Tag: Job

Life goes on

This strange and full of uncertainty corona-period is, at the same time, quite rich and interesting.

I haven’t seen my family since the last year, and I’m not going to travel to see them during winter holidays. I would rather wait for a vaccine. But I saw Greece this summer, and discovered some new astonishing places over there.

I have managed to find a job for three months: it reanimates my multi-language skills and keeps my mind quiet and busy.

Before starting the job, my mind was (and still is, but to a lesser degree) preoccupied with administrative things related to my new stay permit in France (I am changing status from “student” to “employee”). The procedure now takes even more time than before the Covid-19, and one should have much bigger reserve of patience in order to reach another shore.

The end of the second confinement was a great pleasure because I visited Vexin français. It is still the most beautiful place in Île-de-France to me.

I wish I could better control my anxiety while fixing all the things related to my stay here. I wish I could be more patient and more quiet. Because I am doing everything depending on me and because the rest will be done somehow, without my intervention.

A lazy mathematician

I made an nice acquaintance this Saturday. It’s a guy from Algeria. He looks completely like a French, at least not like a Muslim. His slight accent, though, betrays his foreign origin. He’s a painter but he cannot make money as an artist so he, mathematician, works at the same time at a famous French gas company. He loves blue colors and all the time makes jokes about his ‘manias’ and about everything around reacting vividly to any comment or phrase of mine. His and our manias concern everything in our everyday life; I think the way we organize space we inhabit is marked to a great extant by our phobias and manias.
I came to his perfectly clean flat in a close South Parisian suburb, and my mission was to clean it even better. “Don’t you regret of coming here?” he asked. “Of course not. I’ll always find what to do even when there’s nothing to do”. He explained meanwhile his philosophy of the “fainéant”, of a lazy man: “I hate doing a lot of job, so I prefer to do it gradually, in small portions. For example, it’s better to wash a cup of coffee right away, as soon as I finish my coffee. I never leave an unwashed dish for the next day, I can’t sleep if I know there’s something not done. I wash it, only then I go to bed and my mind is zen. I iron all of my chemises in advance because in the morning I only have 30 seconds to put one on.”
When I came he first made me coffee, natural, strong, tasty, not in a capsule coffee machine, offered some chocolate fait maison. As it took some time I wondered, “Am I going to work today at all?”
His womanish manners (is he gay?), his laughter, his jokes… I had an impression to have met a very educated person, generous, attentive, with his mind open… So this visit was not really cleaning someone’s apartment but like a good friends’ meeting.
I also learnt something important: amour, love in French, is in singular a masculine noun, but mes amours (plural) becomes feminine…

End of Studies

One week ago I defended my diploma. My studies are thus officially over. The defense procedure took place at Sorbonne, just in the middle of severe strike with heavy public transport disruptions. The procedure was hard, unfriendly, kind of a Kafkian process. The people engaged were rather from two different planets. One can merely imagine  h o w   d i f f i c u l t  life and studies can be for an ultimate foreigner in Paris.

I still haven’t any job. I’ve got only 35 euros earned yesterday cleaning a house of an Azerbaïdjan family in Enghien-les-Bains, 15 minutes from Gare du Nord.

The good news is that my diploma is ready in several months and that I’ll be in a regular situation in a few days as I managed to visit Prefecture de Police these days. There’s also a chance to visit Kyiv and see my beloved.

Angry bird

I am an angry bird today. The representative of the Saudi family called me this morning again. Again, they propose me to give French lessons for 20 euros / 1,5h, or for 15 euros / 1h. So, once again, we’re at the beginning of our highly diplomatic dialogue.

For those who doesn’t know: in Paris, this is more or less what one can earn as a housecleaner. NOT as a professor speaking 5 languages and having his/her PhD degree.

And although I do need money at the moment and I love money, the principle is much more important: if there is no respect for the teacher’s work, adieu!

Burning from anger, I’ve made all the way back home by foot, from 2e to 19e arrondissement. The weather is changing all the time, and there are very few people outside.

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Good job!

May 13, 2019. Monday

Three days of giving and taking the audios, of saying same words and phrases thousands times, of gathering and lifting up the guides on our shoulders from here to there, up and down, far and closer, of cleaning and putting the machines into the chargers.

Three days of waking up at 6 a.m. and coming back home after 8 p.m.

Hoarse voice, anger, but also some jokes, and also good jokes. Jokes and laughter save us. The sameness of the routine physical work varies when we laugh.

People are all the same, and we’re so always ready to create stereotypes. People are all so different, and we pay attention to these differences, we like them or we hate them, we play with them and make fun.

The 4th day is my day off. And, strangely, I do not feel as if my flesh and bones were thouroughly chewed and split out by the crowds of people visiting the fabulous château de Versailles.

I have a good feeling of my body, it is sound, ready to escape – finally! – into the fields. Val d’Oise is calling. It’s a perfect day with lucid air.

Acacias are in bloom.

One day of the sun and silence.

The next day we were told we didn’t work hard enough: instead of 50%, we distributed the audios to the 48% of the visitors during Easter and april. That’s why we won’t be paid our salary bonus which is about 200 euros. Bloody capitalism. It’s like bloody communism. Achieve the impossible with as less facilities as possible. Some colleagues think though that other colleagues are to blame: they did not try thaaat hard.

Night call

May 8, 2019, Wednesday

– Hi, I’m calling you ’cause I found your announcement on leboncoin.

– Hello, which one?

– Cleaning and other.

– There’s no “other”, and there’s no cleaning anymore. I have to delete the announcement.

– So, there’s no “other”? and there won’t be no “other”?

– No, Sir. Thank you.

– Ok, have a nice day.

– Have a nice evening.

 

 

 

 

Versailles. Suite 2

I’m losing my voice because I talk all the day long when I’m at the Château de Versailles. This Sunday there were toooo many people in the Palace. Today I think all the people who wanted to visit Notre Dame de Paris came to Versailles…

Versailles. Suite

I dare to copy and to paste here my text I posted yesterday on my facebook page in russian. I hope that the google translate or something else will help you to read it. Too lazy to translate it right now and I beg your pardon for that!

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самое занимательное в этой нынешней работе – что она голову совершенно не занимает, но зато язык это ужас, на целый день я – попугай, одни и те же фразы приходится повторять миллион раз, и слишком их варьировать не получается, потому что надо быстро, телеграфически, и понятно. так что язык к концу дня сильно путается как пьяный и извиняется. я и так не особо говорлива, но по возвращении домой рот без извинений захлопывается насовсем (на вечер)

нравятся китайцы. в предыдущем тексте я никоим образом не негативно о них, если кому почудилось. в основном это бабушки и дедушки, натрудившиеся в своей жизни, а может, и все еще. молодежь чаще всего уже холеная, упитанная, гладкая. лица у старичков морщинистые, сухие, похоже, всю жизнь пробывшие на солнце и ветрах. они перелетают с места на место стайками, не дай бог оторваться кому от всех!

есть греки, но редко. “а греческого нет?” – “нет. только я тут по-гречески.” – они хохочут: “прекрасно!”
и я веселюсь

пожилые кореянки выделяются из массы: они ухоженные, модные, похожи на черепах Тортилл – в круглых на поллица очках от солнца и шляпках, все одного фасона.

португальцев, бразильцев, испанцев еще не различаю, а их немало…

в общем, голова отдыхает и глазам не скучно

выдали, наконец, пропуск. по идее, теперь хоть сквозь стены ходи, но все мы в конце дня так устаем, что убегаем из Шато без оглядки, не оставаясь в нем ни секундой дольше) с пропуском могу, кажется, проводить одного-двух посетителей, так что велком до конца мая, кто тут

Château de Versailles

I’ve started to work directly at the Versailles Palace. The contract is signed. It’s for two months, 212 hours; ça va. My mission is extremely important! because it’s like being a mediator between the site with its rich cultural heritage and the visitors from all over the world.

I mean, I distribute the audioguides Orpheo which are in several languages 🙂

Wish me to find enough time to visit the château until the end of the contract, because it seems to be complicated: we start and finish our work when the palace opens and closes… One of my new colleagues, by the way, is not only from Ukraine, but also one of the colleagues of my Ukrainian academic colleagues! It’s a small world.