Operation Pari Berry Part Deux

Paris in a nutshell:

Beautiful gams and fells dressed to the nines real fine cause hey this is the city of fashion and models and such.


My brothers went to this club and said the bouncers looked like models straight out of that Ben Stiller movie Zoolander - they were in hoodies and posing with that silly ¨Blue Steel¨look.






But yes, this is the place to go to if you like to shop and want inspiration on what to wear. London is eclectic, Paris is Romantic. I can imagine Milan will be sleek in a ghetto fabulous sort of way.

No skyscrapers and beautiful decor on the buildings. There`s a reason why some art freaks go crazy from the beauty of the architecture. You can just feel the history and smell the ancient psychic must in the air. This is a land that`s been people since when people lived in caves. Their history has not been eradicated like other places on earth (Native American and African; save for individual and obscure tribes). Ah the nature of the conquerers. I am sure the rest of Europe will feel this way when I eventually explore it all one day.

French people aren`t snobby. If find them very sexy because of how they openly show passion whether it be raw lust or anger. I guess they show both spectrum rather than mainly aggression that I see on the other side of the Atlantic on my isle. I was a little stoked by it all. Yea! Passion! Alright! And non of that weirdness in the US and Canada towards Black folk. Paris has a huge black population. I have read of the taint, the riots, etc ... so I know this place has its problems with us of ebony skin, but at least it`s a change. As I say to myself, different places have different dimensions of negatude towards my Blackness. What one place lacks in a dimension, they make it up in a totally new dimension. I know with Barcelona, they are weary of color due to their history of Moorish invasion, so I know what to expect when I leave for there tonight. I just didn`t know what to expect here and well, it wasn`t too bad. If I spoke French, looked like a recent African immigrant; perhaps things would have been different. I mean, Black women still fry their hair with relaxers here.

But French people suck at driving. Haha! The Arch de Triumph is a death trap of laneless cars and mopeds going around in a circle. I`m surprised by the amount of folk without bike helmets riding around on their pedal bikes because of the intense traffic and crazy drivers. My dad was like look at that family, they`re going on a death ride. The driver of the night tour van we went on was cutting off people, getting cursed at a lot. He sped around corners real sharp that I felt like I was in Ber,uda again where the roads are so narrow you can`t help but get that effect. The guy even drove us down streets packed with people. I was miffed as people cursed us in French. Yea, cats can`t drive.

You see some American influence - posters for American movies, chain restaurants, etc ... But that`s all over the world. We import French style and wines, and in turn give em`back equivalent quick fixes of fast food, sports and media. Still though, you`d be hard pressed to find a supermarkt and the fast food is only near the tourist areas. Cafes are everywhere and everyone walks. French people are skinny or rather Parisians.

So today I am bound for shopping and a health store and then railing off to Barcelona. I am going to miss these open balconies and little fruit sellers, sexiness, and overall romanticism compared to my isle; but I`ll be back. There are places and things I want to do in this city that having my family around really bars me from doing. My only con, I`m a laid back chick. I can only do feminine for so long. :D

Pari Berri Cha Chah Chah

I`m in Paris.

London was a delight and I would like to spend more time there in the future. Did a tour on a double decker bus that was open at the top. Had a good time making fun of things and being sarcastic with my siblings - tour buses are very touristy. Bought some sushi and a smoothie that said it was for three bucks but knew it was worth 6 dollars. Still though, better than Bermuda prices. FYI there are no trashcans in the city (hardly anyhow) to discourage the homeless. Room serve was my source of grub as my energy bars made me sick with a nasty allergic reaction to the chocolate in them (I barfed). Tea, smoked salmon and avocado was what I got.

Today I left London, took the train under the Channel and two hours later entered Paris. From there I took the metro and then walked to my rental. The rental is great with three floors, a hot tub and two patios.

I got a taste of Paris. On the metro I got to see a splashing of local styles and tastes. I tried out my lame French skills buying two mangoes and two avocados from a middle eastern fruit and vege seller in the metro station - bonjour, merci. Keyboards are all different in setup. I am still getting used to it all.

Compared to London, Paris feels a bit more like Toronto and a bit bigger in feeling. I really enjoyed the London vibe though and miss it, but I've not been out enough to really scope out the vibe here. Part of it is anxiety - I am not familiar enough with the language and thus feel I will fail to connect to interesting people. At times I wish I were travelling sans my family so I can get full exposure, but ah well. My views will change as I get comfortable in this new environment. I just wish I brought a personal camera.

It`s three in Bermuda and 8 here.

Cramped Flight and a Taste of Britain

Coming in from a little posh apartment in London via free internet on an apple computer ...

At 12 ish last night, Bermuda time, my plane zoomed off into the dark skies. I'd never seen Bermuda at night. What a beautiful sight to see that tiny isle sparkling like a jewel in a sea of darkness - hook shaped amber on velvet. Before long the clouds swallowed us up and we were off to spend six hours in coldness and crampness as we (my family and I) attempted to sleep comfortably. Blankets weren't complementary and cost 3 pounds or 6 dollars (along with neck pillow, headphones, eyecover). With the a/c on so high they practically force you to buy their package else face hypothermia. Made it through though. I am thrifty so I brought a blanket and extras anticipating the highway robbery. There was some extreme turbulence, which was fun. Seriously, planes don't scare me anymore. They just don't. Manufactured scare tactics for people who watch too much news. There are better things to be paranoid about.

After one spell of sleeping, my legs sprawled over my younger brother's legs since his legs were long and needed the extra space, plus we were sharing my blanket, I awoke to the sun and a glimpse of British landscape below out my window. The clouds were tiny, white and fluffy. I was surprised. I figured it would be like the US and it's murky grey miasma whenever I entry its airspace. Britain on the other hand was clean and welcoming. The lack of suburbs and the small farm hamlets were charming and very attractive. British time is four hours ahead of Bermuda time, so it was well into the morning when our plane landed. In a flash we were through customs (a very easy process compared to stringent Bermuda and scare tactics US). There weren't any custom guards there to check our bags even! Security was relaxed and not uptight like entering a US airport. Even though the airport was crowded, everyone flowed, unlike Toronto airports. :P

Outside the airport the weather is in the 70's and very nice. Atmosphere is chill. We took a cool old school taxi to our hotel and got to peer out at Londoners. The city looks like Georgetown DC, but the people look like they're from downtown Toronto, only more relaxed. It's a totally different vibe here and I am enjoying it. I suppose, that suspicion that I am used to feeling, even in Bermuda, is just gone - no terrorism paranoia or the fashionable fear of the moment in the States (cause it was there even before 9/11); no blatant suspicion of dark skin as in Canada; and no social suspicion and conservativeness as is prevalent in Bermuda. My family as a group is still a curiosity though.

So I am going to rest and later on go on a hop-on-hop-off bus tour, shopping, and dinner. I'll write again when I get to Paris.

Euroland: The Vacation Begins

Sooooo I am jetting off into the great blue yonder to a place called Europe for the touristy triplet deal - Spain, Italy, France. Am I excited? Yea. Am I anxious? Of course. I am leaving on a downer note though - my cot damn period is on the verge of starting and it, well it just sucks. I have had to deal with intense swelling, funky hormonal induced emotions, and the realization that I'll be facing cramps on a plane or in some strange hotel room. Boo. Buuuuuut, it'll start and I'll be happy. Grabbing a pad = the end of PMS horror and well, that's totally worth the cramps to feel happy and at ease again.

So my vacation begins tonight at the airport, I've said my goodbyes and now I'm off.

Look out for part II tomorrow while I'm wittering away in jolly Britannia.

Zapping out laser beams Cyclops-style from my mutant eyes of destruction

So today I went to get my eyes checked and pick out some new glasses.


My new Vera Wang frames model V147

Ah ... the state of my old pair could fill a book with its adventures. It all began three years ago ...

"Oooh I like this pair!" I say as I take off a trendy thick black frame.

"Hmmm ... I dunno ... They look similar to your last pair. I like the other pair so I think you should get them." Says the guy I was dating at the time. He holds the other pair in his hands. They're pretty basic, black with a clear inside lining.

"Sigh ... Let me try them on again." I put the ones he prefers on. They fit nice but aren't what I was looking for. "I wish they were fully black like the other pair. I really like those."

"Hey, they probably sell these pair in a solid black." I hand him the glasses and he goes to ask the ladies if the pair he prefers comes in solid black. They don't like him and his stern adamant nature, which he showed them - from arranging my eye appointment to getting there and checking me in. So the ladies basically say yes even though they could produce no catalogue to point out that they do indeed come in solid black. I picked up on this, but I don't fight the unstoppable machine that is him though. I was weaker back then.

"See sweets, they come in all black." His posture and expression speak 'these are the pair I like on you and I want you to get them.' I meekly give in because I want him to be happy.

"Okay, but how soon will I be able to get the solid black pair? I need something right away." The secretaries tell me they have no solid black pair in stock and that it will take a number of weeks to order in. I was a little peeved over it all. I needed new glasses right away being as to how I could not see with the pair I currently had.

"Can she get a substitute frame until her frames come in? She really needs to see." Oh how I wanted to say forget it, let's just get the other pair - the frames I want. Instead after a few minutes of scuffling with the already peeved secretaries I pick out some maroon frames that are of the same style as the ones he liked and pay my fees. The red frames were cool though, cooler than I thought, albeit a little larger than I would like (they would fall off a lot).

The ordered frames were nowhere in sight. Two weeks went by and nothing happened. So he called, scuffle, nothing. Soon it was time for me to head back to school in Canada with him, since he was only in Bermuda on vacation. So more phone calls, scuffles and the day of when I am to leave "yea the glasses are ready." Those secretaries really wanted to punish me for inflicting them with him, although they weren't very helpful or professional to begin with. So I get the frames and lo and behold, they are not solid black, they were the very pair I tried on from the get go, slightly brown and totally not what I wanted. At least they were smaller, but I liked those red ones. I wanted to say that I wanted to keep the red ones, but again I said nothing because he put in so much fight to get those frames.

Later on I suspected that maybe he wanted me to get those frames because they were the cheaper of the two. I know they looked decent on me, so he paid attention to that, but I know he didn't want me spending all my money on glasses. Instead he wanted me to focus my money on us, even though it was money my mom gave me for school, not for a boyfriend. We had some issues in that area and I never spoke up about it.

Years later I halted getting my eyes checked and picking up new frames, even when my frames were scuffed up and beat up to the point where they were held together by black duck tape; scratched lenses; peeling plastic. In addition, my eyes became a little weaker and needed stronger lenses - ones that would make my world a little sharper and elevate my eyes from the slighty blurry fog it was slowly descending into (and my night vision sucked sucked sucked. Zombies NEED night vision).

The whole experience three years ago left me powerfully mortified. I did not go back to the vision centre because it was a reminder of my failure to stand up for myself over risking the anger and disagreement of someone I cared about. I was whipped, emotionally and physically. It seems so trite and domestic when I reread all of this, but at the time I felt so frustrated and confused and powerless. It wasn't as if I couldn't do anything and didn't try to on numerous occasions, but to have been coddled and deconstructed for so long that when you do try to break away it is so weak and pathetic and that those that hold you down use it as evidence as to why you need them. In your mind's eye you see your terrible stake at independence and hold it as proof as to why you can't function in life without him. Not only were my eyes in a fog, but so was my view on life. I went on to endure two more years of that fog until I couldn't take it anymore.

Four years of fog is a lot and I am clearing it all away, making my stand not just for independence but self reliance. I'll always be dependent on others for something, but I'll never be dependent on others to live my life for me because I let myself stumble into thinking I am not strong enough to do so for myself.

So I went somewhere new, and they turned out to be more professional with better glasses and better staff. I have new frames on the way, very feline Vera Wang frames of the style I wanted to get sooo long ago, and I feel very happy.



As soon as I get my paws on em', these old frames of mines are getting a good and proper burial at sea in a shoe box tied to drift wood with a eulogy and everything. I don't ever want to see them again.

RetroFuturism, SteamPunk, And All That Goodness

So recently I got to rewatched Gargoyles and scooped out this movie called Mutant Chronicles. And got a surprise - they both existed in a world that is called the "Retro Future."

Retro Futurism is a fantastic genre. You take a past age or decade and you place its spirit in technology or a future age. The result is flying ships decorated in mod; Sherlock Holmes looking characters riding on horseless chariots to solve crimes on a distant world; Mayans or Egyptians zooming around in awesome technology. The possibilities are endless when it comes to Retro Futurism and you can reinterpret any age and make a retro future with it.

You take take Retro Futurism in two directions. The first is is taking certain aspects, the soul, of an age and giving it futuristic technology during its time period or in a separate future (the far future after an apocalypse) or dimension. The next is speculative fiction produced during a time period. An example of the first would be something like say Porco Russo. Here you have circa 1940's air pirate. It is somewhat of an alternative history. The technology is not high or very futuristic, but it is taking the spirit of that age and putting a spin on it with the air pirates. Another, but better example would be say Vampire Hunter D. This takes sampling of the 1700's and it's styles during the age of enlightenment and mixes with some styles from the mid 1800's. Amid all of this you have iron machine horse, spaceships, and laser weapons. Very cool. An example of the second would be say Metropolis. Here you have the future as envision by people from the 1920's with robots and super cities. Another example would be 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with its Captain Nemo and his submarine. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen plays off of this piece of fiction. Alan Moore takes speculative fiction from the late 1800's early 1900's and weaves it together to form a tale of famous literary characters who wield fantastic technologies not of their age.

Have I made this thoroughly confusing for you yet? lol. There are many genres of Retro Futurism. Let's take a look at a few:

SteamPunk/Foglight: This takes everything from the Age of steam engines and uses it to craft the future. H.G. Wells is a huge inspiration. You get a lot of early science fiction from this age that can be taken to inspire tales from modern writers as it did with Alan Moore.

1900 - early 1960's: You know, aliens on every planet; jet packs; bubble shaped space helmets this is everything before man actually went to the moon and developed more powerful probes and telescopes.

1900 - Now: Each decade is marked with a certain soul that is ripe territory for Retro Futurism. Let us look at the soul of our decade: Terrorism. This has shaped our decade in a monumental way. Cellular technology has expanded and gotten smaller and smaller (120 gig ipods); internet is growing bigger with blogs, while dot coms have died; space exploration and other technologies have leveled off; environment is in peril; and bioplague haunts our every corner. Right now is a very social time as the earth goes from turning outwards to inwards. We won't really feel the spirit of this age until ten to twenty years down the road.

Above I mentioned Gargoyles. This cartoon takes place during the early to mid 90's and has futuristic technology that meshes with the time. Side by side with great flying machines, robot battle suits, cyborgs, and cloned beasts and genetically spliced humans you have boom boxes, mullets, rat tails, 90's lingo, disks, and heavy computers. The show represents 90's retro futurism in its glory. But you can find examples of such throughout the 90's in many of its scifi offerings.

With Mutant Chronicles you have a steam/ironpunk lover's wet dream. In it you get future technologies and early 1900's circa WWI wrapped into a delish package. They even throw in trench warfare to wet our tongues. The style of wear, the ship design, the buildings, the workings of technology everything is wonderfully steampunk. The movie is pretty bad, but for its genre it is very appropriate and you can only appreciate the attention paid to making the film as true to steampunk as possible.

You can argue that given some time any scifi can be Retro Futuristic. This is true because we are only humans and can only envision the past and future with perspective to our place in time and society. Retro Futurism is based so much on where and when. If I were living in some other part of the world, my idea of a spirit of an age would be totally different from now. The whole genre could even fail in some areas. Then again, it is all up to the imagination of the fiction creator. Retro Futurism is very Western.

Here are a list of movies that are out right retro futurism:

Steamboy
Vampire Hunter D
Time Machine
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Escape From New York
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Back to the Future II
Star Gate (Egyptian space aliens)
Laputa
Howl's Moving Castle
Metropolis
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Mutant Chronicles


Sigh ... I will expand this list as more flicks come to me because there are tons more out there which begs for attention. Best to explore and be aware that retro futurism is present in so many films. Also check out the wikipedia entry on this fun genre.

Letting Go and Frankly Doing What I Want

So I am in yet another mire. In a few short weeks I am jet setting to Europe and have some languages to brush up on and some planning to do; I am working on projects that'll make future scholarship committees have boners; and am getting my stuff together for school in the fall. In all of that I get so insular. My past has led me towards squashing my inner rebel fighter demon and just doing what others think is comfortable. Frankly, I am tired of that. I don't like it anymore. There is doing what one needs to survive and then there is doing what one needs to survive. I think I have been doing a good ob to deconstruct that though, but at times I really feel the weight of it all. I would ever so love to just disappear in some steamy jungle or wilderness or quote unquote country that ain't like the West and its haughty attitude and lifestyle. I want paradise and I want it now and it is this desire that is destroying me and putting me into a mire. I need to find that slice here and now and just live it up happy, now. So many things I have done this past year to further myself and now I realize that my biggest challenge of all is delaying my perilous habit of instant gratification. A little restraint and will power never hurt no one.

So what can I do?

Meditation - I hardly do any and I should set aside time each morning and evening to do this. Perhaps taking a yoga class would help too.

Internet Liberation - I spend to much time on this beast. It has become my life blood. I suppose a goal would be no internet for all of August. I know there are things I need to do online - research for various endeavors, contacting people, etc ... But that takes mere minutes and at max an hour of raw online time. The rest of the time I spend browsing, not being productive. A month of productive only internet at 1 hour max a day would be best for me. And I will expand that as I go.

Running and Walking - I love these two activities. I like waking up early while it is still dark and running for an hour or so. Too late and the brutal sun, 9-5'ers, and everything in between slays me. My body enjoys the exercise and I am pumped for the day as long as I don't over do it.

Rawness - I admit, although most of my diet is raw food, it is typically of the "junk" raw food type. I don't eat enough hearty green salads which should compromise the bulk of my diet. Instead I eat raw bars and other such filler foods that are certainly not giving my body what it needs. And after that, I eat too much fruit. Priorities in my diet should be green green green and a little in between. :D

Those are good starter goals. I can expand later.