Tonite I am smiling... and Gus knows how long i haven t been smiling, i know that in 2 days i ll be back to my unhappy place but i don t give a shit because today i smiled more than the past 3 months. Today I spent 4 hours eating in a restaurant and this is how we rule in France! Food is like spirit an religion in India.... and when it s with your family it means even more!


It is now 10PM and i am watchin the pinkish sunset laying on a pool chair while listening to some soft zen music.... me and the sky... best romantic date ever!
Today I saw most of my dad s family, except my uncle who was too sick to come, hope to see him tomorrow. We went to a restaurant and i ate like an elephant... pate... fish...meat...cheese...cake, u name it :) And the best part was the smile of my granpa who recently turned 80!


I ve seen all these smiles and laugh even with 2 people who were not getting along pretty well, have seen a brother and sister laughing... and uncle and niece tolerating each others.... it was a memorable day for me that i ll keep forever in mind!


I then came back to my grandma place to take a swim in the pool with Tony the Dolfin and Roger the Frog, i left the pool when they started to get to close from each others :P
Of course I barely ate this evening, i m still digesting my lunch and promise to fast till tomorrow lunch since my grandma is hosting a party at her place with the same people for an other big lunch!
That s it for now, i wish u guys to enjoy ur weekend as much as i m enjoying mine... spread the love People!

That s me with my new haircut btw :P
Anyway, this week, I went to still south of France but east, even though I moved 21 times in 28 years, some members of my family haven t move. I arrived on monday at my grandma s and unfortunately until the end of the year we had the... flood, of course everybody joked about it, telling me ' u brought us the irish climate ;( ' bunch of mean people! So, i could not do much the first days except clicking animals, i dunno i love animals so I got the chance to click some of them:

Vicky the cute doggee of the neighbour, I heard she likes to pose for the photograph, I must say she s doing it pretty good :D

Julie, my grandma s cat:)

Tigrou, the neighbour s cat, such a cute and soft cat.

Fusain, my aunt s cat :)

Some random dogs in the street, notice the leather jacket, doggeee fashion style, u don t see it but he is actually wearing a pink reabbon on top to maintain some extra hair, while the one behind is showing is tongue :P
Sometimes I also take babies like the neighbours, and she is darn cute:

On the last day of 2008, I went to my aunt s house to celebrate the new year s coming. During the afternoon while her best friend was cooking yummy stuff for the evening, I colored my aun t s hair. Why i m sure u re wondering I mentionned that, well it s simple, i can t really say i m proud of many things in my life, but for sure i m proud of one thing, I am the first person that ever colored my aunt s hair in 47 years!!!!
My aunt is not the kind of girly girly and i managed to make her change her mind and switch from a grey hair to her former brunette style, since then (it was a year ago) she started wearing make up, rings and made some highlights!!!!
I know, so that day she was in big need of a new hair color since her previous color well vanished and she looked more like Sonia Rikyel (fashion designer)!!! so I only put a pic of her AFTER the color not before, I don t want her to kill me!

I celebrated with great food the new year and funny story, if u never tried i recommend u to do it, have u ever play arrow-words drunk? No? What a shame! It is fantastic!

I did my first arrow-words at midnite after wine and champaign not only my brain was on speed but for sure my aunt s guests were thrilled to have me there since how much they laugh!
Anyway, I m not gonna through the good resolutions of the year since 99% of the time I don t reach them, I only gonna put what I would like to happen and then hope it will:
- loose weight (this is somehow recurrent each year)


- go to India (lets say in March :)
- find a great job in south of france
- move out this year (preferably before summer :P)
- why not find someone (not that i m desperately looking for it, i d rather move first)
- win the lottery (well what the heck y not)
- NB: buy a lottery ticket (that might help :P)

On friday I went to eat in a spanish restaurant with my grandma:

and my god i was so full that i could not even eat a desert, I got meat 'a la plancha' served on top of slate one word DE-LI-CIOUS.


Of course I haven t mention all the great plates my grandma did but trust I had a special yummy diet and that s not gonna help my first 'resolution'!

Now, today I went to la Grande Motte, which is a special place for me, my grandma bought when i was 1 year a flat in this city which is very original by its weird architecture but i love it.


I spent all my summer, learn to swim, my first teenager holidays and first love here so this is a special place for me.
There is a port:


giant beach where i used to go twice a year to get rid of the negative feelings and it feels GREAT


today I was happy to be there and of course I took some pics :P Hope u ll enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking them :P

A seagal ready to fly, I m so glad I got this shot, click on it to have it bigger:


Black and White sunset in front of the beach



Sepia sunset



It has my AGE, I used to play there when I was a kid, I can t believe it is still here!!!!!!



The sand with the building of La Grand Motte as a background

A little bird not that shy :P


My yatch well in my dream ...Well, that s it for my 2 weeks trip in France, I packed my bag and of course with all the food I brought back i have 5 extra kilos to carry so 50 euros to pay to mean Ryanair! Anyway, I ll be back to Ireland tomorrow ;( but the only thing that make me happy to go back it s because next week i ll go to the Indian ambassy to do my visa for my future trip to come :D
Take care People

I m not back yet in Blogville, but since i m on holidays and I have less freakin-office-compulsory-stress, and for the sake of the holidays spirit, play PAUSE on my break to share wid ya my first week in France. I left on sunday the 21st my rainny-greenish-windy Ireland to South of France where surprisingly it was colder than Ireland ;( so guess what I got a very bad cold ;(

While looking at my pictures I start thinking, why do I love so much taking pictures. I think everything start with my grandma...She was the first who showed an interest in taking pictures, she has an amazing collection of pictures of the family, and I love her so much for that, i always said to her that the day she will leave, i don t want anything except her pictures, the best treasure ever. At 76, she s using a pc, chat with me on the internet, scans her pics, compare to my mum my god!

That s her, with me ;) first time I opened my eyes. The pic was took by my dad, who got the 'pic virus' from his mum. It s quite funny though, when my mum was about to give birth, my dad asked to wait a bit more so he could arrange the lights to take the best pics of me (he was good friend with the doctor) and when my mum was about to push my dad yelled 'WAIT!!! I forgot to put the film!' i have to say I was in hurry to get out, I was born 1 month before the due date!
I start using the 'plastic camera'when I was 14 I guess, every time I come home, I can see a pile of pics that my mum asked every time to clean it, but i can t get rid of it, and of course my mum does not have a scanner to scan them all! I really start taking pics with the digital camera appears, my first one, was a loosy HP that I could afford my few money! But I guess the real thing that made me want to take pictures was because of my dad s amazing shots. Years ago, he was using the 'reflex' camera with film, developing them in the 'dark room', and I think the picture that touch me the most is the one he made with my mum and I:

I simply love it, we re both eating crackers, it was an instant moment, we weren t posing on it... i can t even explain what i feel, but it is my fav pic! Now last year, I finally made it, I bought my first Nikon D40 which i m very proud of, u can find all my pics on my SMUGMUG! I hope I ll be able to make great shots, i d love to be a photographer.
I guess, this is one passion I share with my grandma and my dad:


i m happy about it, but we don t have all the same passions of course. Do u guys share a passion with a relative? Which one?

Is there anyone here who heard about the Toastmaster International, don t remember if I mentionned it in my blog already but I am part of the Club Hellfire in Dublin since January this year.


What do we do during our 2 hours sessions: we have generally 4 speeches made by members of the club, then we have a debate pro/cons between two members, followed by the topicmaster who is one member of the club who asks questions to the audience who has 2 min to answer it, and to finish each speeches are evaluated by others members. Here you learn to do speech using different techniques and time allowed for it, which help you, at least me, to gain some self confidence delivering speech in front of an audience.
So I decided to share my speeches with you guys, and I hope i can have some feedback, you have to remember that i m french, and I m doing it in english so there is always areas of improvments ;)
My first one was the ice-breaker, you have basically 4 minutes to break the ice and introduce yourself to the Club, here is mine:

Madam Toastmaster, Madam President, Fellow toastmasters and welcome guests.
My name is Cecile, I was born in January 1980.
I am from France, and more particularly from the best part of it, which is south of France. The reason why it s because we have something call... shoot I forgot the name, it did happened in Ireland but rarely though... mmmm.. oh Summer... bright and shinny, great!

Anyway, my dad picked my name Cecile because of one of his favorite s singers, his name was Claude Nougaro. He made a song for his daughter which begin by... and please pardon me for my poor vocal performance.... Cecile .... ma fille! which means Cecile, my daughter.
I m glad he called her Cecile it could have been worst.

Speaking of my father he is a sales director, my mum is nurse, I have one brother, 4 years younger than me, who is a salesperson too.

Now, I think the second week when I came here, Florian and I got two toastmasters magazines, and the one that he gave me was so perfect for me, it was the special Humor issue, and I do love humor, I think I m quite funny well at least I make myself laugh which is a good start. And I will definitively live longer.
So in that magazine I read an interesting article called 'Want to be funny? You can t go wrong if you name that song", ... speakers will used several songs from a famous group or singer to introduce their speech so ... I figured it out that I can try it to describe myself, and because I m living in Ireland I choose U2 of course.
And here are the 5 songs that I selected.
First one: A day without me... It will be so boring, seriously after the ice breaker since you re going to know me, you will be looking forward every Tuesday.
2nd song: I still haven t found what i m looking for: ... true, I kind of figure it out but still ... I am not 100% sure of what will be my career path within the next 10 years, but ... i m working on it.
3rd song: Last night on earth....I think ... I will probably go to the best French restaurant ever and... kiss Brad Pitt.
4th song: Ocean....As i say i m from South of France, was born next to the sea, and I can t really live without it, I always have to go there not necessarelly for swimming, but just watch the sea to get rid of negative feelings, when u are angry, if u have never done that u should try once.
And last song to conclude my ice breaker: Indian Summer Sky, I love to travel, as a matter fact, 3 weeks ago I celebrate my 20th move in 27 years. Every time my dad has a promotion we had to move, so I ve been traveling from south, to north and then north to south again and then... out of nowhere my parents stop moving, I told them ...'are we going to stay in that city forever? OMG. I m going to be so bored ' so when I did my Master degree in Marketing and New Technologies i start moving on my on, from south to Paris, then I went to USA for a year to definitively improve my English, you would not have spoke to me before, then to Cork, Ireland and last year I moved to Dublin, and ... this year ...hopefully I will go to India with my work for two months and enjoy a beautiful summer there.
Madam Toastmaster.
Thank u