Cricket, allergies, mindless panic

I have 7 days left of my #thirdyearabroad.

This is a deeply upsetting fact for two reasons:

1. I don't want to leave. I like it here, despite this ridiculous, furnace-like heat.
2. I have way, waaaaaay too much work to do.

Reason two is the reason I've not been blogging much. Well, reason two and a whole new onset of allergies. My immune system has taken to treating pollen as the opening of hostilities by some unseen enemy and thus flushes my entire nasal cavity every two minutes, with six to seven enormous sneezes as an accompaniment. To round it off, sleeping is for people who are not under savage attack from pollen and being able to see is reserved for those not subject to ambush by flora.

My kinder colleagues tell me I look tired. I don't have any unkind colleagues, which is just as well because I'd go totally bananas if someone actually pointed out what an utterly unpleasant mess I must look right now.

The allergies were particularly bad last night because I played cricket with some friends from work; all interns, all Indian, and all light years better at cricket than me. I was glad England were playing well against Australia because in this little corner of the world I was letting the side down a lot. Still, it was a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon, if a little (a lot) roastingly hot. It is testament to my lack of sleep and wooly-headedness that for four hours today I couldn't work out why my right arm and side were hurting. Not a proud moment for me.

The work, as I said, is endless. Why people wait until just before they go on holiday to give work to the new guy is beyond me; I suppose they see me as the least important thing on a list but it does make it a touch difficult to get clarification on things I need...well, clarified. Still, I shall muddle through to the best of my prodigious abilities.

My final design for the invitations has been approved, and I got to spend several minutes groping paper. Oh, 350gsm gloss. Mm, 300gsm matt. Oh, Bristol, let me touch you with my fingertips. I used to work in a print shop, and some things never go away. And although it sounds odd, handling paper, looking at the different colours of white, comparing the gloss to the matt and imagining how your image would look...it's amazing fun. Never let me design your wedding invitations. You will lose hours of your life to talk about paper.

With that done it's on to the movies, two translations, and a couple of rearrangements. Six days, five projects. No problem.

Now I think about it...I might go in a little early tomorrow.

A stressful day that got better and somehow more stressful

If you don't want to read the entirety of this post, then this image will sum it up nicely.

If you don't get it, I'm afraid you're just going to have to read.

Alright, so yesterday and Friday several of my colleagues mentioned that the annual intern report was coming up, and had I prepared anything.

My reaction: whut?

"Oh wow," they said, "you didn't know? Every year the intern has to prepare an hour-long report and present it to the senior staff."

Oh hey, that sounds amazing fun, like running across coals or jumping out of an aeroplane - the kind of thing I'd love to do with more than two days warning. So the entirety, and I do mean the entirety, of my day has been spent in a frantic, sweaty panic. I read and reread my report speech. I argued everything three different ways, trying to find any criticisms that could be levelled at me and working out how to counter them. I put together a presentation. I sweated through two shirts, and that's a pain because I do not have a lot of shirts right now.

So I turned up at the appointed hour and place and knocked on the door. I heard the voice of the motherfucking Dean of the School on the other side. My knees, which were already doing an excellent approximation of castanets, switched up a gear and knocked out a tempo that might easily be labelled prestissimo, if one were writing a symphony for the body.

I digress. I was nervous. That's the point.

I entered.

"SURPRISE!"

My coworkers had thrown me a surprise party. I had sweated through two shirts and it turns out there is no intern report. I was set up. They got me, and they got me good. To apologise they'd bought cake, fruit, and gifts.

The gifts were two-fold. First some physical things: a guidebook to Chicago, in French; a gorgeous dark blue tie; and a flash drive and a keyring, both inscribed with my place of work.

They also filled a card and two sides of A4 with kind words. Amazing. I can read them. Even more amazing-er.

I still had to make a speech, mind you. I'm also still shaking from that. 

So that was my day. A stressful day that improved but got more stressful at the same time, and a very pleasing way to say goodbye to all the friends I've made on the staff.

Welcome to Stress City. Population: me

That's not really fair. Myself, H, and M are all up to our eyeballs in work, and poor H is also up to her eyeballs in tissues too - she seems to have picked up an awful cold. The rest of my colleagues, however, have no more classes to teach and don't want to do any work - so they're bothering me. Normally this would be amazing, but right now, my to-do list looks like this:

And quite frankly I do not have time for tomfoolery.

Still, I got a lot of work done, I'm forcibly animating the film for the Alumni by getting rid of most of the video and inserting plenty of images. A rough draft is finally ready and I should get feedback on that before long if I'm very lucky, which is exciting. Once everything's correct, I get to stamp the logo on the whole film, a process that will put my name on a thing produced for an international graduate school. Forever.

Gulp.

In addition to that, I've also dedicated a lot of time to an invite to the annual dinner. Before you see this, note that I'm nowhere near a graphics expert. I am using +GIMP and struggling like an elephant in treacle. But after encouragement from my colleague, I had a crack at it, going for a (very) basic art-deco style, using a font called Glover, which you can download here. It looks very Roaring Twenties and it's free.

Can I point out at this point that I'm continually stunned by the output of actual artists working for free? It's mad.

This font is the awesomest.

Glove by ~matiasromero on deviantART

 So anyhow, this is what I'm using. As you can see, it's got a really nice style, and I'm hoping it looks good on the background which is essentially monochrome. Bear in mind that this is a draft and, in addition, probably pants. It's the front of a two-sided invite, and the back will have a very similar style, though I'm working on a couple of different ideas, while keeping with the monochrome theme.

This afternoon I stayed an extra hour to finish off the translation of the source code (see above) for the website. I've got to input it tomorrow and find out if it works. My gut says yes.

Speaking of guts - mine has been getting just a little too big and, since in Chicago I'll be in shorts and pools a lot, I've decided I need to trim just a little off. I don't know how much it's going to help, but I've started the +7 Minute Workout twice a day.

It is not a good sign that I did it for the first time last night and less than 8 minutes later I looked redder than I have ever been and had managed to work up a very impressive sweat.

"Do you want to go again?" it asked, cheerfully.

I slipped on a patch of sweat and collapsed. That'll be a no, thanks. With any luck by the end of the week I won't be quite so ready to die afterwards, and by the end of the month I might even be able to do the whole routine twice.

Yea, okay. I'm not holding my breath either.

Qu'est ce qui est jaune et attends?

Me, according to a 9-year old who's far smarter than she should be. Jaune-attends is close enough in pronunciation to my real name that I'm unsettled by how long it stumped me. It seems so obvious now, of course.

So I'm sneaking back to the blog. Sorry for the long hiatus. There are a couple of reasons for this, but they're both immensely childish and I'm not willing to dwell on them. Onwards.

My life has been absolutely filled with work recently; two video projects, colleagues with a whole host of things to do that are more important than my repeated requests for information (that sounds bitter, but it's not really - I'm aware that my emails get put into a folder marked "Deal with later" and that "later" means "never" because I am literally the most junior person in the entire organisation.) and a whole host of things to do before the entire company leaves for their summer holidays. I'm not kidding, it's highly likely that come the end of the month I shall be drifting, wraith-like, through the halls that once were thronged with students. My boss, my colleague, and their respective bosses are all leaving, and I'm genuinely a little concerned I shall be left swinging in the wind. We can but wait and see what is revealed.

Plans for the future are coalescing like a sponge that's been put through a blender. I've got a visit lined up to an actual nuclear research facility, which is making my inner geek (who bears a striking resemblance to my outer geek) leap up and down with glee. I've also organised a visit to a place in Chicago that I know Mary's going to love, and I know I'm going to love, and that I will not permit myself to take money into because it will all be spent. And I need to keep that money for the moment.

Speaking of such things, the flat-hunt is creeping forward. Suitable properties with suitable moving in dates are appearing, so I need to nail the next one I see and sort out contracts while I'm here. I'm hoping that's not going to be an issue, but again, we shall have to see. I'm also a few steps closer to bar work at home, if I need it, and I think I'll do a little - the forced socialising is good for me. Plus, being tipped for being handsome/charming/awesome/all of the above is an ego-boost, which is clearly what I need.

(Yes, the mere fact that I've stated it clearly demonstrates how desperately I crave attention. It's a thing and I'm working on it, but for god's sake I blog, and if that didn't tell you I'm desperate for people to look at me you're more blinkered than I am.)

I've got an interview for some copy-writing and photography with a company that deals in student housing, so I'm really excited for that - 9.45 CET and I'll keep you updated on progress there. It's minimum wage but it's writing and photography, and quite frankly I can do that in my sleep. Scratch that, I can excel at that in my sleep. So next year should be fun.

Oh, and I get to start writing a dissertation in September. I am so totally prepared for that!!

Yea, that's going to go as expected. As always I shall keep you informed.

A song of ice and fire

This morning I was loath to get up, and the blame lies squarely with my inability to stop reading the books that form A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm profiting from reading them slower, exploring the links between the characters and the houses. I warn you that once you get into it, you find yourself making maps, drawing family trees, wondering, breaking, weeping. The game of thrones is a serious business, my friends, and the Martin does away with the literary convention where the named characters survive by killing at random. After a couple of books you realise that what drives the story onwards is not the need to tell a story but the characters themselves, living out the world in which they find themselves.

As I said. Enter at your peril. Enter the French version with even more care, because you will soon wear through your dictionary, though your mastery of the passé simple will be legendary.

Today, as I said, it was hard to get up, but get up I did. This morning was slow; my colleague is in a hurry to finish all her work before she leaves on Thursday, but that didn't leave her an awful lot of time to find something for me to do. Rather than take up space underfoot, I moved next door and worked a little on some writing, though nothing was going well. Sometimes there are days like that, and the best thing to do is try something else. So I relearnt A-level Economics, because that kind of thing cheers me up enormously, though it does have a very Keynesian bent. I like Keynes, I just wish we were taught others, if only so we can debate them better. Still, Keynes is better than nothing, and it was a very pleasant way of passing a couple of hours.

Yes, I enjoy Economics. Goodbye the brave few daily readers.

Lunch was spent in pleasant company and then came the afternoon, which was absolutely jam-packed with students needing practice tests (for the test they'll sit tomorrow) and the thesis, part four. I feel that needs more of an introduction.

The Thesis, Part IV - The Conclusion

Still a nightmare. And there's more to come and, o joy of joys, she's given my address to her colleague who also needs their thesis proofread. More geology. More reservoirs. More about faults, and coarse-grain and fine-grain stone, and more modeling and on and on ad infinitum.

Still, I did have French this evening, and that was enjoyable. We talked about love, and how it hits the French like a thunderbolt while the Czech have it at first sight; how a person who falls in (and out) of love often is a Spanish hummingbird but has a French artichoke heart. I can understand the logic of the Spanish, but the French thus far evades me. I daresay I shall get there in the end.

An interesting assignment to work on tonight and more Song of Ice and Fire - I can't stop, even though everyone's dead. Although I have just got the part where Joffrey bites the dust, and if you want to avoid spoilers I highly recommend not highlighting that space there. It's a good moment though.

My final thought is that I have strawberries, my window open, and a small glass of beer, and I could not be happier. Winter is coming, but for now let's have strawberries.

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.

New tricks, old cats, and keys. And this damned tooth.

Parents arrive in four and a half weeks. I leave three and a half weeks after that.

This is not making me happy at all.

Still, following Third Year Abroad on Twitter is giving me just a little glee in a sort of schadenfreude way, as I watch my fellow year abroaders try to pretend that the unhappy day has arrived and they have to go back to Blighty. I'm still here, just, and the desire to return gets stronger every day. I can definitely see myself coming back for a Master's, especially if the UK continues to raise the price of Higher Education. In any case, you're not interested in my musings on my future. You want my day. Here you are then.

My wisdom is increasing, and now my teeth feel very strange - as though they no longer fit together correctly. I strongly suspect that this is going to require some minor surgery, which is a deeply unhappy prospect, so if it comes to that wish me luck and hope that I come out of surgery only missing the teeth I don't need. Ultimate test of French right there.

My morning was interesting; a translation and an update to a couple of things. Nothing too taxing, but it was quite enjoyable and I was given free rein to give the text a little more bounce that it got from the straight translation. At lunch I tried out a new trick I've been working on and I'm very pleased with the way it turned out; only one major error and it was brushed aside as "nobody's perfect." I believe, looking back, that if I'd pulled it off flawlessly it would somehow have been less impressive.

Back to the office for the afternoon and more translation as well as a brainstorming session with my colleague in the Association. She wants to do a video do, and has some really interesting ideas that hopefully I'll be able to realise. So far I'm confident, but she might come in tomorrow with something completely hare-brained.

This evening I went to see C, my Monday night student. She's going away this weekend, and last week she mentioned how frustrating it was that people charged her 60€ to look after her cat. Since her going away would mean no lesson (and thus no cash) I immediately stepped forward and offered to do it for half price. The deal was struck, and so today I went over and was shown how the microwave oven, coffee machine, and WiFi work. That's all a chap needs, really, so although I shall be twenty minutes from work (instead of thirty seconds) I'm rather looking forward to a morning commute. I shall be able to stagger into the office and complain about the traffic, it'll be awfully fun.

After showing me round we had sashimi and a glass of wine. I still can't like sashimi. I'm not a fan of raw fish at all. Fried, steamed, poached, roasted but cold - yeuch. Sling it on the fire.

Finally home, to find eating an apple is surprisingly painful. It's going to have to be M. Le Dentiste, isn't it. Yikes.

Have you had any French dentistry experience? How was it? How expensive was it? Please help out with any knowledge you've got.

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.

LOUD NOISES

This is going to be a quick blog and written at near light-speed, because I have just way too much to do. Some people bite off more than they can chew; I appear to have bitten off more than I can feasibly fit in my mouth and have stuffed a bit more in my ears for good measure.

Today I have had meetings with four different members of staff, lunch with another, and left at 6.45. If this is what real life is like, then it's awesome, and I'm not going back to uni. Seriously, how did I fill the time? Assassin's Creed? Halo? Skyrim?

Well...yes. And it's enormously satisfying, and a large part of me would really rather like to go back to lounging around for eight hours and exploring the vast digital worlds laid out before me but this - this is more satisfying still. The project I did last week on mind-mapping is going live in the next few days, and that's something I was given from its conception. I'm not a broody guy, but that thing is my baby, and I love it. In addition, I'm frantically learning as much about iMovie as I possibly can and storyboarding short video clips, for which I'll need a student willing to be soaked to the skin, thrown over someone's shoulder, and theoretically can wasted. Or at least act it.

I still have to get these past my supervisors, but what's amazing is that I'm pretty confident I can sell them.

I'm also on a huge high (and rushing slightly) because my year abroad essay is coming along, slowly but surely, as I do my best to decipher the complexities of the French political system, which is highly devolved and thus as easy to follow as a drawer full of headphone cables.

I also got a very exciting message from my friend Kate, who'd spotted an opportunity she knew I'd be interested in (love that girl, she's far too good to me). I put together a quick email and shot it off to the person in question. Ten minutes later she and I were having a lovely chat, and if I'm very lucky I'll have an enormous project to work on when I get back home towards the end of August. I've a meeting lined up with her as soon as I return, and if I can get the job, I think I'll explode with glee.

In essence it'll involve a total media strategy with special emphasis on social media, my particular favourite. You can tell, can't you, and to prod you with it a bit more if you go to my homepage you'll see all the internet places I am. Send me a tweet or connect with me on G+, if you'd like to know more about me (assuming there's anything left to learn, since I put most everything here.)

Now, at last, I am soaking up the #ausacouncil hashtag on twitter and avidly following the discussion. A group of Tories are trying to argue that we need a "centre-right officer," because Tories are bullied by all the mean lefties and are under-represented at local and national level. It's not like we've got a government that's controlled by the -

Wait, my mistake. You're an idiot.

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.

Moving about again

I am in my new (new) and (I pray and I beg) permanent office!

The workmen finished off today, and I now have a gloriously open space, with a table for meetings and lessons as well as shelves for books and DVDs. I also have a blank wall, on which I could put posters or project English-language video clips. There will be Blackadder, Ab Fab, Fawlty Towers and the Office before my time here is out.

I arrived this morning feeling utterly washed out; I've not been sleeping particularly well recently and apparently staying up until you almost fall asleep is not the cure I thought it was. However, calls in rapid succession from my supervisor and my co-worker had my brain turning over like the finely-tuned engine it is. My supervisor needed a very boring task done in Excel, so I made a macro and watched with glee as my boring task got a lot easier. Macros are exceedingly cool little things, and if you use Excel a lot I recommend you learn how to use them.

I also had a small translation to do and a copy-edit to do on someone else's translation. A small nightmare, because the translator had translated the present tense in French to the present tense in English. This doesn't sound even vaguely nightmare-like, but in French you can describe events that happened in the past with the present tense - the same way you do when you tell a story in the pub:

"So I'm in the club and this guy comes up to me, he starts talking to me and flirting with me and I'm like..."

Unfortunately, it's not suitable for written text. Thus for half an hour I went through an otherwise perfect translation making "is" into "was" and "have" into "had" and "explodes" into "exploded". I actually really enjoyed the text, which is lucky, because there are another 12 chapters to come.

That brought me to 5 o'clock (which I almost wrote as 1700h, my French ambushes me in unlikely places) and my French lesson with Raphaël, who's my favourite French teacher. He loves tangents as much as I do and we have a good rapport, which is really cheering. We were doing the passive tense, which is old hat for me, but since there were only three of us we worked together, and I tried to tease the right answers out of my friends - which to their credit they hardly needed, leaping to the correct response like gazelle.

After that, I went back to see my supervisor, where we worked out a few kinks in the copy-edit, talked about some more work she had for me, and how I can improve my written style and grammar. Before I knew it was 8pm, and she kindly offered me an hour off tomorrow. I've taken it in the morning, which means I will be staying in bed until the glorious hour of 9am.

I'm telling you. This is the stuff that dreams are made of.

For dinner I have accidentally bought a baguette that could be considered a loaf. Take a butcher's at this bad boy:

French secretaries

Some things in life make you want to explode out of sheer rage at being made to wait. Sometimes it's in the coffee-shop, where the person at the front of the queue has apparently been asleep and is now unsure of where they are or what they're doing. Sometimes it's in the laundry room, where someone has left their clothes in the dryer and, as the minutes creep past, it becomes clear that they have forgotten.

And sometimes it's being made to wait for twenty minutes, sent away, brought back, abandoned and then shot up 45 flights in a lift only to be abandoned again.

Let me start from the beginning. We had some important documents in the office that needed to be signed by a man who works in La Défense, so at 3pm I girded my loins, pulled myself up by my bootstraps, and made my way into town.

At this point it was raining. I say this now because the rain continued throughout this little misadventure, and I really want you to understand my soggy unhappiness from the offset.

So after finding the tower in which the elusive Monsieur was hiding I was blocked by four elegant, beautiful, bespectacled secretaries. I felt like Don Draper. I stepped up, presented my credentials, and had them returned with a blank stare. Not a good start, I felt, but perhaps my French had deteriorated after a week in Allemagne. I started again.

- Je suis - I was cut off.
M. is not available today. He will be available later this week.
When?
Four perfect pairs of Parisian epaulettes moved in time.
Later this week.

The frustration notched up a little.

- I need three signatures, that's all.
The look I received might have floored a rhinocerous. I beat a hasty retreat and rang my supervisor, who is also a secretary. She snorted derisively, told me she'd call me back, and hung up.

A moment later, one of the secretary's phones rang. She answered in tones as clipped and polished as her nails. Her eyes widened. She looked down. She looked at me. She looked at the phone. She put the phone down.

I didn't do a victory dance. At least not on the outside.

I was escorted to a life, where a number was punched in and I was ushered inside. Before I had a chance to ask the number of the office, I was flung up 45 floors. The height of a room is 2.4m, which means I shot up 108m in a time that was unpleasantly fast. Several of my vertebrae cracked. My ears popped. I got shorter, and at this height, that's not a fun thing.

I stepped out, trying to get used to the fact that my chin now touched my shoelaces. I waited there while people gave me suspicious looks as they swept past. Finally the Monsieur's own secretary came to find me, and then took my documents and left me in what might charitably be called a broom cupboard. She returned thirty seconds later, scowled, and gave me back the documents. She ushered me back to the lift, which re-cracked my vertebrae, re-popped my ears, and returned me to my normal size.

I then had to rocket home to drop off the documents. I literally ran past, dropped the documents in my intray, ran out and leaped back aboard a bus. Three metros later I was in the right area.

I then managed to take a wrong turn that would give me a lovely mile long walkabout before finally reaching my destination - a meeting with the next President of the CIPR.

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.

The land of fairytales

There was no blog yesterday due to a migraine that sat right behind my left eye and threatened to pop it clean out of its socket. That may not actually be how migraines work - I'm no Dr House - but that's certainly how it felt, and I went to bed with a heavy heart. The next day I was due to go to Disney, but with pain that severe I knew I'd have to cancel - and bringing two friends down from Le Havre and then abandoning them would have been awfully rude. Thankfully, with my alarm (summer storm today, completely surreal but very pleasant to wake to) came clarity and renewed vigour; energy, not agony, coursed through my brain. I had breakfast, I got dressed, and I checked the weather.

"Ressentie" means "feels like". "-10ºC" means "You ought to wear a coat, dumbass"

I confess a small problem of mine is that I sometimes overestimate my tolerance for things. These things include, but are not limited to, alcohol, cheese and the cold. As a result, I put an undershirt on, buttoned another over the top, threw on a suit jacket and attached a gift to it and made my way into the cold. The bus arrive quickly, and although it felt nippy, I assumed it would warm up - the sun would shine, the cloud would burn off, and Disneyland would twinkle and sparkle in the light.

Being wrong once is bad luck. Being wrong twice is indicative, but being wrong three times is a good sign that you are not as smart a cookie as you'd like to think. The short version, for those who believe that brevity is the soul of wit, it was exceedingly cold and, despite having got back 90 minutes ago, I have only just regained sufficient fine motor ability to tap this out.

I've also taken on another two students because their father called me when I was tired and freezing, and it was easier to just agree than to turn him down and then explain why. So my week now looks like this:

Not pictured: free time

So that's my week ahead. Frightening. But exciting! New students are younger still, 7 and 9 (I think, the connection was abysmal, if it turns out they're 70 and 90 it'll be interesting for a different set of reasons) so I can foresee this being a real challenge. I'm going to aim for 50-50 English-French teaching and will need to start looking at more detailed lesson plans to really hold small children's attention. If anyone has any advice, I'd really appreciate it.

So: my friends, it seems, slept incredibly badly - no more than five hours sleep between the pair of them. We had to make an emergency stop at Starbuck's before a brisk walk to the RER station Auber. The RER A goes pretty much directly through Paris East-West, and although it's faster than the Metro, it still took us around 45 minutes to get out to Marne-la-Valée and DisneyLand Resort Paris.

It started snowing on the way, big, thick, perfect flakes of snow. This was to become a recurrent theme.

We arrived and were at once struck by how cold it was. At no point did we swear, because Disney never has swearing. Even when lions are being thrown to their deaths by Jeremy Irons (warning: all the sads), and you'd think that at least merits an f-word. Minimum. So there was no swearing at all, all day, even when mentioning how extraordinarily, finger-blackening, blood-freezingly cold it was. We made a game effort and went around every part of the park, tagging the Teacups and Indiana Jones on the way round. We were hampered in our efforts to get onto the more exciting rides because other people were willing to stand in line for 80 minutes to get on them, and we don't have that sort of determination. We were all far too cold.

We broke for lunch in a gigantic theatre and half-watched several of the incredible shorts Disney/Pixar have made. If you've not seen them yet, then here's a lovely little one from Wall-E to get you started.

We all know that feeling.

In any case, by five in the afternoon we were just about ready to crash - trotting around on no sleep in the freezing cold had ground us steadily down, and we made for the train station. Before long we were zooming back through the snow, falling even heavier now, and dragging our weary selves into the station. I said goodbye to my friends, who looked as dead on their feet as me, and made my way by metro and then by bus back home.

The bus, being a bus sent by Satan, stopped half a mile from my flat. That's not far, but in the state of mind where all one wants to do is sit in the warm and drink tea that half mile stretched far, far ahead of me. And blew snow in my face.

In any case, I've made it home. My laundry is on, my alarm is set, and my 7-day week starts again in 10 hours, so if anyone needs me, I'll be the one passed out in bed and not snoring. 

I hope.

The absence of books (or, sadness is an empty library)

This morning I went into work and found out that the person for whom I had done the translation - for whom I had gone into work early - had had it translated by someone else as well. I have zero problem with this, understand, but when the email that came with it said "I could learn something from it" I confess I had to suppress just a little jolt of rage when the educating document had five errors in five paragraphs. The number of errors in mine, though I am loathe to admit it, was 0. I do not object to second opinions, but I object strenuously to those opinions being thought superior to mine when this is patently untrue.

Not a great start, you'll agree, but it got better quickly. I filed some cheques, I ran some errands, I located the memo with all the days off and put them into my agenda. I'm really excited about May, we have a five-day weekend so I'm tempted to grab the rest of my days off and make it a ten day holiday. Who'd like to suggest somewhere for me to go?

The afternoon was given over to settling into my new office. I should have been at a French lesson, one of only two a month, but unfortunately the teacher was ill, so I was at a bit of a loose end in the afternoon until H, my supervisor, asked me to update my little technical plan with the electrical sockets that had been found after the shelves had been moved. I trotted down and my goodness me, that room is a cold, empty cavern without books. It echoes. The roof seem suddenly very high and the walls very far, and it was unsettling in the extreme. I made my measurements and left Echo by herself.

Returned to the bosom of my lovely little office, I was greeted by all and sundry from the floor. The second floor is given over to economists and other intellectuals, so I shall feel quite out of my depth, but for all their brains they're very friendly and have coffee on a continual turnaround, which is a godsend.

I can't procrastinate any more, so here is the moment you've been waiting for - a dramatic reading suggested by Paula: Taylor Swift's I Knew You Were Trouble.

Please forgive me.

I'm working on something else, but for the moment - and I use this word in its widest possible sense - enjoy.

Too much to read

We have almost completely emptied the mediatheque now, and I had the misfortune of catching a glimpse of the outgoing piles of New Statesman, The Economist and New Scientist. And so now I have about two feet of reading material, the time for which I think I shall have to magic out of the aether.

I am, much like my mother, something of a hoarder. However, while she hoards things - plugs, cables, instruction manuals for equipment long since dismantled or disregarded - I hoard information. As a result, I have a room which could legitimately be the study of a professor of linguistics, statistics, or politics. It could even, at a pinch, serve as the flat of serial chef. (It should be noted that a cereal chef, although it sounds the same, is not. It's not even a real kind of chef.)

There is a chess set, in the middle of a game. A book of poems by an excellent poet of my acquaintance. A library covering titles from Why Does E=Mc2 to The Bartender's Bible (which is going to be an absolute nightmare to get home, I have not the first clue why I insisted on bringing it). A camera, a Kindle, five packs of cards and a shot glass complete the ensemble.

In any case, with the room nearly packed the question of where I shall be going has apparently only just reared its head, much to my consternation. It appears nobody knows where I am going, and I shall likely be shoved into a closet office in the back end of nowhere. However, a colleague has offered me space in her office and she's really nice - plus, it should lead to me speaking even more French than ever. Result.

My extra-curricular working week is now over, and I have to say it's cheering that even in the three weeks in which I've not seen C she's made a concerted effort to keep her English up to scratch. She'd written the story of The Three Musketeers in her own words and for the most part it was excellent; very few mistakes and lots of elaborate tense use. She still tends to use enormous sentences, a habit many French people form (and a habit which of which I am often guilty), so we worked on cutting them down and on coordinating conjunctions.

And now I'm home, and I've written, and I've realised I've nothing for breakfast. I work too hard. Anyone want to be my butler?

Oh, bonus question - which country literally means silver? No googling, and answers to @jonodrew

How to make someone fall in love with you in 29 steps.

More old books have gone!

In the same breath: I can't believe anyone wants all 29 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Wikipedia has more information than all 29 volumes and it doesn't take up all that space on your wall. The teacher who took it told me that he was tired of looking things up on wikipedia and then printing them out. "It's just not the same," he said.

I have literally no idea how to react to that. I realise that paper copies of anything still hold a certain fascination for people; the debate and extended metaphor I got into with a friend of mine over on tumblr speaks volumes as to how passionately people feel about it. All the same, those 29 volumes weigh a huge amount, and he takes the bus to work. I'm struggling to work out how he's going to engineer getting them home. Maybe he'll take them one at a time, puzzling his fellow travelers, until one of them - who's had a quiet crush on him for a while - asks him about it. They talk, they make plans for coffee, they fall in love and out of it and finally get married.

And I probably won't get invited to the wedding, but that's life for you.

I've run out of things to do in my mediatheque as things are decided high above me, and so I've started making an inventory of our DVDs for the students who want to borrow them while they're in storage. So far I've found a ton that I really want to borrow. Oh, the glorious power. In any case, that's how my afternoon has been spent, broken up by lecturers coming in to see if there's anything of interest left on the shelves. A few more books went today, including a study guide to the GRE and a book about British motor cars. Last thing on the agenda today was a call from the (at least) trilingual marketing co-ordinator who wanted a second opinion on a student-targeted press release.

An early blog means I'm focussed on supper, which tonight is salmon with a creamy spinach, parsley and lemon sauce. The parsley is by accident; persil is a kind of laundry detergent in English but means parsley in French and, rather than admitting my mistake, I took the parsley and found the laundry detergent myself.

In the words of my ever-charming American friend Paula - so British it hurts. See also: British problems, real and terrifying situations natives of my little isle find themselves in every day.

I leave you with a surreal look at the most obnoxiously handsome French man I've ever seen, promoted to me by another American - my friend +Helen Alexis Yonov. Take a look.

Weakness of the flesh

Alright, so in comparison to yesterday's hiccup, today has been a thousand times more unpleasant and I really, really ummed and ahhed about talking about it. It's in no way a pleasant subject, but on the other hand I have committed to writing every day and, unfortunately, what happened to me today has been focussed on something deeply unpleasant.

Today started pretty well, although I'm running low on pressed shirts. That meant wearing a shirt I wear only for seduction and looking ruffled, and today I looked very ruffled - the neck is a half-inch too small and so I have to wear it undone. With a tie as well I looked...deshabillé, which given the country in which I live is only to be celebrated.

Suitably unsuited my day started well, a dull but necessary task with a translation thrown in for extra fun. At ten-thirty I went down to my soon-to-be-ex office; as with all my exes, deciding what to keep and what to throw is proving difficult. I'm trying to get rid of everything that's just too old now; video cassettes and OS maps of Sussex are simply no good to anyone in the era of Youtube and Google Maps, though I am offering them to anyone with an iPhone.

Staff members came and went in a fairly constant flow, taking videos and old English training manuals for their kids. I chatted away in French, extolling the virtues of huge tomes of photographs of Ireland and recipe books written by Delia, back when she was young and pretty and not into cheating at cooking, though if you're keeping score I wonder against whom you're playing.

My supervisor decided I'd done such a good job with the technical plan of my old office that she has asked me to do the same for the new office, only in a day, rather than the week I had last time. Despite the time constraints, I felt confident. There's no need for 3D models with this plan so it should be nice and easy.

That was before lunch.

After lunch I discovered that something I had eaten had disagreed with me, and was doing its best to escape. Consequently I had to leave work early and my whole world has been narrowed to the distance between my bathroom and my desk.

Let's leave it at that.

In any case, I'm now missing several important measurements and will have to run around measuring things in the morning, assuming my universe can expand to that distance. Plenty of fluids and bed rest tonight will hopefully see me back to my vibrant and hydrated self.

First and only time I feel sympathy with his Holiness: the human body is a frail thing, and it is frightening when it fails one. I, for one, am not happy about it.

Briefly:

I've written quite a long explanation of what I learned in my French class today and realised that you're probably not here for the French grammar lessons that I am. If you're interested in reading then by all means, it's over here, but otherwise my day was as follows:

Going into the office to discover that I had made two small errors the previous evening both, unfortunately, to the same person. Having finished a minor proofread and edit I sent the editor a cheery email, explaining that I'd only found some very small errors and that with my enclosed corrections the piece was ready to be published. As I sent it I realised I'd forgotten to attach the document, and shot off another quick message, apologising for the first and reaffirming that with my attached correction the piece could be published. I then went home.

You're all laughing, because you can see where this is going, but I couldn't and didn't.

So when I came in this morning I settled into my desk, opened my inbox, and got an understandably irritated message and, shortly after, a phone call. All was fixed in minutes, but the editor had a point - without the article he'd been left twiddling his thumbs. I try not to err, as it only reminds me that I'm human, but I do think that all email systems in the world could do with something like this from +Gmail:

I did! Thanks, Google!

Aside from that, however, my morning progressed as normal - I took some phone bookings for the cultural events we run for alumni and my supervisor and I adjusted the plan I've done for my old office. Since it's now finished with, I'm going to share it with you, because I think it's awesome and I hope you'll appreciate the huge number of hours I poured into it.

Isn't it glorious?

It's also a 3D model. Even as I type that I can hear the appreciative susurrations of future friends and acquaintances.

In the afternoon I discovered two things; one, that dates for the next TOEIC session had already been set - a fact I discovered by opening my inbox and watching 120 inquiring messages come in - and that someone high above me had given the order for my office to be moved, bypassing both my colleague and my supervisor. I suspect this is a danger in many large organisations; it's hard to ensure that right and left hand both know what they're doing at the same time. After sorting out a more suitable date for them to deconstruct everything the foreman and I had a pleasant chat about my internship and he congratulated me on my French. Happy days.

Last thing today was French class, which was interesting. I've done preceding direct object pronouns before but one thing caught me out; preceding indirect objects which, as it turns out, don't agree. The lessons are really helping with vocabulary and to clear up little grammar points I've always been a little shaky on and, as I love teaching, the professor puts up with my chattering as I try to nudge my classmates in the right direction. I really like this particular professor, although the fact that he's never read Calvin and Hobbes may prove to be a source of serious contention. 

In fact, here. Have some Calvin and Hobbes to warm your heart.

Bill Waterson, you magnificent, genius son of a gun. Come back.

In which our hero discovers writing is hard

Today has been absolutely full of writing things. If using one's brain burnt calories, then I'd have the perfect excuse for the slice of coconut cake I had with lunch. As far as I can tell, it doesn't, and I don't.

This morning I liaised with an Association member who needed a rewrite of her MBA application letter. It was a complete rewrite, and at certain points I wondered what she hoped to gain from submitting a letter written in good English but having an interview in which she would struggle. Still, ours is not to reason why; I raised the question but she waved it away, assuring me that she could converse fluently in English if necessary. I was not reassured, mostly due to the fact that we spent two hours rewriting and spoke only in French. I also edited an article for our quarterly review by a super-hilarious guy who was pleased that safety was the number one concern for companies, "especially those working in remote offices where local workers have little or no education and no concern for the own health." Yup, those funny foreign people, they have no sense of self preservation because they're not really human beings. Git. In the same article he wrote about how the West is the best because we have democracy. Double git.

I took a nice early lunch today with my colleagues; a strange situation where I got to experience three English people sitting with a Colombian person and speaking French as the lingua franca. It's really exciting that there are still small pockets and combinations of people where English is not necessarily the only way in which to communicate.

My early lunch was because I had a French class at 13h30, and although several of my fellow students were missing the six of us had a very interesting lesson. We did a mini-test, a micro version of the full TFI that we'll be taking before long. Apparently the TFI is not as well known as the TOEIC/TOEFL, so I'll have to give some sort of addendum to it. The test did not go as well as expected, and I've now got a long list of grammar points on which I have to focus.

A good lesson though; a test is a great way to see where weaknesses are and saves me having to go through an entire grammar book getting frustrated with practising the things I already know. Now I can target my learning. It doesn't sound like fun, but it's the lesser of two evils - if you know you've got to study then rather than studying more, study smarter.

I've my post-apocalyptic French essay to write now and then to relax I'm going to write some more; I managed two acceptable sketches and then had to give up. This writing malarkey is tough.

A picture to close from my friend Meg, because it's funny in sort of not funny way at all. I can appreciate the pun but simultaneously be kind of horrified that it's an ad.

"Even I've been accused of penny-pinching. But I paid Penny off"

Sexual harassment in the workplace. Now it can sell conference calls.