Lettre de Motivation

Une petite pointe d’impertinence peut mener loin. Ou pas. A utiliser avec parcimonie. Ou pas.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Monsieur,

Bien embarrassée par une introduction à cette lettre que les muses ne se sentent pas pressées de m’inspirer, je rentre dans le vif du sujet sans ambages et autres fioritures et vous prie d’excuser ces tergiversations.

Je me présente donc, je suis Mélodie Lalangue, orthophoniste de formation, métier auquel mon nom semble me prédisposer, et titulaire d’un diplôme de Maitrise en orthophonie.

Je suis actuellement étudiante en Master 2 Création Artistique — parcours Musicothérapie à l’Université Paris Descartes, formation à laquelle me prédisposait sans doute mon prénom cette fois. Dans le cadre de cette formation, je suis à la recherche d’un stage pratique de musicothérapie dans un établissement sérieux pour compléter mon cursus.

Lors de mes précédentes expériences, j’ai eu l’opportunité de découvrir l’efficacité de la musique dans l’accompagnement des patients avant, durant et après des chirurgies qui affectent leurs états physiologiques et psychiques, notamment des chirurgies sans anesthésie générale.

Si la musique seule ne guérit pas les maux, elle contribue grandement au bien-être du patient, selon un ancien adage qui se vérifiait tous les jours lors de mes stages précédents, à la stupeur de la Traditionnelle Ecole de la Pratique Ancienne et Acceptée à laquelle adhéraient nombre de mes collègues, ceux, en tout cas, qui ne jurent que par les thérapies médicamenteuses. Voyez-vous, la musique adoucit les mœurs.

Au cours de mes recherches, infructueuses pour le moment, mais le salut ne saurait tarder, j’ai appris que certaines procédures au sein de votre établissement se pratiquent sous anesthésie locale avec un accompagnement comme l’hypnose. Je suis convaincue que la musicothérapie peut être une approche complémentaire et que la collaboration entre différentes disciplines d’accompagnement dans ce type de procédures ne peut que favoriser la qualité des soins. “Plus on est de fous, plus on rit” est un adage qui pourrait s’appliquer littéralement à ces approches novatrices, hypnose, musique, que d’aucuns qualifieraient de folies, et leurs promoteurs de fous.

Mais nous n’en sommes sans doute plus à cette étape primaire de la réflexion dans un établissement tel que le votre, ou peut-être pas encore, ce qui constituerait un défi que je serai très encline à relever. Voyez-vous, un stage dans ce domaine au sein de l’hôpital me permettra de développer mes connaissances et mon expérience dans l’accompagnement des patients en musicothérapie, et de m’ouvrir à d’autres domaines d’accompagnement, tout en permettant à l’hôpital de s’ouvrir à plus de domaines thérapeutiques non médicamenteux qui démontrent tous les jours leur efficacité en tant que complémentaires des thérapies médicamenteuses.

La combinaison de mon expérience professionnelle en tant qu’orthophoniste et de ma formation en musicothérapie est une valeur ajoutée qui me permettra de mettre en place des projets thérapeutiques personnalisés qui se basent sur ces deux approches qui, comme vous le savez, sont toutes les deux fondées sur des preuves scientifiques. Les pseudo-sciences n’ont pas leur place dans une candidature sérieuse, vous en conviendrez.

A ce stade de ma lettre, je devrai peut-être essayer de vous convaincre de mes capacités de travail en équipe, de ma rigueur et autres qualités génériques du candidat idéal et idéalisé, mais je crois qu’un stage pratique me permettra de les démontrer de manière beaucoup plus convaincante que n’importe quelle diatribe énumérant des chimères du monde de l’entreprise, que j’éviterai bien évidemment d’inclure dans cette lettre. Il vous suffira de constater que je mets l’humain au centre de mes préoccupations professionnelles pour que tout le reste suive et que la musicothérapie se mette en musique.

Dans l’attente de votre réponse, et pour finir cette lettre sur une note plus classique et moins irrévérencieuse, je reste à votre disposition pour de plus amples informations et vous prie d’agréer mes salutations distinguées, sans me tenir rigueur de ces quelques pointes d’impertinence dont j’ai eu l’outrecuidance de parsemer ma prose, dans le but de piquer votre curiosité et vous éviter ce qui aurait autrement été une bien fade lecture.

Cordialement,

Mélodie Lalangue

A Rita, a Claire, mes complices dans cette entreprise d’irrévérence

Let the board sound

Rabih

How Worse Could it Get

A more than weird episode at the office

Photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash

8:04 AM.

I’m in the elevator with a weird colleague I had never seen before. The company had been growing like crazy in the past years, and the days when you could say “I know everyone” are long gone.

Long story short, I get off the elevator on the 6th floor and I think to myself:

Damn! That girl smells like the sixties and looks like shite…

Cold tobacco and wet leather kind of smell. And the looks, well I leave that to your imagination. Don’t get too wild though.

As the elevator door closes, I hear her whistle.

… All the lonely people…Where do they all come from …

OK. Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles, 1966. How odd. How fitting actually. The song could have been about her. I go my way whistling Your song by Elton John as a tribute to her.

You can tell everybody, this is your song …

I know, I am being mean. But hey, what can I say, it is just not my day, and besides, my thoughts are my own to think.

And it is not like she could hear me!

I head to my desk. A message is waiting for me in the chat.

Rabih,

If I smell like the sixties and I look like shite, you’d better be a nostalgic scatophile for I’m here to stay. Just saying.

Eleanor Rigby, COO

It was sent the previous evening.

That would explain the sixties smell.

And back to the main title, it can hardly get worse than sharing the elevator with a telepathic-time-travelling C-level executive. I guess the fab four would agree.

Let the board sound

Rabih

The Last Currency Standing When All Is Lost

Hint: not Crypto

Photo by Zlaťáky.cz on Unsplash

Some humor coming up, don’t take this seriously. Or maybe just a little bit.

Here I go.

Lose the crypto folks, it will soon be dust. Why? Because

Universal War is upon us

People! Universal War is coming up! You could have seen it coming since the sub-prime crisis in 2008. If that was not a wake-up call, then maybe the COVID Pandemic was? Global warming maybe? And now, the conflict in Ukraine? …

Universal War I tell ya!

A war following which no economy will be left standing. Dollars? Nada! Euros? Nada! Sterling? It was already doomed since the Brexit!

Crypto?

Nada!

Useless figures on virtual screens at some ex-central bank or defunct crypto exchange. Toilet paper at most.

The post-war currency candidates

So how will we buy bread in the aftermath of Universal War? Not with Crypto, that’s for sure. Ah! I see you coming! Guns you say? You’ve heard some smart ass saying that’s the most liquid currency in the world and you want to sound smart?

Granted, you can use one to get some bread. I doubt however you will be handing an AK-47 Kalashnikov to the baker, just like that, in exchange for a loaf. You will actually be pointing it at the lad and will leave with it and the bread. That’s no payment. That’s theft.

Armed robbery.

Unless you end up shooting something or someone in the bakery and think that lead is some sort of currency. You would have bought you bread with a bullet, that is if you are careless enough to leave the bullet or its casing behind. Come to think of it further, that is not payment either.

That’s first degree murder.

OK. We’ve established so far that guns are not currency in this new apocalyptic world. What is then? Gold you say? Indeed, gold would still amount to something in these dire times. However, would you be willing to hand the baker a gold coin in exchange for bread?

Hell no! Because “Sorry, no change”!

And you can bet the bloke will have a gun to enforce it.

The new currency

You need some tools. You need a metal grater. A steel file. Only then can you produce the exact amount of gold to pay for your stuff. Gold gratings. Gold dust. Like in the wild west back in the days.

If we take a shortcut, we might even argue that the actual currency will be the file. Gold becomes a proxy, for the real value is in the file itself. It does not even sound like a shortcut come to think of it. To me, it sounds like evidence. It is unescapable.

The new currency will be the steel file. Not gold. And definitely not Crypto.

Folks, let me give you an advice. A head start.

Storm hardware stores and stack up steel files.

You’ll thank me later. If you survive Universal War of course.

Now you might say it does not matter. Why stack up steel files when no one is going to stop you resorting to violence and guns for bread, in the midst of a total collapse of civilization?

In that case, I just hope we are not neighbors. I’ll stick to my steel files, hoping I have enough to grate for my daily bread. Sorry folks, I need to wrap this up. The hardware stores close at 8 around here and I have 7 more to visit.

Let the board sound

Rabih

On FinTech and a bit of fun in a post for once

Or how to explain what you do as a fintech professional to people who have no clue about technology and/or financial institutions, without quoting The Wolf of Wall Street.

Photo by Timisu

The average tentative involves you saying that you work in fintech (that’s financial technology) and having then to explain that your clients are mostly banks which rely on complex technologies and heavy computing power to operate, which will not make sense to most people because, well, why would you want a data center and cutting edge software to track the account balances of your customers and run your accounting, there’s Excel for that, but heeey, nooo, it’s investment banks and funds we’re talking about, not retail banks, you know, the type of banks which trade complex financial products which require heavy math and intensive computation to be valued and processed, and it goes sideways from there on because, well, you find yourself compelled to provide an example, so you try to explain what an option is, a contract which conveys its owner the right to buy or sell an underlying asset or instrument like an Amazon stock at a specified strike price prior to or on a specified date, and that the math to value it was only developed in the 70’s by Black, Scholes and Morton, which sparked a boom in the trading of options which has not waned ever since, and by the time you start explaining the Black-Scholes equation and the fact that it relies on the volatility of the price of the underlying, what underlying? Well the Amazon stock remember? No? That’s exactly my point: they are either completely lost or completely bored. At this point, you can always try to rely on your wingman, the Wolf of Wall Street, because that’s the closest most people will ever get to a trading floor and I do not blame them for not trying harder, it is an acquired taste.

If this long explanation still sounds obscure to you dear reader and possibly fintech professional, just know that a retail bank is the one you go to to open a bank account and get a credit card and it caters mostly for individuals whereas an investment bank is the place where options and other financial instruments are traded, on a trading floor. 

And for those who have never seen one, a trading floor can look and sound like a high-tech fish market, a bit toned down maybe, no fish smell, less decibels, but a fish market still. People selling stuff to other people, trying to agree on a price, managing their stock while keeping an eye on the market and the competition. There you go. It might not be entirely accurate, but it has the merit of demystifying the place. 

At this point of the reading, you might want to realize that we have still not explained what it is that a fintech professional actually does. I personally work in delivery, that’s implementing complex financial software solutions at investment banks and hedge or mutual funds. But it is not about me, it is about you dear reader/possibly fintech professional.

So the next time they ask you about your job, and unless it is alright because you like the way it hurts, swallow your pride, give The Wolf of Wall Street a break and say you work in IT, full stop. 

And point them to this post.

Let the board sound

Rabih