First post - the pilot, in which I meet the Mayor of France

Hmmm... so I decided to write a blog. This may or may not be a good idea. I realised that a disturbingly large proportion of my day is filled with internal monologues, and maybe it will be more productive or useful in some way by writing instead. I hate the word "blog". 

Why so many internal monologues? I moved to France with what can only be described as partial language skills. After a few years and fewer lessons, I can cope fairly well with daily life, although I am terrified of phone calls. But daily life chat is not the same as having deep, or even not-deep but just normal, throw-away conversation. I also refuse to limit my friend-sphere to other English-speaking ex-pats. Why move to another country and then exist in some sort of weird international social-limbo. So I generally go out of my way to avoid deliberate meeting/socialising with english speakers when the meeting criteria is "they speak english". Thus forcing me into a weird social-limbo...

Being pseudo-integrated into French life can lead to a unique outsider-perspective of what constitutes "normal", or maybe more frequently, stumbling into some sort of misadventure. So in that sense this will form sort of an "ex-pat log". A xplog. I also run a lot, so that will come up frequently since many bizarre occurrences...occur... whilst I'm doing that. In fact, to improve my french and mix learning with pleasure, I joined a local running club. And so the members now unwittingly constitute my major source of pals.  As far the the xplog is concerned, I guess I will inadvertantly review races.

I'll also review the occasional film I see, since we seem to have entered the brown era of cinema, where films are often a) lazy b) nonsense and c) boring, and are as entertaining as watching actors throw faeces at each other for 120 minutes (this may be the actual plot of the regurgitated Planet of the Apes remakes). Anyway, good, or at least interesting films deserve to be highlighted, and bad films need to be systematically destroyed. Also it's fun to talk about films.

Ok, so now the toughest part. Post number one, the pilot post. Well this week I met the Mayor of France. Well it wasn't the mayor of France per se. It was the mayor the the 6th in Paris. And technically I didn't meet him, but I was in the room and he spoke in my direction. Last week I took part in the 10km Course du Luxembourg with a team from my work. They also have a 6 km and 1 km race. It was on the same day as the 16 km Paris-Versailles race, so I thought perhaps Luxembourg would be quieter, but there were still, I think, around 2000 people who turned up for the 3 races. It was fun to meet some new people from work, outside of a work environment, and the course was well organised. It's a bit of a strange one, since it is essentially four loops on the road around the outside of the park. Some people will not like this because it is repetitive and you are constantly turning in a single direction. I imagine that people new to running, and finding the 10 km distance a challenge, might find it a bit demoralising. On the other hand, for the more experienced, after one lap you can gauge your speed and effort easily even if you don't normally run there. It is also a nice area and the course is fast. One thing to note is that the faster runners begin to lap the slower runners pretty quickly. I didn't really feel that this held me back (I got a new PB), although there was zig-zagging involved, and the winner managed to crack out a time under 30 minutes. Also, due to the loop nature, this course has the highest ratio of race photographers to km that I have ever seen. So if you like being photographed whilst undergoing horrible, unflattering physical exertions, then this is the race for you. In most (all) of the photos I look like this guy from Starship Troopers getting his brain sucked out.

Spoiler warning - he died.

I shall bemoan my conflicting issues with certain aspects of mass participation running events in a future post.

Anyway, the organisers kindly offered to make a donation to my workplace. So the following week, I found myself arriving with a work colleague at the Mairie de 6'eme for the award ceremony and to receive a cheque. I assumed they gave out the medals after the race, but this one holds a ceremony the following week in the nice Mairie building which I had not been in before. The course organiser did a nice job of quickly thanking all the volunteers and passing out the trophies of which there were many. Unfortunately the acoustics in the room were too bad for me to follow (and I struggle at the best of times) but I think the top three in every age category for every race got a prize. A lot of people didn't turn up which was a shame. Perhaps it would be a good idea to ask everyone receiving a prize to sign a sheet or something so they can skip the no-shows. We received the cheque within the first 20 minutes and we also were given a trophy which was nice. Unfortunately I had spent most of that day alone and wasn't in french-mode, and it was a completely new context so I had no relevant vocabulary. Although I often need to ask people to repeat themselves, it's been a while since I had no idea whatsoever what someone was talking about. So when the organiser was talking to us, I defaulted to "grin like a deranged maniac until his mouth stops moving" face, and the organiser increasingly adopted a similarly stressed "please say or do something, weird grinning guy" expression. Anyway, awkward moment over and it was very nice of them to donate a cheque and trophy for our fundraising.

Hmmm well there is not much more story after that. But the first one is done. I have no idea if that was even interesting for other people. But then no one is making you read it. Perhaps I should provide links to better pages in future, at the start of each post. I also have no idea what this is going to even look like so I shall stop and attempt to post it.

I assume you can say things at the bottom should you feel the need.