Paris
24/08/2011
Today is my birthday and I had planned a Restaurant dinner but decided that the stress was not worth it, so cooked up a "special" meal at the college and bought a cheap bottle of white wine for the occasion! Worked out pretty well but it did highlight that I have not made any friends in the week I have been here. It would have been better to have celebrated in London before I came over.
As for every-day living in Paris (or rather in the very special place, the Cite' Universitaire); some good and some bad. I tried to set up a bank account on campus and was nearly there (as in signatures, photocopies of documents etc) when they asked about my student Visa. Now I could have got one, or at least the Long-stay Visa, but that would have meant a special trip to Sydney for the Photogrametry and interview. As an alternative I fitted everything I needed to do in the 90 days of an ordinary visa, but the unintended side-effect is no EU student bank account. I will check-out the non=resident accounts but they have to be negotiated in head-office.
I am also having a bit of a problem getting a "smart phone" SIM card. Not as easy as a normal mobile phone because it needs data (or internet), which is excluded from most cheap pay-as-u-go cards. When you go on-line for the Orange Telecom "MobiCarde" for example, they have "Internet exclu" on their classic card. Tried one "phone shop" for information and was brushed aside very quickly. My problem is that you need the "data" to run Google Maps so there must be a way (and a simple one at that). I will try again tomorrow morning.
Today I cleared the last of the batch of Manuscript boxes that the Library/Archive staff had got out for me. I am now back to Lesueur's early American period, and have some of his "Tropical" species sketches and small water-color paintings. These were from the Caribbean and Florida, rather than the Australian coast. There are about 20 boxes still in the archive and at two per session means at least two weeks work to go. I have got through 9 boxes in 3 days so the timeframe is reasonable. It is mind numbing going through the french text written in tiny text, trying to get the meta-data to fit the sketches and paintings into context.
I have yet to get to the Australian sketches, if they are here. So far no mention, even when Lesueur is putting together chapters for his book.
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