I'm going on an adventure!

Planning tomorrow's jaunt, for which I shall be leaving at the unnatural hour of 7 ante meridiem, has got me terribly excited. I've looked up places to go and things to see, been bitterly disappointed by the fact that my favourite looks like it'll be closed and found myself once again confounded by the French fondness for just shutting everything for two hours at lunchtime.

Still, there also seem to be plenty of good eateries, so I'm looking forward to a delectable lunch. The early morning will be interesting and hopefully I'll get the chance to take an early breakfast when I arrive. There seems to be an awful lot to see there including big clocks, various museums, and a cathedral or three. There will probably be lots of pictures, although I can't promise a post - I know I shall be absolutely dog-tired.

Anyhow; that's tomorrow. Today was a slow news day - at least in the morning. In the afternoon, this tweet appeared in my timeline:

I like PR; I'd like to see myself in it one day before long. It's storytelling by any other name and, like a rose, is still as sweet. I like to portray myself as cool, calm and collected. I like you all to think of me as the pinnacle of effortless charm, poise and grace, un maestro di sprezzatura if you like. So it will benefit me nothing to tell you that upon reading this tweet I jumped out of my chair and said a word that my mother told me oftentimes not to say.

Nota bene - For British readers, don't forget that Mothering Sunday is this weekend, and if you've not got anything yet there's probably still some sad looking flowers or a dog-eared card at the petrol station. It's far too late for me. But you still have a tiny chance. Go. Go now!

So having fired off an email to the man in question and received a full job description in reply, it turns out that the company is looking for an intern whom they hope to turn into a full time employee, and at this point in my life I can't really drop out of university and hope all turns out for the best. There was a time when I did exactly that, but I'm older and just a little wiser now - in part because when I did, it didn't, if you see what I mean.

However; I am nothing if not tenacious, and I've sent emails in French and English asking for the company to consider me for an internship of fixed duration. I don't know if I'll get it - that advert will have been answered by a minimum of 200 actually graduated francophones, some of whom will be naturally bilingual, but nonetheless - nothing is gained by doing nothing.

As I sent the email last thing on a Friday night I don't imagine I'll get anything back before Monday, but  I'm going on an epic trip tomorrow and planning lessons all day Sunday so I'm not going to have any time to worry. That's the plan, but I daresay I'll find half an hour to chew on my fingernails. Even in the depths of panic, I know how to schedule my time.

As I packed my things away to go for the weekend, my neighbour popped his head round the door to mention he'd be gone for a week. I asked if he was going anywhere nice, and he pretended to think about it.

- Cap-Vert, he said at last, grinning.

Cap-Vert is a string of islands just off the coast of Senegal, 14 degrees above the equator.

Rouen suddenly looks less awesome.

In case I don't do a blog tomorrow please accept my apologies in advance, and have a picture of a man who looks like Ant and Dec at the same time. 

Can't be unseen.

Bards and poets and wizards

I am having a student friend for dinner. I am not sure what to have for dessert.

She's coming to sing for her supper - or rather, speak. I think stories are a great way of using tenses with advanced students, because when constructing stories we have things in the past, the past perfect, the imperfect as well as wishes, desires, hopes, dreams, ambitions and so on and so on. That's why a good storyteller is a wizard, and to be a wizard you have to be able to tell convincing stories - after all, what's a spell but a story that starts with a desire and ends in fulfillment?

And everyone has stories to tell, whether they're autobiographical (auto, Greek, meaning self- or one's own, hence automobile - self-moving and autograph, something you wrote yourself) or famous tales from one's homeland. Strange and marvelous things happen to us all the time, and they happen by chance.

Take the story of the crane operator who was an hour late to work on Wednesday and, hustling up his ladder, saw a helicopter smash into the structure above him. Two people died in this awful accident. They died because that day they got up on time, and he survived because he happened not to. That's it. The universe is random and without purpose.

Returning to stories, then, and my autobiography - my story written by me, although since it's typed - but I digress.

I have finally concluded the translation project that I thought I'd finished way back in December, so I'm going to add that to all of the important documents that make up my application for a job when I (finally) graduate. My colleague was so pleased with it that he insisted I put my name on it, and so I am now immortal - or will be, for as long as this unit is taught with this translation. Still, it's something. I've also been finalising a video - for some reason a perfectly gorgeous video in iMovie became absolute, pixelated crap when converted to .avi, but a little research and a solution was found. The internet is brilliant.

I've also taught myself the basics of plan drawing, and using Sketchup - and playing around with a lot, there's a strange sort of childish glee with grabbing a cube and deforming it like putty - I've knocked together something at which I daresay my brother would cringe. On the other hand, he's in Dubai, but because he's a really good guy the minute I mentioned I'd done it, he facebooked me and asked why I hadn't asked him. He's in Dubai and he's still willing to help me out at a moment's notice. My brother is awesome.

In any case, it's been a really interesting day, despite my first French lesson being cancelled. Next one's on Tuesday and I'm actually a little bit nervous.

So here's something fun I've found, because laughter is a natural cure for nervousness: NFL players overdubbed with very bad lip-reading. Hilarious.