At Least Afloat

The early bus was late for a change today, our internal audit finished, I made a mistake and apologised for it (after deliberating for half a day on how to), I had a few more physical administrative tasks to do today. Not too much to report 🙂

Also, success on the banking front! I have both

1. Arranged a meeting to open an account tomorrow, and
2. Withdrawn the necessary sum to pay my rent.

So ya gal’s all clear and going places.

I finished Episode 1 of Lingthusiasm, and progressed onto Episode 2, which is about pronouns, and that is really quite interesting. They discussed the ambiguity of the usage of the formal forms of the second person (that’s “you” to us English speakers). Of course, I am in a country where there are two forms of you – “tu” and “vous”. The first is informal singular, and the second is formal singular, but also the plural. I think I’ve got the hang of which one to use when, but the fact that the workplace insists on informality (that is, everyone is “tu” there for me, even my seniors) means that when, say, the handyman comes in, I have to check myself, because here we maintain ordinary French professional policy – you are not my friend, so you are “vous”.

I also chuckled to myself as I remembered the “mindboggling fact” I used to tell my Spanish students – that there are 5 forms of “you” in Spanish (tú, vos, usted, vosotros, ustedes). This is more of a dialect thing – in Spain, you’d use “tú” and “vosotros” informally, and “usted” and “ustedes” formally. In Argentina, on the other hand, instead of saying “tú”, you’d say “vos”, which has its own conjugation, by the by. And I’ve been told that some countries are very formal and use “usted(es)” almost everywhere.

But apparently some languages have different degrees of formality. And then they also talked about the inclusive and exclusive first person plural (“we”). We don’t have that, but some languages do. Inclusive meaning “We, that is you, me, and those guys”, and exclusive being “Those guys and I, but not you”. In English, you’d just have to rely on context to know if you were being excluded from this club called “we”. It’s crazy to look at features of other languages and realise how lacking our own is.

I came home. I made ratatouille. I texted a friend. I washed some clothes by hand. I called my family – my littlest sister struggled to withhold a secret she was dying to tell me, as little siblings often do. Not too much to report, except satisfaction. The week is coming to an end, and tomorrow I shall (hopefully) have a French bank account.

My lessons learnt today:

1. If you had a premonition, perhaps it’s worth listening to. (That is, perhaps I should have taken the time to buy cereal yesterday rather than today, like I thought I should, as this morning was hectic and I got up later than usual).
2. Before embarking on a course of action, consider how it may be done gracefully. (So, in my case, I had to inform my boss that the auditors had come back. Rather than shouting round the door like I might for my siblings at home, I should have excused myself, closed the reception door, walked quietly into my office, cleared my throat, and stated my business to my boss. There is only a certain level of familiarity that is ok in the office, and one should especially recall decorum before strangers. I thought, My Mama raised me better than this.)
3. Patience and observance. (This comes from cooking, as I sat down to eat a ratatouille where the courgettes and aubergines were still on the rawer side of cooked).
4. Who doesn’t risk, will not drink champagne. (I went into HSBC today, though I had to ring a doorbell, and you know me, I’d rather not bother anyone, especially if they prefer you make an appointment. I swallowed my irrationality and pressed the button. They let me in. It was fruitless, as they said that no new accounts could be opened at the moment. However, I knew this much: it was one fewer bank on my list, and the next bank I went to, the news was good. A better example really is a discussion I had on exams today. They who don’t try, have no chance at succeeding <3)
5. The road to Skye by public transport is very near nigh impossible. Farewell my idea of going to the Festival of Small Halls – for now. I will learn to drive, and then the world had better be more wary than it currently is…