Keep the good spirit!

Bon ce post la, je suis oblige de le faire en Francais, puisqu’il est indispensable de parler et comprendre le Francais couramment afin de profiter pleinement des videos qui vont suivre…

Donc, grace aux merveilleux reseaux sociaux (en l’occurrence Facebook), je suis tombe sur cette video:

S’il faut bien avouer que certains sont tres tires par les cheveux, d’autres sont assez bien trouves et m’ont fait beaucoup rire… En fait, apres une petite recherche (tapez “hallucinations auditives” sur youtube), il est facile de trouver d’autres videos:

Bon pour la prochaine video, je demande pardon en avance a toute personne de nationalite russe…:

Je suppose que ca aide egalement d’avoir l’esprit mal tourne/pervers. Mais ca me fait penser aussi quand j’etais petit et que j’entendais une chanson en anglais ou autres (les gipsy kings). Vu que je comprenais rien, je remplacais par du Francais avec ce qui s’en rapprochait le plus… Mais je ne vais pas me rabaisser a donner un exemple

Today starts the Euro basket 2009, in Poland.

After difficult games, France managed to qualify for Euro (only going through some kind of loser bracket).

While some nations are obviously going to deliver (Spain, Greece, Croatia, Lituania, …), some like France are outsiders. I’ve been disappointed with French national team’s results for quite a while now, especially considering the potential of the team and the number of players who currently are in the NBA. I think France does not have good shooters, no strong and tall center, their FT% is ridiculous, … and they lack of regularity. The time where I woke up very early to watch every single game of France at Sydney’s Olympics in 2000 is far behind now…

So tonight, I’m gonna watch France vs Germany (without Nowitzki), knowing that France could very well lose or win by 20 points. Then I’m gonna pray they make it to the Olympics…

It’s like Mulder in the X-files, “I want to believe”…

France vs Germany – Half time update:

Not surprisingly France is behind (4 or 5 points). Let’s sumarize:

- France sucks at FTs (nothing new)

- Tony Parker/ Boris Diaw transparent, but really what is Boris Diaw doing on the court, does he even wants to play?

- Big up to Ronny Turiaf, so active and into the game… I even forgive his low % at FT. Big up to Florent Pietrus for his defense also.

- I think De Colo is bringing the spark offensively, but in defense, caramba!!! Always late …

- Anyway generally speaking France is not defending…

Mmmm, so what it’s gonna be in second half?

Update after the game

What if Tony Parker had not scored these three baskets at the end of Q4?

Some comments about the game:

- Boris Diaw, wakkkkkeeeee upppp and move your ass… It looks like you have the mobility of a center

- Ronny Turiaf was great in this game, though some defensive mistakes and FTs %

- FTs! FTs! PUT THEM IN! Come on they are professional players and they barely score 1 out of 2…

- Same thing for 3 pointers. Tony, when you see it’s not going in, it’s not going in!

- Surprised by Nicolas Batum, first time I really see him play in a game. Maybe needs to shoot more and be more agressive and it will be perfect.

- Koffi, just no comment, same goes for Bokolo (who barely entered the game anyway).

- Guys, D-E-F-E-N-S-E! Although I saw improvement in Q4, but the first 3 quarters were a joke.

After this game I watched most of Spain vs Serbia.  Quite easy win for Serbia, surprisingly, especially considering they don’t have any star this year.

My internship has been over for about 2 weeks now, I’m back to the big city, Urasa… I have many things to blog about, i.e. what I did until now, but to keep some logic, I’m going to start by the end, and will finish with posts about the beginning of summer. So… Most recent thing that happened, I went for the first time to Lotteria (ロッテリア). It’s a fast food chain in Japan, much smaller than McDonald’s. It’s not coming from Italia, not from Japan, but it is a Korean burger fast-food chain. Even in Tokyo, there are not many Lotterias, I can remember one in Shibuya, one in Harajuku and one in Takadanobaba.

So during my intership I got a coupon for a discount on their newest burger (don’t remember the name, and don’t know these kanjis (although I could look for them, but laziness has me):

So after getting my Japanese driving license (details in the next blog post), I saw a Lotteria near the Driving center, and I still had the coupon, and it was lunch time, and I thought why not? So I entered Lotteria for the first time…

First thing you notice when you enter, the design of the the restaurant is not as nice as a McDonalds. McDo has more stylish restaurants, looks kind of cheap, but it’s “design”. This Lotteria looked old inside, no music, no people…

I get to the counter and order the burger with the coupon and get my discount. Fries are about same as McDonalds, but when I received the burger, I thought, wow it’s kinda smaller than the picture… Size is about the same as a Quarter Pounder, except that I thought the bread/meat ration is bigger than in McDonalds, I got the feeling of eating bread with a small steak. Secondly, this burger had nothing special, it’s like a Big Mac but smaller.

Since it wasn’t enough, I wanted to try another burger, so I tried the Cheeseburger. Result: better than McDonalds, but a much higher price. I finished my meal with a milkshake, or should I say, melting vanilla ice cream. Nothing compared to McDonalds milkshake, one of the best in terms of quality/price ratio (100 yens!).

It’s good to have a change once in a while, but… It’s not like when I was in England and I discovered Burger King (XL Double Bacon Cheeseburger, aaaaahhhh I miss u!), Lotteria won’t replace McDonalds as long as I am in Japan. Anyway, the closest lotteria from my university is more than a 100km away, so I guess it does not really matter…

Game was over about 3 hours ago.

1,

2,

and 3-0:

Post-game interviews:

Better luck next time! Also I don’t know why the Japanese TV shows height and weight of Japanese players each time they touch the ball…

I think I have heard somewhere that they have the objective to be finish at the 4th place of the coming 2010 World Cup.

“It was a good experience” said a wise man

Just got my tickets to go back home for Christmas: Narita – Paris + Paris Narita for 600 Euros (79 000JPY). It was getting as cheap as 550 euros but I’m not that flexible for Christmas.  Don’t miss the opportunity.

I think the offer ends at the end of this month (July). Might also be only for travellers travelling from Japan. Too bad I won’t be able to use my Air France miles, but got a free ANA miles card just in case…

I didn’t think the internship would take me so much time, but after a couple of 無礼講　(bureikou, some kind of time where managers put aside their title, and have fun with employees), meeting with other interns, etc. , in the end I just went to bed after showering every night. So where am I working?

Well, first, it’s in Ebisu, a rather famous part of the Shibuya-ku. Then it’s a big building right next to the Ebisu station:

The Yebisu Garden Place building

The big one

YGP By Night

At the bottom of the building, there is the “Garden Place”. Placement of benchs and fountains are a bit different but you get the idea:

Now there are some kind of windmills all around the place

And there’s also what looks to me as a French castle:

Looks nice

See after 2:00, looks like that now. Don’t know why but there’s always wind blowing under the ark and feels nice and fresh. Maybe there’s some kind of ventilation system, I don’t know…

I’ll probably put photos of the inside of the building soon, basically it’s open space, with like 200 people in the same office sitting face-to-face.

I am currently in the middle of packing since I am leaving for Tokyo tomorrow (I mean today) and I have to check out from my room in IUJ. The Open Day DVD was out two weeks ago, and I spent a couple of days ripping it and uploading it. Some performances are really worth seeing:

The European performance.  French guys will have immediately recognized the Claude Francois’s classic, Alexandrie Alexandra. Second part is some german/russian song, but don’t ask me what the title is.

In Open Days, Team America’s performance is always something you should not miss. This year, even though the quality was a bit behind last year remake of Evolution dance, it was still the case.

Japanese locals performance: aerobic dance? That’s kind of impressive. Is that the Japanese parent of jumpstyle?

Notice the creativity of Japanese students… Plus they don’t hesitate to dress as women for the show, the GSO-EC president (student organization) is dressed as a girl in the middle at the beginning. And they finish with Run to you (DJ doc) or its Japanese version DJ ozma. Visualy it’s great, and I think it will stay in memories as the best performance of this Open Day, setting high standards for next year Open Day…

You can check out other performances here: GSO-EC youtube channel

Ok, back to packing!

Because videos are always better than long posts, check out this video:

Maybe it’s time to call Pimp my ride Japan?

You could say it is just as usual. And you would probably be right. This week is the last week of the term, meaning exams + term papers & group presentations. Time flies, it’s already been a year in IUJ… Many things have happened in the recent weeks (e.g. IUJ Olympics), but I keep that to have something to talk about in the coming weeks. Unless you’re very close family, you might not now what I will be doing for the next two months. Easy to guess, it is an internship. 2 months in Tokyo working in Ebisu, living in Takaido, close to Shinjuku and Shibuya. I’ll be working for a japanese company. I don’t know about writing the name of the company on this blog, I7m still wondering if it is a good idea or not. We are 3 students from my university to intern in this company. Internship is about Marketing / Business development. Honestly it sounds very interesting and I consider myself lucky to have found such an opportunity. It looks nice, seems to be in the hands of very nice people, they have organised activities for the interns. And most of all we will be actually working/learning, not making photocopies/coffee.

23rd of June ==> 24th of August. Uni starts end of September, therefore I still have one month where I have yet no idea of what I am going to do.

I think this summer is going to be a great one…