FinnishSimon

Last blog! Holy cow, how did we get here? Has it really been a year already? No, not really, just 11 months (11 months and 6 days, actually, but who's counting?). Tomorrow morning I'll be loading my life into the back of the car, at the break of dawn (so around 8 o'clockish), then it's off to nice train station and goodbye France.
Two days of travel later and I'll be finding myself in Brisbane airport, 8h30ish in the morning, tired, scarfed, a bit cranky, but happy to be back and able to breath air at sea level again. Oh! That reminds me, the World Tour of International Airports and Various Train Stations has had a venue change from Bangkok to Singapore, due to recent events.
That's if the tour even kicks off, by the way. The thai coup d'état is about the 4th thing that could go wrong during the tour. Others include:
1. The car not starting due to un-treated diesel in the tank freezing over
2. A general strike at SNCF, meaning all TGVs being cancelled, and,
3. Snow at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport stopping planes from taking off.
Let's all cross our fingers, eh?

Also, the wings may fall off this Qantas plane too...

2nd Last Thursday

Hey guess what? I've only got one Thursday left! That's crazy. This year went so quick... Here's what happened on my second last Thursday:
Grève National d'Education. All the teachers were on strike today, except, of course, my maths and history teachers (yippee!). So, as you can imagine, I had a busy two hour day today. It started with maths at 11, so I thought that it might be fun to go to school on bike (like back in the good ole' days): I was horribly wrong. I'm not sure if I've ranted on enough about that bike, but damn! It has become impossible to ride! The wheels are more than just buckled, they're loose or something; which does have the hidden advantage of turning without moving the handle-bars, but nothing else. There is a leak in the front tyre that I cannot find. The brakes don't work - they actually don't work. You'd think that that would worry me, but, thanks to those crazy wheels, brakeable speeds are unachieveable; to stop suddenly, I just take my feet off the pedals. I'm not crazy about the gears either. Suffice to say, THAT will definitely be my last bike ride with this bike. Hey, I gave this bike a chance (I rode it all the way to Le Pont Du Gard), but it just doesn't wanna play ball!
Anyway, got a bit off track didn't we? Yes, school, we were 7 in maths and 10 in history out of classes of 19 and 33, respectively. And no, I wasn't the only person eating à la cantine. Then, for the rest of the afternoon (we found a bit of spare time between classes, believe it or not) we all played Taboo! and went on the internet in the library.
Oh and the strike? Same reason as last time, teachers losing their jobs and other teachers having to pick up their hours. Except now, they want to get rid of economics class - something that's not going down so well with the economics teachers.

World Tour of International Airports and Various Train Stations

Attention all fans, Simon Kyme will soon be coming to you!
Mr Kyme will soon be embarking on a World Tour and will be visiting (ever so briefly) the following cities:

Nimes (catching the TGV) - December 2nd, 08h53
Paris (flying out from CDG) - December 2nd 19h20
London (flying out from Heathrow) - December 2nd 21h45
Bangkok (exclusive stop-over walk of the airport) - Some time between December 2nd and 4th
Sydney (flying out from Kingsford Smith) - December 4th 08h05
Brisbane (Final Destination) - Arriving at 08h35, December 4th

Mr Kyme hopes to see as many friends, family members and well-wishers as possible on his up coming World Tour of International Airports and Various Train Stations. The tour will cross 10 World Time Zones and cover over 19000 kilometres. Mr Kyme wishes you all well & hopes to see you during the tour.

The Ski Trip

This Sunday my host sister and I went up to the mountains to enjoy a spot of early november skiing. It has been a particularly cold autumn in France, and as a result, there's quite a bit of snow already up on the mountains. Anyway, we thought we'd head up to Les Deux Alpes ski station, about a 1 hour drive from her apartment in Grenoble. I found out I was invited on the Saturday afternoon (and she was planning on driving up to Grenoble that evening). After a mad rush I had my bag packed and we were on the road! We stayed the night in her apartment Saturday.
Completing the journey Sunday morning was a bit of a drama (just a bit), we didn't have a map - just a list of directions from Mappy.fr. A really good list of directions, mind you, that had me completely lost! Anyway, 2 hours and several arguments later we arrive at our destination: the snow! First stop, hire myself some skis. I went to the first hire shop I saw open and ask to hire a pair. He said no. The guy didn't want to hire skis to me. He went on to explain that the station was, in fact, closed - due to high wind.