street blur sounds but no smell

Clichéd scene it may be, but the blur seems appropriate over the last few days.

My blurs are different sources too; business work and the muzziness of a cold have aggregated along with that need to keep going and not give away too much of my generally sluggish feeling.

I can tell I'm recovering now and my senses are returning to a more normal balance. It makes my late attempt to do something from the street photo instructions seem out of kilter. I can more or less hear the scene above, but until my cold subsides I'm not sure how well I could smell it.

plunk

I decided I'd plunk a few bets into the Olympic lottery to see whether it was practical to get any tix.

Like many, I thought about the odds based upon the many venues and different sports combinations. My fall back would be something like the cycling, which it's possible to see free from the roadside across a decent swathe of London.

The more interesting option is around things in the main complex. The "I was there" factor.

Fortunately, diamond geezer had already worked through the options in a similar way to that which I'd do. Along the lines of 'it has to be at the main venues but its worth bidding for something less popular'.

I decided to do a mix of popular and less popular main venue events as well as a stab at the opening and closing ceremonies.

Time will tell.

this was not part of the plan

I've been operating for the last couple of days on a 'low' setting.

An ickle bug has somehow jumped onto me creating various unpleasant symptoms.

I know it will be really bad if I start to find the cherry flavoured sucky sweets pleasant; they are something that really only taste to me of medicine.

laduree

A small amount of time hanging around in cafes before back into the usual mayhem of meetings and schedules.

la différence

Usually when I'm travelling for business there is little time to see the places that I visit. That's unless I'm there for a while on some kind of assignment, when I do manage to get out. So despite being in Paris three times in the last few weeks, this is the first time that I've really had a chance to amble around, take in some sights and sit in cafes.

Yes, I've been in Paris on my own time rather than for work, and that makes quite a difference to the perspective.

I do know my way around pretty well and have stayed in plenty of different spots in the past, so there is a familiarity to the geography and the way things connect together. I'll admit that I mentally transpose London's format onto Paris when I think about some of the areas, with Gare du Nord as Liverpool Street, the Champs Elysee as Oxford Street and the Eiffel Tower as the part around Waterloo. The Rive Gauche is the bit by Southwark. Its a weird way to think of the areas, but it works for me and its the only city where I have that kind of arcane geography, useful for calculating walking distances.

Of course, the actual areas I've just described are uniquely Parisienne, and everything from the weather to the police look very different.

But that's another story.

Paris

still in Paris

Places

I am in Paris tonight but i only just realised I've been in a different place every night this week.

keep cool and carry

Almost a Wordless Wednesday moment.

prinsengracht

It may be two forty in the morning, but I've just finished work until my 0700 call.

blur

Maybe a quiet blog week as I'll be spending most of it in planes, hotels, offices, cars and taxis.

beats per minute

An early morning bicycle spin today, which was more or less a test that the various parts of the bike in question were functional.

I've been out a few times over the last few weeks but on a different bike with extra lights and other paraphernalia associated with the wintery months.

My last trip on the bike with the thin tyres was the day I slithered rather ungracefully to the icy ground and even now I have the last remnants of the scrapes to my knee.

It started today with me squeezing the tyres and noticing the front one was too squidgy. A few moments with the footpump fixed that and the back tyre seemed okay. I clipped on the little speedo/monitor gadget and remembered to press start.

Pleasant early morning, birds chirping, little traffic and then after about 20 minutes a beeping sound.

The speedo unit was beeping at me. By this stage I'd gone up and down a few hilly bits and was starting to feel the exertion. Except the unit was saying my heart rate was about 35 bpm. That's low. It said it was too low. It certainly didn't feel like 35. More like at least 135.

I decided it was better to switch the unit off and read the instructions again.

cat's eyes

I've been listening to the Cat's Eyes album, which is by Faris Badwan, frontman of the Horrors, and Rachel Zeffira the opera singer.

But this isn't a faux classical trip, just a classic.

The first time I heard it as an album was in reverse, courtesy of that iTunes thing where a CD's tracks get reversed in 'recently loaded' or whatever its called.

And the first striking thing I noticed was the space on the sound. Really wide - a kind of old school analogue stage with the music rolling gently away. I continued with the reverse listening and decided that this was one chilled album.

Most of the songs are only two or three minutes long, but the effect is a very solid work of instantly re-listeneable music. There's all kinds of little sonics included, a touch of early Pink Floyd synth and Cor Anglais on a track called 'Bandit' plus sweeping violas and vibraphones dotted here and there. Laura Palmer would have played it at Twin Peaks.

There's channeling of 60's style pop, and some tricks played with the vocals without resorting to the annoying comedic ueber-autotuning on most of pop radio output at the moment.

Spacey trippy, pass the jasmine joss.