Since my exams are going to end in june next yr, i'd better start now! just finished a paper yesterday and will have one almost one every 2 or 3 weeks right till next yr. there's no study break like in NUS where we can cram!

France is basically this big country with lots of interesting geography. In the east, we have the Alps and Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in the world, for skiing. In the south , there's Nice and Cannes, the great summer beaches. I was at Vichy for a language course and there were dormant volcanoes in the region, otherwise known as the Massif Central.

The "villes" are also different as u travel in the different departments. For example, pple from Marseille have a very different accent from the parisians. Those from Alsace are also often "ostracized" as "germans". In Bretagne, it apparently rains once a yr, from Sept to March.

Here at the university, most of us are "tourists", even the French from other parts of France. Last night, I went to watch the film "Chungking Express" by Wong Kar Wai in this cinema which is showing all his films for the moment. On the way, this French student from Grenoble recommended the opera and also some theaters to me. Which is what Paris is known for, isn't it? The little cafes, the bars with concerts and all that is art. Well, since it's getting cold and dark early, I guess the best activities are indoor ones for the moment. There're also improvisation matches, or French xiangsheng? U have 2 teams of about 3 with a referee who gives a theme. After about 2minutes, each team sends out the no. of pple asked for and they have to improvise to act out the theme. They might even try to make a scene commencing each sentence with a diff letter from the alphabet. After that, the audience votes with a card, one side for each team. I went to watch a match where our sch team participated and it was really cool.

As for the people, I can't say I know enough of them to make a generalisation. Not sure that it's good to do so, in the first place. With the administration, we often hear, "J'arrive" which means "Wait a moment. I'll attend to you in a moment." They talk a lot about the weather and they day can start well or terribly depending on the state of the sky.

The main dailies here are Le Monde and Le Figaro. I'm not sure if you can find them easily in Singapore. The former is very serious and if you're wondering, I don't understand much if I flip through. The latter is strongly influenced by the right, ie the party of Jacques Chirac. For now, we get Le Figaro Etudiant free once a week at the hostel and it's comprehensible.

For everyday life, most people buy their groceries from the supermarkets eg. Intermarche or the hypermarkets eg. Carrefour, Auchan. When I say hyper, I mean really big! You risk getting lost in them but they've everything at a good price or as they say here, bon marché (good buy). Only thing is that they're often at the outskirts of a town to have enough space so you waste travel time and cost. It's best to have a car!

Some weeks ago, some beef infected with CJD was found in some hypermarkets so there's this huge uproar about animal flour and the mad-cow disease now. I'm trying to avoid beef for the moment.

Transport is mainly by bus, metro and since I live in the suburbs of Paris, RER, a regional express railway network. A trip on the metro/bus costs about S$1.25, regardless of the distance. No rebates for travel within 1 hour since most people use single-trip tickets, etc. On the RER, it depends on the distance you travel. The parisian region is divided into 5 concentric zones, with the main district, Paris Centre, occupying Zone 1. For example, I'm in Zone 3 and it takes about SS$2.20 to reach Zone 1. To get to the main airport at Charles-De-Gaulle at zone 5, it would cost you about S$15. Public transport stops just before 1 am. After that, there's the NoctamBus, like our TIBS NightRider for each area. Taxis are reputed to be expensive so I've only tried once with 3 others and it was realtively reasonable for the short distance we took.

Well, that's about it for now. Tomorrow is the 3rd Thursday of November, so it's the grand arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau, a wine that has to be drunk fresh. I saw the banners in Marché last year. I was really excited about it but a Marseillais here tells me that they inject chemicals into the grapes so that they are ready for the 3rd thursday of November every year, to attract the tourists. I'll try and taste it, nonetheless but if you have the chance, let me know what you think of it!

Voila the summary of my impressions of France for the moment. As always, comments are welcome!