I await the ‘bro I’ll be in St Helens next week if you wanna meet up’ PM.
I await the ‘bro I’ll be in St Helens next week if you wanna meet up’ PM.
I'm a twit
Up in Solec Kujawski today, real prostitute murder country and there are plenty of potential victims loitering along the road should such a murderer arrive in town. We're so far out of the way that the truck company we visited had its own hotel and adjoining restaurant. The boss sensibly ordered halibut, and now wonders why his stomach is aching. I went for tomato pasta, which even these lads can't fuck up.
Have to credit Poland though, unlike anywhere in western Europe that I can think of it's a country visibly moving in the right direction.
If you have the chance (though I'm guessing you won't? Maybe you can squeeze a dinner in there or something), go visit Torun. Very impressive old town.
Torun is lovely.
I have a job interview on Monday for what is essentially my dream role for where I'm at in my career, but it's in Paris, and I am seriously skeptical of moving to a place filled with Parisians...
What if you commuted in from <looks at Google Maps> Noisy-le-sec?
The first image when you google it makes it look like a northern council estateOriginally Posted by Shindig
Purely by chance, I swear.
This looks like every Paris "view", just that usually you have something in the far distance that makes it so the landlord can say "with a view of the Eiffel tower".The first image when you google it makes it look like a northern council estate
It depends on where exactly in Paris your office would be. The people weren't as bad as I expected/was told, but then again I was only there for a year and it coincided with Covid so maybe I was spared from the full Parisien effect.
Dead center, near Opera metro. I think I would only want to live on the left bank though, maybe all the way down towards 13th.
I lived in L'Hay-les-Roses (southern suburb) and it was great but it was not very well connected in terms of public transport (substantially cheaper rent though, and it was closer to my research center anyway).
Last edited by Adramelch; 27-09-2023 at 11:46 AM.
Another boss-related disaster today. Starting out in Warsaw at 8am, I put the address of the next customer into the satnav, it was in Poznan (in the west of Poland). Boss said no, that's wrong, they're in Katowice (in the south). I argued, he said no, it's a suburb which has the same name but they're actually in Katowice, I've visited them before. I said but look at the postcode on his email signature, it matches the one in Poznan. He said no, believe me, he picked me up from Katowice airport last time. I said fine, have it your way.
Long story short, they are indeed in Poznan and we're now in Katowice.
Ah well, you can go visit some silver mines instead, I guess. Or, more likely, just drive him back while he refuses to acknowledge he even made a mistake in the first place.
Will you be driving to Poznan now or is that customer now done with?
No, we've had to rack him off and going to see a much smaller fish in Czestochowa instead.
I really like this country, the one thing that counts against it is the impenetrable language. I speak 4+ languages to some extent but I can't get this out of my mouth at all. Even the word for thank you is impossible to say.
Religious freak central in Czestochowa.
'Kurwa' is easy enough.
What's so bad about Parisians?I have a job interview on Monday for what is essentially my dream role for where I'm at in my career, but it's in Paris, and I am seriously skeptical of moving to a place filled with Parisians...
This question is not open to any of you English lot cause you're all weird as fuck about the French.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewb...for-travelers/
The general consensus seems to be that the French will just refuse to speak English to you no matter what (which I don't even personally mind to be honest) and just generally look down on people who don't speak French and that Paris is the worst at that. That wasn't as much my experience. Even people that didn't speak English, tried to use the 5-10 words they did know in an effort to communicate with me.
On the topic of them speaking English: My default response when someone doesn't speak Greek will be to switch to English. I think that's not their default reaction and it might come across as them not wanting to speak English. I had multiple encounters, where young people tried to ask me for directions in French, I replied "Je ne parle pas français" and then we either moved on or tried to communicate with hand signals and stuff. Since they were young (one specific occasion was a 20-25something girl asking me directions for a student dorm), I doubt none of them spoke English. I didn't ask if they spoke English because for me it was a given that they would switch to it since I said I don't speak French, but I think that's just not the case.
I'm a twit
Pretty much spot on in my experience. I've had the same feeling in rural France as well as Paris, so I don't think Parisians deserve a bad reputation on this point. Although Paris itself is just wank in my experience, so there's that.
Contrast that with Germany for example, who default to English as soon as they discover you're British, even if your German is better than their English (although not normally, they're usually very good). It's just in their nature to be accommodating, whereas French isn't so much (rather like us, then).
Is being this sort of person a requisite for making it in that job / industry or does being in the job / industry just turn you into that sort of person?
The French have a real bugbear about what they percieve to be the anglican dominance of western culture in general and I can't blame them really as I can imagine it being like Brexit on steroids here if the reverse was true.
The one thing that really baffles me in all of the big European countries is how they can stand watching everything dubbed. In all of Barcelona there was a total of 2 cinemas that played the original versions of movies with Spanish subtitles. Everything else was dubbed.
He means 'Parisians'. Not Parisians.
Parisians are just curt, same as the inhabitants of any mega-city. France is basically a mirror image of England, and Paris is basically like London.
And you should all just learn French.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 27-09-2023 at 04:38 PM.
He (and several of the other regional managers, from what I've seen) seems to thrive on a high-stress existence. If things are calm and running smoothly, he becomes very uneasy (often visibly so) and feels the need to change things or shake the jar to unsteady them again. I am the complete opposite, and spend my life trying to eliminate all stress. As such we actually work very well together but honestly who knows if I'll be able to bring my personality into his job, if/when I get it. Hopefully I will.
What's the best of the numerous services for learning some basics in a language? And by that I don't mean "maan you got to move and immerse yourself in it". I'm a grown adult with responsibilities.
I reckon Duolingo, whilst annoying as fuck for those around you, isn't bad at the job.
Duo Lingo's decent but I find it really bad for teaching grammar. It's never explicit about it so you're meant to just sort of pick it up as you go but my brain likes rules I can learn.
I agree with Boyd.
I've tried upping my Polish to a better level but it's so hard because I struggle with grammar. In particular choosing the right endings to words (there are 7 cases in Polish so it's a minefield), Duolingo never tells me why X is right as opposed to Y, it just tells me I'm wrong.
Unless you’re gonna benefit financially, there’s no reason to learn a language.
I'm a twit
Yeah, I don't know that I would learn one for fun, but they are one of the most marketable skills.
Idiot comment. @Baz
I'm using duo with German and it's massively improved my vocab and can handle basics. I do need to top it up with some actual lessons and grammar books but no time etc.
My French was actually not bad when I lived in Nice back in 2011, so should be able to pick that up fairly quick.
It would be a big help for work.
Is it something that would work while driving or do you need visuals?
If you want something to listen to while driving, get the Michel Thomas stuff. You can get the recordings on various piracy sites instead of paying for the very expensive course but they're good.
You need to be able to use your phone for Duolingo.
Nice one. Maybe a combo of the two would be good.
Everywhere apart from here and US/Canada. I regularly go to Vienna, Cologne and Stuttgart for work and the only time I need to speak German is when asking for the bill in a restaurant. Everyone reverts to English as soon as they know one is about.
But anyway, I agree, it’s always good to learn another language.
I find the accommodating varies a lot depending on where in Germany you are.
Even if it's not necessary because they speak English, speaking someone's native language still makes things better. A bit of an extreme example, but whenever I was living in Barcelona, everytime I said a couple words in Catalan (the very basics like good morning) in any kind of business setting, their demeanor instantly shifted.
I don't know what the other Duolingo languages are like for phrases but it feels like whoever is making the Italian lessons has issues when you have to translate lines like "she does not miss her grandchildren"
Yep, and who you're talking to. English is obviously the language of the corporate world, but for random interactions in different places, and just for reading signs and so on, it's really useful to have at least a basic knowledge.
Plus in my line of work we're often dealing with shabby bastards who are about as corporate as my belly button fluff.
As others have said, if you can combine Duolingo with some grammar lessons from elsewhere, that should give you a good foundation.
I learned Dutch mostly from Duolingo and asking my Dutch ex's family to just stop speaking English/German during visits to the Netherlands. Now I'm mostly fluent conversationally but somewhat wonky grammar-wise. Though I guess the German->Dutch jump is an outlier since the two are extremely similar.
Depends what you want out of the language in terms of grammar I guess? I work for a German company so on the rare occasions my written/spoken German is called upon, it's in a professional setting so my grammar has to be somewhat decent. But if you just want to get by then does grammar matter that much? They'd still know what I'm getting at even if it sounds weird. For mental grammar languages like Russian, it's probably not worth all the extra hours learning if your goal is just to converse.
The Germans I deal with have shit English grammar anyway, but can all carry a basic conversation and you know what they mean. That's all I'd really need the other direction.
Then Duolingo and maybe some occasional reading/watching of not-too-complex German media with subtitles should get you there. Also after you've picked up some basic phrases, ask one of them to point out your most egregious mistakes early on before they become a habit. Germans are much more diffident and less willing to do that than the French or the Dutch in my experience, but it really helps.
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