Friday, August 31, 2007

Don't use what?

Some of the trains in the Paris Metro have the following warning near the doors:
En cas d'affluence, ne pas utiliser les strapontins.

I know what it really means because I can read French, and some of them have English translations nearby, and my English is fine, but I like to think that it means: If you are rich, don't use strap-ons.
I think my translation is funnier.

(For those of you who are wondering, the real translation is: If the train is crowded, don't use the folding seats)

Monday, August 27, 2007

Je suis a Paris :-)

Well, I made it to Paris, after Lines and then a week in Scotland.

I'm currently staying in a hostel here, and I seem to have acquired a private room, which is nice, and not a lot more expensive than some dorm rooms at other hostels around this place. I'm also "borrowing" someone's unsecured wireless internet connection. Hey; if they can't secure it, I'm going to use it.

The weather in Paris is great at the moment; warm, sunny, and pretty much what you'd expect from summer, unlike the summer that seems to be barely there in the UK. I arrived in Paris on Friday evening, and I'm going to go job-hunting tomorrow. Once I've found a job, I'll change the hunting target to apartment-hunting, so that I have somewhere to live. I think I should find the job first, just to make sure I don't end up with a long commute, such as living in Ile-de-France and working in Lyon.

I flew here with Ryanair, which meant finding my way to Glasgow-Prestwick Airport, which is so far from Glasgow I thought I'd need my passport before getting there, and then travelling from Paris-Beauvais Airport to the centre of Paris, another lengthy trek, though at least in this direction I didn't have a check-in time that I was worried about missing. I think, after flying with cheap airlines in various places, that I've been to some of the most inconvenient airports in the world: Glasgow-Prestwick, Paris-Beauvais, Katowice-Pyrzowice, and Melbourne-Avalon.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Dziewięćsetdziewięćdziesięciodziewięciotysięcznik

It's raining again. It wasn't when I wrote that last post when I used the past simple to describe today's rain. Now I need to use the present continuous.

Can you pronounce the title of this post?

Last week at Lines

Well, this is my last week at Lines, in Cold Ash. It's been an eventful 5 and a half weeks, or really, 6 weeks since my actually arrival.

On Saturday I'm heading up to Edinburgh in Scotlandshire for a few days to visit Liz and other people. I've booked my train ticket and I'll be travelling with another teacher heading the same way, so there'll be someone nice to talk to on the 6 and a half hour journey from Thatcham. Britain seems like such a small island, and it's stupid that a journey from here to Edinburgh should take so long, but I've been told that part of the reason is that the tracks in this land are shite. Banjaxed, if you will.

After Scotlandshire I'll head to France but I haven't yet booked my flight mostly due to two problems: one is not knowing when I am going to leave the UK and the other is not knowing where I need to land in France. Actually, come to think of it, I don't exactly know where in Scotshire I'll be when I want to depart these wet shores.

Speaking of wet, it rained today. In England. What a surprise.
More suprisingly, it was actually sunny for a couple of days in a row at the weekend!

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Try again

This one should work - there was another setting that I missed relating to timezones and date formats, so finally on track now.

Hopefully this sets things right

I know this is my fifth week in Cold Ash, and I only have another week and a half before I leave this small village*, but I thought I may as well change my settings to show that I'm not in Brisbane anymore, in the hope that the times of my future posts actually reflect the times that I posted them. The last one I wrote was apparently posted at 4:49am, tomorrow, and I can assure you that I didn't write and post it tomorrow.



* It lack a cathedral.

Wow, this is exciting!

I know I've been slack and I haven't posted in a while. I'd promise to remedy this except that I know I probably won't be able to stick to it.

Anyway, the exciting bit is that I've acquired another language to add to the collection:
Mae fy hofrenfrad yn llawn llyswennod.