Categories: france, work, the-little-people, music
Date: 06 March 2010 18:09:23
It's not that I don't want to write, rather that I don't get round to it. 4 months... Hmmm.
That restaurant was brilliant. The kind of restaurant that has a small choice of dishes but where you can guarantee that any one dish will be perfect, so the meal was nice, the wine was very nice and the champagne, well, we regretted ordering a glass each and not simply a bottle instead of the wine.
The thing about the restaurant though is the view!! It is on the top of the hill next to the basilica and even with mist you have an incredible view of the whole of Lyon and at night, of course, all of it's lights. Lyon is the city of lights. We didn't have a clear night but, sat in the bay window with a 20 metre drop below and the hill vanishing steeply below that, we could still see so many lights twinkle, I was enchanted.
A VERY nice way to celebrate my first year in France. Thank you my lovely Fabrice!
There are so many highlights to the past three months that I'll have to pick out a few favourites and sadly forget most.
Music:
SanSeverino was certainly great fun. I don't know anyone else capable of singing quite as madly and rapidly as him while coming of with the daftest things all the while :)
The guy who did his first half was manic: air guitar with the guitar and all the excessive mimics.
Yodelice was brilliant. Truly! We saw him in first part of Tracy Chapman this summer and loved it and December's concert was just as enjoyable. So much so that I actually went out and bought Fabrice the CD full price, something we hardly ever do since by waiting just a few months you can usually get most things for peanuts in a sale of some kind.
Little people: Fabrice and I visited a few families with kids, amongst them his God-daughter (11) and God-son (1) (for whom we had fun Christmas shopping for bath-books) and my nephews and niece. I could write so many things about them all. Fab kids!!
My niece tops the lots with two grand acts. She regularly rings Maman to tell her all about the latest scratch, bump, argument with brothers, telling off by parents etc, warning them beforehand that she's going to pack her bags and move to her nan's.
The second had me in stitches. I rang one afternoon when everyone apart from her was having a nap ('sieste' is nearly as important an institution in France of a weekend as it is in Spain any day). She called her mom and dad who didn't move and called them again, then she said something about handing the phone to her younger brother, 18 months, who usually eats it at the best of times, and I could hear her counting to 5. Older brother comes running, bullet-like, and ends up with the phone instead and I was able to say I'd ring back later and said bye. At this point it dawned on me what she was doing :) counting to 5 like mom does and about do the equivalent of sitting her parents on the naughty stair: giving the phone to godzilla. I love it!! The little lady absolutely rocks!!!
Work:
Ever the eco-warrior, I'm recycling ME. It's taken me years to truly move on this.
I'm sick of waiting for the paperwork I need to get enrolled in the NVQ validation process for a job which may be decently paid but seems promised for extinction or at least is becoming increasingly rare. So I've finally made some of the initial steps needed to begin working as a translator.
I've sent out my CV and that sort of thing and put in the translation/interpreting criteria on my 'job-shop Français' account.
I've had one interview which was a shot in the dark by a company who needed a PA desperately but failed to tell me that. The guy did give me a couple of tips though including reminding me that I need to sort out the equivalent of self-employment asap.
I've done a couple of test translations (Fr to En + En to Fr) for an American company called ITC which has a branch just down the road whom I don't recommend to any of you for your translating needs. They had the nerve to reply to both texts with the same misspelt and badly punctuated email words to the effect of: 'Thank you for applying your style doesn't suit us'! I raged at the lack of respect and tried to convince myself it must have been an automatic reply sent out by a machine.
I have an interview on Thursday in Bordeaux for full time translating job. Oh my...
Voilà!
There could be more but this'll do as a run down of the main events of the past 4 months.
Oh no! I forgot: my little sister is getting married! She's going to look like a fairy princess in the dress she's thought up. Wehey!!
À bientôt!
xxx