Ageing.

When I wear makeup people say either that I look older, or that I look like a ballerina: not sure what's best. And when I don't wear any and tie my hair the most rapid way, I tend to look like just I barely passed voting age. 

This had to change! Not that I want to look older, but I want to look like a woman, not just like a student (which I'm not anymore, and had a lot of advantages when going to the cinema of visiting a museum).

First of all I was barely able to put on makeup. Yeah, I know, nobody taught me and honestly watching at videos online didn't really help (have you ever tried putting on a straight line of eyeliner while watching a video and trying to stop that damn video because she's already putting on lipstick while you're still struggling on your eyes?). Let's call that technical problems. 

Other despairing fact, I just didn't have time. But now I have time to learn and practice.

That's how I got to these short courses to improve my 'personal image' (that's how it's called, I didn't invent anything like that myself ;). That was all about make-up and colours, and that was awesome! If you're in Bordeaux, I highly recommend you go see Laura. 

I won't say I can put on make-up perfectly and quickly now, but at least in theory I know how to look more natural while still wearing make-up! It's only a matter of colours!

Anyway, ageing. As I see friends around me getting married, buying houses, having kids... (yeah, usually in that order) I now acknowledge that we are getting older even before I could realize it. My boyfriend is blowing his 30th candles in 5 days now, and even if we don't really care about age, I can see this is embarrassing him a little. The fact that I'm writing that blog about all the things I would want to do before I'm 30 probably also mean I unconsciously care.

This is now the time when big screen movie actors are about my age, and that TV show ones tend to be slightly younger... We still have a bit of time until we can get scared we get in the age of presidential candidates, but we'll have to make sure they don't get younger over time.

About presidential candidates, I also wanted to update my dear non-french friends that didn't seem that concerned by our election time on the french presidential elections. Well, I understand, politics can be both boring and tabou. Anyway, 80% of the population voted on April 22nd! 1.92% of the votes have been considered spoilt or null votes. François Hollande got 28.63% of the votes, Nicolas Sarkozy 27.18%, Marine Le Pen 17.90% (just click on the link to have a scary view at the picture), Jean-Luc Melenchon 11.10%, François Bayrou 9.13%, Eva Joly 2.31%, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 1.79%, Philippe Poutou 1.15%, Nathalie Arthaud 0.56% and Jacques Cheminade 0.25%. Hollande and Sarkozy are now trying to seduce everyone that kinda is on their political side, and by that I only mean left and right. I find that seduction part really gross and ridiculous, as they try to make people that obviously don't think like them, believe that they can be part of their "new" program. Really strange things happen here that can no more be called seduction but more political prostitution. It sounds like the parliamentary elections are gonna be as 'fun' as the presidential ones!

This link above (on Nicolas Sarkozy) as well as this one actually deserve a closer look. Sorry, these are from the only english source I could find.

Now let's make a teaser of what's gonna happen next in that blog... 

First of all, things didn't go the way I planned them when I came back to Toronto. The woman at the immigration was hard to convinced that I could support myself for 3 months so she gave me a tourist permit that expires exactly on July 4th and by that date I have to have left the country and officially came say good by to her at the immigration service. That compromises a little the rest of my plans as I now either have to find a job really quick in Toronto, ask for a work permit and stay in Canada, or leave the country for an unknown amount of time, as next time, that charming lady at the immigration office is gonna send me right back to France without even taking the time to know me. Which means I'm looking for a job right now... well, I am looking but let say I will truly start around May 15th as I have other plans for now. 

But you'll be asking, what are you doing right now?

I am back in the training process, unfortunately not for the NY marathon, as they didn't pick my name in the draw, but for my own sake and for probably a run or two during the spring/summer. 

And I'm doing a lot of Fimo stuff... that you'll see in a coming post. 

I've also been reviewing my own articles... My PhD paper has finally come back from review and is ready to be re-submitted pretty soon! The paper from my collaboration in Toronto has also been submitted... To be continued!

And because I don't know where I'm gonna be in 2 months, I cannot really plan any other thing like hiking on the Kilimanjaro or camping in Hawaii or even less, that trip to Vancouver and Banff that we've been talking about for a while. 

For now, I'm actively preparing for a special long day: May 5th, as this is the wedding day of dear friends of us in Toronto, but also that wedding where we are official wedding photographers! They were hard to convinced (still are a bit dubious I think), but now that the contract is signed I'm getting nervous. Do we really have the capabilities for that? Are we gonna be able to take nice pictures under pressure? The ceremony only lasts 15min, the shooting time with friends and family plus the newly weds alone only 45min, it's in the middle of Toronto in a busy district and this is a wedding! You can't mess up photography at a wedding, that's supposed to be the most beautiful day of their life, they planned it for so long and they won't probably do it again. I am both really excited, and panicked! Anyway, I'm studying to be a better photographer that day. There is probably gonna be a post about how we performed that day.

I'm learning from that book.