Small victories

I've recently realised that French is taking over English around these pages. I can't argue anymore that it's my only chance to use my mother language: most of my friends in Helsinki are French speakers (weird, I know) and online I spend a lot of time writing and reading French, so I don't really miss it anymore. The thing is, I started writing my personal notes about books I've read, and since I have connected with French-speaking litterature bloggers, those notes need to be in French. I also created a new habit of presenting every Wednesday an interesting blog I like to follow, and I also made it in French. These two categories have produced most of my posts these last two months, so although I kept writing in English when I had a chance, the language is receeding around here.

Nevermind, I promise I'll still keep you posted with the latest developments of my life in Shakespeare's language. And I'll prove it now: here is a small list of my recent daily victories.

Last Saturday, I spent an afternoon playing boardgames with friends, and later I met them for a dinner in a typical Finnish restaurant and a tour of surrounding bars. We were celebrating a birthday. My victory was to avoid spending an insane amount of money (as can easily happen when you go out in Helsinki) and to maintain a tolerable level of alcohol consumption.

Sunday, I cleaned up the appartment, which really needed it. It's now completely spotless (victory n°1). I also managed to avoid going to Mummy and Daddy Bear's house, although Mr Bear was very insistent. I kept my ground and I'm proud of it (victory n°2, good job for a Sunday). I don't think Daddy and Mummy Bear are upset, they had me delivered two pieces of pie - they have noticed by now that I eat twice as much as they do.

Monday, my victory was: surviving to the movie 2012. I was expecting a totally uninteresting display of the worst kind of high budget US cinema, but Mr Bear really wanted to go. I was right: it was a totally uninteresting display of the worst kind of high budget US cinema, something along the lines of Armaggedon and The day the Earth stood still. Special effects were good, though. The only part that I found a little original was a short moment when two Tibetan characters - a mother and her son - are having a conversation. The mother is about to chop off the head of a chicken. Thoughout their whole conversation, you can't take your eyes away from the axe she's holding high, wondering when she'll let it down, which adds some funny suspense. Especially for me who didn't catch a word of what they were saying in Tibetan with subtitles in Finnish and Swedish.

Tuesday, I managed to write a small text in Finnish within about 30 minutes. It's a victory because I usually take about 2 hours. But you're under pressure when you leave it for the last moment and you end up waking up two hours late because your alarm unexpectedly switched off.

As for Wednesday (yesterday), my victory consisted in remembering just on time an important paper to fill in and send. I thought I still could do it until the end of the month, but the deadline was actually this afternoon. For once, I realised it a few hours early, and not a few hours late as usual.

Now I don't know if that was interesting at all for any reader, but never mind; if you just want to know how I feel, the fact that I'm counting daily victories might tell you something.