If you're bored at work...

Try my Desk Items Test.

I drew round several items that happened to be within easy reach, scanned the sheet and numbered the outlines.

Can you guess what the items are?
Some are easier than others.

Send me your answers and the person with the most correct answers receives Item 3 as a prize.

The Desk Items Test

Awkward moments

Yesterday I had one of those unfortunate conversations where every question asked generates an awkward answer, which is followed by an awkward silence.

It went along the lines of:

S: Hello Katy, how are you? Are you feeling less stressed since the end of your exams?

K: Well, I suppose so, though I'm having a few minor mental health problems at the moment, so I'm not feeling at my best, though I'm much better than I was a month or so ago.

S: Oh dear. Um, well, how did your exam results go? I bet you did really well, with all that hard work you put in!

K: Actually, I didn't do as well as I'd have liked. I failed.*

S: Oh, I'm sorry. Are you still seeing that same nice girl as before?

K: No.

S: Oh. Um, how are your parents? Didn't they go away on holiday recently?

K: Not too good. They've split up and, er, my dad moved out two weeks ago.

S: Oh. Um, shit, I'm sorry. (In a desperate attempt to lighten the conversation) Um, how's the cat? Has he caught any mice recently?

K: He's dead. Got run over when he was washing his arse in the middle of the road.*

S: Oh, god. (Pause) Do you want a cup of tea?

__________________________________________
Footnotes:

* = made up and added in for effect. I got a 2:1 and the cat's fine.

Bienvenue à Paris, have a lovely day!

The notoriously rude Parisians should perhaps take a leaf or two out of New York's new, friendly book. The city's mayor has launched a campaign called Just Ask the Locals, whose strategies to improve New York's grumpy image include tips for visitors easily accessible via a phone line, special maps on street corners, videos designed for tourists in taxis, 50 street teams of chirpy "ambassadors" and the support of several high-profile celebrities, including a grinning Robert de Niro and an unusually cheery-looking Julianne Moore.

I can't quite see residents of the French capital taking this idea on board, though the odd improvement in their general attitude towards the rest of the population sometimes wouldn't go amiss. It has even been known for a bizarre psychiatric problem labelled "Paris Syndrome" to develop amonst Japanese tourists, triggered by the shock of an aggressive "bof!", an unprovoked "non!" in a restaurant or even a filthy look and a "merde!" during the push and shove to get on the train before the doors shut at a busy metro station platform. Some travellers are left shellshocked and unable to cope, and require counselling on the flight back to Japan.

It seems that the Parisians are aware, maybe even a teensy bit proud, of their characteristic lack of civility towards others, and perhaps their rudeness contributes a little to the town's haughty charms. Television adverts for the city's local paper, Le Parisien, include a scene of a tourist asking for directions to the Eiffel Tower, the Frenchman pointing him down one street, then the camera zooming out to reveal that the monument is in fact just around the corner, in the opposite direction to where the tourist has just been pointed. The scene is accompanied by the words: Le Parisien, il vaut mieux l'avoir en journal!, meaning The Parisian: better as a newspaper!

Looking for: professional female 25-30, with GSOH and DIB (dog in bag)

Bad news for single owners of Pooches, Sweetiepies and Tiddleses: the more you spoil your pet, the less attractive you appear to potential partners of the human kind.

The results of a survey of attitudes towards pet ownership reveal that turn-offs include men with pet spiders, women with yappy dogs in a handbag, and anyone with more than two cats.

Above: Paris Hilton with beloved dog Tinkerbell

Suggestions for romantic bliss: sell the dog, get the cat put down or buy a low-maintenance pet such as a goldfish.

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/14/relationships.animalbehaviour

See also: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,11000-2007360596,00.html

Titanic error

If you're going to pinch video clips from someone else's film to back up your own story, make sure you choose one a bit less famous than Titanic.

If only the Russian TV channel RTR had heeded that advice before claiming that the footage of "Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole" were genuine. It was a 13 year old boy from Finland who found the images strangely familiar, and revealed that they were in fact identical to sequences from James Cameron's movie about the 1912 shipwreck.

I'm sure nobody would have noticed if they'd nicked pictures from a lesser-known maritime disaster film, such as Poseidon or Deep Rising, though they would have had to remember to airbrush out the giant monster tentacles, which could give the game away:

Source:

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2146373,00.html

Learning the hard way

Last year, I lived in Paris for 11 months. By the end of that time I had acquired and polished many different skills. My spoken French improved considerably (I know five different words for "joint" as well as an impressive array of swear-words); I dealt with a wealth of French bureaucracy, studied at university and found employment in a variety of different sectors (including waitressing in a restaurant, serving chizburrgurrs to grumpy Frogs and eating frogs' legs on my lunch break); I found my own place to live, made French friends and navigated confidently around the capital. The thing that I perfected with the greatest success, however, was none of these CV-worthy skills, but was the art of staring expressionlessly into the middle distance whilst on public transport.

I don't know what it is about the underground networks of big cities that reduces their citizens to unsmiling statues who avoid looking at you whenever possible but, like the street entertainers you find above the ground, occasionally surprise you with a blink of an eye or a sudden sneeze. The same is true of London. It seems to be an unwritten rule that you must not acknowledge the presence of others.

Wonderfully inventive and useful though underground public transport is, the residents of a city must get pretty fed up with having to suffer smelly, crowded, noisy trains every day just to get to work and back, so it's not really surprising people aren't at their most communicative when travelling through a city. Things only get worse in the summer months when the hot weather and the tourists arrive, and you're forced to commute with hundreds of other smelly beings, with your nose in someone's armpit. And all this whilst trying desperately not to make eye contact.

Cross-channel cultural differences become apparent, though, when you do inadvertantly look somebody in the eye and acknowledge their presence with a small smile. Whenever I've done this on the tube, I've either been met with a bemused look, a returned smile from another non-Londoner or someone else whose guard has momentarily been forgotten, but in most cases, no response at all.

Being a young woman in Paris, however, a meeting of the eyes or a twitch of the lips, when directed at a member of the male half of the species, is frequently mistaken as a kind of mating call. More than once in my year in Paris, I found myself warding off invitations to "come to my 'ouse tonight" and firmly removing wandering French hands from my knee as a result of nothing more than a polite smile or a glance that lasted a second or two too long.

One time, my landlord was having some building work done on the exterior of my apartment, and for a few days I would wake up to find two or three men clattering and banging around outside the window. It seemed rude to ignore them, so in true English style, I offered them a cup of tea. They looked slightly surprised, but accepted, so I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When I returned, with two cups of strongly brewed Tetleys with milk and no sugar (I'd brought the teabags to Paris in bulk - the French don't really do tea a l'anglais) and some Garibaldi biscuits, I found them perched on the edge of my bed. It was my turn to be surprised, but I handed them the tea, which they tasted with suspicion, put down on the floor and proceded to chat me up. After an hour or so of various not-so-tempting offers, which included an invitation to go and stay in their house in Egypt, I managed to get rid of them. I poured the cold tea down the sink, locked the windows and put the kettle on. They did seem to like the Garibaldi biscuits though.

My experiences with Parisian men then and on the metro taught me a lot more about public transport etiquette, the European method of seduction and French taste in tea and biscuits than any grammar lessons or lectures at the Sorbonne ever did.

Debt drives students to extreme(ly silly) measures

Students today are leaving university in more debt than ever before. The majority of those who embarked on their undergraduate degree after 2006 face top-up fees, with students at many universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, forking out up to £3000 per year for tuition alone, not to mention accommodation and living costs.

Having just completed my degree and left university, my parents are several thousand pounds down and I owe a sum of roughly £14,000 to the Student Loans Company.

Although my loan will be paid back in instalments according to how much money I earn per year, I'm a little concerned about my overdraft, which is currently at an alarming level and isn't showing any signs of improvement, despite having two summer jobs which give me a regular income. The only way I can see to earn some money instead of scrimping and saving to break even, is moving back home.

But there may be an alternative.

The following suggestions are not necessarily recommended:


1. Posing for photo shoots.

I responded to a couple of posts on the Gumtree website advertising for models to pose for photographs, hoping that the opportunities would be as innocent as some of them seemed. I really should have caught on when I read "an open mind, discretion and nice feet are essential" but in naive desperation, I responded to the ad and got the following response:

"Thanks for your interest. I would like to photograph your beautiful, naked feet in the comfort of your own home. You will be required to dip your feet in chocolate, custard and other substances. You will of course be paid for your time and you can keep the chocolate/custard, as well as a copy of the photographs."

After some careful consideration, I decided not to bother.


2. Modelling.

Another trawl through the Gumtree website led me to some slightly less seedy-sounding opportunities for money-making. "Average female models required for classy photo shoots", read one ad. Whilst I'm no Kate Moss, I'm reasonably confident about my body and thought that with a layer or two of make-up, flattering lights and the right clothes I could pull off a bit of amateur modelling. I emailed the person who posted the ad to enquire what would be expected of me.

The reply was: leather catsuits.

Again, maybe not.


3. Participating in medical/psychology research.

A move away from thoughts of photo shoots and modelling brought me to a whole selection of ads asking for individuals to participate in research projects. The opportunities ranged from answering surveys on depression and anxiety to testing new TB vaccination drugs. Even though an incident like last year's Parexel disaster which left six men critically ill after taking part in a clinical trial is extremely unlikely ever to occur again, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of taking untested drugs, so I opted for a few others. So last week I went to have an ultrasound scan on my heart to confirm that it was suitable for participation in an experiment involving inhaling air containing varying ratios of carbon dioxide and oxygen. It turned out that my heart "doesn't regurgitate enough", whatever that means, so I can't take part in that one. But I got paid a bit of cash just for lying on my side and getting my left boob covered in lube ("ultrasound gel" I think is the correct term), so it was worth the half hour. And tomorrow I'm off to the Warneford (the psychiatric hospital in Oxford) to have an MRI scan whilst being fed chocolate through a tube.


4. Getting a proper job.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Great Crested Dweeb

What on earth is going on with the fashion for Russell Brand haircuts?

Besides the fact that the man is a total prat, he looks like he's opted for a home haircut with no mirror after several glasses of wine, having had an unfortunate run-in with a bramble bush or three. As a consequence he bears an uncanny resemblance to the great crested grebe :

A bit harsh on the bird, perhaps.

This hairstyle is usually accompanied by punk/indie-style attire, comprising baggy, colourful tops, lots of eyeliner, Converse All-Star basketball boots and skinny jeans, which would look a lot better if the waistline was worn on the decent side of the arsecheeks. A centimetre or so of pants sticking out the top of your trousers is acceptable, providing they're not the ones that you've had since you were fifteen that you found at the back of your underwear drawer because your hair isn't the only thing you haven't washed for weeks, but some people go that one inch too far. Do you not understand? I don't want to see your bum.

History has shown us that fashion and good taste don't always go hand in hand, but the overgrown, lost-my-hairbrush-and-can't-afford-a-new-one, great crested grebe, arse-to-the-air look is just too silly for words.

Broken Records

Whilst I'm supportive of live music and buskers in general, it has come to my notice that the people who get their musical instruments out on Cornmarket to try and earn a few quid from the hordes of tourists swarming the streets of Oxford at this time of year, cater rather more for passers-by than for the people working in nearby shops and offices who have to sit and listen to them all day: the most extensive repertoire among them consists of three tunes. I've also discovered that Amazing Grace and Scotland the Brave, lovely melodies though they are, stay stubbornly lodged in one's brain after they've been on repeat from 9 til 5. And I've nothing against Pachelbel, but if I hear his Canon one more time I think I'll shove it.....

Ahem. Oh well, at least the man selling the squeaky bird toys is on his day off, and the weather's getting better.