FR - Rien à déclarer m'sieur l'agent!

Il semblerait que je vais avoir tendance à parler des élections présidentielles après tout!

J'aime assez ce côté "transparent" lancé (contre son gré?) par Mme Royale. Apres tout, si l'état français sait exactement ce qu'on gagne, pourquoi ne saurions-nous pas ce que "eux" gagnent? Ne pas le dire ne me dérange pas non plus, à vrai cela m'amuse plutôt... ce qui prouve une fois de plus qu'on élit une personne et non ses idées...

Bref, je ne suis pas là pour dénoncer, mais plutôt pour m'amuser d'un détail, le mot est juste, qui m'a frappé.

Suite à cette déclaration, d'autres candidats ont décidé de faire leur coming-out financier, et là, ça devient intéressant!

3 candidats paient l'impôt sur la fortune donc, Mme Royale, M. Sarkozy et M. Le Pen, et en bas de ce tableau sans grand intérêt, on trouve Mme Arlette Laguillet, qui possède, je cite un article du Monde de ce jour, "aucun bien immobilier, Clio achetée en 2000".

Ce qui m'amène à en conclure deux choses... elle s'est séparé de sa mobylette il semblerait, et la seconde est que moi aussi je pourrais me lancer dans une carrière de politicienne sans avenir (ni passé?).

FR - Les élections du petit Nicolas

Allez... on va respecter le saint secret des urnes, mais pas trop quand même!

Je suis d'aussi près que possible le débat qui se passe actuellement en France concernant les prochaines élections présidentielles.

Je me souviens que je vivais en Angleterre en 2002 et croyez-moi, j'ai bien eu honte de ma nation lors des résultats du 1er tour. Et les médias anglais ne nous ont pas épargnés!

Il semblerait déjà que la France ait compris l'inutilité et même le danger du vote sanction... comme quoi tout espoir n'est pas perdu pour nos esprits un peu étriqués!

Je n'inciterai pas à voter pour une personne ou pour une autre, déjà parce que je me pose toujours cette fameuse question et je pense que je me la poserai jusqu'à l'urne, et puis parce que finalement qu'est-ce que ça va changer...

Je suis aparti, préférant me retrancher derrière les idées d'une personne que d'un ensemble incohérent... la 5ème république est morte lorsque Le Pen s'est retrouvé au second tour!

Bref... pour qui voter en mai 2007?

Storm, I wasn't kidding!

When I was telling you there had been a storm in Scotland, I wasn't kidding!
I managed to get a few pictures of the portion of the road that fell down at the entrance of my town... I just hope nobody actually 'discovered' it the hard way!

Convention: Constellation 4 - Pegasus May 2005

They say everything comes to those who wait... or those who don't even know what to wait for!
To make a long story short but still giving you an insight of how full of suprises life can be, back in May 2005, I was unemployed... job seeker they call that because I had never worked before! ;-)
Anyway... I was depressed, I had nothing to do and not much to look forward to. I was working on a database project on Stargate SG-1 with a few people and was chatting with one of them on MSN like any other day. But that day, he asked me if he could invite someone to the chat... and that's how I met the president of Constellation Conventions.
What's even more surprising and quite amazing is that we were talking about the behind-the-scene of these conventions, which I had never heard of before, and I merely dreamed out loud, saying I would love to be a translator on a convention.
Two days and an interview later, I was a translator for the organization!
Life's great, ain't it?!

Two months later, I was in Paris for Constellation 4. There I met:

Stargate SG-1:

Tony Amendola (Bra'tac)

Douglas Arthur (Heru'ur)

Musetta Vander (Shan'auc)

I also met a few Star Trek actors but truth be told... I'm not a Trekker/Trekkie! ;-)

I had one of the most humiliating moments in my life at this convention!
I was translating the questions from the audience during a Star Trek panel. Denise Crosby was on stage. A French fan asked her a question and of course, being the translator, it was down to me to ask it in English.
Problem is, at the time, I had never seen a Star Trek episode! I mean I didn't even know (and still don't!) what or who a Vulcain is!
So the person in the audience asked the question in French and I had to make her repeat because there was a couple of words I couldn't get. I honestly thought it was a technical term I didn't know about.
So I made her repeat about 4 or 5 times before even Denise Crosby understood what I couldn't...
She stared at me like I was from another planet, and said: You don't know him??
I was like... huh, sorry, no is that a person?
Then about 150 persons started shouting, kinda shocked... which I can understand now since the 'technical word' I couldn't understand was actually the name of the actor portraying Mr Spock, Leonard Nimoy!

Then, another funny moment was during the signing session. Vaughn Armstrong was also attending the convention, Amiral Forrest on Star Trek Entreprise. Needless to say, I didn't have the slightest idea who the man was!
But he's such a lovely and sweet and funny person that we had a real great time having him and I really enjoyed talking to him.
So on the Sunday night, during the signing session, I came to him and told him as much. I also added that I really didn't know what he was doing but I liked him as a person. He gave me a bear hug and told me he had hardly ever heard that! ;-)
But on the next Tuesday, we went to the restaurant with the actors, just the staff and them. In the meantime, our president had made me watch an episode he was playing in.
So when I met him again I had what must be one of the stupidest reactions ever... I told him I found it weird to see him on TV when I had met him in the flesh!
I mean I had the opposite reaction when meeting the actors from Stargate, it was surreal to meet them in the flesh after having watched them so many times on TV. But with Vaughn Armstrong, it felt somehow weird to see him on TV!

One of my favourite moments during this convention was being a translator during the Stargate panel, chatting with Tony Amendola who is a lovely and interesting man and meeting the staff of Constellation. that was my very first convention and I was already working on it, which was just as scary as it was excellent!

Conventions are always fun. there's a lot of pressure for us and in the end we just have memories and tons to do for the next one, but it's a way to give back to the community and show the actors and the producers that we really appreciate what they're doing to entertain us. On our very small level, it's being part of this dream.

Geek and damn proud of it!

Some time ago, I started asking myself the essential question, the kind of question that every individual ask themselves at some point in their life. I think it’s sane to actually doubt oneself, not knowing who we really are until we face reality…
I came to the conclusion that, well, the answer to THE question is - Yes!

Well… it might help if I told you what THE question is! Am I a geek?

Yes, I do watch way too many TV series, yes I can quote all of them and yes I do it on a daily basis, yes I still have a couple of posters on my walls, yes I watch the behind-the-scene features of all the TV series I like, yes I do have a calendar whose sole purpose is to remind me when to watch which series…
Guilty as charged to all of the above statements, but you know what… I’m proud of that!
At least I’m some kind of an expert in the TV series field! ;-)
I’m the Scully of the 30 and 60mn format!

And being totally crazy and living life to the full, I got involved in a non-profit organization promoting TV series conventions in France. So yep, I met other geeks and yep I met quite a few actors!
I’ll shortly come up with a few funny anecdotes, trust me, when you have 150-200 fans in a room and 2 or 3 actors on stage, there are funny anecdotes!
I might have to start with an introduction to conventions though, every time I talk about it, people think it’s some kind of obscure cult where we worship some character, dressed like them… let me get this straight… it’s not!

A TV series conventions, like any other fan event, has for sole purpose to gather fans of a TV series or genre and actors of said series.
The main activities are a Q&A session, photo sessions, signing sessions… every organization comes up with ways to make a convention special, depending on the guests and the culture (you won’t have the same schedule in France as you would in the USA for instance, it just wouldn’t work).
Anyway… all in due time, I’ll get around to explaining further what a convention really is and how it works… I happen to work on them so I know quite well how it works! ;-)

New Year's Eve in Scotland!

There's this famous Scottish saying joking that there are the four seasons in one day...
It's quite common to have sudden changes in the conditions, but I've got to admit the weather over the New Year weekend has been quite surprising, and not the kind of surprise I like!

This shot was taken on Saturday, at around 4:30PM:



The sky had been quite cloudy all day long, some showers but all in all a nice winter day.

The 31st of December was another matter entirely though!

It had been raining all day long and very windy, but still, it was ok, that is, until we decided to go to the party!

We had decided against going to the Hogmanay in Edinburgh due to sporadic public transportations, and by the time we had made up our mind, the one in Glasgow was sold out. So we had planned a nice party at a friend's in Glasgow.

That was actually quite fortunate since both events got canceled due to a terrible storm that hit Scotland!

Here is what it was like to drive along the coast near where I live:

When we arrived in Glasgow, it got so windy that we couldn't do anything but go with the flow, running with the wind in our back. I never felt so out of control! A friend of mine finished her course in a parked car, her sleeping bag rolling like in some cheap Western!

When we got back to my town on the next day, we saw the damages done by the storm. A nearby house right on the beach got its fence blown away and was found some 30 meters down the beach. The waterfront was covered with half of the rocks of the beach. A small portion of the road fell down the beach, leaving a gaping hole on the main road, which is just as surprising as it is scary!

I must consider myself quite lucky, nothing big to deplore, I can't say the same about my neighbour's garden gnome though! ;-)

And we have yet to record a negative temperature in my part of Scotland... I'm telling you, this global warming thingy is messing up with Scotland!