2011

After a rather interesting Christmas, I'm would like to take a few minutes to write my very own 'New Year' letter. You know the ones folded up in the Christmas cards and no-one is quite sure if its self-indulgence or a genuine desire to fill you in?  Yeh, one of them, and this one's fairly self-indulgent. But hopefully there are a few of you involved in making my year another grand one who may enjoy the read.

The start of 2011 couldn't really feel any different to the end. It came in with a bang at our flat party in Edinburgh. 80 or so guests crowded into our scruffy little over-priced flat spilling punch, eating curry and weeing in my sink. Christmas jumpers, spangly shorts and coats bought in midnight which passed in style with a thousand and more faces flashing blue, green, pink watching the fireworks above Edinburgh castle. This, the culmination of four years of friendship, has to be the best way to see in a new year?!

Now, I will try and keep uni nostalgia to a minimum, but this really filled up the first half of the year as, after Hogmanay, it was a one way road to graduation. Standing in the way was a dissertation on stem cells, no less [sorry about the patronising link, I know you all know what they are but its a different type of stem cell I was looking at so for the geeks amongst you, you may like a read]. This passed remarkably painlessly and I resurfaced to a good deal of celebration with the freshly formed neuroscience crew. A weekend trip to the Edinburgh uni outdoor activity centre, firbush, was probably one of the most amazing of the year for me. If anyone hasn't visited the Scottish highlands and fancies a cheap holiday with enjoyable excerise, good food and fresh air, do it.

Firbush with the neuroscience crew

After all the hard work was done, my thoughts timidly turned to what was next on the agenda for life. A small, insignifiicant question, but one that needed some contemplation. Luckily my dissertation had provided me with a lot of time for procrastination, and so I was led to the Red Cross website and, more specifically, to a perfect-looking project set in a small village in the east of Paris. So, after getting rejected from the Heineken grad scheme (no idea what I was thinking), I decided to apply. Luckily I got an interview which plonked itself right at the beginning of a fairly memorable week in June.

After the interview, to which I turned up wearing a rucksack, red dress and boots, I was due to go to Glastonbury. This was much to my embarrassment when nearly everyone else was in suits. Again, luck would have it that it went smoothly and so I set off to the adult funfair (a mild description) that was Glasto. The next four days passed in a flurry with my favourite night of the year being marked by a haul up onto a friend's shoulders to watch Coldplay finish with 'Fix you', all in the company of a good few of my favourite people. And so I woke up with a headache, to a journey of epic proportions under a tight time constraint to get back to Edinburgh in time for my graduation. Luckily I made it, only to be greeted by a mother armed with perfume, which she was not afraid to use. And use it, she did. The day following graduation bought with it the tear-enducing news that I had properly done something right and got the job in France. All-in-all, not a bad week.

Before and after: glasto to graduation in less than 24 hours (lots of pictures of me. yay)

It was not long after this momentous week that I found myself co-leading a team of 10 through Moldova to an orphanage for boys with disabilities. After having endured it the year before, I had managed to wipe the memory of the 24 hour journey to the Capital, Chisinau; foolish. Moldova isn't strong on fast trains, or much for that matter, except erratic taxi drivers, fried potatoes and placinta (a local pastry) not to be mistaken for placenta.  Despite that, I have developed a firm fondness for the country, with its quirks such as switching off the street lights at 2 a.m. on the capital's main street to save electricity. In the three and a half weeks we spent there, 'wave three' formed a strong teamly bond, with activities such as a 10 hour taxi ride (without suspension) to a place in the Ukraine. 'A place' not being intentionally undescriptive, as we just didn't know what it was, due to the aforementioned erratic taxi drivers. The place turned out to be 'Zagota' (I think); a surreal, post-communist-but-not-by-far, tourist sea-side village. For example, we were encouraged to eat our meals at set places in a big hall, with all the other guests from the hotel.  Making it back to Moldova safely bought us all closer and we worked hard to do our best for the SKIP Edinburgh project  , our ultimate reason for being there. I will talk about this at some other point as I tend to get quite bogged down in frustration and detail when I do.

Wave three visiting Orhei Vechi in Moldova

And so passed my final month in Edinburgh for the fringe festival, which was spent dodging idiots in costumes and being forced to give money to watch shows which I would have paid only not to have seen. And, after touching base for just a week to remind the parents that I was in fact still alive, I set off to France, to work in a school for chidren with motor disabilities, where I find myself now.

It has without a doubt been one of the biggest challenges of my life so far, surprisingly harder than the dissertation or Moldova, for the simple fact that it's the start of what we always used to describe as 'the big bad world'. Mind you, I love the work, and the rest, I'm sure, will follow. I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, that's it from me, a happy twentytwelve to you all.

Jwaye Nwel, Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad

Having only ever spent the festive season in the UK up until now, I egocentrically thought that Christmas celebrations were fairly similar the world over; that Christmas is a time for family, turkey, crackers, presents and Santa. Being in France has made me realise this isn't quite the case...

 

Yesterday it was my school's Christmas meal. This meant 70 hungry kids and 50 hungry adults. In my experience, us Brits whip out some turkeys, a few pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, buckets of gravy, the generally loathed-but-necessary brussel sprouts, and wash it all down with flaming Christmas pudding. The French, well known for their culinary abilities, take a slightly more demure approach, even on a large 'school-meal' scale. The meal opened with fois gras on toasted brioche, casual, and was soon followed by what looked and tasted like boeuf bourginon. I was just finishing my last mouthful, thinking 'this is very chewy for French beef', when my neighbour leaned over and said 'tu as aimé l'otrouche?', pointing at the meat, to which I replyed with my automatic 'oui' and a smile; oblivious to the fact that she had just asked me if had enjoyed the ostrich.....  :|

After realising that Christmas traditions (quite clearly) aren't the same the world over, I had a look at how it works in some other countries. In Romania, it is apparently custom to march around town singing carols and then, five days before Christmas, a ritual called 'Ignatius' is performed where straw is put up a recently slaughtered pig's nose and set on fire. Then the pig is washed, covered in cloth and incensed (if that's a verb). After this the father comes and shouts 'Let's eat the pig!' and they tuck in.

 In Russia, traditionalists often begin fasting up to 39 days before Christmas, which is celebrated not on the 25th of December but the 7th of january (due to the Russian Orthodox Church following a calendar that runs 13 days behind our own, but I am sure there are people far more qualified to talk about this than I am). When they finally break the fast, the Christmas meal consists of 12 courses, one to honour each of Jesus' disciples. Sounds solid.

 

I think my favourite tradition that I found was the 'Cago Tio' from Catelonia. Translated literally as 'shitting log', the Cago Tio is hollowed log, propped up on two sticks, which is given a face and 'fed' with festive foods. On Christmas day, Cago Tio is put partially into the fire and ordered to 'poo' while being beaten by sticks. The contents then fall out and are to be enjoyed by the family. Yummy.

Finally, I heard this Christmas song from Haiti being played in school today, its so different from the overplayed songs (Slade, f***ing Slade) that we hear every December. Give it a listen, it gets going at 0:22:

~~~JWAYE NWEL~~~

Memory

Isn't it amazing when a smell or a sound unpredictably reminds you of a time or a place which you once associated with that trigger? It happens at the most unpredictable times and can bring back memories, which are detail-perfect, or so minute that it seems incredible that the 2kg mass in your head bothers to store it. This just happened to me.

So I just clicked random on itunes and Will Young came on. [I would like to take this moment to make a disclaimer. My music taste is varied; I am aware that I appear to like some seriously bad pop but I like to think that I have a broad enough, and generally decent, taste in music for me to fall into the 'open-minded' category thus exempting me from any possible judgement from anyone]. Anyway, Will Young came on, 'Who am I' to be precise, and without being aware of the transition, I was immediately reading George Orwell's '1984' again on my friend's bedroom floor when I was 16. My memory of this is so lucid that I remember where I was sitting while I read, and what was happening in the story. I find this particularly strange because I can only recall the bare bones of the rest of the book. Afterwards, 'All Time Love' came on and I can actually feel the dull-ache of heartbreak that I once felt for the main characters and their predicament. The fact that I couldn't even remember their names (subsequent research - Winston & Julia), shows that I am remembering the emotion that I was feeling for the characters more than the facts. I find it amazing, if not slightly creepy, that this emotion that I had felt for two fictional characters has decided to lodge itself firmly in the depths of my brain (hippocampus to be precise (Bsc in neuroscience (nob, I know))). This associative emotional memory must be what makes mourning so hard to bear...

Anyway. This is not the first time that this has happened to me. I have seriously strong associations with Keane's first album, particularly 'Sunshine', and one of my favourite holidays in Grenada when I was 15. The same with the Ralph Lauren  'Blue' perfume I used to wear when I was 14 at boarding school.

I am going to do a bit of self-imposed research to find out what causes all this to happen. I'll report back at some point in the future. I am fully aware that people have a reluctance to comment on these things, or CBA, but if anyone cares to share their associative memories with me, please do, I'm genuinely interested.

As an aside; for those who haven't read 1984, do. Also, for those who watched the 'Who am I' video, notice how unrelated the song and the video are, poor effort. I wonder if I am the first person to ever associate Will Young and 1984 so strongly...probably literary sacrilege...ah well

Growing pains

Just(in Beiber) too young for this front cover

Justin Beiber. The Beib. Beibster. Whatever you will call him, has divided people. Granted, this division is generally between people over and under the age of 16, but all the same, if people over the age of 40 have heard of him, its safe to say he's made an impression.  For me personally, I have very-little-to-no shame in saying that I have previously joined the youths in enjoying him. Not him, he is a child, but what he does, the over-produced music, the way I can associate with his wee little fans (Beibettes, or whatever, for some reason music producers decide to name the fans too these days) because I too used to like tweenypopstars when I was 13. At university, the songs 'One time' and 'Baby' genuinely form a fairly strong memory of my third year; I would say this is probably a decent balance of 80% joke, 20% guilty (or not so, in my case) pleasure.

However. I do feel for his producers. The well-renowned Usher and Ludacris have both had a hand in his 'upbringing', but as with the star chorus boy in a church choir, he was always going to grow up and things were always going to change. In other words, his voice has broken. So where does that leave us? To be precise, where does it leave me. He is no longer a tweenypopstar and so I no longer enjoy what he does.

In addition to this, he has just released a new version of 'All I want for Christmas is you' with Mariah Carey. Have a watch, if you can bear it:

Firstly, why, if I can put financial incentives aside for one moment, is Mariah Carey hanging out with a 17 year old in a supermarket. Secondly, why is she facing a wall for most of the video? It makes me think she's hiding something...unretouchable wrinkles perhaps? Thirdly, Justin's autotune. We all know it's now used freely in mainstream pop music, obviously you don't need to sing to be a singer these days, but normally its inconspicuous or at least so obvious that the voice is just a synthesised instrument in its own right. Listen when the beib bursts in at 1:20...Really?! Its not like I'm a huge Mariah Carey fan but its well known that she has a range of eight octaves, it seems odd to have coupled her with a pubescent boy who, in line with his recent 'growing up', has probably just lost his ability to reach two . Finally, does anyone else think that from 3:40 on, when the two are sitting in the sleigh together that it looks a little bit like a flamboyant coming out party for the two of them?

Sorry. This is harsh. I think that Justin Beiber becoming a real person has hit me hard.

Anyway, for those of you thoroughly offended by this blog, take a moment to cleanse your palate with this:

SBTRKT - Wildfire

To speak of rain and nice weather

I learnt a new french phrase today:

Parler de la pluie et du beau temps

Guess what it means? The literal translation is: 'to speak of rain and nice weather'....any closer?

Yes, its 'small talk'. Ironically, its a phrase rendered fairly useless in France due to the fact that it doesn't really exist. Those who know me well are probably imagining me breathing a deep sigh of relief; relief that I can finally rest easy during those lulls in conversation, in the safe knowledge that the other person is not finding it as awkward as I. 

However, strangely enough I miss it. I don't mean the small talk with those people that you half know...that is always a tough one to work... But I really miss it when you don't know someone at all. In fact, I would say it is probably one of the biggest differences between French and British culture. In the UK, I find that people are generally willing to strike up chat if you cross their path for more than 5 minutes. In France, I am becoming aware that if a group of people were randomly thrown together for an afternoon, without the prospect of becoming 'friends for life', nothing would happen.

When I first arrived here, I was warned that the French can be a little 'closed' in nature, very family & friends orientated. I thought nothing of it at the time, but on entering my third month of being almost entriely surrounded by French speaking people, I have seen first hand that small talk doesn't happen, and friendships take time to form. Break time in the staff room, for example, does not consist of people chatting about how cold it was when they woke up, or what they did at the weekend (believe me, I've asked...nothing). Instead, its a 20 minute, heated debate about Greece and the economic crisis; or whether Sarkosi is really f***ing everything up; or what I think of the pound (did happen...). And then, as abruptly as it started, tempers are calmed and an amiable farewell is made before the next lesson, all in the space of 15 seconds.  I have yet to see that happen in the UK, that is unless it is fuelled by a whisky or a wine and happening after midnight.

Anyway, I guess the point that I am making is that, if I hadn't lived here - I would probably have just thought that the French were unfriendly and left it as that, but I'm getting there now and soon I'm sure I too will be giving a heartfelt opinion on how disorganised the French educational system is.

As a final point, for those of you still in the UK, take some small talk tips from this, its FUNNY. I ask everyone who has read this to follow point number 2 tomorrow iust for a laugh and report back

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