NANO ZEN

photo by @unclr

Some people are gentle, some are bold, few are both…

Well score another one for Murphy today. Having previously talked about the difficulties of getting into Monaco during GP, I got a call today from SNB; seems like they have a buggered laptop (hard disk failure or corrupted Windows). Thankfully I could direct the manager to use one of the Internet café machines to access her files on the file server. Still means though that next week I have to collected the machine, replace a hard disk, and reinstall a machine. No point trying to do anything about it until after the GP of course.

Also yesterday there was a nationwide train strike in France, against the government’s proposed pension reforms, which of course kept a lot of people from getting into Monaco for the F1 practise sessions. And there is talk of about a French road haulers strike concern the price of petrol and the taxes on it (1.60 Euro a litre), but they said they’d at least wait until after the GP to take action. Oh how thoughtful. Mind you if they do succeed in getting the French government to reduce petrol duties, that would be good for everyone.

I’m not an F1 fan, but because I do spend a lot of time in Monaco, I do take some interest in just this one race.

The Monaco Grand Prix is special more for the venue than the actual race itself. I’ve watch the GP several times on TV in the past years and qualifying is far more important, because who ever gets pole position will most likely be the race winner barring any mishaps. This is because the cars are too broad for the narrower track, which makes passing very difficult. However, it is not impossible, as I remember a very clever and imaginative pass a couple of years ago by David Coulthard, where he made an inside pass on the hair pins just before the tunnel.

Still passing is very rare and so any drama typically comes from unfortunate mishaps rather than skill. Every GP I’ve seen has been dry and sunny. However, the weather forecast for this weekend is calling for rain on Sunday, which many of the drivers have comment on, saying that Monaco would become 10x more dangerous. I’ve never seen a wet race in Monaco, but given how boring a dry race is, if it rains on Sunday, then the drama through misfortune will be high, unless all the drivers decide to play safe.

Now I don’t wish anyone harm or misfortune, but personally I think a wet race in Monaco would be a more interesting test of man and machine. And for the fans that brave the weather, should prove very memorable. One way or other, I have a sense that this coming Sunday is going to be dramatic.

This is the week of the Monaco F1 Grand Prix, another one of the Riviera’s prestigious events, which always overlaps with the Cannes Film Festival. Monaco is about 45 minutes drive east from Cannes and about 20 minutes drive west from the Italian border by the A8 autoroute. It is very popular tourist destination and common stop for cruise ships.

I mentioned before how Cannes triples in population during the Film Festival, well Monaco is probably no exception and possibly worse as it is only about 5 square kilometres in size. So with both the Cannes Film Festival and Monaco Grand Prix, you can imagine how trying to do any normal day-to-day business in these two places in the days leading up to and during these events can be a nightmare.
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