Paris hasn't burned to the ground

Every day's like sunday .. la la lallllalalaaa


... and things seem normal as ... well ... any other day... really ... the boulangeries supplies of flour and butter, to make our daily croissants - saints preserve us, haven't been interrupted ... so that's one essential of la vie taken care of then ... Chirac (our lord and master) is going to speak to the nation on Thursday ... or Friday ... or Saturday ... heuuuum .. 'at he end of the week' at any rate, according to french t.v news ...

So there you go, i feel reassured knowing that the main man feels safe enough to come out of his bunker - but at least he, unlike some world leaders i could mention (nudge, nudge), doesn't need to speak from behind bullet proof glass ... mind you, he does it from his office ... so there.... probably has his slippers on under the desk - that's all he'll be havin' under his desk at any rate ;-)

Actually, this afternoon in front of the office, there were coaches (at least five or six) jam packed full of CRS- the equivalent of the infamous special patrol group - parked outside for about an hour or so ... we (well i, at least) were all hoping to see a bit of action ... but no, they all got out, swigged stuff from brown paper bags, smoked a few tabs then bogged off ... i was gonna take a few photos, but a collegue said it. might. not. be. a. good. idea.

I went to a meeting this afternoon where we were briefed about the roll out of a new product ... it's going to be based around formation à distance using video conferencing and all that jazz ... it was classic : my french collegues were all saying they didn't understand how it could possibly work; has it been tested yet - on cuddly, furry, little animals preferably; how do we know it'll work - we'll be f***** right up if it does work; what happens if/when .... phwouarrrr i'm not too sure about all this newfangled technology stuff- scratch of the head ..

Every time an answer was given, someone would find a way of saying yeah-but-no-but-yeah-but-no .... in the end, being the good kiddie that i am, i kinda said "well, who here uses stuff like msn or yahoo or whatever, instant messaging, who has already played games on line? " ... every last one of them said like,"oh yeah all the time" - "so where's the friggin' problem then? it's all gonna have the same kinda platform" .. bunch 'o' bleedin' imbéciles .... that one didn't go down too well

But the point is, not being a smart arse, the people who're going to be using this kind of service are gonna be used to being autonome and are gonna be highly computer literate and savy - they'll sort their own problems out.

The other thing here is that, for us anglo-saxons, the attitude is more like "o.k, that sounds really cool, how does it work ? Show me "... after that it's all plain sailing, we can figure it out, we can make it up as we go along, blagg it ... suck it ... and ... er ... see ... as it were .... missus !!

But for our latin temperment, kinda cousins, it's alllll just soooo stressfull; into the unknown 'n' all that... whoooooo ... c'est une catastrophe .. they've gotta be mega reassured, you've gotta take 'em by the hand and walk 'em through, step by step, line by line ... very cartesian.

So there y'a go : the old uncertainty avoidance stuff, live and direct ... sometimes you really do wonder how these people get by just breathing without being giving detailled instructions, in a kinda IKEA kinda stylie (not a good example, i grant you) with a carbon copy, folded up neatly in the back pocket just in case or at least a help line with a real human voice at the end of it ...