Happy Christmas! ... Joyeux Noël !

Christmas ... Noël

Un peu à l'avance, mais joyeux Noël à tous mes fidèles lecteurs. Je remarque avec une certaine ironie, qu'au bout de bientôt 6 ans de blog, la page la plus visitée reste celle qui explique comment changer les ampoules de phare sur ma voiture!

A bit early, maybe, but Happy Christmas to all my (6?!) faithful readers. I note with mild amusement that after nearly 6 years and 870 posts, by far the most popular page is the one about changing the headlight bulbs on my car!

Decaf ... Décafféiné

Ca fait déjà un bon moment que j'ai raconté ici que j'allais progressivement arrêter le cafféine.

Et voilà, c'est chose faite depuis 2 semaines.

Pas d'effets secondaires notoires, si ce n'est que je dors beaucoup mieux et plus. Autrement dit, je commence à bailler déjà vers 15h, et ces derniers deux jours je me suis endormi à 20h! J'ai un sacré déficit, et ça ne fait pas de mal de commencer à le combler.

Par contre, j'ai toujours de temps en temps des maux de tête. Alors je vais peut-être devoir suivre le conseil de ma soeur et me faire examiner les yeux.

(voilà J, content? :)

It's a while since I mentioned my intention to stop all my caffeine intake.

I'm happy to report that I've been 'clean' for the last two weeks.

No side effects of note, except that I sleep more, and better. I start yawning about 3 in the afternoon, and these last two days I went to bed at 8! I have quite a sleep backlog, so there's no harm in catching up a bit (while I'm still young enough to be able to sleep that much!)

Still get headaches though from time to time, so might have to follow little sis' advice and get my eyes tested.

Any questions?

A while back I mentioned a good question & answer site for programmers : StackOverflow.

Now it is spawning lots of satellite sites:

Photography
Cooking
English Language & Usage
Maths
Games

and many more....

Racists? ... Racistes ?

La presse internationale s'est affolé de la votation pour l'expulsion des criminels étrangers.

Je ne suis pas certain que je suis pour, mais pour donner un peu de recul, voilà les statistiques sur la population veveysanne que je viens de lire dans le journal:

Population: 18 501
Suisse: 56%
Etranger: 44%
Portugais: 23%
Italie: 15.5%
Ex-Yugoslavie: 14.4%

Peut-être qu'on a la chance d'avoir les 'bons' étrangers, mais je crois que si ces autres pays arrivaient même à la moitié de ces chiffres, ils seraient déjà en guerre civile.

Notez aussi que (si j'ai bien compris), ces chiffres concernent la nationalité, et non l'origine - sûrement qu'il y a quelques 'étrangers' qui se cachent dans le % de suisses.

Tous les chiffres ici.

You may have read the SHOCK HORROR reports about the swiss voting for expulsing foreigners who have committed criminal offences.

I'm not sure that I approve, but just to put things in perspective, here is what I just read about the population of Vevey:

Population: 18 501
Swiss: 56%
Foreigners: 44%
Portugese: 23%
Italian: 15.5%
Ex-Yugoslavia: 14.4%

So maybe we have the 'right' foreigners, but I think you will agree that any of the other 'right thinking' countries which are look down their noses would be in meltdown if they were anywhere near those numbers.

And note that (as far as I can tell) these figures are for nationality, not origin - so there could be quite a few naturalised 'foreigners' hiding in the swiss % too...

All figures here.

Play ... Jeux

De plus en plus, les filles arrivent à jouer ensemble. Quel bonheur (pour tout le monde!)

(Notez que ce sont des photos de la semaine passée, la neige a tout fondu maintenant).

The girls are increasingly willing to play together, a good thing for all concerned.

(Note, these messages were pre-recorded, the snow has all melted now)

Cold ... Froid

D'après ma belle soeur, mes neveux et nièce considère que 'froid' c'est 24C, alors il fait froid chez nous!

With reference to this post, here you can see that it is 'cold' inside our flat!.

Snow again ... Encore de la neige

Cette photo prise droit après la précédente, mais de l'autre côté de l'appartement.

I took this photo right after the preceding one, but from the other side of our flat.

More snow ... Encore de la neige

Ces jours qu'il fait noir tôt (et encore plus noir, plus tôt, avec les nuages à neige), c'est difficile de prendre des photos.

It's difficult taking decent photos after work when the sun sets around half four.

Sillies ... Coquines

Snow ... Neige

Celle-ci me plaît.

I'm quite pleased with this one.

Portrait

Not quite ... Presque

Je roulais, alors difficile de prendre la photo parfaite - à gauche il y avait la tempête de neige; à droite un magnifique couché de soleil.

I was driving, so it didn't come out perfectly, but to the left of this sunset there was a very big black snow cloud.

Fashion shoot ... Top model

The snow is snowing, the wind is blowing.

A défaut de photo, voilà ce que dit le 'niederschlagsradar'. Il a neigé tout hier soir, et tout ce matin, et ça continue. C'est très joli, même si c'est un peu le gabegie sur les routes (pas au même point qu'en Angleterre!)

N'empêche, j'adore la neige.

The 'niederschlagsradar' doesn't do it justice, but it snowed all yesterday evening, and has been snowing all morning. I unfortunately haven't got a camera to hand, but it is quite beautiful, in a chaotic kind of way. Obviously things don't fall to pieces here quite like they do in the UK when it snows, but this morning there was a lot of snow on the secondary roads.

I love snow, nevertheless.

What the world needs now

"The man’s tears were unsettling. There is something about a man crying uncontrollably that shakes me. His dying wife was in the bed across the room, speaking occasionally, but mostly lying with eyes closed, comfortable but waning. He cried for her. He cried for himself. He cried for the fact that he was losing the life they had shared for decades."

Read the rest here...

Knew it was coming, and it came

While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn

By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words were told, our songs were sung
Where we longed for nothin’ and were quite satisfied
Talkin’ and a-jokin’ about the world outside

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never thought we could ever get old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one

As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split

How many a year has passed and gone
And many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a friend
And each one I’ve never seen again

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

(PS, it's not quite that bad, but I'm not going to fiddle with Bob's lyrics!)

Autumn ... L'automne

D'accord, les journées se raccoursissent, le temps se raffraichit, mais... quelles couleurs, quelle lumière, quelle ambiance.

Je crois qu'avec l'âge (je peux me permettre ce genre d'expression maintenant !), chaque automne que l'on vit n'est pas isolé, mais fait écho à tous les précédents. Du coup un genre d'ambiance interne s'installe et illumine tout...

Ca me fait penser à la dernière phrase du livre 'Journal d'un curé de campagne':

"Tout est grâce"

OK, so the days get shorter, the weather is colder and blustery, but ... look at those colours, the deep sunlight in the early evening!

I think that with time, as one gets older (I can start saying that kind of thing now, I think!), each autumn isn't experience in isolation, but surrounded with the echo of all the autumns past. So it is all bathed in a kind of inner atmosphere which lights everything up....

Makes me think of the last words of 'Diary of a country priest':

"Everything is grace"

Photos

Deux autres photos automnales.

Two more autumny photos.

Elia

Notre filleule Elia est venu passer 24 chez nous la semaine passée.

Elle s'est bien occupé de Rebecca lors de notre promenade, ce qui m'a permi d'aider Kalia lors de sa première sortie avec son 'nouveau' vélo. Elle a su faire presque du premier coup, impressionant!

Elia a marqué des points auprès de Kalia, qui a pleuré "mon amie Elia" le soir quand elle est partie...

J'ai aussi eu beaucoup de plaisir à avoir trois filles à la maison.

Our goddaughter Elia came and spent a day and a bit with us last weekend.

She looked after Rebecca when we went for a walk by the lake, which gave me the chance to give Kalia a hand for her first time on her 'new' bike (without stablisers). She was up and running in no time at all, quite amazing.

Elia really made an impression on Kalia, who wept the loss of "my friend Elia" the evening she left.

I also had a great time having three girls at home.

Cause and effect

Paintbrush injury pupil set to receive pay-out

Lady Dorrian was told that since the accident the local authority had issued a "safety flash" warning, stopping children working on the floor and banning the use of long paintbrushes.

Mr Brown claimed that the "risk assessment" carried out after his son was hurt should have been done before the accident, and could have prevented the tragedy.

He also claimed that those supervising the class at the time were at fault.

Pupils face 'uninspiring' lessons

Pupils at school in England are facing too many "dull and uninspiring lessons", say inspectors.

Whatever happened to "Hard cases make bad law"?

Now it's "Better safe than sued"

ABC

Les deux filles s'amuse avec le jeu ABC.

Both girls having fun with ABCs.