Dear friends,

I ask of you very little but today I ask you for an immense pull-together of brain power and original thought.

If, hypothetically speaking, you had a marked oral presentation to give tomorrow at 1pm on the subject of business but with an “economical, political or social” spin, what exactly would you talk about for seven minutes?

Of course this is entirely hypothetical and I do not have said presentation to give in less than 24 hours which I haven’t even started.

Any and all ideas are welcome and will be rewarded (I’m not yet sure how, but rest assured they will be).

Yours always,
Matthew.

I’ve been out all evening, why wait until I get back in at gone 1am to do it? Sleeping with headphones in is getting tiresome.

Hello, sorry for not telling you but I’ve been in Berlin this week. I’ve just got back home and I already have post-holiday blues. I had a really good time discovering a new city and remembering what it’s like to be somewhere where you don’t understand a word they’re saying to you (it’s been many years since I’ve holidayed in a non-franco or anglophone country). But there were a few ‘turning points’ (à la History Boys) that really make me think and reflect.

Like homophobia-driven confrontations on the dance floor of a night club in a 21st century capital city. Excuse me?! I mean, in the middle of a Lebanese shopping centre or an Abu Dhabi business meeting this sort of behaviour wouldn’t be altogether unexpected, but is it really in Europe? Inversely, I understand also that seeing two guys necking one another on a night out isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but tolerance is the name of the game, or failing that just not behaving like a total savage.

Otherwise my impressions of Germany on my first ever visit were good. A French guide book I bought talked for pages and pages about the ‘coldness’ of the Germans, though I found the truth to be the polar opposite. I actually think the French could learn an awful lot from the Germans’ openness and hospitality. In fact the thing I enjoy the absolute most about travelling to different places and meeting new people is, as cliché as it may sound, seeing how much we all stand to learn from others. How to act, how to think, how to live. To drop the frustrating coincé and superior attitude of the French, the ignorance and pig-headedness of the English, in favour of a more German attitude. And I’m sure there are some that would do it better than the Germans, so I would love to find that place and learn even more.

Anyway, I’m all alone in my flat since I flew back a day earlier than all my friends due to work commitments. Yes, the post-holiday blues have been brought on much quicker all thanks to the fact that tomorrow morning I have to get myself out of bed to go to work like an idiot for 12 hours for the most horrible man in Paris who is always happy to count the till at the end of the night but has never to date thought about the benefits of thanking the staff that make him the very wealthy and odious man that he is.

He too has a lot to learn.

whydoihaveablog:

It’s pretty depressing when your first thought in the morning is “I cannot believe some of the things I wake up next to,” and it’s not in reference to someone you met at a bar the night before, but instead a lampshade and 4 giant English anthology books. 

Every morning I wake up and realise I’ve just spent yet another night with my laptop, phone and glasses for company. Occasionally I find old cereal bowls or plates too.

By the way I recently started using Tumblr in French and I’d like to be the first to say that it’s really weird and doesn’t really make sense. The words are all correct but the whole concept doesn’t really work in French.

Anyway the sort of cool French kids that’d use Tumblr would be the same kids who are too cool to speak French and probably speak English one hundred percent fluently; I don’t know a single French person who uses facebook in French, for example.

The apprehension of languages other than English is well and truly dead, it’s a fact. This is a sad fact as it renders my whole degree, everything I’ve worked for in life this far and my entire skill-set (which consists solely of: speaking French) totally useless. Oh.

#existentialism

Yesterday I saw this laptop bag in Maison de Ville, a wonderful shop a few doors down from my apartment and I just knew I had to have it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day today so went back and bought it.

It’s super green and super gay, but fuck it. I do live in the Gay Marais in Gay Paris and a splash of ostentatious leather in a vibrant colour against my usual muted shirt-and-jumper combination is hardly the most offensive thing that I could do to my innocent Catholic upbringing. So I’m embracing it.

(Also I did ask the shop assistant her advice on colours and walked up and down the shop in front of a mirror seeing which one was best. That is the gayest thing of all).

Adele - Someone Like You.

I can’t stop listening to this song, though if you’re currently of a heightened emotional state I wouldn’t recommend it.

This sounds like a very good album, however it annoys me how she’s called it 21 as it only rubs it in my face that her last album was called 19 and I am 19 now and I haven’t released an album yet. Not that I’m going to, let alone two by the time I’m 21, but it just reminds me that I’ve achieved nothing so far, left no lasting mark.

In case you hadn’t noticed, generally speaking I’ve had an awful January 2011 so far. This was not remedied by even more bad news at work this evening. Afterwards though I went out, had fun, and then walking home I found twenty euros on the floor outside the Pompidou Centre.

Every cloud has a silver lining?

The University of London Institute in Paris - three days a week of pure, organic, force-fed bollocks.

It’s a hugely depressing thought that I’ve got another 18 months of this unbearable, pathetic excuse for a university, during which period I can no longer miss one single lesson (yes, I just received a formal warning for absence under the new system imposed on us by Royal Holloway, who refuse to believe we exist when we need them but enforce us to comply with their ridiculous policies and procedures which are nigh-on impossible to fall into line with when you live in a country as politically and bureaucratically backward as France, a system which is implemented in different ways by different members of staff and not fully understood by the student body or union).

One more absence between now and end of term 2012 and I fail my degree.

The current contents of my fridge does not bode well at 9pm on a Sunday night when literally every shop is closed and I’m starving hungry.

fuckyeahkanyewest:

 

Fully Validated Kanye West Retires To Quiet Farm In Iowa

‘I Got All The Approval I Needed,’ Content Former Pop Star Says

From The Onion, but an entertaining article nonetheless.

Up until this very moment I’d never even once considered Kanye West’s potential culinary abilities. The more I think about it the more I like the idea. We should probably just hurry up and get married to be honest with you.

After battling with the iPhone/Blackberry debate - as seems customary these days - for many months I have finally decided to purchase a Samsung Galaxy S Android Smartphone and I’m thrilled to say it shall be winging its way to me within the week.

Help me, I have a bit of a situation here. A colleague of my flatmate has recently moved to Ireland, but he left his dog in his apartment in Paris. This happened in early December and since then colleagues at the restaurant where they work have been taking it in turns to tend to the dog, walk her and feed her.

Yesterday I happily volunteered my services as a capable dog-lover and carer and went round to the apartment. When I got there I found her locked in the bedroom, laying on a ripped mattress covered in urine stains and surrounded by her own fæces. Her water bowl was empty. The dog didn’t know me at all but all she wanted to do was be as near to me as possible. She was desperately crying out, craving for any form of attention. After walking and feeding her we settled in a chair, her on my lap. I eventually had to leave, though the devastating cries coming from the bedroom as I locked the door were enough to test the emotions of any man.

This morning when I returned the situation was much the same as I fed her her breakfast and took her for a walk. We stopped by a pet shop and I treated her to a rope toy and some biscuits. Back home I inadvertently fell asleep on the sofa of the cold, deserted apartment and woke up with Hurley curled between me and the back of the chair, softly snoring as we shared each other’s warmth and company.

I’ve known the dog less than 24 hours but I know she is one of the sweetest dogs I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and it’s not fair for such a beautiful creature to be locked up in that place with very little affection, company, food or sanitation.

All the better half of me wants to do is contact the SPA to get this dog into some proper care as it deserves, but the problem lies in that the dog belongs to a colleague of my flatmate, so what repurcussions would something like that have on her? Also, apparently ultimately the plan is to take the dog over to Ireland, but no body seems too certain on when or indeed how this will take place.

What should I do? For now I’m just going to keep going to see the dog and make sure she is well. That’s all I can do and will do in a humane sense, but more morally I can’t let this dog live like this for much longer, can I?a

Pardon? My greatest achievement of 2010? Well how thoughtful of you to ask. If you’d have asked me 24 hours ago I’d have probably said that furthering this exciting yet somewhat directionless life I have in a foreign country by getting a job, making new friends and generally doing all right for myself was the achievement about which I was most proud.

If however you’d have asked me about 20 hours ago, my biggest achievement of 2010 would definitely be getting reblogged into FuckYeahSamTsui.