nefitis

dear all

as i was back to my roots in paris for a week, i had the pleasure to experience every aspects of this city who became a real multi cultrual hot spot. Inspite of all the tension growing problems in different ethnic and religious group in France, multiculture is also brining us funny experiences and adventures… I was spending a day with a friend, doing some shooting for his architechture project about urban “trompe l oeuil ” ( see next post ) and we got intererupted by some guys who asked us to film their futur music video clips… it was a lot of fun !

hello

As I am getting more involve intro big projects in the company, i wanted to give you some impression about a world of crazy projects. Of course i cannot give any names of our client or specific details because i could be in trouble, but I am sure you ll guess some of the names

laos and gold mining : I am still impressed when I arrive in those huge gold mine in the middle of nowhere in this small countryside land…. Modern gold mines are nothing in common with our pre-conceptual ideas… Mining is all about engineering…. Basically, what is happening:

- first, you blast a big rock, or part of the mountain where analysis proved that you have gold and copper ( I have experimented some blast, it s not a small one, i had more the impression of experiencing an earthquake !!!)
- then huge truck ( 3 m wheel ) take the rocks from the blasting area towards the processing plant
- then all the rocks are going through a huge processing plant. Many phases transform the rocks to gold and copper involving usage of dangerous chemicals as cyanure and arsenic.
- After this long process of complicated engineering, you get your copper or your gold. Some of the mine are even making their gold bars on site. So you often got the pretty well guarded gold room…
- as the copper is mainly transported by truck in a form of copper sheets, the gold is well escorted by chopper or plane towards its final destination ( jewelry or high tech )

As you can understand the main work of modern gold mine is too construct an efficient and safe processing plant where lot of engineer, environmental and geologist professionals are involved. Most of the people working in those kind of places work everyday during a certain period of time, and then go on break for another certain period of time. We call that rotations. So people live on sites in camps. Those camps are busy are their most during what we called the construction phase when places like the processing plant are being made. Those camp are usually occupied by a population of 2000 to 5 to 8000 people. It s a real little town where you have accommodation, mess, bars, football field and shops…. This where my company do its business, and I am the one who buying the equipment for those camp. Above, you can see a photo I took during the visit of one of this camp being constructed. I was analyzing the place to find the best equipment and furniture to equipy it. This camp is now soon finished, i ll probably go back there to install all my products.

here is a processing plant in one of the mine
We also have lot of different project in the oil and gaz industry described if you click further
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I am starting this blog mainly to share my views and opinions on what I observed, read and hear about the part of the world I live in… Asia. For this first post, I wanted to expose my views about the social and cutlural diversity of young chinese generations.

When a foreigner who never came to China thinks about it, he sees a big country with a lot of chinese people who managed under a communist governement to becaume one the most powerfull economical progress ever seen. But lot is forgotten with this simple vision of China,

country who managed to unify such a cultural, ethnic and now social disparity to push away concepts and logics that stays still in our western minds.

One of the first reason I enjoy living in china so much, is that, in the major cities, you will encounter such a variety of people that you will never get bored of incredible stories. Among Chinese mainlanders, many races are found. As the han (汉） is the mane race, we should not forget that the country is full of other races as the Manchu (欺人，northern china) , the Hui (回，muslim chinese, the tibet, the Uighurs(维吾尔族, western china) and other multiple minority from the south. This ethnical diversity is due to the history of China where instead of fighting an ethnic group in particular, the Han tended to absorb their ethnical opponent by invading their regions with starting new han families mixed with their local opponents. This exactly what is happening in modern tibet where in Lhassa, the Han community is growing more stronger than the local tibetan.
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