I'm in an Italian mood!

Hi there!
I know I haven't posted anything in a while...Been pretty busy!
Here is an old tv ad featuring a funny Italian guy!
By the way, let me explain why i'm in an Italian mood. It's just that i've been teaching "French as a foreign language" at university this summer & many of my students came from Italy & they were all very nice & funny (as well as those coming from other parts of the world, of course!!) So here i am, pining over the "loss" of my students. But i've got over it now & i'm soon to teach at the university of London, i.e to brand new British students! So, gotta go back to my stressful packing (i have to move out in less than a week) & PhD conference paper writing (that i'd ideally love to finish before leaving...) & to tears-inducing friend-gathering-for-a-last-goodbye event!
Enjoy the video (in French, though I think it was originally "imported" from Germany)

I've managed to split myself into 2!

Oh my god, I'm so exhausted...
Let me explain, and keep in mind we are on a saturday, i.e supposedly a relaxing day, when you can indulge in some trivial things to do & can allow yourself to linger a little...

Well, I had to get up at 8 am, i know, it's not so early but i'm not a morning person & have had many days of early waking-ups-without-a-proper-good-night's-sleep...So, i had to get up (quite early for a saturday) to go to university for a course that goes along with my job as a volunteer in a non-profit organization (dealing with education & social inequality). When i arrived, there were only the two of us and when the coordinator arrived she told me she had sent me an sms to tell me the meeting was actually to take place 30 minutes later. Well, never mind that; that mishap actually allowed me to meet another PhD student like me, very nice (just like me again, hee hee!), with whom i probably hadn't talked with if i had arrived on the "legal" time. The course was not that bad, though not highly informative, nut after the 1st hour, it became a bit boring (i felt as if i were back to high school, hearing about stuff everyone knew, or should at least).

Then, i realised once that my mind had been wandering off, and when i came back to the solid reality, i realised that this daydreaming could probably be a good thing to make time go faster... So i started conjuring up some memories & other things that inhabit my imaginary world (from Six Feet Under to Virginia Woolf) but then i realised my imaginative world wasn't enough to escape this & i felt even more disheartened...
There was also this conference taking place at university at the same time and which i would have loved to attend (i had already been there the day before & really wanted to pursue my discoveries ;)) so for some time, what soothed me was the thought of being able to attend the colloquium on the afternoon & listen to interesting talks about the reception of Shakespeare in the Victorian period & its refashioning by Oscar Wilde. So i told the coordinator that i had to attend that conference & finally was "released" from the afternoon session... The thing is, the other PhD student seemed aroused by this idea & also quit to go to the conference: now i'm feeling like some devilish literary missionary or proselyte, hee hee!

Well, after that i had to hurry to give a course to my student, but met some friends on the way, & unluckily didn't have that much time to talk.
Well, the long day is over (as Norah Jones would say), even though i managed to go & try on a pair of boots and buy a cameo-necklace on my way back after my lesson!

AND NOW, I'M IN DESPERATE NEED OF A CUP OF TEA! (yeah, i know, i'm so British on that matter!)

From a soon-to-be-expatriate teacher

Oh, god, I've just spent almost 6O euros on books this afternoon... All in less than an hour at that. I went to the library to pick up a book by Leonard Woolf I had ordered and then perused over a few books in my favourite British bookstore/coffee shop and found another one & then went to another library for French titles and found two by Flaubert, one entitled "Journey to the East" and i couldn't help thinking it might be useful for my thesis & anyway, i like Flaubert, now I just feel like acquiring his complete letters cos I keep coming across great quotations precisely from his correspondance. On my way to Flaubert, I saw the wonderful picture from "Lust Caution" the latest Ang Lee film, and I just thought that would be a pale transcript or synopsis from the movie, but it was actually the short stories on which the film was based, i'm so stupid, i didn't know the film was an adaptation. Now i'm secretly praying to find some link with the stories and my PhD subject, since the British writers i'm studying are within a trans-cultural dimension. Anyway, I keep telling about my books-imbued life... & i hope soon expatriate. I'm all focused on my teaching assistant application right now & i went to meet the English assistant from the university i'm applying for this afternoon, even though he wasn't that enthusiastic about his home university & city (i.e London!!) at first... How can you not be thrilled by London? He said he was a bit tired of it & I couldn't help replying to him with that famous quotation (by Woody, I guess) "When you're tired of London, you're tired of life", but he immediately contradicted the latter bit; hopefully i hadn't ran into a prematurely depressive student! Anyway, he gave me much information, making up for his apparent lack of enthusiasm, which was nice & fueled my already strong desire to go there. Let's pray I'll be chosen (well, it sounds like a religious assumption, the choice lies on the university commission). Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Exhausted or just bankrupt?

I feel so worn out...Why? Well, don't you guess? I've been shopping. Not that long actually, I'm no longer used to spending hours on end of rambling from store to store; still... I've been indulging in some shopping orgy (even though the term is a bit strong, I'm usually quite sensible & think twice before buying something, with the risk of seeing my hoped-for piece of clothing disappear, which happened twice in less than a month!). Well, I was supposed to prepare my tomorrow "intensive course" but one of my "students" wasn't available so the course is postponed... I also have to go on reading extensively for my thesis, there are so many things I want to read (and need to get hold of, incl. Chinese books that haven't been translated, but I may have to put this one aside...) & I'm meeting my supervisor next week.
Apart from that, I went to a conference last week-end and discovered a yet unchartered academic building at the other end of Aix, pretty lovely actually! On my way to the university annex I came across an old lady who stopped to tell me something. At first, I thought she was just asking me for directions, cos, yes, another troubling & upsetting thing in my (quite uneventful) life is that i must unconsciously carry some signpost saying "i'm a tourist agency, for enquiries, ask me"... So, she started to speak but i was in a hurry and didn't really catch all her words. The terms "fortune teller" reached my ears, and she started to unravel her "prophecies", which stirred my inner laugh, when she said things like "you're pretty, you'll be very lucky in your love life", and which completely destroyed her credibility and struck me with its falseness: my love life is simply non-existent! Well, of course, if she can see my future, there's still hope!
Right now, I'm so into my British-mood (kind of England-sick) that I spent almost an hour on Sainsbury's grocery store online, just to browse the incredible range of teas, and the typical biscuits...How pathetic is that? (But among them are custard creams, one of my favourites, just after scones, my all-time favourite) that we can't find here except in a bookstore picturing itself as British (am I being nasty, here?) where the owners aren't warm at all and where you pay 3 or 4 times the normal price. Yet, there's another British bookstore-coffee shop in the city which is so cosy and makes great, original teas. And I really need my shot!

Don't you dare "madam" me again!

I'm facing serious existential questions nowadays, or existential crisis even... I'm a bit troubled by the fact I'm being addressed to as "madam" in shops and so... Well, it depends, once, a salesman said "madam" and then "miss, rather, sorry"... Hum. As John Cage - aka "the Biscuit" - in Ally McBeal would say (yes, I've indulged in some Ally episodes over the Xmas holidays, i must admit it), so, as he would have it: "I'm troubled", I really am! I mean, I've always looked younger than my age and that used to annoy me a lil, except when I could get reduced fees in museums or fairs, but that was hardly worth the existential trouble. And now, all of a sudden, I look like a madam, though ringless and unmarried, which makes it even more ironic. Help?

What's happening?

Today, I've lived an experience (well, that sounds a lil bit too official for what i'm about to tell, but never mind) that has seriously qualified my – well – hatred, or rather lack of enthusiasm for city buses. I had to give a course quite far away, i.e not in the city centre of Aix… So I had to take a special bus in addition to the normal one (a kind of minibus, called "proxibus", nothing to do with an internet-related thingy, though the process of getting a chance to have a ride is to book it by phone, modernity has taken hold of us, hurrah!). The outward route was pretty good, the bus was even ahead on time and I didn't even have to care for my stop, the driver just knew where I was going and stopped by himself. Then, on the return journey, I feared – for all the time I was running full blast since I had done extra (unpaid) hours (Sarkozy, where art thou?) – that that bout of technology wouldn't meet my expectations, or at least, wouldn't meet me…But there it was, waiting for me! I felt so grateful (yes, that deserves to be noted, I rarely acknowledge gratitude for the public service) actually, I was only 1 minute late. Then, it dropped me whereabout I was to catch the other bus (the "regular"one, are you following?) but there were several stops and no mention of where the bus I was waiting for was to pass… And, lucky as I naturally am, I was waiting at the wrong stop, so when I saw the bus arrive, I took to my heels (after a few seconds of hopeless hesitation) and was running again; I saw the bus stop and then start driving again to reach a green traffic light, but I didn't stop running (the irony of hopelessness? A repressed Forrest Gump surging up?), and to my great surprise, I saw it stop and waiting for me. Grateful again; no really, that was too much! I'm not use to having such a stroke of luck with public transport! What's going on?