Category: Personal

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

Intention [en]

Lorsque j’écris, il m’arrive de me relire et de me demander si mon texte exprime véritablement ce que je voulais dire. Le lecture donne-t-elle un accès à  ce que je ressentais et voulais communiquer? Parfois, j’en viens à  constater que je me suis laissé emporter par les mots…

Crossroads [en]

warning: lots of “me” stuff ahead – probably not of interest to the rest of the world.

As months go by, I am approaching the exciting yet scary end of my life as a student. There are too many roads ahead for me. I’m not sure which one I want to take. I would like to take them all, in fact, but sadly they seem to be mutually exclusive.

Once more I am faced with my eternal problem: wanting to bite of more than I can possibly chew.

Actually, there is more to it than that. Because it raises the question of what I intend to do of my life. And life, for me, is more than just finding a suitable job, earning money and raising a family.
I’m not worried about being capable of finding a job and staying employed. I’m not worried about the amount of money I’ll earn, as long as it allows me to live. Having a family is maybe another issue, but this is not the place or the time to delve into it.

I want to reach out to the world. I want to reach deep inside myself too. I want to keep learning and growing, and I want to give to others. And I don’t want to confine myself to one single domain.

I’m finishing a degree in history of religions (Indian), philosophy, and French – having learnt some Sanskrit and Hindi on the way. In a bit more than six months, I’ll be starting work at Orange – a job in the low levels of project management in a young company, involving lots of hours in front of a computer, solving problems, and hopefully putting to work some of my so-called web design skills.

I already know I don’t want to do that job all my life. But setting foot in the “business world” is frightening to me. I’m a bit afraid of staying stuck in it. I don’t have a business-oriented mind at all. I am a rather “anti-consumerism” person. I like reading philosophy and religion books and I want to change the world. I want to teach judo some day and possibly write stuff that others might read. I like fiddling with computers and talking with people hours on end. I like too many different things and I don’t want to lose them. I’m complicated, too. I want a high responsability job but I don’t want to work full-time. Putting it in French: “Je veux le beurre, l’argent du beurre, et le fils du laitier.”

And now I’m starting to sound like the average whining “I want it all” teenager – and I’m supposed to be a bit old for that now. Time to stop the navel-gazing ; )
Luckily, I have more than a year ahead of me to sit at the crossroads and look down the paths. Maybe I’ll pitch a little tent there to make it more comfortable while I wait.

Snow [en]

Finally. Winter is paying its dues. The grey, the cold, the wind and the rain are forgotten. Lausanne is white at last.

I arrived home safely after an exciting drive from my sister’s place. First, a narrow squeeze between two lorries: one of them was on the road-side, the other was backing up in the middle of the road to line up behind it, and I was gathering speed to climb up the hill. Then, a long slow ride on the snow-white motorway. I had never imagined that driving at 60 km/h would one day give me the feeling I was speeding.

Bagha set his indian paws in snow for the first time of his life. And I daresay he didn’t like it. Even though he is truly amazing in some respects, he’s still just a cat.

I went for a walk with Cali in the woods near my home. I didn’t get any winter last year (no, it doesn’t snow in Pune!) and I had forgotten how magical it is to be surrounded by silent white trees with not another human soul in sight.
Snow muffles everything. It makes silence thick. It also makes places look smaller. It makes your shoes wet and your feet cold when you walk in it with your town shoes instead of the winter boots which are down in the cellar.

I love white walks. Especially when all this white seems to be Nature greeting me back into the world of the living: I’m finally feeling up to life again : )

Disclaimer [en]

Although it still may be funny, Nickd got it wrong. I wrote the word to css email to groupmonkey, not to him.

Just so you people know who I send my dumb emails to… *wink*

Christmas wish-list [en]

  • a digi-cam
  • a film scanner
  • a big bucketful of time
  • two pre-written French courseworks on the appropriate subjects…

Thanks in advance!

A Day in my Life [en]

Tonight I went to see The Virgin Suicides with my brother.
The movie was all right – nothing to scream and shout about. I appreciated the teenager narrative point of view, and the fact that the story is not fully explained.
It’s worth seeing if you want to go the cinema, but it’s maybe not the film to see if you’re feeling a little depressed.

I felt like eating guacamole, so we went to eat mexican. Both my brother and I had a good time trying to get him to roll his fajitas correctly.
Nice evening!

Cali is busy chewing on used hankies she has dug out of the waste-paper basket. Bagha shoots out of the flat with a “mrrrraou!” each time I open the door.

Hopefully, professionnals are coming tomorrow the trim the tree that Bagha uses as a ladder to access a certain lady’s balcony. He will be allowed outside for the first time in ten days.
My grandmother recommends offering her a water-pistol. That indeed seems the best way to keep the tiger at bay!

HTML-Kit and WS_FTP Lite [en]

I’ve adopted HTMLkit. It’s really nice. I haven’t finished customizing it, but one thing is sure: I’m going to become an in-site-editing enthusiast.
The only feature it has missing is multiple file replace. I’m longing for something which will do what BBEdit does – carry out a replace on all the files in a directory.
And thanks to those who suggested it, I also got WS_FTP Lite.

Between Friday night and yesterday, I finished writing the script for my work at Orange. Thanks to those people who helped me : ) – working on the web is great!

One thing I’ve started doing when I need help on a topic is this (soooo simple, why didn’t I figure it out before?):
First, search with Google, and fine a few relevant threads in mailing list archives.
Then email the people who seemed to know what they were talking about, or who seemed to have a problem similar to yours.

Sérénade [en]

Le travail chez Orange est très chouette – mais il y en a beaucoup. Je devrais normalement avoir trois personnes pour m’aider (l’une d’elles est déjà  en place, et fait vraiment bien avancer le schmilblick).

Mes examens de français approchent à  grands pas, et avant eux, les deux séminaires qu’il me reste à  faire.

Quant au chat, il insiste. Après avoir chanté une sérénade aux chattes de la “dame au balcon” – à  dix heures du soir bien entendu, pour qu’il puisse la tirer du lit – il a encore récidivé cet après-midi après que j’ai péniblement obtenu du concierge la mutilation du buisson coupable (coupable de permettre à  Bagha de pénétrer en territoire interdit).
Tout ceci s’est donc accompagné d’un téléphone peu agréable qui contenait menaces de tribunal et suggestion d’abandonner mon chat à  la SPA. Ah oui, et ce serait aussi un bonne idée que je déménage. Heureusement que la dame de la gérance n’avait pas l’air de prendre toutes ces plaintes trop au tragique: “non, mais vous inquiétez pas pour ça…”