Lost in the City

Between all the paperwork and a first mission right away, I didn’t really have time to settle during my first week at work. I don’t think the past week qualifies either: Monday was a Holiday, Tuesday was a RTT… which stands for Reduction du Temps de Travail. Now here is a topic of interest… We legally have a 35-hour week in France. But at the IRSN as in many other firms, we work 40 hours and get 24 off days in the year as compensation. Of those 24 days, 12 are set by the employer while the other 12 are chosen on a personal basis. Tuesday was one of the days set by the company… Anyway, back to the point… after two weeks on the job, I still have to experience a basic week. Actually, I’m starting to doubt there’ll ever be one… but I’m digressing again.

There are three main things I’ll have to juggle: work, rehab, and my PhD. Then, of course, I don’t intend to be a hermit, so I’ll also have to make time to see my friends. “Have to” as in “I really want to and couldn’t do without”… not as in “damn… I guess I really should make time for them” ;-) AND, I won’t let you forget I’m a Cub fan (yeah, like you really could have missed that piece of information before…) so I’ll definitely have to make time for the games.

Work: I’m spending a lot of time at the office, I admit. It’s usually an 8:30 am-6:45 pm affair with a one-hour lunch break in the middle. So yes, if you do the math on a 5-day working week, it’s more than 40 hours… I guess that’s what it takes to get a nice salary at the end of the month. Not complaining anyway since time passes really fast when I’m on the job.

Rehab: I did it after work during my first week, but I quickly realized that it wouldn’t last long at this rate… I would be too wasted to do it properly. So I came up with an alternate plan. I now bring my lunch at work several days a week and spend my lunch break doing my rehab at a soccer stadium nearby.

PhD: Frankly, it’s hard to keep up while starting this new job, but I still manage to put some time aside to read and write. Let’s just make sure it will last on the long run! I’m done with the baseball part (the Senators, D.C.’s local team in the postwar era, were integrated at that time), and I think I’ll start working on the race issue now: schools, restaurants and movie theatres were all integrated during my time-frame.