hannah dee

Number 10 in a series of N…

Back in June, when I was getting started in France, one of my major headaches was the form-filling. The French excel at bureaucracy – the number of times I’ve had to show my birth certificate/marriage certificate/degrees/passport is just amazing for me as a brit. Why do the bank need to see my wedding cert? Why do the uni need to see all my qualifications, three times?

But the real problem for me is the proliferation of impossible questions. The first question on the form I had to fill in to get a social security number asked for my numéro INSEE, and after asking about four people I found out that this was asking for my social security number. Er, hello, I don’t have one. That’s why I’m filling in this damn form.

So here I am in my last month in France getting geared up for a new bout of form filling – I expect to have to do it for gas, electric, internet, income tax, health insurance, etc. etc. The latest form to arrive is for the Taxe D’Habitation (kind of a council tax). They didn’t just send me a bill – no, that would be too easy. They’ve sent me a form with 14 questions. The first of which asks for my numéro FIP, which apparently I can find on the first page of my tax return, which I haven’t received. They also want to know all sorts of other stuff, which I can probably work out, but I can see this particular bit of bureaucracy dragging on a bit. Which is a shame, as I’m leaving the flat at the start of June and would have liked to get this out of the way. I hope they’re not as bad as MGEN, the mutuelle I have to use for health insurance – they sent me a letter two weeks ago about the final piece of documentation they needed to set up my account, 10 months after I started the process.

There’s an interview with the captain of Grenoble foot 38 in this week’s GRE News, and it’s got a cracking opening question:

Rough translation… “Shit season, don’t you think?”

Today’s Ada Lovelace Day, a day when people across the world will be writing blog posts about women in technology that they admire. It also represents a year of this blog, as I started on Ada Lovelace Day last year with a post about Sue Black.

My choice for today’s celebration of women-in-tech is my friend Julie Greensmith. She’s a lecturer in computing at Nottingham, doing research into artificial immune systems and into the nature of thrill. This second research direction has her covering people in electrodes, pointing cameras at them, and sticking them on roller coasters. All in the name of science. When I last spoke with her she was talking about buying a bucking bronco for the lab. YAY SCIENCE!

I invited Julie up to give a talk at the 2009 BCSWomen Lovelace Colloquium (that’s where the picture comes from), and she’s spoken at the Royal Institution for womenintechnology.co.uk, and I’ve heard nothing but praise for both talks. She’s a great person to invite if you want an inspiring woman speaker, and if you’re lucky, she’ll show some video of a journalist screaming on a rollercoaster.

She also juggles, snowboards, plays about three hundred different musical instruments, and is great company. And she’s been called “Dr Thrill” in the national press, which you have to agree is very cool indeed. So here’s to Jools and many years of inspiring women scientists to come.

I’ve been getting quite into the rugby lately. It’s the wrong kind of rugby, obviously, and the whole “line up and throw the ball in” thing still confuses me a bit, but it’s good fun to watch down the pub and there’s a good chance that France might win the tournament. I got chatting to a woman during the France v. Ireland match who mentioned that there was going to be a live match between the Italian and French under-20s teams in Grenoble, and that it was free for women (!), so of course I said yes when she offered to get me a ticket.

Fast-forward a few weeks and I’d assumed that the opportunity had evaporated, like so many pub-based opportunities, but two days ago I got an email saying if I wanted my ticket for the Friday night match I should be in a particular square at 1915. So of course I said “Oui merci!”. But… upon arriving at the square, I discovered that it was full of people, many of whom were under 10. I hovered on the fringes of the crowd for a bit, straining to see if there was anyone I recognised (I had, of course, forgotten the woman’s name by now…) and generally played the lost English person. Eventually she spotted me and handed over the ticket, and we all moved off in convoy towards the ground. It turns out that all the local Rugby clubs had also been given free tickets and that’s who I was with – a junior rugby club. Oh my god can those children make a lot of noise. Good fun though. Here’s a video of some of the march to the stade des alpes – warning, you probably want to turn the sound down:

The pre-match entertainment included Les Pompom Girls du Stade des Alpes, a hugely irritating DJ bloke, and a brass band. DJ bloke came on to annoy us all at half time too. The match itself was a bit scrappy – lots of silly mistakes – but that’s to be expected from the under-20s teams I guess.

Number 9 in a series of N…

This photo was taken by my mum in Galleries Lafayette in Paris. Apparently “Acne” is upscale designer clothes, and you can find it between Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood. Heh.

Number 2 in a series of N…

I love the graphics here.

The Shag Cafe has a new house band. Naturally, they’re called “Shag Band”. They’ve got a very cool washboard – actually two different types of washboard with various other bits of kitchen equipment bolted to it. Here’s a very short clip – apologies for the sound quality, but I think the video does capture a certain je ne sais quoi, and at least it is short…

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.