The La La Song

Charlene has the opening tomorrow for her, and two other Taiwanese friend's Paris Art Show: Metamorphosis of Time.

— Le temps du corps — 40 par Charlene Shih
— Le temps de l’imprimerie — Dialogue remixé de style FF par Li-Ming Cheng
— Le temps de la lumière — La lumière dépasse le temps No°2 par Chi-Yang Chiang

Part of her show is a short documentary film about women artists, and the challenges facing them as they get older. She asked me to write something that:  sounds like a French circus, that is both happy and kind of sad, that uses an accordion with women singing, but not words, just the sound "la, la, la, la".

And so, became the "La La Song".

NOTE: This is just a video that I made for the song, it has nothing to do with Charlene's film. I just took a few promo pictures for the show, and edited them to the song.

Back in Paris

Arrived back in one piece to Paris today, pretty amazing trip for sure. Instead of the typical summary post, I'll write down the actual notes I took at each location...kind of an "in the moment" description of things that happened on the trip:


Paris, France

• almost jumped and robbed by two guys at the bus stop at 2:00am, luckily I was able to run quickly down inside the Paris Metro station to escape them

Cairo, Egypt

• there is no government here, only martial law with the army walking the streets with machine guns...wtf did I get myself into?
• weird pushy tour salesman at hotel, reminded me exactly of the guy with the swords that Indiana Jones shoots with his gun
• scammed by camel jockey guy at pyramids
• power outage at 3:00am at hotel (no other buildings in the area affected), thought it was a hostage takeover situation...walked down 8 flights of stairs to escape only to find out that the power came back on and there was no problem

Luxor, Egypt

• water smells very, very strongly of chlorine...no way in hell I can drink or even brush my teeth with it
• internet down in entire city for three days due to cable break by construction on roads
• so pissed off at people bothering me to go to their stores or ride in their horse carriage I just ignore everyone and pretend I am deaf or from Russia
• someone used a key to try to get into my hotel room while I was in the room, barricaded the door for the night

Athens, Greece

• Greek salad looked great, but tasted like crap
• can wear shorts and no problem with long hair...most people speak to me in Greek thinking I am a local
• excellent Metro system can get anywhere very easily
• forced sweating from intense sun to dehydrate myself and eliminate need to urinate on 2 hour non-stop bus ride from Attica to Athens

Satorini, Greece

• 8.5 hour ferry boat ride from Athens to Santorini...should have flown
• first gyro in Greece, fucking awesome!!!
• Santorini is basically the Greek version of Hawaii
• tried to walk to the beach from hotel in the morning...way too far, turned back after 30 minutes

Mykonos, Greece

• after five sunny days in Greece I finally get a chance to go to the beach...10 minutes before I arrive dark clouds cover the sky for the entire day
• nice/mildly retarded (?) waiter at dinner
• idiot noob on scooter crashed into a wall and would have run over me if I didn't jump out of the way

Samos, Greece

• hotel 25 miles from ferry port...opps
• beautiful authentic Greek fishing village
• Samos Archaeological Museum had many small items that reminded me of the figurines in the movies "The Exorcist" and "The Omen"

Selcuk, Turkey

• scammed by taxi driver going to hotel
• killed one large moth, 3 smaller moths, 4 large ants and 2 fleas (one in my bed) in my hotel room
• hotel smelled badly of moth balls (someone or something die in my room perhaps earlier?)
• crappy Turkish food

Cappadocia, Turkey

• 12 hour night bus ride was pure hell, asshole was sitting in my window seat, but wouldn't move forcing me to sleep in the aisle seat getting banged all night by people walking by
• Turkish food from day tour gave me diarrhea

Istanbul, Turkey

• if you like mosques, you'll love Istanbul...otherwise not too exciting, slightly underwhelmed
• more crappy Turkish food
• best Turkish food I had was at Popeye's Chicken at the Istanbul Airport before my flight back to Paris

While my notes were mostly pessimistic, angry jabs, I had the trip of a lifetime. As scary as Egypt was with only Martial Law, I'd have to say it was my favorite place on the tour. Ignorance is bliss, because if I would have know how fucked up Egypt is right now, I would have never gone there. I've never claimed to be the smartest guy in the world, but I sure as hell know how to take advantage of an opportunity when it comes knocking at my door.

Necropolis of Heirapolis

Roman necropolis of over 1200 tombs in the ancient city of Hierapolis (now modern day Pamukkale, Turkey).



Turkey

Finally arrived in Turkey and on my last leg of the tour. Not sure how much internet access I'll have until Istanbul, so we'll see if I get a chance to post anything before then.

Samos

Samos Island in Greece...next stop in 6 hours, Turkey.



At the Parthenon

At the Parthenon in the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.

Temple of Poseidon

Crappy video from the Temple of Poseidon in Attica, Greece overlooking the Meditarrean Sea. Sorry about the bad audio it was really windy up there.



At the Pyramids

First test to see if I can post via my cell phone. Here's a picture at the Great Pyramid of Giza. Unreal!