I go out

In January or February, I will have my Canadian residency.  This will mean that I can work in the Canada, which is where I now live.

Work, as we know, is a necessary evil, but given the right 'mindset' (as I believe they call it in management circles), all should be well - allowing me to enjoy a balance of doing work I find interesting with people I like,  laugh every day (a new and excellent criteria added by our new friend John) and have enough money to buy sweets, crisps and hats.

The last "sortie" into full-time employment did not reap juicy fruit(s). I resigned because there was no point being there. "What have you learnt in the last eighteen months?", I was asked just before I left. "That the last eighteen months have been a total waste of time", I muttered, staring out of the window.   But it was not all a waste of time: despite my professional reputation being enhanced by a vague understanding amongst my colleagues that I was good at making biscuits, I made some good friends and met enough nutjobs to create a cast of characters sufficiently large to populate a trilogy of 800-page blockbuster novels.

But I digress. To get a job, you have to talk to people and/or have interviews. I am old now so interviews don't really happen in the same way that they did when I was 22 and wanted to be a Parliamentary lobbyist. (Interviewed by twelve people at once, I fell at the last post by mis-spelling "bureaucratic" in a quick-fire parliamentary lingo spelling bee.) As far as I can see you go along and have a chat with people and see if you get on with them or not, and see if the job you might be offered will be interesting or not.  Then you sort of go from there.

I have had a few chats recently.  They have been going OK.  Despite being asked for "down-to-earth, blue-sky thinking" and alarming conversations involving expressions like "vertical workstreams", it is all very pleasant and full of possible things to do in the future.

One did not go so well. The conversation was excellent. We were all (for there were six of us) laughing and laughing and being quite clever now and then.  Earlier that afternoon I had put a yoghurt in my computer-bag-rucksack knowing, as I stuffed it in, that it was bound to end in tears.  I was not disappointed.  "Nice bag!", said one of the men, showing me his; it was like mine, but brown.  "Yes!", I barked, pulling my own bag out from under my coat. "What is that?", said the man. "That, my friend, is yoghurt", I said, admiring how the yoghurt had jizzed across my coat. "What is that?" said the man, pointing at more colourful jizz exploding across the top, covering my computer, wallet and gloves with a sort of raspberry spew flecked with old porridge.  "That, my friend, is the delicious fruit compote that you are supposed to stir into the yoghurt."

Some time later, I am in the bathroom of the office I have visited scraping porridge out of my makeup bag.  A lady comes in. "Don't see that very often, do you?", I say. "What?", she says nervously, backing into the stall. "A yoghurt that explodes in a computer bag!!!".  She says nothing. The stall door closes, and she starts to wee.

The best website, like, ever

It really is. There is no point pretending otherwise. Make sure you hover your mouse over the 'enter' button and do - if you value all that is good and just in the world - have a little wander through "music" and "animation". You will not be disappointed.

Here it is, right here: the website of a website designer who is going to be getting a bit of a SHOCK today as his traffic will go up 1,000,323%, based on the amount of links I have seen to it in the last hour.  In his defence, there is a lovely 'clunk' when you click through to something else and it loads jolly fast, and he will probably get a lot more business out of the whole thing.

Phew!

In other news, what is your favourite time-wasting destination on the interwebs? I am very keen to find out these new things. Let us have Reader Recommendation Week. I think it will be nice.  I will review them all AND put the results in a post.  Everyone will feel like it is Christmas a bit early and cry a bit.

I love Google Translate

Sometimes I press on "Next Blog" at the top there. Sometimes something comes up in a language I do not recognise. "Would you like to translate it?", asks Google. "Oh yes!", I cry.

I remain, 

A sworn love of all lung fascinated and your friend in the internet,

NWM

I discuss the facial features of the people of our respective countries with my "husband"

My husband is a French-Canadian who, if it wasn't for his distinctly North American hair, looks like he is half German, a quarter Scottish and a quarter Swedish.   I am British (I sound sloppy RP-English, but am I think also Scottish and, dare I say it, Welsh) of some sort, but do not "look typical" according to him, which, as you will see if you read on, is probably just as well.

Winter is coming and we hate hockey, so there is not much to do in Canada at the moment. The garden is tied down and the bushes are in their special jackets;  our coats and boots are out of storage and the beaver hide in the garden lined with moose fur. All we can do now is wait for the snow.

Struggling to pass the time, we often talk about the facial features of the people of our respective countries.  Recent conversations include the following incisive commentary, muttered in restaurants, on the street, or at the television when I am illegally watching British TV:


"That man has an English face. His eyes are on the same level as his nose, and his mouth is too far down. He looks like a shark."


"She's one of yours. Massive gums, like fucking massive, the size of the moon. And the eyes. Always too close together. Descendants of peasants. French ones."


"Pointy noise, sandy hair, flat hair, like all your women."


"Twatpatch. Oh sorry. Soulpatch. And over-complicated t-shirts."


"A lot of product in the hair. Looks messy but is done on purpose. Sticky."


"Why do your young women dye their hair black? Do they know it ages them?"


"See him? His ancestor from La Rochelle was a cut-price pirate."


"You British. You all have thin lips."


"See her? Typical. Looks like Red Rum. Who won the Grand National a lot."


"Tattoos, dirty ones."


"His eyes are on the side of his head, like a fish with big watery eyes."

It goes on for hours. There are only so many times I can say "look at the fucking gums on that!", and in the end the only way to really communicate what we are thinking is to do drawings for each other. I share them with you now; I think they are self-explanatory, and I hope you find them as offensive as we did. (Oh, and if you're not British, will you tell me in the comments box what you think the typical British face looks like? If you listened to my husband, you'd think we all looked like sand-coloured rats with wigs - in plaits too, judging by his drawing.)

Pip "Un-PC" Pip

NWM

I will never be on Desert Island Discs

"What are your Desert Island Discs?" people are always asking me, non-stop and all the time, even when I am at the dentist or having a biscuit or trying to have a wee in a public lavatory.  I cannot ever answer the question because I think it is odd. I would never be on a desert island for starters, not even by choice, and I will never be famous enough to be having a chat with Youngy, so there will never be a reason to have to think about it properly.

But I think about musak that never, ever annoys me quite a lot, partly because the decision about whether I like most things is based on how much it does (or doesn't) annoy me.   For example, I am with the person I married and he is with me because, on balance, we don't annoy each other. That may not be enough for  younger people who think love, marriage etc is about hot love in the pants and going on romantic minibreaks and being told you are pretty the whole time, but let me tell you - what you're looking for is someone who doesn't annoy you.

Anyway, back to the sort-of point.  There is some music I love a lot with my bones but cannot listen to without wanting to lie on the floor and weep, like Hurt , or High and Dry, or Wake Up or Asleep in the Back or Chicago or Free To Run, and there is other stuff that I can listen to over and over again and never be annoyed by (which is different to being bored of something).

The list makes literally no sense, and it could probably go on for quite a long time, but I will try and keep it short-ish.  Here we go.  Ignore the videos. I do not watch the videos. I listen to the musak either privately or in public, sometimes with accompanying movements from my fez and/or small clay pipe.

I wish that I could see you soon. Herman Dune. (In this case the video is also ace, with puppet angels and beards)
All of Jill Scott's This is Jill Scott. Here is one song from it.
All of Bryter Later, but this one is always good for the nerves
No Fear of Falling, I Am Kloot
Save Me, Turin Brakes. Odd how I don't find it annoying.
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, despite having no right to listen to The Smiths
The Best of My Love, cure for all ills, The Emotions
La Femme d'Argent, Air
Douna Ma Yelema, Boubacar Traoré (Everyone should own this record. It is very good for the nerves.)
Keep the Car Running, Arcade Fire
Rhythm and Blues Alibi, Gomez
Once In A Lifetime
Strangely, most of LCD Soundsystem and New Order, e.g. this and this.
Most of anything that came out of Mozart's head, but this bit of this in particular; I think it, too, is good for the nerves.  (I am not sure about this recording of it, but I know fuck-all about classical music so won't even go there.)

** UPDATE** after a prompt from the owner of one of my favourite internet destinations: I include most of what came out of Bach's head, including obv. this, which is astonishingly good for the nerves.

I will stop there, because this list could be 100 things long, and just spurting that bit out of my fingers took about two hours. Still, it is good; it has reminded me to spend more time listening to musak and staring out of the window, and less time thinking about things that there is no point fretting about, or watching Come Dine With Me on 4oD.

What is one (1) song you do not ever find annoying? I would like to hear about it.

Pip "Do Re Mi!" Pip

NWM