It must be quite precisely a year ago that Sonia and I stepped joyfully out of IBM in Dublin after our last day at work, knowing we would have two more weeks left in Ireland to relax and prepare until finally leaving on the 18th of august for France, direction Clermont-Ferrand. At that point we didn't know anything about this city, nor did we have a flat or a job or any other particular plans...other than getting out of Dublin as soon as possible and then enjoying life in a reasonably quiet region of France. We moved in to our flat and signed the contract on the 24th of august, 11 month ago today, so in view of the upcoming anniversary I thought I'd write an update on our everyday-life down here in the Auvergne.
Well then, to begin with: we both work!! Finding a job has honestly been the only worry or the only not entirely positive feature of our time here so far. I guess especially coming from Dublin where anyone with some knowledge of the english language can find a job within a week's time, we did not expect to have quite that much of a hard time here. Of course we knew that it is generally harder in France (and, for that matter, in most other places outside Dublin) to find a job, and the area in France we chose did not make things easier, but the extent of idiotic requirements for even the most brainless of jobs did come as a bit of a surprise. And so it took us, after an initial period of relaxation, acclimatisation and half-asked looking through local papers and websites (at this stage we still had some savings left from Ireland), a good 4 months of 'serious' job-searching until, funnily enough both within two weeks time, we did manage to trick an employer into believing we might be of some use to the company.
I'll leave it Sonia to report, or not, about her own job...as for myself I was actually very lucky! While already expecting to end up working either on a german/english speaking hotline or walking from door to door delivering publicity, magazines or similarly annoying items, I found a job for a small company that does sound/light/video installations...or something along those lines. I applied for a job as sound/light technician but after the two people in charge reviewed my CV during the interview, was offered a post doing video editing, post-production, video shooting and any other more or less related jobs that came up. The company, by the way called Avventura (you can have a look at our website
HERE), did not do anything like this before, so at the beginning we had to improvise a fair bit, and in fact still do. I have done all the work so far on my own laptop which I have to take to work every day, though this is finally about to change now, and we are still in the process of buying various pieces of equipment (cameras, accessories, computer, software, etc...) for my job. On the positive side, this situation gives me a lot of freedom as I'm the only one working on any project from start to finish, including all aspects of it which also makes the job pretty diverse. Nice recent project: we made a two minute 'making of'-type-clip of a photo-shooting for a fashion catalogue. So I went down to Marseille to shoot the video, did the editing and post-production, some graphic stuff and finally created a DVD with the clip....not a bad experience!
Outside of work, so basically during the weekends, we have started to try out the nearby lakes for refreshment. The summer seems to be pretty hot all over Europe and at the moment our average daytime temperatures are somewhere between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius. But considering we're not living right next to the sea, we picked a nice spot nonetheless as there's plenty of lakes in the region. And though the experience of swimming in a lake may be somewhat strange at first for certain individuals coming from a mediterranean island we both appreciated the short excursions. Pretty clean water, not too many people and always very nice views of the surrounding hills/volcanoes make up for a nice change of scenery.
We'd kind of like to update our photo album with some photos from these and other trips/events but have so far not managed to save some money to buy a nice digital camera to do so, so just stick with us for a bit, we do intend to buy one and catch up on supplying pretty photos in the not too distant future. In fact, regarding our recent acquisitions: it has only been about three weeks since we received our sofa! Which means that until three weeks ago we were sitting on little cushions on the floor whilst eating, watching TV or pretty much anything else. Since then we also bought a dining table and chairs which have not yet arrived though, so we're still pretty much in a phase of buying more or less basic stuff for the flat. I think the idea of acquiring a digital camera is also challenged by the alternative of a nice espresso machine....that'll be a close one, I'll keep you posted!
Well, so much for now. I ought to start getting ready to go to work, of course after having the indispensable two cups of delicious coffee in town on my way....quite possibly consumed in combination with a fresh baked good of my choice! I do intend, once again....., to write posts more frequently so maybe i'll continue this one the next time....we shall see.
A good week to everyone & à bientôt!
