My first full-time permanent job was based in Covent Garden, in the heart of London. I was able to leave the office at lunchtime and walk around the square near the opera house, watching the street mimes and eating my sandwiches. I worked in advertising, and it was a small office. Advertising salesmen have a [...]

Back in May 2004, I took a drive up to the Netherlands with Yasmina to visit friends in Utrecht. A big advantage of living in France is that access to most of Europe is overland and most of western Europe is easily accessible. We drove up to Amsterdam one day and toured around the capital [...]

I was reading a post some time ago over at Jenerally Speaking and I remembered the first time I heard the story of an old schoolfriend’s tragic death. That was back in 2003. I never found out the reason why, and the press and the school where he was working as a teacher were discrete [...]

I was my office in Rabat, Morocco when I heard the news. I was working with mostly Americans at the time. Google was at a crawl, and most news sites and portals like the BBC, CNN and Yahoo! didn’t work. We left the office for a while to go to watch CNN via satellite. Everyone [...]

You could say I have quite a record collection. I mean real records, 7″ and 12″ pieces of vinyl that require cleaning before you play them, and perhaps a “dust bug” to clean off excess dust as the record spins. Some people take their record cleaning very seriously even today. I have all the Beatles’ [...]

I am a Monty Python fan, and I always remember the sketch Bicycle Repair Man because it made my Dad laugh so much. With a Clink! Screw! Alter saddle! he came to save the day. The humour of Monty Python, taking an everyday situation and stretching it to comedic end, is well illustrated by this [...]

I suppose you could say my blog is now officially launched. My first reference (fr) from a fellow blogger Rachid Jankari was published today (merci Rachid). I lived and worked in Morocco for over four years with a leading independent ISP, MTDS. During that time I travelled around the fascinating North African country, and was [...]