hello old friends

I recently got in touch with some old friends, and it was a really pleasant way to start the new year.

Warm hellos to Nick and Nisha who may or may not be reading this right now. You can also read my policy on refering to my friends by real names here , and of course, if you especially don't want me to blog about something you should also tell me about it.

Anyways, here are the answers to some questions raised by my re-discovered old friends, and a brief re-cap for the rest of you who may have forgotten already. I haven't included the questions because they can be fairly easily deduced from the answers.

1. The baby is due in middle/end May 2006 (actually this is stated on the email flyer you probably already have)
   



2. It was a "planned accident" (yep - for those of you actually asked outright, you can email me directly for what I mean exactly by this term! I have no objection to telling you, but I assume it's Too Much Information for everyone else)



3. Fabien and I met in Singapore, where we both lived and worked for 4 years. Fabien came to Singapore to work for a French Transport company as a project engineer for the trains on the North East line. Sharon was working as a very boring lawyer, with the same love for travel as Fabien but none of the mobility.



4. I'm currently working from home mostly as a legal researcher/proofreader. What this means is that whenever I am not busy correcting other people's grammar, I'm spending my own cash on Lexis/Westlaw searches, which is then almost completely offset by whatever I get paid for delivering the answer to some idiot too lazy/busy to find the answer him/herself. I'm waiting for the day when someone asks a question I already know the answer to, so that I can recycle all the previous work and collect pure profit, but it hasn't happened yet... Anyway, this means I spend an inordinate amount of time online, and am usually found blogging/answering email when I really should be working!



5. I'd like to work for the UN in a developing nation at some point in time. I think the UN has a lot of cleaning up to do before it can get over its credibility problem. I understand that there are a great many things wrong with it, but I am optimistic that it can be resolved. I will start a short-term IUSE tutorship contract in March/April (it was originally scheduled to be longer, but then the baby made some serious schedule shifts!) I will not take on any new assignments after the baby is born.



6. we're moving to Beijing at the end of 2006 for Fabien's work - he's a validation manager in the same French company for a set of high speed trains which are manufactured in Turin and installed in Beijing. I hope to work in Beijing. Although I haven't decided as what yet.