Work

The Crowd and the One

Posted by yseult on Feb 26, 2005 in Personal, The Odd Philosophical Question, Work

I just had another one of those moments that can only happen when you live in a big city… one of those occasions where from the crowd (and I mean crowd) of faces without sense or meaning, someone comes up,stands out, looks at you and you slowly emerge from your own misty look upon the world…
Where all of a sudden you meet a neighbour you never knew he lived there in the first place… and when on top of that he tells you he has been looking for you…
I’m walking up the stairs to my appartement corridor (think about Gosford park and the two sided life: the backhouse and the shiny fronthouse… I would live behind the tapestry door where the servant’s rooms once where…) and someone stands in front of my door.
The guy turns around (I have my keys in the left hand, immediately readying them as a pointy defense, just in case…) and says ‘Are you the philosopher living in no 16 ?”

HUH?

“That would depend on the definition of ‘philosopher’ now, wouldn’t it?’ I say before I even start thinking… and at the same moment a thought of ‘Where the hell did that come from, Y.??!!’ passes my mind.
“Well, you see, I have a question for you… if you have five minutes…”

Again: HUH?

Since I just got home from a missed appointement and my head is racing I don’t really have the force to say no, and following the habit I took up in this impersonal town, I will not turn down any hand or look that is offered me. Just to be clear: I won’t do anything. Not here, nor back home. But, being here and being the way I am – frightful and distanced towards people to say the least – I swore that if someone took the time to address me personaly I wouldn’t turn it down beforehand like I most certainly would in Switzerland.

Some minutes later, coffee in hand, we’re off to the heights (or depths) of the human mind and the great questions.

His was as follows: “Do you need to love at any price – and risk losing everything – or do you only need to live for yourself?”

My inital answer of course was that this was rather a poetical question before being a philosophical one. Defiant snorting.
And it’s true. Dont’ you at first need to rid yourself of the poetical content of ‘living for love only’ and romantic feelings, before addressing the philosophical meaning of the question?
One talk later I’m not much wiser. But that’s a hazard of my profession. Sweet talk and no reward.
Even worse, isn’t it the question of my life? The one I always get back to? The one that always leaves me doubting for the next day, the next relation, the next terrible downfall to bring be to my knees? Am I not ready to give everything up in an instant, just to savour a true link to a true person? Am I not the one who’s ready to just give, and maybe hope to get some warmth back in return? And what if I have missed my chance in one of my lost loves? What if the ones I have left and the ones that have left me, were the best shot I’d have ever had at solace and peace?
What if my inner torment was of my own chosing – the last consequence of my actions – rather than just coincidence?
And how many conflicting assertions can you even pack into a question? Or several ones for that matter?

But without knowing it, he might have offered me an answer to my own conflicting feelings. A rather clear answer, and that makes him the true philosopher, not me…

Like I said, another one of those encounters you can only have here… Because you try to be much more open. So different from what you really are… And then you close the door to your appartement, your inner sanctum… and what remains is but the memory of a nice coffee and a good advice. And in that… still nothing has changed. Not really anyway.
I am still left with my fears and doubts and there is still no hint of a solution… just good advice. As if I hadn’t had those myself.

Paris under the snow

Posted by yseult on Feb 23, 2005 in Personal, Work

Paris was under the snow today…
… that’s not really astonishing as a news line now, is it?

Well… maybe you don’t know that this city has not a single snow vehicle, nor any salt to prevent the snow from icing over, nor do they send out any maintenance people in the morning to make some pathways on the streets for people who should be so bold as to try to get to work in the morning…

400km of traffic jam from the peripheric to the center is all I am saying.
Here… or here or here maybe… or here or then again (even made CNN, haha) and again HAHA!!! (The Rugby fans for the Six nations cup are grounded in Cardiff… Airports of Paris closed…)

I’m sorry, but this really makes me laugh… and I am sure it would have Krystin up in the Great White North laughing on the floor.
Er… hello? Weather control to the pompous French…? There is another load of the terrible alien white headed your way… What are you gonna do? Have a 10h week? This’ll be your end… muuuuaaaaahhhh….

Not even half of the students came into the seminar today. Lol… OK. Let’s get real. It did snow quite heavily. And it was about… well, 10cm. Pathetic… and this is supposed to be one of Europe’s center pieces of a new society? Hmm…

I had my enjoyable moment with the snow this morning at 7:30. I went out spend an hour to get all ‘snowed up’… with the wind from the boulevards I was white when I got to my café at the corner to get some smokes. “Ah, Uh… vous êtes toute blanche…??!” the guy said… He hates snow, just like every one in this town. All I could manage was a “Alors… je me sens comme chez moi en Suisse…” – He looks at me appalled and timid, stating: “Ah… alors cela ne vous fait rien?”

Hahaha…

I’ll better stop laughing, because it’s possible that I have opened all windows and doors to that flu bug that has been bothering me for the last weeks…

Trying my best Penkala: “I am shakin’ so goddamn much…I feel like I’m dancin’.”
What a YYBWBOBTM moment… *sipping hot tea with lemon*

More impressions of Paris under the snow
1 (the angel of the Column of July, Plc dl Bastille)- 2 (bvl Richard Lenoir towards Plc dl République)- 3 (same)- 4 (still the same) – 5 (the angel again… ah)
If you want to know where that is… go here…

Explosion Downtown and Valentine Weekend

Posted by yseult on Feb 13, 2005 in Work

Oh my. I’ve just stumbled over the AP message that the Théâtre de l’Empire in the centre (rue Wagram, place de l’Etoile) has been blown up this morning… literally.
they have no idea what happened, but apparently there was no fire afterwards. That tibit of info tells me two things: cannot have been gaz (cause the metall sparks would always cause a blaze) and not an ordinary fire building up until reaching the gaz line.
Smells like explosives to me and judging from the pictures the blast was rather well localised and limited, directed at the front. Seven victims were counted, mostly scratched… possibly bypassers since the rue de Wagram is a shopping/café street and it was early coffee time.
The theatre was to be transformed into a hotel next year and I wonder if it was a hot demolishion… Seems odd.

Other than that the city is buzzing with a lot of tourists and strangers: it’s Valentine weekend and where do respectable lovers go on Valentine’s Day?
I went ot the Monmartre yesterday evening and listened to some chanson music typical for the 18th arrondissement while drinking a coffee. Hmmm… Can anyone give me a good remedy for not being reminded of the film ‘Moulin Rouge’ all the time?
I passed the infamous windmill yesterday and after the renovation some time ago, it looks… well… new. Lost a bit of it’s typical Monmartre appeal I think.
All is covered in lights and it’s more like place Pigalle now. But, hey… that’s the spirit of the moment, isn’t it? Today, nothing is left to the observers thoughts,ideas or inspiration and imagination anymore. Everything has to be overly explicit. Openly referenced. A spotlight rather than indirect light.
I’ll spare myself the philosophical debate for once and get some more coffee instead…

OCR or how to NOT digitalise a text…

Posted by yseult on Feb 11, 2005 in Work

I went to bed yesterday unsuspecting. It was about 3am and I still couldn’t sleep… in this semi-slumber state… this terribly annoying hybrid state where you’re not awake enough to really think, but you’re not sleeping either.

That’s when suddenly my mental ‘to do’ list starts pestering me… Turns out I completely forgot to enter the digitalised version of a Quaestio by Olivi [14th century thinker with very particular ideas on how to define 'immaterial matter'... don't ask... ] to my boss. And she hasn’t cared to remind me… hm… bad sign of some heavy clouds and rain coming my way…

*curses are censored*

So after skim reading the translation work from the other day and finding it utterly rubbish [please... British expression... not American...], I decided to change the work plan and do the OCR on the Latin Text for my boss… fun.

I thank my ‘Yseult-thinks-about-everything-in-advance-Neurosis’ cause the text is buried in my Fribourg Archive somewhere in the deeeeeeep folders of my laptop, so the scanning is already done.

I obviously even had the sense of saving it to Word.

Of course everything is upside down and the noise from the scans brings some nice errors: substariae? …fldem? RespondeoJX!…? … fleri? what the…

Argh… You forgot to save the recognition routine from the last 80 pages you passed through OCR… you bonehead! *bonk*

There goes my day… 65 pages to correct word for word… with one week behind schedule…

Hankies anyone?