Vegemite Croissant

I’ve been reading the expatriate websites and chatting to a number of expats in France about the work they do here, so I thought I’d share my ideas on jobs for expats. Finding work in a foreign country can be tricky. Not all people make the move with work lined up – some are the trailing partner, who merely hopes they can find a job that works for them. This is made even more difficult when you’re still learning the language – not many local businesses will hire someone who can’t speak the local language well! So, I put a little thought into the sorts of work

I noticed something disturbing about international payments the other day. I thought it might be worth sharing as a warning to expats and travellers. We bought plane tickets online from an Australian airline, QANTAS. The prices listed on the website, in our confirmation and receipts were in Australian dollars. We paid with an Australian credit card. You’d think that would be fairly straight forward. But, no. QANTAS in its infinite wisdom had decided that since we were in Europe it would...

Here’s a question posed by a French-English newspaper on Twitter. I saw it and instantly felt obliged to rant a little. I love France, but I do sometimes wish there was a little more internet usage around here. > Is France behind when it comes to the internet? Do you find it frustrating trying to find information online? Hell yes! Take for instance my local public library. A thorough look at the Mairie website and tourism website will tell you where the library is and the opening times. In fact, the Mairie has several different pages with slightly different information about the library

I just thought I should let you all know that I’ve made a to collect all my best professional writing, including my work at MakeUseOf, NetSavoir, writings at Vegemite Croissant and more. Please feel free to “like” the in order to keep updated. If Twitter is more your thing, I have a few different accounts you might like to follow: @ – This tells followers when there’s new posts from the Vegemite Croissant blog, plus the occasional related link that readers of this blog might be interested in. @ – This updates followers with links to all my professional writing

We’re still plugging away at learning French ourselves, but we’ve hit upon some very good websites and ideas in our efforts to learn. So, I thought I’d share some resources I’ve put together about learning French: – This list of Twitter users is hand-picked to ensure almost every tweet in the list is teaching you French. Most of the accounts listed are dedicated to teaching French with every tweet. The only account which isn’t entirely dedicated to teaching you French is @, but since she’s...

So, French handwriting is gorgeous. No, really. Everyone here has beautiful handwriting. Look: I was doing a little reading up on this and it turns out that the French have dedicated handwriting lessons throughout primary school. Plus, art lessons tend to focus a lot on calligraphy. It’s a big deal. It’s such a big deal that apparently some high school teachers won’t mark work that is handed in with poor handwriting. I guess it’s a good lesson in presentation. I found this video on how the...

Our town just got what I believe to be its first pizza vending machine. I’ve never seen one of these before and I’m kind of excited. Firstly, it’s one of the better pizza bars that’s in charge of the machine. This is a good thing. Cheap pizza varies pretty wildly in France. I have high hopes for this vending machine. Secondly, these pizza vending machines seem to have been tested elsewhere and have been found to be a success. Which means it’s not likely to close down in a hurry. Thirdly, this...

Buying a car in France seems to involve a lot of unexpected steps, so I thought I’d share what we’ve learned about it. Step 1: Car must be checked by garage The people selling the car need to take it to a garage and get it checked over sometime in the 6 months prior to the sale. No-one seems to check this on any of the forms, but it’s known to be required. Step 2: Get insurance cover before you buy the car Get hold of a copy of the seller’s Carte Gris so you can quote the license plate...