RSS Feed

January, 2011

  1. Photo and History Tidbit: La Grande Roue

    January 16, 2011 by Barb

    concorde ferris wheel Photo and History Tidbit: La Grande Roue

    'La Grande Roue' at Place de la Concorde

    Thought I would share this photo (how it turned out well was merely a stroke of luck) that I took on Saturday afternoon before I leave for Berlin, since it is unlikely that I will post until I return January 30th. La Grande Roue (or rather, the ferris wheel) actually has a rather short, but interesting, history. It was originally erected with a wheel diameter of 100m near the Champ de Mars for the universal exhibition of 1900 in Paris. In 1937, it was demolished. However, the one that we see today (60m high) was built for the millennium celebrations and was meant to only stay at the Place de la Concorde for a year.

    In 2001, the wheel was dismantled much to the dismay of owner Marcel Campion who refused the judge’s order to take it down himself. The wheel wound up traveling and erected itself in the UK, Netherlands, and Bangkok. La Grande Roue eventually returned to Paris in 2007, and is put up each year around Christmas time to illuminate the end of the year festivities.

  2. Bon Retour à Paris!

    January 15, 2011 by Barb

    soldes paris jan 2011 Bon Retour à Paris! I’ve been back in the country since Thursday morning and am finally settling back in routine after visiting the Auteuil market this morning, and stocking up on food to last me two days. Why such a short amount of time, you ask? Well, I’m in fact still on “vacation” – I put this in parentheses since I’ve been working for clients this whole time – and am only due back for classes January 31st, so I’ve taken it upon myself to head to Berlin for fashion week with fashion illustrator Danielle Meder, and to finally take a vacation the week before school starts in Prague, Vienna, and Budapest.

    This semester is bound to be an interesting one what with several of my friends from high school being in Europe, as well as my mostly French course-load (lucky for me, I’ll have one course in English for Steinhardt). You can only imagine my relief of having one less French intensive course, since after all, we can all recall my experience with the need to quickly adapt to the French methodology and rewriting my horrid syntax. Advanced Conversation with Patrick Guédon, Contemporary France with Isabelle Ernot, Fashion and Power with Rachel Ward, and perhaps Gender & Sexuality with Christelle Taraud or another literature course with Philippe Boyer. Since I didn’t travel at all last semester, thoughts of where to head for Spring/Easter break are already percolating, as well as trips to Amsterdam/Rotterdam (since Thalys is having a sale right now), and London for fashion week.

    In any case, you always end up learning something new, and sometimes it is school-related. For the many NYU students that end up studying abroad at one of the many international sites, the pain of not having access to Hulu or Netflix results in a desperate withdrawal of visiting SideReel and waiting impatiently for the latest episode of Glee to be available. However, there is a solution. It turns out that we in fact can connect to NYU-net proxy, which provides us a US IP address so that we are able to access our favorite location-based websites. The instructions are easy to follow, can be found on the NYU ITS page. All you have to do afterward is to provide your NYU home login, and you are instantly connected. And for the skeptical, I’ve provided proof below.

    hulu proof nyu proxy 640x437 Bon Retour à Paris!

    Watching Grey's Anatomy in France on Hulu via NYU proxy

  3. NYU Global, You Need Me

    January 9, 2011 by Barb

    I don’t like to wait for opportunities to come along, I much rather create them. So I decided to dabble a little out of my comfort zone and designed this short presentation that I uploaded onto SlideShare this afternoon to convince the NYU Global department to hire me to revamp their social media platform and promotional materials.

Older Entries