Our bathrooms at work are curious. We finally got a mirror installed in early March, that was cool. We also have the stupid towel system where it's like a big cloth paper towel that is wound up and you pull yourself down a fresh piece and the remainder wraps up on the backside or something. But it's horrible because you are always very close to the last person's dirty residues. So I pull out two persons' worth. I'm sure if my French coworkers found out, they would chide me for wasting resources, but I'd rather waste their precious towel resources instead of contracting cholera or scurvy.
But the worst part about our bathroom is the toilets. It looks like any other toilet and even has a real door instead of the stalls in the US. However, the lights are not controlled by a simple switch. Rather, you have to turn a knob that functions as a timer to turn on the light. When it timer goes off, the lights go out and you're stuck in the dark sitting on a toilet. To make matters worse, the timer ticks noticeably as it winds down like it's commandingyou to hurry. And it only lasts about a minute. I haven't been to that bathroom in ages because I go in there and then I'm sitting in the dark, and I haven't completed my business either. So I usually sneak off to some other building and terrorize them. I don't know why the French cannot trust themselves and their American saviors to turn off the lights. I'll bet they don't trust Magnus. He's a Swede and very tall so I could see how this would make them wary.
Magnus Mortberg works in my building in the combustion group. He has been there one and a half years, and I've never heard him speak French in the three months I have been working there. He sends me websites like http://www.i-hate-france.com and is generally a funny, amiable guy. He works with a little fuzzy haired Frenchman who he calls the hobbit to his face. 'Pippin' is a nice guy, but he does kind of resemble a hobbit. I shall ask to see if he has hairy feet. I doubt he lives in a sod house although it would be great for storing cheese and wine and avoiding showering.
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
I had my medical exam at work today. They called me up at 2:50 to ask me where I was. But I didn't know I had a 2:40 appointment so I handed off the phone to our Portuguese intern to get some information and translate it into English. He tells me that they need to see me immediately at the infirmerie. I was working on something so I finished that up. Then I had to pee real bad so I went and then went to the infirmerie. I opened the door, and lo and behold, they tell me to wait outside, which I did for like 15 minutes. They had a miniature television running some educational anti-drug use shorts whose plotlines reminded me a lot of Requiem for a Dream but without the 'attention to detail'.
Finally I get to enter, and she asks me some simple questions regarding my identity and medical history. Then she asks me to take a pee test, but I had just gone so I was as dry as a West Texas creekbed. While we're waiting, she makes me take a vision test instead. So I'm sitting there with my bottle of water with my head pressed against the apparatus staring at these tiny little numbers and letters. Actually, I didn't even know they were there for the first 30 seconds of the test until I shifted my gaze so I could see the display. Anyways, I'm supoosed to press a button when I hear the number or letter being said. But it was more like a French test than a vision test. They said 'uh' (which turns out to be E which I had thought was pronounced 'ay') like 5 times so I'm pretty sure I missed all of those. After the numbers and letters, they had a test where they would show the circles and you had to click if one was deeper or more to the fore than the others and another with lines and you had to press the button if one was darker or thicker than the others. But the instructions were in French so by the time I figured out what they were asking me for, the pictures were already gone and a new one with a new set of undecipherable instructions had appeared. Finally they had a rectangle and a circle on the upper right, just outside of the rectangle. I gathered, or thought I did, that I was supposed to click the button when the circle got inside the rectangle. So the circle starts moving slowly to the left into the rectangle and just as it's about to get into the rectangle, the machine shuts off, and the nurse tells me I am done. She gets a printout of the results, too bad it wasn't from a dot matrix, and she tells me I did pretty well. So that makes me think that the Frenchman are either blind or retarded, but I'm pretty sure she was being nice and that they think I'm color blind with no depth perception and an inability to discern differing line thicknesses. Then she ended her diagnosis by telling me I have a problem confusing R's and B's; I'm pretty sure this is not the case, but who knows, maybe on they're on to something.
After my body filtered the bottled water I had drank, I let out a few droplets earning me the right to enter the doctor's office for a regular physical. I had to strip to my undies; I was wearing some nice light blue boxers with easter eggs all over them, looking dashing. I don't know where I got those from, but they are pretty comfortable, perhaps a little silly to be wearing in front of a 55 year old woman especially since there's a hole that's been worn in the crotch from extensive use. I might have made a different choice had I actually been told I had an appointment today. The doctor weighed me (just a shade under 90, fat-belly kilos), and since she was a wee one, she was looking right at my belly the entire time I was on the scale. Then I had to lay down on the examination table, the type with the crinkly paper, and she listened to me breathe, looked in my throat, hit my knees with a hammer, and banged on my ribcage to see if I was hollow I guess. After she had finished examining me, I was able to redress but not before I found an impressive piece of bellybutton lint that I promptly removed and threw on the ground. Overall, I don't think the ladies at the infirmerie were too impressed with ol' B.
Come to think of it, I guess it's possible they told me I had a physical scheduled. My phone has this red light that's been blinking for like a month. I assume the phone is desperately trying to tell me I have messages, but I don't know how to check them. I had set up a passcode at one point, but my voicemail never picked up; it always was answered by some woman whose identity we never discovered. Then all of a sudden one day the flashing red light appears. Last week, I talked with Sabine, the German girl, and she said her phone does the same thing, and she hasn't figured out how to check messages either. Her French is better than mine so I figure it's ok not to check my voicemail until she learns how to figure her own phone out and can teach me how to work mine. Her phone has caller id and a little display panel while I just have a crappy phone that I am thankful is not a rotary.
Finally I get to enter, and she asks me some simple questions regarding my identity and medical history. Then she asks me to take a pee test, but I had just gone so I was as dry as a West Texas creekbed. While we're waiting, she makes me take a vision test instead. So I'm sitting there with my bottle of water with my head pressed against the apparatus staring at these tiny little numbers and letters. Actually, I didn't even know they were there for the first 30 seconds of the test until I shifted my gaze so I could see the display. Anyways, I'm supoosed to press a button when I hear the number or letter being said. But it was more like a French test than a vision test. They said 'uh' (which turns out to be E which I had thought was pronounced 'ay') like 5 times so I'm pretty sure I missed all of those. After the numbers and letters, they had a test where they would show the circles and you had to click if one was deeper or more to the fore than the others and another with lines and you had to press the button if one was darker or thicker than the others. But the instructions were in French so by the time I figured out what they were asking me for, the pictures were already gone and a new one with a new set of undecipherable instructions had appeared. Finally they had a rectangle and a circle on the upper right, just outside of the rectangle. I gathered, or thought I did, that I was supposed to click the button when the circle got inside the rectangle. So the circle starts moving slowly to the left into the rectangle and just as it's about to get into the rectangle, the machine shuts off, and the nurse tells me I am done. She gets a printout of the results, too bad it wasn't from a dot matrix, and she tells me I did pretty well. So that makes me think that the Frenchman are either blind or retarded, but I'm pretty sure she was being nice and that they think I'm color blind with no depth perception and an inability to discern differing line thicknesses. Then she ended her diagnosis by telling me I have a problem confusing R's and B's; I'm pretty sure this is not the case, but who knows, maybe on they're on to something.
After my body filtered the bottled water I had drank, I let out a few droplets earning me the right to enter the doctor's office for a regular physical. I had to strip to my undies; I was wearing some nice light blue boxers with easter eggs all over them, looking dashing. I don't know where I got those from, but they are pretty comfortable, perhaps a little silly to be wearing in front of a 55 year old woman especially since there's a hole that's been worn in the crotch from extensive use. I might have made a different choice had I actually been told I had an appointment today. The doctor weighed me (just a shade under 90, fat-belly kilos), and since she was a wee one, she was looking right at my belly the entire time I was on the scale. Then I had to lay down on the examination table, the type with the crinkly paper, and she listened to me breathe, looked in my throat, hit my knees with a hammer, and banged on my ribcage to see if I was hollow I guess. After she had finished examining me, I was able to redress but not before I found an impressive piece of bellybutton lint that I promptly removed and threw on the ground. Overall, I don't think the ladies at the infirmerie were too impressed with ol' B.
Come to think of it, I guess it's possible they told me I had a physical scheduled. My phone has this red light that's been blinking for like a month. I assume the phone is desperately trying to tell me I have messages, but I don't know how to check them. I had set up a passcode at one point, but my voicemail never picked up; it always was answered by some woman whose identity we never discovered. Then all of a sudden one day the flashing red light appears. Last week, I talked with Sabine, the German girl, and she said her phone does the same thing, and she hasn't figured out how to check messages either. Her French is better than mine so I figure it's ok not to check my voicemail until she learns how to figure her own phone out and can teach me how to work mine. Her phone has caller id and a little display panel while I just have a crappy phone that I am thankful is not a rotary.
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