CANDIDE

"'Is it true that people in Paris are always laughing?' asked Candide.

"'Yes,' said the abbe, 'but they're burning with rage at the same time.  They complain about everything with gales of laughter, and they even laugh while they commit the most abominable crimes.'"

I'm in a good mood because Jeremy Corbyn defied expectations and took away Teresa May's majority in the British election.  Corbyn's the kind of politician we need these days!

I've started reading Candide for the second time. (The first time was back when I lived in London in 1995, and I read it during the long commute to the Public Record Office in Kew.) It's something of a burlesque.

Wednesday night I saw Francois Ozon's Frantz with Miriam at the Mt. Pleasant. (Hadn't been there for a while.) It's a pretty downbeat movie about a German woman whose fiance was killed in the Great War and meets a French veteran who knows something of the dead man.

Last night I went to another ESL Meetup.  I met a Korean girl and managed to say to her, "Je sang'il-un Iwol o'il ieyo," which means "My birthday is February 5th." (Which it is.) I told her that I liked the Korean movie Taegukgi:  The Brotherhood of War, and she said it's famous in Korea.

Today I had lunch with John Snow at the Schnitzel Hub again. (He generously gave me copies of a couple of French books his book club will be doing soon.) I seemed to leave a bit abruptly and he later wondered if I was mad at him, but I explained that us Aspies are often giving the wrong impression!

After a fortnight, I've finally got rid of my email backlog.  It took a while because I was also dealing with the new emails that arrive every day.

It's supposed to be a hot weekend, and I bought some ice for our freezer.  Now I'd like to find an ice-crushing appliance...