Today an Olga taught a Margarita how to…well, for the purposes of this story it doesn’t really matter.

One of the women mentioned above is Spanish and one is Slavic.

You tell me who is who.

My supervisor here in my current lab (not the big boss, but the person responsible for showing me around and teaching me how not to accidentally kill myself) has the most adorable french accent*.

Think stereotypical portrayal of French people in Hollywood movies. Think Kevin Kline in French Kiss (best romcom ever, btw!). Think David Suchet as Poirot. Think “ze” (=the), aftör (=after), aör (=hour).

Can you be in love with an accent?

*I prolly should clarify that he speaks perfectly fine English, as does the rest of my group and most of the people in my immediate surroundings here.

You know what?

I don’t miss Sweden!

At all.

Well, maaaaybe just a bit.

I will. Soon enough. But not right now.

Right now, I eat croissants for breakfasts, spend my days doing what I love (working in a lab) and circle in the towns I plan to visit on a map of France as I drink my evening tea. 

You can all start envying me now.  :p

So far during my stay in Lyon, I’ve been doing the following:

Eating, signing papers, eating, looking at beautiful buildings, eating, visiting IKEA in search of a piece of home and a I-can-pronounce-the-sofa-name discount (didn’t get one. They’re cheap!), eating, horrifying the locals with my French, signing more papers, eating, spending waaay too much money and have I mentioned eating?

Next on the agenda: shopping for larger pants.

No particular reason. It’s a pretty poem and I’m in that mood.
 

Message keeps getting clearer
radio's on and I'm moving 'round the place
I check my look in the mirror
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
Man I ain't getting nowhere
I'm just living in a dump like this
There's something happening somewhere
baby I just know that there is

Dancing in the dark - Bruce Springsteen

It sprang from a few chance encounters in June, developed into a shy curiosity in July, became a full-blown crush by August, stabilized but not subsided during the autumn months and now, half a year later I can confidently state: this is it, this is true love. Things he makes me feel no artist has ever made me feel before, Bruce Springsteen is my musical soulmate.

And I am totally aware of being like no 128643654 to say these words but whatever. His music fits into my life so effortlessly, if I believed in fate (which I totally don't), I would say he was destined to write it and I was destined to listen to it.

On an unrelated note, with a visa stamped in my passport, plane ticket safely locked away in my documents folder and a helluva lot of money soon to be transferred to my bank account courtesy of the Swedish board for study support, I guess it goes to say Lyon’s happening.

Who could have guessed this at this time last year?

Oh my.

I do need to shop for a bag first though. A bag to fit my life for the coming I-don’t-know-exactly-but-hopefully-more-than-5-months.

I think the books one reads can very fittingly be described using gastronomic vocabulary.

There’s that bestseller you gulp down like a donut on your way home from the supermarket, with an accompanying sugar rush and a short-lived sense of well-being, but that is really just being empty calories. There's that haut cuisine blueberry-and-goat-cheese-salad that you ordered trying to appear sophisticated and that gave you no pleasure whatsoever. There’s that guilty pleasure McDonalds menu you’d drop dead rather than admit you order (and love) sometimes. There’s that classic beef with bearnaise meal that’s perhaps not the most exciting choice out there but that delivers what it promises every time. There’s that exotic and spicy dish from a faraway land that’s so delish. There’s that all-bran-whole-grain-zucchini-bread that’s oh-so-healthy and oh-so-good for you but that’s chewy and takes a while to swallow. And finally, there’s simply that oh-my-god-I’m-in-heaven gastronomic experience that may also belong to any of the categories above but that’s so good you don’t want to put a label on it.

You know what my biggest fear is?

Getting hit by a brick.

And you know why that’s my biggest fear?

Because then some big newspaper will be doing an exposé on the awful state of public buildings in Sweden and they’ll need a picture of the innocent victim to add some human drama to the article and the only picture of me they’ll be able to find is the school photo they forced us to take on our second day of university in 2006 and – I’m being sincere here – if that picture ever sees the light of day, I’m SO turning in my grave and coming back to haunt somebody.

Probably the school administrator for forcing us to do that.

I have this curious little habit of looking at the registration plates on cars. I like to think that one day, I will witness a bank robbery and the police will go out to the public for clues and I’ll provide the registration plate for the car robbers used to get away, and then I become a national celebrity and get a million as a reward and buy a puppy and live happily ever after.

I also like to think that I’m not delusional.

Anyway.

One day, while walking home from campus I spotted a car with the letters DNA on the plate. The plate itself was a most regular one, that is to say, not one of those fancy ones where you pay for it to state IRULE or HIMOM or anything.

I guess this three-letter combination isn’t that noteworthy in itself, but the car was parked on the parking lot of a building called Biomedical Centre and I’d estimate that most of the scientific staff there handle DNA for a living so it was a little bit chuckle-worthy and I chuckled and carried on.

And then, just a few days later, I spotted another car in the same parking lot, this time with the letters RNA in the aforementioned place.

Now, that’s funny.

Some people sing, some people draw on sand, some people bend their tongues in the most unorthodox shapes.

My unexpected talent is growing mold on things. The other day I discovered several distinct colonies in a cup of tea.

Like, seriously, plain ordinary rooibos tea that I left standing on the kitchen counter for a couple of days. Without sugar, milk or anything that (to my poor biochemical knowledge) even remotely could constitute an energy source for anything carbon-based with a metabolism.

Any suggestions how I can put this little gift of mine to pecuniary use?

So, I’m reading a romance novel right now. (Actually, it’s marketed as 19^th century English literature classic, but that’s probably because the Harlequin concept wasn’t yet invented 150 years ago).

And the problem is that I have a really hard time understanding the characters… We have our typical beautiful, noble but-oh-so-poor heroine and a handsome, manly & rich hero who start off their acquaintance in mutual dislike. The hero is soon smitten by her fine eyes however and falls in love. A proposal takes place but is firmly refused. That's about how far into the book I made it to date, but we all know where this is going. (And no, it's not Pride and Prejudice I've just described.)

Anyway.

As romantic as the description above sounds, it’s simply not something that I have any experience of and thus can relate to.

Now, a romance novel more applicable to my reality would have a plot along the lines of:

A chubby, plain and generally unsympathetic heroine develops a crush on a tall, dark and knee-weakeningly handsome hero. For some reason, understandable only to a licensed professional, she chooses to deal with this simple fact by first avoiding the hero and then down-right ignoring him when he tries to be nice and say hi. She continues avoiding/ignoring the hero for a few weeks, thereby creating a tension that makes life uncomfortable for both (have I mentioned that our heroine is an idiot?). The one time our couple ends up speaking, (coincidentally, the last time they see each other) the heroine is plainly impertinent towards him, while actually, she’s overflowing with desire to run her fingers through his hair. The epilogue takes place ten weeks hence, with our heroine still love-struck and miserable but with no prospect of a happy end in sight.

Somehow, I doubt that it would be a bestseller though…

On a figure skating forum I frequent, there's a pretty vocal group of connaisseurs who consider this girl to be overweight.

Sad. Just sad.

Получила спам. Обычно я (естественно) такое удаляю не открывая, но имейл с заголовком Request from Russia просто кричал lol.

Вспомнился анекдот:

Mark Twain once in his youth wrote to the president of America: "My dear Mr. President! I see by the papers that you are very prosperous. I want to get a hymn-book. It costs 2 dollars. I will bless you, God will bless you, but do not send the hymn-book, send me the two dollars.

Yours truly, Mark Twain