guilt

Ever since the end of exams, I've been feeling guilty about my lack of updates. What have I been doing instead? Well first I caught up on months and months of sleep. Then when I was rested and feeling creative, I finally got my screening kit dirty and I turned my apartment into a shirt-making factory. After that I dove into the pile of unread magazines sitting on my bedside table and spent lazy afternoons reading in the Champs de Mars. I also went to see Mr. Oizo's first big-budget flick, Steak, featuring Sebastien Tellier, Kavinsky and Sebastian. That turned out to be a waste of my time and money. The only redeeming factor was the soundtrack.

After a few days of laziness, I had to get back into study mode for a week-long seminar in Strasbourg. I won't lie: going to this seminar was the last thing I wanted to do. The thought of spending a week waking up at 730, sitting through 6 hours of conferences a day and working on a group project until 11 at night had me close to tears for the whole train ride. But it was a valuable experience, I met some cool people, blah blah blah.

Then I went to Bucarest for 4 days - my first time back there since 1991. I was too young the last time to be able to tell how much the country has changed, but apparently the economy has taken off since Romania joined the EU. Concretely however, you would never guess it, since most middle-class families still live in old, decrepit Stalinist housing complexes. Only the people who fled the country and then came back are able to afford a comfortable life...and only if they managed to recuperate their belongings from the government after the fall of communism. The romanian mafia also seems to be doing pretty well for itself judging by the large numbers of expensive cars rolling through downtown.

Usually I'd be pretty sad to leave Paris in the summer, but the unbelievably shitty weather is starting to get to me. I can't remember the last time I was this pale in mid-July. Wreck beach here I come.