A self-portrait using a home-made Big Data methodology: every day, I move the clock two minutes forward, and I write on a postcard what happens at that very moment. All those days, put together as a single day, generate an average image of an ordinary individual.
All the days are already booked. Check this page regularly to read them...
The rising sun wakes me up.
My first moves of today: reach for the phone towards the left, for the tablet towards the right. Turn on the screens.
There are six unread messages.
The energy of the sun is now strong enough for the plastic Maneki Neko to wave its arm every half a second.
[personal]
Rising upright by weighing my body on the left leg, roll up the mattresses, throw the pillows on the table, pull the curtains, open the window, check outside.
The phone's alarm rings. Its music is supposedly inspirational. I have to try four times before I manage to turn it off.
Down in the street, the garbage truck rolls on.
Does a bar of soap thin faster when the same side is always used, or when both sides are used alternatively? So I wonder under the shower.
Laying on the bed, I am sending text messages to a person located in a car moving on the secondary road network, 600km away.
I am still fast asleep.
[personal]
The ceiling fan is rotating, two and a half turns per second. Should I go back to sleep, should I wake up, should I stay laying there, I do not really know.
Thus the fan gets my attention again - another hot morning.
He is snoring.
In my dream, the chimney made the same roaring noise.
I fall asleep again.
The daily news are dire: hurricane over the Carribbean, terror attack in Lyon, children being dragged back to school against their will, bad Beaujolais harvest due to global warming. Luckily enough, interstitials remind me that I can buy the latest Samsung smartphone.
I am now fully dressed and I suddenly realize I forgot to spray deodorant under my armpits. I return to the bathroom and get undressed again.
The perfect moment to write a letter to an administration.
How to wrap a sphere with a flat piece of paper? How to tape it? Where to leave creases, where to pull? The whole thing looks like shit.
We are still asleep, maybe.
Sun on the platform, the seats are wet - so my trousers.
The envelopes weigh more than 20 grams and I have to stack the stamps vertically so that they all fit on it.
The dishes are accumulating in the sink. Should I clean or should I go? Sipping my tea, I ponder.
I am trying really hard to leave at 8 but I am still looking for my keys, my wallet, my scarf and my bus card.
According to my tablet, the weather will be hot and sunny. As I check by the window, I find this prediction to be accurate.
There are a lot of strange videos on the internet, I ponder while checking the Facebook links received during the night.
When the peanut butter jar is empty, it is always possible to obtain an extra spoon of it by scraping the sides. As I go back to my tartine, I ponder.
I transfer the user manual of the barcode reader I bought on a shady Chinese website from my personal mailbox to the one at my company.
On the street below my windows, a lady on a bike explains to a guy in a blue car that his car "will not get through." The bemused vehicle stays still in the middle of the crossroads.
I finally scroll down to the local news section.
I learn about human relationships thanks to an interview with Esther Perel released in a national newspaper.
The termination notice was amidst one of the numerous piles of paper.
Helping your relatives may cause them loss of social welfare benefits, national newspaper says, showing real life examples, to a reader audience that will presumably never be in the situation.
Sitting on my throne, I consider the upcoming weekend.
The tea is still too hot. The children's laughs echo in the playground. A category 5 hurricane slowly moves across the Atlantic.
I try sticking a stamp on a postcard: one of the corner folds inside, and the thing looks like a trapezoid.
My bus is reaching the roundabout. If I run, I might still catch it. Should I run? Should I not run? I dash towards the bus.
The bus announces the next stop, it has my name: "Mathieu's Dead End." I thank the speakers for the greeting.
The dental surgeon is trying to converse with me, I answer by grunting. On her radio, the music blarts "please don't go / don't goooo" - I really want to go.
I am waiting for the bus. The display does not indicate when the next one will be coming because our Noble Leader is in town today. On the bench, a young woman wearing flashy red lipstick is mumbling.
I am reading "Epicure in Correze" by Conche, he is reading "The chess player" by Zweig, the others are reading their phones, the bus rolls on.
I pass by a building in construction. It has one more floor than it had yesterday.
There is a small building here, in between two larger blocks, slightly withdrawn; a tired-looking guy passes by, pushing a trolley in front of him, the noise of the avenue is barely to be heard; it feels like a good place to live in.
The dentist manipulates in my mouth a pen-like device that emits blue light and gentle beeps, one beep, two beeps, a longer beep signaling the end of the operation.
The bus leaves the stop, it is packed; around me three people have a bad case of coughing; earlier I read some news about winter diseases related to public transportation.
There is a strong smell of weed in the bus. He must have been smoking a lot. I actively avoid gazing into his red eyes.
The automated person detection system, located right above the exit door, maintains the said door joyfully open while we try to pack ourselves in the already crowded bus. It won't go until the door can close. We wait.
Cardboard goes into the cardboard bin. Plastics go into the plastics bin. Empty cartridges go into the cartridge bin. My hands become of an odd color.
It's a cold morning. On the roadworks for the gas company, an employee lights up a cigarette.
The computer is so heavy. I haul it around, rushing to avoid the incoming rain.
I apply a silicon joint on the edges of the glass, hoping to render my artwork waterproof.
I painstakingly remove little traces of silicon joint, little by little, with an old piece of cloth.
The bakery is far, the exhibition starts in two days, I have a lot of stuff to do, so I eat noodles as a way to avoid going to and back from the bakery.
She asks if she likes Asian all-you-can-eat restaurants. She says she would prefer a French all-you-can-eat restaurant, if such a place existed. They both heard there may be one in Narbonne.
I eat several M&Ms while waiting for my turn at the coffee machine. They are all of different colours, but they all taste the same.
It is already the second phone call since I sat on my chair and put on my headset.
We pass our february leave request forms to our manager at the same time. We both want to leave the same week.
The nurse measures my blood pressure - 10.2 - and asks if I can sit. I try sitting, wobbling a little.
It seems impossible to write down what happens at 9:14am. I tried and failed over and over again. 9:14am seems to be an impossible time to describe.
The phone does not ring.
I turn the phone on.
I have four unread messages.
A fifth one arrives before I can even get out of the bed.
The bus didn't stop since I took it five stations ago. All six passengers seem to wait for the final stop.
After lengthy tractations I manage to convince him to call the actual company making his products, since they are not ours.
My roommate is snoring. I am dreaming of countryside camping and Burago toy cars.
The national call for strike is not even mentioned in the local newspaper.
where are we going to meet next time?, we wonder.
Phone call mayhem.
The lines keep ringing
The sound keeps cracking
I click.
I check by the window of the train, the Michel Bolard pâté en croûte factory, located in Saint-Amour.
I wake up to the chirp of a single bird.
She is already working on her computer.
We are trying to figure out what happened on friday while I was away.
Three phone lines start ringing at the same time: I take the calls and say the magic words.
I rise from my chair to fetch some coffee.
We are talking over the phone of her children, who print silly things on the family's printer.
The Excel spreadsheet is very dense. Sometimes, cells are switched from a column to the next one, leading to storage errors in the warehouse.
As everything slows down, I find the time to write her.
A suspiciously high number of people cough with regularity at the marketplace. Do I remark this only because I am more aware of this phenomenon than usual?
She has been coughing for the last ten days. She came back to work on thursday, but she is now back home again. I configure call forwarding for her.
We do not know whether we are to go back to work this afternoon.
Somebody is walking up towards me on the sidewalk, I hurry to the other side of the street.
There is a general shortage of face masks.
I help anonymously by email a well known visual artist with her printer problems. This information then lands in one of my art projects.
I read the product details of a cereal box produced in the Austrian Alps.
We queue at the supermarket. Somebody drew a snowman and a long-nosed stick figure on the yellow wall.
I press the needles on the chip's contacts. I press a button. The new program is uploaded. I then move on to the next chip.
There definitely exists a place named "Nowhere".
There is a long queue in front of the roundabout's supermarket. We walk on to the next one.
Three pokestops are accessible from my window. She rolls their logos on her phone in order to earn virtual objects.
I type in an order for a customer. It seems that there really exists a town named "Letusdie".
I try to explain that since we are sending the product today, he cannot also receive it today. He turns angry.
She sends me a text message. At the local newspaper shop, face masks sell at €4 each.
I feel feverish. It turns out the sun was heating my back through the window.
A man queuing in front of the supermarket lowers his face mask down to his chin, gives a loud cough, and raises the mask up his nose.
A group of children loudly cheer in the yard outside: today is the final day of lockdown.
I can smell my own breath inside my face mask. It smells of coffee. The smell is unpleasant. It lingers on my face as I remove my mask.
To drink or not to drink coffee? Afterwards, I have to wear the face mask again. To wander into the warehouse. Smell my breath. I grudgingly press the button for espresso.
The dental surgeon sends me a form with questions about symptoms of coronavirus.
I am confused by her name. Is it a real name? Or a pseudonym? It seems real, as it also appears on her post address. I am confused by her name.
How to select a melon while wearing a face mask? If the mask is properly fit, one does not smell anything. If it is removed, the other customers are scared. Eventually, we choose it visually.
We stroll by the building where she missed an opportunity of buying an apartment. It is one of those old-fashioned buildings that look like an overstretched house, what with the tiled roof and geranium-decorated balconies.
We walk out of our office because the boss is offering cake. We rush back in because we forgot our masks. We walk out again, wearing said masks.
The dental surgeon calls: my appointment is moved forward 15 minutes.
I lob the remains of my apple over the grassy hillside, wondering if some of the young trees rising just above the grass may be older apple leftovers.
We have one table for everything: work, and cooking. There is conflict between me on the computer, and her and the plum pie.
Somebody answered my interstitial. By posting it on Facebook, I managed to get answers in merely two days - to be compared to the two years of trying the same thing with my personal website. But... is it spam? I will know later today.
I get struck by pollen allergy and start sneezing in my face mask. I have to leave the store hurriedly, under the worried gaze of the other dwellers.
Her cat runs after a laser pointer, but quickly becomes bored and starts looking frantically for another thing to play with, like it was suffering from ADD.
My colleague is maddened by the tiny flies hovering around office. Where do they come from? The coffee machine? The potted plants? The nearby restrooms? They come back every spring.
We put out the trash and washed the waste bin of the coffee machines, but the flies are back, annoying, trying to sip water from our eyes.
I browse through many lines of text. I have to decide which lines are OK, and which ones need to be corrected.
He is wearing a pink sweater with a big "Beko" logo - the household appliance brand -, and orange sport trousers. He is asking for loose change. I do not give him a coin.
I do not plan my moves properly and I discard the wrong card, leading to her winning the game again.
There is a tiny hole at the thumb in the rubber glove. Superglue went in. When I remove the glove, a piece of rubber remains glued to my finger.
As I paste the text, the computer converts all the "R"s into "E"s. I then have to correct manually.
Earlier I was congratulated for my new position, another colleague also congratulates me, this time in front of my manager and of my coworker. The latter says she'll resign if I leave her alone on the job. My boss then says the rumors about my promotion are not true. The hotline rings: I pick up the phone.
I can hear in the tone of her voice that she is calming down and she is glad that we will replace her product without arguing. It is like her life had been, until this moment, a never-ending stream of hassles and setbacks.
I buy an apparently Indian book. The author has a French-sounding name. Did I make a mistake?
We finally figure out our uncanny feeling about this videoconference: our host has removed all the photos from his wall.
Due to a dispatching error, the parcel sent towards Southern France is now located far to the North of the country.
A lone dandelion is growing on the asphalt outside the window. I watch the raindrops falling on its leaves. Then I go back to my calls.
For the 19th time, I unload the paper from the output tray of the printer, and put it back in the input tray.
Young leaves of a nondescript plant sprout on the plastic fibers of the toilet brush. This proves said brush is seldom used; also, the cleaning liquid used on the brush is nontoxic.
The farewell gift card that I wasn't allowed to sign because I didn't give money for it on time comes back to my office: someone added my name to the list of the participants.
The page about house centipedes led me to the page about fruit flies. I fire up the browser again and start reading at the section dealing with mutations.
I finalize the cover letter for my manuscript.
Her email signature states that she is "actively looking for a job." I wonder whether some people are inactively looking for work.
The meeting starts. In our office, the phone rings, somebody enters to ask for something, my colleagues comes, leaves, and comes again. My boss is sitting on a chair, waiting.
We close the window of our office, as the temperature of the air outside overpasses the temperature of the room.
After finishing trimming the hedge with a buzzsaw, the gardening company nears the young tree protecting our office.
The scorching sun is shining right through the unprotected window. We turn on the AC.
We wanted to drink smoothies, but we settle for "chaussons aux pommes."
I serve her a bit of coffee in the tiny plastic cap of her water bottle.
What was meant to be a quick nap turned into a one hour slumber.I sleep tight.
We discuss about which map should be presented first.
Thousands of grasshoppers bounce away as we walk.
As we observe a middle-aged woman struggling with a stroller on the uneven stones of the medieval city's pavement, we wonder how did people of old transported their children.
A Segway guided tour is halted in front of the statue depicting a female centaur kidnapping a young male faun. It is not the same guide as last time.
A marketing student (female, according to her writing) lost on one of the hill's stairways a manuscript page titled "Branding and Desire." On the page, it is underlined that it is important to have a "Big Idea."
I turn the washing machine on, this time making sure the temperature is set to 40°C.
I have been working on the problem for nearly three hours and I always fail to get it working. Maybe I should be considering other options?
It's the wrong product in the box but he does not seem to care. The status of this case is updated to "case closed."
As the other transport protection parts were also black, I turn the little black cap in order to release it. It springs off, along with a spring, a plastic thingie, and a piece of aluminum paper.
We repress our urge to ask Ms. Captain how old she is.
He is wearing a silk face mask, a little French flag is labelled on its side. He removes the mask as soon as he starts talking to us.
I am sitting in front of the mirror in the hairdresser's salon, wearing the white gown lent by the hairdresser. I look like an elderly choir boy.
We scavenge some figs from the roadside trees. Their inside is crimson red. They have an acid taste.
I show to my colleague the problem I have with the machine.
The phone rings, thus starts an impromptu conference call. I am hungry.
I calibrate the machine yet another time.
The machine's needles need to be replaced again. Who bent them? Who pushed them too far into their support? Who knows.
We are trying to get the pronunciation of our prospective new colleague right, under the guidance of our manager, himself being Chinese.
I calibrate the support of my 3D prints.
The phone's screen slowly returns to the idle state.
There are conversations in three different languages in the office, and as I answer the phone, I answer in the wrong language.
I put the cartridges in printer A: they work. I put them in printer B: they fail to work. Where is the problem?
We wonder who is going to dig in the bag of crisps.
I reach for the outside of the bulding so as to eat my sandwich and breathe without my face mask, but it is raining.
I am looking for information about Stanislas Petrov on YouTube.
I click and drag shapes that I link together with arrows, trying to reconstruct my store's logic.
While on our way to the always crowded lunch room, he is talking about how the Covid19 crisis is mishandled for political motives in his country.
I unenthusiastically eat a definitely non-crispy chicken mayo sandwich that I left all morning in a plastic bag in the fridge.
I overhear a conversation about war in Azerbaidjan coming from the table next to me.
The library's door is closed shut, I try looking for the opening hours in the hallway: it seems to open at 1pm.
I start eating, the washing-machine is chugging along.
It appears that these days most of my lunchtime conversations with the team deal with bicycle maintenance.
I leave my sandwich on the bench in order to pick up three parcels from the delivery guy and shove them on a table where they will be forgotten all afternoon, managing to spill a whole bottle of hydroalcoholic gel in the process. Meanwhile my sandwich rolled off the bench and fell on the ground and one of my colleagues kindly threw it away.
We talk about him. Did he get a special cure only available to rich people? Was he replaced by one of his doppelgängers during his stay at the hospital? Did he actually not catch it and the whole story is a conspiracy? We ponder and my lunch is getting cold.
We both sign a form allowing the government to contact and quarantine us if a positive Covid person was in the restaurant at the same moment as us.
He tells me that when he tries to sleep, he sees boxes opening in front of his eyes, each containing a person he knows. This reminds me of the cemetery in Venice where he used to go meditate.
I hang up the line to take another call. It is my sister on the phone. We exchange customary greetings.
There is a pause in the discussion, and I can hear his munching. The cabbage he is eating seems to be quite crunchy.
I ogle at the picture of the muscular bald man wearing a slim white t-shirt printed on the bottle of cleaning product. He looks like a gay model, or possibly a porn actor, or a bodybuilder; I believe he could attract men, but does he attract the women this product is marketed for? Lost in thought, I forget to wipe the table clean.
At this moment of the conversation, we agree that wearing the mask is one of the factors leading to our reduced social activities.
They gave me a table located at the centre of the restaurant. I sit there alone, oblivious of the many gazes of the rest of the room on my solitude, as I consider whether I should put the face mask on in between each dish, or keep it off.
She shows me the videos she shot at the exhibition.
We wonder whether we should leverage our existing contact in the townhall to get a direct contact to the neighbouring town's officials, or if we should contact them directly.
I put my lunchbox back into the bag.
He is speaking Chinese over the phone. My hand hurts because of the glass shards of the vessel I broke earlier.
I grab the last pain au chocolat before somebody else eats it.
While moving stuff around I drop an electric fan and it dismantles ; I need some time to put it back together and figure out how to lock the parts of the protective grid with each other.
I struggle taking care both of cooking the rice for lunch and cleaning the bathroom at the same time.
I later learn that it was forbidden to help friends with their relocation.
I boldly enter the restroom.
Donald Trump, Joe Biden, who will win? The suspense...
I am negotiating my future wages.
I placidly eat potatoes and green linses I prepared to last for a few days.
I hear the usual 1:30pm clack of the off-peak hours electric panel contactor.
She enters the office with a large pillow under her arm - or is it a parcel?
Go back to work, or procrastinate a little bit more? I type in an URL that is not going to help with my fatigue.
I send my housing application form, and the twelve accompanying documents.
The laundry has crumpled inside the washing machine's drum, it refuses to start the spin-drying cycle. I turn it off in order to open the front door and rearrange the clothes.
During the meeting, the boss says my contract will finish on Dec. 18 and not on Dec. 11 as stated on my resignation later. My new job starts on the 14th. I am speechless and worried.
I wander on the internet. Again.
I am one hour and fourteen minutes late from the usual lunchbreak time I send her a message. She does not answer my message.
I couldn't find time for making lunch yet: I hurriedly whip up something with the microwave and the frying pan at the same time.
I remove some snow from my shoes before going back into the bus.
I put on the shirt I just ironed, there is still a fold on it. I unwear it so as to iron it a third time.
I struggle with the arrangement of the boxes on the shelves.
I can't seem to find a way out of this phone call.
I tread in the murky waters of Mac OS server certificates. Documentation is sparse, to say the least. I space out watching snow falling out the window.
I expected he would come later but, there he is now. We start discussing today's matter.
There are lots of different software with a similar purpose, and management insists I attend a sales presentation for each of them. I click "yes."
I am sitting on a chair between two machines I need to prepare for lending, keying in commands on one after the other.
Two students are chatting about their future: one wants to settle in the South, the other is undecided.
I enter the bookstore: I need to remove my gloves, pour hydroalcoholic gel on my hands, and put on my gloves again.
I am looking for a specific trigonometry formula online.
I fail at figuring out how he did empty his file, save the empty version over the existing one, and delete the backup.
They wish to sit but all the chairs of the media center are occupied, and I see them hesitating. I go fetch extra chairs before they ask for it.
I have an odd feeling of nostalgia as I carry along a blue ink cartridge and a waste toner tank down the hall.
As I am carrying a monitor across the room, someone calls me for help. I drop the device on the nearest table's corner. It does not fall off.
I was going to post a snarky comment on the usual group, but I am interrupted by a message on my phone.
I am yet again posting some comment on the usual forum instead of focusing on the many things I have to do.
I run through the loose papers on my desk. A timetable mentioning a meeting I forgot catches my eye.
He tries to show me his product offer, but the building's burglar alarm starts ringing again.
I tell him where to copy his files so that they will be part of the backup.
I thoroughly wash my hands after removing my face mask.
The preparation for the pancakes is done: I place the dough in the fridge to let it rest.
My procrastination leads me to look for old internet resources. The website about programming the Neo Geo Pocket apparently still exists.
He is so enthusiastic about my proposal of configuring call forwarding on his office phone, that we have to do it now.
There is a general moment of uneasiness as we decide who will be the next to speak during the Teams meeting.
So, this is yet another piece of videoconference software...
He describes his idea in detail. I think of several ways to implement it.
We are both wearing a red sweater, but he alone is not smiling - I make sure my smile is OK on my video feedback.
For some reason it seems to be impossible to invite a new person to the meeting once the meeting is started. They decide to quit the meeting and start a fresh one with the extra person added to the list of participants.
I am utterly lost at page 11 of the manual.
I am looking for a second fan of the same brand.
I place the raspberries in the glass dish. They are still frozen.
The training session has been going on for hours. I doze off watching the Powerpoint presentation.
It's €1 for a beer, but I don't have any coins or bills in my wallet. She allows me to have one anyway.
I am giving four old phones and an obsolete internet router to the local recycling center. The person in charge says the phones will look nice painted pink.
I hop on the lift to go to the third floor. It proceeds towards the basement.
I remove the postcards from the oven. The ink now seems dry.
I have to communicate about the exhibition. I struggle with the first sentence of the email I am writing.
She asks me if I want to stay for her conference after helping her plugging her laptop in the room's audio and video system. But I have tons of things to do.
The meeting is lingering on and I have a hard time not falling asleep in front of my screen.
I send a test email. It does not go through.
The noise of the fan is soothing my headache.
I finish writing an important sentence of this informational piece of news.
It seems that International Procrastination Day is really a thing I can relate to.
The conversation takes an unexpected turn.
I drop an undetermined number of tiny paper scraps in the bin.
It turns out that she worked with a person I wrote about a few years ago. The coincidence is stunning.
I enter an empty room. Somebody forgot to turn the lights off some time ago.
I walk by a building unaptly named "Casimir."
Is it a one-person dialogue or a monologue? Is it that I can't find anything to say, or that there is nothing for me to say? The call lingers on.
This other meeting is also a long one-man show where the host speaks on and on, every once in a while reminding us that this is supposedly "interactive."
What vegetable is this? I try to distinguish something on the miniature screen of my old phone, but fail.
I try to figure out how to put text in bold in this IM app, but their self-help website is not helping.
I struggle with finding information about the new, Europa-certified, student cards. There are still some links I did not click yet, though.
I run by hand the different steps of the future migration process.
I get out of the subway station. This is the first time in one year I go back to this place.
I finally figure out where the last cable goes.
There are lots of different body paints of different brands, but the website lacks an important information : the volume of each item.
How many of the participants are really following this online meeting? Half of them seem to be looking away from their screen.
The printers churn out all kinds of colorful documents. The end of the workshop is drawing close!
I witness the future on Youtube, watching an enthusiastic speaker presenting some revolutionary device of sorts.
I have the feeling I am getting sidetracked.
I read a Wikipedia page about dazzle camouflage. It gives me vertigo.
We had never actually stopped on the first floor to observe the wall painting. It turns out that it was made by a quite famous artist.
I check the computer she surreptitiously dropped at my office while I was away: the screen is covered with fingerprints, the mouse is greasy, and the keyboard is missing the "8" key.
I walk through the bridge on the 3rd floor so as to avoid the flock of kids doing some workshop in the hall.
The phone rings, I hurriedly hide the browser tab I was procrastinating on.
The facilitator tells us that we only have one hour and a half to go. I work faster and the strings flow under other strings without error.
I am trying to find a comfortable position for this video call using my phone. Standing: not OK. Sitting: pain in the neck. Laying on the bed: arms sore.
Everything is actually working as planned, the configuration documentation is actually accurate, and there is no unexpected problem whatsoever.
Something must be wrong.
I reproduce the same sequence of actions for the 28th time.
The range of colors they have is narrow, but I find all the ones I need - except red, for that one I will have to cheat and use another kind of yarn.
I walk by a geeky-looking guy and I immediately think "this must be a player." Indeed, the arena in the park beyond him has changed colors.
A horrible stench of fresh paint and plaster dust forces us back down the street.
The tapestry is definitely not going to be as detailed as the drawing I am using as a model.
According to the speed of the guy walking his dog and of the other guy running down the street, the best time to cross and avoid both of them is now.
We glance at the cray cliff and ponder about going to look for fossils.
I managed to go through the checkpoint! I feel relieved.
I dropped my smoothie and a few drops of molten ice land on my phone and on my freshly-cleaned trousers.
The window-facing seat is not actually facing a window but a white wall.
My stomach-ache is getting worse.
We talk about health issues and about the unbearable pain.
Cars are rushing above us on the bridge, under the bridge, on the left side of the crossing, also on the right side, in front of us, behind us. My father is talking to me but I can only hear the roar of the engines.
After a long pause, the vending machine grudgingly gives me back my change.
He roars "Hello, Odile!" in his phone, shattering the quietness of the apartment.
I pull the travel case down the street. One of the wheels is broken and the case wobbles noisingly behind me.
Rather than going to the reception to ask for the WiFi password, he prefers whining to me by text messages that it does not work.
The train is slowly accelerating to its nominal speed. Thanks to this unexpected delay, my phone will be fully charged.
They are really late on the program, it is very hot in the building we are working in, a storm is brewing over the city. He sighs, sweating.
The things, they were working yesterday; today they are not working anymore; why??
The washing machine is at its peak speed, and I am trying to create a poll in the middle of the noise it makes.
I already received two emails and I had to fill in a satisfaction form on the technician's smartphone earlier, now the phone rings and I am asked whether everything was OK. The person also tells me I will receive an email to evaluate how satisfied I was with this call.
All this is excruciatingly slow.
Are my trousers too short? As I go down the stairs, I feel a cold draft on my ankles.
I communicate about my tutorial videos.
I am ready to leave but the transfer takes longer than I expected, so I watch the progress bar slowly progressing.
I receive a SMS a few seconds before my alarm clock was supposed to ring.
My alarm clock keeps ringing, but I do not wake up.
The man is walking in the same direction as me, he is carrying a ladder, he looks happy.
I should be out already but the conf call keeps lingering on. He speaks uninterrupted, and we listen.
The Shift key remains hopelessly stuck.
The train departure times keep changing, and we anxiously wait for the moment where they will announce the platform.
We put the box in the drawer. The secret is safe.
He is still breathing as loudly as before, and he uses all the available space of his seat - armrests included. I do not dare to stand up and disturb him so as to go to the restroom.
The noise of the passing cars slowly merges into the voice, and soon I can't even distinguish words.
I don't offer to read my text: it is too long.
I ran out of packaging tape, but there is some left at the fablab.
The little green man just turned red.
I forgot to send a reminder message for the meeting, so I am back to my screen.
She walks by me without a glance, but I have the intuition that she is the person we are waiting for.
It starts pouring rain as soon as the trail leaves the cover of the trees.
They arrive at the shelter one hour early. The hot wine is not ready yet.
I try to remove the toothpaste stains by wiping the glass with a piece of cloth dipped into window cleaning liquid. There is a strong smell of alcohol.
The guy in front of me shells out 96 euros for a single bag of groceries, yet nothing in what he bought seemed expensive.
I consider my own groceries wearily.
Observing myself in the mirror, I feel beautiful. Yet the sweater is a little bit too tight, and the sleeves are too short.
I feel my fingers shaking as I reach my phone to answer the ten thousandth notification of the day.
I forgot to brush my teeth this morning so I do it now that I am back home.
I must stay for longer because I arrived late this morning. I browse through my browser's tabs.
I can't change of sidewalk to avoid the worker's van that blocks it, so I wait in front of it until the traffic calms down. The man at the steering wheel observes me with a tired face.
A dog is barking at its owner, who is in a heated argument with a group of people holding beer cans. A phone plays some techno music. Someone is charging his phone on a wall outlet that is usually used by the city market.
I have lost my measuring tape. Again.
I copy a handwritten list into a spreadsheet.
- How many earphones do you need? Fourteen?
They confirm. I will have to find those things, now.
I forgot to install that specific module that needs to be installed before the bulk of the installation is run. Yet there must be a way to add it afterwards... But how?
She is waiting for her test results in front of her computer, and she starts talking about a global conspiracy. My work colleague stealthily moves back to her office. I helplessly look for a way to get out of the situation, but the only thing I see is the wall clock reminding me that I am already late.
We finally notice the outline of the snow panther on the hilltop.
The wind generators have a blinking light that turns on and off in sync. The slow motion of their blades makes me drowsy.
I am still working on a screen. My head aches.
I check the supplies list. The list is long, and the 15000 participants of the experiment are going to order that at the same time.
Is that really a good idea for a present? I am having second thoughts.
I glued the cubes too high, and now the cover won't close over them. I remove them with a angry hammer hit.
I am so intensely concentrated on my code that I forget it is time to leave the office. Yet this is not a program for work.
I reach Candy Crush's level 277.
I spread a third layer of white paint. The wood can still be seen through.
I read through my own work - is it a bit repetitive?
The car is parked across the sidewalk. I can try to shuffle myself in between its side and the wall, or walk on the road itself.
My new office phone is already out of order.
My hands are now clean, but I ran out of liquid soap. Maybe there is some left under the sink?
He says he is afraid when he has to drive, but he drives dangerously. I am carsick.
I find a missing piece of information about the online bank.
She concludes her presentation by showing us a photo of Maurizio Cattelan's "Banana taped to a wall." We ponder on it.
The class is a mix of A1, A1:2 and B2 students, and the teacher seems to be wondering how this will work out.
The German radio resonates in the kitchen. Sometimes, I get a word.
She wins 21 to 14.
The discussion brings me 16 years back.
Which pair of trousers should I wear? The black ones? The white ones? The ones made of jeans?
We are talking about health issues.
The "angry" emoji is appropriate.
German practice is too easy.
Which bank is the best bank? So I wonder, and the Internet is definitely not helping.
I am just home, but I already turned on 4 screens in the living room.
Online, there are news of the storm. Outside, the wind is blowing.
I put on headphones with music to cover the noise made by the machine.
I am looking for the list of things to buy for the experiment, but I can't find it.
This cauliflower is so huge, I need to get a bigger pan to boil it.
My running session lasted only 15 minutes, but I need a good shower.
My poor internet connection makes our faces pixelated and our voices stutter.
I take a photo of the volcano. There is light at the station at the top.
I forgot he doesn't eat ham; so I call the pizza take-away to modify my order.
The call gets lenghtier.
We reach Ikea's cash registers. There is almost no one.
We are shown crude drawings and we are supposed to guess what they represent. It is fun.
My hands are covered with clay.
Running is making me sweat. I remove my K-Way.
Night falls on the highway.
He says he has trouble concentrating with the ambient sound of the room. I realize I have the same problem.
We are talking about glasses. Can I have both myopia and hypermetropism?
The family is supposedly agnostic, but the conversation is all about religion.
He has come.
It's apparently cheaper to buy pizzas straight from the pizza restaurant than ordering them with Deliveroo.
I feel alone without my smartphone that the hospital requested I leave at home before the exams.
I'm trying to not be a Tanguy anymore.
Finally, a moment of freedom.
She asks if she should turn the alarm off, I have to ask her to repeat twice because of the noise in the restroom, and I answer "yes!"
I check on the clothes dryer which pieces are already dry.
Three out of the four people in the classroom, including the teacher, are coughing and snirfling under their face mask. I observe them wearily.
The Ikea furniture simulator is not really helping us figuring out how to place the bed in the room.
This short-term rental apartment is perfectly ordered.
I realize I left the list of furniture to buy somewhere in the shop.
It's like they waited for me to finally leave my apartment to try to deliver the parcels.
We still have many things left to buy.
I buy chocolate.
We wait for the bus. The roadway nearby makes a constant hum.
The plots around the roadwork area are actually equipped with a lamp that shines faintly: it is not only a light reflector.
I have a quick look at Facebook. Nobody tried to contact me in the last ten days.
I unlock the door of my apartment.
The coursebook is finished but we still have thirty minutes to go. The teacher is unsure about how to go forward.
Dinner is actually two slices of burnt bread and a raw carrot.
I still linger on this website listing airplane crashes.
The usual fatigue kicks in as soon as the call is over.
The hot wine is warm, but my wet trousers on which I poured water earlier during the walk is cold.
I diluted a Maggi Kub in the pasta's water so as to give them taste. Now the yellowish water is flushed down the drain.
I am honoured to learn how to say "I am honoured."
The gloves are not yellow enough to fit their planned purposes. I do not buy the pair.
Should I go for another drink? I check the time.
Our considerable stocks of dried soup bases is lucikly not subjected to the product recall.
Is there an issue with the heating?
The factory-made croutons are now out of their plastic enclosure.
The water does not seem to want to be drained fast enough from my shower cabin. Its level is reaching my ankles.
I use migraine as an excuse to skip the dinner party. In reality, I am just too tired.
The side effect is not on the leaflet listing side effects, even though the list is long.
He said he would come later so I didn't hurry home, but then I receive a text message where he says he is waiting in front of my door, so I quickly go back, but when I arrive, he is not there anymore.
The bowls are finally ready and out of the oven. We set up an appointment so that I can collect them.
There was way too much agar to fill 16 petri dishes last time; but this time there is slightly not enough to fill 32 petri dishes.
Once again, I need to make more agar.
The temperature of the enclosure stayed the same until I took the last picture.
There are 86 online viewers on the festival's live stream.
I washed half the Petri dishes.
I spin-dry a bunch of green salad leaves.
The sky is dark towards the east, but clear to the west. I leave my rain coat home.
The page does not open.
I dry the dishes to make space to more dishes that I will also have to dry.
I place the trash bin in front of the sink in order to optimize my moves and throw away the agar quickly.
I'm experiencing some trouble writing down the temperatures in the notebook.
I think I found the most efficient way to wash all the dishes without shuffling their labelled covers: I place them assembled in the sink.
As soon as I put the piece of paper under the stream I realize its tint is not water-resitant. I won't be able to use it as a support.
It is way more fulfilling than I expected.
I manage to wave at her from the ground.
I manage to get a reduced price by reorganizing my travel plan.
Yet another industrial paella.
I am having trouble keeping up with the phone call while answering two friends on Facebook.
I am idly sitting on the couch.
I eat two slices of bread sandwiching a slice of bacon.
The black and white movie is interrupted by blue screens, likely caused by magnetic interference from the loudspeakers.
The computer switched to standby mode during dinner, nuking the ongoing backup.
My hands are busy with the phone so I can't make dinner. I am hungry.
I am concentrated on the online conversation, while sitting on my sofa.
The park's website shows a giant swimming pool, but the rollercoasters seem more exciting.
He ate all the peanuts before we could lay a finger on them, and now his wife sighs as he starts talking yet another time.
I'm still browsing wikipedia instead of packing up.
I hoped we would not meet them tonight, but I see them in the distance.
The ham is definitely not organic, and the pancake is bland.
The history of emojis I sent contains mostly hearts and smiles.
Did I correctly fill in this language course registration form? I wait for feedback.
[personal]
The idea is great but I don't get whether I should write the note and put it in the parcel, or email it to another person.
His drawing style is already very professional, but his stories are still those of a beginner.
Luckily, his other works are more captivating.
More Dragon Ball episodes. How long will it take me to read all of them? I click on the next chapter.
The planning of moving my apartment causes a lot of stress.
(personal)
These new insights do not reveal anything, really.
How can I explain my poor grades in math?
(personal)
She designs a huge vegetable garden. It answers the customers' specification document, but it turns out that it is not what they really wanted.
(personal)
I write yet another lengthy comment on the internet.
I receive a cold answer in my inbox: I think my overreaching enthusiasm made me bork the interview.
Yet another hour reading some comic found on the internet.
Does this medicine cause addiction?
I'm still lurking on Wikipedia.
I should really buy caustic soda.
I win by a wide margin this game of Scrabble.
I'm having trouble guessing the correct combination of colors because one of them is doubled in the set.
The old lady is very kind, and she helps me sitting with her in front of the bus.
I write a program that is supposed to compute the MPG of an automobile. I am upset to have to do that as a prerequisite for an interview.
Are we supposed to fill tax form 2042 or 2041E?
When I was kid I would turn the lights off precisely at 22:22. Tonight I try to debug some error on my screen.
When 90% of the job is done, there is still 90% remaining to be done. My eyes are sore.
I eat half a loaf of bread. I feel full.
I started reading about Banana Equivalent Dose on Wikipedia, and am still reading about other things one hour later.
Baden is not in Baden-Würtenberg. And I should go to sleep.
The psychiatrist emits a remark about the way the person presiding the ceremony withdrew her hand right after giving a medal to a handicaped patient.
The story is not as unrealistic as I expected, actually I find it quite moving.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am still sleeping.
I am still sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am still sleeping.
I am still sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am fast asleep.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am sleeping.
I am fast asleep.