News from Nouméa

Photo: Baie de l'Orphelinat (our closest bay).

What is the news from our little corner of the world? Well, local merchants are beginning to worry as electronic commerce is starting to take off: one in ten packages received here have been ordered on line. Oh dear. (Actually, I'm surprised it's not higher, given the cost and limited availability of goods. But my guess is this is weighted against the small number of Internet subscribers in New Caledonia - 70 000 as of September 2005.)

But as for us, all is well. Sophie will be going back to school on Friday (24 February), following two months of summer break. This morning we went to buy her a new pair of flip-flops and a few of her workbooks to start the year off with a bang (no, a whisper). She is at a crêperie at the Baie des Citrons this afternoon with friends, and is enjoying her last few days of vacation.

Laurent has solved most of his Access database problems but is at another standstill: his superiors do not want him to pursue developing it further as they are not sure that his replacement will know how to use Access ...

And as for me, I've been visiting a few doctors (ear problems - all taken care of!); cooking new recipes (last night I set up the laptop on the kitchen counter so I could read and follow a recipe for herb chicken and grilled red peppers and simultaneously stream jazz from Paris); reading and catching up with work. A fun project for work yesterday concerned a set of blogging guidelines. Thanks to the likes of Jakob Nielsen and others whose ideas are freely available on the web, I had great fun with the project and found a number of tips and interesting facts about blogs (the term dates back to 1999). For all of my French-speaking friends, for example, see the January 2006 news report from TF1 on blogging in France, Internet : la mode du blog chez les adolescents (copy and paste the title of the video report in the search on www.tf1.fr and click on the link provided). The report goes on to address the effect of blogs by French politicians as well. Speaking of work ... it calls ...