FR - Royal ou Sarko... oubliez, je veux Obama!

Le plus gros problème que j'ai avec ces élections, à part le fait de devoir rentrer en France pour m'acquiter de mon devoir de citoyenne, c'est que je ne sais honnêtement pas pour qui voter.

Trop de médiatisation autour de Mme. Royal et M. Sarkozy, pas assez autour des outsiders François Bayrou, Marie-George Buffet... J'avoue que M. Bayrou et moi-même partageons une (seule?) opinion... il faut arrêter de voter pour un parti mais pour des gens.

En fait, moi ce que j'aimerais vraiment, c'est voter aux USA! Déjà parce que la pression de se dire que mon vote compte serait levée comme on a pu le constater en 2000, et surtout parce que je sais pour qui je voterais... ou du moins j'hésiterais moins!

Je l'annonce donc... si je pouvais voter pour des élections qui vont vraiment compter pour les années à venir au niveau planétaire, je voterais Barak Obama!

Démocrate de 45 ans fraichement arrivé en politique (depuis 14 ans), qui ne cache pas avoir fumé de la marijuana au College tout en étant sorti d'Harvard diplômé de droit avec honneurs, qui ne renie pas ses racines mi-africaines (père africain, mère américaine) mais ne mise pas dessus. Barak déplace les foules, et plus important, Barak déplace les jeunes! Un des rares à avoir ouvertement dénoncé la guerre en Irak dès le début (quand c'était pas bien vu de le faire!).

Il veut ouvrir le dialogue avec l'Iran, retirer les troupes d'Iraq, les mettre en Afghanistan, parler sérieusement des problèmes environnementaux...

Honnêtement quand je vois les candidats états-uniens, je me dis qu'une fois de plus la France est en retard! On se bat pour savoir si une femme a vraiment une chance d'être élue Président quand ils ont un candidat femme (en tête dans les sondages) et un candidat métis. Je ne dis pas qu'un des deux sera élu, mais ça pose la question de savoir si la France n'évolue pas un peu trop lentement.

Le problème étant que je reste également persuadée que les français sont bien plus ouverts d'esprit que les américains et que les fans de Nascar/Rednecks vont sans doute tuer cet espoir dans l'oeuf en votant pour un 'mec qui en a'... sans compter que les morts votent apparemment, mais ne sont pas représentés dans les sondages... de même, les noirs sont représentés dans les sondages mais ne votent pas!

Et comme de toute façon je ne peux pas voter pour Barak Obama, je reste sur ma première conclusion... on est mal barrés!

UK oddities and singularities.

Throughout my 3 years in the UK (I lived in England for 18 months a few years ago), I've noticed many inconsequential differences between my own culture and the British one.

Please keep in mind I'm in no way judging those nor the French or UK culture. I was asked once by an American girl whether France and the UK were similar... obvisouly this person never studied the European History. But on a funny note, it seems the only similarity we truly have is that we both drink tea (but then again it's subject to discussion)!

To list but a few oddities I've come across:

- Tea bags: You'd think England is the country where to drink a cup of tea, a cuppa as they would say. Granted, it's part of the decorum, but if you want a good cup of tea, the UK is not the place to go in my opinion. They basically have two kinds of tea, Breakfast tea and Earl Grey! You'll have to go to wee retailers like Whittards where you'll find a few more varieties, but nothing like we find in any middle range supermarket in France or the dozens of varieties found in tea and coffee shops!

Another oddity is that they haven't discovered something I find rather useful, some very basic concept I thought always existed... the string! You'll need a teaspoon or a tea claw to extract your tea bag from your cup.

The reason for this might be they don't really take the tea bag out! If you like it light, my advice to you... always specify you want the tea bag on the side, not already in the cup or tea pot! They like it really strong and sweeten it with milk. All in all it's not bad and I came to like it like that too, but nothing is better than a light Orange-Cinnamon cuppa if you'll ask me!

- Products you won't find in the UK: Being French, I was used to certain products I was raised with. Nothing too fancy or too French, at least that's what I thought, until I came to the UK!

In here they don't have 'compote' nor do they have an English word for it! It's not marmelade, it's more like mashed fruits and it's really good! They don't have 'crème dessert', they have chocolate mousse. You'll find some in the continental shop Lidl but every single French person out there will share my misery when I tell you I couldn't find a single Danette pot here! You won't find a good slice of ham the way we know it in France, nor will you find any 'saucisson sec' or pâté (I'm talking about real pâté folks! ;-) )

- Products you'll find in the UK that you should find in France!

Everything isn't negative about the food, truth be told I don't really miss the French food in the UK but I surely miss the UK food in France! They have baked beans, real bacon (not the round tasteless slices we have!), real barbequeue sauce (not the Heinz sort we're so proud of!), Digestives (the best cookie ever!), scones and clotted cream (so posh, so good!), garlic bread...
But more importantly, we don't have cheddar in France! Yes, we do have tons of different and very good cheeses. Being from Normandy, I know about cheese, but I'm telling you, extra mature cheddar is to die for!

Now for the real oddities!

They have bags of crisps I could fit in after I had eaten the content, it's crazy! Their frozen chips departement is bigger than the vegetables one! If you go to a take away and ask for a burger, they'll just dip a piece of ugly meat in boiling oil and put it in a box! Their kebab meat always looks like they haven't removed the plastic wrapping!

I can't list all of the oddities I've discovered in one post, it would be a looong one... so stay tuned for more comparisons!

It was a close call!

Just some silliness to finish the week/start the weekend!

Lenovo and and the Formula 1 Williams Toyota team just signed a sponsorship agreement from 2007 on!

What's funny is that I'm a big fan of Formula 1 (Michael Schumacher, you're a living legend!) and former fan of Williams, back when Ralf Schumacher was driving for them. But at the same time I happen to indirectly work for the former laptop activity owner of Lenovo... so I'm a former fan of my work and F1 team! ;-)

Doesn't make much sense does it? Well, it does to me only I guess!

Anyway, thanks to Frank Williams' way of managing his team, I won't have to support a team with a sponsor which put a few friends out of job a few months ago... nope, doesn't make much more sense!

Well... forget it, I still think it's funny though!

Bottom line... Look out for Lewis Hamilton, I might not like Ron Denis either, but the boy has potential, that's for sure!

I did it!

Long time, no see I'd say! It indeed has been a while since I wrote the last message in English on the blog. Well, you see, there are two reasons!

The first one is that it's winter time! So no trip, no photos and basically rain pretty much everyday! So not a lot to say about Scotland at the moment, although it might change soon!

The second is that life has decided to speed up the pace a bit and I had a hard time catching up with it!

To list but a few changes at the moment, I got a promotion at work, I'll soon have a new flatmate, I've switched to Linux and I got new screen wipers for my car!

Ok, the last one is irrevelent but trust me, it's quite useful!

Regarding the first one, when I first arrived in Scotland, I promised myself not to remain an agent for the duration of my initial contract which was of 18 months... well, 17 months and 3 weeks later, I finally got promoted with a side order of payraise! ;-)

On a personal level, my Swiss German flatmate will soon be flying back home for good and a French guy will be moving in next week!

As for Linux, well, Vista was the final straw... I just couldn't resign myself to getting the new version of Windows... too many expectations, I would have been disappointed! So I switched to Linux, Ubuntu to be precise. The only reason I'm saying this, apart from the reason being I'm quite proud of my achievement, is that it will change the way I deal with my pics as the softwares I used to work on are solely Windows ones, so I need to somehow find new ones as well as a way to upload them since I used to upload them through Windows. But hey, if Windows can do it, Linux can do it better, I just have to dig a little to find what I'm looking for!
So back to the title... I did it, what you'll ask me!

Well, today symoblizes my 18 months in Scotland, which is what I had set my mind on! So I kept the promise I had made to myself, to my employer and to my family and friends! From today on, it's all bonus!

But I'm not done with Scotland yet and don't plan on leaving anytime soon, not with the promotion and the flatmate, a new period of my life is beginning, with more responsabilities and the same eagerness to live my life to the full!

So stay tuned... there should be more tips about Scotland, more pics and more stories to come fairly soon, afterall, it is my duty to show my new flatmate the beauty of this country!

Cheerio as they say around here!