I finally have time to sit down and dig Tienyao’s video cam to get this song out. 
Among all the chansons français which I sang for Jazz in July on 22 Jul 08, the song I had looked forward the most was this (click to listen).
I love love love the song. It is one of those songs that I’ll keep going on repeat mode when I listen to French audiophile cds . For those who are interested, it actually came from the French Musical Les Parapluies de Cherbourg in 1964.
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, it just means “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”.
Recently my French friend from Paris asked what I like about the French. I told him I love how the French people hold fast to the importance of having enough personal/family time, away from work (enough to campaign it as a law); the warmth they have, the food (OMG), the clarity they have about certain issues (but maybe cos they’re quite a bunch of practical people who either keep quiet or don’t mince words). But of course I dread the sarcasm, and sense of pessimism and helplessness that seem to come with the culture. Actually if anyone were to pick up a foreign language (and try to follow through for some time), I think you’d get suck into their world, naturally. Learning a foreign language seems to serve as another pair of binoculars for me to interpret the world. And it’s quite fun to confuse yourself sometimes for eg. example is spelt as exemple, apartment is spelled as apartement. It’s also quite tiring to keep saying ‘of something of somebody of someone else’ in French cos they don’t have apostrophe S – LOL.
One of the chansons français I learnt early was Ne Me Quitte Pas. For fun, I actually did a demo recording in 2006. I sang this at the Esplanade, but the ‘batteries OF the videocam OF Tienyao’ died on me halfway. 
Anyway, my French lesson starts again tmr.
