hannah dee

Weightwatchers in France is an interesting thing to do. It’s not as hugely popular here as it is in the UK, and I don’t think there are any competitor diet clubs (I’ve seen no Slimmers World or Rosemary Conley), and it is much more expensive than in the UK (38 Euros/month rather than 18 quid/month !!). However given that my documents were posted in Maidenhead, I guess there are some postal overheads involved here. And it’s still cheaper than French lessons, even if the vocab is somewhat limited.

In the UK, as you approach the scales, there’s a kind of scruffy striptease, in which everyone ends up in skirt and blouse or trousers and t-shirt. No coats, very few jumpers, and definitely no shoes. Some people insist on wearing the same clothes to meeting each week. Here in France you see nothing of the sort. There’s even a sign on the scales saying “Keep yer shoes on” (in French, obviously). Another major difference is that in meetings in the UK you might get one or two loud contributors but the leader often has to really work to get the group to contribute ideas. At both the meetings I’ve been to here the leader (“animatrice“, I like that word) has real difficulty getting people to shut up and listen to the talk rather than discuss food, recipes, progress and so on. There also seems to be a more scientific edge to the French WW – over the last three weeks we’ve covered lipides (fats), glucides (carbs) and proteins (I don’t need to translate that one, do I?). But it’s not been about what to cook with them, it’s been about why the body needs them, how to maintain the bilan alimentaire (balanced diet), how many calories it takes the body to store 100g of fat (4kcal) or protein (35kcal)… It’s seriously been quite a biology lesson.

One other difference is in the calculation of Points® – to work out what you have to count for eating a thing, you need to know the calorie content and the fat content. In the UK this is based upon saturated fat, and in France it’s just based on fat (this has to be because the food labels here don’t include saturated fat content by default). The formula for Points® is a closely guarded secret but those of us with a small amount of scientific or mathematical background find it fairly easy to work out from the documents – it’s a simple linear simultaneous equation (X calories + Y fat). Without going into details, in the UK X is 10 calories higher than it is in France, so here, a Point® doesn’t go quite as far. Boo! Exercise Points® don’t seem to be as generous here either – 1 hour of walking gets me 3 Points®, which seems rather mean as it doesn’t even equate to a pint of beer.

This view is about 20 mins into my bike to work. I love the way the mountains shift behind the buildings, perspective changing and somehow managing to make the boring boxy foreground stuff look interesting. There’s been snow on those for about four weeks now.

It was a glorious evening yesterday, but I didn’t make it up the big hill before dark. I thought I’d give the panorama an attempt anyway.

VITAE (a UK organisation to support researchers) recently advertised for paid blogger positions on their career development blogs. I wasn’t successful in my application, as I couldn’t make it to their training day in London, what with me living in France and all. But they said they’d publish the submission from my application and it’s now up: ranting about powerpoint overview slides. Seriously, I have, in the past, considered adding a slide to my conference presentation which says:

• Waffle
• Other people’s stuff
• What I did
• How it worked
• Waffle

The other thing I’ve considered doing is photographing every overview slide in a conference and turning all 30+ of them into an animated gif. I guess I’d better wait until I’m better at taking photos without flash though, as it could get a bit distracting for the other attendees…

I’ve taken up dance lessons – partly because I enjoy dancing, partly because I know I’m not very good at it and lessons will help, and partly because it’s something sociable that gets me out of the flat and doing some exercise. I’ve been to six or seven lessons now and am beginning to be able to string a few moves together, but I’m always counting in my head and trying to remember stuff. There are a few sentences that repeat and I am sure I have a look of absurd concentration on my face – I don’t think it goes as far as sticking my tongue out and frowning, but it might…

“don’t look at your feet“
“relax your shoulders“
“try to move on the balls of your feet, not your heels“
etc.etc.etc.

It’s good for my french, in a limited way – I expect I’ll soon start believing that counting in french goes un, deux, trois et quatre, cinq, six, sept et huit, and every now and then I am completely baffled by what the instructors say. Sometimes I catch just one word in a sentence, and try to work it out from there. Other times that doesn’t help… Pamplemousse? That means grapefruit. How should I dance like a grapefruit?! Yellow? Sour? Turns out I had to pretend I had a grapefruit in each armpit. I worked it out in the end, but it wasn’t easy.

On top of the lessons, I have been to two or three social dance evenings now. It’s really interesting, for me as a teacher, to observe myself and my classmates dancing in a less constrained setting. I find myself being a bit of a robot – the things I know from class I am OK on (so if I dance with people from the same level I’m not bad), but the few times I’ve danced with the instructor, or the inimitable Vinnie, I’ve been embarrassingly bad. Others are much more natural; they take what they’ve learned in class and are able to build on it and take cues from the more experienced dancers. Some of these people I find out have done other dance classes before, so have a framework to work with; others just seem to have natural talent.

The parallels with learning maths, or programming, are surprisingly clear – those who take what we teach them and immediately try to apply it in different contexts, and who see beyond what’s shown, are the students we all love to teach. People like me, the robots, take work; we’re not so easy to teach but we do get there in the end. It’s quite instructive to do the learning in a context that’s so different, and it’s equally instructive to see the teaching. I think the instinctive element in maths & programming actually has quite a lot in common with dance.

I’ll finish with an embedded video; one of these is the inimitable Vinnie, and another is my instructor… and yes, they really are that cool.

My favourite one-and-a-half hour bike ride goes out along the Drac, past the confluence with the Isère, across the dam, then back along the Isère. Here are two panoramas from the barrage – the first in early summer (June, I think), and the second today: