Suffer Little Children - Cute Suits

Most parents love their children which is not a bad thing. It is the fate of children the world over to live up to their parents idea of them as 'little angels' (or cultural equivalent) which may not be so benign. Many parents express these Angelic qualities to others by dressing their kids in suitable 'little angel' attire. But who really knows what angels wear?  (Apart from Michaelangelo of course, and he had his own agenda and should not be taken literally.) 

Regardless, I would take a big slice of the action that it is not this:

Angel suits for very small girls

or this

Angel suits for very small boys

Also spotted were cute departments selling angelic footwear

and angelic hats (at a 20% discount):

I did not see any very small boy Angels wearing Mini-Elvis-Angel outfits, but I did see these girls and many more like them. 

This does not seem so much an expression of parental love but more of a cute show, where the poor little sods have to out-cute each other in public.  

This has probably been happening all over the planet since the first cave-baby was displayed to other envious cave-parents in a bear skin tutu. But, unlike todays kids, they were not being targetted by multinational marketing departments determined to sell fashion-crap and all the nonsense that goes with it.


It would be nice to think that the kids themselves don't know (or care) and are not adversely affected by all this, but one has to wonder where the 'little princess' and its adult counterpart 'the fashion victim shopoholic' start.

Then again I don't have kids so what do I know... 

(The lack of a question mark indicates that this is a rhetorical question, but do not let that stop you from suggesting answers)

Fun with numbers

We have a wide range of skills talents and abilities of which we are not aware.

Reading backwards is one. Most people can do it and not even realise that it is happening.

Take Arabic (Oh go on! After all this is about Oman). 

I will assume you know that Arabic is written right to left (for those who did not know that read the following sentence. ‘Arabic is written right to left’) OK, so that is everyone up to speed on the basic premise.

Digression: Some people write OK as okay, which is OK. Okay?

Arabic has an 'alphabet' and numerals. As this blog is called Fun with Numbers and there are only 10 of them (whereas there are 28 letters) let's stick to numbers.  Many of them look similar to western numbers but there are differences...

Close, but no cigar*.

The numbers 1 and 9 are the same in both written languages. Whereas a zero is a dot like this (.) and 5 is what we would call a nought or zero (0). The number 4 looks like a reversed 3 and worse still is the number 6 which looks like a western 7 (see pic above). The numbers 2 and 3 are quite easy to remember as they are like sevens but with either two or three ‘points’ on top (so look for the points). The 7 and 8 are Vs, with 7 looking like a regular V and 8 looking like an upside down V which is best depicted on a computer keyboard with the ‘carat’ symbol (^). To tell which is which it is only necessary to remember which way up they go. Think ‘V’ and ‘upside down V’ and you have them in their correct numerical order – namely 7 (V) and 8 (^).

Here is a chart showing how they correspond:

In Arabic, while letters are written from right to left, numbers are written left to right, which is backwards to them but the same as we are used to in the west.

This is the number 19.

It is the same in Arabic: 19.

When we read it we read from left to right. That is to say we read the 1 first and then the 9.  But we say Nine-teen

This is in effect reading the letters backwards (9 first then the 1).  

And we are even smarter than we thought as we do not say nine-one, but because the 1 is actually a 10, we add them together without thinking and it becomes nineteen**. 

And we do the same with the other 'teen-numbers'.

We do this instinctively***. I doubt many of us have thought about it as reading backwards but that is what it is. 

So, clever you! You have a numerical skill you may not have recognised.

But it only works with the 'teen' numbers. Twenty-seven is written 27. One hundred and eighty is written 180 (pronouciation is matter of personal choice) and so on.

So why do Arabic writers write all their numbers left to right when they write their letter the other way?

Damned if I know – but I am working on it and when I find out YOU will be the next to know. If you know tell me and I will pass it on.

* An expression used in any contest where the correct answer would win a cigar. This example looks like 179 but in Arabic is actually 169, which is close but not close enough to win the cigar.

** Of course you could argue that we see the two numbers 1 and 9 as a single shape which we know to be the number 19 but that spoils the fun of being smarter than we thought, so I won't dwell on it.


*** OK, we had it drummed into us at school, and maybe the word should be 'habitually'.

TGV - On the Train

(continued from previous post 'TGV - Paris, Montparnasse') 

Finally our platform was decided but we had to watch the board to find out where to go…

…as the public address system is worse than the British system...

...though it does come with a big light, presumably for sending morse signals which would certainly be easier to understand than the announcer. The camera may be to make sure that you are paying attention or may be a quality control monitoring device, tuned to detect furrowed brows to see if they need to turn to morse code.

Any way the board showed we were dure to depart from platform 5 and we all traipsed off to the lower level.

The train was fully booked and the platform was alive with scurrying life forms scrabbling to find their carriages...

 

Luckily two trains had been stuck together so there was room for all of us.

My carriage is in the second train and is sort of comfortable, but once again there are other people on board, including a baby which makes one apprehensive.

As it turns out the baby is OK for the next four hours. It is a pity the same cannot be said for the mother who chirps and cheeps, throws baby-food all over the place, and makes raspy rattling noises with one of those coloured  plastic clowns designed to give kids nightmares. I wonder if babies are allowed to travel unaccompanied?

Mother and baby seen here 

in a rare moment of repose

The TGV has two types of carriage which, in typical French style, are named Zap and Zen. From what I can work out, Zap is for people who want to work on their laptops and party with their iPods and Zen is for people who want to meditate and not be bothered with mundane everyday matters. Having said that the Zap passengers who want to party must do so without disturbing anyone else (some party!).

I assume the Zen passengers are requested to chant their Ommmmms silently so as not to disturb the Hari Krishnas who are not allowed to ring their bells. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

In fact the only substantial difference between the two carriages that I could elucidate from the man in the peaked cap is that Zen does not have power sockets, so presumably one cannot recharge one’s laptop or mobile whilst recharging one’s psychic batteries.

France, where a peaked cap
still denotes authority

But I was in a Zap carriage (with power sockets) and did not want to disturb the Zenners by crawling around on the floor to check – so it will remain a mystery.

The train also has a bar where you can hire a DVD player and some DVDs, buy magazines and have a snack.

The snacktastick choice here is between a very healthy looking sandwich and an even more ‘good for you’ salad which is so full of fresh-loveliness that I swear it will extend your life by several days. They ought to run a campaign along the lines of: Travel TGV – live forever.

Happy punters can lean on the stagger-tables and swig carafes of vin-wonderful...

…while lesser mortals, condemned to a life of sobriety, must suffer the pitiful conditions in the foreground

 

We arrived at Bordeaux St Jean…

Which has a big clock and probably a lot more fascinating stuff not visible from the train. And then on to Agen...

 

...which is only 40 mins from home, except that on this ocasion I arrived home an hour or so later which would make it an hour or so from home.

So that was Oman, except there is a lot more to say about it, so I will continue with this blog until I am distracted by something else…

...and then I will probably share that with you - the choice is yours.

TGV - Paris, Montparnasse

Managed to flag a taxi to the station. It is only around a kilometre and when we reached the station the meter read €4.50, exactly half the fare I paid in the other direction the night before. I was then informed that there was a minimum fare of €10 which included a ‘Look pal, there is no way you are going to argue the toss over €5 so just pay up.’ sort of look. And he was right.

I just love taxi drivers, they make the world so much more interesting with their “Guess who I had in the cab… I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this country… and just give me a shit load of cash for bugger all”

Smug taxi driver hiding in his Skoda Octavia.

Arrived in plenty of time so I had an opportunity to look round the station concourse. The first thing one notices is the very sparse Christmas decoration, well it maybe not the first thing…

But they are sparse, just the two of them hanging down like that.

In addition to Hercules (for that is he) they have this…

….which I thought was a kangaroo but may be a deer. I don’t know who commissions the art work but I’m sure Mr Freud would have something to say about them. Mind you, €2 for a kangaroo/deer, is not bad.

There is no platform indicated on the board...

 

...so I go for another look round.

 

They obviously expect delays so they provide some distractions. I think they take bets on how long the delays will be and have a number of Tote windows where punters can place their bets directly. For those who prefer their gambling to be a little more immediate there are any number of fruit machines dotted around.

Well, that’s what the porter told me.

It must be said that for fruit machines they are not very ‘bling’ and not many people were playing them.  And now I come to think of it the betting slips looked very similar to my travel ticket.

The porter also said that this woman had just won a dog. She seemed to be checking the terms and conditions on her winning ticket, but I may have misunderstood…

But they are certainly very environmentally aware and have special machines where you can compost your tickets when you have finished your journey.

 

The station is on a number of levels and seems to come apart if this diagram is accurate.

 

There is something soviet about this station, this window has a definite 1930s feel about it.

And it affords a good view of the tracks.

Meanwhile the view of the board is worrying. Is it going to come up with a platform number or a big red CANCELLED?

Watch this space…

La Lune et les Etoiles

The morning brought the usual elegant bustle of a Parisian suburb.

I had a closer look at the outbreak of pavement tentage which indeed turned out to be a marche de noel. Bloody taxi drivers, what do they know. It’s not as if there were no clues.

Not so good as photos go, but it is Santa on left
with added flashing blue lights on the right

Next door decked out with tinsel and baubles

And one for les hommes de saucisson, Harry and Dave.
[fireworks tech team reference. Ed.]

You lookin’ at me?

The caption above could have been voiced by Ray from the American firework company, Zambelli. He is from Rhode Island and sounds like the voice coach for most of the Sopranos, and any number of Italian American New Jersey movie gangsters.

 

There was also a poster for the Champs Elysées gig mentioned by the taxi driver squeezed in between two tents where no bugger could see it. 

 

They certainly wasted their advertising budget there, then.

On the way back to the hotel I found a corner café called the Bistro cent’8, which I thought was a bloody silly name for a café.

But good enough for a caffine shot, so I went in anyway.

 

My coffee arrived and I thought I might nick the cup, but it seemed a little unnecessary so I took a photo instead.

(close-up for the hard of hearing)

Besides, by extension of the logic, if I nicked the cup I really should have had to have the similarly branded saucer and...

the coffe machine - and I was already over my baggae allowance.

When I came out of the cafe,  Paris had done that thing that cities do sometimes and presented my with a ready made photo showing itself to be something other than a rather smelly place, best avoided.

The moon was looking particularly big, shrouded in cloud, and looked like it does in Oman, with a big bite out of the left hand side - turned out to be an eclipse. Typically the best angle was in the middle of the road. I wanted to try an HDR shot and wished I had a tripod and could stop the traffic. Then I remembered my very short emergency tripod. What? You don’t have an emergency tripod? Shame on you! But I had to stand it on the pavement as the road had become too busy, which meant the Christmas stars were too high to be in the frame.

I also took a couple of hand-held shots. As I walked back to the hotel I kept trying for a better shot with a better selection of stars. I only nearly died a few times. Bloody Parisian drivers. You’d think it was asking for the blood of their first born to wait a moment while I stood in the middle of the road and banged off a few pix. Just because the whole of northern Europe is in pre-Christmas weather-related turmoil, they are late for work and there is an ambulance with blue and twos just behind them doesn’t mean you have to be rude.

 

Anyway, despite their complete lack of consideration I got this picture before the clouds closed in. Not a great shot but I was working in conditions of great adversity.

I also got this HDR which is good for colour but completely out of focus. There are so many contorls on this new camera that some basic functions, like focus, get overlooked. I will just have to try harder.

I went back to look at the stalls again when it was light and there was definitely a Christmas theme developing.

but the bunny had done a runner

At the end of the Rue d'Alesia is the Alesia Gaumont

 

I think the bunny had come here to re-assert his pre-eminence in the ‘You lookin’ at me’ stakes and indulged in a little graffiti while he was at it. 

But I may be mistaken.

More Travel Misery (or Air Chaos etc. Pt II)

The misery continued. For a start there were other people on the plane, which is always a nuisance. Some of them were not taking this snow business seriously.

The guy in the souk told her these were
special British snow shoes...

I had a window seat but as I suspected it was over the wing (they do that just to wind you up, I mean why would you want a window seat? So you could admire the flowers in the window box? NO! it's so you can see the ground - you yuk numpty!) And the view was, indeed, second rate, but I did get this shot of the full moon. Little did I realise that we would be meeting again just a few hours later...

The bloke next to me fainted and had to be given oxygen which meant that I had to wait a full ten minutes until he was stabilised before I could go to the toilet.

This mask did not tautologically "drop down from
the panel above [his] seat" it was brought by
cabin crew who were also blocking the aisle.

I didn’t want to go to the toilet, but if I had it would have been most annoying. 

A few minutes later they asked if there was a doctor on board… three bloody times! The announcement kept interrupting the movie I was watching and a I very nearly said I was a doctor just to shut them up.

 

A plane full of doctors watching TV

Anyway, we finally got to Charles De Gaulle, arriving ten minutes late. What is it with these people? The airlines publish perfectly good timetables. If the pilots read them they would know what time to arrive. Just plain sloppy if you ask me.

After the chore of collecting luggage I found the bus stop. It had stopped snowing and started drizzling. The bus stop is just out there on the pavement with no cover. I had to wait for nearly four minutes until a bus arrived so I got a bit damp.

And then, can you believe it, they went to Gare de Lyon and Gare du Nord first. They finally dropped me off at Montparnasse around 10.15. Just because the bus passed these other two stations on the way and there were a few dozen passengers wanting to get off, does not mean that passengers for Montparnasse should suffer such inconvenience. Have they no sense of priorities?

Anyway, I found a cab for the last kilometre to the hotel. As we approached it I saw a row of tented stalls on the pavement.

In an attempt to promote a little entente cordiale I asked the driver if this was a marche de noel, to which he replied that the marche de noel was on the Champs Elysées. Au contraire, I thought, but bit my tongue and suggested instead that maybe it was an encampment for people delayed by the snow. He had the decency to snort at this and said “peut-être”.

He dropped me at the hotel...

on the Rue d’Alésia at 10.30...

Although there were no bars or restaurants open there was a late store nearby where I bought a few cans of Heineken. 

Stretched out in my small, but adequate room, sipping a beer, I was forced to watch my fellow humans suffering at airports from Heathrow to Frankfurt on CNN.  

 

The feeling of compassion that swept over me was almost tangible. As I slowly slumped into slumber I sent them a telepathic message of support: ‘I too have suffered the misery of travel chaos, I share your pain.’ and had another beer.

Two hours later I was woken up by some people talking very loudly in English about some very personal stuff. It took a while to realise what was going on, but I finally turned off the Jeremy Kyle show, got undressed, and slept very soundly for the rest of the night.