"This is your year!"

Um...no it isn't. We (the partners) have already come to -- and accepted -- the realization that this year is "about" our spouses at IMD, and so it is rather hard to buy into the administration's party line that we are just as important, just as integral, just as valued blah blah blah: "This is your year, partners!" Oh really? Then why does my name placard at IMD workshops read as follows:

Laura Boudreau
(Ian B)

And, even more annoyingly, why do people ask me, "Who do you belong to?" when I walk in the door?

When I got into a brief discussion about this issue with Lisa (Admissions/Ombudsperson for 08), she told me that the whole "belonging to" terminology was just an off-shoot of various and necessary administrative procedures. I'm sure that's true...in part. Surely my name is linked to Ian's on Excel spreadsheets lurking all around IMD, fine, but to have it on my bloody name card at a workshop that is supposed to empower me to express my individuality, creativity, and agency while I'm here in Lausanne? It's a mixed message, to say the least.

On the one hand, the partners are supposed to be hip-hop dancing and making pottery and having a lovely ol' ex-pat time, and on the other, it's already assumed that we will crack and be a burden to our partners, and so therefore we need psychologists on 24/7 call, nutritionists to tell us how to lose weight (apparently I can have a "nice talk" with some woman name Patricia about this), and some sort of herbalist from Paris to help us treat ourselves for anxiety. It's like frosh week for people with capital-I issues...and I never much cared for frosh week, even at the time.

There is a general consensus that it is all kind of bullshit and we will make our own friends and manage our own lives; if we need help, we'll ask, but thanks for your card. Tanja thought all the vaguely ominous "it's going to get worse" talk about the IMD workload rather laughable, considering that her husband, Rich (in Ian's group), spent the last four years in Special Ops in Baghdad. How much worse can it get? Plus, believe it or not, people here have problems that can't be solved with salsa dancing (gasp!) or Jungian analysis -- Josefine, for instance, has a 5-year-old on her hands who cries herself to sleep because Daddy's not home...that is, of course, when said 5-year-old isn't saying that "Daddy went back to Sweden" and refusing to talk to Jesper, even if he manages to make it home before bedtime (which is pretty much never). Wait -- maybe they have an herb for that?

The problem is not with the partners themselves -- I've generally found the women (and they're all women) to be very dynamic, interesting, engaging people -- but rather with the weird programming that we are subjected to/is available to us. I'm all for a little companionship and camaraderie, but this workshop today made me glad to be visiting Lausanne and glad that I have my own life, which is not contingent on the next pot luck party, theme to be decided.

Speaking of my own life...

Good news today from across the wires! My short story "Hurricane Season" has been accepted for publication by Grain! Grain is a great magazine that I have a lot of respect for, and you can check it out here (apologies that this isn't a live link...haven't figured that out in Blogger): http://www.grainmagazine.ca/

M. Winter sent his transatlantic regards:

laura that is fantastic. grain is a hard
magazine to get into, strong material.
I might have poked you here and there
but you sucked it up and did the revisions
so good on you. michael

YES! Good on me, indeed! I am tooting my own horn! Ian is proud. He took me out for dinner (but I had to pay because he had no money...so much for those finance classes!), and he and I laughed over caramelized fig pasta (?) about the IMD Culture of Capitalist Oppression of Women and Minorities. (Perhaps Ian has forwarded you the rather dismal email the admin sent out to "all the gays and lesbians"?) Argh!

Enough raging...

Ian's work is going well -- he's currently building a model to determine the value of real estate in Lausanne (and/or any other city), and apparently this means he is going to start wearing a top hat/bow tie and looking suspiciously like the Monopoly guy:

In not so good news, our ski trip to Verbier has been scuttled! The company Ian's working for has determined that it can't afford to send the team out to test the ski product in question. Ian and I might still go the two of us, but it's looking a little unlikely. We'll have to see how the week plays out.

Hope the world is continuing to turn over there. And no, I am not offended by the lack of comments... Not at all... ;)

It's a chilly night here...hope you are all bundled and well!

Laura (the one who belongs to Ian)