Busy, busy, busy

Has it really been a week?  Gentle readers, I do apologize for my neglect, I truly had every intention of keeping up with this blog during my travels, but I just never seemed to have time (last week) or internet (this weekend).  It's all been somewhat crazed - I was in London on Tuesday through Thursday for work, but still managed to see a few friends for lunches, dinners and (of course) cocktails.  Got back with just enough time to unpack my suitcase and re-pack it for the mystery trip with my Paris office, which involved me having to be at the Gare de Lyon at 7:45 on Friday  morning (a hideous hour for a non-morning-person like me, I do assure you).  We ended up in the Camargue, which is a rather lovely area famed for horses, salt, and bulls.  I know - random.  But it was good fun: beach bbq, horseback riding, scavenger hunt, flamenco dancing, tons of great food (who knew bull stew was so delicious?) and a great deal of lovely wine (which I very much needed, because being with 27 over-excited French people all talking at once isn't exactly my idea of a relaxing weekend).  But sadly, I didn't escape unscathed - I managed to sprain my ankle on Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the trip hobbling around with it swollen to hilariously cartoonish proportions.  Oh well, at least it wasn't another black eye...

My morning commute

Well, it's been a while since I posted something so smug that it will make you all hate me (at least I think so - it's entirely possible you hate me all the time just for living in Paris, and if so...well, I can't blame you, so have at it), but I really had to show you what my morning commute to work looks like these days.  I know, I suck.  Sorry!

Sub culture

You may recall that I finally got a second job, but I didn't really get into the specifics of it - well, it involved submarines.  You may very well be thinking that Miss K ended up working behind the counter of Mr Sub (and it may yet come to that), but noooo - this is about the actual under-the-sea machines.  And dammit, I've now got "Under The Sea" from The Little Mermaid playing in my head...and now it's in yours too, mwahahahaha!  (Sorry, I swear I haven't been drinking - I am, however, deeply silly.)

Basically, it was a voiceover gig - listening to an engineer speaking bad English and then summarizing what he had said into good English and recording it onto a slideshow about building submarines.  Listening to the engineer was unbelievably boring (sorry, engineers - much love to you guys!), but the actual stuff about the submarines was really interesting.  I did modules on eleven different systems, so at this point I feel like I could build one of the damn things myself.  Of course, I have absolutely no mathematical ability or engineering qualifications whatsoever, so it would probably end up shaped like a unicorn and sink like an anvil, but hey, I never said my submarine would actually work.

Anyway, it was a great gig - I could do it from home and it fit around my other job, and it was also extremely well-paid.  I made about five months worth of rent in the space of three weeks, but it was a ton of very detail-oriented, extremely time-consuming work on a brutal deadline.  It's done now, but if they get another contract in September, hopefully they'll have some more work for me then.  

And who knew anyone would pay me to talk??  I can honestly say that I have never once in my entire life considered my deep voice to be an asset, but apparently the clients were very happy with me.  Of course, that's probably because I put on my super-smooth, female-version-of-Barry-White voice for the narration, and got to say all sorts of sexy engineering things like: "mounting", "studs", "enabling the shaft to move smoothly within the tube" and on one glorious occasion, in the section on ballast, "after a good blowing".  Hee!  Ahh, I make my own fun...

A brief pause

Gentle readers, we are nearly at the end of the month - I haven't missed a day of posting yet in June, and I fully intend to achieve this goal.  HOWEVER - I am trying to pack up for my impending move, sort out the move logistics, do a very large and time-consuming project for my new job and do my old job as well.  Hmmm - I have gone from having tons of free time to having none at all.  Never fear, my pretties, I won't neglect you, but for the next few days, it's just going to be photos with no yapping from me.  Sorry, I know it will be hard for you live without my bon mots, but do try to be strong - you'll get through it... Somehow...

A very good day (I think)

Gentle readers, I advise you to look up into the sky to see if there's a flaming ball of DOOM headed for the Earth.  No, really.  Because I apparently landed both an apartment AND a lucrative second job today.  And the reason why I say "apparently" is because these things have both actually happened, but I have been so unlucky in the areas of housing and finance for the past year that I am not going to believe either one of them are true until I have a) my new keys and b) my first paycheque both clutched tightly in my grubby little paws.

So the story, in brief, is this:

Home:  a colleague at work told me a friend's apartment in Montmartre would be available for rent in July and that she would put in a good word for me.  It all seemed fine until it fell apart two days ago (cue panic attacks about finding another place to live in just two weeks - aieeee!), but I met with the landlady today and basically begged her to let me rent it until she agreed.  Yes, this is how competitive the market is in Paris - if you want a home and you don't earn eight gajillion euros per month, be prepared to grovel.  And possibly barter one of your kidneys.  My negotiations didn't go quite that far, but I was ready to offer it up.  Just saying.

Work:  I love my job and they pay me well for it, but I just don't have enough hours to really get by.  So I have been looking for something else that has flexible hours and is in English (someone suggested I'd be a great dominatrix and if this doesn't work out, I might just have to think about that...), so the always-awesome Tiny Dancer mentioned me to a firm she's doing some voice work for (as she is a radio journalist and her dulcet tones are in high demand) and I also met with them today and they're giving me a trial run.  So I will be spending the whole weekend recording technical specs to be narrated onto a PowerPoint presentation, but in my current state of poverty, that actually realllllllly sounds like a good time.

So there you go - an extraordinarily lucky day for Miss K.  So lucky that I might just have to buy a lottery ticket as well.  Before I get hit by that meteor, of course...

Isn't there an app for this?

I rarely talk about my job on here because, well, it's boring.  But I found myself so mindboggled by a work situation last Friday that I had to share it.  I had to send a courier from Paris to the south-west of France where my boss will be staying on Tuesday and wants the package waiting for him when he arrives.  Simple, right?  Except that this was my first time sending a courier package from our Paris office, and let me tell you, if you'd like me to perform brain surgery or build a cyborg army or program a rocket to Mars, just let me know because I am pretty sure any of those tasks would be easier than this. 

First of all, our mailroom doesn't help with couriers.  The mailroom. Doesn't. Do. Couriers.  (Which makes me wonder what exactly they do do, other than drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes all day, but that's beside the point.)  Anyway, after discovering this, it took me 45 minutes and asking no less than six of my colleagues for assistance with various aspects of this ridiculously complicated task.

So after all that, today I go online to track the package (because it's not like I could ask the mailroom to take time away from their busy schedules to do any such thing), and I discover that the package which I was sending from Paris to the south-west of France was first sent to Germany to be processed and sorted and THEN sent to Spain to be processed and sorted AGAIN.  How much processing and sorting does one little envelope need???  I shouldn't be too annoyed, after all, it seems as though the package has finally made its way back to France (although not to its final destination yet - what, are you crazy?  It's only been 3 days, let's keep our expectations reasonable, people).  I'm wondering why I bothered with any of it - I am pretty sure I could have walked the package there more quickly.  Hell, I could have crawled there on my belly, backwards and blindfolded, and gotten it there before now. 

And I'm trying to detox at the moment - to borrow a phrase from Airplane (one of my favourite movies): "Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up drinking..."

Where's the love?

I've been writing this blog for exactly one year today - this is my 177th post, which averages out to one nearly every other day.  So even though I haven't always been the most...erm, consistent, shall we say?... blogger, that's not actually a bad track record.  And I seem to get quite a reasonable number of hits, but not many actual followers (although to those of you who do follow? Thanks!) appearing on this page.  Now, gentle readers, Miss K is a hardy soul, but I could still use a little ego-boost from time to time.  So if you lurk out there in cyberspace and drop in once in a while to see what's happening in my random life in Paris, and if you enjoy my silly ramblings, I would take it as a personal favour if you would put yourself down as a follower.  It only takes a couple of mouse clicks, and you can count it as your good deed of the day - show a humble blogger some love, people, because it's hard to stay motivated when you feel like you're just talking to yourself all the time... 

The things I learn...

On Monday, a well-dressed middle-aged couple came into the bar and sat at a table in the back.  I thought nothing of it, the window tables were occupied and the weather was just average for sitting on the terrace out front, so it didn't even register as unusual to me.  Ahhh, sometimes I am still just an innocent hick from the swamp and I need to be educated in these worldly ways, because my boss took one look at this couple and muttered to me that they are having an illicit affair.  Quoi?  How does he know this?  Well, apparently the only reason a couple sits at the back of a bar in Paris is because they are up to no good and they don't want to be seen by anyone they might know.  And he was right.  One glass of wine and they were all over each other like hormone-crazed teenagers - most unseemly.  Seriously, if your smooching is loud enough to be heard over the sound of a dishwasher, you need to dial it down. God!  Is there a snarky French equivalent for "get a room"???

I have nice friends

I think I jinxed myself - no sooner do I say that I am trying not to miss a day of posting in April, what do I do?  Yep, miss a day.  Damn.  Sorry about that!  Not totally my fault, though - yesterday I started my unpaid job at the bar and after an exhausting day there (for which I made €15 in tips - doesn't sound like much but tipping isn't the done thing in Paris, so it's actually pretty good), I then had to rush off to meet a friend who is in town from London for a couple of days.  

The totally awesome Miss P took me for a much-needed glass of wine and then very kindly offered to buy me dinner in order to keep this starving writer from, you know, starving.  I suppose I could have come home and blogged instead, but... Gentle readers, you know I love you all more than I love my shoes (which is a LOT), but I don't love you more than a free steak dinner with a lovely friend - sorry!  Hey, try living on 5 euros a day and see how many dinner invitations you turn down...

Huh. Strange times.

So today I was in a bar owned by a friend of a friend and I basically begged the bar owner to give me some work experience so that I can start looking for a second job. Because (and truly, this astonishes no one more than me) I have never actually worked a bar in my long and storied career.  Waitressed?  Yes, many times in many places (and if you were on the receiving end of that, I do apologize, but just pretend I was one of those "sassy" tv waitresses - god knows, that's how I survived it).  Ran a till?  Yes (and impeccably, my count was never short, but it was in an art supply store, not quite the same thing).  Customer service? Absolutely (I worked reception at so many companies that my fake phone manner is still a thing of absolute beauty, not to mention the big smile when someone walks in the door - seriously, I'm an expert).  And, let's face it, after nine years in London, a bar is pretty much my natural habitat.  But I have never combined all these skills at the same time (not to mention the pouring of drinks that aren't being consumed by...erm...myself), so I figured that before I went begging for someone to hire me in such a capacity, I should maybe try to get a bit of experience. 

So I have essentially sold myself into unpaid indentured servitude for the next 2-3 weeks (they're actually selling the bar, which is why they don't want to hire some proper help while things are winding down, and how I weaselled myself into this), but I am strangely excited about it.  A) learning a new skill is great for me, and hopefully it will turn into paid employment somewhere else and B) it will be good to force me to speak more French and C) they will occasionally feed me. Whee!!! Win-win!