Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

One of the stranger aspects of us living here is the different way that James & John refer to things.

As we’re in France, they aren’t picking up english from kids at school as they’d normally do but rather picking it up from home and the TV. This means that it’s possible for us to pick out where they’ve learnt a word. So, by and large, they “speak cooking” with an Australian accent and they “speak computer” with a Belfast accent.

It’s also interesting that whilst both James & John refer to “Granda” and “Nanny here”, James who used to be looked after by my parents has “Granda’s Nanny”, John who was born here has “Nanny at the airport” as that’s usually the last place that he sees her.

We think that it was because Wendy was looking after James a lot more when he was younger than I was that he has developed a largely Australian accent but with us both being around much more equally since John was born he has a much more pronounced Belfast accent. You’d have thought that since James has been here over 60% of his life now that his accent would have become more balanced but it hasn’t done, or at least not yet so I guess that it’s the first couple of years that are the most important in terms of accent

One of the best ways to see Paris is from a cruise down the River Seine which runs right through the city.

There’s quite a selection of cruising options of course. Day cruises let you see the sights but don’t have quite the romance of the evening cruises.

Now, you might think an evening cruise would cost a fortune but, whilst not exactly cheap, they’re far from being the ripoff that they could so easily be and you can have dinner on an evening cruise for under EUR 100 which is pretty good value considering that you get a good meal with the cruise thrown in.

The evening cruises usually offer a choice of early and late. The later cruise is by far the best option as you’ll have the chance to see all the illuminations as you have your meal. For a truly fantastic evening, July 14th is hard to beat as that’ll include the Bastille Day fireworks but even on a normal evening you’ll see things like the Eiffel Tower illuminations.

We’re listed on a number of instant-booking websites which are quite different from the usual “drop us a line and we’ll get back to you” type of site that the majority of B&B type places (and many hotels) are listed on in that once the guest has clicked the “book it” button, they are guaranteed to have the room available.

Now obviously when there’s an automated process like this, the system needs to hold information about various aspects of the room and, in particular, the number of people that the room will hold. So, for example, if you book a double room through a system like this, then it’ll sleep up to two people.

So what do people start doing around this time of year? Well, they book a double and in one case turned up with five people for the room. Why? Well, on another site (not the one that they booked through), we say we don’t charge extra for children so they figured that they could book the cheapest double room and turn up with an unlimited number of children.

This, despite the site saying, “the maximum number of people (including children) is 2” for that particular room.

We’ve just received the first of these bookings for the Summer season… there’ll be many more. Actually, the current family are quite lucky in that we have a room available: I think that the 2 adults plus 3 children ended up sleeping in the car as they arrived on the busiest day of the year last Summer.

After nearly two weeks of no ADSL, we’re finally back online, at least for the moment.

We’ve been calling France Telecom every day over that time and every day it’s a a different answer. At the start of the two weeks, the noise on the line was so bad that we couldn’t hear the guy on the fault reporting line so ended up having to call them from another phone.

Result? We’ve tested your line and it’s perfect. Emmm, we can’t hear anyone when they call as there’s so much noise on the line. No, it’s perfect.

Next day. Testing… yes, there’s a problem. We’ll send someone out. Two days later nobody and no working line so we call again. No, we’ve tested it: there’s nothing wrong. Several more attempts and we actually had someone come out. Ah, there was oxidation on the contacts, that’s why it wasn’t working.

Well, that sort-of fixed the phone. We can usually hear people now but still the ADSL wasn’t working. Called again. Yes, there’s a problem on the line: we’ll send someone out. Two days later, with nobody out: no, it’s your problem we’re charging you EUR 150 for someone to come out.

That guy actually did come out and announced that it was perfect. Still no ADSL though. Of course, the guy who came wasn’t from France Telecom so wouldn’t test the France Telecom modem for us. Thought I’d try changing the modem and cables and that worked, for a while (at a much higher speed than before) but ’tis still rather hit & miss and we can’t hear people when they call so I’m not sure how long we’ll be online this time.

As you’ll have noticed, I’ve posted next to nothing over the last month. A total of seven posts vs what would have been a more normal 30 in fact.

That’s because I’ve been over in Northern Ireland trying to sort out some administration since June 5th and only got back home on Friday evening.

Now, I wasn’t expecting there to be much change in the traffic on my websites but the blog is different. The most commonly held belief is that you need to post at least once a day to keep up the traffic. That seems reasonable: after all, blogs, for the most part, cover “current events” in some fashion so without the regular updates, the traffic on a blog is bound to drop off quite quickly, isn’t it?

Well, the funny thing is that the blog traffic didn’t drop at all by any meaningful amount. The number of hits showed very little change at all nor did the adsense income. The number of subscribers via Feedburner dropped about 10%. The number of incoming links as counted by Technorati went up.

So little was the change that it has me wondering if the best strategy would be to build up a blog over six months or so then start a new one.