Mise à jour

The computer guy who fixed my laptop put this stupid French anti-virus programme on that feels the need to SAY "la base de signature de virus a été mise à jour" to me every day... Anyway, French for update!

I had fun the rest of the night on my birthday. We had dinner here, which was yummy, much wine was drunk. Emily made me a birthday cake with 27 *trick* candles, fun times! They were actually the best trick candles I've seen, cos they actually waited like 10 seconds before relighting, so you actually thought they'd all been blown out (the first time at least, they had to eventually be pinched by braver souls than I). Then we went into down, there was dancing, yay! On Tuesday one of my students came up and said she saw me out, which is one of my recurring nightmares... Seriously, they're like 16, find your own parks to drink in or something! Anyway, she was all "I was going to say hi but you didn't see me", to which my improvident reply was "sorry, I was quite drunk". So was she though, so no harm done!

I realised earlier this week that due to various cancellations and illnesses, I only have to work 4 hours this week - but still get normal pay :D The resulting boredom, however, drove me out of the house today. It was a lovely sunny day, as per. Went down to the beach and actually went ON the beach for the first time. Feel a bit lame saying that, but at least I've done it now! Yep, it is entirely covered with stones, but they are mostly quite flat and rounded off, and I discovered that you can in fact lie down in relative comfort, just make yourself a little hollow and spend the first few minutes removing offending stones from your back and you're set. And really is super beautiful. I imagine it's a nightmare in mid-summer, but at the moment it's sparsely populated, and you can actually hear the crashing of the small waves over your ipod and not much else (bar the occasional inevitable scooter).

After I'd got bored of reading on the beach I tried to go to the modern art museum, which was equipped with an array of doors smack bang in the front of it which I just knew from looking at them weren't going to open. What is it with museums and having large, conveniently-placed entrances that don't actually work? Under the scrutiny of gangs of youths the like of which would just LOVE to hang about at the Westgate movies (eh Ranch?) I tried all the doors, wandered around to the side, decided it must be closed, saw there was someone inside, wandered around to the other side, found a door covered with a curtain which presumably didn't open, and left. So who knows how you get into the fortress of modern art?

Being still in the museum-going mood, I wandered over to another part of town and checked out the Musée Masséna, which is a museum of the history of Nice. It's set in very nice grounds, slightly back from the sea, in a beautiful 19th century palace. The entire ground floor is decorated as presumably it always has been and is really pretty. There are also no ropes or anything, so bar the odd discreet sign, you really feel like you're actually in a palace, not a museum. It used to be owned by a Masséna, who judging from all the stuff named after him in Nice, is fondly regarded in these parts. I figured out from the museum that he was born in Nice, was the son of a wine merchant, but ended up the Prince of somewhere thanks to helping Napoleon out in various wars. Not bad, eh? There is apparently still a Prince of whatever - someone should really go strip him of his title and point out that it's even more made-up, meaningless and ridiculous than the average petty European princeship.

Upstairs is the museum part, which is no longer decorated up like the villa downstairs, don't know if someone came in and stripped out all the decorations (if so why?), or if the downstairs was restored? The exhibits up here were of moderate interest. I started feeling a bit sick and decided to go home. Not sure why, although I had run out of water before getting to the museum, which is somewhat of a crisis for me, of course.

Anyway, this resulted in me fainting on the bus. Or perhaps 'collapsing' would be a better word, since I don't think I passed out. The bus was hot and crowded and I had to stand. I wasn't feeling too awful, but then I suddenly felt nauseous. Thought about getting off the bus at one stop, but it was just on a bare footpath and I didn't want to throw up there (yeah, it would be *much* better to do it on a crowded bus... I think my brain wasn't quite functioning properly). Anyway, shortly thereafter I really intensively felt like I was going to vomit and then all of a sudden my knees just buckled and I fell over. Luckily enough I was against a wall and just went straight down. Don't remember feeling especially dizzy or anything, just nauseous and like my ipod was suddenly very very loud and then my legs just gave way. My favourite part was hearing an "oh là!" from someone as I did so. Ha. I got up somehow and someone gave me their seat, which was nice, but I got off at the next stop anyway, partly to get some air and partly because despite my feeble bleatings of "ça va, ça va" (I'm okay) people just kept staring at me anyway. And then I came home and slept all evening, which probably wasn't the best move, but yeah...

So just goes to show, outings are foolish and I'm much better off holed up in my apartment!