Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

As ‘yall know, Wendy and me have been plugging away with paid posts over the last month or so.

One thing that we hadn’t expected was that by taking it a little bit more seriously, we’d be rapidly closing on the top 10 earners on PPP quite so quickly. Due to the delay in payment (you’re paid 30 days after your post is approved), it’ll actually be another month or so before get into that list but ’tis encouraging that we can get there so quickly.

Actually, all being well, we’ll not only be in that list but moving up it next month as we should be bringing online another blog by then.

As you know, I’m in the process of building up a sort-of technology blog over at An Age of Magic. It takes about three months before you can make money on these things so it’ll be a month or so before I’m ready to start raking in the cash from it and retire on the proceeds. Well, maybe a “bit” more than a month before I can retire on it 🙂

Anyway, I’ve been putting on vaguely techie type postings as you can see. Techie with a slightly different slant on the technology.

What’s really interesting is the kind of searches people have been using to arrive on the site…. “walk on water with magic”… “travel in time”… “move things with magic”. Also interesting are the results that I get when I use Digg and similar social bookmarking sites on individual posts: some of them do incredibly well considering the content that’s on the site.

Now, the bigger question is whether I’ll be able to make money it….

We’re about set to choose our next car and aren’t too sure what to get at the moment.

In theory, we’d like to get another Suzuki Alto as it was a brilliant little car with getting on for 70 mpg but they don’t make them anymore so that’s not an option. So, we looked at the next model up which is the Wagon R but I’m not too keen on that one. Their Ignis is a baby 4×4 which looks interesting and would let us go up to the ski resorts this winter plus we’d not need to use the tailer all the time as we did with the Alto. On the diesel model the mpg isn’t too bad either at around the 50mpg mark.

We were also looking at the Chevrolet Matiz but it seems a bit tiny and I suspect that when they say it’s a five seater they mean three kids in the back rather than three adults. Still in the running, but we’d need the trailer all the time with it and, until very recently, the Matiz range didn’t have type approval for trailers so we might not be able to get a tow bar fitted.

We’re still looking though… ideas welcome… ideally what we need is a four door, five seater car with a large luggage capacity and very economical on the petrol/diesel. Preferably 4wd but not necessarily so. Oh, and cheapish but reliable.

Actually, it’s not the last week of the holidays but the French don’t go on holiday in the last week so it’s the last week that they are on holiday.

Traffic isn’t quite the word we’re looking for either, as in many places the motorways are pretty much carparks rather than places where traffic actually moves. Many people think that they can avoid the snarlups by simply leaving the motorway when the traffic gets too heavy but, as you can see, a LOT of people think the same thing so you can look forward to tailbacks at every motorway exit.

But you’re thinking “ah, I’ll use my in car navigator and avoid the queues”. Well, no, that doesn’t work either as when the price of Tom Tom and the like dropped last year, loads of people bought them and you’ll see massive tail-backs on the recommended routes. They’re actually worse than the motorways as the navigation units tend to direct you along B roads which elsewhere would be fine but in France these are often quite windy roads and, in many cases, they’re just not up to coping with the traffic volume that the navigation units are now directing down them.

Your best plan is to find somewhere nice for today and tomorrow and stay there. Not only will this avoid needless aggravation on the roads but you’ll also miss out on the incredibly aggressive driving that this generates and indeed the corresponding jump in road accidents.

One of the things that make it hard to satisfy people is that often the view that two people will have of the very same room can be completely different.

For instance, yesterday one couple checked out saying that the room was dreadful, it was noisy and the bed was so bad that they didn’t get to sleep all night.

This morning, another couple checked out of the same room saying that everything was absolutely perfect.

In another room, we have a bed which we’re planning on replacing once we get ourselves sorted out with a new car yet a number of people have said that it’s the best bed they’ve ever slept in.