and no, before you ask, i DON’T actually know what MIP stands for.  i’ll look it up one of these days.

i am in cannes.  it’s a business trip… my very first in this job.  it was supposed to be sunny, yet as i type the rain is POURING heavily on the skylight in our tiny studio apartment (i am shacked up with a colleague for the week).

before i get around to going into any detail about cannes or the things i’m doing here, i need to share this very amusing thing that one of the speakers showed us yesterday at a seminar.  … extreme sheep!  apparently they’ve only been up a couple of weeks….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw

i really really hope this link works.

now then, what to say?  cannes is… weird.  i guess i’m not even seeing its full oddity, given that it has poured rain nearly the entire time i’ve been here.  this keeps the number of non-tv biz people down.  after all, we HAVE to be here.  but it’s very 80s, and i don’t mean that in this new, retro 80’s way that has most people dressing like the alternative styles of the 80’s… i mean it in the too much bling and too slick fashion way.

now that i’ve said that, i can’t honestly say i’ve seen so much other than in the stores, and the occasional obvious hooker.  i always wonder with prostitutes that seem that obvious in a rather expensive way, if they think they DON’T look like prostitutes.  (sorry about all the caps things… i’m too lazy to deal with proper formatting and italics while i type.)

the market is, i’ve been told, pretty quiet this year.  as one well-known participant said to me while we stood outside the palais, it means that those who are here are in most cases the core people, with real business to attend to, and they are more focused and not wasting anyone’s time.  that’s great for them.  for me, i’ve been attending seminars & keynotes, taking notes and recording, for later feedback to my colleagues and boss.  a journalist in one of the seminars asked me if i was also a journalist, trying to read my badge from his seat beside me.  i have to say, i’ve been feeling more like a journalist than like a student, which was the first self-perception i had.

i don’t enjoy wandering the booths.  i don’t enjoy the networking parties.  i find the seminars, for the most part, very interesting and quite useful to my job and to our business’ general intelligence.  i also do enjoy the food very much.  strangely, i haven’t been enjoying the coffee.  weird!  usually i love coffee in france, but it’s been pretty disappointing so far.  today i came back to the apartment, stopped at monoprix, and bought a package of english breakfast tea, a jar of honey, and a small container of milk.  having finished a nice strong cup of tea, i’m feeling a little picked up.

tonight i’ll be having dinner with my colleague again.  we had a great time last night, getting tipsy at 3 of those horrible parties (the last one wasn’t so bad – champagne helps) before heading to a late dinner at an armenian restaurant.  delicious!  nice conversation and then we were too tired to go to any of the big party hangout places.  tonight she wants to have a slightly earlier dinner then go out and party a little.  i’m looking forward to it.

ciao for now!