Back in germany

So I’m in the thalys. Going back to Münster for a few Days. I spend all my holidays in Paris, mostly with my parents and my sister.

Seeing for a long time gave us the opportunity to talk a bit about politics which was really interresting. I met my cousin Jeanne yesterday and had a great discussion with her too. She is working a lot for a burkenese(is that right?) association, and it was really great to get more of the African perspective. Everytime I talk to her I realize I should spend some time there. It is also funny to see how her studies -philosophy, anthropology and sociology- shapes the way she talks but also how she considers things.

Discussing with all of them, as well as recent books I started to read and the events that are taking places since September have made me realize, in a much stronger and clearer way then ever before that the actual avatar of capitalism, the so called “financial capitalism” is really our main enemy in tge pursuit of better life and just society. Somehow we need to get rid of it if we want the situation to get any better, be it in africa, china or at home in France or Germany.

I will close with a citation by Rawls which I find a very interresting thought:

If the responsability of keeping care of an object is not given to an agent, the object tend to deteriorate.

The citation is approximate. It is introduced as moral justification of property. Somehow it would be interesting to see what would happen if stock holder (and CEO’s to a lesser extend) were accountable to society (or/and there employee’s) for the well being of the company they possess (or are in charge of). That would be the price to pay to take profits out of it.

Paris, movie update

Here we go again, looking back it always seems like i need a few days to adjust to new situations. Funnily enough, the longer my period of stay, the more time i need. Does it mean that i managed “better”, this time around? In some sense yes. I pretty much devoted myself to one thing, and i followed it pretty closely:

Cinema
I think i manage to view quite a few good movies, even though i feel like i missed a few. More on that later.

Eric and I continued to go to action ecole ones more, this time to see:
Gentlemen prefers Blonde Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, well the movie was thoroughly entertaining, you couldn’t possibly go wrong with that 😉

I watched Sakuran the next day. I wasn’t completely convinced by this film. I don’t think the music matched that well with the rest of the film. Call me a traditionalist, but the “arty” and elaborate ambience of the red light district don’t mix well with pop and rock sound. The main actress although regularly felt out of place with her strong, and very “Yakuza”-like talk (deep loud voice, and some expression i can’t really remember that felt coming out of a Yakuza film)[Edit i later read that one should expect such behavior since they are Oiran(prostitutes) and not geishas, i’m still unconvinced that a women in her situation could have such behavior]. The images were really beautifull, but almost to much, the saturation of the color was also overdone imho.

On Friday morning, i read from Epikt’s blog that the Maison de la culture du Japon was doing a retrospective on the Shôchiku, and that i had missed an incredible amount of movies… ;_; I rushed over there to see The Last Samurai, the epic last movie of Kenji Misumi, know for the Zatoichi serie as well as for the Lone Wolf and Cub movies. The movie was great, the story is pretty cool, and even the clichées are kinda fun. The only thing that i didn’t know was that the film was in two part… for a total of about 3 hour. I went out of the movie completely exhausted, and opted to not see the next movie (There was two screening every day one at 15:00 the next at 19:00).

The next day, i saw 君の名は(kimi no na wa; french title: Quel est ton nom). It doesn’t even appear on imdb or other sites as far as i can tell… Granted the link won’t help many of my (few) readers, but google translated it, there some fun in there anyways. Back to the movie though: It was an absolutely fantastic movie! Haruuuuuuuuuuuukiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii , Maaaaaaachiiiiiiiikoooooooo!!!!!!! Great stuff, a sublime melodrama like there aren’t filmed anymore. Can’t say how much i laughed and cried during the movie, it would be shameful 😉 Same problem as the day before, this movie has three episode for a total of 3:05 hours! I lost the count of messed up situations the two lovers had to face… I was better prepared this time and ready to see the next film. Sadly i decided to first get some food, and when i came back, at 18:30 the film was already sold out! -.- Sadly this was although the last day of the 2 week long retrospective…

Having finished the retrospective, i tried to focus more on newer films:

Beyond the Years by Im Kwon Taek, who directed Chi Hwa Seon which i already talked about. I mentioned this because i really felt a link between the two movies: similar landscape shots, two themes that are kinda similar -they are both biographies of artists-, the randomness of one’s life as described by both.

The sun also rise, which was pretty much the revelation of the week. i love that movie! The first part which completely won me over was so incredibly absurd and fast paced i barely had time to keep up with the movie. The structure was really well thought and surprisingly he managed to tie up every loose end by the end of the film. A great moment of cinema.

Wonderful town was a strange movie. I really liked it, but somehow i never understood if it was a love story a social tale or an analysis of the “post – tsunami” period in Thailand. Probably something in between, but it made it difficult to follow the film.

Women on the Beach. I kinda liked it, even though it’s basicaly a film about a man who treats women like dirt (and every other man around him as well), somehow it takes time to realize it and to that point you already built some sort of affinity with him that becomes difficult to break. Movies aren’t here to paint the world in pink, i felt strongly catched by the movies and the vice and flaws of all the people in it.

Utamaro and his five women. I was recently telling someone that i prefer films where nothing happens, this is one of those, it was great 🙂

The next day, i went to a late night screening of Martyrs, that i had read about on epikt’s “glop ou pas glop” blog. There was a huge contrast between that and the previous film. I’m not sure if i’m so fond of the genre. But it definitively was well made, in my opinion, and you where regularly surprised by the turns the movie took. Ame sensible s’abstenir!

Last but not least, i saw tanin no Kao which impressed me a lot. The beginning is rather week, taking a too intellectual approach. But after some time, the actor really started to flesh out they role and it became a incredibly deep movie, the concepts and thoughts of it are still on my mind. A really great closure of my cinemaphile stay in Paris.

On a side note, it’s really amazing how many older japanese movies where airing this time around, you basically had 1-2 movies per day, at least (not counting kurosawa). Since talking about the movies alone took me so many time, i will split up and talk about the rest of my stay in a new post.

Paris one fourth over

The first quarter of my trip to Paris is over (more like one third actually). And i stop my frentic pace to quickly look back at what i did, hoping that writing it up will make me focus more on the important things for the next few days.

Quitting a chronological order i will talk about things  in a more thematic way. I will also toy around rudimentary layout in the hope that it will make the text more readable.

a very beautiful street not far from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Cinema As some of you may know, the seventh art is probably the one i devote myself the most to. I wanted to use the opportunity to see a lot of movies… What i have seen so far:

東京の宿 (Tokyo no yado, An inn in Tokyo, une Auberge a Tokyo) by 小津 安二郎 (Yasujiro Ozu) on Sunday (cine club de Claude-Jean Philippe). I was deeply moved by the movie, which had in my opinions some really amazing shots, once again i feel very frustrated by my inability to describe more precisely what i liked by the lack of shooting specific knowledge. The story itself was deep, looking into the case of a jobless man starving and how he tries to find a future for his son, as well as for some women and her daughter they met during theyr travels. The film, while pretty sad doesn’t fall into a too overdramatic tone, which i was very thankfull for.

Journey into Fear (Voyage au pays de la peur) by Norman Foster and Orson Wells. We went there Monday evening with Eric. Great film noir, i enjoyed the shots a lot, as well as the actors with there “mine patibulaire”.

The next day after coming back from eating at my aunts place, Eric was motivated to see another movie, so we went to The Magnificent Amberson (Orson Wells),  also very impressive, we both particularly liked Tim Holts play. In case you haven’t guessed it by now, Action Écoles, a movie theater 3 min. away from Eric’s place, had a Orson Wells retrospective. While i guess that 3 movies in 5 Days isn’t that bad. I’m kind of disappointed because i haven’t managed to see any newer movie. I hope i will be able to correct this in the next few days and see some Thai, Korean, Chinese and Japanese movies that are airing (is airing right?) currently. The bycicle thief is also looking at me, sadly it’s only on Tuesday morning, so seeing it will be difficult.

view of the street from Eric’s place.

Arts This one is really lacking, i only managed to see the Walker Evans/ Henri Cartier-Bresson Expo, which was really good. I hope i will be able to see more the next few days. (Actually as soon as i’m finnished with this post, i will go see a museum i hope.

Math Even though i haven’t been working all that much, it has been pretty exciting. Ralf came from the Luminy conference with interesting new questions. I was skeptical how usefull this trip would be for me workwise, but it looks like i could learn a lot here in the end.

we have been working mostly in café’s so far, albeit not this one.

Family All my previous trips to Paris have been but last time exclusively dominated by family matters. Last time i think i achieved a roughly 50% family 50% rest. It’s not like i don’t like my family, i love them, but i wanted to be able to do and see something else while here. This time i think i managed way better. I had two dinner with my aunt, one with my cousin and i saw my parents and grand parents for lunch on tuesday. They all took time to talk to me while i was there (sometimes when i live at their places we postpone the talkin till i have to go…). So while i was seeing them less, i have the impression we actually spend more time together. I also went shopping with my cousin in the marias, which was very nice. I bought myself a new hat

＼（＾ ＾）／

Jeanne and me in a café after shopping.

Japanese It’s always difficult to keep track of private projects, while on a trip. But till today i manage to somehow do about one hour of japanese each day. I think i know all hiragana, and hope i will be able to write them fluently by the week end. I still have a lot of vocabulary to learn, but it looks like those two weeks will be good for me in that aspect.

Party! Last but not least, i wanted to party a bit and meet people while here. From the experience of this weekend, it looks like Paris is easier on me that Münster. We had a great time in bars in the Marais on Friday and Eric invited me to an amazing party of some of his girlfriend friend’s. I had a lot of fun talking to nice and funny people. I don’t know what i do wrong in westfalia, but it never work out that nice there. Saturday i will go clubbing at Rex, where Ivan Smagghe is playing, musically speaking it should be the highlight of my trip, unless i end up going to some great classical concert, or some jazz concert. Can’t wait for saturday ヘ(^_^ヘ)(ノ^_^)ノ

Amsterdam Aug. ’08

The last destination of our trip was Amsterdam. Again we didn’t found someone in couchsurfing to host us, but it didn’t matter since Daisuke had kindly agreed to host us if we didn’t find anybody. We arrived Friday in the early evening after a little bit of trouble (i was an hour late because of a missed train, Seisa somehow managed to take a train in the wrong direction and came half an hour after me). Daisuke’s place was not only nice, it was utterly central! The only thing that gave us some bad feeling was that he slept on the ground, so that we could share his bed. We went to some nice indonesian restaurant he knew where we had a great menu, with a lot of different thing to share. Afterwards we went for a small tour, starting from Amsterdam Centraal to Rembrandt plein, through the Damrak.

Later on we went together (! Daisuke surprised me on this one) to Panama, a club who was supposed to have a good “electronic music” party. I was still in a “berlin” kind of mode… which made me believe we were really early there (1:00 am), but Amsterdam actually has more civilized hours, party’s “start” around 22:00 and usually stop around 4:00 or 6:00, a real treat! Anyway du to me not being in a great shape, and Seisa having only sandals, which aren’t that great when the floor is full of broken glass, we left the place a little bit early, even though the party was really nice and the ambience really great.

The next day we slept in again, and left quite late to go to the Kalverstraat, a shopping area of Amsterdam. Even though Seisa didn’t found anything for her (again ^^!), i cracked, the continuous exposure of shops made me buy 3 new pants, which where quite needed (no complains here). After being treated to dinner by Daisuke (we had Miso soup!), we took the train to Den Haag, where we met Qinqin and Tingting (no kidding), Qinqin is a fellow Ph.D. student of Daisuke, Tingting a friend of her. We went to the beach to see some fireworks, who were rumored to take place from 22:00 to 24:00. The fireworks actually stopped at 22:15 and we were underwhelmed to say the least. Anyway we had some good time sitting at the beach and discussing all kinds of topics. We decided to go back to Amsterdam and to put the rest of time in good use by going to some club. We went to Rembrandt plein, where you have a plethora of choices, funnily we had a lot of trouble to find the one we had set our eyes upon: Studio 80, a small door, well hidden between two large venues. A great evening with music from a DJ from Hamburg.

On Sunday, Seisa and I moved out to see a little bit more of the city, we walked to Anne Frank Huis, but the line there was so long that i didn’t wan’t to bother with it. We continued our way south along the canal, stopping somewhere for a coffee. We then hit Leidseplein, went back north from there, saw the flower market, continued till this small bridge on the Amster which name i can’t remember right now. Later in the evening we went with Daisuke to a traditional dutch cuisine restaurant, which was full of japanese, (are they all using the very same guide?). We went back home early, everyone was already focusing on the next part of the trip, going back home for me and going to rome for Seisa. We left Daisuke’s place monday morning at 5:00 for Schipol. At 11:00 i was in Muenster and at 12:00 in my office…

Hamburg Aug. ’08

On monday 08.11 we took the road to hamburg. I hadn’t found any couchsurfer willing to host us in Hamburg, as a matter of fact, finding hosts for two people seems relatively complicated, we where in a pinch. Luckily Jakob had proposed to host us and i must say, we had really divine conditions in Hamburg.

Jakob was staying at his mothers place, a two room flat, for the duration of Esley (?) a logic workshop he was attending to. His mother had agreed to move for the duration of our stay to her boyfriends place, so that we could use her room. They lived in a quite lively area of Hamburg not to far from the center. The first evening we ate with jakob at a persian restaurant nearby, Seisa discovered Humus, a long time favorite of mine 🙂

The next day, since we where still quite tired from the first part of our trip, we didn’t leave the house before 12. We then went straight to the harbour, took some ferry to see some part of it. After a small walk along the docks, we took the S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof, in order to walk through the Mönckebergstrasse, the main shopping area of Hamburg. At the end of it is the Rathaus, a nice old townhall.

On the Rathausmarkt, the place in front of it, was a fair dedicated to products of south germany, we used the opportunity and ate some traditional south german dishes. We moved up north, saw the Alster and the colonnaden, which is a really nice street, a little bit like Arras. Finally we walked through the Planten un Blomen park and stopped at the Reeperbahn.

Sybille, Jakobs mother, was cooking in the evening. She did some great indian dishes, especially the bean dish was great. Niklas, one of Jakobs best friend was also there and we had a, a least for me, quite typical “politics” discussion, emphasizing on the differences of the french and german system, till early in the morning.

The next Seisa had to fly to geneva and soon after, i left for Muenster.

Berlin Aug. ’08

It’s almost too late to talk about it, but better late than never!

I was in Berlin from Wednesday 08.06 to Sunday 08.10. I had a great first evening with Katja, a good friend of mine from San Francisco who was going to Munich the next day. We ate italian on Simon-Dach-straße a very nice neighborhood of Berlin, with lots of cafee’s and restaurant, funny people walking on the streets. It was great to catch up with “San Francisco” even though it hurts as well. After that i went to some park to meet Alexis, Eric and two friends of them. We had a great time even though, since we discussed a little bit to much (i think we came back around 2 am) it messed up my plans for the morning. Originally i had planned to attend to a zazen sesion at the Fuku Gen sadly, i didn’t manage to go to any of the sesions. I spend the afternoon walking between Wedding and Prenslauer Berg, around the Gesundbrunnen. At 6:00 pm i pick up Seisa at the Tegel Airport. We had a nice evening with Matthias, and old school college of mine. This Week-End pretty much confronted me for the first time with my past. But for Alexis (4 years ago…) I hadn’t have any real contact with people I knew from highschool.

The next day turned put to be the tourist day of the week-end. We went out quite early with Seisa and we visited quite a lot of things: Hackescher Markt, Museums Insel, Unter den Linden, Brandenburger Tor, Mahnmal, Topographie des Terrors, Postdamer Platz, Bundestag, Hauptbahnhof, KDW and finally Kurfuerstendam. The evening was sadly less then stellar. We had a really nice beginning, with friends of Alexis, Marla and Philipp (the 2 housemates of Alexis) coming over, had some nice talk with them. Around 2 o’clock we decided to move out to go to some club… After a short (25 min?) line at Panorama Bar, we didn’t get in… This pretty much started the begining of a night full of frustration. We tried to go to maria am Ostbahnhof, which was closed, then took a taxi to Watergate. At Watergate we got refused again, as well as at the club next door (it was a half assed try, nobody really wanted anymore). All of this took sadly quite some time. Seeing that it was already around 5:00 we decided to leave it be and went back to bed.




Not only didn’t we got the fun we hoped for, but the late coming back home made us sleep in. To be honest, we didn’t wake up before 16:00… Which didn’t leave a lot of time to tour around the city. We managed to see a little bit of the Alexander Platz, and then had a really nice walk around Treptower Park, which i like a lot, especially the silly communist monument. In the evening, i cooked, Eric had cooked for us the last few days (it was delicious!), and i wanted to contribute my share. I stayed with the basics and did some mushrooms, chicken and rice with a sauce bechamel. Finaly we went out again, first to pick up Eric at Matthieu’s place. Matthieu was again a really strange event for me. he used to be my neighbor when i was 15-18. I hadn’t seen him since then. We finally made it at Berghain(again). The line up was (partly): Modeselektor, Ellen alllien and Sascha Funke, all from Bpitch Control, who i really wanted to see. Sadly i wasn’t the only one and a humongus line awaited us at the club. We had to wait for 2 hours before coming in (this time they let us in, i don’t want to know how frustrated i would have been if they hadn’t let us in). Basically we missed Modeselektor while in the line. Sasha Funke was playing from 4 to 8 am, so we heard quite a lot from him, even though we spend quite some time in the Berghain hall (he was playing in Panorama Bar). I was waiting for Ellen Allien, who was supposed to play at 8 (till 12). At 8:30 she still hadn’t begin, and my back as well as all the other art of my body couldn’t bear it anymore… I wasn’t the only one, Seisa and Eric agreed happily to go home as i asked them. On sunday we had barely enough time to pack before taking a ride share to Muenster.

We stayed roughly a day in Muenster, on Monday we walked around the city after having lunch with dennis, a friend of mine. It turned out that you can show the city in about 4 hours… In the early evening we left for Hamburg… but this is another story