Pique-nique

The sun was shining again, as it has been now for a couple of weeks, but now it's starting to get pretty warm too. It was 24'C today, and it's only mid March, so one of the main reasons for coming here is paying up. Symbian in Sweden? Too cold, dark, and expensive thanks. There isn't a great deal of work on at the moment so people are barely in the office for 7 hours, let alone working for 7 hours. Case in point; today a few of us went for a picnic instead of lunch. A big bunch of pizzas, soft drinks and vino were collected on route to the park near work, and after eating we just sat and sunbathed for a couple of hours before returning to work. This included our boss BTW, so no guilt got in the way. As it happens, I do have a lot of work to do, as I'm busy trying to get a silicon vendor's software running in a PC environment (ie Carbide & the emulator), so that they have a better product to sell come the inevitable carve up. No one else here has any emulator experience at all, as they've never used it, so I get to do the brunt of this work, which suits me just fine as the further I get my legs under the table in this job climate, the better.

In the evening I had another French lesson. My first on Monday was far too easy, given that I studied French for 5 years at secondary school. Tonight was different; I sat in an intermediate class, and one that was already 15 lessons in too, and this was far harder. From the moment you set foot inside the building, only French is allowed, and it is very hard to be put on the spot and asked to form sentences in real time. It's hard enough writing it in an email, but this is what it's all about, and I'm sure in a couple of months it'll get easier. It's going to be two 2 hour lessons a week from now on, which should make a big difference in three months I'm told. The advantage of the place I've enrolled at is that I can pay lesson by lesson, so if I'm sacked after April, I'll at least not loose out on the 500 euros a three month course costs.