Pancake brunch

Continuing on from the previous food adventures, we had apple crumble pie and pancakes.

This is the apple crumble after we polished off half of it.

"pie" because there was a crust at the bottom...except that the apples made it all soggy. The top was delicious though :D

This was the weekend before I left for Clermont...Jiamin and I made the apple crumble on Saturday, and on Sunday she made pancake brunch for us (Mah, Dinie and me) and we finished the crumble as dessert.

the stack of pancakes...and still growing! (though it's nearing the end...that's got to be the last or second-last pancake)

After eating, we played poker. Dinie and Mah invested in a poker set (chips, cards and dice)...I think we can consider it the Lyon poker set, to be passed on to the juniors :P I mentioned that I recently learned how to play...and I kept losing. Jiamin and Mah were the big winners...while Dinie and I had to get "loans" from the bank a few times :P

Dinie had to leave early...and later we switched to blackjack (when I had no chips left, so I turned dealer instead). Then later Jiamin took over as dealer, and in the end I somehow managed to sweep the bank clean :P

with my stackS of chips! (Mah had a little less than me)

And if you look closely, I didn't even get paid in full, because I bet 200 and the bank had only 130 left! (we used red=100, green=50, grey=20 and blue=10) That's when the bank went bankrupt :P

Oh well...if only gambling were that easy in real life...

But I'd have already gone bankrupt during the poker game. :P

A l'aise? Bah!

This is going to be another grumble about French spelling. Today we received a collective e-mail from the Creatis lab.

A tous les usagers de la salle ultrason,

Après une semaine d'absence, je constate à mon retour, une négligence inacceptable dans le rangement des outils et ustensiles (parfois onéreux) mis a votre disposition dans la salle ultrasons.
Vous êtes nombreux à utiliser cette piéce et je comprend que le probléme ne soit pas facile, mais si chacun fais un effort, il devient gérable.
Je me permets donc de vous faire un rappel de l'importance a garder au mieux cette pièce rangée et propre, pour le confort de tous les manipulateurs (cela évitera détérioration ou perte de matériel , entre autre).
En vous remerciant de prendre en considération ces remarques pour vos manipulations futurs

François (merci de traduire a vos collégues qui ne serait pas a lèse en français)

The e-mail in itself is noteworthy...it is asking the people who use certain lab materials to put them back properly. *sigh* Is every lab like this? But I guess after someone put liquid soap into the piggy bank that's supposed to be for contributions for the aquarium, this isn't a big surprise... :P (we received an e-mail about the piggy bank, but I don't believe I posted it here)

But that isn't what I wanted to talk about. It's the last sentence between brackets...he says "please translate this to your colleagues who are not comfortable with using French". Except that he wrote "a lèse" instead of "à l'aise". Not to mention that he made a few mistakes in the e-mail as well. (though those are rather common, small mistakes) But imagine telling people to "spell korekly"...you get the idea. C'est toi qui n'es pas à l'aise en français! (You're the one who can't use French!)

Stop, thief!

On Saturday I was so busy blogging about the Puy de Dôme (it's just one post earlier) that I forgot about an incident that happened earlier that day. I was in a small shop (Maison de la Presse, for those who have seen it before), and as I was paying, one of the cashiers (I call them cashiers for lack of a better word, "workers" doesn't seem so nice) suddenly dashed towards the doorway. She grabbed a teddy bear (or some big plush toy, about 40cm tall...I didn't notice exactly what) from a man who was leaving, saying "I'll take that back". Seems that the guy was leaving with that toy tucked under his arm, without paying.

The cashier who was serving me burst out laughing, and kept saying "Il fallait le faire!" (literally "(Someone) needed to do it!", but in this context it's more like "What a thing to try!") Really, I was pretty astonished as well. What audacity...maybe because the 3 cashiers were all women...he knew he'd get away...with or without the teddy bear.

Puy de Dôme

I'm rather tired after a long day, but I wanted to blog about this before I forget all the details :P

I'm in Clermont-Ferrand now for 2 weeks of internship (don't ask for more details), so this morning I went out to town to walk around a bit, and in the afternoon Albin took me to hike the Puy de Dôme. It's a sleeping volcano, the highest peak of a ring of volcanoes in Auvergne (the region where Clermont-Ferrand is situated).

We drove up to an altitude of about 1000m (Albin has a car), parked there and hiked the remaining 400m (roughly) up to the summit. Usually there are buses going up to the top, and we can also drive up, but the road going up was closed to make a new train/cable-car to take people up, so for the moment the buses only go up to where we started hiking.

the beginning of the hike

some way up
(I find that the flowers add a nice touch to the photo :P )

after about 40 minutes (note: I was already tired after 15-20 minutes)
You can see the parking lot from which we walked up...it's on the top-left quarter of the photo.

the view was already pretty good

another view

Only this left to reach the top!

Ten minutes later:

We're arriving! (finally...)

45 minutes? We took an hour to come up...because I had to stop to rest :P

the map of the summit

We came up by the Chemin des Muletiers, and went around the summit before going back down the same way. Col de Ceyssat is where there's the parking lot we drove to.

We turned left upon arriving at the top, going towards Panorama des Combrailles. Then we passed by the "vous êtes ici" star (where I took the photo :P ) and went around the edge of the summit to the other panoramic viewing points.

from the fork in the road just before arriving at the Panorama des Combrailles viewpoint

puy de Côme (the name is thanks to the information plaque at the viewpoint ;) )

from the Panorama des Combrailles viewpoint
(the next two photos were taken from the same place)

the TV/radio antenna at the summit

where we came up (on the right of those brown buildings)

along the way to the next panoramic viewing point

The one with the "red triangle" on it is the Puy de Pariou. That's another volcano that some people climb up, and there's a path going down from it that continues up to Puy de Dôme. Actually the "red triangle" expression comes from someone we overheard. I don't know whether Albin would have used the same expression to point it out to me...

from the Panorama de la chaîne des puys viewpoint

from the Panorama de Clermont-Ferrand viewpoint (do I really need to tell you which town is that? :P )

There was also the ruins of a temple at the summit.




The we went down...we managed it in 35 minutes this time, since we (I) didn't have to stop to rest.

See how high up we were? See the Col de Ceyssat parking lot?

So, all thanks to Albin, I conquered the Puy de Dôme. :D (no way I'm conquering Everest or Kinabalu, so this is good enough, eh? :P )

By the way, while writing this post I discovered that "Puy de Dôme" is the volcano, and "Puy-de-Dôme" is the department. I never knew that there was a difference...

Japanese food on French national day

14th of July is the French national day, a public holiday. Most of the Malaysians here have already gone back for the holidays, but the few of us who are left decided to go out for a sushi buffet lunch.

in Gochi, the Japanese restaurant
(credits to Dinie for the photo, even if it was with my camera ;P I like this photo, everyone's face is clearly seen, you have the table and the sushi conveyor belt!)

a stack of plates that the waitress cleared away (contributions from Jiamin, Dinie and myself :P )

After lunch we went to Place Bellecour where they had just put up (I don't know when, but it was rather recent, after 21st June at any rate) an Only Lyon sign.

the sign

me, Jiamin and Dinie camouflaged in Lyon (and lion, if you permit the pun :P )
Can you spot us?

I love Lyon...er, lion...

A tiny sign telling us not to climb on the metal sculpture. No one noticed it...and I did only because I went to see the lion... (look in front of my feet in the previous photo)

Then we decided to "love" Lyon on its own (so as not to be too tiny on the photo)

me, myself and Y :P

I love my Y... lol

I hold Lyon in my hand...
(argh those people spoil my photo)

After braving the scorching sun to take those photos, we had to cool down somewhere...like Haagen-Dazs ;)


Individual shots:





And that's it...after the ice-cream break Jiamin went home and the rest of us went to see Dinie's place (he just moved in) and played cards there. They taught me how to play poker...so now I know how to play. Only the Texas kind, though. And badly. We played only a bit that day since we didn't have poker chips...then the guys bought a set of poker chips so that we could play that weekend during the pancake brunch.

But that will be another post...

A leisurely Sunday

Read about the first part of the weekend here.

Sunday morning in Vichy, we went out again after breakfast. We went through the same park, and this time we sat down for a while. I took some photos of the scenery this time...

sitting down

what they were looking at, in case you were wondering

I asked them to look over here for a photo (the girls whose faces were hidden pronounced themselves very satisfied with the photo, so I didn't take another one)

And then the guys decided to take their turn when the children left.

Julien

Camille

Julien and Alexis (actually Alexis was the first one to go on it, but I didn't get out my camera quickly enough to get a photo)

After that we went to the town centre.

a passageway (argh, the name of the passageway is lost in the sunlight :( )

a church

We didn't exactly plan to go to the town centre in the beginning...we went because Julien insisted, saying that if we were in a town, we had to go and see the town centre! I must say that I kinda agree...even though I didn't find it quite that important. :P But the centre was really pretty...so it was lucky we went!

some pedestrian street

a square we crossed going towards the town hall

the other side of the square

the rather "special" post office :P

I had fallen back (again) while taking photos, so they were waiting for me under the tree. Here I was approaching them, so they were turning around to continue...just as I was going to snap a photo of them all under the tree. Oh well...

the town hall

we stopped for a while on the steps

Camille's photo

I think it was after that that we went to buy the bread...or had we done it already? Anyway, on the way back, we passed a small marketplace where the sellers were just packing up their stuff...and Camille D decided to buy some strawberries. While he was looking at the strawberries, I discreetly snapped a couple of photos of the flowers at the stall beside it (beside the strawberry stall, that is) (and discreetly because I wasn't sure whether the seller would be happy with me taking photos :P )

the roses are gorgeous :)

nice flower arrangement

Camille with his strawberries
He bought four trays, which makes 1kg in all! (for the seven of us)

When we got back, it was barbecue time again, with pork chops this time.

This time Julien's in charge of the grill.

After that I think we played some more UNO while waiting for the time to pass...Marion and Yi were taking the train at about 3:30pm so that they could be back in Lyon in time to watch the final World Cup match at 8:30pm. Since I wasn't going to watch the match, and Camille and Julien were leaving at 5pm and 6pm respectively, I decided to take the next train to Lyon at 6:30pm. (which would arrive at the Lyon train station at 8:30pm, too late to get home and watch the start of the match :P )

After sending the football fans off at the train station, we returned to Camille's house and played UNO again...until when we had to leave for the train station again to see Camille D off. This time Julien and I brought our bags along as well...no sense coming back when the two trains were an hour apart. Before leaving I managed to get a photo of Camille's magnificent cat (the only decent photo I got, even though I took others)

meow

At the train station we played UNO again after Camille D left, and again after Julien left. I guess that was our "pastime of the day" :P

playing UNO at the train station...the other people there probably thought us a bit crazy :P

All three of us left from the same platform (this one), so that made things a little simpler...we could practically play until the train arrived.

By the way, I kept losing at the end (actually I kept losing that weekend)...Julien who had just learned how to play that weekend beat me right before getting on his train (we were the last two). Oh well...better luck next time...I hope! :P