sadness

my mother would have turned 66 today. i woke up to a lot of snowing - maybe representing how i feel that she's not around anymore.

xmas tree

i remember being angry at my father the day he started putting electric lights on the tree. we'd always had candles, and i felt this was a bad move in the wrong direction in terms of making things christmassy. but as it turns out, i've come to love those lights. candles are great, but the truth is, they only last a couple of hours at the most and that's it. whereas my father's got this permanent light-show going on.

what i love the most is sitting in the room at night, with no other lights on that those flickering in the branches and just enjoying the show. it makes me feel at home. safe. it reminds me of olden times, when my mother was alive and i could still pretend to be a child.

more weather in the south

8 days in south-western France and today's the second day of sunshine we get. in fact, it snowed yesterday. a rare occasion in these parts. beautiful thick snowflakes suddenly fell gracefully from the skies and continued to do so for a good 2 hours. pretty amazing. as it turned out, the entire region was in 'amber alert' for snow, very unfortunate, seen as my father had to drive my sister to the airport, 2 hours away.

homey Xmas

got up early today: no real choice as so many things still needed to be done before the evening celebrations. the living-room has finally been painted and we spent the morning arranging the furniture and decorating the tree. then there was food to deal with. luckily, i was able to catch a couple of hours sleep while my father and sister wrapped their presents. it helped, although i frankly didn't feel great.

i'd decided on a nice dress to wear for the occasion, but it was way too cold indoors for that, so while i still wore it, i also wore several sweaters on top, completely defeating the point of even wearing the dress. anyway, our being sick (my sister too) made our father agree to our plan to hold our own 'Xmas Mass'. let's face it, French Xmas Mass is terrible, we're not allowed to join in the singing and the churches are not heated, so it's freezing. so we sat in the library while my father read the introduction to the Mass and the gospel, after which we sang a few hymns. it really was much better than the alternative!

the food was great: after years of surrendering to the Anglo-Saxon turkey, it was back to the traditional roasted pork with crackling and it was absolutely delicious! yummy. then it was time to light the tree, which, as usual, was a wonderful and reassuring sight. we danced around it a few times singing carols and finally, opened our presents. it was just the three of us (dad's girlfriend's family is coming tomorrow night), and all in all, a great night.

the house that moved

when my father moved into the house, he knew it's be at least a year or more before the library would be ready to be filled with all his books, so he stacked all the boxes in neat piles along the wall of one room and basically left them all there until a couple of months ago, when that room was to become the stairway. the boxes were then taken to another room. and then, the house moved.

in fact, the boxes had been sitting atop one of the main beams of the house, so moving them to another room basically meant that beam became a hell of a lot lighter, so it moved up, taking with it a little of the wall, moving some of the tiles and a bit of the door that were just underneath. in fact, it appears the whole house moved. lesson to be learned: never stack all your books in one place if you're rebuilding your house!

weather in the south

the wonderful south, with its warmer temperatures and sunny skies, is once again nowhere to be found on this occasion. it's nearly as cold as back home, and very foggy. it usually lifts after lunchtime, but not this year, it would seem. doesn't help me with my cold, either. but what the hell.

avalanche!

avalanches are, of course, run-of-the-mill occurences in our area. they are, however, normally confined to the 'big' mountains, ie the Alps. but yesterday, there was an avalanche in the nearby 'small' mountain of Jura, where i normally go skiing, if i ever go. and that must be a first. not only that, it wasn't even caused by skiers who decided the marked slopes weren't for them, but by 2 snow-shoers (one of whom died). basically, they were doing what i was doing on Friday - i remember thinking, at some point, that i should probably be just a little careful, but then, it was only the Jura, so i wound up being quite imprudent once or twice. i'll know better next time.

Xmas do

friday night was our school's Xmas party. it was fun, and definitely a lot better than any other Xmas party i've been to! we went to a really nice restaurant and enjoyed enormous buffets of starters, main courses, cheeses and desserts. all this with a very liberal supply of both white and red wines, followed by a choice of liqueurs. and, this being a school, there was a poem contest, samples of French and Spanish songs, and it being the 12th of December, another huge chocolate cauldron. once we'd finished eating, there was disco! i was of course one of the first people on the dance floor, but that was most people's cue to leave. at 1am, there were only about 7 of us left, which i took as my cue to go home too, as i had to be all the way across town at noon and needed sleep. but it was a cool night!

winter wonderland

after 2 days of snow, the weather finally cleared. and what a beautiful view we were then given!

as it was, my lunchtime lesson was cancelled, so i had time to go home, change and drive up the mountain to a spot where you can walk in the pretty much untouched beauty, surrounded only by tall trees covered in snow. the sound on walking on snow, the silence that comes with the white blanket... truly amazing. i took my camera with me, but of course the batteries had run out... still, it was really nice.

1602

on the night of 11 December, Geneva traditionally celebrates the anniversary of a great event in its history: over 500 years ago, Geneva was an independent republic that nearby Savoie wanted to add to its territory. so they sent troops to overtake the city at night, thinking that, as everyone would be asleep, it would be easy. however, not everybody slept: the alarm was raised and the population went out to fight the invaders in their pyjamas. one woman did her important bit by throwing in the presumably warm contents of her cauldron (some sort of soup) on the assailants. Geneva was victorious.

there are many ways to celebrate this event (among others, doing a race through the old town wearing pyjamas). but the most common, i guess, is to buy a chocolate cauldron (see below) filled with marzipan vegetables at the supermarket. then the youngest and oldest people present must smash it with their clasped fists, saying something on the lines of 'And thus perish the ennemies of the Republic' and everyone then proceeds to eat the cauldron and its contents.

i grew up in the area, yet i only found out about all this about 3 years ago, and had never actually celebrated it. but tonight, a friend of mine invited us all to her place and we went through the motions (and had some mulled wine, Xmas cookies and various other things) and had a blast.

let it snow!

ah... there's nothing nicer than waking up to a blanket of snow covering the town and snowflakes falling from the sky. the all time best, however, would be that it all happened on a day where you didn't have to go to work and, if your job is like mine, walk for quite some time through the dirty slush...

on being faithful

i was talking with a old colleague of mine last night, and he came up with this concept that we then discussed for quite some time. as far as he's concerned, it's completely unrealistic to think that he or his long-time girlfriend will never sleep with anyone else. so they've agreed that, should they meet someone they really wanted to shag, they can, as long as they're very discreet about it, never tell the other person, have safe sex and basically keep a very low profile on the whole thing.

i can see the logic. really, i can. but i can also think of some people who'd take this as a license to not even try to resist temptation. and then you'd end up in a relationship where 'love' is really 'convenience'. i think.

any thoughts?

'unreal' banking

one of my students, who works in a bank, was explaining something to me the other day. i understood every word he said, but still had to make him repeat the whole thing 3 times, cos i really couldn't understand the logic, and thus thought i'd misunderstood. but really, i hadn't.

what he said what that really rich people who want to invest their money in funds sign a contract with the bank, 'promising' to give it, say, $1 million within 6 years. it doesn't matter when the money goes in, apart from a downpayment at the beginning and perhaps some regular small sums once in a while. the non-existant $1 million then gets invested from the day of the contract signature, and is supposed to generate interest. but as it mostly doesn't exist...

this explains a lot about how the financial crisis came about. and the problem is that now, the deadline for a lot of these 'promises' has arrived for quite a few people, but they of course don't have the money anymore... great, isn't it?

sexiest man alive

'People' magazine apparently voted Hugh Jackman the sexiest man alive. all i can say is that i wholeheartedly agree!