or is it that the "slightly" younger ones are working all hours and haven't got the time to post...! or are so used to everything here that they moan on the odd occasion they go to the UK :-O
well here's one - the odd english speaking person who comes into my shop and, having heard from others that I'm english, speaks to my OH in English expecting her to understand which she very often doesn't only having the usual smattering of school english (she's french)!!!
Looking at these posts I see we are all in the same sort of age group................. is this relevant I wonder?? Do we become less or more tolerant as we age???
What about people who park their carts in the checkout queue and then disappear to do more shopping, often returning two or three times?
Just when you have chosen the queue because the cart wasn't overfull to start with!!
Good luck!
Share that one... aaargh!
Another aaargh!
When you download a programme in English from an English-language site, and if appears in French! Sorry I speka-da-English computer-speak, and just because I live in France doesn't mean i AM French (yet).
This blind Nerdie assumption that because you have a French email address you must receive things in French from other countries. I suppose I should get a g-mail one, but I have enough problems sorting through my daily diet of 200 plus emails anyway.
Visa for USA. My OH Swiss, children could choose, but their family name is OH's plus mine, I-M by initials. We went to London, I was feeling Machiavellian so OH and I spoke French to each other. The visa clerk asked us if we were certain we were married, to which we both answered lots of wives in the USA keep their names. Not liking our backchat he asked for the marriage certificate, we had it. Then came the sledge hammer, he asked for the children's birth certificates as well. He thought that with my 'advanced' age I may not have been the birth father. We did not have them with us. He claimed it fell within 'reasonable doubt'. If not the birth father, we could require permission for them to travel with us. The fact that our marriage certificate predated the first one's birth by a year. We were given another 'appointment' 12 days later to present them. We asked if one of us could return the next day or immediately after the weekend but that was refused. My OH and I were supposed to be doing a joint conference paper about 10 days later and had been invited at short notice. We had to cancel. The couple with the clerk nearby got their visas quickly without us noticing bits of paper flying about. Think we got the one with the bad hair day!
Not that I hold a grudge, but I was turned down once before because my passport was going to expire in roughly two months, although my trip was five days return. That was some years ago and maybe that has changed but the regulation that was explained there but was only in a six point type footnote said that visas would only be issued when passports were valid for three months or more. For a trip that only put me a few hours under four days on the ground with a UN agency invitation letter that seemed really stupid.
So, visa regulations have always worried me a bit although those were the only two out of about 30 USA trips and no other country has ever turned an application down.
Not just French Annie. It reminds me of the time on the Polish/Lithuanian border when we were working in the region, when the Polish Customs guys (before the days of the EU I might add), got completely in a mess trying to work out how a guy with a British Passport and his wife with a French passport, came to be driving a German car, registered in France!
NB in those days border guards were not noted for their smiling faces, and generous attitudes! They also didn't like looking like fools so after a four-hour delay in the car park, they finally came over and waved us on handing us back our paperwork, plus a grubby piece of paper torn from an exercise book with an official stamp put on it. On the Lithuanian side this was the only piece of paper they were interested in and, I swear this is true, the Lithiuanian Guard just curled it up and dropped it in a bin, and waved us through.
Interesting times.
friends recently asked us to pick them up AA batteries from the UK, because their tv remote would not take french AA sized batteries These are marked LR6 and are at least 1 mm longer than R6, which they had been buying a year or so ago, from home.
But all the batteries we found were LR6. ?????????????
Oh and obsolete software or hardwear thatcost a fortune as is suddenly no longer supported or updated, meaning you have to buy new stuff before the old stuff breaks. It's called "built in obsolescence" and it'sactually in real life, called "a criminal conspiracy to rip people off".
I should not be here writing this. It is weekend, there is rugby today that I intend to watch and yet... I think I hate what often turns out to be a truism: 'It never rains but it pours'.
As I have bemoaned already, I have some work running late, not my fault as said before. I have to complete it anyway. I have a negotiation running for another contract. They contacted me this morning wanting additional details in my proposal. More work. Then an annotated bibliography my OH and I have written for a mere £100 has come back with more queries this morning. We have already put so much work into it that, our pay rate must now run to single pence per hour! Then, to round off my displeasure, a second message arrived - could it be done to send in on Tuesday? I clenched my teeth. Then another mail arrived. Printer's proofs of my forthcoming book with final edit enquiries to answer. Deadline is next Friday! OK, there are not many, but more time required out of thin air. I thought nothing else could happen, went for lunch and there on the floor for me to behold a massive puddle. OK, dogs sometimes pee indoors but this was diarrhoea! Ugh.... So now one or the other of the two dogs needs attention. What else will happen?
A truism it may be, but right now 'It never rains but it pours' is resounding in my head and I am beginning to really feel that this weekend is gonna be one of 'them'. Moan over, must empty the washing machine and put stuff to dry and hope the wind doesn't turn and blow smoke back into the kitchen...
Oh yes, aaaaaaaargh!!
I think we had the 'every other week bad day' playing against Wales, so France watch out. A grand slam spoon! Wales, in for a shout. Italy are seriously on the way up but if they can hold Ireland remains to be seen, it will either be close or Italy will flop completely I suspect. I think all six packs are rubbish, as an ex-hooker, and am getting very bored with games scored almost only on penalties. It would be great to have some real rugby last round.
Yes, a hard afternoon's 'work'!
;-) ;-)
Thank you Brian,
preparing to go for a pleasant lunch in Collonges-la-Rouge. If my timing is correct I should be back in time to catch the second half of Match 1, then it will be a long evening I think? Three top matches in one day is a bit hard for me to handle though, despite my passion.
Funny thing, if it wasn't for a substantial home advantage I would have given Scotland a fair chance today.
I bet they wish they had that notable Italian(?) Luke MacLean playing for them eh?
I think Wales can turnover England, Italy could prove too strong for a very much weakened Ireland, and France by a narrow margin, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Scotland do it. We will see.
Hello Carol Lomax! Your husband and I are twins - but my Carte Vitale is still working!!!
By the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
courage ! je le ferai un jour...!
Yup, reckon that's how things should be. Unfortunately CHEAP, NASTY, SLOW seems to have won too often!
Brian, in my years dealing with print, I always used the basic formula of
PRICE, QUALITY, SPEED
CHOOSE ANY TWO!
Needless to say impressed upon me by more than one direct Aussie printer.
Always seemed valid to me, in any area of work.
Because it is counter logical. The man in charge of the work I am doing is French, but based in Budapest for a Swiss organisation. One might expect that to have drummed some order into his mind. On Thursday he and I had a Skype meeting with one of his colleagues set up for 1400. Just a couple of minutes after two he messaged me to ask if it could start half an hour late, which I confirmed, so expected 1430. 1450 I had heard nothing, so dared to go to the loo and top our stove up. I got back to find a message saying that I was not there!
Anyway I contacted him and we started. His colleague was fuming because she had been prepared for two but not told otherwise and now it was just about three. They are paying me so I had to hold my tongue but when he said something, unapologetic though, about the 'delay' I said that he being French must be used to it in humour. He quipped that 'punctuality' is not even in the French dictionary... Anyway, we did it. The meeting was pointless because he simply went over the mark ups that I had on my draft, and having designed their research document I would have assumed that he might have worked out that I am literate and saved us nearly an hour talking about things I had mainly already done. To boot, what I was working on was several days late reaching me and he had held me up over a whole working day by asking me to wait for the Skype meeting and then asked it he could have the revised draft by yesterday afternoon, less than 24 hours. Strictly speaking I could have done it, but put my foot down and said late Monday to find Tuesday when he arrived at work. I spoke about putting in my invoice because contractually I finish next Friday although I realise that by the time comments come back from the research supervisors in six countries it will be past my contractual time. He said "typical English, wanting to do everything by the book", I was seriously tempted to send a message to his boss in Lausanne about that but resisted. I reminded him that I am neither English, but the same as his programme director who is from Edinburgh, and also not 'typical' but that my bookkeeping would see me having to pay RAM as an AE at the end of April, so would like to be paid with it in the bank in time for that. His response was, that being a French government department they would be easy to cheat, so if the money is not available...
I do not believe in 'French mentality' that people say makes things like this but it falls in step with what both off you Carol and Jane are saying. It is a kind of why be bothered attitude that some people get away with so that planning is pointless and everything logjams because it is pushed into a single 'box'. This all cards at the start of the year business is typical of that irrational administration ideology. Put that together with blame the user (in my case the consultant) for all they do that is irrational and it aggravates no end. I sometimes realise what the many years of life in Germany has done to me in that sense and with a Swiss OH and how we jump up and down in reddest rage on occasions.
When I tell the delivery company that we do not live in the village, but in a hamlet seven kilometres away and they still ring me and I ask them where they are and they say in the village!
I have to get in the car and have them follow me back to the house.
If they follow the directions it is easy to find us.