Villefranche. For lunch. Google tells me this is 16ish kilometres, which is enough to make my legs a little bit sore now, and I may well be unable to move tomorrow.

But the sun was shining, the views are beautiful and once you're actually up at the Moyenne Corniche, the road is mostly flat. (Except the detours to avoid the motorway tunnel just before Eze. That introduces some startling steep hills.)

I'm glad I did it - it's not necessarily a walk I'd do in the middle of summer, but today was just lovely! (Photos might follow, if any of them have turned out well - you get a great view of Eze as you're walking up to it, with all its terraces splaying out down the mountain, but my camera was being a bit weird, so I'm not sure if it came out properly.)

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New Year's Eve - Monaco

OK, so, a belated post. But it's ok, because there's probably no one actually reading this. (If you are, do say hi in the comments - I might try to make my posts make more sense!)

But New Year's Eve was gorgeous - hot sunshine, people were swimming; even I paddled in the sea. Some photos for your viewing pleasure. (Note: Not of me paddling. I'm not that cruel.)

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Japanese Garden, Monaco

We started off the day on a hunt for a Nexus 7 (which seems to be out of stock everywhere, so I've now preordered one from FNAC. I hope it turns up.) and ended up in a Monegasque shopping centre. It's a bit of a surreal experience; sort of like they've heard of shopping centres, but haven't quite grasped the concept - Cartier is not a shopping centre type shop. I think these chandeliers might illustrate the problems:

We then went on to the Japanese Garden. Did you know there's a Japanese Garden in Monaco? I didn't. It's right near the beach, a couple of minutes away from Le Meridien hotel, in case you're looking for it, and it's rather lovely.

Near the gardens is this awesome statue that I may well adopt as my online face if I can get a better picture of it:

And there is also this gorgeous fountain, which is echoed by a similar (though short and round) fountain at Fontveille port, where we ended the afternoon in a nice Italian bar overlooking the sea. The pictured fountain is just above the beach near the Meridien.

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Good Morning Internet!

Merry Christmas and all that - I hope you had a good time and Santa brought you all the toys you wanted!

Sorry it's been a while since I last wrote here, despite my newfound good intentions - December is manic for the jewellery part of my life, as people suddenly realise Christmas is coming. But things are more or less back to normal on that front, not least because I'm still on holiday and so the shop is closed.

We're down in Beausoleil for New Year's Eve, and it's gloriously sunny. I desperately need to find a way to move here full-time - any (legal) suggestions welcome! In the meantime, I feel like sharing, so have some photos: yesterday on the beach in Nice during the day, and at sunset, and sunrise in Monaco this morning.


Nice beach yesterday:

Sunset over Nice last night:

Sunrise this morning:

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Airport security Part Eleventy-Three

I have ranted about airport security before. Those of you who know me in person will no doubt have heard repeated iterations of my complaints about the stringent measures we now have to deal with, presumably carefully designed to dehumanise, intimidate and irritate passengers. My doubts about the effectiveness of a process staffed by poorly-paid, under-trained, overworked people, which addresses only part of the risk to the physical security, at best. I suspect, in fact, it makes no practical difference to the risks of flying.

Today, though, I have a constructive suggestion, which would make me feel much safer. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that it would make you feel safer too. Radical though this may be, how about the security staff spend less time making people throw away sealed bottles of water and coke, and less time groping random people who haven't even set off their insanely sensitive alarms, and more time looking at the x-ray screen that we have to put everything through which is supposed to show up Bad Things?

I know, revolutionary concept. Judging by the behaviour of the people on duty today, it'll never catch on - the woman who was supposed to be checking was turned round talking to her colleague and never even glanced at the screen as my stuff went through, nor the person after me. Just think of all the bottles of water and tubes of handcream I could have hidden in my bag.

But that would have been a security risk. We can't have that.

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