Dissonance

I'm writing even as updates appear in the left hand corner of my screen about some explosions that have occurred near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It's really quite weird to even consider writing about my day when these events are happening, but happening they are, and they are happening half a world away from me. I can't change that, though I'd like to, so rather than sitting here twiddling my thumbs I'm going to say only this:

1. Donating blood is easy. You can do it anywhere. I recently did it here in France and was only a little afraid I'd be misunderstood and have my entire body accidentally drained.
2. Donating a little cash is even easier and even less painful. Consider giving a couple of quid/dollars/huge rocks with holes in (delete as applicable) a month and feeling smug for saving someone's life.

Easy peasy. Please do one of those two things before reading on, or at least do it simultaneously. If you're giving blood then with any luck my prose will cause you more pain than the needle and thus distract you. Onwards.

My morning was beautiful. The sun is shining, the air is warm, and rather than leaving my skin behind when I arose I was instead a rather nice light tan colour. The wonders of my Spanish heritage, which turn up only when I'm under attack from ultraviolet rays sent through space. Or sunlight, if you prefer. I installed myself in my new office, brought my computer down, and plugged everything in. There is a curious satisfaction to currently connecting all the bits and pieces of a computer; everything fits together perfectly.

My morning was taken up with a thirteen-page read through of the third chapter from the book I'm proofreading. No sign of chapter two, as I'm sure you noticed. Where that is nobody knows, but we're certain it exists somewhere. This chapter was a lot easier, and finding out the history of the place in which I live is really very interesting.

My afternoon was all about unpacking. At this point the sneaking suspicion grew on me that books multiply in ways we cannot be certain of; while I cannot prove it, I am sure that we now have more books than we did when I boxed them away. I stood looking at shelves heaving with books, and then the pile of books still to be unpacked, and could not work out how to recombine the two in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Several hours later, and with filthy hands, one of my students turned up to tell me that nobody would be coming to class today, as they all had project work or were on vacation. While a warning of more than ten minutes would have been more useful, and would have better allowed me to plan my free hour, these kids are really busy and the mere fact they sent an envoy was very good of them.

So I upped and I left and managed to read a little more Machiavelli before supping on soup and going off to my private student, who is as charming as ever. The evening was so barmy we sat outside in the heat and sipped beer and talked. I keep saying this, but there is nothing as brilliant as looking back at how a student used to be, and how they are now, and realising the leaps and bounds they've made. Fantastic.

Home; no greasy take-away meal for me today (though my stomach, being naught but a dumb animal, protests at the indignity). The awful events in Boston are still unfolding so I'm going to stop here and just restate that giving a pint of blood will impact your life only so far as some of your lifetime will not be spent doing precisely what you want. Please, please do it. If you can spare a little wonga too then fantastic, but blood is absolutely more important. 

I can't say it without saying cheesy, but if you save a life with your own damn blood, that makes you a superhero. 

Go forth and be a superhero.

Avalanche!

I got a pleasant surprise in my inbox today; an email from the British Council congratulating me on the fact that I'd been approved to work in France next year.

This is pleasant because it gives me something to fall back on, should other career plans fall apart, but surprising because I've withdrawn my candidacy for next year. Or at least I thought I had. So I sent a quick email back, thanking the British Council for the opportunity but mentioning that regretfully I would have to turn it down.

A quick response pinged back; no problem at all. I would be taken off the system. Best wishes for the future.

Ten minutes later I got another email from the British Council, asking if I'd mind terribly if they placed me in the countryside rather than in a city. I am currently trying to formulate an email that doesn't question the reading abilities of those writing these emails. It absolutely isn't their fault, no doubt the system updates at midnight and the email blasts are being sent automatically. Which is why I shan't send the email.

I just find it cathartic to write.

In other news: our network went down this morning, so I was left twiddling my thumbs as I tried to find something to do. I was so strapped for work that I started on the essay I have to complete for university, which will be on manifestations - demonstrations - and why the French are more enthusiastic about it than we are. It will likely be a little fluffy, but should be fun to write - and to read.

I was sent on a mission - an errand, rather than an explosive adventure featuring micro-star-scientologist  Tom Cruise - across campus to retrieve an important cheque. The errand happily coincided with the rain that began to fall in sync with my first step outside, and by happily I mean unhappily. Once I got back, an avalanche of work fell into my lap, including two translations and an Excel project. Using a macro I have to match up questions from our questionnaire with state-approved questions, and it is proving to be something of a nightmare because the answers have to match state-approved answers too.

And neither list is in alphabetical order and there are about fifty questions on our side and 150 on theirs.

Cauchemar.

All the way through lunch I responded to students' requests for their scores, which arrived this morning, and then ran off to grab a swift bite to eat before my T.F.I class. Some good and some bad came out of it; my listening scores are now hitting the mid-80s which is a huge positive, but my grammatical skills still - and there is no other way of saying this - suck.

So that's what I'll be doing after this, after the other two blogs I need to write.

Anyone else ever get annoyed and frustrated that the only important part of their body is their brain and it petulantly demands petty things like nutrition and sleep?

Just me. Right.

While I eat, here's a guy doing some impressions of how other animals eat. They're excellent, you'd almost believe the animals were there in the room.

I seriously love my job.

Something I don't say enough is that my job is incredible. At least once a week - at least! - I learn more about something about which I had had only a passing knowledge.

Take today, for example. The morning was spent in the office, entering data into spreadsheets, struggling with a translation that had gone into French via Spanish. The phrasing was complex but I feel like the translation does it justice - we shall see when it comes back.

In the afternoon I had the chance to go over the newsletter produced by the BDE, the French version of our Students Associations/Unions. It was incredibly well written, considering the author's first language is not English at all, and although I discussed the issues with it in French - I ought to have done it in English, being the English teacher - he often spotted the mistake before I explained it. The BDE organises a lot of really interesting extra-curricular activities, and I'm continually surprised by how many students go along to them - I've seen how much work they have to do, and I don't know how they juggle it. For this particular student to go so far A and B the C of D and produce a ten page synthèse of the events is astonishing. I suspect he sleeps less than me, and yet he is a continual ray of sunshine. He will go far; I guarantee it.

After lunch I had a coaching session with one of the professors, and he explained his course to me - it deals with using waves to measure the sub-surface. In essence, one can send a vibration through the Earth, and that wave will travel at different speeds through different media. By recording how long it takes to get back to the surface, engineers can make an educated deduction about the substances below their feet - whether they are chalk, granite, oil or dwarven halls. These waves are also created naturally, by earthquakes, but since such events are far too destructive to induce on a regular basis, this method is used instead.

Several more students have apparently just woken up from deep sleep and realised that the deadline for the test was a week ago, and the remainder of my afternoon was taken up with adding them to my long, long list. With twenty minutes to go, the director of one of the programmes came in and asked for help drafting a delicate email. A former student had googled himself and found that he had been mentioned in a French paper by his former professor. Assuming that this was because the professor had either cited or, in fact, appropriated his ideas, the alumnus emailed all in a bother, talking about copyright law and the unprofessional attitude of the school.

What had actually happened, had this rude and petulant person bothered to read the paper, was that the professor had mentioned the alumnus along with the rest of his class, thanking them for taking the time to discuss certain ideas in the paper.

That's it. It's as though Adele's mother, upon hearing her name in the singer's thank-you speech, had rushed on-stage and tried to wrest the Oscar away from her daughter, claiming that the work was hers. It is that level of ridiculous.

It irritated me no end to simply read this person's whining; I dread to think how the author of the paper reacted to being accused of intellectual property theft by someone who couldn't spell "google." In any case, the director and I crafted a very strongly worded response which she said she would sleep on. It was very strong; the polite words only sharpened the message, which was - in effect - pipe down and be thankful your name was even mentioned, you ungrateful little rat. It might be more pertinent to politely explain the matter, despite the desire to give said rat the ticking-off he deserves.

I've been in for an hour now and I've got a blog ready and I finished my French homework a day early; the topic was Dîner Catastrophe! and if you're particularly keen to read my stab at French please follow the link. My next topic, for Thursday, is to be a discussion between myself and an acquaintance who wants the recipe for the delicious meal they just ate. It's a work in progress, but if I say that the meal was tantalising (from the Greek king Tantalus) then perhaps that gives you a clue as to the slightly dark path I plan to lay.

I must leave you now to give a lesson but, in the meantime, try to tell me who you're more likely to find in a golf bag: Julius Caesar, Helen of Troy, or Sir Lancelot.