My scrap of dirt

So I was doing my accounts and realized our phone company had charged us for 20€ worth of phone calls we never made. Erm, oops? Ensued an hour spent on the phone with the customer and technical hotline, during which I gave my name, phone number, address, cell phone number to different people approximately 36 times. They've now promised me a refund on next month's bill, but I'll believe it when I see it.

One interesting thing: the international calls we didn't make but were charged for where made to Algeria. Our subscription to our provider (Alice) gives us free phone calls to the United States, the UK, Canada, Sweden, Greece, Liechtenstein, 23 countries total. Yet Algeria, Senegal, Marocco, and pretty much every (mostly African) country that has a high of immigration rate towards France, isn't included. I don't think the choice was purposeful - it's probably got to do with marketing agreements and the such, but it's troubling to notice that, once again, an already-disadvantaged population who could really, really do with free phone calls to their native country, isn't further helped by these sorts of deals. Capitalism just can't resist another chance to screw over poorest populations.

(Interestingly enough, Free, another provider that offers the same sort of unlimited international phone calls, even includes Japan, China, Singapour, but North African countries are still painfully absent from the list. They do offer unlimlited calls to Guadeloupe, La Réunion and Martinique, which only fair considering those countries are technically part of France, albeit poorer.)


In other news, I've FINALLY gotten a hold of my UBC acceptance letter. I'm all set to go for a morning of "fun" at the Embassy of Canada next Wednesday, where apparently iPods aren't allowed. Yay! (Ignore the slight touch of sarcasm - what really matters is that I should soon have a visa.) I've also finished gathering signatures from teachers and after I fill out an application online next Monday for my French university, I should be all done with paperwork re: next year. I will still need to send papers to our International Relations Office when I get to Vancouver - it wouldn't do for bureaucracy to just leave us alone!

The list of student selected by Paris III to go to Canada next year has been released.

People! I'M GOING TO UBC!!!!!!

Officially, UBC hasn't accepted my application yet (we won't know if they have before late May), but since they have a partnership with my school, chances that someone selected at my school would be turned down by UBC are very low. So it's pretty much a done deal.


I'm so excited, and at the same time it's like I can't believe it. I'm going back to North America. I'm going back to school in North America. I'm going back to Vancouver. It's almost too good to be true. I still have that memory of when I was 9 and my mom pointed to Vancouver on a map to show me when you go to see orcas, and it seemed like the other end of the world to me. Some unreachable place. And now I'm going to live there for a year. I still find something extraordinary about that.