Category: Personal

Anything and everything about me and my life. You’ll have to hunt a lot for gossip-worthy tidbits, though.

What Made Bagha Such a Special Cat For Me [en]

[fr] Un pas de plus sur le chemin du deuil, alors que je m'apprête à éparpiller les cendres de Bagha dans le jardin où il passait ses journées. Tentative un peu laborieuse d'identifier (et de trier) ce qui dans la douleur de la perte de mon chat est proprement la douleur de sa mort, et ce qui est simplement la douleur de la solitude retrouvée.

I started writing this months ago, not long after Bagha died. In India, to be precise. As a way to help me come to terms with his loss, I spent some time trying to write down what made him special for me. What is it exactly that I’m grieving, through him?

Bagha's Floppy Nap 3

I actually tried to blog this once before, and that ended up being the article “Sorting Through Grief“. Like all painful things, it’s tempting to postpone this kind of exercise — but now that I’m preparing to take Bagha’s ashes out of the back of my cupboard to scatter them in the garden he loved, I feel it is time to pick up this list again. I need to move forward. These last weeks, or maybe months, I’ve slipped into a not-too-uncomfortable limbo somewhere along the road of grief. There was a little sideroad somewhere with a bench, and I sat down.

It’s time to start walking again.

What follows is a little raw. It’s also not “perfect” — meaning that I’m aware I’m failing at sorting through some of the things I was hoping to sort through while writing this. That’s the whole point, I guess. Otherwise I would just sail “happily” through grief, if it wasn’t that difficult for me.

So, what made Bagha such a special cat for me? Quoting from my previous post, here’s what I’m trying to disentangle:

  • what it means for me to now be living completely alone (ie, “petless” => by extension, what having a pet — any pet — adds to my life)
  • what made Bagha special, as compared to other cats (his personal caracteristics, pretty objectively)
  • what made Bagha special for me, in terms of the relationship we had and what he meant to me

I’ll start by setting aside the obvious: what kind of cat Bagha was, outside of the relationship I had with him.

Physically:

  • he was big and strong
  • he was a beautiful animal
  • he had a mashed-up nose and ear tufts
  • he had a long non-twitchy tail
  • he slept on his back with his front paws crossed
  • he was long-legged and slim with very sleek fur — had the body of an Indian cat
  • he was a spotted/striped tabby with lovely eyeliner

New Year Bagha 1And also:

  • he slept on his back, front paws crossed on his chest
  • he had a very girly high-pitched meow which was kind of comical for such a big boy
  • he snored gently in his sleep and made little moaning noises when being petted

Character-wise:

  • he wasn’t fearful
  • he liked people and people liked him
  • he was smart
  • he was communicative
  • he was dignified
  • he had an attitude
  • he was cuddly without being needy
  • he was patient and tolerant but not out of fear
  • he had a strong character
  • he was very territorial and peed on all the bushes

It's MY computerThings he did (I’m aware we’re in the anecdotal department here):

  • he opened the fridge
  • he drank out of the toilet
  • he gnawed on drawer handles
  • he played with sticks and chewed them like a dog, holding them between his two front paws
  • he would creep into cupboards the second the door was opened
  • he opened drawers
  • whenever possible, he would rest his head on a pillow (proper or improvised — a laptop would do)
  • he would deftly knock over glasses of water to drink it
  • he would knock things off my bedside table if I didn’t wake up fast enough

The cat and his humanHow he was with me, bearing in mind that this is pretty standard cat-behaviour:

  • he loved having his belly rubbed
  • he liked being carried under one arm
  • he liked being cuddled curled up on my chest
  • he’d sleep with his head and paw resting on my arm

More about his behaviour and interactions with me and other humans, which is maybe a little less “cat-standard”, but not yet the stuff that made my relationship with him so special:

  • he would come back home all by himself, right into the flat, and come and say hello
  • he trained the whole building to let him in and out
  • he would patiently let me give him his meds or put his collar on before going out
  • everybody who met him liked him and saw he was not an ordinary cat

Here we are, now. The cat-companion. This is what the emptiness of his absence is made of.

  • he slept with me every night
  • he would follow me discreetly from room to room
  • he’d sit on the table while I ate
  • he’d wake me in the morning to go out with just one meow
  • he would come and lie down where I patted my hand
  • he would come and cuddle when I watched TV or worked at home

Taking some rest

Trying to rise above the mundane details of daily cohabitation (even if they’re important), here are some of the deeper roles Bagha played for me:

  • he would be waiting for me, always happy to see me
  • he kept me company every day
  • he helped me connect to people in my building and neighbourhood
  • he connected me to India and Aleika
  • he was a constant through all the changes my life went through these last ten years

Of these, I guess the fact he kept me company and was happy to see me are more pet-generic than Bagha-specific.

But the role he played in helping me find my place in my neighbourhood, the connexion to India and Aleika, and the ten years of my life that he saw me through — those are things that are uniquely linked to Bagha. No other cat will ever be able to give me that again. He was a living, breathing, purring witness to these things, no lost forever. I carry those years and that part of my life completely alone, now.

Along the same lines, here are two more things I’d like to add:

  • he made eclau a special coworking space
  • he brought me closer to some of my friends who lived in my flat to take care of him when I was away

Eclau will have other cats, and be a “special” coworking space in that respect in the future. Salem, my upstairs neighbour’s cat, has already taken quarters on the couch, and will probably soon have his own page on the eclau website. Some time next year, I’ll be ready to have cats again, and they’ll come to eclau too. It will always be a kitty-friendly coworking space — but Bagha was the first, and his constant presence in the office was soothing for those who worked there.

The fact that quite a few of my friends cat-sat at some point or another when I was travelling over the last ten years made him a connexion between me and them — connexion which is now gone, like some of those friendships. His absence makes their pastness a little more present.

On a more emotional level:

  • I loved him and cared for him
  • I gladly gave up some of my freedom because I loved him
  • I accepted some risks (like losing him to a car accident) because it gave him a better life

These are things I learned for life because he was my pet, and will treasure for ever. His legacy in me. Traces of his life that his death cannot erase, and which — I believe — make me a better person.

I believe there is no meaning in the world other than the meaning we put in it, consciously or not. Beyond the meaninglessness of life and death, we choose to make sense of our lives so that we can keep on growing.

Maybe Bagha’s biggest gift to me, beyond the ten years of precious companionship he gave me, is in his death. I got to say good-bye. Not at the moment of my choosing, of course — death rarely gives us that — but did get to say good-bye properly. I am saying good-bye.

So here’s the meaning I choose and which makes perfect sense for my life, almost as if it were provided by some intention bigger than and beyond me:

Bagha let me love him for a long time and with all my heart, so that I could learn to love and grieve properly.

Amongst all this, I wonder, what is just the pain of finding myself “alone”, or catless? What does it mean to me to have a cat? I’ve tried to break it down into “plus side” and “minus side”, because part of the grieving process is also greeting the new good things in my life brought about by this loss (I have a blog post draft sitting in WordPress titled “The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness” — I will write it someday).

Having a cat means:

  • having company to sleep with me at night
  • having somebody to care for
  • having somebody waiting for me to come home
  • having somebody to communicate with and keep me company
  • having cuddles and affection handy when needed
  • having an attraction for visitors and a topic of conversation to make friends amongst cat-lovers

But it also means:

  • giving up some freedom (no unplanned trips)
  • expenses (food, vet, etc)
  • having to cat-proof the home
  • having to get up to let the cat out, or change the litter
  • worrying that it didn’t come home (or might not)
  • negotiations with neighbours/concierge if it causes any trouble

The pain of losing Bagha is still very present, nearly five months after his death. There is still a terrible pit of sadness in my heart, but it doesn’t overflow with tears anymore when I don’t want it to.

I sometimes try to imagine my future cats, who are maybe not even born yet — I fear that I will not love them as much as I loved Bagha, or that they will not be quite so extraordinary, and I know that I still need to spend some time walking down that road.

Bagha arbre 1

Eat, Pray, Love: Damn You, Elizabeth Gilbert [en]

[fr] J'ai aimé Eat, Pray, Love plus que ce à quoi je m'attendais. Le trip "spiritualité indienne sauce occidentale", je m'en passerais, mais il y a plein de bonnes choses -- outre l'écriture, que j'aime beaucoup. Pour plus de détails... lire l'article complet en anglais!

Damn you, Liz Gilbert. I didn’t want to like your book, but I did. I even like you (well, the narrator you). Yeah, of course I can relate: 30-something heartbroken woman finds peace and love. Which single woman in her mid-thirties wouldn’t?

It annoys me, though, that you found them through faith, because I can’t do that.

I don’t doubt that you had a life-changing experience. I’m not either against religious or spiritual paths journeys per se, as long as they actually serve to grow us as human beings. But like the friends you mention near the end of your India book, I *cannot* believe anymore — believing there is a God or some other power, personal or not, is too incompatible with my worldview. A part of me would *like* to believe, so that I could find the peace you found. But I’d be faking it, right? Because another part of me is *certain* that there is nothing up there — or in there, aside from ourselves.

Bangalore 016 Gandhi Bazaar.jpgTo your credit, you do not proselytize, nor try to tell us that your way is The Only Way, and that we should all be doing it too. You bear witness of your own personal path, which involved a spiritual adventure in an ashram in India. I can appreciate that. But I have trouble relating to that aspect of your journey. (There is the Siddha Yoga issue too, which bothers me, but that I won’t delve into here.)

Also, whether you want it or not, your spiritual journey is coloured by a very specific — and modern — Indian school of thought (and by that, I don’t just mean Siddha Yoga). You acknowledge that, but in some respects you are blind to it, for example when you serve us truths about Indian spirituality or religions in general — you are talking from the inside of a specific religious tradition, not giving us access some kind of general truth. It’s a mistake many make, and I guess I can forgive you for it.

I personally believe that our conversations with God are conversations with ourselves. I believe we are much bigger than we think, and probably much bigger than we can ever know. And I say this not in a “mystical” or “magical” or “supernatural” sense, but in a psychological one. So for me, any religious or spiritual path is no more than a path within and with ourselves, using an exterior force or entity (“God”, “energy”) as a metaphorical proxy for parts or aspects of ourselves which are not readily available to our consciousness. Yes, it’s sometimes a bit complicated to follow for me too.

So what I can relate to, clearly, are your conversations with yourself in your notebook. I know I am a good friend. I’m loyal. I can love to bits. If I open the floodgates, I can love more than is possibly imaginable — just like you say of yourself. But I do not let myself be the beneficiary of so much love and care. “To love oneself,” not in a narcissistic way, but as a good friend or a good parent would. I know this is something I need to work on, I knew it before reading Eat, Pray, Love, but your journey serves as a reminder to me. It’s also reminding me that meditation (even when it’s not a search for God or done as religious practice) has benefits — and that I could use them.

So, thank you, Liz Gilbert. We may differ in our spiritual and life aspirations, but your journey has touched me, and inspired me. I didn’t expect it to. Thank you for the nice surprise. And damn you, because now I can’t look down quite so smugly anymore on those who rave about your book.

Questions existentielles de voyageuse à Montréal [fr]

[en] As the editor for ebookers.ch's travel blog, I contribute there regularly. I have cross-posted some of my more personal articles here for safe-keeping.

Cet article a été initialement publié sur le blog de voyage ebookers.ch (voir l’original).

Me voici à Montréal. Troisième jour à l’hôtel, sans mettre les pieds dehors, parce que j’y suis venue pour y donner une conférence à l’occasion d’Intracom, qui se termine aujourd’hui.

J’ai ajouté une semaine de vacances à mon séjour. Quand on traverse l’Atlantique, autant que ça en vaille la peine! Et hier, pourtant, une fois ma conférence donnée, je me suis trouvée un peu démunie face à cette semaine à remplir. Inutile de dire que je n’avais rien planifié avant mon départ! Même pas mon logement, préférant nettement mieux m’incruster (gentiment!) chez l’habitant pour découvrir le pays de l’intérieur (entre le réseau des blogueurs, Twitter, et Couchsurfing, je sais que je cours peu de risques de me retrouver à la rue).

Crédit photo: Wikimedia Commons

Continue reading “Questions existentielles de voyageuse à Montréal [fr]“

Bonjour de Montréal! [fr]

[en] Gave my talk in Montréal this morning, now, holidays!

Disons plutôt, bonjour de l’intérieur de mon hôtel à Montréal… Je n’ai pas encore vraiment mis le nez dehors! Mais comme j’ai donné ma keynote à l’occasion de la conférence Intracom il y a quelques heures, et qu’il me reste une bonne semaine sur place pour me reposer et explorer… Rien n’est perdu.

Quelques articles à mettre en ligne — les dix jours avant mon départ ont été horriblement chargés, je l’avoue. Le dernier module de cours de la formation MCMS au SAWI (qui s’appellera MSCL l’an prochain… inscriptions ouvertes en passant, hâtez-vous!), une journée de formation à donner à Genève là au milieu, préparer conférences et cours, régler les affaires administratives en cours, faire les valises et sauter dans l’avion… j’avoue n’avoir pas vraiment eu le temps de souffler.

Les deux semaines qui viennent s’annoncent tranquilles, touristiques, lectrices et blogueuses.

 

Semaine chargée! [fr]

Quelle semaine!

Le dernier module de la formation SAWI que je co-dirige, pour commencer, de mercredi à samedi. Je suis vraiment très fière de ce que nous avons accompli avec cette formation, des étudiants qui se sont lancés pour faire partie de cette première volée, des First Rezonance organisés, des échos et retours positifs de toutes parts… et je me réjouis de remettre ça l’année prochaine! (Avis aux amateurs…)

Vendredi, je fais une infidélité à la formation SAWI MCMS pour remplir un engagement pris de longue date: deux formations destinées aux enseignants à l’occasion du séminaire de formation continue “Pollens pédagogiques” de l’IFP, à Genève — en anglais et en français dans la même journée!

IntracomSignature2011-AvecDate Dimanche, je m’envole pour Montréal afin de donner une keynote à Intracom, mardi prochain. Je compte en profiter pour assister à la conférence, bien entendu, et passer ensuite une petite semaine à découvrir la ville et la région (c’est la première fois que je vais au Canada, et donc à Montréal!)

Comme je suis super bien organisée, je suis encore à la recherche d’une bonne âme locale pouvant héberger cette suissesse aux cheveux roses du 13 au soir jusqu’au 20. Un grand merci à tous ceux et celles qui m’ont donné pistes et contacts à Montréal, je vais me mettre à les explorer, j’ai juste… pas encore bougé 🙁

Après (on n’est plus dans le contexte de la semaine chargée mais je vous dis quand même), je fait une escale d’une semaine à Londres pour y voir des amis. Et je compte maintenir mon rythme nouvellement retrouvé de blogueuse effrénée: il devrait donc y avoir de la lecture! (En passant: vous avez vu ce que je commence à faire sur le blog de l’eclau? là aussi, du mouvement en perspective.)

Rouverture des bureaux et reprise de la vie “normale” lausannoise: début mai.

Tears Do Heal — But Slowly [en]

[fr] Un retour d'Angleterre un peu difficile, des vagues de chagrin qui vont et viennent depuis trois mois que Bagha m'a quittée. Mais le chagrin, c'est notre réaction à la douleur de la perte. Le sentir, c'est avancer sur le chemin de l'acceptation.

I’ve had a handful of pretty miserable days upon my return from England. Feeling very sad again about Bagha’s death, and some other losses 2010 brought along with it. But this last couple of days have been better, because tears do heal, and spring is here.

Pencil Effect Sunday 26

Three months after Bagha’s death, I’m thankfully not bursting into uncontrollable tears in socially awkward settings anymore. It comes and goes. I might spend a week or ten days with hardly a tear, and then a wave hits and I’m going through stacks of tissues every day. I’m getting used to it.

I know I need to though, so I dive into the pain and grief when it comes — and when it’s appropriate to let myself do so.

When I’m “in”, it feels like my life is over, like it hurts so much that I’ll never get over it. It feels like some part of me will forever refuse to accept that he is dead and gone, refuse to accept that there is nothing I can do about it, and refuse to accept too that nothing will bring him back. It feels like I will never manage to move on and open my heart this much again, like I will be stuck in grief forever.

Of course I know this isn’t true, and outside of these moments of intense grief, I’m living my life pretty normally these days, despite my heavy heart.

But what I’m starting to understand — and understand really because I’m experiencing it — is that these moments of pain where I am so adamantly refusing to accept that Bagha has died, and I now have to live without him, are actually the very thing that is helping me accept it.

When I was told this it made immediate and perfect sense to me. I feel pain and sadness because I am facing the fact Bagha is dead. Even if my reaction (defense mechanism) to that pain is a futile refusal to accept that which is causing the pain (clearly a flavour of denial — “I want my cat back, I don’t want him to be dead”), it remains that if I am feeling that pain it is precisely because I am realizing or accepting a little more that my life from here onwards will be without him, and I have no choice in that matter.

That is why sadness and tears heal: they are the expression of a step forward in accepting a difficult reality. And though it feels sometimes that the steps are small and the road long, I know I am making progress, and that my heart will heal again.

Two Deaths [en]

[fr] Deux décès, l'un humain, l'autre félin, et mes réactions assez différentes aux deux.

Two heart attacks, even. The first is Bagha, you’ll have guessed. Jean-ChristopheThe second is Jean-Christophe, who was deputy head in the school I taught at and with whom I stayed in touch over the years: fellow blogger and lifter, I enjoyed our lunch-time conversations about social media, web technology, education and the various things of life. He was a really friendly, genuinely nice person. I didn’t know him very well, but we did hang out once in a while. He wrote a very nice piece about me for Ada Lovelace Day in 2009. He died almost exactly a month after Bagha.

I was very, very shocked by Jean-Christophe’s death — and remain shocked. You don’t expect young, healthy people around you to drop like a stone and die in the middle of a basketball match (he was 42, a regular player, didn’t smoke…). I was also shocked by Bagha’s death, but the grief was so great that I just couldn’t stop the tears for days on end, and it took over.

Two deaths, one human, one feline, one of a being who shared almost every single day of mine for 11 years, the other which I would see a handful of times every year. Two different reactions on my part. On a slightly “clinical” level, I’ve found it interesting to observe how I’ve been processing both these deaths. Beyond the obvious animal vs. human difference, I’ve realised that what really counts is the role they were playing in my life.

Jean-Christophe was a truly lovely person. His death pains me, and even though he was somebody I trusted (to the point of collapsing in his office during my first year of teaching when things were not going well at all) we weren’t close. He was somebody I knew and appreciated, a part of my network (our discussions revolved primarily around work and common interests, not each other’s lives). If I think of his family, my heart breaks for them, but I am not touched as if it were my family.

Not seeing Jean-Christophe is the normal state of my life, so beyond the shock of the announcement, I am not confronted much with his death. A couple of times I’ve thought “oh, I should ask Jean-Christophe if he knows somebody who…” and caught myself. Beyond the shock and discomfort of seeing the sudden death of somebody who is just a few years older than myself, and of knowing that a wonderful human being is no more, the impact of Jean-Christophe’s death on my life has been pretty minimal.

Maybe this minimal impact (compounded to the fact I was in India for the funeral so couldn’t attend and therefore share others’ grief) has allowed me to stay in some stage of denial — or maybe the fact he was a rather “weak tie” in my life simply makes the whole grieving process less painful and visible.

Eclau oct 2009 24Bagha, on the other hand, even though he was “just a cat”, was part of my everyday life for years and a primary emotional attachment. His loss is a huge disruption in my life, all the more because he was an elderly cat who had started to require care — some parts of my life were organized around him. Making sure somebody was there for him when I travelled, coming back home to give him his meds, being available to take him to the vet when things weren’t quite right.

Except when I was in India, I have not been able to “forget” his death much. The flat is lonely without a feline presence. Another cat naps on the couch at eclau (I’m happy about that, though). I’m still surprised that I can stay out when I hadn’t planned to. I can leave stuff lying around in the flat (even food) and nothing happens to them. Open cupboard doors are not important anymore. I’m not woken up at 6am by somebody furry who wants to be let out.

When somebody asks a group of people “who has a cat?” I have to keep my hand down now. I don’t have a cat anymore. I’m not a cat-owner. I’ve had a cat since I was nine, even though my first cat, Flam, lived at my parents’ for three years when I moved out, and I was briefly catless between her death and the moment Bagha officially became “my” cat. But being a cat lover and owner has always been a big part of my identity, which I feel I have now lost (risky parallel: does it feel like that to long-time smokers who give up the cancer-stick?). Of course, I will have cats again (after India early 2012 is the current plan), but right now, I’m part of these petless people.

Almost everything in my life reminds of his death. I still have a photo of him as background image for my iPhone, because I’m not sure when the right moment to change it would be, and what to replace it with. Though I’m slowly rebuilding a layer of habits and memories of my new life without him, I feel his loss almost every day — some days worse than others.

This makes me realize that in a way, it is less the intrinsec value of the being who died (who would dare put a cat’s life before that of a human being?) than the role played in one’s life and one’s emotional attachment that determines the amount of grief. Sounds obvious, uh, nothing new under the sun here. But it has another taste when you’ve reached the conclusion all over again by yourself.

Frustrations comptables: banques et logiciels, c'est pas encore ça! [fr]

Pour diverses raisons sur lesquelles je ne m’étendrai pas, je songe à la possibilité de reprendre en main ma comptabilité, après l’avoir déléguée (avec bonheur) durant plusieurs années.

Ma comptabilité n’est pas très compliquée: des factures pour mes clients, des frais à déduire, hop. Je pourrais faire ça dans un tableur (<3 Google Docs, c’est ce que j’utilise depuis deux ans pour la compta de l’eclau et ça va très bien).

Oups, ça vient de se gâter. Voyez, moi, la compta, c’est pas mon truc. Ça me fait un peu l’effet que doivent faire les médias sociaux à certains d’entre vous: important, mais compliqué, et bon sang, par où on commence, et ça s’appelle comment, ça?

Ça vient de se gâter parce que j’ai dit “compta” au lieu de “faire les écritures” ou quelque chose comme ça. Mon bilan, je vais laisser faire ça aux professionnels. Mais c’est les écritures, et le côté “garder un oeil sur les sous”, qui m’intéresse.

Donc, tableur, très bien. Je note les entrées et les dépenses, je fais des petites catégories qui rentreront dans le plan comptable, nickel.

Sauf que Philippe (coworker de l’eclau, justement) me montre qu’il y a des programmes qui arrivent à causer avec Postfinance ou d’autres banques et à importer directement les écritures. Vous imaginez comme ça me fait saliver, ça.

Hop, ni une ni deux, je pars en exploration. Chez Crealogix, PayMaker, le programme dont m’a d’abord parlé Philippe. Je fouille un peu, je demande sur Twitter. MacPay. Crésus semble un poil cher. Je télécharge les deux premiers en version d’évaluation.

Premier constat, désolée, mais c’est pas très user-friendly. (“Moche”, je me permettrai pas — mais un peu clunky.) Probablement que c’est pas très user-friendly parce que je suis une complète pive quand il s’agit de finances et donc que je ne comprends pas bien à quoi doit servir le programme, ni les différentes choses qu’on peut faire avec.

Deuxième constat, ça semble surtout être des programmes de saisie d’ordres de paiement. J’en ai rentré un dans MacPay mais impossible de trouver comment “l’envoyer” (j’utilise probablement pas le bon vocabulaire).

Bref, c’est décourageant.

Je retourne à mon plan initial, le tableur. Ma compta n’est pas bien compliquée… Mais j’ai eu l’espoir de ne pas avoir besoin de recopier toutes les écritures déjà saisies dans mon compte en banque, et j’avoue que j’ai de la peine à lâcher l’idée. Mais oui! Il y a une fonction d’exportation des transactions, non?

Je me précipite dans Postfinance. Misère, on nous sert du PDF. La BCV, ça semble plus prometteur: exportation vers Excel. Bon sang, pourquoi n’ai-je jamais utilisé cette fonctionnalité? J’exporte, et j’ouvre dans NeoOffice. Ah oui, je me souviens: ce n’est pas un joli petit tableau bien propre qu’on nous sert, mais une espèce de machin qui ressemble plus à du Word fait dans Excel qu’autre chose.

Messieurs les banquiers (ou plutôt, messieurs les qui-développez-des-interfaces-ebanking), serait-ce trop vous demander de pouvoir simplement exporter mes transactions en format .csv? Tout bêtement?

On ne va pas baisser les bras, je suis une acharnée. Peut-être qu’en copiant-collant les transactions listées dans mon interface e-banking je peux m’épargner quelques précieuses minutes de frappe. Ben là aussi, déception: la BCV est laconique au possible dans ses libellés de transaction (“BCV-NET”, ça indique bien que c’est le paiement de mon assurance maladie, juste? et “BCV-NET”, c’est aussi les paiements de ma facture téléphonique? oublions…) et Postfinance pèche par excès de zèle dans l’autre direction, me donnant jusqu’à dix lignes d’informations dans le libellé de chaque transaction (je vous juge, j’en ai même vu une qui indiquait la date de naissance du créditeur… presque).

Bah.

Comme me l’a fait remarquer Julien, c’est quand même dingue que ce soit aussi mauvais: on a tous des comptes en banque. On utilise tous (bientôt tous) l’e-banking. On a tous besoin de garder un oeil sur ses finances, même si ce n’est “que” à titre personnel. Et les outils qu’on a à disposition pour le faire sont franchement pénibles à utiliser — mauvaise UX autant que fonctionnalités inadaptées.

Développeurs et spécialistes UX, je crois qu’il y a un besoin à remplir, là.

Sinon, prouvez-moi que j’ai tort de me plaindre ainsi amèrement. Montrez-moi l’outil facile à appréhender, agréable à utiliser (et à l’oeil, ça ne gâche rien), qui automatise au maximum le suivi des mes finances, tout en me laissant suffisamment de flexibilité pour l’adapter à ma situation personnelle. Dites-moi ce que je n’ai pas compris et qui fait que je ne trouve rien, peut-être, parce que je cherche au mauvais endroit. Je serai ravie de m’être lamentée pour rien sur ce blog.

Things I Enjoy Doing For My Friends [en]

[fr] Une liste de choses que j'aime faire pour mes amis, comme démonter les ordinateurs, aider à déménager, remplir les coffres de voiture ou lire la carte.

– Putting together ikea furniture
– Fitting stuff in cellars, car boots, suitcases, fridges or other limited spaces (makes me a valuable asset when moving)
– Taking computers apart and putting them back together (preferably upgrading bits and pieces in the process)
– Installing and upgrading programmes or the OS (mac only!)
– Reading the map
– Explaining finer points of French grammar or spelling
– Light DIY (no drilling in walls)
– Unboxing things

What are yours?

Of Grief and Travel [en]

[fr] Retour d'Inde, et je pleure mon chat comme il y a un mois, après une sorte d'interruption où le deuil a gentiment glisser sous le tapis. M'habituer à son absence alors que je suis ailleurs, dans un contexte complètement étranger, c'est une chose. A la maison, cela va prendre nettement plus de temps.

As all of you must know by now, my cat Bagha died just ten days before I was due to leave on a month-long trip to India, my first “real” (understand: three weeks or more) holiday in many years. It’s been a horrible, horrible loss for me — and if at this stage you’re thinking “just a cat”, switch to “11 years of life together”. I cried every day until I left, and was still very upset when I arrived in India.

Ready to Pounce

At some point, in India, I stopped crying. Different context, people around, not much privacy, but mainly, I think, lots of exciting Indian life and people to keep me busy. Over a month, I had plenty of time to settle down in my holiday-life over there — and holiday-life and travel clearly never involved having Bagha around.

When Bagha was alive, I would miss him when I was travelling. The first days would be the worst, and then I would get used to it and stop thinking about it. After a few weeks, though, I’d be really looking forward to seeing him again. It was part of what would draw me back home.

So, maybe I was just following my normal travel-pattern here too.

Coming back has been really hard. In all honesty, it feels pretty much like I’m back to where I left off before my travels. A few things have changed, though — the work of time: I’m not in shock anymore (I’ll talk about shock in a later post about another recent death), and I don’t really expect to see Bagha sleeping on the couch or on the bed when I enter a room. I still have “where’s the cat?” or “I need to get the cat” moments, though. Many times a day. and I’m going through a lot of tissues again.

I don’t know if this “break in grief” was a good thing — not that I regret going to India at all, and I immensely enjoyed my time there — but I remember wishing I had “more time” before leaving while I was preparing my bags and departure.

Bangalore 142 Fancy Buildings.jpgWhat this trip has shown me, though, is that life goes on. Or at least, that I can rebuild a life for myself. This is very similar to what my year in India showed me: that I could start from scratch somewhere and find friends, have a life, be happy enough. (I write happy enough because generally, that’s how I am — “happy” on its own has not often been a general state in my life, though it’s a regular short-term feeling.)

But life elsewhere without my cat and life at home without my cat are not the same thing.