The holiday's over. In the real sense, a week in the UK and a week at home here in Paris; in a metaphorical sense, I've just come back from two weeks on another planet.
The physical holiday was great: we moved the cats into the same apartment and had found a friend to look after them (and the other animals) while we were away - "we" being Psycho and me, of course. She's part of the family these days, so whenever I head back to my mum's place, she comes along. The journey's quite long: I drive, by choice, so it works out about eight hours if you count a food stop on the way to the car ferry, waiting for said boat and the trip the other side which always involves traffic jams and road works. Strangely, it's even longer coming back, presumably because Parisian traffic jams are worse.
It's always a little strange to go home, back to the house that always used to seem so big. My old bedroom, complete with tiny bed. The beach, the quiet roads, the friendly people, the runny nose from the salty sea air - ah, it's all good, as they say. Of course, I caught a cold, but that's OK. The cats weren’t very happy together, but they didn’t fight and managed to get through the week fine, too.
It was very relaxing to be away from work for a while, even though they called with a drastic, urgent problem (which wasn't a problem at all). A few walks on the beach, several pub visits and a visit to a really cool fish restaurant where the lady remembered us from last year meant I was able to totally disconnect from life here in the rush of the big city and work. Since then, a lot has changed: things have become clearer. Actually, one thing has become very clear.
I am no longer happy with my life here.
Sounds extreme, doesn't it? Well, I should be a little more precise, I suppose. It occurred to me while I was over in the UK that I am getting up and going to work every day, where I am stressed beyond belief, then I come home and have no time to myself, go to sleep and do it all again. I do it because I want to pay for my apartment. I want to pay for my apartment because I need somewhere to live so I can go to work. I'm sick of it: the whole corporate mindset, the game, the rat race. Maybe it's a bit of burnout from seven years of incredibly fast-paced living, working on contract, trying to get ahead. Maybe it's the stress of trying to make ends meet, to wipe out my old debts, to get through each month as it comes along, to survive. Maybe it's part of the changes over the last six months or so, learning why I'm pissed off, why I've been quietly falling apart. Maybe it's the fish and chips.
The practical upshot of all this began with a conversation in a pub one evening. Psycho and I were discussing how nice it was to be away from Paris, away from the stress, when she suddenly announced that she'd love to go and work in the UK. Now, you have to remember that, despite my frequent annoyance with her, Psycho is my soul-mate. She's very cool and lovely, just infuriating sometimes. She is also the main reason I stay here in France, with its stupidly high tax rates and bureaucratic nightmares. She's also one of the reasons I continue to do my job: to be sure I can be there to help her out if she needs it, as she is for me.
I have to add that we are both very different people once we’re out of Paris and away from the stresses of life here: although this is obviously due in part to the holiday attitude, I noticed it’s also a general change. Once I leave my work behind, I’m happier, calmer and enjoy life much, much more. Psycho, too, is different. The English are less judgemental appearance-wise (note to Scary Ross: yes, really) and she loves the lifestyle. She’s less annoying, partly because I’m less obtuse.
Since she announced this desire, we've discussed the choice a lot. In the UK, her degree would be considered a Master's, which is good. English employers are more flexible than the French, which would allow her to get into positions for which she is not specifically qualified, rather than struggling endlessly to find something here. Large English towns are also centres of commerce, meaning we wouldn't need to be in a huge, expensive city like in France. I could find work quickly, given the experience from the job here and my willingless to do almost anything for cash (note to Scary Ross: I said almost anything): an easier, less stressful job, paying less money since we wouldn't need to pay as much for rent. Without looking only at the good side, life would be quieter, simpler and easier.
This week, therefore, I've been looking at the options: how to sell the apartment here without making a loss (prices have gone up by anything from 10% to 17% already this year, which is great news), how soon we could go, how we take the animals and so on. It's all quite scary, to be honest, but I feel good. Oh, so good. I hadn't realised just how fed up I was with life here, how sick of all the faked ambition and pretending I actually care whether such-and-such an application gets released on time.
Finally, I get to, in the words of Han Solo, blow this thing and go home. Well, the UK, anyway.
I have a tune stuck in my head and no matter what I do, it won't go away. Even worse than that, it's a tune from a computer game. At least it's a nice, relaxed little ditty. Perhaps if I drill a hole in my skull it'll seep out.
I appear to have spent most of my weekend sitting on my skinny butt and watching television¹. The stress and anxiety of this project at work is constantly there in my chest, which makes relaxing very difficult. Even after a good half-hour's Tae Bo workout, I could still feel that crunched-up ball of angst clutching to the inside of my sternum, digging its putrid claws into me and refusing to let go.
The good news is that my new job role starts in exactly one week: I just have to make it to the first day of August and I'm free. Obviously, walking away from a project that could potentially still have minor problems is not something I like doing, but in this case I'll make an exception. Normally, I retain a feeling of responsibility, as if the project were a little child I had released into adulthood... despite the fact that it's capable of doing what it needs to, I'm always there if someone should have a problem with it. Heck, I'm still supporting an application that's seven years old and few other people remember!
In this case, though, I'm going to turn my back on the damned thing. I will, of course, document it fully and be available to whoever gets the job of maintaining the reporting part, but I'm not going to be responsible for it. That project has devoured my life. It's taken my days, my nights, my weekends, my sleep, my calm and my happiness, so sod it.
That's why I spent my weekend watching TV: it's one of the few things that relaxes me, that gets me out of the constant pondering of work and makes me laugh or keeps me interested. Of course, one is also dependant upon what's available. I ended up watching the double episode of Stargate SG-1, two episodes of Charmed (*shudder*), one of Andromeda, one of Star Trek: Voyager, two of Star Trek: Enterprise, two of Knights of God, one of Tripping the Rift and a few other bits and pieces.
I'm such a couch potato.
¹ Officially, watching a PC monitor, since I don't own an actual television. Big difference.
Once again, the blogspammers are out and about. In many ways thanks to Google's inability to correctly categorise blog entries, often ending up with terribly inappropriate web site entries as the number one response on searches, spammers are able to wander the web and find us easily. Then they post a comment with an advert in it. It's a little annoying, but easily deleted and the IP banned (speaking of which, if any of them actually manages to evolve beyond the Neanderthal period of human existence and spoof an IP address, thereby getting you blocked, just let me know).
The current one is a retarded subhuman advertising some kind of gift shop. It's a very strange post, to be honest, made up of semi-sentences with HTML links all over the place. It reads as if a demented robot wrote it.
Which is probably the case, given the intelligence level of most spammers.
I woke up late this morning. Not really, really late, but late enough that my first reaction was "Shit! Dammit!" as I realised there was no way I would make it to the office for a standard 9am start. So I shall work from home, instead. A little voice somewhere undoubtedly thinks this is a smart move.
Went blog-wandering today, through my blogroll of folks, and I feel like I must have been away for a week or something. Everyone has loads of entries suddenly popping up! Excellent... I thought I'd do some of these tests and memes and other fun stuff I ran into while wandering.
First off, IQ. I've never known what the figures mean, to be honest, but according to this test (which is, I must say, remarkably short, for an IQ test - they normally last a good hour or two) mine is 135. More interesting is the opinion that I am of an 'Inventive Inquisitor' type (click the image to go to eMode, where the test is):
"The first thing we can tell you about that is you're equally good at mathematical and verbal skills and have a thirst for learning through experience. But that's just scratching the surface."
Of course, the best thing on that results page is the matchmaking service (!!) which, from my IQ result, matched me with a woman who notes "I like: religion" or, of course, the "Hot math teacher looking for love". What's hot math?
This one comes from RockinRonnie and their copy/paste HTML is seriously ugly and screwed up. This is the made-pretty version:
You're Australia!
You're easy-going, relaxed, and yet somewhat tough and hardy all at the same time. You can appreciate culture, scuba diving, and even safaris. This makes you pretty interesting and intriguing to others, though also really unpredictable and even wild. Your knowledge of nature is unthinkable to most of those around you, even though your respect for it is sometimes less than perfect. People really like your accent.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid
Jackie did something today that I've not seen before(no, not that): the 'Three For Thursday'. I don't know where it comes from, either, but I figured I'd have a poke at it with a sharp stick and see if it reacted:
1. What are 3 things unique about you?
Firstly, I am unique: there is no one else like me on earth. Secondly, I am uniquely unique. Thirdly, I'm unique just like everyone else is. ;)
2. What are 3 funny/strange/wacky talents you have?
Hmmm. (1) I can juggle, but not incredibly well, (2) I too can pick stuff up off the floor with my toes (just like Jackie!), (3) I can remember almost every single piece of information that has been told to me, on one condition: that it's pointless and useless to do so.
3. What are 3 of your best traits?
Egad... ask someone else that. How am I supposed to know? If I had to choose, I'd say that I'm a diplomat (I can get along with virtually anyone), I attract people (Psycho tells me this) but not sane women (unfortunately) and I have a minor version of that 'gift for computers' thing - you know, where you just 'know' what's wrong with something?
If I asked Psycho, she'd pick attracting people, that she thinks I'm funny and that (according to her) I have a nice butt.
BONUS: What is the most outlandish thing you’ve ever done?
Without total recall, that would be difficult to determine. I'm not a particularly outlandish person (except in appearances, thank you Scary Ross...).
Doing this one before fully awake and before Psycho phones to spend hours being depressed:
O-hayo gozaimasu!
I've always had a fascination with Japan and Japanese culture. It started young, with an interest in samurai and ninja activities, continued through what could be described as an unhealthy preference for Japanese women (although I've never actually had a Japanese/east asian girlfriend: I find them too beautiful for words and wouldn't dare ask one out) and is maintained by a love of Japanese films, culture, language and virtually anything else related.
Note that I said films there, not anime or manga, both of which I despise intensely. I'm talking about Kurosawa's Shichinin No Samurai, Takeshi Kitano's Sonatine, Ang Lee's Yin Shi Nan Nu (OK, so it's not Japanese, that one, but it's so good it deserves a mention!)...
Fortunately, I work in a global environment: I have actually had conference calls at stupid times of the night with people in Japan to discuss projects we're working on together. I am lucky enough to exchange email and ideas with people based in the Philippines, China, Japan and several other countries in that area. That's one of the great things about the modern world: we're slowly pulling down all the stupid barriers that lie between us as humans.
Unfortunately, every time I try to learn Japanese, something stops me. It's never the same thing twice, of course, but it seems that Life really doesn't want me to learn this language. I've heard that a third language is always a struggle, too, but it's such a gorgeous one! It sounds lovely, it's so funky and I really, really, really want to learn it! I'm determined, I'm energised, empowered, agile and other buzzwords that don't mean anything! Get out of the way, evil language-stoppers of Life - here I come to learn Japanese!!
News of the day: now this is too cool for words... I know the guy who monitored this operation! And I thought I'd ping rockinronnie's blog today, which for some reason I hadn't yet visited until he posted a comment. Daft, really, since I'd seen his link via Flowerhead. Gomen nasai - itte kimasu!
| Edit | - Mean and horrid extended entry. You were warned.
I shouldn't do this, of course. I should only write nice things, and in a new blog entry, but that makes the pages fly by too quickly. However, this is just too much. I just visited the blog at girlrepair.
I wish I hadn't. Quite apart from the 50+ requests for cookie installation (so many, I eventually just hit 'Block All', which is really rare for me!!) upon arriving, and the ludicrously large graphics on the first page that would make this unreadable to anyone without ADSL or cable, the only words that came to mind were "pretentious Mac user".
Pseudo-poetic artsy scribblings that will undoubtedly please some people (and the less "I'm an artist, I can write disconnected words" stuff is actually reasonably interesting), but fail to impress me at all.
Yup, I just screwed up my blog pages. That's what you get for changing style sheets and templates at the same time - and, of course, not really knowing what you're doing! Ho hum. I'm looking at the positive side of things right now - this will give me a somewhat enforced opportunity to re-start my template and style info from scratch, and to properly understand it all. This seems a much better idea than to run to a backup (yes! I had one!) or to update someone else's basic info like last time. Thank you, Movabletype, for having the basic templates and style sheets on your website, and for making such a wonderfully robust product - nothing lost, despite my incompetence!
It is a quiet moment. Meetings are finished, and I find myself at my desk, watching quietly as over 300 users' synch folders are deleted from the servers (that's what you get when you don't use the app for six months, dammit!). The sun's still shining outside the huge window beside me, and I just can't wait to drive home with the roof down. Scary Ross also told me today that one of my favourite films of all time, "Remo, Unarmed and Dangerous" comes out on DVD in July. That's the best news I've had in ages!
So here I am, thinking about the things I need to do to my blog page. So far, I have come up with a shortlist as follows:
(a) I really need to look at the template I use for the blog archive, since it's starting to have more posts in it, and clean it up so that it's readable.
(b) I also need to look at the style-sheet and template I use for the main blog page. The large type is beginning to annoy me for some reason, and I'd kinda like to put the category graphics over on the right-hand side, to use up less vertical space.
(c) I need to build in some more content on the left, under that 'Recent Posts' box. A box which, incidentally, I am beginning to dislike - the text is big, the border is ugly.
(d) I've been considering one of those dandy calendar thingies that marks the days blogs are posted on and allows visitors to jump around to different days. That sounds complex, though, and I'm not the smartest bear in the woods.
(e) I'd like to get category filtering working, which again sounds complicated.
(f) The whole trackback and ping thing sounds intriguing, although since no one even reads this, let alone links to it, it might be less than useful. XML goes in the same bucket.
(g) I need more chocolate in the fridge.
OK, so there's my job list. Now all I need is the time to do them. Daydreams....
You know, these days I wonder how I ever did anything with a dialup connection. I mean, 3k/s is just soooo awful. I've been sat here for 20 minutes wondering whether my screen is going to update or not, and it looks like it isn't. So I'm going to switch to my cable connection. Why wasn't I using it anyway? It was busy, dammit. And I'm bloody-minded. What's the use of having more than one PC if one doesn't use them all the time?
In a way, dialup is sort of like the old "fit a whole game into 20Mb" challenge: with the advent of huge drives, of PCs with 100Gb of space becoming standard, you'll have noticed the bloatware in games. 3 CDs. 4CDs. 6CDs... and most of that is video. At least, I hope it is - I'd hate to be the programmer who tried to explain that the game was so badly programmed that it took 6 CDs to fit it all in.
Speaking of games, I recently came across Freelancer. Not only is this the wonderful graphical update to the Privateer titles, which were excellent, but it's a massive improvement. OK, so it has its shortcomings - primarily the very limited mission system and, for me, the way one has to follow the story right from the beginning if one wishes to advance through levels, which defeats the 'freelance' idea - but it really is a great game. And it fits on ONE CD. I couldn't believe it! All this, and well-programmed, too.
Life is good. But so is sleep, and it's nearly 1:30 a.m.