Girls, girls, girls

This morning was stressful. Soon my shiny new office will be ready and we will be able to start welcoming students to the new médiathèque. It may also be getting a rebranding, so that's really exciting - names are important, but not as important as the thing, as Juliet was so keen to point out - a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It's true; if you have a friend called Rose, ask her to pretend to be Jennifer for a day, and you'll notice she still smells of rainforests and sunlight. And sweat. Just a bit. She's human. We all are.

The problem with a shiny new office, however, is that it needs shiny new fittings and shiny new lights and that means shiny new drills need to be used to bore holes in walls, which would be absolutely top-hole and spiffing if my new office were not next to my current office. Making phone calls while a workman kicks his power drill up to 11 and goes to town on the poor wall is impossible, and conversation in the office became a little strained. Still, I powered through the tasks that needed doing, and before long I was ready to head into my basement to measure more things. My supervisor wants a plan ready for the new occupants of my basement office, and so I'm measuring and teaching myself Sketchup and very frequently cursing under my breath because I've accidentally spent twenty minutes making a gorgeous desk and only just realised it's floating two metres off the floor. And I have no idea how to get it to obey gravity, so for the moment whoever moves in next will need to make do with an anti-grav desk.

We also finally sorted out the books that we're keeping and the books that we're giving to anyone who wants them along with a load of VHS tapes and cassettes, in case Doc Brown turns up.

Not the Doc Brown from yesterday's blog. (Although thank you for reading so regularly.) The other one. Big hair. Owns a Delorean.

That's the bunny.

Incidentally, did you recognise him the first time you saw him as that destroyer of childhoods Judge Doom, from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I did, and it was not a pleasant moment. I kept expecting him to do this:

And he didn't. I got to the end of Back To The Future and was so tense I couldn't stand up. My mother actually used me as a doorstop for an hour before I relaxed. Sensible women, my mother.

All of that was a lot of verbiage for the joke that we have VHS tapes and they're old fashioned, but I am quite sure you'll agree it was worth it. If you are a student in the place in which I work and, for some reason, have a VHS tape player, you may come and see me and help yourself at lunchtime.

I had my first French class today, which was interesting. We focussed on the future simple tense, which was quite fun. The teacher is very animated and the exercises are quite fun, so I may well appropriate them for my own classes because plagiarism is the highest form of flattery. I would say without boasting that I am one of two students with an already good level, but it's really interesting to see how I've gotten rusty through needing only relatively basic French and tenses. Several times I found myself struggling for words that I really ought to know, but it was nice to get back into the swing of speaking French with a variety of people.

It's also interesting to see where I've changed; I've not been in a classroom setting (as a pupil) for quite some time, and so I was surprised to find myself encouraging my classmates to answer and pushing them to take centre stage. Those who remember me from shared classrooms in the hazy days of youth will attest to the fact that I was an insufferable know-it-all, a boy whose arm was the greatest short-twitch muscle ever seen. I could answer a question the teacher hadn't finished asking. Hell, sometimes I even answered questions they hadn't planned on asking. I was the uncool kind of disruptive kid, the one the teacher and the rest of the students hate.

I am now a thoroughly more chilled out chappy, though that's not to say I don't get a bit cross when things like this

Taken from artist's Tumblr, http://roseaposey.tumblr.com/post/39795409283/judgments

(which, by the way, is a piece of art criticising the slut-shaming, it's-your-fault-because-you-dress-like-that attitude which is way too fucking pervasive) appear on my feed titled "Use this as a reference guide." I'm bound to get a tiny bit irritated with anyone who is so apparently unable to control their animal instincts, so stuck in the Stone Age that they need women to cover up from neck to ankle. What utter twattery.

Do you know how to tell if a woman is asking for it?

She opens her mouth and she asks for it. 

She can be as naked as the day she was born and if she isn't asking then you need to man the fuck up and walk on.

Gorram, we live in a world where we have instant access to all humanity's knowledge, we live longer, we can fucking fly through the air and I still have dumbasses posting this as a "reference guide" like we're still living in caves and hunting saber-toothed-tigers and are literally only prevented from committing sexual assault because our potential victims cover themselves up. 

Gor-ram.

It's not my place to lecture anyone on feminism but: if you're a girl or a woman and you agree with that picture then think about what that means. It means you think guys should have the right to decide how you dress. It means that sexual assault is partly your fault.

And they don't. And it isn't.

The return plan

Another week over. I've got a week to decide whether or not to re-apply to the British Council and find myself journeying off to some other corner of France to teach more English. I'm finding it very tricky to decide; I'm really too old as it is - at this rate I'll be graduating in 2015 with around £30 000 of debt, which is such a large number I might need to go and lie down for a bit.

If I wasn't so confident that this time abroad and the skills I'm learning will ensure me a decent job, I'd be a hell of a lot more nervous. I'm still on the old fees, back in the days when Scotland was cheaper than England and the education of an equal level. Now - I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone reading this - it's £9 000 a year, in bonnie Scotland or green and pleasant England. A three year degree, like the one my sister is doing, is going to land her with approximately the same amount of debt as me. Incredible. Utterly incredible.

In any case, I'm really struggling because, as I said, I am way too old to be thinking about spending another year abroad and putting off graduation, but on the other hand - looking at my finances for next year is a deeply unpleasant prospect. Flat prices are higher than ever, and the only downside to this year abroad is that my ex-flatmates now have new flatmates. Such is life; I can hardly expect them to turf out someone who's been a close friend for a year just for me. So I repeat my plea; if you know of anyone moving out then I implore you to get in contact.

I did some more work with Sketchup today, and at one point managed to accidentally turn my model inside out. Obviously the first reaction is fear and surprise, but after realising it could be undone with a simple command-z, I spent fifteen minutes trying to recreate the effect. My curiosity will one day be my downfall, but perhaps it illustrates my scientific bent. A comic by XKCD illustrates what I'm trying to say:

The mouseover text, which unfortunately you can't see here, says "How could you choose avoiding a little pain over understanding a magic lightning machine?" I wholeheartedly concur.

I've spent quite a happy little day messing with Excel and making graphs in the morning before clambering around my soon-to-be-moved office trying to find the electric sockets for the room plan I'm making. I found a tool that measures things and fear I may have gone slightly overboard; my latest draft is a mess of numbers that are only understandable if you zoom in to about 2 000%. 

I've got the weekend off this week, and it's come as a bit of a shock. My student is out in Abu Dhabi (I know, poor guy) so I have two days off, and I'm really not sure what to do with them. This is where I hope my readers will come in. Amy has suggested a tearoom just outside Paris, which I'm quite excited about, but what else can you suggest? I have a whole weekend, so if you can recommend a little corner of Paris that you've stumbled upon let me know - comment below or tweet me; @jonodrew.

A Friday tune, because I suspect there's snow billowing outside your window. Have a wee bedroom dance. You can't help it.

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.