hannah dee

I’ve had another two posts published over at the Vitae researcher blogs. One is on organising your references with citeulike (a website that I think is brilliant), and the other is on what makes a good academic homepage. The homepage question is a big one, I think – all of us academics have a homepage of some kind, but there’s little consensus about what should go on them. So if you’ve got some opinions do pop over to the vitae blogs and leave a comment.

Number 8 in a series of N…

Chambery airport isn’t really in Chambery. If you’re going there, you should probably realise you’re looking at a 20euro taxi ride from the train station. Or if you have a bit of time, you can take a local bus (number 6) to the end of the line (Voglans Eglise), ask for directions, and then take a 15 minute stroll downhill, arriving at the airport on foot. And on your way, you’ll pass a dog training centre called Hot Dog Education.

I’ve been playing with a javascript zoom thing, which is available free from this site, as a means of displaying panoramas better. I think it works quite well. Here are a few examples – Grenoble after sunset, the Chartreuse mountains and a very snowy Grenoble from the memorial to the troops of the mountain. I think the last one came out best.

Number 1 in a series of N…

The wines of the morning! Discounted wine between 8am and 2pm! Marvellous. Must remember to pop in on my way to the lab.

I mentioned a while back (in this post) that I’d applied for a paid blogger job with VITAE, the organisation that supports UK researchers, but didn’t get it because I couldn’t make an induction session in London. To my delight I was contacted a few days ago and asked if I was still interested. So I’m now on the official team until it’s reviewed at the end of March.

The theme of the blog is staff development and career support for researchers, but people seem to be interpreting that quite broadly. My first post as one of the core bloggers has just gone up here – The Coffee Club theory of departmental sociability. It’s a bit frivolous, but with the current economic climate doing what it’s doing to the UK HE system I thought something lighthearted might be in order.

I’ve got to do three posts each month, comment on other people’s blogs, and encourage other people to visit the blog and comment (so off you go now, there’s a dear). It’s not going to enable me to retire early but it’s nice to be recognised. This is my first paid writing job, unless you count a poem I got published in the skateboard magazine RAD when I was 14. So in all, I’m quite pleased.

Number 7 in a series of N…

Actually, I think that if I were to suffer a massive career change and open a native American gift shop in France, I might well call it Sioux Venir. I’m really rather taken with the name. I’ve never been in, of course – I don’t have much call for bows, arrows or dream catchers. But I do like the name. Comedian Dave Gorman, upon my recommendation, has entered this shop into his Pun Street. So thanks to this shop, I’ve been mentioned by twitter ID on Absolute Radio. Fame at last!

Campus looked a bit like Narnia, but with cooler street names.

Being in the Alps, they know how to handle snow. Public transport runs fine. People change the tyres on their cars, then just get on with it. I’ve not cycled since it came down as I’m a bit nervous of ice, but the trams are going perfectly, so that’s not a problem

Later in the day, once the University Snowplough had passed, it got a bit more slushy, but not much.

It’s done a lot of melting today and has just refrozen, turning the pavements into a real ice rink just in time for the next snowfall, but it still looks very nice (and the trams are still fine).

I finally got to catch a Grenoble Foot 38 match just before xmas, and you know what? They didn’t lose!!! The final score was 1-1 against Nice, which for GF38 is really very good. In my not so expert footballing opinion, they were robbed, too, and it should have been a win. But what do I know.

The Stade des Alpes is a magnificent building. It opened less than 2 years ago, and according to Wikipedia its solar panels generate 70,000kWh a year. I have no idea what they use those kilowatts for though, it’s certainly not heating. We had to scrape the ice off our seats on arrival. But it is gorgeous.

So what’s different about going to the footie in France?

• They don’t sell pies at half time. They sell baguettes, and Vin Chaud. However, they’re also rubbish at estimating required stock levels. They’d run out of all hot baguette fillings, and Vin Chaud, and cans of lager, by the time we got to the food stall. Being fairly experienced sporting event goers, we stood up to go and hit the snacks just before the whistle, and so couldn’t realistically have been any quicker. I reckon the ladies behind the counter drank and ate it all.
• You get thoroughly searched before you go in, but who knows what they’re looking for. Elephants, I guess. They managed to let in MASSES of huge flags (with flagpoles), drums, fireworks…
• People do actually say Ou La La!
• The chants are hard to make out but seem fairly simple. We took along a Genuine Frenchman® so it wasn’t just us being rubbish at understanding what they were on about – the only one we really got into was the fairly straightforward Allez Grenoble!
• Swearing is obligatory. If anything goes wrong or right for your team, you should shout Putain! or Merde! in anger or triumph. Unless you fancy saying Ou La La! instead.
• It’s cold, but maybe that’s just the Stade des Alpes

I don’t know if it’s just that Nice is fairly close to Grenoble (just a paltry 4 hours in a car) or whether there’s a big rivalry, or whether it’s just normal for all Ligue 1 matches, but there were a hell of a lot of riot cops there. Shields, batons, guns… all on display. I tried to catch a photo of them down through the sides of the stadium as they were shifting positions at half time. It didn’t quite come out as I’d hoped but I rather like the picture anyway.

And here’s a photo of some fireworks on the other side of the ground. They threatened to stop the match if anything else landed on the pitch, so the crowd calmed down a bit. Maybe they were just trying to keep warm.

The atmosphere was great though, if a bit cold. Did I mention it was cold? I’ll definitely try to go again.

Where Père Noël seems to find it rather hard to get in….