Langoustines linguistiques

This is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of the most silly French words I've learnt so far:

Diaporama = slideshow
Strapontin = fold-down seat (I know I've told you this one before but I just think it's fab)
Pif = nose
Avocat = either avocado (logical) or solicitor (less logical)
Manchot = either penguin or one-armed (as in "un manchot manchot", obviously. Have needed this one on an almost daily basis)

And here are some of my favourite slang phrases:

Clean(ish)
C'est terrible = it's fantastic
C'est enorme = it's hilarious
Grave! = I jolly well agree
Mince = Damnit
La vache! = Bloody hell!

Just plain vulgar
Tu me fais chier = you're pissing me off (literally "you make me shit". Nice)
J'ai rien a foutre = I've got nothing to do (translates literally as "I've got nothing to f***")
Tu te fous de ma geule? = Are you making fun of me? ("Are you f***ing me in the mouth"?!)

A little extreme under the circumstances those last three I'm sure you'll agree...

I was also filling in a programming spreadsheet thingy at work today and it asked me for the length and position of the tampon. And I thought French was the language of romance...



And so, Mesdames, Messieurs, here ends my unexpectedly crude (but very colourful) post...

High time for an update

Good evening, I'm Natasha Kaplinsky. And now a summary of the main headlines this Wednesday evening:

Alice back living the values once more
Started new job last Monday, everyone's nice but have been reminded how it's always a bit rubbish starting from scratch in a new place and having to get to know how things work etc. Rediscovering the joys of Insite and Extensity, and spending many a happy hour catching up on all the Send to Babloos that I missed. I haven't really got enough work to do so my main challenge at the moment is trying to stay looking busy on good days and trying to stay looking awake on bad days. Have just managed to get myself involved on a client which might mean I get to go to Abu Dhabi for a meeting though (a small chance, but still better than anything I would have got in Manc) so that's not bad for a week's work. It's probably cooler over there than in the office anyway, seeing as we have no flaming air conditioning!!!!!! If it had been 2 degrees hotter last week we would have got to go home; instead, I sat and got hot and sticky in front of a 2000-row Excel sheet weighing up whether to go and put my head under the tap (probably not the height of Parisian chic).


Alice gets caught up in World Cup chaos and has to walk 2 miles home
Yes I know this is all happened a long long time ago. I'm only telling you so I can make this blog entry more colourful with some pictures...
For reasons I still don't fully understand myself, I watched the England v Portugal match in Planet Hollywood on the Champs Elysees. They had a big screen which was good, then loads of ridiculous celebrity cardboard cutouts stuck in front of the screen in a kind of display, obscuring about 1/3 of the view. This was bad. About 20 mins in some drunk northern bloke took action and pulled a load of them down, all his mates started shouting "Easy!!" and it felt just like home.
Then I went to see my friend Jethro (sic) to watch France v Brazil. Anyways, to cut a not very interesting story short, the metro stopped running due to all the revelry and silliness and I had to walk all the way home on my own at 1 in the morning pursued most of the way by various drunk French idiots going "allo bebe", "tu as des yeux merveilleux" etc... Not happy was I. Thankfully they lost on Sunday and so I was able to get myself back home and tucked up in bed at a reasonable hour ha ha!

So here at last are the damn pictures. These were the scenes at the Arc de Triomphe. They don't really capture what was going on - there were riot police and burning cars down one of the avenues but I was a bit scared of taking photos of the gendarmes as they tend to be a bit touchy about that kind of thing...

Alice superglues fingers to coaster in moment of craft-madness
I have a stupid cheap IKEA coffee table in my flat with holes in it:




















Everything falls through and it makes me cross. When I was walking by the river with my friend Helen who came to stay this weekend I found some cool arty coaster thingies. This is what I made with them!!!
















Unfortunately I've been blinded by my own creative genius so I have no idea of whether my coaster table covering oeuvre d'art is very cool or very naff. All comments greatly received. As long as you don't criticise in any way whatsoever.
It was the first time I'd ever used superglue and, naive as it sounds, I just didn't realise how sticky it is! So, obviously, I managed to stick 3 fingers to the bottom of one of the coasters while holding two together to stick them. I now have little patches of gold-coloured paper on my fingertips, which provide an interesting diversion on the metro as I try to pick/suck/bite/file them off. Wonder how long it'll take...

And some more!

Here are some proper touristy pics that I've taken since I've got here. See - you've all got to come and visit - this place is amazing!









Inside the Eglise St Chappelle - my favourite church in Paris. 13th century stained glass almost from floor to ceiling - absolutely breathtaking on a sunny day.







Sacre-Coeur at night - very eerie with the light. Glad I spent so much money on my camera now!







Guess where this is taken from...







The back of Notre Dame. Much more impressive than the front if you ask me. Everyone started copying my view-through-the-flowers idea soon after!

Llama llama farmer llama llama llama duck

Here are some pictures of my nearest and dearest. I'm getting excited about going home next week and seeing everybody and I felt like putting these up...



My little sis Holly. Adorable...

Nightmare fountain-coming-out-of-head situation more or less averted by my dad

One cool chick leaning on one cool dude leaning on one cool hedge

This is the country of cheese indeed

No-one beats Jonesy in a pouting contest

How on earth did they do that??!! Hilarity at Notre Dame







I'll give you one guess who the best kisser is...

Can't beat a bit of jazz hands on a Monday morning

Back by popular request

Or a moan from Owen, more precisely.

So, quoi de neuf? Passed my exams! Tried to get all the French lot out for drinks on the Thursday night before I got them, we went out to a bar 2 mins from my flat and I nipped back to check the website at 11pm. There was the usual problem of the French not drinking - the first round consisted of 3 shandies, a perrier-menthe and a leffe (mine). It got worse after that - nobody was in the mood (probably because they were all stone cold sober!!!) and I was pretty stressed. Luckily after that my kiwi friend Mai and my Irish friend Niamh turned up and so I was able to get a bit merry with them to help calm my nerves. When I got my results I offered to buy a round but they all point blank refused and just sat there without drinks. All very odd. I'm not a big drinker particularly but I feel like a real alcoholic here!

A week back in Manc should sort that - I'm flying back home on Friday for a few days in between finishing at Mercer and starting at WW. Have already been recruited for a netball match by Lydia! Reckon living on the 4th floor with no lift must have made me fitter somehow so I'm counting on a thrilling comeback...

Life in Paris is getting good as the weather improves - it was 35 degrees at the weekend. I managed to find myself trekking up the only hill in Paris trying to find some random park where there was apparently some random people of whom I knew one. It all worked out fine in the end though and I spent the afternoon/evening eating lots of cheese and saucisson and drinking cheap fizzy wine (no corkscrew required). Later we went for supper at a Chinese restaurant called the Cok Ming. Mmm...

Good atmosphere here at the moment with the World Cup on - all the expats are bonding even more excessively than usual and the English/Irish pubs are always busy. Just watched the England match on French telly with French commentators - they were utterly scathing about the English team and basically spent the whole 90 minutes ripping it out of daddylonglegs Peter Crouch. Sorry, make that 80 minutes. Happily they shut up after that ha ha.

Here's a silly picture of my friend Sarah at Sacre Coeur to finish off...

My last weekend was full of culture and booze and so I'm feeling inspired to write my monthly entry. I had my two best friends from uni (Mesdamoiselles Skilbeck and Jones) to come and stay in my little flat, which is still in a complete state. C'est la bordelle as the French would say (bordelle being a whorehouse, hmm...). We managed lots of alcohol-related things at night and lots of Parisian things during the day (well, the afternoons). The unnecessarily long episode in H&M doesn't really count but apart from that we did the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame, the Louvre etc etc - all very nice. Touristy weekends remind me why I'm here in this cool place!

Change may be afoot with all things job-related - WW are keen to tempt me away and they may yet be successful. The location of the office might just do it on it's own - 5 minutes from the Eiffel Tower at WW compared to commuterville hell at the skyscraper district La Defense if I stayed at Mercer... Haven't yet spoken to the big bosses at Mercer but think they're likely to be a bit annoyed - oh well!

Final piece of news is a bit more exciting - bought tickets yesterday for the Rock en Seine music festival at the end of August in Paris. Only 70 euros for two days, and the set list is as follows:

http://www.rockenseine.com

Not bad I'm sure you'll agree!!

Pictures from my weekend to follow as soon as the picture uploader thingy decides to co-operate...

And so life begins...

Life after exams that is. Back in Paris tonight after two and a half weeks of joyous last-minute revising in Manchester and two exams, both of which could have gone a lot worse than they actually did. Of course that doesn't at all mean I'm going to pass, just that they could have gone a lot worse... Had enough faith in myself to leave all CT4/CT8-related pieces of paper back in Manchester though - not having to resit those two would make my summer. My suitcase still managed to weigh almost 30kg coming back though - not sure how that happened. Just one of the many daily perils faced by girls everywhere I suppose...

Fabulous welcome upon arrival at Roissy Charles de Gaulle - my suitcase went missing and I had to go to the Services Bagages (what a misnomer that is) and speak to some dolt called Mourad who looked like Manikai/the guy off the Halifax advert. One hour later they finally found my suitcase, and it arrived on the conveyor belt thingy open, with all my stuff displayed for all the world to see. This was just because the guy couldn't be arsed to take me to the unloading bay and pick it up from there, where I could have sorted everything out with a bit of privacy. I managed to close it again, it stayed closed for about 15 minutes and then broke again beyond all hope of repair. Had to do three trips up four flights of stairs to get everything up to my flat!! Found that my lovely friend Becky had sent me loads of Cadburys chocolate when I got back though so seratonin levels were quickly restored :)

Off to do the boring unpacking/getting ready for Monday morning routine we all know and love now. It's ok though. Exams are over. Weekends are back. Life is sweet.

I know, I'm rubbish...

I really should have made the effort to update this blog before now, apologies to all. The cricket has just finished though and the only other things on my to-do list today are the laundrette and CT8 revision, all of which has led me here.

Went out last night to a Pays Basques-style evening with a girl from work and some of her friends. Food was fab as usual; thought I'd get my recommended weekly allowance of meat all in one go (no innuendo please) so I had a massive plate of various cured meats to start, then steak with fried foie gras and gratin dauphinois potatoes, followed by tropical fruit salad. Two words: Y UM... Loads of songs being sung/shouted the whole time (we were in a big hall eating at long tables), the kind oft heard at rugby club socials and the like, except in French of course. I was the only person in the whole place who didn't know the words! Then some boys at one end of the room stood on the tables and got naked. Then we went into a basement area and listened to a band playing Basquais ska punk. Then I had to endure 2 hours of French retro-pop shite at the 'discotheque' which followed the band. All a bit random as you can imagine... Finally got home about 4am and am now feeling guilty for not having done any work with less than 3 weeks til the exams.

God I've really got the fear now, writing that last sentence has somehow made it all very real... This could be exactly the kick-start I need for a productive day's work. Am still going to help things along with a can of the French equivalent of Red Bull - inexplicably called Dark Dog. I say inexplicably because the dog on the can is yellow! Maybe they're referring to his soul...

PS In other news, the French for fold-down seat (like you get in the metro) is strapontin. I thought that was quite funny...(bloody French)

Slippery slope this blog malarkey

STOP! This is the Empire of Death!

Not my blog, of course, no, ha ha ahem. That's what's written above the entrance to the catacombs in Paris, a huge underground cave system which filled with the bones of 6 millions Parisians (thought I'd start with a bit of culture before the inevitable descent into general lowbrow ramblings). They had to put all the bones in the caves after the largest communal cemetary in the city burst in 1725. Literally - into people's cellars, dead bodies everywhere. I put a lovely picture of some bones up there to really demonstrate the French sense of humour in action - arranging the skulls in hilarious patterns. Not at all disrespectful to the dead.

Well this is my first post, hello to all who find themselves here. Following the usual infallible model this blog will probably consist mainly of culture-shock rants, silly photos and links to random websites that I come across during my travels. Hopefully the novelty of this whole thing will last long enough for me to dig out some funny pictures of Gartside to add to the ever-growing collection.

The name of the blog comes from my favourite street in Paris by the way, Road of the Fishing Cat. My second favourite road in Paris is in the gay district - Bad Boys Road. This city is cool.

PS Quite an odd picture to put on my first post I know - I'll try and find something a bit less freaky for the next one! (So guess the Gartside pics will have to wait a bit...)