Do I look like someone who feels like finding a good title?
I'm back from my trip to the South of France for my job interview, and I feel... Weird. Yeah, basically just weird. But a bad weird. Yeah actually I'm pretty low today. I'm torn between feeling veeeeeeeeeeery bored and wanting to do things and not feeling like doing anything. It doesn't help that I thought I'd be spending most of my day on Hatoful Boyfriend but it actually comes out at 6pm... I have jobs I need to apply to but I completely feel like shit job-wise, so it doesn't help. Anyway I'm gonna give you a little summary of my trip, because why not.
First, I'm very used to travelling by train and to finding my way in Paris's underground, so I didn't mind the 8h+ trip. The plan was Nantes -> Paris (Gare Montparnasse -> Gare de Lyon) -> Nîmes -> Alès. It all went smoothly, I had never gone from Montparnasse to Gare de Lyon but it's actually pretty simple and short (I even had time to get very bored waiting at Gare de Lyon but well). The first half of the trip was very uneventful, but I have more to say about the Paris -> Nîmes part.
I was seated next to a very peculiar guy, and we were in a "carré" (litterally "square") which means two persons were facing us, with a table inbetween. First, a small description: he's a white guy around 50-60yo, and the kind of guy who is unnecessarily social, especially for a train trip. He wants to find something to tell you, and he probably means well, but God how you don't care... So the guy sits down and starts taking his homeopathy pills, the woman facing him talks to him about it and I hear him explaining things like he's an expert, at this point I don't mind but I'm like "yeah obviously it works magic since you've been coughing approximately every 5 seconds for half an hour now". Then they finish their conversation, and not so long after he turns to the woman on the other side of the alley, who has her cat in a travel carrier next to her and he asks, out of the blue "when did you last deworm it?". Obviously she's taken aback and says "well... every 6 months, why?" and he starts going on about a natural dewormer made from boiled parslay and I can read a huge "why are you talking to me?" in the woman's eyes. He then spends a while reading Health Through God's Pharmacy (but in French) by Maria Treben (yes I checked it out on google) and I'm reading Beautiful Chaos, so nothing happens for the next hour or so (except that I see him trying to read the cover of my book (I can't blame him I did the same with his) but apparently he finds nothing to say about it). Then we make a stop in Valence and people get in, and I don't remember why but the woman facing him gives her spot to one of the newcomers. So the train starts moving again, and I see him eyeing the newcomer, who is a muslim woman wearing a jilbab, and he starts writing something on a piece of paper. At this point I'm just praying for it not to be some racist or islamophobic or otherwise ignorant comment. Turns out he recommends her some vitamin D complements, which is useful when you never expose your body to sunlight and therefore a pretty nice thought, and she seems to appreciate it. Well she DOES ask "so you are, like, a doctor?" at some point, to which he answers "no, I am a magnetic healer", I can't tell if she lost some trust in him or not, but well. By this point I've finished reading Beautiful Chaos, so I take my other book, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and this time he finds something to say about it, he goes on about how it sound great but is impossible because if you travel to the past you have to be conscious of all of your interactions because everyone has a timeline and stuff (when he starts speaking about time like a line I can practically hear this in my head), I was going to say that anyway in the book the guy was travelling forward in time, but he doesn't really stop talking. I try "in some installments they create alternate realities..." and he starts again saying it doesn't work because of reasons and I decide I'm not going to introduce him to the concept of multiverses. I close the topic with a "well SF isn't made for scientific accuracy anyway".
So all in all this guy was a bit annoying but harmless. When the train arrives it takes longer than planned to make the last couple of km, so we're all standing near the stairs (it's a bilevel train), and there's this old couple with us. The man I had seen being an ass to a woman who was travelling with her two huskies (they were soooo cuuuute), saying it was unacceptable to take dogs on a train and blahblah, so I wasn't too fond of them from the start. Then we start talking, and the woman starts talking about some of their travels with a lot of details and I'm sure noone is actually listening. When I mention I'm here for a job interview in Alès, first the healer guy tells me stuff about visualizing the goal and stuff (PSA: I appreciate people telling me to have a positive mood about this, I do know I should, what I hate however is people basically telling me that the reason I don't get the jobs is that I have a bad energy, which I've been told twice in two weeks. I don't deny your attitude does a lot, but 1) I'm good as hell at hiding that I think I'm crap, 2) when applied to other subjects this mentality gives off the feeling that "crap goes on in your life? It's probably your fault!" which makes me want to puke). Then the woman speaks up and I learn that 1) she's going to Alès too, and is used to going there, so I can follow her and find my train since I'm gonna have like 3 minutes to do so seeing how things are going, 2) she's THAT kind of people. I quote: "Oh but don't live in Alès, it's very special, there are a lot of Arabs, you know, and there's basically the Arab side and the European side, my daughter is having problems because her kid's middle school is between the Arab neighborhood and the Gypsy one so... And he's only ten, he doesn't realize!". UGH. UUUGH. SHUT UP PLEASE. And she goes on, "No but seriously, especially being a girl...". SHHHHH. I probably should have said something, but I didn't have the energy and she was so sure of herself that it would probably have been useless... And it was only us, so there were only white people around, which was a relief because there was nobody to get hurt by her bullshit. Only (very) annoyed. She also told me that "Oh in this area you don't need to validate your ticket before you get on the train" which is 100% false, but thankfully didn't get me in trouble.
Then my stay was pretty uneventful, the interview went OK, but the position is very demanding and I doubt they give it to someone who's just out of school like me, it's basically creating a whole new activity for the company from scratch... The only part I'm sure I nailed is when they made me speak English xD. I should have an answer within 10 days, I kind of still hope, and at the same time I don't, because I'm afraid I just won't be good enough if I get hired. I do want to try and proove myself, but I don't want to crash a small company in the process xD.
The trip back was fine, without much to say about it, except that I read about half of The Time Machine. I finished it today, and I liked it, except for the occasional "Ugh yeah right it was written in 1895" moments (I have the French translation, which uses the 1895 version, not the 1924 one (but I don't suppose he edited those bits out in the latest version)): mentions of uncivilized "n*ggers" and "But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil". Overall the future Wells imagined is very well described, and I could imagine the scenery and the inhabitants (even with having seen the god-awful takes on the two races in the 2002 movie), and for once I got caught by a first-person narrative.
I think that's all, I wrote a lot this time, now I should find what to do with myself...
PS: I think this post is a big mess of present and past, but shh.
First, I'm very used to travelling by train and to finding my way in Paris's underground, so I didn't mind the 8h+ trip. The plan was Nantes -> Paris (Gare Montparnasse -> Gare de Lyon) -> Nîmes -> Alès. It all went smoothly, I had never gone from Montparnasse to Gare de Lyon but it's actually pretty simple and short (I even had time to get very bored waiting at Gare de Lyon but well). The first half of the trip was very uneventful, but I have more to say about the Paris -> Nîmes part.
I was seated next to a very peculiar guy, and we were in a "carré" (litterally "square") which means two persons were facing us, with a table inbetween. First, a small description: he's a white guy around 50-60yo, and the kind of guy who is unnecessarily social, especially for a train trip. He wants to find something to tell you, and he probably means well, but God how you don't care... So the guy sits down and starts taking his homeopathy pills, the woman facing him talks to him about it and I hear him explaining things like he's an expert, at this point I don't mind but I'm like "yeah obviously it works magic since you've been coughing approximately every 5 seconds for half an hour now". Then they finish their conversation, and not so long after he turns to the woman on the other side of the alley, who has her cat in a travel carrier next to her and he asks, out of the blue "when did you last deworm it?". Obviously she's taken aback and says "well... every 6 months, why?" and he starts going on about a natural dewormer made from boiled parslay and I can read a huge "why are you talking to me?" in the woman's eyes. He then spends a while reading Health Through God's Pharmacy (but in French) by Maria Treben (yes I checked it out on google) and I'm reading Beautiful Chaos, so nothing happens for the next hour or so (except that I see him trying to read the cover of my book (I can't blame him I did the same with his) but apparently he finds nothing to say about it). Then we make a stop in Valence and people get in, and I don't remember why but the woman facing him gives her spot to one of the newcomers. So the train starts moving again, and I see him eyeing the newcomer, who is a muslim woman wearing a jilbab, and he starts writing something on a piece of paper. At this point I'm just praying for it not to be some racist or islamophobic or otherwise ignorant comment. Turns out he recommends her some vitamin D complements, which is useful when you never expose your body to sunlight and therefore a pretty nice thought, and she seems to appreciate it. Well she DOES ask "so you are, like, a doctor?" at some point, to which he answers "no, I am a magnetic healer", I can't tell if she lost some trust in him or not, but well. By this point I've finished reading Beautiful Chaos, so I take my other book, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and this time he finds something to say about it, he goes on about how it sound great but is impossible because if you travel to the past you have to be conscious of all of your interactions because everyone has a timeline and stuff (when he starts speaking about time like a line I can practically hear this in my head), I was going to say that anyway in the book the guy was travelling forward in time, but he doesn't really stop talking. I try "in some installments they create alternate realities..." and he starts again saying it doesn't work because of reasons and I decide I'm not going to introduce him to the concept of multiverses. I close the topic with a "well SF isn't made for scientific accuracy anyway".
So all in all this guy was a bit annoying but harmless. When the train arrives it takes longer than planned to make the last couple of km, so we're all standing near the stairs (it's a bilevel train), and there's this old couple with us. The man I had seen being an ass to a woman who was travelling with her two huskies (they were soooo cuuuute), saying it was unacceptable to take dogs on a train and blahblah, so I wasn't too fond of them from the start. Then we start talking, and the woman starts talking about some of their travels with a lot of details and I'm sure noone is actually listening. When I mention I'm here for a job interview in Alès, first the healer guy tells me stuff about visualizing the goal and stuff (PSA: I appreciate people telling me to have a positive mood about this, I do know I should, what I hate however is people basically telling me that the reason I don't get the jobs is that I have a bad energy, which I've been told twice in two weeks. I don't deny your attitude does a lot, but 1) I'm good as hell at hiding that I think I'm crap, 2) when applied to other subjects this mentality gives off the feeling that "crap goes on in your life? It's probably your fault!" which makes me want to puke). Then the woman speaks up and I learn that 1) she's going to Alès too, and is used to going there, so I can follow her and find my train since I'm gonna have like 3 minutes to do so seeing how things are going, 2) she's THAT kind of people. I quote: "Oh but don't live in Alès, it's very special, there are a lot of Arabs, you know, and there's basically the Arab side and the European side, my daughter is having problems because her kid's middle school is between the Arab neighborhood and the Gypsy one so... And he's only ten, he doesn't realize!". UGH. UUUGH. SHUT UP PLEASE. And she goes on, "No but seriously, especially being a girl...". SHHHHH. I probably should have said something, but I didn't have the energy and she was so sure of herself that it would probably have been useless... And it was only us, so there were only white people around, which was a relief because there was nobody to get hurt by her bullshit. Only (very) annoyed. She also told me that "Oh in this area you don't need to validate your ticket before you get on the train" which is 100% false, but thankfully didn't get me in trouble.
Then my stay was pretty uneventful, the interview went OK, but the position is very demanding and I doubt they give it to someone who's just out of school like me, it's basically creating a whole new activity for the company from scratch... The only part I'm sure I nailed is when they made me speak English xD. I should have an answer within 10 days, I kind of still hope, and at the same time I don't, because I'm afraid I just won't be good enough if I get hired. I do want to try and proove myself, but I don't want to crash a small company in the process xD.
The trip back was fine, without much to say about it, except that I read about half of The Time Machine. I finished it today, and I liked it, except for the occasional "Ugh yeah right it was written in 1895" moments (I have the French translation, which uses the 1895 version, not the 1924 one (but I don't suppose he edited those bits out in the latest version)): mentions of uncivilized "n*ggers" and "But I was too restless to watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil". Overall the future Wells imagined is very well described, and I could imagine the scenery and the inhabitants (even with having seen the god-awful takes on the two races in the 2002 movie), and for once I got caught by a first-person narrative.
I think that's all, I wrote a lot this time, now I should find what to do with myself...
PS: I think this post is a big mess of present and past, but shh.