mandarine

I can hardly remember in which blog I found this hilarious meme first. There was at least Cam, Becky, Emily, Charlotte (there, there, over there, and out there). The rule is simple: I have to use google as a mirror, mirror on the wall, to tell me what I need, using “[my name] needs”.

Now, there is a riddle: what should I use as [my name] ? Obviously, Mandarine is not my real name, but my cat’s. Not much fun in knowing what my cat needs (sleep, disgusting paté, to shed hair on my pillow, to miaow loudly all night long because, you know, it’s that bad season for she-cats). Therefore I chose to use my real first name. However, even if I am probably the only one in France with this name, it’s already been what-I-need-memed by tons of bloggers worldwide. I thus decided to change the rules to “[my name] wants”. The results are surprising, but I know why: as I have always been blogging under a pseudonym, google does not have a clue who I am and what I want. And yet, some of the stuff is not far from the truth:

I want…

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My brother used to say: “Don’t do as Americans do. Americans always generalize. Don’t generalize.”

And vice versa.

Boldly borrowed from Pierre Rahbi:

How wealthy are nannies (who take care of our children)?
How wealthy are bankers (who take care of our money)?

Weetabix is my main breakfast diet, and has been for close to a quarter of a century, back to the times when my parents had to smuggle it illegally from England It has been my brothers’ too, and the result is: [more]

After the roaring success of bloglily’s Christmas book stack, I wondered whether the concept could at all be translated into the digital world. A (fortunately fictional) illustration is worth a thousand pages of e-speech:

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I recently saw The Meaning of Life for the umpteeth time, and could not resist sharing some of it:
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In France, there are roughly 3 million tons of French people. And at least 100 million tons of earthworms. On a global scale, earthworms make up 80% of the land animal biomass — much much more than men + livestock. Just thought I’d let you know.

A quote by Paolo Scaroni, CEO of ENI, the major italian oil company:

If it were possible to convince Americans to buy the same cars as Europeans, we could save 4 million barrels a day - equivalent to the oil production of Iran, the world’s third-largest oil exporter.

Read away

The original interview at the Financial Times (member access)
Quotes and comment of this interview

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