He owes Me

Place: Milan

Occasion: Going to a wedding Saturday afternoon

Time: 10:00 AM - lovely sunny morning and crisp autumny air

L's on the phone and I dressed in jeans ready to go out and was just putting on the mascara thinking of all the things we needed to get done before preparing to go to our friend's wedding. L hangs up and call me from the ground floor...

Lorenzo: Astrid...?!

Me: Yeah...

Lorenzo: Uhhhmmm... eh ah.... I just spoke to M and the wedding is at 11:00 and not at 16:00 h as we thought...

Me: .... haha haha ... you think you can scare me, right?! Not buying it!!

I'm calling out from the bathroom. Talking under my breath to myself how some people might be a little daft sometimes.

Lorenzo: Astrid?? ... You have exactly 10 minutes to get ready cos it'll take us an hour to drive to the church!!

Me: .... ?!

Me: ... ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? READY IN FRIKKIN' 10 MINUTES???!! FOR A WEDDING???

My laughter was getting an hysterical tone as I'm undressing and running into the shower. I didn't even have time to do my hair, nor to put on a proper make-up. And L's suggestion was: why don't you put the make-up on in the car? Obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about. Any girl would know that it would be practically impossible to put on eye-liners and lipstick without looking like a trans on drugs. So for that suggestion the only reply he got was a closed bathroom door and a mocking laugh.

I made sure to let him know the rest of the day how lucky is to have a wife able to get ready for a wedding in 10 minutes AND making a minimal fuss about it. AND that he better make up for this by buying me a few sessions at the local spa!

Moral to the story: Don't misplace the invitation and NEVER just believe your right about the time of the event!

La Rentrée with Tai Chi

Tonight I'm going to my second Tai Chi class and I'm really excited. It was my friend pulling me along at first and so far I think it's great. I still don't know much about it apart from it being defined as a martial art but performed in very slow motion. It turned out to be much more difficult than I expected because you need to have quite a good balance, the moves need to be fluid and uninterrupted and you need to be very serious i.e. not smile but keep you mouth closed and breathe through your nose. The serious part is very difficult when even my french friend doesn't seem to understand the instructions and look to me for help, finding me spying on the others for hints of what to do, suppressing the urge to laugh.

And in October my photography classes start, and I can't wait. I have wanted to do that for years!

A great thing about France is the number of classes you can take. In Norway there wouldn't even be half the choice as we have here. You can do Pottery, Dance, Psychoanalysis, History, Languages, Painting, Yoga de Rire, Sewing, Mosaic... and the list continues on and on.

The French are really great at this, making continued learning available for every one! In Italy I didn't meet one single person having a hobby or taking classes apart from the usual gym. But here, everyone does something apart from work. L's colleague M is amazing. She has done all the hobby courses possible around Toulon, and her house is filled with her drift wood frames, pottery lamps, mosaic tables, curtains, paintings, rope rugs - and it looks stunning. Ok, she has talent, a lot of it. If I did the same my house would look like a run down shack. But still, it shows initiative, creativity and a will to do something other than watching TV.

Vive La France (hem hem, on this point at least :)

Here's a Tai Chi video from YouTube showing you what I hopefully will be able to do one day:

Changed Again

In the end I didn't like the old new template. So I used my old template and changed the look of it. It's more zen and more me :)

Question

Is it better to keep a job which makes you unhappy and makes you question your abilities or is it better to spend your time doing voluntary (unpaid) work, courses and thus evolving personally and being a happier person?

Is 10 badly paid hours a week worth it when, I don't strictly have to work apart from pumping my own self esteem making a career of my own? L is earning enough for us to be comfortable but I've never been able to think that way and being OK about it. Being OK about it means leaving some of my independence somewhere behind and that makes me twinge...

Us Norwegian girls like to be independent, men and women are and should be equal, we should earn just as much, make a great career and so on. That's what we're grown up with, that and no gallantry from the opposite sex. There's always two sides of the same coin. Imagine my reaction coming to Italy and all of a sudden the men were holding the door open for me, letting me walk in first, offering whatever, carrying my bags... etc. Embarrassing too - a lot of : "No you go first, no you, don't be silly, you go..." Got used to that too in the end. Such gentlemen!

Anyway, I'm getting off the subject...

I met a girl a while back who asked me about why we came to France. After I had told her about L's job offer she said: " Oh, but with that profession you don't need to work then! " I looked at her as if she came from another planet, what did she mean? For me it has always been a question about wanting to work, not only if I needed it. I did my studies for a reason, a desire to do certain jobs, making something of myself. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind. Only now I find it hard to find my kind of jobs, the one I do now is because I don't have anything else. And it's making me miserable.

What would you do?

Cross your fingers for me

Friday evening I received an email, a reply to one of my cv's. The agency told me that I had been shortlisted for the job and that the employer had invited me to apply again but this time directly through their own website!

Firstly I was so happy just to get a reply.

Secondly because I actually was one of an unknown number of people to have gone through to the next round with my cv and cover letter in French with grammatical errors discovered only after it had been sent off.

Thirdly because I didn't have to write another cover letter but it was just a form to fill in.

I don't want to jinx anything but I just have to say that It would be SO GREAT to get this job! It's well paid, with loads of possibilities AND it's international in case of any future moves I could just get a transfer.

Please cross your fingers for me!

UPDATE: Didn't get it. Oh well, but it's a start, right? Luckily I have my norwegian friend and her Scottish husband-to-be visiting so I don't really have time to be all sad and negative about this. Instead I'm now going to call for 4 take-out pizzas, beers and enjoy the France - Scottland football match.
---
Faen!!*

(*norwegian swear word)

A New Template

So I managed to change my template in the end. Pheeew!

What do you think? Still need to add a few things but just details.

The picture in the header was taken during our honeymoon and is a beach on the island of Gili Trawangan (situated just outside Lombok). A few moments after taking this photo I went snorkeling and saw 2 big sea turtles swimming around making funny noises and eating what looked like corals. They were so cool, just like in Nemo!

ARRRRG

I wanted to change the template a little bit. Tried everything on a test blog first and something went wrong. Did a back-up of my real blog and tested a little bit and it didn't work. I reverted to the old template, and all the links and extra stuff I had in the sidebar kind of just dissapeared. Arrrrg...

I should be happy I still have my blog, right?

Total Relax

So Topolina (because of her indeterminate greyish and black colour) has kind of become attached to our red sofa. So much, that we don't actually think she'll be leaving us anymore... In southern Europe (and maybe elsewhere too?) black cats don't have much chance of being adopted because of superstition, add that to the fact that this cat only eats steack haché and fish freshly cooked -well, chances are next to none.

And then she's just so darn cute and a bit stupid.