Wardrobe reflections

I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I have a terrible habit of buying something that I want (say for example a big cardi or a blazer) and i’ll wear it every day for the next month, then wonder what on earth i wore before i owned that.

I do this ALL the time.

Where do all the clothes go that I used to wear before i bought this super duper cardigan? I can NEVER remember. Surely some of the things i used to wear would have been in the pole position of being super duper and new at one stage?

The clothing life cycle. It’s very sad.

Flight dramas…

Funny story. I got a phone call from Qantas customer service on Wednesday. This worried me, with all the volcano airline dramas the last thing I need is an issue with my flight bank to France. After the very official sounding lady reminded me that our call may be monitored or recorded for training and coaching purposes, she told me that indeed there had been a schedule change to my flight. That is, my flight from Paris back to Melbourne in March 2011! VERY IMPORTANT NEWS, and totally worthy of a phone call to my mobile in amongst all the other pressingly important flight dramas people must be having this week with all major European airports closed.

And you know what the schedule change was? My flight has been moved forward by 5 minutes. 5 minutes people! I mean, quality customer service Qantas, but come on! They couldn’t have just let me know that at the airport when i check in, in March 2011?

I couldn’t let such a moment pass me by though, she sounded so genuinely sorry for the change to my plans that I thought I should make her phone call seem worthwhile. I told her that actually, that schedule change really is quite inconvenient for me, and that frankly, I should be offered some sort of compensation. She didn’t flinch, she apologised profusely on behalf on Air France and offered to file a complaint!

But I couldn’t do it to her, I told her I was only joking and thanked her for the call, she was very efficient. I’m such a pushover.

Colocation location

Well, I have been very bad. I have not written in a week. While I was waiting for my visa, which i have now got (yipee!) I took a short-term contract at an ad agency here in Melbourne, on account of sheer boredom.

And it worked, boy is my boredom cured. But now I’m severely suffering from the ‘bloody tired’ syndrome – something i find usually affects people in the first few weeks of new jobs, while brains are still acquainting themselves with work.

So, dear readers, I am sorry for being so slack, but at least i am not neglecting this page due to sunning myself on St Kilda beach! (But I might, given the opportunity, I can admit that.)

So i am back to Paris shortly, and am madly trying to find somewhere to live. A new colocation. Tricky. Very tricky. Tricky enough to find a place when you are actually IN Paris. A near impossibility when you are searching from another continent. I am just really missing my own ‘things’ though, if you know what I mean. I so desperately want to have somewhere to come back to straight away, somewhere to hang up all my clothes, line up all my little cosmetic bottles and stick up all my little pictures. I don’t want my friends to have the burden of me lying on their sofa/mattress/kitchen table etc while i search and search when I get back. I have only just formed my friendships in my new home I don’t want to go cutting them off at the neck now.

So I persist.

I write email after email after email to the fellows and lasses on craigslist and all those other sorts of  ‘english speaking’ websites. Selling them the benefits of living with an Australian who has a job and likes to cook. Dealing with the excitement of waiting for them to write me back, and then the rejection of realising it’s been 2 weeks and it may just be that they ain’t gonna write me back.

There have been a couple of winners too. One girl had a great place near Voltaire, she thought it was too hard with the me in Oz thing, but we’re friends on facebook now – life’s still got its upsides ‘eh. I wrote to one girl tonight who has a spare bedroom right next door to the Buttes Chaumont – my favourite place in Paris. Hate to be hopeful but geez I really hope this one writes back to me!

It’s also rare to find a colocation without a cat these days. What is with that?

So, my friends, I ask you. Have you been struggling with these issues too? Have you found a new place on your first go?

Any tips, comments, stories, suggestions?

Don’t bank on it.

I’ve been catching up with so many people lately, retelling the same stories, trying to make it sound like it’s the first time someone has asked me what my favourite part about France is, or when am i going to grow up and get a real job? (um hello, just because i’m in a different country it doesn’t mean i don’t have a job! Honestly, if a tree falls in the woods..).

Of all my stories though (and there are many) the one thing people really seem to just love is the one about how the French don’t have online banking. I know, It’s kind of like coming home from your honeymoon and talking about the aeroplane food, but honestly, people just really dig hearing about the lack of this indispensable function. Obviously when i tell the story though, i make it really interesting  (with lots of sweeping gestures indicating my painstakingly slow process of writing a letter to the bank manager in order to pay a bill, or rent, or my tab at the local fabric place)  but they honestly just have an expression of such an unfathomable nature.

But really, when you think about it, it is quite unfathomable. Why on earth don’t the French have online banking? Does America have it? Now i’m not even sure – are we the only country that does use it? What the hell is going on with online banking in the modern world?

Sorry, i’m here!

My oh my, how time flies.

Three more weeks of my beautiful time in Australia, but i am feeling very itchy to get back to Paris. It’s amazing how different it is for me here. Everything, so easy. Talking, all the time. It never occurred to me how silent I had been in France. Well, obviously not mute, but here i find the amount of idle banter really quite consuming. Talking at such rapid speeds, and in the case of my Mother, about people who I’ve never met, but now know everything about their relationship/dog/mother/medical history/(insert irrelevant information here).

It’s great to see friends, amazing in fact, but they have questions for me about which I cannot answer. I miss my boyfriend. Alright, he’s not my boyfriend anymore, but I miss my sense of belonging to a world that is not my own. I miss that guy that dumped my arse on the cold wet concrete like a sac of potatoes that he didn’t care too much for in the first place. Ouch, cutting!

I have an energy in France that can’t be deflated and when I return home I feel it draining out of me and I don’t know why. I wonder whether it’s the thrill of being alone that I like most about not being in Australia – The thrill of having no history anywhere, or with anyone, and no expectations for the future. Weightless. I am weightless in France. People meet me and want me for the person that I am right now – not who we were when we were 5, or 16, or 21 and not because we share blood or memories.

Sorry, bit deep.

But I’m having a good time here, I swear!