The French Saucisse

unlikely to get it right

Actually I have realised that I was unable to keep up with blog post, maybe because I am french or just simply because I am too lazy ...

However I will try to really get into it and keep writing, I might even decide to switch to french as it could be easier, or not.

Anyway, I won’t get it right but it does not matter after all, I will surely have this blog truffé de fautes either spelling mistakes or grammatical incongruitées and worst of all the structure will be awful. But I'll keep trying.

For instance this morning an hour before my usual time at 4.30am, I got up and decided to get on my pomme to watch one of my favorite TV series. My day had started the best way possible.

I won’t be able to it tomorrow though, as I have finished watching the 3rd episode and now waiting for the 4th one to come up ... Well the swell will be on, and the sun high in the sky, the lovely temperature outside (around 40 deg. C) will perfect my tan so hopefully all will be starting good too.

The new Double Arches Standard

We are a fast food generation and all over the world we are a fast food nation.

The double arches have defined the standard but not the content of the fast food and the protocol over the year have sank so deep inside that without thinking about it we are to reproduce the concept and re create the concept over and over, through a variation of effects and styles.

For example, let’s set the picture;

We are in the middle of now where, say in non western food type of countries, which could be anywhere in South Asia

Typical workers and very much work oriented, which means that we have no time to prepare any kind of food during the lunch break. In all circumstances we are unable to cook well and the best we can achieve is ready made noodles.

We live in a very small village and community, and we have access to a restaurant serving asian and western meal.

There we are, we have the people, the place, the facility and the cars and the much needed mobile phone preferably a Nokia but it works with other brands too.

The protocol for lunch is very simple;

• 11.20 to 11.30 – Send a SMS to the restaurant’s person in charge with your preferred choice for the day

• 11.50 to 12.05 – get in the car leave work, get to the restaurant drive-in, fetch your lunch, pay at the cashier, and go eat somewhere suitable, which can be home of any place you fancy having your lunch at.

• 12.30 – get rid of all the rubbish and have a nap before going back to work. If you are at home you may also go on the PlayStation or internet for a while to check out on the latest news or email that you might have miss during lunch.

Thousand miles from the closest McDonald we have managed to set our foot and standards again. That’s so brilliant. If we were a bit more high tech (we are not so clever after all or to lazy maybe), we could have set up an online menu that you click on and a direct debit system. That would have made our life even simpler. But for now that’s more that enough and we are still liking the endless discussion that we have with the restaurant staff because the order has not been well understood or the meat is too cooked or they forgot to leave the dressing on the side.

Anyhow, in fact we have done better than setting up our standards. We have improved it and suited it to our needs, to the needs of our generation and time. We have not been restricted to a system like internet explorer, we are more into and open source system Mozilla type and we have transformed the “fast food” into the “slow food fast pick up”. We have more time, good quality food and we can even sit at a table if we want to.

I don’t know if that concept can be developed elsewhere, but I believed it would work anywhere in the world and particularly in the bigger cities, where you have no time at all for lunch but you dream of one. What’s the point after all of waiting for a table at restaurant then order, then wait for your food, which gets on your nerves anyway because it’s not what you wanted in the end.

Give me a good location in New-York, London or Paris and I’ll make it happen. I’ll surely be setting up the new double arches standard… Think about it (and I am not being sexist), what’s best than going home and your meal is ready and table is set. I am sure you are all loving it, cause you don’t have to worry about it.

Over Rated Hoi An

I remember enjoying so much this little village called Hoi An. But god, after over 16 months of going there almost every other weekend, I've just realized how much it has changed.

I used to say - great let's go to hoi an this week end and enjoy the food, and have a relaxing time. -

Well that time is long past I'm afraid, and although I still enjoy the food at Cargo, I'm now disgusted by all the biz that the Vietnamese have started to impose on us! There's no way I'm going to splash more that I feel a lot of things are being sold for. So rather than trying to discuss prices that are written nowhere, I just pass.

I still have a bit of a buzz for the Ha An Hotel, which is calm and quiet (except for the room located on the ground floor of the main building, where you have a good chance to be woken up by 6.30am, so if you want to enjoy yourself and sleep in, try another room), the Cargo and the pub crawl that we do once in a while with my beloved drinking buddies.

Cargo has a good range of dishes, mostly western that are enjoyable except for the odd guacamole that for some unknown reason is either gone missing or just does not have the right taste.

You will be to choose from stirloin beef, pork migon, tuna steak, fajitas and a very extended and delicious range of dessert home made. My favourite being Mango cheese cake, but I would also have a foret noire, or tarte au citron or a strawberry passionata. All is real good without exceptions and you won't be ripped off. Breakfast are also as good and the eggs Florentine ranks at the top for me. Being french will force to stuff myself with the extra pain au chocolat or croissants and a mouth watering  smoothies.

So Cargo is a very recommendable place to me.

Don't get trapped by the over rated Mango, which is rather fashion and from where you will go away with a huge bill and still an after taste of not being utterly satisfied by what you've just had for dinner. However, the only reason I would get lost there, is for their "passion rumba" cocktail; delicious mix of fruits and rum, but be aware, highly dangerous after few ones - Forget the Mojito or Caipirinha, go for the Passion Rumba.

• Tam Tam Cafe, could be before or after diner prelude to a pub crawling evening. Before and After will surely do after the Tam Tam Cafe.

• Then The Beach Bar. You'll have to get a ride on one the of motorbikes that are waiting outside the bar to get to the beach side. Beach Bar is really packed during the summer season, most likely with western backpackers or visitors from across the planet.

• Then the Salsa Bar, where if you are lucky you'll enjoy a step or two of Salsa dance, but so unusual      that I doubt they really run Salsa class. Maybe in the old days?

Beach Bar and Salsa Bar can be done in one way or the other.

There are a few other places that you could go to, but chances are that you won't find the hype of Hoi An at these places. You can try the upper class Victoria Resort, but ... no you don't really want to go there, a rip off too, and the director is French and highly bad tempered, the food is crap and it's too far from the city center. Actually I just don't want to spend 160$ a night and not get a good diner / breakfast. So once again pass.

As for the rest of Hoi An? Just don't get sucked in all the shops that are trying to sell everything and anything that you would get in any other cities in

Vietnam

but for half price. Just pass, it's not worth it, even for the few handy craft items that I used to like.

You might though still try an excursion on Cham island; very good day out, with clear water to swim in and white sandy beaches.

Hoi An is just turning into a very cheap touristy place, which is a shame. The town has a great potential and some of the restaurants on the beach side have very friendly staff and very good crispy spring rolls.

I will miss the lazy afternoon on the beach with the old lady trying to sell bananas, pineapple and cigarettes when the upper class resorts will have invaded all the good spots ... but not the ripping off.

Rats des Villes et Rats des Champs

In the Kingdom of Far Far Away and a bit, about 12000 kms from another country called France for example, there are differences across this long stretch of land that I was not really aware of.

So here I go, away from my home sweet home; the one a bit further in the K.o.F.F.A., to the Big City. As a matter of fact hundreds of millions people practice that every day, week or month, but for us not so frequently and would be more like every 3 or 6 months. I am amazed that it takes me twice as much time to go to the airport as to fly to the B.C.

Nonetheless, I finally land safely and start to unpack once settle at my temporary accommodation called also hotel. I am already a little bit surprised that people seems to speak or understand what I am trying to say when I express myself in an approximate form of language close to English. But my surprise goes far beyond that, when I reach this very fancy hotel at the other end of the city, where I had decided to go and check out on what is called "an MBA Fair".

First of all, my English probably very rusty as my memory is too, played that funny trick on me of not remembering the exact definition of what is “a Fair”. More to it, I have added to that, that I have a cold, flu or whatever, which got me sleepy sneezy and congested to the point that I wish I had stayed in bed rather than being out there.

Anyhow, here I am sitting in this conference room with a bunch of young citizens from the B.C. and who don’t sound at all like the people I’m seeing every day. Their English sounds as good as mine or even better, their accent is sometimes so mild that I wonder were they are really coming from and their attitude is kind of arrogant, which for a frog like me is quite an insult in itself, but also sure that they will rule and govern the world!

However so sure of their destiny as they can be, and seeing the receiving side bunch of pretentious American ladies vice-director or whatever blah blah from MBA this or that Global Management and so on, I start to ponder whether I am really awake, half dreaming or simply not at the right place.

All together I am lost and I feel like the “rat des champs” in between of all those “rats des villes”, “bobo” aka “bourgeois bohemes”, so I finally prefer going back to the kingdom of far far away and a bit; where I can wake up slowly, look at the sea right in front of me, palm trees on my right and side, the cows not so far that are looking at me, who’s half awake half dreamy but sure that nobody is really pretending to be someone else but himself, and eat up my pain au chocolat while drinking mon chocolat chaud.

One down

Well, it was all about guts, but the French manage to pass through the Irish test. So we are now one up, and I'll be able to avoid grief and being bullied by my so loved English friends. That's says the least, because we've been through a very difficult time lately and it was not that enjoyable.

But we are still up, and tomorrow we might take our revenge once and for all?

- Go England -

We'll all sit frogs and pommies at this "bar / restaurant" called "Tam-Tam cafe", in the kingdom of far far away Vietnam and watch England beat Samoa, or not? We have a deal anyway; a pint to our English pals for each point Samoa is going to put over the line or across the "H".

And to be fair they might win, and not get an once of beer, but will they really care as they'll suffer an utterly and well deserved beating otherwise.

One down for France, one to go for England.

- Go On England -