Introductions

Alright, double blog. I can only apologise; things have been a little hectic and my side projects are nibbling at my time like a shoal of piraña. Let's see: Friday I worked with the Association on their video presentation, for which I'm learning more advanced iMovie techniques. Still in French, mind, when it comes to editing footage in English I shall be hopelessly lost. The afternoon was spent working on the HSE video project, which is ready to start filming, so I'll be out and about with my camera over the next couple of weeks and will, with any luck, get some good footage of students.

The evening, as usual, was spent teaching, and once again C was doing very well. Teaching her has been eye-opening for me, because I've suddenly had to face up to the fact that a lot of English verbs are irregular and thus very frustrating. I'd given B a much harder task than normal, because it was more about comprehension than grammar, but he did very well considering. The two of them only have one more week of school and then it's hols, which is might depressing. Turns out in the real world you don't get summer hols, you just get a hotter office.

I got back quite late, having dawdled in a coffee shop practicing something I'm working on. There were a few kinks in the method but it's fixed now; all that's left is the delivery. I understand this is cryptic and, if you are anything like me, enormously frustrating, but I want to share as much with you as I can without giving too much away. Hopefully it will become clear before long.

In any case, on the way home I got a text from Adeline - asking if I was going to the last BDE-organised party of the year. I replied in the negative; one BDE party per year, I have learnt, is my absolute limit. She wasn't going either, so I invited her up for orange juice and The Princess Bride, because she had apparently never seen it before. I showed her a little Rocky Horror Picture Show before, but I suspect that wasn't entirely her cup of tea. I literally don't understand why not.

(be honest, it's kind of hypnotising)

Why would you not 

love this show?

Stop whatever you're doing right now, by the way, and do the Timewarp again.

(Alright, maybe it's not for everyone.) In any case, we finally said goodnight to each other at 3am, because when it's The Princess Bride you don't stop watching just because it's 2.30am and you're teaching at 10am the next day. You watch and you try to work out who all the actors are under the thick make-up, struggle for ages, and then stop caring because it's so damned good. 

Today, Saturday, was spent with A in the morning. His mental maths is getting faster and there were a couple of times when he almost caught up with me, which is really encouraging. He's benefitting from not being given the answers; as he's following an internet-based course the majority of questions are multiple choice, which I think makes it too easy - one needs only to eliminate the incorrect answers, rather than seeking the correct one from the get-go. So instead I read the question and he cracks on with speed and only infrequent mistakes.

For lunch I made fajitas and discovered once more than living by oneself is wonderful, right up until the point you realise you can't get fajitas for one. So you've got to store it in the fridge, and the wraps never taste so good the day after, and so you always eat just one more and end up utterly rotund, eating a carrot for dinner and wondering how on earth someone could love you.

Saying that, carrots are tasty as anything. Getting on the raw-veg-baton-and-hummus bandwagon when I get home. Hummus recipes from all please.

So that brings us to here, where I say goodnight, because I'm going to drop off before long. Thank you all for bringing your lovely eyeballs to bear on this page. It means a lot.

Meeting and storyboards

That was the theme for today: meetings and storyboards. And essay writing. Third year abroaders, if you need to do an essay/project, do it early. Find something in the town in which you live and write the heck out of it. Make like I did and blog every day except instead of just talking about nonsense, try to frame at least three posts a week around a theme. That way, when it comes to writing it, you'll have material.

Rather than making like I did and learning the entire French political system in fifteen evenings after coming home from a day of work. It's not conducive to good essay writing.

So: this morning was sent polishing the aforementioned essay and then starting to storyboard Project#1, which will be several videos of no longer than 5-6 seconds. I'm actually considering filming them with Vine, and trying to get students sharing them. It might be a long shot, considering the subject material, but it's going to be quite light-hearted. There's also a larger video, and I'm going to need volunteers for that. If you're a student of mine and you're reading this, come and see me in the médiathèque on Tuesday. I'll bribe you with food. Probably.

I've also got Project#2 to be thinking about, although it's a little easier - ice breaking exercises for next year. I've got a few ideas, but if you know any, I'd really love to hear from you - you can contact me all over the net from the home page. So far I've got - ah, but I shan't say. Let's keep it on the down low for now.

Project#3, which I got given yesterday, should be quite fun. That will require more storyboarding but also working with some older gentlemen who are a little...set in their ways, shall we say. Still, they've got incredible presence - comes of being massively experienced in one's field, I suppose - and if I can channel that then I think we'll be home and safe.

Lunch was solo, and thus a little depressing, though I got some thinking done - I was offered an internship in August after I bought tickets to go and see my girlfriend in Chicago. The internship would have been an incredible opportunity, but also only part-time - but then I could do bar work part-time to make up the hours, but then I wouldn't see Mary - the thoughts had been circulating like this for a little while, but I got an email today which seemed to suggest I'd be able to pick up the thread of the conversation I was in with my potential boss when I got back. I really hope so; this could be a massive opportunity, and theoretically even a part-time remote-working job while I'm at uni. Turns out that being massively passionate and knowing what your potential boss is looking for is a massive bonus when asking for internships. In any case, it's good knowing that I can put that thought to bed and fully enjoy the States.

In the afternoon I had to do a more unpleasant part of my job, which is to break down a CV that a student's spent considerable time on and essentially tell them they need to rework it completely. I try to be as jocular and fun as possible, but there's always a moment when they realise I'm not going to stop until I reach the end, and I feel horrible every time.

On the other hand, the student seemed pleased, and he's got a good idea of where his CV needs to go next, so I'm both hopeful and pleased for him. Immediately after that I had a meeting with my Project#1 team, who assured me they'd get (get or bully, I'm not sure about the word I heard) students to volunteer for acting with me. We also went over my storyboards and had several really fruitful discussions. I think one idea may have to be vetoed, but it wasn't my favourite so I can live with it. I'm learning that flexibility is key to almost everything, something I look back on and realise with horror that I never knew before.

Finally a quick look over an Economics thesis (fascinating: if I had my time again I would actually listen in Economics. I'm so sorry Ms Ancrum.) and only a few errors. This is always a delight, in part because it makes my life easier and in part because the students get so frustrated at themselves when I point out "loosed" instead of "lost" and "form" instead of "from."

(I'm checking this blog right now for that last error.)

Finally, teaching, where C has sprained her foot, making it three injuries in three weeks. It also allowed us to revise body parts and how to communicate where something hurts, and how (sharp? dull? achy? Things that are important to know and I never learn til I dislocated my knee at Disney.). Went over the hero work with B and had an excellent discussion about heroes and villains, and how to construct them in stories - opposite, but not too opposite.

A quick jaunt into Paris to get something for the weekend and home. And blog: typed.

Now to get cleaning. This essay's meant my room's got a little cluttered.

Doing what I love

Sometimes you just have a day. You know it's going to be a day before you even wake up. Your body tries its best to stop you waking up because it knows, it knows that when you do, it's all going to turn to crap.

This was one of those days, only worse, because my body actually kicked me out of bed before I needed to. I woke up at 6.30, freezing cold, because the heating system in my flat turns itself off at around 5. This has happened three times in three days, and for the life of me I have absolutely no idea why. Ever since I got rid of my duvet, the evil genie that apparently lives in the radiator has decided to knock off at 5am.

I couldn't get warm in bed. I couldn't get back to sleep because I was cold and apparently wide awake, so I had a shower instead and then some coffee. The luxurious pace with which I broke my fast should have told me of the heapings of crap that were soon to land on me, but no. I was lulled, like a fool, into the sense of smug self-security that envelops a chap when he thinks he is ahead of his schedule.

I arrived at work a couple of minutes early, perfumed, fresh, rascally handsome. Today was a full day, but I felt prepared to face it. I was full of nutella and home-brewed coffee. My first task was the pilot light of the deep-sea fish of a day I would shortly encounter. I had to pull up some statistics for my colleague regarding memberships: who's paying, who paid last year but hasn't yet, how many of the new graduates are ponying up the cash…it was a task that she told me I needn't rush, that would take a couple of hours. 

Imagine her surprise, and the smug look on my face - vile, isn't it - when I returned the document to her twenty minutes. It wasn't a magic trick, but it may as well have been from the look on her face - but then, an awful lot of magic is knowing something the other person doesn't know. In this case, it was knowing that all of the characteristics my colleague needed could easily be identified by "IF GREATER THAN" and "IF LESS THAN" formulae.

In any case, with this task completed ahead of schedule, I thought I could relax - but instead, a huge ginger Belgian came roaring into my life. I do mean roaring;  he has a laugh that most of the school can hear. Once his hair goes white I can see him making a pretty penny as a Santa lookalike. It was for this gentleman that I had recorded the Mind-Mapping video, and he was exceedingly happy with it.

Except one part. One little part, that would only take me ten minutes to sort out.

The man knows me. It was only a small thing, and I was confident it would take no more than twenty (he knows me, and that means he knows how to flatter me) so, with time to spare, I agreed to sort it out there and then. I set myself up in my office, sat myself down, and made sure I was handsome. I was. I am.

I started the recording. I opened my mouth.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

A chainsaw makes a noise that, if unexpected, is one of the most terrifying in the world. I leaped out of my skin and hung to the ceiling by my fingertips, like a bloody and disgusting Spider-Man. The noise stopped. I crawled down and re-installed myself. Hair a little wild, but otherwise ready to begin again. I took a perfunctory glance out of the window. Nothing.

I started the recording.

RRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr!!

Motherfu-

And this continued for twenty minutes. Every time I started recording my mysterious tormenter turned his or her chainsaw back on. Every time. If I ever meet the despicable animal who was doing this to me, I'm going to do absolutely nothing because they have a chainsaw. I'm not a total imbecile.

While I was slowly going mad inside the space of my own mind, I got a text - an unknown number. Unknown numbers always make me nervous, because I don't give out my number very much, but it was a woman who wanted to know if I could tutor her son. Sure, I said, when?

Tonight.

I warned her that I'd not be there until around 7.15; she told me it wouldn't be a problem. I hate such short notice, but a job is a job - and, speaking of jobs, it was time to get filming for the second video project of the day. There's a rather large announcement coming up in the next week, but due to various staff/national holidays, we've not had any time to prepare the online release, which will involve a video in Spanish. So that's how we two hours today: recording a three minute speech. How does one spend two hours recording a three minute speech?

Well, we did it by recording it a number of times and struggling with lighting issues, noise issues, and battery life issues. And pronunciation issues. And people-ignoring-signs-and-wandering-in-and-not-leaving issues, which were the absolute worst. In any case, we got it done, and for the next two-and-a-half hours Meyling, Sophie and I pieced together the takes to form a glorious, flowing draft. We had merely to add transitions, credits, and movement. Exhausted, we agreed to reconvene tomorrow at 8am to complete the project.

That completed, I took a whole half an hour to set up meeting the next day and chat to my colleague about work that I needed to take over from her while she jaunts off back to Blighty. Having added her items to my work schedule (and gained a new respect for the woman, she does a lot of work I didn't know about) it was to my French lesson, where I tried not to get irritated by the notion of the "traditional family," which at best is rose-tinted and at worst bigotry masquerading as "but we've always done this."Perhaps I was overreacting, but the one place in France where I've heard people using the phrase "traditional family" most was on the marches to deny the right to a family to homosexual couples. Perhaps I Pavlov'd myself again and I'm reacting to a slight that is unintended. All the same, I wonder how the class would feel if they had to describe the "traditional family" in the terms they reserve for non-"traditional" families: monoparental, recomposed (recomposé) and homosexual families versus "traditional" gives a linguistic bias (in my opinion) to the word we recognise and feel comfortable with."Hetero families" is as clinical a term as "recomposé," so why not use it?

As a result there was a slightly tense moment when I was asked what a family that is composed of a previously married father, a previously married mother, and kids from both previous relationships and the current is called. I said "a family." Because that's what it is. The day she has to say "I'm in a hetero relationship" rather than just "I'm in a relationship" is the day she has the right to label other people's families.

Sorry, that become something of a rant. I'll try to get back to the funny.

Mid-lesson I got a call from Sophie to say that the man at the top of her chain of command didn't like the video and that we'd redo the whole thing tomorrow, in one go. I have to say I'm a little relieved that our early morning meeting has been cancelled, but at the same time the fact that we wasted several hours in post-production was a knife to the kidneys of my soul. In any case, it was time to haul ass out to St. German to meet my new student, H, whose English is quite frustratingly good/bad. What I mean by this is that he has a solid to excellent grip on all English tenses and can use them comfortably and with ease, but then says "childrens" and "mens". Which is heartbreaking.

I finished that lesson at quarter past 8. I took a bus, and wrote most of this blog on the way. Since getting home I've replied to more emails and eaten half a kilo of ravioli, and I'm pretty okay with that.

Tomorrow promises to be just as exciting as today was. Oh - and I found out the name of the person who'll be replacing me. If it's you, and you read the blog, why not send me a message?

In the meantime, here's a sneaky picture from today's shoot. Hip height, so I apologise for the quality. 

As always, thanks for reading.

Back to normal

Normal here means my normal style; less "blue". My girlfriend assigns colours to my blog, but she also leaves out the u in colour so we'll take what she says with a pinch of salt. (She's coming back tomorrow, and I react to the reappearance in my life of those I've missed by being sarcastic and mean.) In any case, today began with a bang as I had an hour-long meeting five minutes after I got in. It was a great meeting, with lots of positive actions coming out of it, but all the same - that much French a mere 90 minutes after I'd woken up and blearily switched on +France24 is too much, even for someone with my staggering intellect and endless reserves of modesty.

In any case, I understood everything, and have now been commissioned to record myself giving one presentation about mind maps as well as film a series of clips for a secret project. Secret for the moment, in any case. There'll be more about it once I have more details for sharing. In any case, that brought me to 10, when I went to work for the Association, sorting out figures from last year. The accounts seem to be a bit of a mess, but I was reassured by my colleague that the figures I'd worked with last year were all wrong, and the ones I know held in my hands were the "good" ones.

(To all French students of English:  le bon is "the right one", and not "the good one. We can't make moral judgements about numbers.)

I had to fortify myself with coffee to bite back the quick response, which was why on earth was I not given the right figures in the first place, and as I waited for the dark nectar to fill my cup I realised that they probably thought they were the right figures in the first place. It is far too easy to leap to the conclusion that everyone had the information then that they do now, and it's simply untrue. I took a deep breath, a deep draught of coffee, squared my shoulders, and wrote lovely formulas to make numbers jump across pages and add up in neat little columns.

I darted back and forth between the Association and the mediatheque for the rest of the morning as students dropped in for books and DVDs. I have been dong that a lot recently, as I'm yet to work out how to automatically transfer calls. It seems that whenever I am in the Association nobody calls but the world wants to get in touch with the mediatheque, while when I'm in the mediatheque the world and his brother are both calling my Association phone. Sometimes, just for fun, they'll ring together, and I'll get so confused I run into a wall.

I have a fitness machine disguised as a pair of phones and it is a sadistic son of a gun.

I am also only now discovering the joys of endless e-mail threads, where you read something and then write your reply and send to all, because your opinion is so damn important that everyone must read it. Not just the project leader. Everyone on the project. This guy, who did a little picture montage and then nothing else this morning came into an inbox full of e-mail tennis about the correct wording of the French text in the e-mail that accompanied the montage.

And right at the bottom, after scrolling through for twenty minutes and trying to decipher the semantic battle waging, I find: "The montage is fine."

Road rage is a picnic with Winne the Pooh compared to the sensation coursing through a fellow's bloodstream on having read every line of this silliness in hope of any sort of feedback on one's work and finding it consists of four words.

No matter. I quit the business at midday, and threw myself into mediatheque work. The first part of the dual projects I have going on require a translation in which I have - and gods, I love my colleague for saying this - I have white card.

You've never seen anyone look so blank in your life. He repeated.

"Tu as white card pour faire ce que tu veux"

Understanding crept over me like moss creeps over a boulder. Slowly.

"Carte blanche?" I asked.

He beamed. "Oui!"

I almost bit through my lip trying not to laugh. What are the odds that he would pick that exact phrase to translate? Marvelous. A moment of pure comedy.

So I've broken down some of the heavier phrases and pages into more manageable chunks, like a bar of 95% chocolate recommended by the mother of an ex-girlfriend. I've played with the phrasing but, reading back what I've written, I'm realising that I may need to tone down the "me-ness" in it for those who don't speak my particular brand of English.

All of this, by the way, and it wasn't even lunchtime. I love working this hard, the time absolutely flows. I also love Fridays, because I get served this after lunch:

Pictured: why you want to work in France.

Second coffee of the day and this time with chocolate. There's just too much dark deliciousness there.

Straight after lunch I had a meeting with M, who's in charge of social media at the School. She's also charming, smart, and my co-collaborator on my third current project. She'll be interviewing a senior member of staff about an exciting new relationship that the School is developing, and she wants me to help her film and then subsequently edit the footage. We'll be adding in watermarks and doing our best to make the whole thing look as professional as possible.

Exciting times!

The rest of the afternoon was then given over to Chapter 4 of the book, which I didn't even realise I'd not seen yet. While I'll be losing marks for, you know, noticing stuff, I think it should be well noted that I then promptly busted my ass for another 90 minutes before throwing everything in a bag and running off to teach my private students.

Their lessons went well, though it's interesting to see that B, while more confident, is still a lot shakier on grammar than C - but C would rather carve her own arms off than say more than a sentence at a time. I need some way to meld them into one super-student and then divide them in two.

Crashed home, bought a kebab on the way - immigration is amazing for so many reasons, but the spread of spectacular food is the one I love best - and now, at twenty past ten, I'm considering going to bed. I had a lucky escape today; I was offered the last ticket to a party happening tonight in the Tour Montparnasse, the 2nd highest point in Paris. I was more than tempted; despite the long day, this was one of those occasions that will never come again.

But when I dug into my pockets I found nothing; not even a bit of fluff. Not even a moth to comically flutter out to denote my total lack of cash. The opportunity passed me by.

Let's be honest - after last time, that's probably just as well.

Freedom!

Upsides and downsides. A informed me today that he could be absent for the next two to three weeks, which gives me either a) lie-in time or b) exploring time. I've amassed a few pennies from the extra hours I do, so I'm pretty tempted to take the latter option and do some exploring - Rouen is a mere hour away by train and is pretty gorgeous, judging from my friend Adeline's trip. That blog in Mandarin Chinese and English, because as well as knowing beautiful people I know some seriously smart ones too.

In fact, from here I'm looking at loads of different trips and directions - I could head south towards the glorious (and, according to my French teacher, exceedingly expensive) town of Nice or north towards Rouen or even Normandy. Paris is gorgeous, but I've all of France to discover - and a new appreciation for the fact that in Scotland there are a hundred beautiful little corners that are waiting for me.

I've started re-reading The Great Gatsby after seeing a very exciting new trailer for it. If you've not read Gatsby, then please go and do so - if you have any sort of electronic reading device then it will not cost you more than a euro. Or a pound, if that's what you use. I can't say how much it would cost you in dollars, but I can't imagine it'll be very much. In any case, buy it and read it immediately. It's a story about people, about mystery, about striving to be something other than one is. According to the French, it's the 46th best book of the 20th century. I couldn't be that specific, but I would say it is an incredible work of the English language and well worth a read.

The rest of my day has been taken up by writing, laundry, and dishes, that trio of chores that take up my time. I despise the latter two for taking time from the first, which is why several students found me in the laundry room tapping away at this laptop. I'm working on a few things, but nothing that's yet worthy of publication.

In all, then, not as exciting a day as you'd hoped, but rather filled with the minutiae of the things that must be done, the little responsibilities one must look to if one wishes to stop drinking straight from the tap and start using a glass like a person in France in the 21st century. Who has access to several glasses.

I like writing and I hate doing dishes. But I need to eat and I can't eat off what I write. Still, buying plastic cups, plates and cutlery is getting more tempting by the minute.

Final request: if you love France and know where I should go, leave me a comment. I'd love to know what you think.