So today I am on my own, the others have gone travelling to Annecy. It's nice to just be able to do my own thing for a bit, have a totally lazy day with no need to take anyone else into account. No news as such, we've just been working away in college, which is taking up most of our time, it's damn hard. We were probably more than slightly foolish to take on a masters course thing, but sure, it's too late now. Thursday night i was just hanging around, and the other two had gone to the cinema, and I was bored. But suddenly! out on the street i heard a big mad brass band. And decided to go investigate just as i got a message on my phone. Needless to say, the rest of the night was spent on teh street partying with the rest of the city/town whatever, everyone was out on the street, it was mental. It was a festival of some new grape, beaujelais(i can't spell it), and as far as i can tell it was just an excuse to make a lot of noise and drink on the street. Very unfrench, but i'm not complaining. Met pretty much everyone i've ever talk to in Grenoble that night, and saw crazy people climbing on bandstands and roof things, and general mayhem, and the scary french po-lice.
I've been given out to (not sure if that's too strong a description, you know who you are) for not updating this very often, and I'm begining to wonder if my reluctance is a sign in itself. I'm not entirely sure that writing about what i've done is better than using the time to do more stuff. I had intended to keep this as a diary of an Erasmus student in France. but i realise that what makes being here so different from being at home isn't really apparent to me. France is home now (sort of), and it's when i go home that the surprise will hit me i think. I watched a brilliant film about Erasmus (the exchange program not the man, although he did appear) life the other day, called L'auberge espagnole. It pretty much captured the essence of how Erasmus could/should/would feel if you distilled it. I should be writing about that film and what i thought about it, but it would be better if you just watched it yourself, next time you see me ask and we can watch it, whoever you are :). Anyway the point of this whole waffle is that o'm not sure i'm doing the experience of being here justice. There are ups and downs, and it is very difficult sometimes, the language thing is hard, but i'm improving slowly. College is hard but we'll get by. Sometimes i want to go home, but mostly i know i'm going to be gutted when i have to leave. The moral of the story is, go on exchange! come live in another country! learn another language (everyone else in the world except english speakers that i have met so far can speak on average 2 or 3 languages fluently, it's quite depressing). That's all i have to say about that.
Wednesday 12th November: rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grenoble, France
I'm not sure what's got into me today. I was just in a french class. And when the teacher left the room to go do some photocopying, I grabbed my stuff and left. I only lasted twenty minutes. I really didn't want to be there, too much like school. I hated school. Lots. Anyway aside from the fact that I'm trashing any chance I ever had of actually learning this damn blasted language things are pottering along (as things are wont to do), college is still hard (as it is when you stupidly do a masters course) and we just handed up are first proper assignment today. We did it in the lecture before the tutorial that it was due for, and I can only suspect that we're the first people to succesfully merge semantics and comedy. Time will tell.
Currently listening to more than I should: Four Tet - Rounds.
It's a damn good album. No there's no singing, yes it is stupid electronica/dance music genre, yes he did support radiohead in the olympia, yes most people thought the best thing about that set was his t-shirt. But this album is damn good (as I mentioned). What does it sound like? It sounds like a lot of things, it's not new but it is original, or maybe visa versa. It sounds like everything you've never listened to before (ok I should really stop saying shit like that). It sounds like your typical IDM stuff in places, hard beats and funny scratched up samples of Minidisc players skipping, that sorta stuff that annoys my dad. But on top of the complicated rhythyms that most people think aren't enough on their own, and some musicians only get away with because of vocals (Massive Attack), are these beautiful melodies, or snatches of melodies, just mixed together into this really fluid and not at all harsh electronia (think Sigur Ros if they had more drummers and less real instuments). And this beautiful song made from a Tori Amos sample (don't knock it til you've tried it, it's from 'Winter' and sounds nothing nothing nothing like the song it's taken from).
That's all for now. Sleepwell.
Friday7th November: rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grenoble, France
We've had no toilet for over a week now. It's a long story.
God help us all.
Wednesday 29th October: rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grenoble, France
Jaysus, I'm not very good at updating this thing am i? So here's what's been happening. I've been nerding away like there's no tomorrow. College is hard but fun, especially Graphics, or Infographie as it is here. Doing morphing and stuff like that. So me an Colm went to Aix en Provence for a few days cause we're on holidays for this week. Twas interesting at least, saw lots of Cezanne related stuff. Cezanne was a painter, he's probably my favourite, and he was born and lived in Aix.
Some random Colm quotes:
"If they don't have at least one live dinosaur I'm going to be really disappointed"
"No brain, no pain"
Apart from all that stuff, I've been making posters for netsoc, some good some not good. Vaguely considering doing something intelligable with the Design page, I know most of it's not up to much, but there is stupid quantities of it hidden away on hard drives around the place, it'd be nice to have it all in the one place.
I don't know why i'm bothering to update this, i clearly have nothing interesting to say.
Thursday 16th October: rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grenoble, France
Went to a big mad concert thing that was happening on campus. There was a dodgy rock/metal malarky first, and then this mad ska trio, who were fun. I jumped up and down a lot. And talked to french people a bit. I make them laugh. Today I've been mostly eating: yoghurt. Got the Cable modem working with USB under linux this morning, it was complicated, but now i have a free ethernet port so that one of the others can use the internet at the same time as me. Once I figure out IP masquerading.
The library here is brilliant, today i got 4 comics, 2 of them Tintin, and a CD which I was sure they wouldn't have. Left and Leaving by the Weakerthans, I know i like one song on it already so I thought I'd see if the rest of it's any good.
Now that i have always on internet i feel like i should do something useful with it. Like have one of these website things, instead of a webpage that i never change and just talks about this boring guy i know. The french word for percussian is percussian. I think i'll collect words that are the same. the french word for sticker is autocolon (i think that's how it's spelt). A girl asked me if i was from Ireland or Iceland today, she didn't hear properly. I'm bringing "no-one understands me" a whole different meaning.
Going on a trip at the weekend, just for the day, not like the great big weekend i had a while ago with snow! i never mentioned that did i? God bless the internation students society.
Hope everyone's having fun.
Wednesday 15th October: rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grenoble, France
Still in France. Everyone here is mad. I hate mosquitos. I think we live beside the scariest man in the history of anything. Colm says he makes "Tom Waits chasing a kitten into an oven" noises all night. We got bored in 3rd year so now we're in the first year of the masters course. It's much more fun.
Too lazy to write more.
he's a picture i made.
Tuesday 30th September: rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Grenoble, France
Right I really should start to update this thing a little bit more regularly. I'll stick up the two things I wrote when I'd just arrived at the same time as this. I have to say I really am having to adapt here, I'm using my laptop but I'm using it with an azerty keyboard map, this isn't some profound statement, but when I tried to type in qwerty it just came all wrong, so congratulations you weirdass french keyboard map, you win. Ok thats definitely way too nerdy, but it is a good example of how different things are here, and how much I'm settling in already. As you can see I've got somewhere to live, right in the centre of Grenoble, in a flat that proudly carries on the tradition of dodgy flats that started last year in Baggot St. I'm living with Colm (and Sarah till Christmas), which wasn't the original plan, but so it is. It's not good for our french, but there really wasn't much choice, thanks to a certain departmental fuckup we arrived much too late and without campus accommodation. So we searched and searched and rang and rang and cried and thought about going home, and eventually found this kooky little flat right in the centre of the city, for way too much money,with no doors, and an evil cut-stone spiral staircase that will inevitably defeat me some drunken night.
I think I'm gonna go make dinner now, which means pasta. Actually it was salami and yoghurt. We were just watching Lilo & Stitch in french, I've already seen it twice this week in english, and it"s probably my favourite film in the world. France is mad. People here don't speak english, I know this might seem like an obvious thing but before I arrived I think I secretly believed that deep down (if they really though about it) people here can really speak english. But they can't, only french, which is handy cause I don't really speak that.
Lectures are ok though, the language used mostly being of a technical nature, and decipherable from the context or diagrams, we're thinking about switching subjects to the year above us at the moment though, because we have already done some of the subjects and it could be boring to do them again, plus Colm is becoming increasingly obsessed with the idea of doing BioInformatique. I haven't really got to know many people here yet, but I'm going away next weekend with the International Students Society for what sounds suspiciously similar to a trinity climbing club trip. Hopefully I'll get to see some of the mountains and get to meet some people who are in the same boat and might be willing to listen to my dire french. I'll keep yis posted anyway.
In other news, there is an Irish Shop in Grenoble, it sells irish things like Hob-Nobs and Barry's tea and aran sweaters. I find it incredible that there is a demand for such things here, but apparently there is. Mind you I know of at least 15ish Irish people here, and there's bound to be more hiding.
I'm going to go to sleep now, I"m tired, we had a long day of trying to find the hypermarche near campus, and then trying to find stuff to buy inside. Plus lectures start at 8am here, and last for an hour and a half, which is really long, especially when you have 2 back to back, or 5 in a day like yesterday. And people actually go to lectures here, it's mad.
bed.
Friday 19th September: Grenoble, France
So here I am on the morning of my third full day in Grenoble, waiting for the shower in the hotel to warm up while the others are still asleep. I'm awake because I have to go back to the University to meet a friend of a friend whose couch I might be commandeering as of this evening. Everyone is really nice here, really friendly and helpful, nothing at all like Paris, they will go out of their way to help you out. Yesterday everybody we met at the University was really helpful and understanding of our inability to speak french. So we're half registered, as in the University knows about us, as does the CS dept. but we haven't picked our subjects or officially registered and are still to get our student cards and stuff. It's difficult to organise accommodation though, especially on the phone, but Colm is fearless on the phone (I'm scared of them in english, never mind french so I kinda freeze up on the phone), and I shocked myself on a few occasions yesterday when we were talking to people in real life, Sarah said "Wait a minute, you weren't that good at french half an hour ago", which was true, but unfortunately not a permanent thing. Most of the time I talk crazy french.
Actually that's hardly true, most of the time I speak english. I met up with a Grenobloise friend of mine who was in the climbing club last year, and she wandered around the city with me imparting thousands of those vital little bits of information that only locals know. Thanks Annick, but don't let me speak english to you any more. And then last night after we had dinner we went to a pub to say hello to a friend of mine from school, who is also studying for the year here. We didn't stay long because it was jammers and quite late, but we were also talking english then. So I'm not learning much french, but I am remembering lots of stuff I used to know, and I'm slowly becoming less scared of trying to communicate.
Currently Listening to: Fevers and Mirrors - Bright Eyes
I was in the mood for "Haligh a lie" last night. "I've seen and sing some awful things: the pleasure that my sadness brings, as my fingers press onto the strings, yet another clumsy chord". I can't remember if I mentioned it here before, but Atonement by Ian McEwan is a great book, I really enjoyed it. A very modern style but about pre and mid-war England, and war, and love and guilt and people. He talks about all of these things, but still manages to mainly focus on the people involved, and through their eyes tell the story, and portray a very realistic place and situation. It's good, I'm not doing it justice.
The hotel here is grand, even if there is graffiti in the hallway, I think there is a definite "Don't judge a house by it's hallway" rule here. Anyway I kinda have to take a shower now and meet up with this person. Hopefully I'll actually be able to string some sentences this early in the morning.
"Loving is fine, if you've plenty of time for walking on stilts at the edge of your mind"
Tuesday 16th September, heading East, south of France (ish).
So here I am, on a train. I'm en route (see I'm learning some french already) from Lyon to Grenoble, and so far today has been a stress free day of traveling. I'm listening to Bellx1 and Colm and Sarah are both reading opposite me. We aren't on the TGV (the very fast train) any more, that only went between Paris and Lyon, but this train isn't too slow, and it's not as packed. There was a woman with a cat in a box sitting next to me on the TGV, it was a nice black and white cat. France is nice today, and I'm actually in a position to say that considering we've traversed most of it at this stage. It's not too warm, but I'm still horribly sweaty in the way you only can be from being on planes and trains and shuttlebuses all day.
Planes: 1
Trains: 3
Buses: 2
Cars (predicted): 1
So on the vehicular front it's been a good day. Ok I decided that I need to make amens for the whole 'swan' thing, and I think that this journal will be best kept as an impression of my time as an Erasmus/Socrates student studying Computer Science in Universite de Joseph Fourier in Grenoble France. So far there is nothing dramatic to report, and I have to say I'm impressed by how easy it was to travel so far here. Yay for public transport!
Should be arriving in Grenoble in about half an hour or so, and I think we're just gonna get a taxi to the Hotel (a fine one star I found online cause the one hostel seems to be closed for renovations) and then fingers crossed will have a quiet evening to just recuperate and eat. We're such a bunch of nerds, we have a choice of 3 laptops to watch a DVD on, I think anything more ambitious would inevitably involve one of us falling asleep. So cheap food and beer if we can find it, and showers, and a quiet night (of quiet stars if we're lucky) with some silly film, will be all there is to do tonight. And tomorrow is already looking to be a find my feet day, have a wander around and a gander at this new city I haven't even seen yet.
It's good that I'm so excited about the prospect of settling into a totally new place, because I was really nervous when I woke up this morning, I had that butterfly's getting sick in your stomach feeling. It was a very different feeling from the previous morning when I woke up feeling hungover and then remembered that me and Thom and Sarah had been swimming in the sea the night before, but that's another story. Dave and Tim and Rob and Colm and Thom are to blame for my decline into drunkenness, I'll miss yis bollixes (except Colm). I'm listening to the Frames now (I'm not deliberately listening to only Irish music, but it's nice) and I've just spotted Mountains out the window, Capital M. We kinda betwixt the different mountains now, and I suspect that they're actually small mountains. Oh this is going to be a fun year or so. Unless I remember that they speak french here and get scared. Oh my, these mountains are so big, I don't want to say too much cause I know I'll regret thinking that the foothills were big, but...
Well the traveling part is almost over, and barring a hotel disaster the real quest starts from tomorrow when I have to start looking for somewhere to live. My parents just rang there, but I got cut off when we went through a tunnel. It's kinda cool that it's so easy to keep in touch. Anyway I realise that this is about 80% irrelevant and boring information, so I'm going to go put my jumper on now.
September 8th 2003: Castleconnell
It's been brought to my attention that liking swans is a sure sign of liking men.
thomignored: "He didn't stop. His wings didn't stay partway tucked in, and his feet didn't tread to water for too long." FAGGGGGGGGGGG
Emmanuel Stone: you're just jealous
thomignored: yeah. you're right. (you're wrong)
Emmanuel Stone: pooface
thomignored: maybe you'll like me know if i jump out of a river and fly over your head.
Emmanuel Stone: maybe you like me to kick you in the teeth?
thomignored: sure
Emmanuel Stone: your place or mine?
thomignored: i dont like fish
I have no fucking clue what the fish thing is about, but i can only assume it is as sinsister as it sounds. I apologise for talking about swans and to anyone i may have offended. I promise to try and lead a more interesting life once i arrive in france.
It's proving complicated enough tracking down a hostel in Grenoble, I may have to stay in a hotel. Hmmm. I'm very scared about going to france, and beginning to think i am in fact insane to want to study there for a year. it took me 45 minutes to write an 8 line email today.
that is all. No more talk of swans. Scouts honour.
September 2nd 2003: Castleconnell
Hmm, been neglecting this thing recently, here's a random piece of crap to keep yis occupied.
Yesterday I went to the post office to send my birth cert off for translation into french, so I can get Fiche d'Etat Civil. On the way home I stopped with the dog to get some milk. And I walked home by the river. These might seem like simple things, and I suppose they are, but it's a measure of my summer since I came home, and in some ways the fact that I've been leading a quiet life made what happened next all the more interesting. I was standing midway across the bridge (as I often do, looking upstream, forwards not back) just trying to see where things are going, the dog at my feet, unusually calm (possibly because she'd just been chased by a huge terrier moments earlier) when I noticed a swan on the water a good distance away. I watched as he began to move and gather speed along the surface of the water, inelegant as impatient swans always are when half-using their wings to shuffle a little distance upstream. He didn't stop. His wings didn't stay partway tucked in, and his feet didn't tread to water for too long. I don't know if many of you know the type of swan I mean, or even if you've seen one close up, but this is a big bird. Big. I think they are called Mute Swans, and this was a big one, and he was now flying with swooping flaps, wing tips brushing the water, straight towards the bridge which I was standing on. As he got nearer I felt certain that he was going to go under my feet, because I couldn't imagine him gaining enough height to overfly it.
This is the part of the story where you all get disappointed. No, the swan did not crash into one of the bridge's legs, and he didn't swoop down onto the bridge and turn into a beautiful woman and say in lilting Waterford Irish (or wherever the fuck the Children of Lir were from) "Come away with me to a better place". These things don't happen in real life, but what did happen affected me. Not dramatically, I will forget this day, but it affected me in that little way, in that way we reserve for the small wonders, "the little things" I think they're sometimes called. The little things, that add up. A sunrise, a sonnet, the brush of a hand, a stranger's smile reflected in a bus window, all those soppy things, the things we see but would never admit to remembering. What happened was this: The swan didn't go under the bridge. He flew in a fast arc from the water, rising with strong strokes to the height of the bridge and a little higher. This beautiful white bird flew right over me. Just above my head. I could hear the paper comb noise from his feathers, and I could feel the wind from his wings, and if I'd been inclined to jump I could have grabbed one of his legs. I felt like the little kid in Free Willy when he jumps over him at the end (or did that just happen in the Simpsons version?). It was really extraordinary, and I swiveled and watched in awe, with a litre of milk clutched in one hand, as he flew downstream and around a bend. I can't explain how amazing it felt to have witnessed this. It wasn't the first time I'd seen swans flying, or take off from reasonably close quarters, but it was the first time I'd been struck by the elegance of their flight, and the power in their wings, and the sheer size of them. I stood thinking about all this until some old ladies bumbled onto the far end of the bridge and then I went back to looking upstream and said "Hello" as they passed, instead of "Did you see that?" because they wouldn't understand.
In other less upitsownarse news, been working on a few designish type things. Mostly for climbing club tshirts which are here. And also this blatant piece of plagarism/parody. here
Monday 18th August '03: Castleconnell
I have got to remember this stuff.
I went to the dentist today, my teeth are fine, but apparently i'm dentally retarded (no wisdom teeth according to the xray, at least on the bottom). Myself and dad went to see Pirates of the Carribean (I have no idea how to spell that) yesterday. Johnny Depp is my new hero. I want to grow up to be just like Cpatain Jack Sparrow. Maeve got back from ctyi today, at least I won't be on my own in the house any more. I've started doodling on my ibook, i think this might be a worrying development.
Saturday 16th August 2003: Kerry
Today has been a beautiful day. There is nowhere I would rather be than Kerry when the sun shines. I'm sitting on some grass at the water's edge in a little village on the Dingle Peninsula called Cloghane. In front of me is the estuary leading into the Atlantic, and all around me in every direction are mountains. Perfect waves of rock, as green as the sea is blue. The sea is very blue today, because the sky is clear, not cloudless but clear enough to allow the sun to shine all day, and a few clouds to make us remember. I spent the day on the beach with my dad, we're staying in the hostel here for the weekend, and I'm so glad the weather is good. It feels like this is the calm before the storm, as if I should already be preparing and worrying about arrangements for France, but to be honest it's hard to prepare for something that seems like it may or may not happen. I still don't know if I'm actually going to be spending the next year in Grenoble, so I'm finding it hard to ready myself. It's nice to have some time with my dad, I think coming home from Paris wasn't such a bad thing, for me at least. My french has probably suffered, or not improved anyway.
Thu 14th August 2003, sunburnt in Castleconnell:
Pah, haven't been saying much have I? But I have been keeping myself entertained. In the past while I've watched a few films (Hulk, Bruce Almighty, Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within (video), Goodbye Lenin) read a book (Sabriel - Garth Nix (a kid's book)) and am currently digesting the new Bell x1 album "Music in Mouth". Here follows an attempt at a 'review' of as many of them as seems fit.
Music in Mouth first I think. I suppose I should explain where I fit in with my Bell x1 views: I like Bell x1, and unlike some reviews I've heard mentioned, this is not for me their first album, even though the previous was only released in Ireland. I love the last album "Neither am I", I don't care if half the songs were written and some even half recorded with Damien Rice, back when they were Juniper. I still think it's a wonderful album, and I think that their version of Volcano is better, I don't care who wrote the song. Damien Rice can gay himself up the bottom for all I care, I love the last album. I think Bell x1 are great live, and I really enjoy their music, I don't care if they are suspiciously also named after a plane and are from Dublin, their sound is not 'derivative' in the plagiarism sense. And they haven't delivered the same album again, unsurprising really considering how long this album is in coming, and it's good. It's different, but good. I'm already in love with one song (Next to you), which is always a good sign. I'm not going to claim that it's perfect, it didn't grab me on first listen, but it made me curious, and I knew there was more to it than I had heard initially. Headphones reveal all. It's complicated, and intricate and delicate and angry and sad while pretending to be happy. It's brilliant and awkward and it doesn't care. And the lyrics are fantastic and funny (in both senses). "My book has more bookmarks than pages", "I'm a little all over the shop, like a holy souvenir from Knock, that came all the way from China", "I'm not over you, so can I get back under?". All honest and unpretentious and believable. The music is unforced, some songs obviously benefitting from the extended length of time they had to hone them live (Alphabet Soup for instance sounds much better than when I heard it live last year) and others sound very much like studio-babies, for want of a better way to put it, In Every Sunflower comes to mind here if only because the sparseness of it. I haven't fully decided where this album will live on the soundtrack that is my life, and I suspect it will be a while before I do.
Hulk and Bruce Almighty were good. I enjoyed Hulk, the people I saw it with didn't. Bruce Almighty was entertaining but ultimately forgettable and Goodbye Lenin was excellent, with an excellent soundtrack supplied by Yann Tiersan (I think that's how you spell it). I hadn't really noticed how ignorant I was of post-war Germany, and this film gives an interesting insight into life in East Berlin just before and during the collapse of the DDR and the Berlin Wall. I recommend it, and I'm glad a few different people mentioned it to me. The Spirits Within had been out on video for yonks now I think, and I think anyone who has heard of this film has probably either already seen it or deliberately decided not to see it. It was an interesting film from a purely technical point of view, but having seen what the technology that created it has moved on to now (Final Flight of the Osiris - The Animatrix) it was probably less impressive than it should have been. And all those reviews were right, the dialogue is pants. But who was watching it for the script?
I know I'm getting progressively worse but.... Sabriel was good, interesting read. Nix has a wonderful sense of space and place, I don't know if you're allowed say stuff like that about kids books, but the scene he sets is almost flawless in it's credibility despite it's incredible nature. Definitely one to read if the last Harry Potter was too long and samey for you.
I'll shut up now.
Saturday 26th July @ 23:00 (approx) : Castleconnell
So my sister and my parents are downstairs listening to Maeve (my sister)'s first CD, I finished doing an awful job of mixing it about 5 minutes ago. She recorded all 5 tracks on it on my computer here (isn't she great, biscuit not Maeve). It's not her first time recording stuff, but the last demo was minidisc only (i.e. I couldn't get it onto cd :P). So here it is, 5 Songs - by Maeve. 3 new ones of hers, and 2 covers. I'm very proud of her, especially that she managed to make it sound decent, despite the fact that she's just been using the crap built-in mic on the ibook.
It is copyrighted I'm sure, she's not as leftie as me.
23rd July 2003: Castleconnell @ 02.26
The middle of the night is beginning to be my preferred time of day. It might explain why I'm so tired all the time. So I went to Dublin, and saw my uncle, and spent Saturday at Thom's place. A good time was had, and I scored some old hardware to update my old desktop, which I've just donated to Maeve. The modem doesn't work in windows, so I'm thinking about getting her to switch to Linux, that could be interesting. I didn't make it to the party, *shrug*. I was only in Dublin for less that 24 hours in total, so it's actually surprising how much I got done. I'm planning a proper visit which will hopefully happen in a week or two before Katie leaves.
Katie visited today on her way from Kerry. It's strange to see people I've said goodbye to already. Oh well, I had a sneaking suspicion the last goodbye was too quiet, the next one is already looking to be much more exciting. I am officially the most confused and confusing person on the planet I think, but that's a whole different essay.
Still no word from Dr. Vogel about Grenoble. I'm going to ring his office tomorrow until he picks up the phone, and if that doesn't work I'm going to ring the CS Dept. Secretary with orders to kill him on sight. I'm probably being a bit complacent about the whole thing and this is because I'm not entirely sure about what I *really* want to do, this is extending to pretty much ever facet of my being right now, it's not just a college/France thing. I have difficulty deciding what to have for breakfast, so much so that I usually don't. I'm just going to take solace from Radiohead (comme habitude) "One day you'll know where you are", fingers crossed. Colm if you're reading this, you owe me a long detailed email about what has been going on, and damn you for just running away the other day, and never answering your phone.
It'd be better if it wasn't so hard to spell: http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/. But not much..
If anyone knows of any web design work going, please let me know. Despite this site being a staggering testament to the opposite, I do actually vaguely know what it's about.
Sleepwell peopels.
Friday 18th July 2003 - Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, Ireland
It's still wet here, isn't pathetic fallacy great? Only joking, I'm actually enjoying myself in a quiet kinda way here, the days aren't too busy and I've got plenty of time to think, and try and sort things out in my head. I still haven't started programming, which was kinda the plan, but what can you do?
No news to speak of, going to Dublin tomorrow with my dad, my uncle is back from Uganda for a bit, so we're gonna say hello, and I'll get to say hello to a few friends too, and maybe even a party :).
Anyway it's about time I put a link up to the design type noodlings that I have hidden away here, along with a new random thing I scribbled today while watching Billy Elliot with my sister this morning (we watched Legally Blond, and Bend it like Beckham last night, there's a certain mood of lethargy and decadence in this house at the moment).
That is all. Tell me *your* stories people. eman atteh netsoc do' tcd do' ie.
Sleepwell.
Wednesday 16th July 2003 - Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, Ireland
It's wet. Very wet. I suppose I should have seen it coming. I was sorry to miss Bastille Day in France the other day, but it's my own fault for leaving. It's strange being home, it's so long since I've lived here properly, but it's still the place I can relax in easiest. Myself and Maeve (mostly her) were recording stuff today on this little machine. I think it was mostly learning for her, I don't know if she got anything down that she was happy with, but it's always fun to play with lots of different tracks and stuff. The only bad thing is that the only mic available on this is the condenser mic that's built in, there's no mic socket (this is probably the only thing that Apple should be faulted for on the design of the iBook), and to buy a USB mic port costs $30, but I priced them in Paris at 90Eur and 55Eur in two different places. Either way that's money that doesn't exist for me at the moment. It would be nice to get a decent recording set-up eventually but for the time being we'll have to make do with hiss and crap tone.
I'm actually really surprised with myself about how much time I'm spending using OS X, I've really been neglecting my linux installation. I mean I had linux on the machine a few hours after I got it, I thought that I was going to be using it as my primary OS. But OS X has actually really pleasantly surprised me: it's pretty, easy to use, has lots of support out of the box (websites always look good, quicktime, good applications), but it's a BSD under the hood so that when things go a bit iffy it's always possible to fire up a terminal and do things the old fashioned way. I know eventually I'll get around to setting up debian the way I want it, and give Ximian2 a go, there are some things about linux that I do miss, everything being free for one, but it's the little things that keep putting me off, like the drivers for the software modem in the ibook are closed source (I realise that this shouldn't be preventing me from abandoning a proprietary OS, but I'm reluctant to taint my kernel). I want to give Gtk2 development a go, but for the moment I'm still looking at Objective-C and Cocoa. I say looking at, cause I'm still not actually starting, it's mostly because I'm very suspicious of Interface Builder and everyone at Apple seems to love it.
Ok that's enough nerd talk. I should go, I'm really missing the point of writing this I think, I mean it make sense when I was in Paris, at least that was vaguely interesting, but being in Limerick is hardly worth reading about is it? It's still wet by the way.
Castleconnell: : Tuesday 15th July.
Home for over a week now, lost a load of entries when changing the design of the site, i'll fix later, and maybe even write something intersting.
Update Lost entries have been recovered. Probably not exactly like they were, but similar.
Anyway, I've been home in Limerick since Sunday a week ago, it's been pretty uneventful so far. I've been watching a lot of tv, read the new Harry Potter, and been 'researching' for my project. I'm going to start *cough* tomorrow. No i really want to get cracking actually, but it's so hard to bridge the gap between thinking about starting something and actually beginning it. In other news, I nearly shaved my head today, but I couldn't decide if I actually wanted to or not, so I left it. I have big problems and decisions to make in my life don't I? I actually should, I mean that's one of the reasons I came home so eagerly, and here I am not really thinking about things very much. Maybe just relaxing a bit is good. Anyhoo, nothing particularly interesting to say so I should probably shut up. I decided to do the new design because I wanted to see if I could make something interesting with just text. I think it looks ok. Anyway I'm going to go back to reading comics.
Saturday 5th July: Ranelagh, Paris
So someone does read this. He had this to say.
"in answer to your ?blog? question i heard a great quote:
tell me your plans for next week and give god a laugh
whatever your views on deity i think it's fairly good."
It is a valid point, and I think most people will know that I've never been a big fan of plans, but a little direction wouldn't go amiss (so to speak). My views on deities are not coherent enough to fit in this fine space. However I'm not sure if Mr. McMullan is the most discerning surfer considering he followed shortly with
"sometimes i'm so bored i even read http://wibsite.com/wiblog/dull
not to say yours is boring... ". I don't know about the rest of you but I'm a bit suspicious of those three little dots. Anyhoo here's the goss:
Went to Disneyland yesterday: legend. No Rob, it wasn't anything like Euro Itchy and Scratchy Land. Space Mountain definitely gets a thumbs up, and a word of warning, don't go on Indiana Jones if you think you might have a bit of a headache. You do have a bit of a headache after doing a loop the loop backwards at if-not-exactly-breakneck-then-at-least-head-rattling speeds. Other highlights include the Alice In Wonderland maze, a waterfall, the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and a rope-wrapped-steel-cable suspension bridge over a not yawning but merely mildy sleepy abyss. Muchos thankos to Sarah for the free tickets, and to Colm for indulging a giant 10 year old for an entire day, even when he got tired at the end.
Today just to totally mess with my brain, and in an attempt to prevent further regression, I visited the George Pompidou Centre. It was good, I went late at about 4ish, but I stayed til they closed at 9, that's significantly longer than the Louvre got the other day. It's a great place though, full of modern art. I think I like modern art better than renaissance art. I know you aren't really meant to say stuff like that in public, but it's a bit like classical music and pop music (you know what I mean by pop: beatles, jazz, radiohead), I can appreciate that classical music is good, but I just can't take in quite how good it is because there's so much going on that it just goes above my head a bit. There is some classical music that I can really listen to properly, Chopin is someone I've been known to sit down with of an afternoon, and the same goes for painting and stuff, I really like some painters and paintings from long ago, but if I'm to be honest about it I find the more recent stuff more interesting and engaging. So while the Louvre was all Michaelangelo and Leonardo (and the rest of the Turtles) and was pretty mind numbing after about the 5000th painting of the cruxifiction, today was the fun stuff: Picasso and Miro and Braque and Matisse and Mondrian and Bacon even. I liked it, I wandered around for a few hours (I was in the French Museum of modern art section of the Pompidou Centre btw) and I really enjoyed it. Maybe I was just too tired when I went to the Louvre, or maybe it's just that the modern stuff is just easier to absorb, I dunno. Either way, today was a good day.
Meanwhile back in Gotham: I've got a little idea for a project to keep me busy when I go back to Castleconnell (I'll definitely need something I'll tell you that much). I'm not sure if I should say what I have in mind here, because I just know there are millions of spies out there, waiting for me to have an idea so that they can steal it and capitalise before I can. But it's to do with typography. Typography is one of those things I've actually always been interested in, but never really realised or acknowledged it (probably because it's bad enough being a computer geek, without being a font nerd). Another reason not to outline exactly what I'm thinking about doing is that if it turns out to be way beyond me I'll have clearly stated what I'm unable to do, which wouldn't be great really. Anyway I plan to write an application for OS X (and maybe a version for linux/GTK too if I have time/feel guilty) for designing fonts. There seems to be a real dirth (dirth is a word isn't it? it's showing up as incorrectly spelled in TextEdit) of decent programs to do this out there. From what I can tell the most widely used is a program called Fontographer, which was made by a company which was bought up by Macromedia several years ago, and Macromedia have continued to sell Fontographer having never updated it. There is another program out there too called FontLab, which I have the demo of and I'm going to play with to see what I'm up against. I'm not really setting out to revolutionise the Typographical universe, I doubt I'll even get the project finished during the summer, but it would be nice to have a working program to show for myself, one that people could conceivably use. And in the process I will hopefully have learned Objective-C, mastered OS X development (seems much sexier than win32 so far I'll tell you that much), and discovered how difficult it is to write a big application on your own.
In Limerick, I will mostly be on my own. Obviously not all the time, it'll be great to spend some time with my family again (it's been two years since I lived there for any length of time) and catch up with Some old friends. But job prospects are bleak I think, so it'll be just me and biscuit here most of the time I'd imagine, with a few breif forays into the garden to cut the grass, and maybe bring the dog for a long to make sure I don't atrophy completely. Anyway I've rambled on for much to long here. I'll shut up before I bore myself (and anyone else who's reading this instead of the Dullest Blog in the world). Sleepwell all.
Ranelagh: 3rd July 2003
So here I am totally excuseless as to why I haven't updated this in so long. I've been online practically constantly for the past week, not me personally you understand, but biscuit here. and I suppose I just couldn't be arsed to update this, because I have a sneaking suspicion that noone even reads this. Why would you? all I do is bitch and moan. Well anyway here's the thing, I have a flight booked for next Sunday to Shannon airport, with the wonderful and amazing Ryanair. I have bought 5 ryanair tickets this year and I have only flown with them once, that'll tell you how often they cancel flights (granted one flight is yet to happen). So I've given up, and I'm going home. I haven't been able to find a job, and there's a number of reasons I think. It's difficult to find a job at the moment in Paris, especially this late in the summer, and doubly especially if you're honest about how long you're staying for (I haven't always been), it's harder if you don't speak fluent french (mcdonalds requires fluent french apparently) and it's harder still to find work in the service industries if you don't have any experience (what made me think I could just walk into a pub job?). Another factor has been my distinct lack of motivation for the past week or so, don't think I haven't looked, I have, I've been in billions of places, and my CV is whored on every street corner. But it's hard to look for a job and listen to people shouting "non" at you all the time, and it's harder still if you aren't entirely certain you want to be in the city in the first place. And I'm not really sure where I want to be, right now or in general.
I did well in my exams, too well really. I don't think I really deserved the grades I got for the amount of work I did, but I won't go on about that. I'm grateful. I can't believe I passed 2ba5, that must be some sort of record for the most efficient cramming session ever. But in a way I was sorry I did well, I was kinda hoping that I would fail one or two things, and that would kick me up the arse, and make me think about what I was doing. And maybe, just maybe it might have made me decide one way or the other about the course, which I've been so ambivalent about for so long. But I did ok, and I'm obviously going to stay in the course now, and I'll do the last 2 years, because I'm halfway through and because I can't think of anything else I'd rather do more.
Going home has cast doubts upon my trip to Grenoble next year too, the purpose of this little exercise in Paris was to learn some french (read: a lot of french), and since I've been here I've learnt very little, and I suspect I'll learn even less in Limerick, unless I make a conscious effort to study myself. I'm really quite confused about the whole thing, I don't know if I want to study in France next year (aside from the fact that it doesn't even seem to be organised yet) I don't even know if I want to study at all next year, maybe taking a year out would be the best thing to do? But then what would I do? That's the thing, it's this whole indecisiveness that's wrecking my head (and Colm's I suspect, sorry Colm, I promise to be certain one day, or at least keep my mouth shut). I wish I had a plan, there are so many people with plans, and I admire them, they know what they want to do, and they try and do it, and sometimes their goals are too easy, and when they get there they end up a little lost, but usually they've learned enough along the way to decide what they need to do next, and sometimes their aims are a little high, and they never manage to achieve what they intended, but that's a valuable lesson in itself, and sometimes the struggle is more important than the outcome. I'm talking shit now, but all I'm saying is that noone really achieves anything by shuffling from foot to foot like I'm doing now. Noone ever figured out who or where they wanted to be by drifting along the path of least resistance, their eyes to the ground, hoping noone else will notice that they're not actually going anywhere in particular. That's all I'm saying (albeit not very articulately).
I'm terribly sorry for talking nonsense, but as you can probably tell I need a few answers. I suspect I'm having a demi-mid-life crisis (not really), and maybe I'm being silly in presuming that anyone knows where they are going, or what they want to do? Do you people know who you are and where you're going? Or do you just give that impression all the time, because everyone else seems to? Please let me know, because I feel so untethered, so undirected and clueless. Maybe some time at home will put things into perspective, some time to think.
In other more important news, I'm going to disneyland tomorrow! yay, sarah is going to get me in free! yay! I have to get up early though so I should go to bed now before it gets any later. G'night peoples, sorry for rambling.
Monday 23rd June.
Bless me father, for I have sinned. It's been several days since my last confession. I'm lying on a bed in my new temporary home, Liam and Kate's flat, and I'm listening to Radiohead for the first time in way too long. This probably won't go online for a few days because I'm writing it on my beautiful computer and I won't be able to connect her to the net for a few days. When I do get it online it will be because I've moved into my new flat, with Colm. It's in a nice place, Ranelagh to be precise, but it's a bit posh, it's nowhere as near much fun as Montmartre (where the hostel is). Ranelagh is full of old people going to overpriced shops (1.50Euro!) being held up by their toy dog's leads. Whereas Montmarte is where they filmed Amelie, a lively area overlooked by Sacre Couer cathedral, plein de vie and generally the sort of place it is very easy to feel at home in (I almost sound like a travel guide, oops). It's very hard to describe Paris and I don't think that I'm up to the task of even trying. But it makes me feel a certain way, and there are certain things that I'm beginning to recognise as particularly parisien: the smells, and the higgledy piggeldy streets, the metro, the rooftops and the random pieces of giant architecture that are scattered about for no discernible reason. The view out of the window in this flat is just what you'd expect to see, pidgeons and a catherdral belltower (Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelles) nearby, and the white buildings and red tile chimney-pots stretching to the horizon.
Paris is a big place, but it doesn't seem that way because it is so easy to get around: it's easy to walk, even though there are a lot of cars (because pedestrians are actually considered in the overall layout of things, unlike Dublin); and the Metro is always there if you're feeling lazy, it's not too fast (it takes a certain amount of time once you've changed lines a few times and stopped at every stop along the way to allow more and more people on) and it gets a little crazy sometimes. Like the other night during the big music festival, Fete de la Musique, which is this huge giant thing all over France from what I can tell (daytime TV informed me that only about 30% of the whole of the French population stayed at home for it) which happened last Saturday. On every street corner, square and pub there was a band of some description, and huge concerts in certain areas like the Eiffel tower and Place de la Republique. I was still in the hostel at that stage, and a bunch of people who I had met were all going to go to the Eiffel tower to check out the concert. I had already arranged to meet a friend from Limerick who was in Paris for a visit with his girlfriend, and so I swapped mobile numbers with one of the hostelites and we agreed to meet up later. That never happened. I don't think I can describe just exactly how many people were at the Eiffel tower, but there were more than I could have ever imagined, I think at least half of Paris must have been there, honestly. And because there were so many people it was just impossible to find them, even on the rare occasions when the mobile phones both worked, the crowd was just too big. We queued for about 45 minutes to get into a metro station after we gave up and decided to go home, it was actually just a bit too scary being around that many people, we didn't ever make it to the music. They did make the Eiffel tower do this whole flashing blinking thing which was really cool though.
Greek Sandwiches consumed: 2 (finished by myself: 0)
Jobs acquired: 0
Jobs acquired by people I know: 2
Approximate time until completely broke: 10 days
Length of time between starting a job and receiving first wage in France: 1 month
Oh shit factor: 9
Words learnt recently:
epuiser: to use up, as in your mobile phone credit is epuise please buy more.
deposer: to leave (i think), as in, I would like to leave in my CV
redemarrer: to reboot.
clavier: keyboard
formidable, hyper, top, mega, super, genial, choute, cool: legend
"I luff you": (Austrian) "I have noticed that you are female"
Paris: Wednesday the 18th of June.
No news, 40 seconds left. No job, met some friends from limerick today, it was good, paris is weird. mom is coming tomorrow. bye1:
Paris: Tuesday the 17th of June.
I'm not sure if i'll keep this little experiment going, I'm not entirely sure that what I have to say needs to be written down. It doesn't seem any more interesting in text. I suppose it is a way to keep people who want to know what I'm doing informed of the little things. Anyway today I got up earlyish and started the real assault, this was shock and awe like you've never seen it before, and Paris was shaken to its' very foundations.
I have never been in more pubs in one day than today. Honestly, it's weird how you come to a foreign country and suddenly your nationality *really* matters. I amIrish. That is my identity here, and practically my only relevant qualification. Speaking of things Irish, it was pissing down today, I've never seen rain like it, giant drops the size of marbles that soak you in about 0,2 seconds. Damn I didn't mean to use a comma there, this country is getting to me already.
Number of Irish pubs visited: 10+
Number of other ex-pat pubs visited: 5?
Other potential places of work visited: 5ish
Number of cvs handed out: 15
Promising leads: 4ish.
So I dunno, I think i'll have exhausted all of the Irish pubs by tomorrow, and if i don't have anything by then I'll have to move onto some other kind of place. I've already tried a few cybercafes and one i have to go back in tomorrow to see the manager.
That's all I can think of really, I might bein france but that doesn't make my life any more interesting...
Paris: Monday the 16th of June.
Today was the CV day, this required much more than I initially envisioned. First we had to get photographs, and then we go them colour photocopied because we didn't want to have to pay for loads of them. then we had to actually write the blimmin CV things, god bless the google translator is all i have to say about that. And then finally i had to find a phone for a contact number, adn that was an ordeal in itself, buying a phone here is much more complicated than in ireland, and i'm not sure i fully understand the system yet, it seems like a combination of the billphone and payasyougo thing. all very complicated.
Saw this horribly cute couple on the metro.
the only two deliberatly touching
not averting their eyes like the rest of us
they were running their fingers up each other's forearms like some sort of test, I couldn't figure it out. it was probably just an excuse to touch. they seemed newly entangled.
Number of irish pubs visited: 3 (2? i can't remember)
Number of other kinds of pubs visited: 4?
Random chess shops: 1
American resturant chains: 3
Jobs secured: 0
Anyway I don't really have any news, I had a big argument with all these North Americans in the hostel about US foreign policy, not the specifics, just the general we're-bigger-than-you-so-we-can-do-what-we-like thing... it was interesting at least, some day i will learn to stop playing the devil's advocate and just believe in something.
c'est tout. bon nuit.
e.
Paris: Sunday the 15th of June.
Today myself and Colm paid the deposit on the flat in Ranelagh, which we learnedis in fact a really posh area (that explains the peach anyway), it does seem to be populated mostly by old people with dogs. We also visited a few Irish pubs hoping that one of them is hiring, but no joy really. It's probably a bad idea for both of us to go in at the same time, because if they have a job, but for only one of us, then we'd end up having to fight (thumb wrestle or something) for it. Apart from that I haven't been doing much, mostly I've been saving money by not eating and stuff. I was just up at Sacre-Coeur Cathedral, which is on this giant hill near the hostel, and it overlooks the whole of Paris, it's really spectacular. Tomorrow we're going to look for mobile phone shops and get photographs for our cvs. It's weird cause i think asking for a photogrph is illegal in Irleand, not sure though. Also I've been talking to the people that work in the hostel, one of whom is going out with an Irish girl, and both of them didn't realise that I was Irish, I'm not sure whether to be indignant or not. They thought I might have been American and contradictarily also thought that english wasn't my first language, but they honestly couldn't tell from my accent. It could be that I'm stupidly careful about how I pronounce things to foreigners, I dunno. Reading "The Life of Pi" which is curious so far, and well written. It's clearly a bit different to your common-or-garden novel, but I'm reserving judgement til I finish it, which should be soon enough if my current rate of comsumption continues.
Now that we have somewhere to stay it looks pretty definite that I'll be staying here. And so the only worry left is finding a job, tomorrow I plan to whore my CV around as much as my ego will allow,and hopefully I will have some perfect menial minimum wage job to keep me occupied during my every waking hour. It's going to be hard if wherever it is doesn't have air conditioning, both me and Colm were fit to fall over after about 2 hours wandering aroudn the city, it's such a hot place right now.
It was a really nice surprise today to see that there were loads and loads of people out on the street near the hostel selling stuff (kinda jumble sale type stuff, some of it cool) just everywhere, the must have been a few hundred stands in the little stretch between the hostel and the metro.
anyway i should head back now, i can feel my eyes drooping, and we agreed to make an early start of it tomorrow. have fun
Paris: Saturday the 14th? of juin.
So day three, and i can begin to feel a little bit of this place seeping into my brain. i mastered the metro today. i am no longer afraid, and i didn't jump any barriers. today myself and colm went flat hunting, which was nice. We rang about a million people(read: Colm rang about a million and i paid for half the telecartes) but we only ended up looking at 2 places in the end, mostly because we decided to take the second one. The first was the tiniest place I have ever been in, and was actually grottier than the flat on baggot st. Colm wasn't too keen at all, and even though it was cheap and I tempted, the fact that the shower was raised off the ground, and I would have to stoop in it even more than the shower in baggot st kinda make me think that it wasn't the best idea in the world. anyway the second place, may have in fact been smaller, but it was only one room so it seemed more spacious, and it was very well lit, and there's free internet access, and a micro-onde (microwave to you and me) and it was generally just nicer, it's only 380Euro a month, and we'll probably onlyhave it for 2 months or so, so it should be pretty cheap between the two of us, even if one of us has to sleep on the floor. But the clincher in this deal was definitely the location, it's not really very central, it's in the 16th arrondisment of Paris, but it is near a metro station. It's not really that though, it's the name. It's in a place called, wait for it, Ranelagh. How hilarious is that?
So apart from the flat searcing today, I used the google translator to write my french CV, it's ok, I'm getting it prood-read. And myself and Colm had a game of chess, which we played while eating those sweet-necklace things. I don't know about anyone else, but i really respect food that doubles up as evening-wear. I lost of course. Apart from that I've just been hanging out in the hostel talking to some of the interesting peoples that are staying there, and spending way too much money on salami and pepperoni related foodstuffs. I also paid 1.50 for a peach today, damnit some of the places you wouldn't expect to be expensive really are.
Lessons learned: Don't buy anything without a price on it, it's more expensive than you think.
Things lost: the lid off my toothpaste, it's now sellotaped up.
I'm not really sure what i think about Paris now, I'm certainly not learning as much french as I could be, but that's mostly because english is the spoken language in the hostel i'm staying in. that will probably change whenever i get a job, if i manage to find one.
anyway i'm tired, i think i might cut my losses on this and go to bed, sorry for being boring. sleepwell whoever you are.
Friday the something of june,.
i can't believe this is only day 2 done, i feel like i've been here for a week. i know that's such a cliched thing to say, but it's honestly true. today i got up early and walked to the american church on quai d'orsay, it's where all the anglophones post their notices in paris, and apparently it's a great place to find a flat. Unfortunatly it's not really a great place to meet Colm and Sarah, cause they turned up a little bit late :(. it was ok though because I got some more giant yop, and when i say giant i mean GIANT! dave fry, you would quake in your boots if you saw these things, and it's not just the size, the flavours too, so far i've tried pinapple mango and cereal, and vanilla, i've got a chocolate waiting in my bag for later on tonight. anyway they turned up eventually and using some sort of colm doing all the work system, we eventually got the numbers ofpeople offering a handful of flats in and around all sorts of places.
Then we started to ring the numbers.
I made only one phonecall.
This is a phonecall that a poor parisienne woman will never forget, never before in my life have i laughed some much during a conversation because i had no idea what i was saying, she seemed to think it was funny too though so that was ok. i eventually got some information out of her, but Colm and sarah didn't believe me so colm rang her back and pretended to be someone else. then apparently she was able to speak english! damn her, she claimed she didn't for me. i think i made her realise that her english couldn't possibly be worse than my french.
The french language 5 : eman 0.
So after that we got the metro back to my hostel to pick up biscuit, i had to recharge her, and i knew i could do it without fear of theft in sarah's place out in disneyland. so i met the paris metro system. Now i distinctly remember paying for 10 tickets, but i can't actually remember anyof them working, i remember a lot of squeezing two people through at once, and hopping over barriers, adn generally worrying that at any minute the RATP Gestapo are going to burst into my carriage with those giant alsatians that they have, and eat my liver for payment. anyway i'm still here, and i'm pretty sure i can still process sugar, or whatever important stuff my liver unflailing does with little or no encouragment from me. i'm sorry my liver, it's dreadful how i neglet you. but my brain is still frassled after the experience. I mean superficially the metro operates on an identical system to the london underground, which i found easy enough to get into the swing of. but deep down, the metro is insane. i'm not sure if anyone realises, or maybe they do, but they don't want to say in case they embarass someone. But the ticket system is mad, it's probably fine if you have an allday pass or a montly pass, but these little blue things i had, which were for an unspecified journey length and time, and for a curious number of services, siuch a buses. well none of them worked in any of the machines i tried them in. and that was that. i'm probably just missing something important, and in metrospect i'm not sure that this was the most interesting of topics to waffle on about.
Anyway i eventually got home from sarah's on my own, having achieved little more than a phonceall and sweaty feet. i'm meeting colm tomorrow and we're going to go look at some of these apartments, or 'studio's as most ofthem are, i think that's french for bedsit, because i really can't envision that one flat they use in all those films with the wonderful lighting and the room to paint, going for the prices these things are. and after that, who knows, we'll both have to find a job in order to pay the rent, and i'm a bit worried because my loan dones't seem to have come through. anyway i think this diary thing is fun enough, it makes me think about what i've done for the day anyway, even if it's badly written, makes a mockery of punctuation and capitalisation and doesn't really say anything interesting. have fun.
i'm going to bed now.
Thur12 june
So here i am in paris. day one is just over, and it's being a bit of a whirlwind. the flight yesterday was uneventful, got off the plane and i was due to get the train into paris, and colm was to head to disneyland to meet up with sarah. but the bus's to disneyland had just stopped, so instead we both got the train in.
Now as we had already been informed (cancelled first flight on tuesday) lots of different types of people in france are striking at the moment (it's a seasonal thing apparently :) so the trains were all dodgy. in the end this actually worked in our favour, after the initial confusion about what was going on we discovered that the trains were in fact running but that the tiket people just weren't taking any money. yay free train to gare du nord.
which is where the fun began. i would like to take this opportunity to publically announce that Colm Ryan is the most patient person i have encountered in as long as i can remember. I was a total eejit. i totally neglected to organise *any* accomodation before i left, this is one place where the climbing club motto of "it'll be grand" has actually really not worked. at all. pas de tout. So we wandered around (bear in mind that colm should have been on a train to paris, but i think i looked kinda scared), and tried to no avail to find a hostel, a cheap hotel, or whatever, equipped only with two pages which a nice american guy kindly ripped out of his guidebook for me. eventualy after much lugging of luggage we wandered back to the gare du nord, and colm got his train (whcih was delayed by ages because of the strikes). one panicked phonecall home later i was wandering out the front doors again. where i met a very nice brazilian minicab driver looking for some poor sucker to fleece (me) and i was more than happy to let him, he rang the nearest hostel on the by now crumpled pages, and the kindly drove me there. the best 25Euro i've ever spent.
So today here i am, about to stay my second night in the Woodstock hostel, rue rodier 9ieme, Paris. It's a nice place, but hanging around with all these travellers, americans and australians and stuff, is making me want totravel. and my wander around paris today (to the Shakespeare and Co bookshop) make me remember how beautiful places youhaven't been before can seem when you see them for the first time. the architecture is wondeful, and the heat is nice too (even if i'm totally maldressed), and the louvre reminds me of stpeter's square in venice, at least i think it was st peters) i didn't go into the pyramid, i was in a rush. and the city enthrawled me. i think i'm developing a crush. the hustle and the bustle the heat and the acadamie des beaux arts( there's a free exhibition on atm, all about printing, which was really interesting). and i've had bread and salami for liunch and dinner, and the beer is so cheap, and the internet isn't but i don't care. i'm not taking out my new beloved ibook because i don't want people in the hostel to see it, it's not that i don't trust them, it's just that they're probably all theives. So all in all it has been a turbulent day. i hated paris this morning, and i wanted to go home, and now this evening, even though i'm no closer to a job or accomodation i'm a little happier, and i think i'm beginning to want to stay. and i think the main reason, was a little visit i made (the walk, but moreso the destination) to Shakespeare & Co. bookshop near Notre Dame. I've definitely fallen in love with it, it's the perfect bookshop, it's kooky, and qwirky and it has all the right books, (it's an english bookshop run by this eccentric old guy called george whitman, which has some alledged connection to walt whitman and he's been running to for years) and if you are a writer, or george takes a shine to you, you can sleep upstairs in the shop, where hidden under piles of books are beds,there's some downstairs too, but because the place is so pokey you don't notice that they are beds, and not just a really low down badly designed quilt covered shelf. it's amazing, i went in search of a somewhat mythical noticeboard for anglophones which lives outside the shop, but didn't find anything particularly useful (mostly because i was inside enraptured, it's amazing how 24hrs in a foriegn country can make you appreicate your own language more than 6 years of english at school). so that's the main reason i'm writing this, i've got a newfound hunger for words i can understand. i read some ee cummings so ifeel like i can ignore any rules of punctuation (sorry for the miustakes, iu'm in a rush in an internet cafe, they are extracting money intraveniously) and i read some yeats to feel patriotic, and some wendy cope because i like cocoa at 3am, and a few chapters of a biography of betrand russel (because there was a whole section onhim upstairs!) and who knows what else, too much and then when i got home i began to read the life of pi, which i gave to my mother, adn my mother has given back to me, i take it as a compliment of a book well picked, especially as she's so difficult to buy books for.
so the sum total of french learned today:
the french word for open (adjective) is not ouvre(oops!) but ouvrir.
embarrasing mistakes: (too many to count)
words learnt: 1
people who've replied to my french in english: 6
people who haven't: 3
barometer reading diffference [morning/night]: 78%
goodnight.
see you all tomrrow
i have 3 minutes to get this online before i have to pay for another 15 minutes.
