Back on Earth

Well, here I am!
A lot has happened in my life during the last years, including two long trips (6 and 5 months) as a member of the crew of a navy ship. As you probably guessed I am not personnally allowed to publish any detail about what we did, but there is an official blog with lots of pictures:

http://jdb.marine.defense.gouv.fr/batiment/jda

I'll still be appointed on the ship until the end of my contract in the fall.
This experience is nearing an end, but its impact on my life and on my personality will last indefinitely.

:)

52000 km plus tard....

Erased to preserve confidentiality...

Nouvelles du bord

Erased to preserve confidentiality...

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...

Erased to preserve confidentiality...

Dr Education nationale: the institution who made a monster..

I'm alive! Aliiive!" yells I.

And then hell breaks loose: Massive convulsions wrack the sarcophagus, damn near shaking it off its cradle.

"Where have you been?" says you.
"My blogging self was in a coma for 3 months" says I.
"I noticed. Well what did your real self do these past months???" says you.

Closeup on my face, I'm obviously remembering...

Fade in to...

Me studying for my second, big, major, tough competitive exam.

Fade in to...

Me realizing my brain can't keep up.
On my face you can read: despair.
My thoughts are: I'm not good enough / I'm not as good as everybody thinks / I can't live up to the expectations of the people I care for.

Fade in to...

Me unable to sleep at night.

Fade in to...

Me unable to finish my meals.

Fade in to...

Me breaking down nearly everyday.

Then...

April 17 to 20. Me taking the exams. Beautiful weather.
On my face you can read: relief. I'm not doing such a bad job after all.

Then...

Different scenes that show that for a month and a half, I'm waiting for the results of both exams. The anguish is becoming overwhelming.
Not a night goes by without a nightmare about the results.

Then...

The first results arrive: I'm allowed to take the second session of the first exam.

Fade in to...

The last results arrive. I failed for the second time. Only difference: this year I worked twice as hard, and I got abysmally low grades.
On my face you can read: the confusing and exasperating feeling of having suffered for absolutely nothing.

Fade in to...

I receive the letter that says when I'm summoned for the second session.

Closeup on the letter: my oral exams are to take place exactly during my brother's wedding.
On my face you can read: utter disappointment, utter disbelief, utter disjoy.

Then...

Me looking for another job, another future, another prospect. And finding them, too.

Fade in to...

Me applying for a job as a teacher for the french gvt. If I get the job, I'll be travelling around the world from december to may.
Me applying for a "Master 2", to finish my MA, in case I don't get the job.

Fade out.

Credits.

Prison Break

I used to be a free spirit...

and a juvenile delinquent

I loved cars and got caught for speeding...
...several times.
I even knew how to handle a detonator.
One day I organized a bank raid. Although I had arranged and rehearsed it to the last detail...
...my siblings didn't listen
...so things went horribly wrong, and I was sent to prison.
My brother and my cousin decided to get me out of there.
They finally did. We were worried that if they caught us we would all go to prison

...but we found shelter in a farm.

TO BE CONTINUED

Shakespeare sketch

With Hugh Laurie and Rowan Atkinson, and it's hilarious! To me, it is!
I'm working on Coriolanus and I needed a break...

Waning gibbous

Last night I was up until 3 a.m., and from my desk I could see the moon rise. It had a faint coral hue and it glowed softly. Just like a child, I felt immensely reassured to see it there, and it reminded me of the small orange night light my parents would plug in our room.

No show

I saw Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola today. I don't know what I think about it yet, which is usually a good sign.

I also recommend The Last King of Scotland, Babel and Das Leben der Anderen.
I have grown to enjoy films in which there are narrative gaps that are left to be filled by the viewer's imagination. When I was younger I was annoyed when something was not shown or told, but now I find omissions stimulating. At the end of Babel a depressed girl gives a written note to the man who comforted her, and later you can just see him reading it. I liked how it made me study his face for a hint of what the note said. In Lost In Translation, you never get to know what Bob whispers to Charlotte when they say goodbye. To me this narrative strategy has two interesting effects: it brings depth to the diegetical world the film creates by giving the viewer limited perceptions. You don't feel like a privileged audience, but it feels all the more real, because that is what we experience everyday. Secondly there is no better way to attract someone's attention on something than by not showing that thing. Turning the written note or the whispered words into definite, unequivocal meaning would be more comfortable (although possibly disappointing), but less intense. I definitely choose intense.

Rinko Kikuchi in Babel

C'est pas l'homme qui prend la route...

I'll be busy next summer.

Busy taking oral exams (praying to God those won't prevent me from going to my brother's wedding), and then busy road tripping to Norway, Sweden and Finland with two of my friends for 3 weeks (praying to God we can keep it cheap), and then going to the highlands in Scotland with my parents (praying to God... nothing, I couldn't ask for more!).
I will need to keep summer 2008 simple... anyone wants to come visit?

So...

So I haven't posted anything in nearly a month. Main reason is because my entire (professional) future will be defined by the competitive exams I'll be taking in 2 weeks and again in 7 weeks. So I'm beyond stressed out.
I could definitely take a little time to write posts, but I can't seem to find topics other than the exams, and I really don't think that's interesting. But I do miss writing in here, so I think (I think a lot these days, don't I) that I'll try to write small posts every day, and keep it very simple. Fortune cookies type of posts!
So there!

The freedom of freedom Freedom

I wrote this in an openDemocracy.com forum back in 2003, and I thought it was funny, so... here it is:

I have re-written the last paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence, replacing every word that was borrowed from the French language by "freedom", so as to help the American people who eat freedom fries further deny their cultural ties with France:

"We, therefore, the freedoms of the united States of America, in Freedom Congress, Freedomed, freedoming to the Supreme Freedom of the world for the freedom of our freedoms, do, in the Name, and by the Freedom of the good Freedom of these Colonies, freedomly freedom and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Freedom States; that they are Absolved from all Freedom to the British Freedom, and that all freedom connection between them and the State of Great Freedom, is and ought to be freedomly dissolved; and that as Free and Freedom States, they have full Freedom to freedom freedom, conclude Freedom, freedom Freedoms, freedom Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Freedom States may of right do. And for the freedom of this Declaration, with a freedom freedom on the freedom of freedom Freedom, we freedomly freedom to each other our Lives, our Freedoms and our freedomed Freedom."

I know it's a ridiculous argument against French-bashing, but I couldn't help myself...

Brendon Grosjean

As I was walking home from campus at noon, I saw a woman with a stroller stop and start talking to her child. I walked past and saw that she was pointing at faces on a big tabloid poster, and telling her 3 or 4-year-old whose faces they were. It amazes me that some people -- including those in France who name their kid after their favorite tv series actor or character -- have such a narrow cultural horizon to begin with, that tv actually broadens it.

A license for tv.... 116 euros.
A library card.... 15 euros.
Intellectual curiosity.... priceless.

10 canoes and 2 thumbs up

Chloé and I are just back from the movie theater. Well that's not exactly right, we're actually back from the burger place. But the point is we saw the Australian film Ten Canoes (that I mentioned here a couple of months ago). Unsurprisingly, we both loved it. The whole story is a multi-layered fabric of stories told by several voices simultaneously to several audiences, the one in the theater being only one of them. On the whole, for the sake of clarity (unlike this post), there is one significant story and one significant story-teller, but the film and its voice make you feel not like a prominent audience, but like a side observer of a story being told to someone else.

I am very aware that the way I described this film is not necessarily the best way to prompt people to go see it. But really it's informal and funny, and well away from the exoticism too often displayed in films about indigenous populations.

Some days like today are normal until you pick up the phone and learn what happened to a friend.