38 posts tagged “english”
Ok, yeah, i haven't really been updating this blog at all. To be honest, i'm really more of a LiveJournal man, myself.
Désolé! Quand j'ai plus de photos pour posté, je posterai encore plus. Until then, ça suffit de faire rien. :P
How do you handle phone calls from telemarketers?
I, like many, got my start in the technology industry as an in-bound call-centre monkey. I spent close to two years working phones before i moved onto the rest of my career. Although it wasn't out-bound sales, i learned some valuable lessons about being polite and respectful to the person on the other end of phone - and by "the other end of the phone", i don't mean the customer, i mean me.
As a result, when telemarketers call, i now just thank them for their time, explain to them that i realise they have a job to do, but that i'm not interested. Then i hang up. Honestly, there's no reason to get worked up about a telemarketer calling you, and it'll absolutely make their day if you treat them like a human being - even if it's only for a few moments before the conversation quietly ends.
Hmm.. i should really take my Xmas tree down. :P
Have you ever met any celebrities? Any interesting stories?
Submitted by Tasha.
A few years back, while backpacking around western Europe for a summer, I ran into somebody claiming to be Paco 'Christian' Prieto at a terminal in Paris. I didn't know who he was at the time, but he mentioned he was an actor in martial arts movie actor - the "latino guy", as he put it. Said he knew Jackie Chan and Seagal and them folks.
How did this come about? He didn't speak too much French, and was confused about the automated banking system (he was in town for the Cannes festival, to see the premiere of a movie he was in). He noticed that we (myself and my travel companion) spoke English and French, and came over to ask for help. We chatted for a while, and parted ways.
Well, he came back less than 10 minutes later, and rather sheepishly asked if he could borrow a few euros for the subway, as his gold mastercard (which he showed us) wasn't working. I believed him, because the credit cards we were carrying were flaky out there as well. He thanked us profusely, and asked for my postal address so he could send the money back to us - even gave me his cell number in case we needed anything. We parted ways again and i didn't give it much thought.
When i got back to Canada about a month later, i looked up his IMDB entry which, at the time, had a couple of pictures of him listed. What's most interesting about his list of movies on IMDB is this entry. He plays Silvio, the antagonist in Only the Strong, which is just about the only Capoeira movie anybody in North America has ever seen.
And now, the punch-line: dude still owes me 5 euros!
The first day back to work after the winter break is always a tough one. For some reason, both the resto downstairs, and the Starbucks in our lounge are closed today, which means that the office is largely without coffee. Who's brilliant idea was that? Vraiment. Je suis prêt à dormir ici sur mon bureau, et je ne suis pas le seul - tout partout l'office, les gens sont somnolent. Sans aucune autre option, ils sont forcés de partir du l'edifice pour trouver leur fix nécessaire.
Je suis curieux: quelle est la valeur du temps perdu par les gens qui sortant, aussi bien qu'être fatigué et irritable, contre la coût de payer le seule employé de Starbucks pendant un jour de travail? I suspect that the math would add up in favour of coffee supply. :P
Merry Chrismakwanakuh everybody! I don't know about you, but it's a (relatively) warm, sunny, and utterly snow-less day here in Montréal. I don't think i've ever seen a 25 December without snow. Anyhoo, peace and goodwill and all that - please hug your favourite person, for me. :)
I set up my Christmas Tree this evening. C'est un arbre simulé, donc c'etait super-facile de l'établir et décorer. My room-mate and I even put our childhood stockings beneath it. :)
Are you a re-gifter? Have you ever re-gifted?
Submitted by Sandals.
I've only re-gifted once, and that was because the person that gave it to me specifically instructed me to re-gift it after one year. It was a boardgame - the name of which now escapes me - that had apparently been passed from person to person, once per year, for an unspecified number of years.
We had a minor ice storm here in Québec last night. It caused power outages across the province. J'étais sans électricité pendant environ dix-sept heures - ridicule! En plus, la glace a même fait tomber quelques arbres, par exemple:
What were you afraid of as a child that seems silly to you now?
Submitted by navelgazer.
I was afraid that jackets, hanging in the closet, would somehow inflate around invisible bodies and chase me around the house.
Yeah.
