apres la pluie, c'est le beau temps

a French way of saying that things go well after a bad spell (sunshine after the rain). This is what a friend of mine said to me after he asked what I've been up to since January, and received a response that started off 'january february bad, march good!' (to paraphrase), and it's true that since the sun's started getting up before me again, there's a certain weight that's been lifted off my shoulders.
Mental health wise, December through to February have been difficult months. I'd had a feeling I might have some trouble adjusting as my body has been exposed to pretty much non-stop 12 hour daylight days for the last 13 years running (near the equator the daylight hours change very little in their length throughout the year).
In addition I was consistently falling ill, at least every 3 weeks, which had been wearing me down physically and mentally, not to mention my general hatred of where I lived and my 9-5 routine!
In the end, the combination of everything together was something of a downer, and the combination of everything changing simultaneously has turned up the happy vibes (I'm not saying anything about a positive attitude after the whole Raffarin affair ;) )*

Back to the subject heading though, while the weather certainly has taken a wonderful turn for the better (21°!!!), it certainly didn't follow much rain, and France is currently faced with a water shortage situation that resembles late summer. There's hope that April rains will recharge key water stores, but little will be absorbed by the soil as most rain is absorbed primarily be vegetation during this period, or it evaporates. Should I use my expertise in studies of ecology minded techniques suited to adapt to the driest continent on the planet (that would be Australia) as a selling point in my upcoming job search do you think?


* For my non-France readers, a teeny bopper type singer had a saccharine teeny bopper type hit 'positive attitude' (yeah yeah yeah), which a very non-teeny bopper like prime minister decided was a rather jolly good philosophy and decided to counsel the French people to adopt just that. Which provoked much eyerolling and a long running gag on 'les guignols' (basically the French version of Spitting Image...and if you didn't get that in Australia...er, caricature puppets?)