“la parole exportée”

May 1st is a holiday in France (see post below) and I was invited to a barbecue-birthday party all afternoon and evening.

May 1st may be a holiday in France, but it doesn’t seem to be in England, and already in the morning I received a short translation with a long deadline, so I didn’t have to process it immediately.

I left mid-afternoon, but I was careful to place my gmail account on autoresponder. This way my clients and contacts get notice of how long I may be away from my desk. The message also includes instructions on how to contact me in an emergency, i.e. on my cellphone.

I have access to my e-mail account from my cellphone, using the Opera Mini browser. Those who own Blackberries, don’t laugh. I access the internet via a tiny (and not too cheap at the time) Sony Ericsson, I read my e-mails (but not attached files) and I respond to them from it. Previously I used my mobile operator’s wap access to go to the internet, but after suffering major frustration and ruining many a holiday when the ‘thing’ wouldn’t work, I’ve turned to a more secure alternative. I have had that kind of system in place for 5 or 6 years now, and it works well. So far it has allowed me to be anywhere, even at the checkout of my local supermarket, without any interruption to my business. The only place I can’t use it is when I’m actually driving, although it has patched up things between traffic jams and me.

Yesterday, as I knew only one person at the party, I spent a lot of time networking initially, but after a while I checked my e-mails, and well… there was another translation offer. Seems that in France we celebrate labor by not working (a totally acceptable proposition if you ask me), whereas the rest of the world celebrate labor by working. Another aspect of the ‘French exception’ that I totally subscribe to. And the entire French working population doesn’t stop dead on holidays either. Beware of sweeping statements.

So it’s back to work for me today. Some employees are lucky enough to be taking what we call “un pont,” a bridge between the holiday and the first day of the weekend, a.k.a. a long weekend. Not for me. That offer that I was able to accept from my cellphone has materialized and I may be well-advised to work at the weekend. Another feature of self-employed flexibility.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 11:05 am and is filed under Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.