kelly la violiniste

So the other day my co worker says to me "Kelly you play the violin!" I looked at him quizically. Smiling he shows me an email about the new intern with this accompanying picture:



My other talent? Practicing the violin? I hadn't touched the violin since the 7th grade. How did this happen?

My brain flashed back to almost 8 months ago in the office of the woman designated to help the foriegners find internships. There I was, having been in France for 3 months and tasked with creating a resume in French for the upcoming internship fair.

Her: Under hobbies you have under instruments 'Viola'. What's that?
Me: You know what Violin is?
Her: Yes
Me: Do you know what a Cello is?
Her: Yes.
Me: Well a Viola looks like a Violin but has the strings of a Cello.
Her: ...
Me: You've probably seen it but you didn't know you saw it because it looks like a Violin.
Her: ...
Me: It's not very popular.
Her: ...
Me: ...
Her: How about we put 'Violin'?
Me: [Just agree idiot don't you realize you have to write an entire resume in French?] D'accord.

Voila. Or should I say Viola.

i heart my new camera

nuit blanche

So this past Saturday was when Paris "does New York" and becomes the city that never sleeps. But of course they had to do it the French way and incorporate contemporary art into it.

Knowing full well that my relationship with contemporary art is at best tolerant, I decided to go anyways since I figured heck, I'm in Paris and should check it out, right? Plus the purpose of Nuit Blanche is to incorporate contemporary art into every day life and by extension to the masses (read: me).

We started by going to one exhibit where a large line was forming to get into an enigmatic boxlike structure. Filled with the desire to not miss out we immediately got in line. For what we had no idea, but it had to be good, right? Just look at the line!!

20 minutes later I found myself in a room listening to the voices of a couple arguing. No video just voices and other people sitting around listening to the voices which coming from each of the four walls randomly.

I was not impressed and neither were a lot of people if I judged the looks on people's faces correctly as they finally entered the room (first a look of "That's it?" Followed by hope that maybe there's more. And finally the disappointment that there wasn't).

Next we saw a video entitled "All the world's fighter planes" which consisted of newspaper clippings of fighter planes set to music.

Then we saw a video entitled "A Voyage in Dwelling" which the voyage consisted of a woman roaming the halls of what appeared to be a mental institution and decided to go down the stairs like the Grinch did in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" only I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be humorous. At the end she cried on the deck of a cruise liner.

Other exhibits included flashing lights in a swimming pool to mimic lightning and a in a ice skating rink with a orange glowing picture thingy. Both were not worth the walk to get there.

We were very close to leaving at this point. However I was stubborn in my faith in Paris that it MUST have something cool to offer in this Nuit Blanche of theirs so I insisted we check out something called the "Light Machine" (I like light) at Parc des Buttes Chaumont.

And I was not disappointed.

macaroons

So after one hour wait at Laduree I left with 6 mini macaroons. The math doesn't seem quite to add up.



They are good little buggers though. Next time I'll avoid going on a weekend.

(h)appy (h)our

So I got roped into going to a BI meeting to discuss "lessons learned" from current projects. The meeting started at 6:30pm, lasted for 2 hours and a half, and was all in French.

And since I can barely carry a conversation about the weather in French I was pretty much useless to my "Bleu" team when trying to figure out things like this:



Then about half way through the meeting (which was held in a meeting room at CSC headquarters in La Defense) an assistent wheeled in "refreshments".



Indeed.