... and a happy new year !

I may, or may not have used the same post title last year, but, well, it's seasonal. And appropriate.

In any case : Happy New Year reader ! I am off to Berlin, to celebrate the new year with my friends and enjoy a bit of the German atmosphere. First time in Berlin in my whole life, though I've studied German for... wait... 12 years. Quite a lot von die Motivation !

My plans for next year : Eat less, work more and spreaaaad love. What about yours ?

I wish you all the best, anything you might wish for yourself (except if it involves whatever form of death and destruction), and love, health, glory and riches on top of that !

Fahlala lala, lala, la, la !

** MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU **

I wish you all the best, a very, very merry Christmas, and also this :

Loooove all around !

The world is all around you...

Hej! Hej hej hej! I am back from Copenhaguen where I spent these last ten days for the Klimaforum09. It. Was. Awesome. And really weird sometimes. A mixture of hope and despair and stress and love and hate and tiredness and music and noise and laughter and tears, and yes I do believe I'm out of clichés XD

It was very exhilarating and if you add all the excitement to the message and the depressing-ness of the situation, you end up with being perpetually on the verge of some kind of break down. The kind of state where you start crying because your keys fell to the very bottom of your handbag, and you fall in love with anyone who says hi to you in the corridor. The kind of state where you want to hug people half the time, and kick the furniture and scream the rest of it. Nothing in between. It is all very exciting. And very tough to describe. But here are 5 things I wanted to tell you about more particularly. My top 5 Copenhaguen "Here's to".

1) Here's to guitar playing hippies Yes indeed. Guitar playing hippies. Here's to vegan people, here's to the Via Campesina, here's to love and vegetable soup. Here's to woolen hats, here's to yogis, here's to trees and raisin bran, here's to organic coffee beans and to activist T-Shirts, here's to that lady from Tibet, and the other one from Bolivia, here's to you all who came and went and changed the way I see the world like nothing that happened to me before. Here's to me becoming a little less cynical and a little more sorry.

2) Here's to the danish pølse (and to those danish letters with the slashes and the ° on them...) Pølse is a type of special Danish hot-dog, with pickles and three types of sauce on top. They are very inexpensive, and they include some meat. Pølse are murder. Here's to vegans indeed, but I needs my proteins.

Pølse saved me from turning into a turnip at day 5, or falling into the dark pit of vegetable-spread induced depression.

Look Marion! Cool stuff on the walls in Copenhaguen too!

3) Here's to the Danish people in general, to their English skills which helped me a lot throughout the trip, to my hosts who were very, very kind and accepted to give me a bed for 10 days even though I came home at crazy hours every night. I need to find some kind of karmic offset for my hosts.

4) Here's to the Danish currency, which also saved me from starvation (had the prices been in Euros, I would probably have eaten nothing but the free vegetable soup they gave at the conference center). Honestly, Denmark, what's with the crazy prices ? 5€ for a coffee ?

5) Here's to the booth technician P, J from GoodPlanet, and the grey-haired lady who believed our tales of peanut and chocolate-fueled interpretation and brought us sweets and water all the time : Just seeing them got me in a good mood. I really like those people who are always, always in a communicative good mood.

I forget many, many things like the guy in the black hood talking about "ze pipole of ze Bretagna", the øko-chocolate cake of the conference center, my pillow and my blanket, the little christmas gnomes they have all over the place in Copenhaguen, my awesome lipstick from Japan which helped a lot with the frostbites, MSN and IT in general, all my colleagues and cinnamon rolls, but if I go on for too long, I'll start crying and saying things like "we are all part of one big human community" or "spread love" and then we will all be sorry .

PS: Sorry about the layout of this post, blogger seems to have gone wild

In the box right now

Hi reader! I'm writing here straight from my hotel room in Le Mans. I'm so glad to have a blog, sometimes... It's been a nice working day, and everyone was really nice, only I must admit to feeling slightly stupid in comparison with the experienced interpreters I worked with today. But I learnt plenty, and it was really cool. I left my hometown in the morning, (at 5.30, in fact. Too morningy for me, I am afraid) and thought about my blog in the train, since I stupidly forgot my Dorothy L Sayers at home. I hate forgetting my book at home, especially when it's as great as this one. But let's get back to business : I have a new list ! The top 5 amazing things I learnt over these past two weeks. I learnt many more things besides these five, but these are the ones I feel like talking about.

1. On the latest album of my favourite French singer, there's a duo with Eagle Eye Cherry. Now. This number 1 thing implies my admitting to the world that my favourite French singer is Gerald De Palmas. And I know for a fact that most of my readership (one is a person, two is a "-ship") knows what De Palmas sings, and is familiar with his lyrics. But I have no shame, and I love De Palmas. He's great, he is!

The reason why it's amazing that he sings a duo with Eagle Eye Cherry now, is that when I was at the end of junior high (i.e. about 10 years ago), my very very first pop-rock concert was a double bill Eagle Eye Cherry and Gerald De Palmas. It was sooooo great. I went with my sister M and my best friend V, and had such a great evening. I saw De Palmas and Eagle Eye Cherry afterwards too, but each in their own concert. So it's really strange that they should record a track together now, but it makes me very happy. Besides, it's a really cool track. Called Pandora's Box. I likes it. Makes me happy. Listening to it right now and shaking my head like those plastic dogs they put in cars...

2. Reading a book by Jane Austen is just not the same as reading another book. Now I knew that already, but last week, I read "Persuasion" in a beautiful room with golden chandeliers and portraits of dashing officers on the walls, and then I had two gin tonics, and then I went completely crazy. The kind of crazy where you pretend you are slightly lifting the long skirt of your dress when going up the stairs so that you wont step on it, even though you are wearing jeans. The kind of crazy where you can't help smiling when you remember about the "you pierce my soul" part, even though you are on the subway. Aaaaah, my. Jane Austen. One more person I'd like to thank if I ever go to heaven.

3. A good reason for tall people to wear nice shoes. I have noticed in Paris lately, and very often before, that people tend to look at my feet when I get up. Now I might be paranoid, but I can't help thinking that they are checking if I'm wearing heels. So, I figure, it's a good reason to have nice shoes. And yes, I am just trying to justify buying two pairs in two days.

4. If you are doing something silly in the street, there will be someone to watch you. Say you are in a small town, where hardly anyone is out after 10 p.m. except for you, apparently, since it's midnight and you're going home trying to be furtive as a ninja so maybe you can startle someone who's just like you, except going the other way.

Say there's a little chain dangling from the top of a shop window. Say you want to try and see if you can touch it, and then you jump a little and make a little jingle-noise with the chain. Well, statistically there is a 100% chance for a parked car to materialize right there on the spot, with a guy inside, and then you look ridiculous. And it really doesn't go with the vampire image you are trying to have when walking alone at midnight. But then again. Who knows. Maybe vampires play silly games in nightly cities all the time. If I were one, I know I would.



5. I can eat a shrimp with a knife and a fork and not use my fingers. What the mind can do... :)



Have a nice day !