It is 1am and I am sitting in bed, utterly soaked in tiger-balm. I am hoping that the smell of the ointment might do something to annul the lingering smell of onions in the room and my thighs that still ache from a hit of social volleyball three nights ago (I am doing well to sell myself as a potential husband).

I have class in a few hours across the other side of Paris, a good 45 minute commute. Most likely I will wake up at 7:30, hit snooze once, then crawl out of bed, maybe check facebook, abcnews and any spam I have at one point signed up for in the hope that that man from Ghana would send me that Amazon Gift-card, while drinking lukewarm tea that is oh so romantically heated in my microwave. I will then sort through the pile of clothes on my floor for pants, a t-shirt and boots most likely. Given the sun still won't have risen by this time, I will don my thick jumper, jacket and a beanie, anything to battle through the -6 degrees outside. I will slurp down some muesli and then leave, ipod in, blasting some pop-trash to help things along in the waking up process. I pass the boulangerie and the homeless man who sits on the corner, in the freezing cold. I always try to avoid eye-contact with because that means have to face up the reality that less than one hundred metres from my cosy, and (for Parisian standards) spacious apartment, sits a man that braves the freezing cold, his hands held out, ever polite, "sil vous plait, Monsieur". The inconvenient realities of the world.

I then travel to Passy, changing once. The metro is filled with tired faces, bodies that leave their homes before the sun is up and return after the sun falls. The metro is silent at this time, nothing but the sound of the train clacking along the tracks and if you are lucky, a loud, heavily lip-sticked, Parisian woman complaining about a work colleague, a treat for those who had forgotten their i-pods. And then, as any invigoration that an Earl Grey and Gaga had pumped into me starts to wear off, the train traverses the Seine and behind rows of apartment blocks, the Eiffel Tower reveals her brilliant self for a few seconds. Soon, as the train pulls into the next station, she disappears again, at times peaking over the stunted skyline of Paris. Paris has mastered the art of 'surprise landmark'. Surprised by Paris, every morning.