Joe Chin

It's that time of the year

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Christmas is almost here and for family in the US Thanksgiving is here. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a real equivalent here. The French didn't find themself in a foreign land and unwilling to eat the local food. They have no reason to worry about starving in the winter. And they didn't screw up the relationship with the locals afterwards.

Here, Christmas glides in easily with a few national holidays and school breaks between now and then. Already, the shops have put up their Christmas wear and the scent of apple and cinnamon is wafting in the air as the new perfume for this winter. As I'm typing this I wonder what I should be buying. I've already started my list of stores I won't be shopping at this Christmas.

• Those that make me buy a bag for the convenience of carrying all the shit I bought from you home. Really, which idiot in charge thought this was a good idea? It's bad enough I'm giving you 200 large, now you want to charge me .10€/bag so I can carry it home. C'est pas juste. And you know who you are.


• Those that have too much or not enough heat. This might be an inconvenience. But if I come into a place I don't want to stay in. Don't give me a reason to leave. It's bad enough that I'm carrying a lot of things, and a coat. If you see ripples of sweat on my forehead. I'm on my way out the door.

I've got more to say...stay tuned

Out of Ink

I hate it when a device tells me it can't do something for no good reason. For printer makers this is especially true. They've gotten into the habit of squeezing you at the backend that you are left with 2 choices, buy a new printer or buy new printer cartridges that cost as much as a new printer. No matter what you're still getting screwed for that print. In my case I have an Epson Stylus Photo 790 that is refusing to print right as I ma printing some important documents. It's just a black/white form, the black cartridge is half full while the color is nearly empty. The great thing about this is I rarely print in color. I prefer to go to the photostation and get my photos made on their excellent FUJI.
The machine could just warn me and let me go about my business. Instead everything comes to a full stop until I replace that cartridge. How it managed to go empty while barely being used? I have my hypothesis. After searching the web I found a site run by some smart russians who have the answer.
Now the world is in equilibrium.

r

Only in Paris...

I'm walking down Rue Custine the other night and walking past me is this little kid. With a cigarette in his mouth. And he's puffing away like he's been doing it all of his very short life. I wonder what he thinks of the smoking ban that comes into effect next year. He probably doesn't care nor reads the newspaper.
Here's something I didn't know. Approximately 20% of Parisians are smokers. This is a very visible and vocal minority. And it ruins the image of foreigners of Paris. You know where we pull up to our local bar to have "une clope et une cafe".
I wonder what percentage of >10 year olds smoke in this city?

Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris

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I watched An Inconvenient Truth last night and it was a really good documentary about Global Warming and how its going to have a greater effect on our lives, if it already hasn't. I've taken classes in meteorology in college with a cool, sleepy professor, Prof. Snoke. He cleared up a lot of errors the popular media had about global warming. So as I watched this film made 5 years after I had taken this class. I'm still hearing the same errors that have been corrected by scientists.

But the overall message is still the same. In the coming decades things are going to get a lot hotter. I'm curious as to how hot its going to get in the UAE. It is one of the hottest real estate markets in the world and the average temperature is already unbearably warm for a lot of people.



Also, a frog will jump out of hot water no matter how slow you turn the heat up. They're not that stupid to be cooked alive.