genius programme design

the genius assistant programme design involves 2 types of contracts.

a 7-month one and a 9-month one.

the former starts officially from the 1 oct, ends 30 apr.

the latter finishes on the 30 jun.

now that things are coming to an end, you'd be getting ready to wrap things up and leave.

so i was trying to be very organised and started packing up and sorting my stuff out.

but then it came the 2-week spring holidays.

you see, the absurdity here is having a 2-week break in the middle of the calendar month.

this means that you'll work for 4 days or for some lucky people 2.

and then off you go on holidays, after spending 2 happy weeks getting tanned, you'll be back for 3 more days at work.

then that's it, the programme officially finishes.

i don't mind getting paid while i'm lying on the grass enjoying the great weather.

but wouldn't it make more sense to have one single form of a 9-month contract?

then people don't have to worry about sorting stuff out right after their return from holiday yet right before their departure for home.

you won't be able to close your bank account until you've got your very last payment, which, as you've now guessed correctly, is done at the end of every month.

for most people their contracts with the landlords finishes on the very last day of the calendar month, too.

if you're lucky enough to have made some local friends, you could just sleep on their floors for a couple of more days till you get things sorted out.

unfortunately i haven't made one single local friend here in france during my stay.

things have to be done before my departure.

the woman at my bank who always treated me like i was retarded told me that i should try not use my card to make any payments 2 weeks prior to closing my account.

i didn't listen, i mean hello, how is it possible to pay for everything in cash anyway.

especially when you need to make some payments online and didn't have another credit card?

i don't know how things would turn out to be, yet.

as much as i love france in general, i hate all the paperwork involved you could ever imagine and their seemingly "flexible" but rather rigid systems.

i know that i complain a lot about sheepland, but at this moment, i miss it.

when in rome... but what happens when one leaves rome?

so in fact, deep down, am a pessimistic person.

we aren't even half way through march, am already worrying about how life would be after april.

it'll be so hard to get back to the "normal" world, where everything works and is efficiently done without having to cross words with the bureaucrats.

let's face it, at the very beginning, i was really worried about this whole system:

schools are closed on wednesdays, kids are off school for at least 2 weeks every 6 weeks.

what are they able to learn?

how on earth do they have enough time to learn anything?

after being "in the system" for some 6 months now (nearly a quarter of which was holidays), you'd think i've changed my mind a bit?

well, to be frank, i am still very worried.

but hey, that's the way it is.

if it has been working for the french for decades, it must be working in some ways.

mysterious? yes. but it works, even if it appears otherwise.

i love having wednesdays off - meaning, you start a new week with monday syndrome.

after a whole day of adjusting, you're slowly getting back to reality and are ready to switch back to "work" mode.

but then it's wednesday again!

knowing that, tuesday afternoon gets just as bad as monday morning if not worse.

you can't use a bell-shaped curve to explain productivity here.

first, the word "productivity" simply does not exist in their dictionary here.

second, a bell-shaped curve is called a "normal distribution" curve.

anything but "normal"!? nah, i thought not either.

then you'll experience the exact same thing, once again, till friday afternoon.

i don't know what primary kids should be doing.

but life does get really hard later on, so let them just have wednesdays off and be nuts while they still can i say!

who cares what you've learnt in primary school, let's just have more holidays and enjoy being a primary pupil (or primary teacher come to that).

but then it's much harder for me when i do leave this wonderful "system".

i will have to go to work on wednesdays, or even saturdays and sundays like how i used to.

and i won't be having 2 weeks off work every 6 weeks and still get paid.

i won't have to pay half of my salary as tax and receive some super detailed payslip only rocket scientists could figure out...

or to expect to pay only $12 if my medical bill was something like $500.

i guess it is true then - the only way to enjoy france is to live outside it.

l'écriture cursive

it's not the first time that my kids would yell "no, it's not written like that!" while i'm trying my best to spell something for them on the board.

well, if you can tell it's a letter "L", then it's not that bad!

sometimes that happens too often, i'd lose my patience and just write in print.

during lunch ms k was marking her kids' handwriting homework.

it's such a big deal here in france, to have perfect cursive handwriting.

i was already shocked when i first came.

my 6-year-olds have perfect handwriting while i write like a kid.

well, i was taught how to do cursives once upon a time, too. but but but...

come to handwriting, i've got to mention that at my school, there are desks designed for fountain pen users - there is a hole on the RHS corner of the desk to place your ink bottle.

and all of my kids still have a fountain pen, they use them quite often too.

where was i?

oh yes, ms k marking handwriting.

so seeing how she marked all those beautiful "B"s wrong made me ask the obvious question, "so why do you mark it wrong? they look perfectly fine to me."

"well, just cos."

"why do they have to have perfect handwriting? learning to write letters is hard enough?"

"just cos." ms s echoed in matter-of-factly.

no wonder her son would leave his seat and come to the board to tell me "you have to put an extra half circle as the beginning of L" every time i write his name.

so, what next?

i'll try practicing till i re-master it again.

another thing to do in the evenings to kill time.

thanks.

laïcité

if you've ever done any french, you would have come across this word called "laïcité".

being laïque in france means that there's no such thing as religious studies at school.

well, some private schools do have such classes and that's why they're private.

so during the break time, a girl in my cp class came to complain about a boy telling them that there are vampires and she got so scared.

the teacher got so annoyed, she told her, "well, have you seen a vampire before? with your own eyes?"

"no."

"there you go, there's no such thing if you haven't seen it."

the poor little girl seemed unconvinced.

"i assure you there's no such thing, just like father christmas and god, it's just a made-up word."

here you're a perfect example of the classic french laïcité.

les grèves nationales

well, this is yet to get better here.

before my inbound trip to france, workers at la sncf went on strike for a few days.

luckily, when i got here, everything returned to normal.

(touch wood)

now, it's been barely a month, everybody's striking again as the bill is going to be put forward (and highly like to be put through) at the legislature at the beginning of november.

usually i'm often with the strikers, whatever they're asking for, they should get it.

but this time, it's getting on my nerves as i'm planning for a trip to paris the following week.

not knowing how to get there by car (or in fact, it's just me not wanting to rent a car and drive in/on the famous 'parisian traffic' and/or french highways), i had to use public transportation - the friendly and effecient tgv and regional train services.

unfortunately, they are the boldest strikers amongst all.

at one of my schools, a teacher was filling in a form to inform the authority that she's going on strike this past tuesday last friday (that's a 48 hour notice?).

and i thought it was just a one-day thing.

hell NO.

it's been on for a week now and is still going strong...

fingers crossed that it'll come to an end before my departure.

from what i've learned, read and heard, the french simply do NOT do reforms.

i dunno anything about management skills or politics, but why can the french just be left alone and just do what they're good at (okay, maybe not strikes this time)?

i don't know how people who don't own a car or a bike or friends who want to do car-pooling and live far away from work get to work on days like this.

from the experience i had, it was just a pain in the A.

i had to take a cab to work and obviously it wasn't covered in the end.

i couldn't call in sick either cos i was up to my neck in work, too.

so i just had to drag myself to work on time by all means.

it's amazing how the government is still standing strong by its stance leaving its citizens in chaos like this.

but i guess they all grew up with this kind of sh*t.

so to them, it's just one of those days.

maybe you just go out, have a ciggie break, and take it easy.

i'm yet to master this just-calm-down-on-days-without-any-kind-of-transport-to-work skill.

though i am sure that this is a very fine example of the french culture and am proud that i'm having some authentic experience living like a french person.

being well-organised

i'm not the most well-organised person on the planet, obviously.

i haven't met all the people on this planet, so i can't claim the above.

but the french are famous for being so "well-organised", as you've already heard so far through different channels.

lemme just elaborate on this in the following.

first of all, the whole application thing.

it was so well-organised that i was only contacted twice (okay, maybe 3 times) during the entire process.

the original cultural attache finished his appointment in sheepland half way through our application process.

the new one came in and got in touch with us just 2 weeks before i got my actual visa.

well, that wasn't particularly helpful of her, was it?

on the other hand, the french french side of things are just "pretty-looking".

on my assignment contract, there's no final destination.

meaning, i was only given a visa to come to work in france, but god knows where.

might as well be high up in the mountains doing random sh*t like counting sheep.

well, according to someone who's done this programme before, this is VERY normal.

all i wanted was a visa anyway, so i guess i can accept that.

then it just got prettier.

i was meant to start my assignment on 1 oct, so i figured that i shall arrive here a week earlier to get myself organised before my assignment starts.

but i had to know where i was going to begin with, hadn't i?

so at the end of august, i sent an email to the contact person.

no reply after 2 weeks.

well, it was the first 2 weeks into the new school year, i guess it is normal?

then the third week, still no response, even my dad was kinda worried for me.

i re-email the contact person by copy-pasting the exact same thing.

couple of days later, she told me where to go, but still no more specific information.

it was like they're sending me to do some highly confidential assignment or something.

cos why else you wanna be so mysterious?

isn't that just a fine example of how well-organised the french are?

anyways, i told her that i was gonna arrive in france and would text her to know what time i shall be arriving so that i would get collected from the train station.

guess what?

to keep the consistency of being well-organised, after i texted her on my day of arrival on the tgv, i got a reply saying, "sorry i don't have anyone to get you from the airport, take a cab."

if you think this sucks, then keep reading.

we were meant to be having an induction today in a different city.

so we took a bus early in the morning to go there, and we were told beforehand that we would be collected by a bus which would get us to the induction place.

guess what?

well, you're right.

the bus never came.

turned out the bus wasn't gonna come.

we had to catch another bus then walk all the way to that school from the train station.

so well-organised you guys!

i'm feeling like i'm experiencing the authentic french life.

and after all this, i'd like to say that even sheepland has a very efficient bureaucratic system.

well, at least they won't stand us up by not sending a friggin bus.

cuteness @ the city hall

worry not, i'm not insane.

well, not yet, not before i encounter the OFII and/or the CAF people.

that's some serious bureaucracy there.

if i haven't gone through those processes, i can't say that i've been living in france.

honestly, why are you laughing?

anyway, on our way to town today, we saw something on the noticeboard outside the town hall.

there was this one piece of paper hanging up there.

just being the usual nosy me, i walked up close, it read:

mr xxx, shop keeper, born xxx, in xxx,

and

miss yyy, hairdresser, born yyy, in xxx,

are getting married on ___.

this is to notify that they are tying the knot.

and will be living xxx after they get married.

according to the authority, this public notice will be up there for 10 days and one is not supposed to celebrate till the 11th day!

i don't really know the protocol (why should i anyway), but i thought this is really cute.

french supermarkets

being chinese has certain advantages - one of them being, you'll totally keep a straight face when you see what some people call "odd" at supermarkets.

my american colleagues have arrived in town.

to get myself some fresh air, i went to the supermarket with them.

to be precise, this is what they call an "intermarché ", i guess it's smaller than an hypermarché?

coming from sheepland, this intermarché is actually quite a decent size compared to the ones in our neighbourhood.

if you're (un)lucky enough to have seen the size of the new world on willis st in wellington, you'd think that this intermarché is what should be referred to as an hypermarché.

well, things are different on the other side of the world in america.

they aren't impressed by the lack of choices, for sure.

plus it's only 1/7th big as a wal-mart.

then they saw pig ears, trotters, things that they'll never see at supermarkets back home.

next, in the fridge, a WHOLE fridge filled with duck hearts!

they kinda freaked out a bit.

i didn't want to scare them, so instead of picking up a pack and put it in the trolley, i just stared and walked away.

i can't decide if it's me or people from the english-speaking world just don't eat certain things.

i still remember how in french classes, we'll always be talking about eating escargots and frogs.

and they'll just frown and say, "no i don't like escargots, they taste like rubber."

this actually brings me to another question, have ALL of them who claim this actually eaten their erasers in primary school during classes?

the good thing is that there're no frogs in sheepland, so most people who don't like the idea of eating frogs can't give nasty comments about the taste of these heavenly frogs.

little do they know that our french prof, catherine's favourite food is tête de veau.