fido 

this dog meant business 

but we had walked all over the place and finally had a good lunch near audrey's faculty at st michel. all the university buildings are covered in scaffolding due to the riots, andnd everyone is worried about how they will pass the exams, after having missed a month of classes, but it seems most of the proffs supported the students and will be cool about the exams. fingers crossed! after wards, we met up with Darren and and Adam for drinks....it had been a while, i missed these guys! but it seems nothing at work has changed, there was some petty gossip, but the basic system appears to be still in place.... Darren has been here for years now, and adam is not far behind. it is amazing how fast time goes. we were all here drinking last summer. since the weather is the same as at the time when i left, i had the strange feeling that nothing had happened, and i hadnt gone to england for the entire winter....but then the dynamics of things had changed, in subtle ways that occured to me in passing moments, leaving me at times feel odd....i wish i could have had more time to catch up with adam, i used to enjoy our 2 hour lunches at noura and ching n ling....but time was short and i had take off, as usual

audrey and i went shoe shopping yesterday in les halles. i hate les halles. there are always some nasty guys trying to talk to you and if you tell them to bugger off, they start insulting you, as if that would make you change your mind and pursuade you to strike up conversation! shoe shopping with audrey is an old tradition. we used to work together on the same shift on saturdays last spring and summer and inevitably we always ended up shopping, both delaying having to go back to le 93. then we would go to the RER and get junk sweets to take with us on the trains. Audrey is lucky, she finally got a place in paris this year, so she now lives near gare du nord and doesnt have to take the RER out to aulnay sous bois anymore. we were talking about that: how we used to walk home from work late at night through some of the dodgiest of areas and not think anything of it. what were we thinking?

retour sur image

i wrote a long entry on the train...but it is on my usb, which i cant locate at the moment. so it will have to wait...unless i have actually lost my usb, in which case i am fucked for a number of reasons.
i am once again in paris..coming back here just reminds me why i left. sometimes i feel that actually i was just dreaming that i lived here for over a year, but then last night i refound myself in front of the hilton on suffren, where i once spent so much time, and then i remember that it was actually all real, i worked here, i left, and i dont plan on returning, other than to meet my mother from time to time.
i have done the necessary: cashing my participation from the government, closing my bank account, accompanying my mother to laduree, getting a hair cut from christophe (at my mothers insistance) and going to gibert jeune. i delibrately did not go to le 93.
and i have met with some friends. i am off to have lunch with audrey in about an hour, and i am spending tomarrow with solenne in neuilly...yaelle is off somewhere so unfortunately i will miss her this time around...i went to le fumoir and it didnt seem right to be there without her, but it would have been more odd not to go at all.
photos to follow.

all that lacks is sleep

The past few days have been so hectic that I wont bother with the details. I have spent the days trying to entertain my mother in London, and the evenings trying to keep paul entertained in Cambridge.
My mother and I have done a round of shopping and museums, paul, iain and I a round of pubs.
So rather than recount the tedious details of all that, I will note the highlights.
First, the TTB update for those of you hanging on every detail: TTB has had a mini crise of nerves (ok, that’s what she claims, I have serious doubts) but the good news is that, unable to handle the stress of sticking around, she has voluntarily fled the country. Rumour has it that she has gone to Atlanta. But the key is that this has bought paul desperately needed time to strengthen himself. But the past weekend has been a struggle, everything was closed, we are out of term; so lots of people are gone, and a lot of places closed. Iain has been taking him out on invented excursions to keep his mind occupied….i think this has included a tour of all the antique shops between Cambridge and Brighton, and the medal collection in paul’s library keeps growing, but hey, whatever keeps him functioning…. All of TTB’s little presents and pathetic letters have been put in a black rubbish bag, but no one has decided what is to be done with them, so they are decorating the hallway at the moment, waiting a better time to be incinerated.
On a more cultural note, there is an EXCELLENT expo on at the V&A on modernism. It is really well conceived and assembled, and definitely worth the obscene 9 pound entrance fee. It traces the origins of the movement from the post world war one period, and then looks at how the movement developed in Russia, Italy, Germany and so on. But it takes a thematic approach to the movements conception, so there are parts on modernism and health and sport, modernism and architecture/ urban planning and so on. This really helped me to put everything together in my brain, far more so than the Bauhaus expo at the Tate Modern, although the V&A expo had a lot on Bauhaus as well, since there is a fairly clear overlap between the two. I also really liked the decoration of the expo: following the ideology of modernism into a practical application, all the rooms utilise sparse, industrial design, coloured exclusively in red, grey, white and black, just as the fathers of modernism would have wanted. Brilliant.
there is a lot going on at the natural history museum also, as you can see in the picture.
On a less serious note, there are mid season sales on everywhere, and I got two pair of boots at Harrods’s and two suits on Oxford street. KASHMAR….

the cambridge tour

so yesterday masha and i decided to make a tour of cambridge> paul, as a cambridge university phd student, gallantly aggreed to give us a tour of the colleges and obligatory pubs. this was a bonus because normally if you are a tourist you have to pay to go into the colleges, but if you hav a universtiy pass, you can take people in for free, which is very very nice. so we made the rounds of all the nice colleges....and then made the rounds of all the good pubs. we started early after paul made the classic freudian slip "so which pub do we go to? i mean what do you want to do?" so naturally, this meant the pickerel! this is supposed to be the oldest pub in cambridge, although god only knows how much truth is that. cambrdige is full of such legends. but everything was really nice and it didnt even rain to much...
then we headed for my favourite cambridge indian restaurant, maharaja. we spent over two hours there stuffing ourself with all kinds of delacacies, so much so that we could barely move when we finnally stood up. so in such a state we realised that there was little else to be done other than continue the hedoniam. so we went round to another bar, and drank a bit more....then we went back to pauls phenomenal library and drank tea....and then whisky. this was probably an unnesisary final excess which result in us collapsing into comas in our beds....
today was a phenomonally beautiful day, probably the most beautiful weather since i came to this country. it was warm and sunny, and we were walking about in shirts, without our jackets. so we decided to take a walk through the countryside...it was really beautiful, and at the end of the road was a nice pub....(pictures of that to follow)
good weather, good company- what else does one need?
agh, but now back to reality. my mother arrives tomarrow, i am going back to france on tuesday....and i have a paper to write. panic.

the TTB latest

for those of you who are waiting for the TTB saga to continue, here is the latest: paul finally returned from his hiding place (is, his parents place)
it seems there was a sequel to her sunday afternoon explosion that i didnt know about until today. on sunday, she came and with crocodile tears assured me she felt "like a worried parent." i reiterated the official story that i didnt know where he was or when he would be back, and off she slunk....little did i know that she went staight from my door to her car, and set off for pauls parents house on the coast! so, it seems she turned up there and made a huge scene, right in front of his mother. she was even calculating about it. she didnt park in front of the house, but down the way a bit, and waited in her car until pauls father went off on errands. then she pounced.
pauls mother finally threw her out.
then yesterday, while i was out having fun with masha, the envelope arrived.
the envelope is a large mini-box containing information printed of the internet aimed at helping people with sexual maniac disorders, which is apprently what TTB thinks paul has got!!! there are probably 300 pages worth of the stuff, all highlighted and annotated for him, explaining the help he should be seeing to control his maniac urges! incredible. this has all been sent with the intention to "help" him get over these primorial instincts!
obviously this woman is insane!

ceu reunion

after the Tate, we struggled accross to St Paul's...i say struggle as it was pissing cold and miserable rain the whole time, as usual in this city...
to get out of the rain, and to entertain ourselves, we arranged to meet razvan close to uni. it was amazing: a ceu reunion in the middle of london. we exchanged a few antohi stories, and did a good amount of drinking. razvan (lucky bugger) just got a marie curie fellowship, which gives him a free 2,000 euros a mont for the next 18 months....all this and he is about to go off to MOLDOVA to do research. it is totally impossible to spend that money in moldova...you could even buy a house with that i imagine, and not a bad house at that....some people have all the luck! so i told him that i will definately be his first guest in chisinau...i am slightly (but really only slightly) embassed to say that i have never been to moldova. but having a friend there makes it really impossible to avoid the place, so.....next holiday- chisinau!
it is amazing about ceu, after you finish you realise that you have friends in every little shit hole of the ex socialist world, really every little place. it is a nice feeling- whereever i go (east of berlin) , i know someone.

visitors!

my friend maysamba is visiting. we have been having fun running about playing tourists in london and catching up on several months of back gossip. we havent seen each other since december, and a lot has happened since then, not least, all kinds of exciting department scandals!
we went to some libraries, and then ended up where i fear girls often do in this city: harrod's. we had a blast walking through the pets department (guess whose idea that was?) masha calculated that a dog leed and collar from burbureys were the equivelent of two months rent in buda! we didnt buy any clothes for reasons i dont think i have to explain, but we did have an excellent lunch in the sushi bar. i live good sushi, it is one of my favourite meals....mmmmm/ given that my stomach has recently go beserk (again) and i am now on some wierd supposedly gluton free diet, i guess sushi will have to become a major source of energy for me. pity it is so expensive...even at places other than harrod's!

from there we headed to the Tate modern. i wanted to revisit my favourite snow piles / sugarcubes, and masha want to see an expo on Albers and Moholy- Nagy....bauhaus stuff....laure, you would have hated it, it was all modern. i am not a massive bauhaus fan (unlike masha) but the expo was really well put together and some of the works were striking. i like the tate modern more every time i go there...and the bookshop is really wonderful. if i had more money i would buy all sorts of things there.

TTB

i have to say one thing about this woman, she is persistant. she has shown up on my doorstep everyday for the past three days....finnally today i decided i couldnt handle another skandal, so i left home early in the morning with the plan not to return until very late this evening. i just cant face her again. yesterday when i opened the door, she greeted me with "guess who?" then burst into (crocodile) tears and told me she felt like a parent and was worried sick. yeah right. i spoke to paul by telephone...he is planning on coming back from his hiding place today, which makes confrontation inevitable...he says he realises she is bad news and is going to stick firm..but i doubt it. he has caved many times before. if he sees her in front of him, he is likely to cave all over again. Meanwhile, Iain has used his power to have her officially banned from coming a certain number of metres near our flat...but i doubt that is really going to keep her away, as she has failed to heed all other warnings. theoretically, if she shows up one more time, the police will be formally involved, which if she persists, could result in her being expelled from the country (a police record would have her kicked out of her college, which means she would automatically loose her student visa) so fingers crossed...there is nothing i would like better than seeing that woman plopped on a plane back to Georgia!

and more skandals still

so last night i came home to find TTB (thunder thighed beast, as iain and i are calling my flat mates persistant girlfriend) hanging about outside my door. she let HERSELF in, without even asking, put little gifts outside his door and started decorating the place with FLOWERS. she told me in a sweet baby voice that "oh Paul is coming back tonight." i didnt know where she had got her information from, but i presumed it must have been from him. but it turns out is wasnt. it was all a figment of her imagination!!!!!!
so today i was talking to my father on the phone, when she started pounding on the door. i opened and told her that i was sorry, but i was busy and couldnt talk. goodbye. silly me....about 45 minutes later when i finished my call and decided to do grocery shopping...i opened the front door only to find guess who on my steps! obviously this is a woman who doesnt get a hint! then she started on the whole thing again, where was he? why was i protecting him? what was our relationahip?
really i dont know how to deal with this woman, she is completely and utterly irrational. i think she is halucinating because nothing she does or says makes sense. Plus, i am constantly afraid she is going to hit me. i am ready for her, at this point it would give me great pleasure!

scandals to asylum

I have spent the past few days trying to get some work done….i have been greatly aided by the absence of many key people: Justin is in Berlin, Max is in Tbilisi and Igor has gone to Belgrade. Even Paul has supposedly gone, but more about that in a minute. So I have no excuse for not being productive. I have been trying to get my thoughts cleared sufficiently to start writing this monstrous paper…I will get there, but it is a slow process.
I have been making pauses in my work to clear my head from time to time. I have been going through the various films at the public library, and the other things I normally don’t have time to do. I saw Last Days, the last Gus Van Sant film supposedly based on the final moments of Kurt Cobain’s life. I realise it is a well-done portrait of a soul leaving this world, but I had problems getting into it. I was never a Cobain fan. It is shot in the same style as Elephant (slow moving, replays from different angles and perspectives etc) but I found Elephant more compelling. I then saw Closer, which I didn’t like at the beginning, but I warmed up to a bit in the last part. I liked the ending. I re-watched Tito I Ja…. Hardly an artistic masterpiece, but I never get tired of seeing it, I love the school teacher…. And the little kid is great.
But the film that struck me the most I fear to say was Asylum. The film wasn’t that good (actually the first half was painfully trite) but its theme was close to home. A woman has a relationship with a institutionalised man who killed his wife in a fit of jealousy. So, you get the idea, the pattern replays itself. The woman ruins her life and destroys her family for a man she knows is no good for her, and of course there is a suitably tragic ending. I saw the film and immediately asked Iain if he had seen it. He had, and grimly agreed with my train of thought.
Needless to say, the paul- beast situation has got more complicated. When we sent him away, Iain told him he was not to return for AT LEAST three weeks. But here is the problem: he has decided he misses the beast. He called Iain and told him that he cant live alone, he is miserable, no one will ever want him, she is the only one… and so on. We tried to remind him that 1.) she is abusive. 2.) she is possessive and jealous and says he cant have any friends or socialise with any one except her. 3.) she is utterly insane. 4.) he says he is unhappy with her.
But he claims he is unhappy without her.So I came back home today to find her hanging out near my door, armed with flowers and all kinds of little gifts for him, despite the fact that she has been issued and official warning not to come back on site. She claims he is coming back tonight, which I guess she can only know from him, since neither Iain not I know anything about this plan. She was behaving all sweet and complacent; obviously convinced she had won the battle. If he comes back I am certain the whole sick cycle will start all over from the beginning- she will be nice and kind and caring for a few days, and then the screams and flying objects will be set into motion…. As usual. The whole thing is so depressing. We have done everything imaginable to try to help Paul get out of this situation, but how do you help someone who is his own worst enemy. He is rational about the whole thing (“yes, I know she makes me unhappy, yes she is bad for me”) but his behaviour is totally irrational. Irrationality is, of course, perfectly understandable is cases of love or lust…. But how can anyone love being beaten all the time? I don’t see a good end to this one.

pub night again

here are some pictures from pub night. when we arrived the place was a total zoo, due to a major football match...but fortunately it cleared out when the match ended (and fortunately england one) but here are some of the students!

When the beast (as iain and I have started calling her) was interrogating me she made a whole series of accusations that were supposed to reveal my guilt. However, I am quite proud to be the bearer of some of these intended injuries. She accused me of being “a social creature.” YES! I am! I like human beings! She accused me of being “one of the boys.” Sure, why not? And then she told Iain I am a slut! YEAH! A middle aged overweight American thinks I am a slut, I take this as a great compliment!
So now, feeling I have a reputation to live up to, I have decided to profit from my holiday and go out a bit; but I have also managed to get some work done over the last few days. Contrary to what the beast seems to think, socialising with other people can actually help you improve your working abilities. So I went to an 8 hour seminar about reading techniques held by the university. According to their test, I read 445 words per minute, with 90 percent accuracy. 45 words above the phd student average. This is, of course, when I concentrate really hard and know I am being observed. I can read fast….but only when I am interested in the material or really stressed, otherwise my mind wanders and I waste time.
After the seminar, I headed to the student union where I met max for some drinks. That lucky bugger just got offered 16,000 pounds a year to transfer to the Open University. Everyone knows that it is a shit school, but they are also offering excellent funding, which means he would be able to do better quality work, without the stress of having to maintain a full time job at the same time, so probably he would produce a higher quality product, but from a less prestigious place…. A tough choice for anyone, and I think he is going to take it, which I fully understand.
And tonight the party continues, I might be officially on holiday, but I told the school I would still do pub night……let the fun begin!

a note on my readership

i just wanted to take a minute to comment on my readership. i have a thing on my page (which is invisible) that tracks the location of all my readers, in some cases down to the part of the city they are located in. i realise this is a bit like spying, but i find it very interesting to see who is reading this thing, other than those of you who routinely leave comments. thanks to the invisible counter, i can see that this week, people in Italy, India, Canada, the US, UAE, Australia, the UK, Estonia, Hungary, Malaysia, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapour, Portugal, France, Russia and Israel have visited this site. actually, this blog is most read in the UK, Portugal and Estonia. In addition, i have regular readers in Abu Dhabi, some Indian city, and Kuala Lumper. actually, people in Asia and the middle east regularly check into this site, even though I have no clue who they might be!
unfortunately (for my pride) i have no readers in south america or sub saharan africa. oh well.
just wanted make a note!

fun games and scandals

So the holiday got off to an odd start, Ian banished Paul from the city. Yes, the entire city. He is not allowed to return for a few weeks. He came back briefly to the flat, packed his bag and left for a certain place on the coast (but this is a secret I am supposed to carefully guard). The scene with the girlfriend had got so bad he lost control of his stomach and kept puking. I thought that only happened to women, but then the power relations in this pair are so inverted that I guess he IS the woman.
In the evening, me and two Romanian blokes (both cooks, both named Dan) decided to lie about, drinking wine and watching Kill Bill 2. Personally, I liked the first film better, but that is just me. I can’t even logically support my view, except that Kill Bill 2 was a bit too… sentimental? I mean, for a film about killing people!
Then this morning I got up early for my “day of fitness” as I had been told it would be. Danka and John picked me up and took me to their fitness centre, where they had got me a day pass, so I could see what it was like. This was really interesting; basically it is part fitness, part social club for the neighbourhood retirees. They do some sport, keep active, and meet other people like themselves. So Christine (also a member) and Danka took me to their yoga class (specially designed for the over 50s) and then we went swimming, and then we had a nice long lunch on the glassed-in patio. I was pretty impressed to see people in their 70s and 80s being so active; I hope I will do the same when I get to that stage!
The drama started when I got home. As I was approaching the flat, I could see Paul’s girlfriend leaving. She didn’t see me, but I decided to go home, quickly change, and go out for a while. But a couple of hours later, when I returned, I saw her making a scene in Ian’s place. Again, I ducked and bolted into my flat…. But an hour or so later, a persistent knock started at the door. The girlfriend. The very angry girlfriend. She spent the next hour interrogating me with the zeal and precision of a KGB officer. I went out with Paul? Did I think that was appropriate behaviour? Were we having an affair? Did I want to have an affair with him? What did we talk about? Why was I covering for him? Apparently, in her world it is not appropriate for neighbours to go out and socialise on a friendly basis. But then I don’t think she understands “friendly.”
Actually I told her only one lie: that I didn’t know where he had gone. Funny, I think that was the only thing she believed!
My favourite part was when she stamped her foot and shrieked that SHE would not be made a fool of. I can’t believe this woman is 38. I wouldn’t have behaved like that at 18.

afterwards we went to an art gallery were some of justins mates were having an expo...uh...or something like that. there was a guy to spray paint street art (pictured below) and free cobra. free beer is apparently one of the benefits of owning an art gallery. it seems the owner just wrote a letter to cobra saying she was having and expo....and they sent free cases. not bad! the guys paiintings were pretty cool, although some of them were going for large somes of cash....needless to day i didnt buy anything!
i was really tired and left early. i walked to the train station and took my train, with the intention of going home and getting into bed with a good book. no such luck: as i was walking into the courtyard, i saw ian and a glum looking paul. the beast (as ian calls pauls emotionally abusive girlfriend) had struck again. paul was in a massive depression. so we decided we couldnt let him sit around on a saturday night and mop. so we headed out to an indian restaurant. we stuffed our faces (and i wasnt even hungry!) on all kinds of dishes and alternated between trying to give paul practical advice (ditch the bitch) and trying to make him laugh. i think he is trying not to laught in the picture here....i was being obnoixous and making faces...then i really did stumble home, well after midnight, and collapse into bed. today i will rest and work. really, i will!

after the morbid stroll, we went back to justin's place to hang out for a few hours and reach the bottom of this nerd debate that has been burning for the past week. the tests were clear: just scored "total nerd" and i was "normal" rest assured lemurana and laure, we are the normal ones!

the portions were massive and i wouldnt have stuffed myself so much if i had known more restaurants were coming.....afterwards, we went for a walk in a cemetary nearby that was in a state of total disarry. there were gravestones turned over, nothing had been taken care of for decades, it was very bizarre. there were also condom wrappers all over the place... odd