A working life
Archive for November, 2008
THE SATURDAY INCIDENT
Nov 28th
But one shouldn’t hit oneself and therefore I’m getting a good nights sleep (even though it’s Boom night) to be prepared for a long days work tomorrow.
Late for school!
My exam is in the course “Molécule au matériau” (From molecules to materials). During the 40 minutes I worked this afternoon I found a nice chemsitry book explaining some of the (countless) topics I don’t yet understand. Then I found out I couldn’t borrow it because I’m suspended from the school library because of a lately delivered book last week. Bah. Enough work.
This week has been a hard week, one thing is that I’ve had a lot to do but the main thing is the trouble we’ve had with INSA because of a party incident last Saturday. Santiago, Joao and I had a meeting Tuesday with the head of the guards and the responsible for International Relations at INSA and now Joao and Santiago may risk to get kicked out from their residence, R1. I won’t get kicked out because I live in R5 – silly/lucky.
The Holy Grail of Beer – the Saturday Incident Mascot
For those of you who don’t know the situation, the party on Saturday was no worse than any other party. At 23h20 the guard kicked us out from the R1 common kitchen and took the cards from three of us (he asked for everyone’s cards but three of us gave them to him). We therefore got called in for a meeting. During the meeting we were told that they want to try to kick out J. and S. because the general unhappiness with people making noise and not cleaning up after their preparties in R1. The head of the guards wanted to make an example of us to show they’re not kidding.
To make one thing clear, we cleaned up after ourselves! (See my previous post). The fact that it was S. and J. who gave the guard their cards and that they live in R1 is just random. In my opinion they could just as well have said:
“We’re going to kick someone out because of too much noise from preparties. The choice landed on room 115 and 526. Sorry”.
We have tried to make BDE (Bureau des Etudiants) speak our case, but we still have to wait until next week before we get an answer. I really hope no one will get thrown out of R1!
And now laides and gentlemenn – something completely different!
The Christmas decoration in the uppermost picture is taken from the restaurant at school. I have no words. What do you think?
I just came home from a superb dinner with 13 other Erasmus students (Not everyone was Erasmus, but I call everyone Erasmus). The restaurant is called La faim des haricots and one menu option is to select between 1 to 5 different types of food and serve yourself as much as you want. The atmosphere was great and we chose the 3 different types for only 12€!
Now I’m tired and I’m going to bed. I don’t have energy to go to one of the big events of the year (Soirée Boom). Dommage, but life is hard :)
Today I received some new t-shirts from Threadless – always a great bonus to see the T-shirts in real life. Once again I didn’t get disappointed! Wee!
I know I’m jumping the subjects here, but I have some things to say about a lot of things. If you EVER think of buying the “Blitz Energy Gum”. Don’t. It is the worst chewing gum I’ve ever tasted! I took a bite on my way from the grocery store and the first thing I did when home was to drink lots of water to get the awful taste away. Yack!
Blitz Energy Gum – toxitacating your breath from the very first second
When that’s said: Have a good night everyone!
PS. I got a job offer for Summer 2009 today, Yay!
SOIRÉE NORVÉGIENNE
Nov 25th
As I said earlier I cleaned my apartment, then I tried to do some school, but I couldn’t make anything out of it. Then I went to CSH to tell them that I’m not going to do the law part of the Gestion course (Management).
After class (18h30) I went to the information meeting of Club Ski INSA with Synnøve and we decided to join on Club Ski’s 7 day trip to Vars-Risoul in April! It’s gonna be great, 7 days of alpine skiing for just 295€!
Unfortunately INSA isn’t completely happy about the guard incident I talked about on Saturday, so Santiago, Joao and I need to have a meeting with the International department tomorrow to sort things out. Apparently we had a disturbing attitude (attitude pertubatrice) towards the guard (we wanted to get some kind of confirmation that he took our student cards. I don’t think it’s too serious, we’ll see.
I after meeting with Santiago and the others, to see if our conception of the event was similar I helped out on making ready the Soirée norvégienne. We had a hard time making the Norwegian flags stick on the walls. Special for the night is the serving of Tyrkershots, Gellyshots and gløgg (vin chaud in French, don’t know the English word). The gløgg is always a hit.
Back in the apartment it has a weird smell. It took me about 15 seconds to remember that I’d forgotten to put the camenbert cheese I bought earlier (between the meeting and the helping out at P’tit Kawa) in the fridge. D’oh.
I am airing the room big time, hoping the smell away :)
Good night to you all!
BEER OLYMPICS 2008
Nov 24th
Friday:
The kick off was in the middle of Place de la Capitole in centre ville at 16h. The beer walk was the first event starting with the filling of “the holy beer grail”.
We passed important locations in Toulouse, Place St. Pierre being the most important one. Back again at INSA Beer Pong was next on the schedule (Hit the opponents beer glasses with a ping pong ball. First to clear the opponent’s table has won). After intense battles with plenty of fun and beer Tom and I ended up winning the event!
Saturday:
A hard morning, but at 17h everyone was ready for the second event: “Beer relay”. Two teams of four have to complete a round and drink a beer before the next contestant can start. It was a close shave, but my team (with Tiago, Joao and Tom) won the best of three contest (2-0). Juha, Zaid, Geir and Roberto came on a good second.
Third event was Dizzy Bat – a really difficult game. Drink the beer in the “baseball bat” as fast as possible, spin around your own axis the same amount of time as you needed to drink the beer – THEN hit the ball that someone throws at you. If you can’t hit the ball you have to do the whole thing over again (Maximum three times and you can forfeit after the second). Tom won this competition as well with his time of 20 seconds. Personally I ended up with 15 minutes 20 seconds due to strict judges (I didn’t finish my beer completely so 15 minutes penalty was added).
Fourth event was Flip Flop, a kind of relay as well. Four persons in each team, the first drinks his/her beer and have to flip the empty cup from upright position to bottoms-up position. The next person can then continue. First team who finishes wins.
Beer Olympics ended in centre ville after us being thrown out by the security guard (who took our Student cards and called the police, but we managed to discuss the cards back to our posession).
Sunday:
Clean up day. I went to Roberto’s and he told me about the mess we had made in the kitchen in R1. It was horrible, a complete mess. Santiago, Tom, Roberto and I cleaned up the mess, leaving the fourth floor kitchen in R1 the cleanest in the entire building.
R1 kitchen before and after cleaning
Monday:
A new week is here and I really need to work. I’m now going to clean my appartment before I’m going to work at Bib’INSA. Oh, and tonight it’s “Soirée Norvégienne”, Norwegian party!
