Se mettre au courant

After a late night overcoming language issues with the Arabic assistant when trying to make a poster to advertise a language club (it took me an hour to get her to send me translations of some French phrases into Arabic)...I was looking forward to an early night. Unfortunately the drum and bass fanatic from the block next door decided that last night was his night to have a party, thus keeping everyone else away until 2am. The worse thing about it was that it wasn't a next door neighbour, or someone along my floor...I can only imagine what the noise must have been like next door! In order to try and drown out the awfulness everyone had their own music on, playing louder than usual, and the Butterfly Effect occurred. I guess at least they turned it off eventually. Either that or got lynched...not sure whether I prefer the latter answer or not! Anyway, a late night led to a late morning, although I have managed to do all the tasks I set myself to do today so it's not all bad.

Managed to catch up with mum and find out about her week. Somehow it's always better to hear and see someone than to just send emails. Although we're in contact a lot of the day, Skype really is where we manage to properly catch up. Looking forward to finding out how dad's day has gone later this evening too...he has spent the day at a Classic Car Fair with his friend, told mum he'd bought stuff. Hopefully not an impulse purchase of a car!!

I then had the wonderful unexpected surprise of finding that my friend Tim was also on Skype and very up for a catch-up! Tim and I have been friends since we were seven, so 14 years now ("longer than a life sentence" as he says!), and it never fails to amaze me just how much we can talk about random topics that have not much at all to do with daily life. The philosophy discussed today was as follows (although I have changed it slightly to fit more in with me!) - there are reasons that the world is like it is sometimes, and they are...
- People can be overarchingly and irrefutably shit
- Women can be crazy
- Men can be useless
...and this is the cause of most of the problems in the world today. Simple, but also kind of effective. So, heavy subject, so happy song...without fail this always makes me smile.

Anyway, great to finally talk to him as I haven't seen him since I went to France/he went back to Cambridge...you forget sometimes just how much those old friends know about you, and just how comfortable you feel with them.

Remembering a conversation from yesterday with Steven in which we discussed just how little preparation work we have to do for work compared with some of the others. In Steven's words: "I just turn up and be English." Sometimes I worry that I should be doing more work...but I guess the things I do do just don't feel like work to me. Why anyone wouldn't want to do a Year Abroad is beyond me!

So this photograph is of a statue I pass every day when I walk from home to the tram stop. It's in the grounds of a lycée, so it usually has students standing/leaning on it so I've never had the chance to photograph it before now. I also wanted to picture it before all the leaves fell off that tree! The leaves look great big.