Yesterday I decided that it was time for me to give up the pre-paid cards and move on to a contract for my iphone. I did a little research at home and went to the store. I was planning on keeping my phone number but that turned out to be impossible and that should have been the moment that I left the store.. However I was determined to get it done and so I somehow ended up with the most expensive contract, a different number and a new phone… I have about 2345 hours of free phone calls, but only to France.. 758942 free texts messages only to France and as far as I am aware I can only access the internet through some stupid orange portal. So now I am paying 60 euro’s/month for nothing. I am going to go back today and see if it possible to change it to a cheaper option but doubt I will be successful.
Last weekend I went to Bordeaux to visit some Aussie friends and it was really lovely. Bordeaux is 1257 times nicer than Tours (and I really don’t mind Tours at all). Unfortunately it was raining on Saturday but we did have a lovely drive and a great lunch. It was also nice to discuss our experiences in the French labs and they were surprisingly similar; No communication/discussion, people working on their own isolated islands and bosses that are constantly absent. In contrast to my lab, the labs in Bordeaux do have a lot of facilities although they are not used very often. So having a bitching session was really great and it made me realise that it might not be such a bad thing to stay a little longer if it means I can get some publications (Yep that is a total 180). It also has to do with the fact that my experiment is finally falling into place; I received protocols needed for my project, probes are on the way and my boss agreed to the crazy amount of money I need to spend in order to get everything I need to carry out the experiments. While I have not given up on my dream job in London I know that I will stand a better chance in the fellowship application field with more publications so it looks like I will be staying in Tours a wee bit longer than initially planned.
French language is still a problem and I think I might need to get a tv and start watching French shows in order to learn by osmosis (this I also picked up from my Bordeaux weekend).
Wish me luck with my contract downgrading!