Fear

World. I am genuinely beginning to fear for the future.

Where the fuck has my childhood ambition gone?

I don't know what will become of me at this rate...

Chokobo | チョコボ

Translation Party

Translation Party

Stingy month: week 1

The results are in for week 1!

So far, Graeme has spent £34.69.

I have spent £63.92.

This consists of:
- £16 on flights to Berlin
- £10.73 on junk food/snacks
- £1.70 on a bus fare
- £27.01 on three birthday presents
- £8.48 on a CD for me.

Therefore I must spend less money on crap food, holidays and music. However, I am going to London tomorrow, which does not bode well...

Income includes £10 that I found on the floor, and £5.55 my mum gave me for a train ticket.

Stingy month begins!

So here are the rules for mine and Graeme's competition to spend as little money as possible in November:

1) Only money spent during the month counts, ie. electricity or water bills that have been prepaid don't count.
2) Rent doesn't count.
3) Heavily relying on the generousity/lending of friends will be seen as 'not in the spirit of the rules'.
4) Our own accounts of our spending will be official.
5) We are allowed to ask for details of each other's spending.
6) We each should publish a weekly total.
7) Cheques count on the day they are written.
8) Income cannot be deducted from expenditure, but can be taken note of for side interest.
9) The prize has something to do with German Christmas markets.

As I will update this every Monday, I'll give my lowdown for yesterday here:
1/11/09 - £16 on return flights to Berlin

How depressing...

This morning in our Japanese literature class we watched one of the most upsetting films I've ever seen - I actually wanted to cry when it had finished. It was Oshima Nagisa's Cruel Story of Youth, and I know Oshima is meant to be this cool, edgy director, but I have no idea what exactly he was trying to say with this movie. It was basically a lot of woman-beating, rape (and then the victim falling in love with her rapist), prostitution, forced abortion, some more rape and woman-beating then a nice violent death to top it all off. The main female character had no autonomy whatsoever, was saved from being raped by a guy who then raped her and then put her in more situations where she could have been raped so that he could 'save' her. The complete objectification and lack of any kind of respect for all the female characters was deeply troubling. I was planning on watching Alain Resnais' Night and Fog afterwards for my homework, but I think that's enough depressing stuff for today.

In other news, Pau is no longer offered as a term-abroad option, because it is shit. Yeah.

I'm not dead

I am still here! Fun times have been had in Dublin, two forms of employment have been found and a throat infection has been overcome!

The month of November will be my so-called 'Stingy Month' - I'm having a competition with my friend Graeme to see who can spend the least money in November. There will be weekly updates with full financial breakdowns, how exciting!

Doppelganger

Doppelganger. Noun. A ghostly double or counterpart of a living person. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/doppelganger)

Fortunately, the doppelganger in question is neither my own nor that of any relatives or close friends; to which I breathe a sigh of relief. 

And in all fairness, the doppelganger in question doesn't look even remotely like the person I think he is similar to.

However,  the very voice, mannerisms and work-ethic of this individual, conjure up thoughts of a horrible bastard who I had the misfortune of crossing paths with during my year in Japan. The resemblance of character- and as I have just come to learn from my house mate, apparent affinity of hobbies- leads me to the conclusion that this individual is at least, the spiritual doppelganger of the aforementioned horrible bastard. 

My house mate has gotten to the know the spiritual doppelganger in question, and has informed me that he does indeed share traits with the horrible bastard, but unlike he, has a soul and is genuinely a nice guy, and doesn't have a phallus on his forehead.

And that news, is great news.

But if the legend of doppelgangers is true, here's hoping that this doppelganger and the horrible bastard meet face to face, and that the horrible bastard fades away. 

Chokobo | チョコボ 

When did we all become so middle class?!?

Seriously. Not only is everyone coupled up and living with partners, we've also had a superfluous number of dinner parties in the past fortnight. With handmade sushi nonetheless. And colour coordinated plates and napkins. It's like we've aged 10 years in six months. And they're turning into 'couples' dinner parties! I only have three single friends left... dear Lord.

I honestly didn't think I'd feel like this until I was in my late 30s.

The wait it over (after interview number four.)

Was it the short hair?

Was it the slick shirt?

Or was it my ability on the day?

The truth, we'll probably never know. But one thing I do know is this: that after 2 months and a few weeks of waiting, I am finally employed. 

Whatever it was, the need to make money overrides the "sacrifices" made.

Chokobo | チョコボ

Temporary Wallowing

I can't even lie about it.

She's been gone only a few hours and I already miss her like crazy. 

She'll be back in a few months for a short time, and God willing, I'll be able to fly out to see her before then.

This wallowing better had only be temporary! I swore to myself that I wouldn't get all soppy about it!

I'm sure that the both of us will be busy enough for time to fly by until we meet up again.

Until then, I hope she has a great time out there.

:-)

Chokobo | チョコボ

Making the most of having fuck all to do

I would just like to point out how utterly wonderful and liberating it is to not have to do a single thing in the world. After a summer of working sixty-hour weeks for a bunch of heartless wankers (the parents, not the children), wiping kids' arses and cleaning toilets, there's a certain joy to be had in knowing that, for a few weeks at least, there is nothing pressing to be done. Of course, I could start revising some Japanese or reading the texts I'm studying this year, and I really should find some kind of job, but for now I am utterly content just to stay in bed until the early afternoon reading books, or taking two-hour baths surrounded by candles and bubbles, or catching up with all my friends that I was so cruelly separated from for five months. With a fridge stocked by the purse of Mama and Papa, and almost enough money left in my overdraft until the loan comes through, life is good.

I'm also feeling way more positive and optimistic than I was, say, six months ago. I think the time in France away from everything gave me a chance to sort out a lot of the built-up, unnecessary anger and frustration I had inside me (it really was unnecessary). Also, being in a situation where I never knew what was going to happen in the next 15 minutes (let alone the next couple of days!) and moving house and job at least three times has made me waaaay more relaxed than I was. This is a very good thing, especially for counteracting my inner (or not-so-inner) control freak. Dare I say it, I may have even become a little bit more mature! So, despite the rather large amounts of crappiness that I had to put up with as part of my au pair job and the three months in Pau-gatory, I would say that all in all France was a success for me, personally if not financially! And now I can hopefully chill the fuck out and well enjoy final year!

Pre-final year blues.

"Sorry, I'm not a fresher."

"Sorry I'm not a fresher."

These, the words of my quick fire response to being hounded to join a society of some description, whilst I walked back through campus on my way home.

What I'm certain of are the words that I spoke.

What I'm not certain of (now) is where the emphasis lay in the utterance...

Lesson for life: Maybe it wasn't the hair?

So, I had my second attempt at a job interview last Thursday evening for a local pub. It wasn't exactly a traditional interview, since the first half mainly involved ice-breakers and group tasks.

Having neither pub nor bar work, I was already at a disadvantage to the vast majority of other candidates in the room. However, the fact that I had no said experience didn't stop me from getting to that stage, since this fact was clearly stated on my CV.

Anyway, so the whole group work phase of the "interview" -or 'Audition', as the whole event had been presented- consisted of picking two favourable famous people of the last decade and two unfavourable. That section seemed to go all right and I made quite an active contribution in the whole decision process. The second group work task involved picking two unusual items from a set list, and having to devise a marketing skit for them. Now I hate marketing, but I have to say, I was right on the task this time; my item of choice being "diarrhoea chocolates." I contributed to most of the points and was even enthusiastic enough to offer to present the thing.

I assumed that by being quite active during the group working phase and getting the managers in presence to notice you, this would be advantageous fr the one-to-one stage of the audition.

Since I'm sat here writing this, it clearly didn't.

As far as I can remember, the one-to-one stage went pretty fine. The interviewer was friendly enough and the questions weren't difficult; the typical team-working ones and a "why I think I should work in this pub" finale.

I most certainly had no time to waffle, as these were no more than 5 minute flash interviews. So that's not a factor and this would also mean that lack of talking or lack of ability to talk to another human being, wasn't a problem. I sure as hell didn't smell, as I had had a shower literally moments before walking through the front doors of the pub. Appearance was all right. Smart black shirt and trousers, minus the (apparently) outrageous dreadlocks I had sported for the last three years. *sniffle* Having stood up to present a marketing skit, plus happily getting on with other members of the group I was assigned to suggests that my interpersonal skills are not fail-worthy either.

The next day I didn't get a call so I thought I'd call them, to which the person I spoke to wasn't really sure about, well, anything. The day after, I gave them a call again to be told that letters were to be the method of informing, and not telephone calls- dubious. So today I thought I'd pop in and spoke to one of the three senior staff that conducted the audition. He may have faintly recognised me, I don't know. He has the same name as me which sparked up a brief topic of conversation between us on the audition night. Anyway, in his own roundabout way, he basically told me that if I haven't received a call, I probably didn't get the job, to which I kind of just shrugged and said "well, that's life." He was very apologetic; genuine or not, he needed to appear so.

So onwards I went on a long walk into the city centre, to buy a tie for my third interview of the year, which takes place in two days time. Incidentally, that long walk served the double purpose of making me avoid wallowing in disappointment any further. It did work, though something about listening to the progressive rock tunes of Muse as I made my way away from the pub, probably helped some.

I'm not sure where I've messed up in the last two. I ought to call the pub up when I finally get this letter of rejection and ask them, unlike when I got rejected from the posh supermarket, where I subsequently refused to acknowledge its existence. I most certainly am not doing anything any different from before, and it's not as if I'm lacking experience or aiming too high.

According to a certain someone who is part the network of people I have befriended during my years at university, the reason for the supermarket interview failure was not down to my hair (at the time), but down to the fact that "they probably just didn't like your personality." Well, thank you for that, bitch. That did wonders for my self-esteem. You know who you are.
Fact is, whilst I (think I) continue to mature year on year, my personality is essentially the same. So you can take your unfounded appraisal, and shove it, my dear.

It could very much be luck of the draw though. The last two jobs I've gone for had many many other applicants. So, it makes it even less likely that you'll be accepted. Pity that I wasn't good enough to stand out from the others, eh.

Working in a pub would have been a cool job and like every other "cool" job I've been hoping to work part-time; I've achieved none of them in 5 years!

I really have no desire to return to clothes retail.

Please, wish me luck with my forthcoming interview.

Lord knows I'm going to need it.

Chokobo | チョコボ

Why I will never get married

Marriage. The word strikes fear into my heart and conjures up images of what could theoretically be the end of my life: being trapped in middle class suburbia with a husband (yeurch) and two or maybe three kids while my soul slowly disintegrates from ennui. There would be Ikea furnishings and probably a people carrier and we'd have dinner parties with work colleagues and the kids would do ballet and football. All in all, it sounds simply horrific to me. However, I have recently discovered the real reason why I will probably never get married. It has nothing to do with this perceived ending of my life as I know it, nor the traditional values upon which marriage was founded and which of course I am utterly against (woman as man's property and all that jazz). No, the real reason is simply statistical. Let us examine the facts.

Firstly, over 90% of my close friends (and indeed not-so-close friends) are either female, or gay. Mostly they're gay. The ones who aren't gay and don't have a vagina are all in long-term relationships, and even if they weren't the chemistry between us is so unreactive we'd be classified as inert gases on the periodic table. I'm not entirely sure why I'm surrounded by homosexuals, but I imagine the fact that I'm a languages student doesn't help much (how many straight men really study French?) Even so, it's a worldwide phenomenon: no matter what country I am in it's not long before I've ended up with a NGBF (new gay best friend) and we're either sitting at a cafe examining passing men's packages or in a random club dancing to Kylie and Madonna. It really is like flies to shit.

Of course, there are many perks to these relationships: for a start I know we'll never end up having random drunken sex and then never being able to talk to each other again, and it's pretty unlikely they'll ever steal my boyfriend - though I guess that is a possibility! And, stereotypically, for the most part my gay friends dress better, cook better, dance better, can hold a better conversation and have nicer and cleaner houses than the few straight men I do know. While statistically this means I'm having many emotionally- and intellectually-stimulating conversations over amazing food in aesthetically-pleasing surroundings, it also means that none of this is ever going to get me laid, ce qui m'enerve un peu!

Secondly, I am extraordinarily fussy. Well, people say I am and I can see where they're coming from, but in reality I don't think we ever choose who we're attracted to - for the most part, when you meet someone new you either fancy them or you don't, and you know straight away. Unfortunately, the number of men I meet and immediately find attractive (not including the ones who then turn out to be gay) is pretty fucking low; on average one or two guys a year. My pheromones aren't exactly giving me a lot of choices. For example, in the past year I have met 1) my now ex-boyfriend, and, approximately eight or nine months later, 2) one other guy. ONE! And of course I met him in a tiny remote campsite on the side of a French mountain where I was only staying for one night, in a tent with my parents. It wasn't exactly ideal. Furthermore, my womb has some kind of inner radar whereby it knows in advance if I'll meet someone I like, and alters my usually-regular menstrual cycle just so it coincides with meeting that person, and thus all is doomed. This has happened so many times it's not even funny.

Thirdly and finally, the statistics show that in actual fact I may have had some kind curse put on me. All of my ex-boyfriends (with one exception), and indeed some of the people I randomly hooked up with, have, after splitting up with me, then gone on to find the love of their life (on more than one occasion this has been one of my good friends) and had a seemingly beautiful, fulfilling relationship for at least a couple of years. And yes, I am a little bit bitter about this. All I can say is that a night with me will probably ensure that you then go on to meet someone bloody amazing and you'll have a fab relationship for many years. I'm like a fucked-up reverse good luck charm.

So, there you have it. The maths says that I am doomed, and who am I to argue with statistics? Of course I don't want to get married, and even the idea of a long-term relationship is mildly terrifying, but it would be nice every now and then to even have the opportunity for a little bit of sexy time. Is that too much to ask, oh mathematical one?!

Lesson of the day: appearance is everything

Lesson of the day:

Don't bother trying to work for a company that caters to a posh demographic, if you're unwilling to look posh yourself.

This is my reaction to being rejected from employment from such a company and subsequently, I will be sacrificing the length of my hair in order to please "the man"

(Or rather, to be able to determine in future whether my medium length, slightly neglected dread-locked hair is an aggravating factor in me failing to gain employment this time. Egotistic as it sounds, a damn monkey could have had "the skills necessary" for the job I applied for.)*

Yes. I am bitter about not having got it.

*Based on the presumption that my hair was an issue, I resent society and its superficiality just that little bit more.

Admittedly, I have let my hair go a little and during the interview, emphasis was made upon appearances, but I'm not exactly bathing in sewage, now am I?

This all contributes to an evening where after a conversation with home, I've had to think long and hard about how I am perceived, and unfortunately, the first thing that comes into my mind are the infrequent times where I am asked if I can get someone some form of narcotics in the street. This has happened in both the UK and France. *sigh* In that case, I dread to think what a potential employer might ignorantly presume...

And all this because of hair? Nique TOUT! >:-(

Nine reasons not to go to Pau (and one reason why you should!)

Two weeks ago, I celebrated my last day in Pau. After finishing two oral exams (both delayed), moving out of my flat (again, delayed) and finally getting to the train station (luckily not delayed), I’d bought my ticket and was on my way to Bordeaux, ready to chill out for a few days before my job as an au pair started. For me, the train journey was the escape from three months of what can only be described as extreme, mind-numbing tedium in Pau.

For those of you who don’t know, Pau is a smallish town (population 80,000) in the Pyrenees, sandwiched between the French Basque country and Spain. I was there for a 10-week language course which would allegedly improve my French and give me the chance to immerse myself in French culture. All very well, but unfortunately not much of that happened. What follows is a slightly exaggerated and tongue-in-cheek list of reasons why you really should never go to Pau (and one reason why you should), which should help you understand to some extent why I ended up spending a lot of my time in my room, with my roommate, eating a copious number of hard-boiled eggs and walking around the room in circles making funny noises.

Reason 1: Lack of tourist attractions
Pau’s main tourist attraction is its castle, birthplace of Henri IV and one-time holiday home of Napoleon. However, it is also Pau’s only tourist attraction, unless you count Pau’s main square which, while having some rather funky fountains, usually shows about as much human activity as I imagine the surface of Jupiter would. Either way, once you’ve done the one-hour guided tour (given only in French bien sûr) and seen the famous turtle’s shell berceau (cradle) that old Henri slept in as a wee bairn, you’ll be left with the distinct impression that there really should be something else to see in this pretty Pyrenean town. There really isn’t though; the only option left is to leave. However…

Reason 2: Little to no public transport between Pau and the rest of the world
For a town perfectly situated between numerous places of interest – the Pyrenees, the Atlantic coast, Spain – Pau’s transport connections are remarkably poor. When you first arrive in Pau at the airport, the first thing that everyone has to do is get into town. In other cities, a bus or train service would be provided. Not in Pau! It seems that one used to exist – there are weathered bus stops around town – but the navette is now unfortunately deceased. Well, never mind, you’ve paid your 25€ to get to the town centre by taxi, you’ve seen the castle and now you’ve decided to take a day trip to the seaside resort of Biarritz. This plan is somewhat hampered by the fact that a) you’re a student and 30€ return is quite pricey for one day away, and b) the last train home leaves at 16:45. Convenient at all? Instead you decide to visit the Pyrenees but, as you have no car and there’s no bus service, this plan fails too.

Reason 3: Sundays redefine the meaning of the word ‘dead’
You wake up the next day, slightly énervé but determined to make the most of those £30 Ryanair flights you’ve paid for. Looking out of the window you notice that everything is eerily quiet. Indeed, it could be the set of the next blockbuster zombie film. Bewildered, you try to work out why everyone in the town has disappeared. And then it dawns on you: today is SUNDAY. It’s a well-known fact that the whole of France shuts down on a Sunday, but Pau really takes this to the extreme. I once sat on my balcony on a Sunday, next to what is usually a noisy and busy road. In a 30-minute period, one car drove past. One! Maybe it was because none of the shops are open, none of the cafés either, and the only place you can eat at is a crappy restaurant in the multiplex cinema (which actually is open). Time passes so slowly in Pau on a Sunday that it can often feel like several years have gone by in only the space of only one day. Needless to say, this was the day when my roommate and I were most likely to pace incessantly around the room or make various animal noises over and over again.

Reason 4: The bus network is utterly shoddy
To make things even less tolerable, there are no buses in Pau on a Sunday, so even if there was anything even remotely interesting going on, you wouldn’t be able to get there. But, given that the weekday bus service finishes at 8pm sharp, the lack of Sunday buses is hardly a surprise. I’ve heard rumours of a night bus, and in fact I even saw it once, but one really must question the usefulness of a night bus which leaves the town centre at 9pm. In short, the moral of the story here is that you should never expect that the public transport system in Pau will be efficient or indeed useful, because it rarely is. I won’t even go into detail about the bus drivers’ driving – suffice it to say that you do fear for your life every time you board a bus.

Reason 5: Everyone and everything is on strike
This is not specific to Pau, as everyone knows that the French love to strike, but it nevertheless had a great effect on our time there: for example, the bus strike in Pau stopped us from getting to the train station and thus leaving the godforsaken town. Mainly though it was the three-month strike at the university which affected us the most. Again, one comes to study at a university with the preconception that they might meet some French students and make some French friends. Wrong encore une fois! Most university departments had been barricaded with tables and chairs, stopping us from even entering the buildings when we arrived. The campus was deader than Michael Jackson. (On a side note, this is also the campus where a female student last year was gang-raped on her way back to the on-campus university residences. Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it?) Even when the strike was over, most French students went home at the weekends because Pau was so boring, and it seemed that everyone had left by the time we got to the summer exam period. Sociable it certainly wasn’t.

Reason 6: Halls of residence – just say no!
Another thing that the university excels at is its halls of residence. The majority of foreign students are placed in a compound of three foul buildings in the Saragosse quartier of Pau (nicknamed Saraghetto because of the constant police presence and the many criminal deeds ceaselessly committed there). Not only was it an unsafe area where many of us were harassed in the street, the buildings themselves were truly foetid. Cockroaches? Check. Bedbugs? I’ll take the lot. A kitchen for 30 people containing only a mini-fridge, two hotplates and absolutely no storage space? Why yes sir, we have it here just for you! It was so vile that I moved as soon as possible. The new place was undoubtedly better (we had a one-room apartment between two, with awesome views of the Pyrenees from our two balconies), but unfortunately the nearest washing machine was a 15-minute walk away, which is not great when you’re carrying two large bags of wet clothes. Furthermore, the one machine was shared between… 700 people! You had to book the machine to use it, and if you hadn’t booked by 9:30am on a Monday morning, well then you were going to be doing a lot of hand-washing that week. It was, quite clearly, an excellent set up.

Reason 7: Everything is excruciatingly expensive
Another bad point about Pau, although really this is a France-wide problem, is the prices. Of everything. A taxi from the town centre to our flat was in the region of 10-12€. Two loads of washing using the crappy washing machine was over 5€. An orange juice in a bar or café was 3€. Entry to any club, no matter how bad, was 10€, and then you were forced to pay extra for the obligatory cloakroom. A quick shop in the local ‘cheap’ supermarket was the equivalent of a visit to Waitrose, but without all the organic, fair-trade middle class-ness. The only thing for which you didn’t have to sell half your liver was the uni accommodation, which luckily was much cheaper than in the UK. Even so, I still left Pau with a suicidal bank account.

Reason 8: The Pau people have a reputation for unfriendliness
None of us left Pau with any French friends. Of course, the fact that the uni was on strike didn’t help matters, but even with the French people I did meet, no friendship developed despite my best efforts. It is always hard to break out of the English-speaking foreigner group when you’re abroad; after talking to several people though, both French and not, I discovered that the people of Pau (les Palois) have a reputation in the area for being closed and unwelcoming to most people – foreign or otherwise. Of course, I did meet a couple of cool Frenchies (the Fête de la Musique being a good example, when our Spanish/Portuguese/French/English group all got down and threw some funky shapes together), but on the whole, the Palois kept up their unfriendly reputation rather well.

Reason 9: You’ll need protective clothing when you visit
I’ll keep the final reason short but sweet: the streets of Pau are covered in dog poo and they smell of piss. I know the French have a reputation for this but seriously, in Pau it’s worse than anywhere else I’ve ever seen in my life.

And finally, one reason why you should visit Pau:
Anywhere you go afterwards, you will appreciate a million times more once you’ve spent three months in Pau-gatory. I should know, I’m having an awesome time here in Bordeaux now.