that horrible accent!
Thursday, May 4, 2006, 09:33 PM - General, Language, English, French


Today, I had a lesson at Decathlon with two of the accounting team.
One had just been to New Zealand, and as it was the first lesson, I like to get them to talk about a variety of things, no matter what their level, so I can hear all their mistakes.
So this man says:


student
I went to New Zealand for my holidays, it was very beautiful, we went to the South isand by plane and all over the North Island, but the New Zealanders have this horrible accent, they turn the vowels so they are like "aieeeeiiiii" (this was his impression of a NZ accent).

myself
Yes, they say thing like fush and chups (meaning fish and chips)

student
Yes, it is really ugly

myself
...kind of like the Australian accent...

student
YES!

myself
I am an Australian! (Laugh out loud)


He went so red, and after three seconds was laughing along with me. But then we had accent jokes for the rest of the lesson. Good start. I didn't have the heart to tell him that my father is a NZer. Nor that I spent most of the summers of my childhood in NZ.
Proves to me I don't really have an accent, as such, for the French.

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lost at e minor
Wednesday, May 3, 2006, 09:10 PM - Art/Design, Illustration
So today, after being told that they were having some problems with my site (strange), I found my pictures and profound comments on Lost at E Minor, (right at the bottom of that link). I am pretty impressed. Makes me sound like I have got my act together... (see I refrained from swearing!). So I am pretty happy about that.
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crumpled
Tuesday, May 2, 2006, 09:51 PM - General, Work (The Man), Art/Design


So over the weekend, while the weather was foul, I sewed in between cooking and stuff for the hoardes. Above is the end result, and in fact, I made it for a reason, not to post on my Blue House store, but to send to Crafters for Critters, also with a couple of buttons that I have as well.
Wasn't so thrilled to be back at work today, but, that is what has to be done.
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illustration friday : under the sea
Sunday, April 30, 2006, 11:31 AM - General, Damn Carnies, Illustration, Illustration Friday


WATCH OUT FOR THE PLESIOSAUR SEA MONKEY!
So here is my illustration friday for this week. I have been slowly constructing it in between cooking for and kind of entertaining a heap of Parisians who have converged in Lille for birthdays. It is nice they are here, but it isn't very nice weather this weekend, just to give Lille more of a revolting reputation. The dinner last night was a sucess. It will be nice not to cook for eight people tonight.

I started to cut collage pieces out for it, but... it looked out of place, so that's it for this week.

little postscript: my husband thinks he looks stoned, all the better to look out for roaming carnivores!
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dance
Friday, April 28, 2006, 07:50 AM - General, Relationships, Art/Design


Last night we went to a performance at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, it was a Consacrée à Eugène Dodeigne , a dance piece inspired by his work. It was very beautiful, but there were parts where it was too much for me. Two examples, at the start and finish there was the sound of the chisel hitting the stone... at the start ok, at the end, it was very final, it kind of pointed out his mortality and it made me choke a bit. Yes, that means tears came into my eyes and I tried not to be the type of girl I am, which means my cry mechanism is very easily triggered, not if someone is mean to me, say, but emotionally raw. Another example within an example: there is a piece of music by Górecki called Lento e Largo / Tranquillissimo from his Symphony No.3. It is extremely beautiful, but intensely sad for me, makes me cry every time. Controlled or otherwise. The funny thing, or not so funny thing about that, is I gave this particular Symphony to my mother for her birthday this year, and she mentioned that she knew it, but couldn't listen to it due to hearing it just after her last dog died.
Large digression.

So, the other part that kind of pushed home this mortality idea for me, was there was a screen behind the dancers, and they projected this moving image of his hands, now, caressing, feeling one of his sculptures... I feel pathetic when I get upset like that.
It was a beautiful tribute to him and his work.

The photo is of the Palais des Beaux-Arts with his work that is the fountain in front of the Museum.
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