New Home [en]

I’m moving… I have moved.

Bagha is exploring the new flat, which is full of boxes, and spends quite a lot of time on the balcony observing neighbouring cats. He grunts, sniffs, swallows and his fur stands slightly on end.
No computer, no music, no cupboards, no table, no shelves. Way to go before it looks like “home”.

Ecriture [en]

Et voilà ! Même si la traduction du journal de mon année en Inde n’est malheureusement pas pour tout de suite, il y a enfin quelque chose à  manger sur ce site pour les francophones.
Le site comporte maintenant une section “écriture“, qui – bien qu’elle soit en anglais, comme tout le reste du site – comporte principalement des textes en français.
Il y a donc une version française de la plupart de ces pages. Elles sont peu nombreuses pour le moment, mais j’espère augmenter prochainement la “présence francophone” dans les environs…

Writing [en]

I’ve opened the writing section. It is a small (hopefully growing) collection of things I have written over the years.

Most of the texts are in French, though there are a couple in English, and I’m very happy to be able to finally offer something to my French-speaking visitors.

I’ve been asked to make a French version of my logbook. I’ve thought about it, and it is a tremendous amount of work.
And of course, considering I write better in French than in English, I want to do it myself.
I really would like to have a bilingual site. But for the moment, it just seems too much work.

Nevertheless, I’ll start introducing bits of French here and there.

One other thing you will certainly have noticed, as you are reading this, is that this weblog has moved to the home page of my site.
This change had been trotting in my head for a little while, and has of late started to look inevitable in near future. Why wait more?
The poem that used to live here has moved to the writing section.

As I was at it, I also removed the what’s new page from the front of the scene, and closed it – the site news entries of this log have made it useless.

Flexible [en]

I’m amazed at how easily Bagha adapted to his temporary home up in the mountains. The first day he was exploring his new territory, and the second day he was making friends with all the camp children.
He did give me a little fright, though, when he stayed out half of the first night. I was really afraid the screaming-and-running children might have scared him off.
Of course, I was wrong – I always worry too much about wandering cats – and Bagha is not the kind of chap to be scared away by a bunch of noisy humans.

Underground Web [en]

Just when I was thinking I had absolutely no excuse to use my new little toy (i.e., blogger), I stumbled upon Zeldman‘s Second Site column, a commented list of cutting-edge sites, or the Underground of the web.

This gives me a little excuse to let you know that not much is happening in my life (so I won’t say too much about it). Work is OK (I almost manage to do a day’s work in half a day), the cat is looking increasingly forward to strolling in the grass again (though he still doesn’t know it will happen soon!), and my father (my own father!) asked me where I had copied my Thoughts from.

So, let it be said once again, loud and clear: I wrote them. There : )

I will be away during next week, cooking food for a bunch of little scouts, so don’t expect much posting around here.

And while I’m at it, to give you something to do while I’m away, I’ve uploaded another song in the music section, with the lyrics.
Very nice song. Check it out!

Futile but funny [en]

I did the weekly shopping this afternoon (Switzerland is a country that still has closing hours for shops – 6 or 7 pm weekdays, 5 pm saturday, and sunday clo-osed). Back in the kitchen, as I was waiting for my groceries to walk into the fridge on their own, I noticed Bagha looking at me in a queer way.

Damn! I forgot to buy the cat-food.
Got back in the car, went back to the shop, stopped at the doggy-kitty department. While I was hesitating between beef, chicken or tuna flavoured meat mash for the perpetually hungry feline, I noticed a little sign upon one of the tins.
It said “spoon included”. Yep. You know, the little plastic ones they sell with ice-cream cups so you can feast on them right away.
I immediately imagined Bagha opening the cupboard and catching one of his tins (he’s smart enough to do that), peeling the lid off, and using the little plastic spoon to eat his snack…

HA!

Of course, the spoon is meant for the owner, silly – not for the cat. Cat owners don’t want to run the risk of getting smelly meat-mash juice on their fingers when dumping their kitty’s dinner on the plate.

How on earth have we survived until now without those marvellous little plastic spoons?

I remember the days when we needed a tin-opener to feed the cat…