Only two more days to go (and one hour) before I sign the papers for the new place! The solicitor (or notaire here in France) has been kind enough to send me a soft copy of the documents before the signing: as an Englishman, a 24,000-word French legal document takes a while to read and understand.
Apart from the good news of almost being a home-owner, not much else has happened this week. The silly people at work switched on the air-conditioning, so I've caught another cold, which is annoying. One day with cold air blowing down on my head, sharing everyone's germs. Pah.
"Baldrick, you wouldn't know a cunning plan if it stripped naked, painted itself purple and danced on top of a harpsichord singing 'Cunning plans are here again'..."
I'm being terribly organised today. Since all the dates are sorted out for the new apartment, I've been figuring out what I need to do and when. Shifting the telephone number, re-subscribing to ADSL, dealing with the electricity company and so on - it all has to be done pretty quickly. Since the movers are coming some ten days after the signing, I shall probably end up living without furniture for a while, which should be amusing.
It's going to be a busy week.
In other news, I received the devis¹ from the movers today. Yesterday afternoon, the lady who runs the company with her husband came by to make a list of what needed moving (and to where, since it's a three-way move), so that she could figure out how much space is needed in the lorry.
I appear to have been very lucky with the moving company. A friend of a colleague recommended them, as they have had both good and bad experiences while moving homes. It seems the recommendation was for excellent reasons: not only did she and I have a lot of fun chatting as we went through the list of what needed moving, but the price is in the range I expected (or rather 'hoped for'!) and they appear willing to perform the move around the date I want. This last surprised me because I have asked somewhat late in the day - with only a couple of weeks' notice.
All that remains is for me to find out how much they will add to the bill to include dismantling and rebuilding the mezzanine at Psycho's² and to agree to their price. Oh, and of course I will need to finish packing!
¹ An official estimate of cost for a job.
² Since her flat is quite small, Psycho has a tall mezzanine where she sleeps, bought from IKEA and adjusted (i.e. the legs shortened) by me. I even built the thing, but I'd rather someone else dealt with the dismantling and rebuilding because I'm a lazy bugger.
Do any of you remember this entry about idiots who post questions about body piercing and their PC troubles on my blog, treating it like some kind of forum? Do you recall my resolution to ridicule such people? Well, today we have a very special visitor: JAM.
JAM is 14 years old. He, she or it is incapable of writing proper English, of reading a blog entry, of realising that said entry has nothing to do with their question and of using Google to find things appropriate to their questions. At least, I presume that last missing talent is how this comment ended up on this blog.
Once again on the Buzzword Bonanza entry (I assume the post was found via Google, which probably turned up a result because of the other idiotic comment on there), JAM has this to say:
Name: JAM
hey im 14 and i really wanna get my belly button done..and my parents say thats fine..but im kinda (well rreally) scared that it will hurt..what really happens when u get it done? like the procedure?
I loathe people who don't capitalise "I", who don't put an apostrophe in "I'm" (but will put one in plurals) and who use the abbreviation of "u" for "you". Learn to spell and to punctuate, monkey-child, or be ridiculed for the rest of your life by those of us with IQs above that of inbred amoebae.
To make matters worse, I would like to add that I know what the procedure is for navel piercing (Psycho has one), how much it hurts and how the pain can be reduced... but I'm not going to tell you. Learn to use Google. Learn that blogs are not discussion fora. Learn to post on entries that have something to do with what you want to know.
Learn to avoid posting crap on my blog or learn to live with being ridiculed.
Jackie made an interesting remark on the last entry (as did Scary Ross, but for an entirely different reason... or two!) about the new apartment being relatively empty. By pure coincidence, I was talking to Psycho about this very subject last night.
Some of you may find this very odd, but one of the things that pleases me the most about moving to the new flat is that I will reduce the number of my possessions. Where I live now measures some 60m² (I believe), whereas the new location is merely 28m². I will transport the bed, a commode for clothes, the computer desk, the four PCs (not the big 60kg server), my chair, a small sofa, a small table, the cat's stuff and a few boxes of other items, but nothing else. The vast majority of my possessions will be thrown away, given away or left in storage in the old place.
Why does this make me happy? I'm not entirely sure. I prefer a minimalist lifestyle, yet my sometimes obsessive collecting doesn't fit with that very well. I know that it annoys the hell out of me to have to walk around things when moving through my current apartment. I rarely decorate - no pictures, no plants, no little "doodads".
I'm looking forward to having a nice, empty place. Very zen.
"...Goodybeee,
Wipe a tear, baby dear, from your eyeeee."
Packing has begun in earnest. Well, not really in earnest, but it's begun. All my CDs are now packed ready to go and I've listed all the old VHS cassettes I intend to dump, so they can make their way to friends or charity. It's a bit of a mess:
1. That's the big pile of old VHS stuff waiting for dispersal. There's at least a couple of hundred: years of collecting! I figure I'll hand them over to friends and the ones that are left will go to Oxfam in the UK next time I visit.
2. Those are all my old TV recordings. A lot of those are really old and useless (over ten years old), but I'll hand some over to Psycho when she moves in, so she has stuff to record on.
3. Ah, the boxes. Hundreds and hundreds of CDs and another two boxes of DVDs, all neatly stashed away. Of the movable stuff I intend to take with me (as in non-furniture), that makes the bulk: there should be a box of books and a big bag of clothes, but that's about all.
4. Backpack: I use this for work. Big enough for the laptop and not obvious enough to get mugged or stolen from the car when I'm at a traffic light. Not that either of those happen much where I am, but a little paranoia is a good thing.
5. Yet another old PC. One of the many supplies of bits and bobs that I keep around, in case I feel like doing something stupid like installing Linux on a machine...
6. Inflatable alien!
Un, dos.. un, dos, tré, quattro...¹
Provided everything continues on schedule, today marks the 'Two Weeks To Go' point in my apartment purchase. Papers should be completed and keys handed over on 30th April, unless the Notaire is too busy and the signing has to be moved a couple of days in either direction.
Consequently, I've started making lists for myself: a list of things to do, of things to pack, of furniture to transport to Psycho's old place, my current place and the new place, of repairs and changes to be made to the old and new apartments, of letters to send to change addresses and telephone numbers... and dozens more. I hate lists.
I suddenly realised this morning that I should be packing. Two weeks seems an awfully long time, but it isn't. It's not like I have huge masses of boxes to transfer to the new place, of course, but I must admit to having way too many CDs and DVDs to transport - and none of them are packed yet. We're talking hundreds and hundreds, here.
Since I grabbed my digital camera back from Psycho when I was flat-hunting, I figured I should also take a few pictures of preparations, the move and the new place in its original form - the work I'll be doing to change the bathroom will also end up digitised, I would imagine! It's been a while since I last used the camera, so I had a little practice on Pie 'Oh' Pah². A tad fuzzy, those pictures, but the camera's surprisingly difficult to maintain steady and Pie doesn't often stay still for long, especially with a camera in his face!
Coming soon: the mess that is my apartment in preparation for the move. SEE the monstrous pile of old VHS cassettes awaiting disposal! MARVEL at the furry brown and silver wallpaper! GASP at the lack of organisation! FEAR the cat!
¹ No, I don't speak the language. I just remember the song.
² A vomitous pile of putrescent mucus it may be, but Yafro is still free.
Seems the MySQL stuff died yesterday, which was why nothing was working here. Poopy bottoms. Just wanted to check posting is back and raise my head above water level to say hello.
Why is it that hearing the words "American" and "Patriot" in the same sentence makes me think of raving redneck lunatics who hate Arabs, homosexuals, liberals, anyone who wants peace, anyone who won't vote for George The Monkey, feminists, Jews, blacks, fat people, Wal-Mart¹, non-Christians, the French, Europe, foreigners and at least thirty-five other categories of people?
Ah, yes. I remember now.
¹ Despite the fact that Wal-Mart is the epitomy of the American Dream: screw everyone and make tons of money by catering to the lowest common denominator.
That's precisely what I have to report after spending yesterday morning with Amel: nothing. After all this time, I finally managed to convince her to meet me outside of the supermarket. She had to go to the University to check if she can use her degree in history to bypass some of her political science courses, so she suggested we go together. I'd never seen a University here, so it would at least be interesting to compare with the one I attended in London.
After some 45 minutes in the Metro (the University is on the other side of Paris!), we spent a few hours wandering around and chatting. It was very pleasant, but strangely more like passing the time with an old friend: no stress, no relationship tension, no real interest. Oh, well.
I just noticed the server time is off by an hour: my entries are appearing to have been posted one hour later than they were. Excellent. Ms Admin! Wooo-ooo! Over heeeeeeeere!
I'm observant today: I also just remarked how the number of lines in an email request from a user tends to be inversely proportional to the amount of work it will require to solve their problem. Today's example is a classic:
Email 1: approximately two pages (of A4) long, this one goes into great detail of what is needed, in what format they would like the data, which parts are required or simply desirable and a whole steaming heap of other information. This one was from a techie.
My response is approximately four lines of text and the work will take me (at a rough guess) two or three hours to complete. Shiny¹.
Email 2: approximately six lines long, this one asks for two simple things. A list of lists in the system and the list of people attached to each list. It's from a business user.
My response is over a page long and has an attached spreadsheet that took me 5 minutes to produce. The follow-up work on this one (the second of the two requests) happens to fall into what you might call a "conceptual gap" in the system... the designers didn't think anyone would ever ask for this particular functionality. Of course, in practical terms, that means I will have to produce up to 145 lists of subscribed users manually and individually, depending on how many of those lists this person wishes to see. I'll leave you to work out how long that will take: my calculation gives the result "I'm meeeltiiiiiiiiing...."
¹ This is an expression meaning "Good" or "Great" that I picked up from watching the truly excellent TV series Firefly... and which I can no longer seem to get out of my head.
The second series of J'ai décidé de maigrir¹ started last night on one of the six national TV channels, M6. Since I was over at Psycho's and she was asleep, I figured I'd watch it. The idea is that six people of varying sizes - four women and two men this time, I believe - decide to lose some weight over a period of six months. The series follows them through the bad times and the good and is presumably designed to encourage people to lose weight. Thankfully, it seems to be based upon the e=M6 series of scientific documentaries so, although it gets a bit "reality TV" at times (read "crap and confrontational") it is built on sound foundations.
In the first series they had people such as a centre-of-the-world princess bimbo who was desperate to lose weight to be a fashion model (oh, what a wonderful choice of role model that was!), but this time round they've avoided such stupid decisions. The worst individual is one of the guys who is, to be blunt, an arsehole. Same age as me, single, salesman, likes to go out and party and thinks he's really cool. He's not. Of course, he doesn't follow any of the doctor's advice, because he knows better. At least it should be fun watching him have a major organ failure on film.
Also on the up-side this time round is the fact that at least two of the women recognise that their weight problem is not simply a result of eating too much or the wrong things. The psychological aspect of "comfort eating" to fill an emotional gap is included, which bodes well as long as it's dealt with properly. We'll have to see how that turns out.
Why am I going on about this show? Well, first off it's quite unusual for me to bother with a television series, since I don't own a TV. About the only things I watch regularly are Caméra Café and Une nounou d'enfer² because I am over at Psycho's at that time of the evening. Admittedly, the first eight seasons of Friends are also in a cupboard at her place (we both love that series) and I have all of Stargate SG-1 at home.
Secondly, the question of personal weight is of interest to me. I hate that fat people are so badly treated in life and suffer so much discrimination and bullying from the mindless idiots who seem to populate most places. I was a chubby kid, you see, so I know what it's like - even though I'm as thin as a rake these days (due to stress, mostly). Personally, I don't think fat people are ugly³: obesity is unattractive, yes, but a little extra poundage can add some interesting curves!
Also, being skinny, I put up with a fair amount of crap from heavier folks. The constant commentary of "You don't know what it's like!" or "But you can eat whatever you want!" belies the fact that being thin and not being able to put on weight can be as painful as being fat. I'm six feet tall. I weigh around 140 pounds. It's taken me two years of effort to put on five pounds and reach that point, so don't come running (irony not intended) to me complaining about how such-and-such a diet doesn't work quickly enough for you to have visible results!
This morning, I was chatting to a chum about the TV show after he sent me this news item, which I found ridiculous. I agree entirely on the whole "fat and fit" idea - just look at Sumo wrestlers, who are very fat, but also incredibly fit - but once again it's a piece that blames the government and society for the problem. I despise people who pass their problems off as someone else's fault. "I'm fat because my local council sold a playing field to build a new MacDonalds." No, you're fat because you're a stupid bastard who bows to advertising pressure, always eats (supersized) meals in that MacDo and never used the playing field when it was there. I grew up in the same society, remember? Hello? McFly?
Personal fitness, appearance and weight are precisely that: a personal responsibility. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm merely suggesting it's better to try to change than to blame someone else for the problem and wait for a Fairy Godmother to solve it.
¹ "I've decided to lose weight" or, literally, "I've decided to get thinner".
² Otherwise known as "The Nanny". Yup, the one with Fran Drescher. I know - disturbing, isn't it?
³ My preference is actually for skinny people, but that doesn't mean I don't find a curvy woman to be a yummy proposition...
What is it with women and being unreliable? I mean, women hate unreliable men, right? They're always whining about how we don't turn up on time, how we don't call, how we can't be trusted, how we whatever else they don't like. So why are women so damned flaky? Is this supposed to be attractive or something? Well, I can tell you that it's not. It's downright damnably annoying.
Yes, I spoke to Amel yesterday and no, I still don't know what her problem is. When I phoned, she was driving home so we didn't talk for long - just a couple of minutes while she was parked, then I said I'd call her back, since it's dangerous (not to mention illegal). Of course, she wasn't there when I phoned back, despite having said she would be. Nor was she there for the rest of the evening. Nor did she call back.
Now, it's not annoying that she obviously has a problem with something. The annoyance is not knowing what that something is: her comment about honesty in a recent message does not worry me, since I'm honest anyway, but it does make me wonder why she asks. As Psycho said, when I mentioned the expression in a conversation at the weekend, there's something she's not telling me.
The good news is that we've finally arranged to meet outside of the supermarket where she works: on Thursday, I shall finally spend some time with her and find out more about her and who she really is. Obviously, I will also try to find out what's going on that is so difficult for her to talk about, but I'm not holding much hope of success on that front. We'll see.
By chance, I came across this editorial from the New York Post reprinted on Yahoo News today. To say it's laughable would be kind: it's ridiculous confrontational crap based on unproved rumour. Allow me to elaborate... the piece starts with said semi-truth upon which everything thereafter is based:
"An upcoming audit [...] is expected to confirm the names of some 200 people and companies around the world who allegedly were bribed by Saddam's regime."
This is, of course, worrying and not unexpected. If anyone present can point their finger at more than one politican and/or big business owner who isn't corrupt, please let me know. What is amusing is the vitriolic outburst against the UN that the writer embarks upon, carefully making the US government sound lovely and wonderful at the same time. My favourite part is this:
"The United Nations itself stands bereft of moral authority when it comes to Iraq, and to America's heroic effort to reclaim that tortured nation for its people."
As opposed to the US, who not only declared war on a country without any sound reason to do so but are currently working on corruption just as bad? Of course, since they haven't been discovered yet and were kind enough to get rid of Saddam (which was a good thing, although I disagreed with the war itself), they're heroes. And as for reclaiming the nation "for its people", does that include the natural resources or will they be carefully siphoned off to the US? The Iraqis can have their country back, but we'll keep the oil, thank you very much.
I wonder if, one day, journalists will once again be news reporters, rather than bullshit-mongerers.
Bizarre some reason for, been speaking have with friend like this. Amazing result of human meaning intellect understand can. Imagine whole entry blog like annoying this would be.
And no, I don't know why it started. Just one of those stupid things one does on a Friday morning when one is knackered and fed up with the continuous assault of pessimism at work and in general. I mean, come ON: the sun is shining, it's the weekend tomorrow and there are people dying horribly, screaming in agony elsewhere in the world. Is it really that bad here?
Actually, I should curb my enthusiasm a little, since I just had a depressing week. Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty bad, mostly because of the all-encompassing pessimism, mentioned above, that seems suddenly to be coming from all directions. What with Psycho causing herself problems by overspending, work worrying about penny-pinching, scrimping and saving every last possible coin by outsourcing everything and the pressure of the apartment purchase, I couldn't face coming in to the office on Wednesday. That's very unusual for me, to feel so bad that it affects me physically to a point where I fall (psychosomatically) ill.
Thankfully, the ol' family stubborn streak came into play on Wednesday night and there's nothing can stop me once that gets going! One of the big advantages of having a very religious father with a deeply ingrained work ethic is that it's very difficult to dissuade members of my family for very long. We're strong, we're resistant, we'll fight anything and everything (in a non-physical way, being pacifists and all) to make it through and we'll even try to keep smiling while we do it. Throw everything you got at us and expect to get steamrollered as we come marching through...
A bit of exercise also helped, yesterday. I didn't push it too much, since it had been a while since I'd done anything much and I only had an hour (lunchtime, while working at home) to flail my limbs around, get clawed by the cat, recover and take a bath afterwards. Still, it did me a lot of good - those endorphins raise the spirits quite nicely. No, not in the "Hello, Mr. Poltergeist" sense. Admittedly, I'm having trouble walking properly today, but such is the price of manic aerobic stuff!
There's also some news on the Amel Front (now there's an invitation for a Scary Ross comment, if ever there was one!). She phoned on Monday night to say hello. I'd called her and left a message on Sunday, since she wasn't around. Her message was a little bizarre and it's at times like this that I wish I had a better understanding of the nuances of the French language, as well as those of women in general!
As best I can figure out, she wanted to apologise for not having phoned before, because she's been terribly busy with University and work. That bit, I got. Then she seemed to go off on a tangent and, as far as I can figure, seemed concerned that I was either (a) not being honest or (b) going to stop being her friend if she didn't agree to see me soon. It's confusing because, without knowing what she was thinking, the message was a bit messed up - and my answerphone records in rather bad quality, too.
Anyway, the practical upshot of this was that scenario (b) seemed far more likely (upon a second and third listening). It also appeared that the whole reference to honesty was simply in passing and one of those normal female fears of being messed around by men¹. So I phoned her yesterday and left another message, simply saying that there was no rush. We will get together as soon as she and I have time. My friendship is not dependant upon that.
I have to admit, though, that I also made it very clear that I'm interested in her... *grin*
¹ Men (at least the nice ones) have similar fears. It should also be mentioned that, although some are very nice people, many French men feel it is their duty to 'prove' the undeserved reputation they have as the world's 'most romantic lovers' by screwing any female in range. Many do this regardless of marital status or feelings for their target.