Day 49:
So, folks, I’ve seen the Louvre.
I didn’t go at 9am as was recommended, and I found out the day before, to my vast chagrin, that I am not eligible for free tickets because the UK is no longer part of the EEA. That referendum shot down cheaper trade, free movement, and now free culture. Like, why did this happen? So, now ya gal has to pay 17€ online or €15 at the door. I can afford it. Not everyone can, though.
Arriving at Châtelet-Les Halles today I had the choice of a salon and a chocolatier to go to for a hot chocolate. The chocolatier was nearer, in the Rue Montorgueil, which is a gorgeous little street with many shops in it very close to the station. I went to Charles Chocolatier. I was served a chocolat à l’ancienne in a paper cup. It was perfect.
Folks, the Louvre is insane. I know now that 9am was a sensible suggestion:
- There is too much to see to see it in an hour.
- The crowds are wild, and so are the queues.
It was a vast and gorgeous repository of almost everything beautiful humankind ever made. It is a gallery, and very much a museum.
When I finally came to la Joconde I saw a crowd still before her (and the museum was closing in half a dozen minutes!). You can only either see her at the end or at the beginning of the day, I’ve learnt. People queue in droves to see the little lady.
Then I quickly took the Metro, for the first time during my sojourn here, to Bastille. I had a consultation at Laboté that I had booked.
It’s a beautiful little area. The streets are cobbled, and there are many cute shops and Restaurants. The Laboté officine (something between a lab and a workshop) is located on 3 rue Keller. I arrived with 5 minutes to spare and had a lovely time. They had 25% off for Black Friday, so I invested. This is a thing my mother taught me that I will maintain – Anything going close to your skin, like cosmetics, or underwear, must be of good quality. Your most valuable asset is yourself.
Laboté makes very simple, tailored treatments. You can have a cream made for you especially. I didn’t go for that, however. I got their oil cleanser, a night cream, a day cream, a flower water, and an exfoliant. Eyecream, I was told, at my age isn’t necessary. In any case, the skin around the eyes is so fine that you must never put a cream directly on the eyelid, only around. I was told. And I also have lovely skin. Many thanks – I didn’t have such as a teenager! I didn’t have acne on my cheeks, but my T-zone was a warzone. I still have scars where my third eye should be. Nonetheless, the advice was to keep drinking water, about 1.5L a day.
I then wandered into two other shops on my way back, both of which were really quite cute – the homeware shop La Maison – Nad Yut and the French jeweller’s Vingt et Une Heures Dix. Both are alternative in their vibe. That’s to be expected from me. We are attracted to that which we seek.
I wandered down the colourful, cobbled, nightclub-studded Rue de Lappe and wound up in Sukiyaki on Rue de la Roquette, a stone’s throw away from the metro, and the awe-inspiring Colonne de Juillet, for dinner. It was a nice ambience, and the miso soup and sushi were just what I needed.
Even as I got stuck on the RER on my way back home (in a tunnel – scary), I thought, if I get stuck here, if this is the last blogpost I write (as I started writing this then), it’ll be a worthwhile blogpost of a beautiful day.
And when I came home, I opened my girl best friend’s parcel and letter to me. And the end of the day just became more beautiful.
Day 50:
Day 50 was when my mood plummeted. I spoke to two friends over the phone that day and reminisced on the past, which bears and dredges up all kinds of stuff. Did I need the reflection? Maybe. Was I productive that day? No. I fell asleep in the middle of the day.
When I went downstairs to give my landlady her supporting documents back (from my visa application), we had a conversation about stress, started by her. She asked me, How stressed are you, on a scale of 1 to 8? I said about 7. I had a meeting the following day with my supervisor for my linguistics project and I had done no work towards it. She said I needed to try and look after the mental side of things. Maybe meditation might help, for instance. It was a nice conversation. I really appreciated it.
I had intended to set Sunday aside, after Saturday, to study and to clean. Back in my highschool days, in Lower Sixth, when I lived almost on my own, I dedicated a day on the weekend to do just that. One of my colleagues cleans on Friday so she can rest on the weekend. I should try that, I reckon.
I did end the evening beginning to read and making some good notes on the article Exploiting Emojis in Sentiment Analysis: A Survey. It’s a long article, and I still haven’t got through all of it.
Day 51:
I had a 6 hour work day. I thought I would get to work early, and missed the first bus I wanted to take, and the second was slow as anything. So I started at 9am. And had to leave at 4pm to make my meeting with my supervisor. I spent so much of that day in pain and contemplation. I read another, shorter, article on sentiment analysis, which was less linguistic and more computational, alas, but still good: Emojis Aid Social Media Sentiment Analysis: Stop Cleaning Them Out!
At 5pm I had my meeting. My supervisor and I talked about irony, ambiguity, neurodivergent comprehension of text tone, statistical analysis methods, the process to get ethics approval for a study, maths, and chemistry. This lecturer is an inspiring, generous, and extremely clever man. I am most lucky to have him supervise my project. I now need to have draft questionnaires ready for next week, but I am going to apply myself and make sure that happens. I have ideas. It’s a question of:
“Boy, you’d better put that pen to paper, charm your way out
If you talk, you’d better walk, you’d better back you s*** up
With more than good hooks when you’re all under the gun.”
– London Beckoned Songs About Money Written by Machines, Panic! at the Disco
That album is Ryan Ross and the boys calling the world out for a solid glorious just-over 3/4 of an hour, and, though it is not the world’s happiest record, I love it to pieces.
I ended the evening with another advisory group meeting, which was lovely. I have a love-hate relationship with research – I shy away from the idea of dedicating time to it, but, tricked into it, I love it.
Day 52:
On this day I started the great census of all the docking stations and monitors of our office, and our office put up Christmas decorations.
Having begun the census, I became conscious of the fact that, whilst I was examining desks empty of their occupants, I was also examining desks that were not empty of their stuff. I also became conscious of the fact that many of the docking stations and monitors were not on our system. I complained about the latter to my boss, and realised complaints about the former may follow. So I wrote an email to the office, which went much like this:
“Bonjour à tous et à toutes,
I have been entrusted with the census of all monitors and docking stations in the office, so if you see me at your desks rifling through your stuff, I am not doing that, and I wish to apologise in advance if I render your desks untidy. I will do my best to pass over like a fairy.
Bien cordialement,
Bella”
The first response was one colleague correcting my use of “immobilier” in the title – I had stupidly used it in place of “materiel”, because I recalled a previous IT inventory where numéros d’immobilisation (asset numbers) were a thing. The second response was a laugh. The third response was one of the lovely ladies in Start Up saying “I await a sweet fairy to visit me :)”. People get my sense of humour, and I’m glad.
Day 53:
And then on Wednesday, it looked like I might actually need to become a fairy.
So, I’ve started rising at 6.30am to get to work for 8am. I walked downstairs that morning and my landlady asked me if I might be a bit quieter, as my floorboards creak, and the noise had woken her up. She asked nicely, in fairness to her. It’s the request that is a little ridiculous, because if she knows the floorboards creak, what can I do? I don’t stamp or run amok. I merely walk. I despaired.
I went to work and felt awful the whole day. I don’t think it’s just the troubles in my lodgings, I do feel it is also that I am bothered by my PMS. I spoke to a colleague about what my landlady had asked, and he said it was unreasonable. So I’m glad to say, I don’t think I’m going mad.
Like, she’s a really nice lady, but I have a) the distance from work, b) the request already for me to keep noise downstairs to a minimum if I come home before my landlady has finished receiving patients, c) the difficulty to coordinate or slot in time to cook, d) the difficulty in coordinating a time for me to do my laundry, and now finally this, plus my own low mood and general anxious tendencies, and real difficulties in living with people I don’t really know. I have had a baaaaaaad history with flatmates:
1. In my first flat, we weren’t all that close, but then I had to isolate due to a Covid contact, and though I wasn’t ill with it, I had to wait to use the kitchen, which was also our general shared space, and so I wound up eating at ridiculous times.
2. In my second flat, one of my flatmates was very ill, and the other had anxious tendencies, and I had to shoulder a lot.
3. Also, before all of that, my difficult experience of living with my grandmother when I was in Lower Sixth.
I lose track of the times I’ve vowed to myself that I will never share a flat with anyone outside my close circle (if that) again. I know I’m not easy to live with, either: I’m very quiet, and very withdrawn, and when I’m ill or unhappy I don’t tell anyone until very late. Often I bottle my feelings. I’m resentful. I’m passive-agressive. When I’m properly angry I could set the world on fire with a glance. I am very rarely properly angry. That happens after a lot of bottling, and when I am done with shouldering slight after slight, burden after burden. Don’t bottle, folks.
I’m weird. I’m outlandish. I have a taste for the intellectual, but I can also become a pixie at a moment’s notice. I am extremely disdainful, and proud, and principled, but I acknowledge my hypocrisy, and I laugh at myself. I am prone to faux pas, because I’m not all that socially adept. I feed everyone with what I’ve cooked whenever I can. I will slave for hours over the stove at a party, and I will enjoy it. I wash dishes thoroughly, and criticise when they aren’t done right. Conversely, I may not sweep the floor as religiously as I should. I will organise events, and not be ready myself until after everything has started. I am not fantastically organised, no, but I do strive to be considerate. I may have played my music too loudly on occasion, but no one ever complained, so I won’t know.
But these sides aren’t anything my current landady has seen. She’s just seen me withdrawn and quiet. If I tread on no one’s toes, no one will hate me, so I tell myself (erroneously for oh so many reasons). If I shoulder stuff, no one will hate me. So I tell myself (erroneously for oh so many reasons). People do hate me. So I tell myself. Erroneously, for oh so many reasons.
And I used to not care about what people thought. I wish I knew where that kid went.
Another friend, whose opinion I value highly, also told me that he had his fingers crossed for me, and I felt better. I also spoke to my mum and dad, who said, Maybe look for another flat. And so I am.
Day 54:
I came home from work hoping to do something, and again got sidetracked by worry and obsession. If my phone says I spent 15 hours more on social media this week, I know why.
I did some shopping, so it wasn’t all that bad. I tried out the grocer’s, Vrac de Terre, that I had so long wanted to go into. It is really rather lovely.
But I remember walking to the bus thinking, “I am so disenchanted with myself.” To which, of course, the other side of my mind says, “Become someone you are enchanted with, then.“
And I recognise it’s not easy, but this, I reckon, is good advice. So, I don’t like myself. Well, who do I like? Who would I like to be?
I also tested walking with thorough caution on my floor that morning. Almost ever step creaked. It resounded in my ears.
No, I did not feel well yesterday. And I had so many hopes for the evening, and I managed nothing.
But, now that I think of it, I did manage to converse with a colleague in Russian, send a parcel to Lithuania, make some origami, and successfully continue my census on the ground floor, and also talk to a colleague about arts in Paris, so it was a nice day at work.
And I did get to bed relatively early, so I was happy about that.
And two of my close friends got engaged. ❤
Day 55:
I finally replied to my cousin, who lives in Paris, today. She reached out two weeks ago proposing to meet and I left her on read, which I am ashamed to think about. But I have written to her now, and I’m glad I have. I don’t know my cousin very well, but I hope I will have the opportunity to get to know her better.
Today I was given the task to make puzzles for our teambuilding event next week, which meant graphic design, drawing, and découpage, which I love. I told my boss today – “Well, if I don’t make it as a writer, an actress, a professor, or an administrator, at least I can be a puzzle maker.”
I also had a bunch of accounting tasks to do, and, honestly, yay 😀
Other than that, we went out to lunch, my boss, a research associate colleague, and I, at a restaurant I personally rang and booked without stuttering or hesitation or shame. I think I may have had my favourite meal in France to date – it was called Irish Beef, and it lived up to its name – the whisky sauce that the medium-rare steak lay in had a very good slosh of the aqua vitae in it. Paired with mushrooms, red onions, and chips with the skin still on, it was delectable. This was at MOA, in Saint Maur.
And actually, on a general note about French, I think I am getting more confident, and losing the accent I affect in order to signal that “I am a foreigner, and please have mercy on my soul”.
And thus, I hope I conclude my update on how I have been this past week. It was a mistake not to make the time to write. I have been out of sorts, but this would have helped.
And, I have lunch with my boss to look forward to tomorrow, and a trip to Scotland next weekend. Life is beautiful. I actually found myself the other day writing to the man I’m in love with saying something to the effects of “Please choose your time slot” (and then, “(Please forgive my arrogance)”). Because everyone wants to see me. I am loved. Isn’t that a wonderful feeling to have?
I hope you are loved, too. If you don’t feel so, here: I give you mine.
At Least Afloat 