A poisson out of water

I've done it. My very last week of working full-time for my current employer.

As from Monday, I am officially a 3 days-a-week part-timer / slacker / lazy girl. But not really. Because what I'm doing from next week is something I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember: to be my very own boss (at least for 2 days a week).

Last year I spent long hours studying for a translation diploma at the University of London in Paris. I did this diploma thinking it would be good to have translation as a back up to teaching and it has been something I always enjoyed at school and at university. As I was doing the work for the diploma I realised that I was enjoying it much more than I had expected; the craft of putting together sentences and transferring one language into another not just with words but with tone and style became something not just useful but enjoyable too.

So, my fledgling company is just poking its beak out of the nest for the moment. There are days and weeks of URSSAF (French independent workers' authority) documentation to file, bank accounts to open, accountants to see, and of course clients to canvas. All this will have to fit into my newly freed-up Thursday and Fridays, the rest of the week is still dedicated to tutoring.

It's a risk, but it's a risk I have to take now, while I don't have a family to support or a mortgage to pay!

iConvert

I'm a true pc girl. In truth because I've never had the opportunity of trying a mac of any other kind than that which comes big and with fries; I have never ventured out into the crispy world of apple.

But, all that changed last week when I ordered a shiny 8G iPod nano. I have since discovered how iTunes works (it's very easy) and have ordered and sorted my music into albums with proper track titles, rather than trying to decipher whatever has been assigned to the file by whoever or wherever I picked it up.

So now I am the proud owner of a very sexy little iPod, which never leaves my person. I'm having a little difficulty knowing where to put it though. My first mp3 player had an attachment which you could put around your neck, but the iPod doesn't have that. At the moment it's being zipped away inside my bag with the tell-tale wire hanging out and leading up to my ears. Not sure how much of a good idea that is.

One thing that I hate about it is the excuse for earphones that they put with the iPod. White, plastic ridiculous objects that fall from your ears the moment you put them in. I was ready to throw them out after only 10 minutes of using them. I have another (non-fall out) pair, so no harm done.

So now I'm discovering tracks on albums I never knew I had. It's fantastic to rediscover your music collection. The memories some of the songs bring back are Proustian in their power and I have found myself dreaming away on the metro several times .

Now I'm starting to save up for an Air Macbook, for the moment I have about enough for the paper envelope it comes in...

A day in the life of Paris Lights

I've just read a great blog-book (more and more of these around nowadays) called Queen of Sky - Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant, and I found it amazing that someone can actually make money from writing a blog. I know she's not the first, and she won't be the last, but it really shows how a news story (she was fired for posting photos of herself in company uniform) can boost readership and make celebrities out of regular Joannes.

I don't plan to be a celebrity, or get fired for that matter, but reading that book did make me want to make my own blog more interesting. I don't have a huge readership and obviously I hide rather a lot of things to protect myself from instances such as the above. Anyway, one of the Queen of Sky's good ideas was to post a 'day in the life' style entry, to explain to her readers how she passes her time. I know that a flight attendant's life is probably much more interesting than an English tutor's, but you never know, so here goes.

7am - telephone alarm clock goes off to a (now annoying) gentle ring tone

7.04am - force self out of bed and stare at gradually forming eye-bags in mirror

7.10am - shower to wake up - decide whether or not to wash hair (curly day / straight day decision time)

7.20am - do make-up trying to look sophisticated but businesslike (usually manage neither)

7.30am - eat bowl of Country Store / Country Crisp - or any sugary cereal masquerading as healthy muesli - and drink glass of red fruits fruit juice while checking Facebook.

7.59am - panic and run around flat packing phone, metro card, purse, keys, work badge and USB keys into handbag

8.02am - realise am wearing brown boots and have taken black bag. Unpack black handbag and repack into brown one

8.09am - steel self for metro horror hell. Fight with grown men for non-flip-down seats to avoid standing later

8.20am - find self inexplicably jammed into someone's armpit. Notch up fever of 39.5°C and begin dizzy spell.

8.40am - burst out of hellish metro onto street and make way to office (variable locations).

9am to 6.30pm - nose to grindstone

7pm - see 8.09am

8pm - partake in musical activity of the day (choir, band). Yawn and moan during other singer's rehearsal sections.

11pm - arrive home, cook measly bowl of spaghetti and eat with parmesan cheese while checking Facebook.

1am - spend twenty minutes panicking and worrying about what I didn't do during the day.

4am - wake up in a cold sweat and write down list of 5 things to do for next day, knock over glass of water onto new parquet floor.

So you can see that my life is full of interesting and enjoyable activities. Definitely time for a breath of fresh air now...!

Ch-ch-ch-ch changes

I think it's time for a change. This new year has brought several truths to the forefront of my mind:

1. I'm not getting any younger
2. A good night out always precedes a bad day in
3. Women want babies
4. When you get a knot in your stomach on a weekday morning it's time to do something about it
5. I'm not getting any younger

The last one was so important I thought it deserved a curtain call.

It's not that I'm hearing ticking clocks with baby faces on them in my head or anything, it's just that I'm starting to understand the passage of time and how things just inexorably continue until they die and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Someone I've worked with is retiring soon and just speaking to her made me realise that a life can whizz by and suddenly your at the end of your career and you feel like you just got your teeth into it. Unless you're a dentist in which case you're taking their teeth out of it.

Anyway there's only so much I can write on here, so suffice to say that things will be moving in my professional life pretty soon if I get myself organised.

On the plus side, and to move away from naval-gazing, last night I made rabbit in mustard sauce for some friends and we had a very lovely evening laughing and eating and I don't even have a headache today. There's nothing like a nice dinner with good friends to put things in perspective.

Make-over

New Year, new style of blog and I've added one of those lists 'about me' which I enjoy reading when other people write them.

That's about all really.

Still breathing!

It's been a while since I've sat down and put finger to key to update this virtual diary. Not because I've been too busy, but because I've been thinking that what I'm doing is not actually all that interesting. My lovely friend L is having such a blast in Hong Kong, working like a dog, but grabbing life with both hands and squeezing out all it has to offer. Her blog is hilarious, sad, touching and inspiring reading, so go and visit it!

One thing I've done recently that certainly was not dull was visiting Manhattan - the antithesis of boring. It was truly amazing. We didn't stop discovering, walking, exploring for the whole week we were there. The city of New York is one of those intoxicating places where you leave with the feeling that you still have so much more to learn and discover. We went to museums (the Met, the MoMA, the Frick Collection, the Guggenheim), restaurants (One If By Land, Uno, Vinyle, Joe Allen), shops (Century 21, DKNY, Barney's, Bloomingdale's) and countless other places.

New York is a sizzling mix of cultures, so you can not only eat Chinese but you can choose from Szechuan or Catonese; the choice of restaurants alone is dazzling. Chinatown itself is spreading out from its original location around Canal Street and is swallowing up Little Italy, which is now just a street or two of Italian restaurants. The map of the city is dotted with Little Ukraine, Little Korea and is only becoming more and more diversified as time goes on.

One threat to this diversification is the gentrification of most of Manhattan. The West Village is no longer gay and bohemian but rich and bourgeois. Harlem is no longer a no-go zone where drivers jump the red lights to avoid stopping in the area, it has an H+M, a Starbucks and a Body Shop. You can even see on the photo above that a Caviar and Champagne Emporium is opening soon in the middle of Harlem. For New Yorkers, the soul of their gritty city will soon be lost forever and they are seriously against most of the sterilisation of their beloved neighbourhoods.

So now I'm back in Paris, back in my real life routine and back at work. My 31st birthday has just gone by and we marked it in style with a New York cocktail party. Lots of fun and lots of cosmopolitans, but somehow the rainy Paris evening outside didn't quite match up to the brisk, cold NY skies.

NYC

Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York
These vagabond shoes
Are longing to stray
And make a brand new start of it
New York, New York
I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps
To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you, New York, New York.
I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps
To find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting away
I'll make a brand new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you, New York, New York.

Addiction

Being currently wrapped up in series 4 of Desperate Housewives and seeing one of the characters struggle with an addiction (no spoilers I promise), it got me thinking about how much time I spend being addicted to things. Not dangerous things, I'm not that exciting, but certainly little everyday things that notch up the minutes as they eat away at your life. I don't want to think of the amount of hours frittered away on the internet that could be spent doing something useful like knitting, needlework or scrapbooking.

Like Facebook. I've just spent more than an hour surfing on facebook. OK so yesterday night I had my choir practice and I've been working far too much today, so I've been using my time resourcefully up to now, but my evening has just been swallowed up by reading amusing comments and watching funny but time-wasting video posts.

Like text messaging. Not the actual typing of the messages but the checking of the phone - I must do that twenty times a day. Fumbling around in my handbag to fish it out, checking the screen and putting it back must gnaw off a good half hour from every day of my life.

Like email. In my job I have an email in the office and one which is online with a password. Typing in the login and password must take up another half an hour every day. Let alone checking gmail and hotmail when I get home.

Like vente-privee - a French online shopping site which offers brand name products at discount prices for short periods. I check the site perhaps twice a week but always end up staying on it for twenty or so minutes.

I know living alone during the week is probably the reason for all this, and also the undeniable geekiness which flows through my veins.

I would like to go cold turkey for a day, but I just don't know if I could stand being out of contact with cyberland that long. Am I sick? I'm sure there will soon be facebook anonymous groups where people can go who are totally addicted. I'm just glad it's blocked on work computers, funny that I never miss it there. Ooo, just a minute, I've got a new text message...

Tinsel time

Today is the 1st December and things are hotting up in the shops. Kids are screaming, mums are tearing out their hair, dads are starting to ask themselves why everyone is crazy. Christmas shopping has begun in earnest in Paris and you can't buy so much as a T-shirt without waiting in a queue for ten minutes or more.

Of course I haven't experienced any of that, because this year I decided to do all my shopping online. I know that "it's not the same" - yes, it's better. No carrying anything, no waiting in a queue and no pushing through throngs of people with no idea what they want or where they're going. Being a fairly organised person in my professional life means that in my private life I'm a bit of a mess, and usually the warning lights of Christmas shopping don't arrive in my radar until at least mid-December.

Maybe I'm getting on a bit, or maybe I use up so much patience with my students during the week, but I just can't stand the thought of traipsing round Galeries Lafayette (as nice as it sounds on paper) with a million Parisians and two million tourists. The tourists are annoying because they don't know where they're going and the Parisians are annoying because they push past everyone at any opportunity.

So, I've probably accrued a delivery bill of more than 50€ in total, but at least I haven't left the privacy of my nice warm slippers.

Gospel Dreaming

I've just got home from an extremely boosting evening at the Eglise St Roch in Paris. No, nothing to do with Alpha; this was musical boosting, curtesy of Gospel Dream. They are a small choir of around 20 people with voices to raise even the heavy stone roof of St. Roch and the heavy stone hearts of the Parisians listening.
Their songs were upbeat, their style so clear and confident that I smiled and clapped along throughout the whole thing. For the encore, they performed a version of O, Happy Day, a classic, and I've been singing it ever since. Enjoy.