Anyone who knows me knows I’m fussy as all hell about my food – or at least I used to be. When I was a child, I used to be packed off to other children’s parties with a list from my mother. It stretched to about 15 items and it was all the food I would eat. This was because the list of things I wouldn’t eat was far too long for her to draft.

Without wishing to sound offensive, I’d have been an ideal Jew. I didn’t like pork, sausages or bacon. Neither would I touch fish or any other seafood (some things never change…). I also didn’t like lamb very much. Melted cheese was a no-no. Forget onions, pickles, peppers, spices, curry, garlic…

Since then I have grown to live for a decent bacon buttie on a weekend. A sausage sandwich is a good way to fill up on a lunchtime. Extra-spicy fajitas (stuffed with peppers) are the order of the day at present and Midnight Express along the road don’t to anything that’s not improved by the melted cheese inside.

While I’ve been travelling, I’ve explored a few unusual foodstuffs. In Australia I had kangaroo, emu and crocodile all in one meal; and a camel-burger at another. At various points in Vietnam I chowed down on cobra, pigeon and sparrow, though I’ve yet to try dog. I did sample alligator back in the UK once. And I found the best curry house in the world in Krakow, closely followed by a doozy in Vientiane. Not to say the food in India wasn’t good – it was superb (too many links to mention!)

Here in France, I’d expected just the usual – good bread (on a par with the Vietnamese stuff at least), various cheeses (none as good as mature cheddar, but hey), fine wine (who can argue with €0.85 a bottle for rosé?)… I’ve even made a couple of "French" meals while I’ve been here, some inspired by those cooked for me when I was walking through Europe last year. An easy one is to fry some potatoes, smother them in one of the runny cheeses that comes in tubs like toghurt, mix in some meat, spices, and perhaps some pepper or onion and slap it on a place. I guess this is kind of the French version of a hotpot or stew. Damn fine it is, too.

The other night I opted for something simple. A slab of meat and some mixed veg. Now at home I used to have one of those George Formby ukulele/grill combo things. It got rid of all the fat from your meat, cooked it right through even from frozen and played songs in a cheerful Cockney accent. OK, maybe not the last bit. In my little flat I have a tiny oven the size of an antique portable TV, and a frying pan.

I usually opt for the pan (poêle) method as the electric oven just dried everything out. So I warmed up some oil and checked the cooking instructions. Yes, OK, so I know it was just a steak but it’s interesting to see that they actually tell you how to cook it. I guess they must get a lot of tourists (with French/English dictionaries) here. Essentially the instructions were to drop the meat into a pre-heated pan, heat on each side for 2-3 minutes and then serve.

Now, anyone who’s tried French cooking knows that they prefer their meat… almost still kicking. If it doesn’t bleed all over your plate when you poke it with a spoon, it’s overdone. If you want it done correctly you get a trained chef to breathe on it for half an hour. If you want it slightly charred you get him to eat three chilis first.

I prefer my meat just cooked right through, preferably without charring on the outside. I’d kind of gotten a knack for it, but it’s been a while since I made a steak, and the meat I had this time was very slightly different to what I’m used to. You’d be surprised, but horse meat takes a bit more cooking than a piece of cow’s rump. On eating, the texture is very similar but it’s pretty tricky to get it to cook right the way through without turning the outside to charcoal.

So add another species to the list that’ll want to kick my ass when it gets the chance.

It’s always nice to spot the differences and similarities between countries. Except, perhaps, when it’s something as annoying as crap drivers. The kind of person who shouldn’t be let loose in a 750cc bubble car let alone a house for three on wheels. The mountain tracks around here are heaving with these idiots at the moment. Several countries have school holidays and the weather’s beautiful so they’ve all dusted off their motorised bungalows and gone looking for roads to blockade.

My shift today was supposed to be a "split" (8am – midday / 4pm – 8pm). This had the major advantage of meaning I couldn’t make it to Bar d’Up to watch us get hammered by ManUre. Instead, I ended up driving to Albertville and then on to Moutier to collect Sonia, who was to manage the Sap for a week or so. Until she arrived, the hotel would be managerless. And assistant managerless. James, the AM, had come down with a very serious condition about a week previously. One hospital trip at 3am where he needed oxygen resulted, and he’s still laid up in bed with a huge collection of pills.

Pete, the manager, was coping pretty well by himself until yesterday. He had a teeny accident snowboarding and broke his collarbone for the second time in two seasons. Hence my trip to neutral territory to collect Sonia at 11:00. A trip that should have had me back in the office by 1pm. Not taking into account the traffic.

I was actually in Moutier by midday. Sonia eventually arrived at 1pm. Their drive had been even more tortuous than mine (including going past a bus that had toppled over, its wheels still spinning), but they’d managed it without screaming at a campervan driver. Or cutting one up on the only available corner in 15 miles after he’d not bothered to pull over and let traffic past several times. My only regret is that I didn’t have the time to get out and slash his tyres as well. Or ram him down into a ravine.

Anyway, the upshot is that it’s just gone 5pm and I theoretically finished an hour ago as my shift changed due to the driving. I now have no excuse not to go to the pub. Except for the two hard drive images I need to do, the partition resizing afterwards, the backup configuration and testing, the final few email configs to roll out in the office…

Maybe I’ll get away with this yet.

This sounds like a silly thing to get a lot of pleasure out of, but walking into a shop and leaving a few minutes later with all the things you wanted is quite an achievement. Well, it is when you have to ask for them all individually and in a language other than your own.

OK, so I’m showing off a little but I’m just pleased with myself. Today I bought a power splitter and two 2.5" laptop hard drives from a computer shop in Sallanche. Not the sort of things that turned up in my GCSE French class back in the early 90’s. Hell, back then a laptop was the result of a bench breaking under the groaning weight of a full-size PC. I don’t think the French even had a word for "computer" until 2003. I do remember not being able to find one in any of the reference texts in the days when I actually had hair.

In fact, I just spoke to Talia on MSN and she tells me her French is limited to "Where is the monkey?" and "The monkey is in the tree". Not exactly useful, but in fairness I don’t know the French for "monkey" or "tree" so she scores points off me in that respect.

While sat in the office last Thursday, I also discovered that I knew how to say "Sorry, I’m the only one in the office right now and my French isn’t very good. Can you call back after midday?" I still have no idea where that came from, but all three people I said it to seemed to understand.

Chamonix is looking lovely again right now, despite the lack of snow. With it being half term it’s busy so all the part-time traders reappear, including the candy-floss man opposite my apartment and the guafrettes (waffle) man who sets up shop outside L’m. He’s there in the late afternoon charging €1 per shot for fresh-made waffles with a delicious caramelly/sugary spread inside. Ideal for the carbs when you’ve just come down from the mountain.

I had a bit of a field trip yesterday, driving over to Belle Plagne, Montchavin and Courchevel. All problems dealt with, everyone happy and I got to hang out with a few of the staff in the evening which was good fun. A shame the pub we went to was so busy it was night on impossible to order food. A good job I still had a sandwich left over from lunch.

The original plan had been to stay over in Courchevel for the night, but I had a lot to get done back in Chamonix (including finishing the hardware build of the new UNIX server humming next to me) so I just drove home at 2am. I was good today – I only did about three hours’ work on my day off…

Plans continue to be put together for the summer and I’ve also been looking at employment possibilities for later on. Hans sent me details of a very interesting looking IT position. Pretty much what I’m doing here (that is, everything) and a similar deal with accommodation, food, travel and so on thrown in. As well as health care and "risk insurance". And I’ve never been to Baghdad before so that’s a bonus.

Er, yeah. A little warmer than it is here and something tells me my mother wouldn’t sleep for the entire time I was working. Still, the agency do cover other places and I have no genuine concern where I work as long as the pay’s very good. I could be posting my CV off this week! It’d certainly make for an interesting blog anyway.

So that’s me up to date. The running joke about lack of pictures will continue for another short while, although I’m looking at putting more up on a gallery hosted on this site. As and when I get the time! I’ve still not sorted out any of the photos since I left Israel, I think. It’s a big task, especially with all the recovered photos from the xD card crash I had. They’re all over the shop filename and date wise – and there are around 700 of them.

Wish me luck and I’ll try to post at least once a week from now on!