Fashion

Twice in two days (that's today and yesterday) I've seen teenage (probably?) girls wearing the supremely unattractive combo of:
a shirt in the theme of a flanno but made of cotton and not flannelette, usually with some sort of sparkly vibe to it too. Note that this shirt is normal shirt-length, ie. sort of bottom-skimming;
unattractive faux-leather belt;
opaque-ish tights, by which I mean opaque around the calves, more transparenty around the thighs; and, and I think the next point is key
no pants. I mean nothing over their tights.

Today it was quite windy and so I confirmed that the girl waiting on the other side of the pedestrian crossing from me was not wearing pants (I gave her the benefit of the doubt for a while and assumed she was wearing tiny tiny shorts), and also that her tights were of the "control top" type style, ie. where the fabric is thicker at the top.

I realise I just had a birthday and am OLDER THAN EVER, but does me thinking that this is the stoopidest trend ever make me into a sad old loser? It's bad enough that famous people don't wear pants from time to time, but teenagers? Shouldn't they be at school?

So What Have I Been Doing?

Since I obviously haven't been chained to my computer lately, what have I been doing? Getting my hair cut so it's ridiculously short, for one thing (see photos on Facebook if you actually know me). Sitting around waiting for the library to call, for another. We started watching Twin Peaks a while ago, having found the whole series in the fairly excellent audiovisual section of the library here. As far as I can remember, it comes in the form of 3 DVDs (or 3 boxes at least; maybe there was more than one DVD in each box, I don't remember), and we had no problem with the first and the second, but some ******* borrowed the third one just as we were about to, so we waited patiently for a few minutes and then we reserved it (which means that the person who currently has it gets an email from the library, not asking that they return it asap but just saying "there are other people waiting" and presumably implying that they be considerate). That was about a month ago now. We are the only ones in the queue. You can only borrow DVDs for 2 weeks at a time, and I don't think you're allowed to renew them. I have forgotten what happened in the forst 2 DVDs now. Bastards.

We've also been in the Paris, Je T'Aime queue for about 6 weeks (honestly, I can understand it might take a while to watch 10 episodes of TV show, but a movie? It's two hours, you watch it all at once and then you return it. That takes a week at most, and that's assuming that the only time you can get to the library to return things is on Saturday. For some reason the idea of "after hours" slot thingies doesn't seem to exist here), and now, having finally got through the first season of Six Feet Under, some person borrowed the first 2 DVDs of season 2 on the very day that I was going to go and get them. Grr, I say. Grr.

Happy Birthday Me!

Well, after some months of relative blog slackness, I've decided to give me a birthday cat. Apologies to all those others during April and May who had cat-free birthdays (that means you, Lidia, Daniel, Tina, Olivia, Ivy, Phil, Roy Orbison etc).

So happy birthday me (and Ms Mac, whose blog I won't link to because it's gone private these days, who I graciously deign to share my birthday with. Or perhaps she's the gracious one, since it was her birthday first), slightly belatedly. You'll all be pleased to know I had a fab day.

Crazy Foreigners

I discovered the other day that apparently it's only us who say "do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do". Everyone else (and note that my poll only involved ukrainian, russian, portugese, colombian and french people, not actually the rest of the world) apparently says "si", not "ti". Huh. I asked Reto later and he said he would say "ti", but he also wasn't really sure if he'd been infected by The Sound Of Music or not.

And then we sang the song.

When my parents were here in December, we all went to Rouen and visited the grave of my great grandfather, who died near there during WW1. On telling my mother-in-law about it some time later, she expressed surprise that any Australians had been killed in the war because she didn't realise we were involved. We were all surprised that she didn't know.

The other day I was telling my french teacher about the trip, and she asked "But why did he die there?". "Errmmm, because he was a soldier" I said, and she also was SHOCKED to hear that Australia had been involved. Apparently she must have thought he was on holidays or something. I was surprised that she didn't know (and then I gave her a big tedious lecture on Australia's continuing links with England and the fact that so many Australians signed up to be soldiers because of the desire to travel and have an adventure, which I imagine was fairly different from the motivation of french soldiers. Which I quite enjoyed).

It always comes as a surprise to find that the rest of the world thinks of us so little (except to say how much they want to go to Aus on holidays and how they think it must be some sort of paradise and "Why are you living in Switzerland when you could be living in Australia? What's wrong with you??"). Are we really so irrelevant?

(the military part of the cemetary in Rouen. Some of it, anyway)

Well Someone Has To Do It.

Congratulations/commiserations to Reto, who rejoins the world of the living dead, I mean working dead, I mean fully employed (actually his new job is only 80%), today. On May Day, which is apparently unusual/appalling/ironic (or something). If only we had a public holiday today too (like Zurich does, and possibly other cantons too, but I can't be sure) then I wouldn't have been woken up at 6.30am. Although I might have been woken up at 7am anyway by the marching band that marched past making a racket for no good reason. Grr.

Zombie cat, with job