Catégorie : C’est la vie

Suitcases and nutcases

Don’t get me wrong: I love to travel and I’m grateful for the fact that I’m able to do it once in a while.

But man, do I hate packing! I hate trying to anticipate the weather in a foreign country and knowing that no matter how much stuff I’ll take, I’ll never feel like I’m wearing the right clothes: too hot, too warm, not stylish enough, too dressed up, not ready for the rain, etc.

No matter how much time I’ll spend picking the perfect suitcase or backpack, I know it will not be appropriate for my next trip and I’ll feel like I need a new one. Don’t even get me started on a daypack. Backpacks make you feel like the ultimate tourist but anything else is too small or too uncomfortable for a long day of walking through the city. And do you bring a purse to go out at night?

Picking the right shoes also makes me nervous. They have to be comfortable since I’ll be walking for hours, but what will I put on my feet when I want to wear a skirt to go to a nice restaurant? Shoes are heavy so you can only bring so many…

And how about toiletries? What if I forget my contacts or my glasses? Should I really bring a hairdryer? Will it work with a power adapter or will it fry my hair like that stupid dryer did in France? Will I just leave my hair curly and hate myself on every single picture? Has that bottle of sunscreen expired? Will I remember not to carry the pointy nail file and the scissors in my carry on so I don’t get busted at airport security?

Which book should I bring? Isn’t that one too heavy? If I bring that small book, will I be done reading it before we land? Will I really have time to read or won’t I just be too tired at night?

Then there’s the electronics: The camera, the memory cards and the battery charger with the appropriate adapters. Should I bring my PDA (and its charger)? How about my iPod (and its charger)? Should I really bring it since I’m not traveling alone?

And what if they don’t transfer my bag during the short time between my connecting flights? Will I have to stay all day in the apartment I’m renting to wait for the damn thing to arrive (that is, IF they ever find it).

Yikes.

If I were rich I would never ever bother packing. I’d just spend the first two days of the trip buying all new stuff.

Le goût de la télé

Je reviens de passer une audition pour une émission de télé à laquelle je pourrais peut-être participer sur une base régulière comme chroniqueure. Je n’étais pas absolument convaincue que j’avais envie de retourner à la télé. Ça faisait deux ans que je n’avais pas été placée devant une caméra pour faire une chronique. Quand la télé me manquait, c’est surtout au travail d’équipe que je songeais et pas à ma face à l’écran (ça, ça me manquait pas mal moins). J’ai rencontré des gens intéressants ce matin (dont un blogueur connu qui auditionnait comme animateur), j’ai remis les pieds sur le plateau de tournage et hop, le goût de la télé m’est revenu, comme de la belle visite qu’on est content de voir. Ah ben! R’garde donc qui qu’y est là! On pensait pas te voir la fraise à matin!

Les auditions, c’est parfois cruel, mais les gens qui regardent les cassettes d’audition peuvent l’être encore plus. Croyez-moi: j’ai assisté à quelques unes de ces séances de sélection et personne n’est épargné. Question de chimie, de goût, du pied sur lequel on s’est levé ce matin là. Ceci étnat dit, je partirai en vacances la semaine prochaine avec l’esprit tranquille (et avec Blork) en attendant de connaître en détails le sort de cette émission de télé qui est en pleine période de changement (non, je ne dirai pas de quelle émission il s’agit, du moins pas maintenant). Qui vivra verra!

Special features and bonus track

Whenever I watch a movie or a tv series on DVD, I try to listen to the commentary tracts. Unfortunately, I don’t often make it all the way to the end.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that the information the director, writer or actor provide is not interesting. Quite the opposite. But there’s something about the quiet and monotone voice that they often adopt to do the recording that puts me to sleep. I can sense the presence of the microphone and the padded walls of the recording studio. I can imagine them dressed in comfortable, messy clothes, sitting in the small room with a cup of coffee between their hands, watching the movie on a small screen, trying to bring back the memories of their work experience so that they can share it with us.

The soundtrack of the movie plays softly in the background as if someone somewhere had forgotten to turn off a radio. The voice on the commentary tract goes on an on. I sit there and I watch, motivated to stay awake and to make it till the end. After a little while, I decide that I can close my eyes for a minute because I’ve already seen the movie and the picture is not really necessary anymore. It reminds me of being read to as a kid. You know the book so well the pictures don’t matter anymore. Only the voice of the dear person who reads to you.

zzzzzz…

Sorry. Did I just fall asleep again? Damn.

Anyway, this weekend we watched the grand finale of Six Feet Under. It was intense and beautiful and good, just like everybody who saw it said it was. I had gotten pretty emotional while watching DVD number 3 – that funeral scene just about killed me because it was close to something I’ve experienced in the past – but I managed to calm down for the last episodes.

I listened to Alan Ball’s commentary track on the last show, which he wrote and directed, and this time, I managed not to fall asleep and sat through the whole thing, wide awake. It felt like the right thing to do to make sure I could « grieve » properly since the series is lost and gone for good.

Last night, I had a dream which I won’t describe here because it would be boring and I can’t remember the details anyway. Let’s just say it involved friends and family. There was nothing really special about the dream, except for the fact that the actual soundtrack of the conversations was set to a low level and the voice-over of Alan Ball was narrating the action. He was explaining why a family member said what he said, why someone was dressed with certain clothes, why someone else entered the room from the front door instead of the back door… Alan Ball was narrating my dream, providing a commentary track to my own universe. Now THAT is what I call special features.

As I said, I don’t remember the dream so well but I’m glad to announce that no one died in the end.