Category: Family

So, my dad has an iPhone

I gave my former iPhone to my father. This morning, after watching for a while his 5 year-old grand-son play Angry Birds, he recounted his experience setting up the iPhone.

First, he didn’t know how to insert the SIM card. The leaflet only said to look some page up on the Web. Eventually, he searched and found a good video on YouTube, and watched it 15 times to get the hang of it.

Then he wondered how to open the damn thing and where the heck was the tool he had seen in the video. Well, it was where it had to, nicely tucked on the side of the white cardboard. He found it eventually, which saved him from having to look for a paper clip. Then he cut his SIM card. No sweat, here.

His next step was to install iTunes on his PC. It took a while to download but the hard part was to install the program. It failed near the end with an obscure error. He tried ten times. He decided to discard what he had downloaded and start again. It took another while but this time he managed to install iTunes properly.

What next? Well he needed to activate the iPhone. It didn’t work; he said the servers were probably loaded too much when he tried and that he’d try the next day.

So he took back the SIM card, reconstructed the card to its previous bigger shape, using tape and put it back in his previous cell phone. The next day, he was able to activate his phone.

Et voilà!

Summer theater

I was always too shy to do drama (and always worried on the several occasions it was suggested to me as a means to overcome shyness. A few years ago, my boss told me I should consider “improv” and it freaked me out so much that my instinct response was to think about quitting, which I didn’t do). However, I did go on stage, three times.

I don’t have many recollections. Shame must have taken care of blanking them from my memory.

The first time I went on stage, I was between 3 and 6 years old and the occasion was the celebration of the end of the school year. Our teacher had decided our class was an Indian tribe. I was the squaw (i.e., the chief’s wife) and I was to present our newborn baby to the tribe. I don’t know that these memories are mine or based on hearing my parents recounting the story, but I do remember waiting in the teepee –with the baby doll– for the signal my teacher would give me. At the signal I was to come out of the teepee and present the baby. I was told that I came out of the teepee holding the baby by an ankle, presenting the newborn upside down.

During the summer of 1985, I was visiting my aunt in Corsica for a month, and I was in a play for the second time. Someone in the village had decided that keeping the kids busy with a theater play was better than letting us wander the streets and woods around in search of some trouble to make. I was to be a maid. I practiced long and hard, I remember that much. I also remember that the representation was to occur only a few days after I turned 10. I don’t actually remember the play or whether it was a success. But my aunt remembers things. Like I was very unhappy that I was to be a simple maid. That she had to reveal to me the importance of maids at the time the play was set in. She also remembers that she helped me with reheasals. If I had been a promising actress, I’m positive she would have complimented me 😉

The third time I was on stage was, similarly to the first time, at the occasion of the school fair. I was almost 12 and it felt like the last school assignment I had to do before being rewarded with the summer holiday. Our teacher had picked an episode of “The Love Boat”. I was the goffer. I remember a few things, but none related to the play itself. I remember being glad I was wearing a white outfit because it was a really hot and sunny day and we were not acting in the shade. I remember wishing I would not trip when I climbed the stairs to go on stage (I don’t think I did, otherwise I would remember). And the other thing I remember is the make-up artist telling me the shape of my eye-brows was perfect and how pleased I was by what he had told me. I was also surprised because never before had I considered that eye-brows shape was something to have an opinion on. (I’m totally digressing but I have to note that either fashion changed since then, or the said shape changed and became not so perfect over time. Or the guy made fun of me in the first place.)

MBTI en famille

I found a French version of the MBTI test and all those who can speak 😉 in this house took the test:

Vlad: INTJ (I 50, N 30, T 30, J 10) [Mastermind]
Renaud: ESTJ (E 10, S 10, T 20, J 10) [Supervisor]
Coralie: ISTJ (I 70, S 70, T 10, J 60) [Inspector]

That makes an absolute majority of TJs, a majority of Is and Ss, and an absolute minority of E.
I wonder what Amy would say about our results 😉 (I hold Amy to be *the* MBTI specialist, although she would humbly deny it).

Eugénie went for a walk

Impératrice Eugénie et ses dames
Impératrice Eugénie et ses dames

I dreamt of “L’Impératrice Eugénie parmi ses dames d’honneur” by Winterhalter (1855), that I know because there’s a small reproduction in my parents’ dining room.

The Empress Eugénie was having a nice and quiet afternoon with her friends from the palace, sitting in the beautiful and shady garden in Compiègne.

I could hear their educated, sophisticated and subdued conversations. Two were laughing lightly, another was humming a song, one was lost in the contemplation of flowers, two were whispering secrets, two were undecided as to which conversation to follow, and the empress was rather bored. I was on my way to the kitchen and wasn’t paying attention to them.

On my way back to my room, something was missing.
The Empress Eugénie had left.
I guessed she had gone for a solitary walk.