Maki et Diego Partout le Monde

South Bank

2010-03-31T16:13:00.005+01:00

You wouldn't know it by today's weather, but we've been having some lovely spring days here. The nice weather made us want to leave our little neighborhood, though not so much that we actually crossed north of the river!

We stopped off by a kids' playground and had a grand old time on the swings:

The street entertainment included Metallic Man and the Most Pierced Woman Alive.

And best of all, at the end we serendipitously happened on the Chocolate Festival. Yum!

Happy Pancake Day!

2010-02-16T08:36:00.000Z

When I saw the signs at my local supermarket stating that today is Pancake Day, I thought that either this must be a great country indeed, or that the supermarket is trying a new marketing ploy to get consumers to buy more baked goods. On further research, though, it turns out that Pancake Day is really a holiday here, though sadly, you don’t get a day off work to stay at home and eat pancakes.

Pancake Day is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. It is common to eat sweet pancakes with a little lemon as a way to live it up before Lent begins. Pancakes are considered an indulgence on this day because they contain ingredients like eggs, sugar and butter, which some people do not eat during Lent.

Some cultures celebrate Fat Tuesday with a big carnival full of rowdy, bawdy fun, but I guess the celebrations are just a bit more subdued here. While I do not really follow Lent, I still plan on having pancakes for breakfast! It’s a great way to start this rainy Tuesday on a positive note.

Putting Down Roots

2010-02-10T13:36:00.001Z

For those of you that know us in real life, it might surprise you to hear us say that we are thinking of settling down in London. When we first moved here, we thought we wanted to just do our time in London to establish ourselves career-wise and then hurry back to France (or jet off to some new, unexplored land). Maybe it’s because of the baby, the sunny skies, the gourmet fare, or plain old age, but neither of us really wants to think about moving out of here.

Sure, Paris has many things going for it: it’s a very walkable city, the food is generally pretty good, and it feels very continental. London is expensive, sprawling, and a bit grayer.

So why do we like it here so much? First, compared to Paris, we have a lot of friends here, including English friends. It Paris, I went to the same bakery for months before the owner said more than a cursory greeting. And while we had some French friends, the majority of our friends were other expats.

London also feels a lot more cosmopolitan, mainly because of the mix of people that live here. In the mood for some Uighur food? Try the place down the road. Want some fufu? We have that nearby too. As Diego likes to say, London is really an airport with a city around it. For cultural mutts like us, living in a place with such a mixed identity has meant that we don’t feel like outsiders. Ultimately, too, finding a place to call home is about finding a place where you belong and that accepts you just as you are. And for now, at least, London is home.

Jet Lag & Babies

2009-12-11T02:36:00.003Z

It's the start of the holiday season, and the cacahuète and I are now on our second trip to the US. Much like last time, jet lag has wreaked havoc on our sleep schedule. I say "our" because when the peanut wants to play at 2 am in the morning, I have to be there to amuse him. Such is the price we must pay for our wandering lifestyle, I suppose.

On the whole, I cannot complain, I suppose, as our little cacahuète is a seasoned little traveller by now. He is not at all fazed by the airport security routine, and gets very flirty and happy when security personnel hold him while I gather our things. And somehow he manages to make friends with the people seated around us on the airplane.

For those of you who may be flying internationally with a baby, I highly recommend Virgin Atlantic. They have new cots for babies that are bigger and more comfortable than the traditional skycots, and they have jars of baby food on board. It was reassuring to know that even if the food I had prepared for the trip was confiscated at security, the peanut would still be able to eat. Not to mention that the flight attendants gave us a big bottle of water so I would not have to get up in the middle of the flight with the baby if I got thirsty or if I had a problem with the water I had brought on board for formula.

My only gripe is that our pram was not available when we deplaned, and I had to go through immigration and to wait for the luggage (and the pram) holding a 21-pound baby. Not fun, but at least I know that nex time I will have to make doubly sure that the pram is properly gate-checked.

Our next international flight is to Uruguay in a couple of weeks. Thankfully, Diego will be joining us for that one. And I'm less concerned about the peanut not behaving on this flight because the Christmas flights to South America are full of families with screaming babies. What better way to get into the holiday spirit than to be in a small, confined space with crying babies for 10 hours? Happy Holidays!

Frequent Vacationers

2009-09-15T12:41:00.003+01:00

We just got back from our first family vacation. With a new baby to cart along and the weak pound, we decided to stay in the UK and took the train to St. Ives in Cornwall. I know that a lot of Brits like to go abroad because they believe the food and weather are better just about everywhere else. But on the whole, we heartily recommend St. Ives.

We ate amazing food:

Well, we have no pics of our food, but can assure you that the seafood, especially the local mussels, scallops and crab were delicious. The mussels, in particular, reminded us of the type they have in Uruguay: soft and not at all grainy.

We had a lot of tasty local wines:

I know you are thinking “English wine??!!” because we thought that too. But, we plucked up our courage and decided to follow the advice of the old advertisement that stated “The best golfer in the world is black, the best rapper in the world is white, and the best sailors in the world are Swiss. Now is the time to try English wine.”

The verdict? The wine was actually drinkable. Better than drinkable, in fact. It was good! The wine above reminded me of German Rieslings and was fruity but not sweet. We also had a sparkling wine by the same maker, which was crisp and clean. Overall, English wines (at least the whites) are definitely worth trying, if only for the adventure factor.

Last, we also spent some time on the local beaches. The weather was not warm enough to really spend time in the ocean, but Diego could not resist taking a dip in the balmy 14°C water:

Were it not for the occasional rainstorm, it almost didn't feel like England at all!

In typical Maki et Diego fashion, our first family vacation is over, but we won’t be staying put for long. The cacahuète and I are flying to Miami to visit the grandparents.

I’m excited that we will be spending quality time with our families, but I am also nervous about dealing with the hassle of the airport and the 9-hour flight with a small baby in tow. Not to mention that the effect of jet lag on a 5-month old who has only recently started sleeping through the night...somehow, I knew he’d start to sleep through the night shortly before we were due to start crossing time zones. But, hey, at least he has beat the family record for youngest frequent flyer.

NHS Hospital Delivers Baby Safely

2009-08-31T19:50:00.004+01:00

I know, I know, we have been very much out of touch. I promise that we have a good reason, though: our little globe-trotting cacahuète was born in mid-April. In the months following the birth, it felt like we were running a hotel, as grandparents, aunts, and cousins from near and far came to meet the newest family member. I have also gotten very involved in the local baby circuit, hanging out with other new mums in the local area parks. Bring on the power-pramming!

You might remember that when I was pregnant, I blogged that I was concerned about having a baby in the NHS. I really needn't have worried as the hospital staff was very knowledgeable and efficient. Even when things got a bit dicey right before the peanut's grand appearance, the midwives, doctors and nurses were in control of the situation. And for a couple of weeks after the birth, I had midwives and health visitors coming to my living room to check on us both. It was great to have medical professionals visit us at home, since it took me a few weeks to feel like I could venture outside the house with the always-hungry and insatiable peanut.

While Joe the Plumber might be surprised to hear of my positive experience having a baby in the NHS, Stephen Hawking would find nothing unusual in it. Indeed, like most Brits, he would likely be amused at my amazement that health care here is free. I understand that it is our tax pound that pays for nationalized health care, but taxes here are not much higher than they were in the US, which makes me think that we are getting a good deal overall.

Additionally, supposing that I was utterly distrustful of the NHS, I still have the option of seeing doctors and specialists on a private basis. In short, if I want to pay for extra service, I am free to do so. But if I - like most of the uninsured Americans - cannot afford to pay for private health care, I can use the national medical system. As a new parent, it is comforting to know that no matter what happens to us job-wise, the peanut can still see a doctor. And politics aside, fundamentally, it's all about taking care of peanuts, isn't it?

That said, it does feel a bit like I'm missing out on all the fun of the health care debate back in the US. Maybe I can say we've been too busy dealing with all the death panels, health rationing and socialism. But, like Stephen Hawking, the cacahuète and I are alive and healthy in spite of it all, so there you go.

Just Divine

2009-04-05T12:04:00.004+01:00

Last weekend we saw the following advert for a company that rents IT equipment:

Yes, that's a picture of Hugh Grant after he was arrested in 1995 for asking Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown for oral sex. My favorite part of the advert? The caption at the bottom that states the company provides "service that will blow you away."

Burnin' and a-lootin' at the G-20

2009-04-01T20:59:00.005+01:00

Diego here. Back again. I know we haven't been keeping up the blog lately, so sorry. Those who know understand that there are other things on our minds lately. Also, for me, the humdrum of the day to day routine saps me of my creative energy sometimes, so there you go.

Luckily for me, the humdrum routine was broken today. The G-20 pow-wow is going on in London tomorrow, the big O is in town and today there were protests planned throughout the city. The City (financial district) was a particular target today. That's where I work. Several days ago, the HR department sent out an e-mail advising us to dress down since some of these anarchists might target suits for violence. I had seen on the Evening Standard that Moorgate station, right by my work, was supposed to be the gathering place for one of the marches. So off I went this morning, dressed in the scruffiest getup I could find along with my Fidel Castro looking hat, thinking that if push came to shove I could raise my fists in the air and pretend to be a protester.

By mid morning, Moorgate was full of police vans and officers in every direction. All my bored colleagues kept staring out the windows waiting for something to happen, and waiting...and waiting. Nothing. Just a lot of cops. Hey, what can I say, when you work in a cubicle farm, you value any little bit of excitement that comes your way!

At lunchtime, a colleague and myself decided to go have a wander and catch some of the action. We walked down by the Bank of England where the protesters had gathered. The police had sealed most of the area off, but we managed to sneak in to a small, crowded area. I'd say there were about two cops for every activist there, and furthermore about 2 gawkers for every cop. Yes, it was so easy to tell that most of the people around me were bored office workers in casual attire, just like myself, trying to see what all the fuss was. Oh, and the place was swarming with journalists. Cameras everywhere. I'm surprised there actually are that many photojournalists in London. I guess those are the guys that follow celebrities and the royal family around when there are no G-20 protests. At one point I saw a guy spray-painting some graffitti on the pavement and there were no less than 4 media people taking his picture. Talk about exposure!

After that, we headed to the carbon exchange where the environmentalists were protesting. Also a lot of cops and journalists but there was much more of a party atmosphere going on. There was a sound system blasting music and a bunch of trippy hippies dancing to it. The loudest cries of protest I heard were whenever the music was switched off. No angry speeches. No manifesto. It felt like a very pleasant block party but a rather useless protest.

That was it. Totally overhyped and anticlimactic. I managed to get a few snaps on my way home. They are appropriately boring:

Dettol

2009-02-12T12:25:00.001Z

One thing Diego and I have noticed is that each country has its own cleaning products and those cleaning products are not available in every country. For example, in France, we had a hard time finding Oxyclean, a crucial product when you spill as much red wine as we do. Luckily, Diego’s Mom was able to bring a Costco-sized box of the white powder in her luggage when she came to visit us (and surprisingly she was never questioned about the contents of her luggage when going through the airport). Instead of Oxyclean, red-wine spillers in France have to make do with a transparent liquid called detacheur that sometimes manages to remove the stain and sometimes doesn’t.

Here in the UK, the locals seem quite fond of a cleaning product called Dettol that looks and smells a lot like Pine-Sol.

According to the package, Dettol is an antiseptic disinfectant, again, much like Pine-Sol. What makes Dettol different than Pine-Sol is the variety of uses it has.

Dettol does not just clean floors, bathrooms, and countertops. No, that would be too pedestrian. According to the package label, Dettol can also be used “for personal hygiene” by pouring 1-2 capfuls in the bath. Indeed, according to the March Marie Claire, some women even use it for douching! (though the doctor interviewed did warn that it upsets the healthy balance of bacteria).

Not only can you use this Pine-Sol equivalent to freshen your bath, Dettol also has “medical uses,” including an disinfecting wash on cuts, bites, abrasions, and insect stings.

Even more disconcerting, Dettol can also be used for “midwifery.” Yes, that’s right folks, you can use Pine-Sol when birthin’ babies! The midwifery instructions state to pour “1 capful in 500 ml (approx. 2 cups) of water (1 part in 40) for routine antisepsis.” I’m not sure why one needs a liquid cleaner diluted in water during the birthing process. Is it to clean Mum . . . or baby? Is it to clean the stuff in the birthing room? I have no idea, but frankly, I’m scared that come April, I’m going to be in massive, painful labor, and a midwife will approach me, all smiles, armed a bottle of Dettol instead of an epidural.

Snow Day

2009-02-02T11:18:00.004Z

It's the worst snowfall in 18 years in Southeast England, and it sure makes me glad to be admiring the view from inside.

The view from our living and dining area:

Our street:

Sanguis non Grato

2009-01-22T20:02:00.002Z

Now that Maki has commented on the national chauvinism of health care providers as well as my (supposedly) unfortunate genetics, I’ll add a little story of my own. About the genetics, I’ll say that the downside of being a mutt is that there’s a greater chance of being related to races with ghastly genetic disorders, but the upside is that you can always find some distant kin to vouch for the quality of your stock (or at least the small part of it they share with you).

Anyway, back in 2007, before we made our big move, I was approached by some bloodmobile touts outside the Coral Gables DMV. Feeling especially civic minded that day, I decided to heed their pleas for a blood donation. I walked into the bloodmobile expecting to blush at awkward questions about my sexual habits, but that part was pretty straightforward. Instead, the interrogators began to focus on my travel history: had I recently visited any tropical third-world places, had I ever been to Africa and, most importantly, had I lived in Europe for a total of more than five years? See, if you’ve been in the Olde Worlde for more than 5 years they’re afraid you’ll have CJD (aka Mad Cow Disease). Not a problem if you’ve only got 4 ½ years of Euro-ness, apparently. Alas, the Florida blood bank is too good to take deposits of my tainted blood.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I received a letter from my local blood bank here in London asking for donations. They’re not very proactive here. Instead of sending the bloodmobile close to where I am, they set up times at their local offices in my neighborhood: all during working hours, of course. Never mind. I’m not so civic minded that I’m going to take a day off work to donate blood. More amusing, however, was a small disclaimer at the bottom of the letter saying that they cannot accept blood donations from people who have visited North America within the last three months due to, get this, the high risk of West Nile virus. There’s a way to get your own back. “So you don’t want our CJD? Well, we don’t want YOUR West Nile virus, so THERE!! Nyah, nyah!”

Meanwhile, my poor, nomadic, bastardized blood is like the ugly girl at the dance. Nobody wants it. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

I’ve decided I’m going to have fun with it. Next time anyone in the US solicits my blood, I’m going to give them my crazy look and start mooing. If anybody does it in Europe, I'll start...I dunno...walking like an Egyptian (a West Egyptian, of course). By the way, is da West Nile not just a river in west Egypt? Just wondering. Do people in the East Nile have a virus? Enquiring minds want to know...

Adventures in Prenatal Care

2009-01-16T14:29:00.003Z

Because I got pregnant a few months before we left Paris, I was able to experience both French and British prenatal care. My experiences have left me to conclude that the centuries-old rivalry between these two great countries is alive and well.

In France, I was privileged enough to go to the American Hospital, a very swish hospital located in Neuilly, which perhaps colored my experience to a degree. Neuilly is Sarkozy’s old ‘hood, where he was mayor, and is so posh that rather than follow the housing rules requiring it to have a certain percentage of lower-income housing, the city chooses to pay fines for its failure to comply. In my doctor’s office, pregnant women with bellies the size of a Smart Car (the two-seater kind, obviously) still wore their Gucci heels and Prada purses to their visits.

French prenatal care is obsessed with the woman’s possibility of contracting toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is caused by a parasite found in animal feces, and in the US, women get tested for it if they have a cat (hence the recommendation that pregnant women do not change kitty litter). According to the brochures my doctor gave me in France, to avoid toxoplasmosis, a woman should not eat salad at a restaurant (out of concern that the parasite may not have been washed off properly) and should refrain from eating raw meat and eggs, i.e., French bistro classics. Apparently, French food is in much closer contact with the earth out in the farmland, and the risk of toxoplasmosis is higher.

Pregnant women are therefore typically tested to see if they are immune to toxoplasmosis. A French woman is usually immune to it, probably because she has been consuming steak tartare and undercooked eggs (which taste better than overcooked ones, I must say) since she was old enough to sit at a proper table in a bistro. Like most non-French women, my test showed that I did not have immunity to toxoplasmosis, causing the women at the laboratory where I picked up my results to o-la-la vociferously and declare that I would need to have monthly blood exams to make sure I had not contracted this dreaded parasite.

Mind you, at this point, I did not realize that the concern with toxoplasmosis is a peculiarly French obsession. As a newly pregnant woman, I took everything said to me quite seriously, especially considering the reputable sources of my information.

Before leaving France, I had my 13-week ultrasound, and the doctor who explained the results to me (after also o-la-laing about my lack of immunity to toxoplasmosis), tried to resassure me by telling me that I did not need to worry about this infection in the UK or the US. She explained that “the English boil all their food,” and hence the parasite was not something I should worry about. Now, I know that the English don’t have the gastronomic reputation that the French do, but surely it is a bit overbroard to say that they boil all their food!

In addition to reassuring me about toxoplasmosis, the doctor asked about our ethnic heritage. When she saw that Diego had English grandparents, she became most concerned and stated that as soon as I moved to London, I would need to have the fetus tested for spina bifida, as Diego’s English genes were subjecting our unborn child to a higher risk for this birth defect.

As a newly-pregnant woman, you can imagine how concerned this made me. Indeed, within a week of having arrived from France, I promptly booked an appointment with a GP (although I did not yet an actual address in the UK, which is required to register for health care, my GP’s office quite kindly registered me as a “temporary patient” so that I would be able to receive prenatal care in a timely manner).

At the appointment, I explained to the doctor that I was most concerned about spina bifida as a result of my husband’s unfortunate genetics, and that I would like to be referred for the early spina bifida test. The kind doctor’s indignant response to my new-mother overreaction? “There is always a risk of spina bifida, but it is not because your husband is English!”

Somewhat reassured (though, in typical new-mother fashion, still a bit doubtful), I asked the doctor about other new-mother concerns. Although the doctor in France had said that I did not need to worry about it here in the UK, I also decided to ask about toxoplasmosis, as the monthly blood tests and the o-la-laing at the laboratory and doctor’s office had left me worried. Perhaps seizing on the chance to get back at the French doctors after the spina bifida comments, my English doctor said I did not need to worry about toxoplasmosis here because of the way food is prepared and exclaimed “Dirty French!”

On the whole, the only conclusions I can draw from these experiences is that, to this day, the English and French don’t like each other very much and that each culture (and probably every culture in the world) makes up its own concerns and rules about pregnancy. My only advice for mums-to-be the world over is to take all advice with a grain of salt and to keep in mind that your doctor’s culture will impact his advice.

Take the issues of an epidural and breast-feeding. In the UK, the theory seems to be that if grandma did it one way, we should do it that way today. Never mind that in grandma’s time, women and babies routintely died because of childbirth.

Indeed, most UK mums and midwives seemed horrified when I announce that I want an epidural, going on and on about some supposed list of horribles (I don’t really believe them, though, especially as my own mother had an epidural and is probably one of the few women I know who thought the birth was a breeze). To make matters worse, I have heard of women in the UK not being able to get an epidural because an anesthesiologist is not always necessarily available to administer one, a downfall, I suppose, of a system of truly socialized medicine.

The French, in contast, are very much in favor of epidurals. When I told her of my fear of not getting an anesthetic during the birth in the UK, my doctor in France even offered to schedule an induction at some point after 36 weeks in Paris so as to ensure that I could get an epidural. The French may believe in eating natural food that has been in close contact with the earth, but they certainly do not believe in natural medicine!

Likewise, the French do not seem as concerned with breastfeeding as the English do (in part because breastfeeding ruins a woman’s breasts). The UK system, on the other hand, is positively obsessed with the breastfeeding issue. While I think it is fantastic to be breastfeed if at all possible, I absolutely detest that the UK medical establishment seems obsessed with preaching breast-is-best to mums-to-be. The way I see it, if they are so resistant to letting me choose the type of birth I want, they have no right to dictate my post-birth life (not to mention the overly big-brother aspect of it all).

Alas, if I could, I would choose to have the baby in France (epidural and 5-day hospital stay included). I just hope our little kiddo someday appreciates the fact that I am quite determinedly staying in the UK for the birth, risking having to do things grandma’s way and getting kicked out of the maternity ward a mere few hours after he is born, just so that he may have double nationality and become a little globe-trotting adventurer.

For Richer and for Poorer

2008-12-03T10:54:00.003Z

Unlike Paris or Manhattan, London is a very mixed city. I can just hear some of you protest that Manhattan is indeed quite diverse, and that it is home to millions of people from all over the world. But the truth is that the poor can no longer really afford to live in Manhattan, as even areas like Spanish Harlem and Hell’s Kitchen are turned into yuppie condo enclaves. And let’s not forget that in Paris, it is the poor minorities that are relegated to an existence in the suburbs, while the affluent get to live in the central parts of town.

London, however, is different. Here you can have a street in a historical preservation neighborhood (like ours!) lined with charming Georgian homes interspersed with council estates (low-income housing). Sure, some neighborhoods are very, very posh and only the richest can afford to live in them. But as far as the majority of London areas are concerned, the poor and the not-so-poor tend to live in mixed company.

This phenomenon is due, in part, to the fact that London did not use to be a city with its own central government. Rather, it was made up of different boroughs, and each borough had to find a way to provide for its own poor. Now that London is more centralized, this means that low-income housing can be found throughout the city, rather than being concentrated in one area of the city.

This perhaps explains the public service announcements that appear in many streets and buses, like this one, warning against “benefits fraud.”

In our neighborhood, one resident, concerned with the government’s efforts to crack down on benefits fraud while letting other types of fraud go unchallenged, decided to add his own message to the public service announcement.

In case you can’t see it clearly in the picture, the message reads, “List Below Your Favourite Fraudsters.” The handwritten list, started by the original concerned resident and continued by other concerned residents, states:

1. British Aerospace £ 200m
2. Chairmen of Banks £ 900m
3. Ministry of Defence (£ xm) (perhaps the number is too difficult to calculate?)
4. People who you think love you (I think you can tell where the original poster left off!)
5. My phoney parents
6. Tony Blair £ 12m
7. The queen with more than £ 2 tax per hour for my job
8.
9.
10. Ordinary people – nothing

Alas, no one was able to fill in slots 8 and 9 as the friendly council folk took down the list. But stay tuned in case we see further public service announcements by Camberwell’s concerned residents.

Living in Victorian Times

2008-12-02T13:00:00.000Z

We’ve now been in London for about two months and are still disconnected from the outside world. I thought that our inability to get phone and internet installed sooner was related to the fact that we decided to use a cable-based service from Virgin Media. Last week, however, we went out for drinks with a couple of friends and learned that it also took them about two months to get the phone connected, despite choosing British Telecom as their provider. Even in France, where such things take much longer than in the US, we were connected to the outside world sooner than this.

I suppose it should not surprise me. The UK is oddly behind the times in some ways. For example, our plumbing is quite Victorian. We have a water tank in the kitchen, which is basically a big, plastic box with water stored in it. According to Diego, every building has some contraption to catch the water on the roof, and then somehow the water gets sent to each of the individual apartments.

While I don’t particularly care what type of plumbing system we use, I do care that we have rather weak water pressure. I learned this is because water pressure is based on gravity here. I think this means that once the water is collected on the roof, the water pressure is dictated by how fast it comes down the pipes to our first-floor shower. Bizarre!

I also remember that when Diego used to live here, he seemed to have constant issues with the boiler in his apartment breaking. I’m not too sure what a boiler is, but I do know that it heats up the water. I always assumed that it was just Diego’s apartment that had this problem, but when we first moved in, we learned that our neighbor’s boiler had broken. We’ve also heard of a couple of friends who have had to deal with broken boilers in the last few weeks. Seems to me that the hot water gods over here should rethink the whole boiler system.

Getting added onto Diego’s bank account has also been an ordeal. Even though I did manage to get added onto his existing bank account in early October, it took about another month to get the debit card. And while I’ve had a debit card for a couple of weeks now, I did not get the pin code for it until this past weekend. It’s pretty embarrassing to have to ask your husband for money every week, so you can imagine that I am relishing my newfound debit card freedom.

Mind you, I don’t think that everything should always be done in the most advanced, modern way. I think some things, like bread and certain wine-making methods, should not be modernized. But when it comes to plumbing and banking, I am a modern woman.

Settling In

2008-11-15T20:16:00.001Z

Diego and I are finally moved into our new apartment here in London. By a strange twist of fate, we are now living on the same street that Diego used to live in when he was in London. In the process of narrowing down neighborhoods, we visited Diego’s old stomping grounds, including the local pub he used to frequent back in the day. And, much to his surprise, one of his old friends from the neighborhood was also at the pub, seated on the same stool he always used to sit on when Diego first lived here about five years ago. It was then that we decided to stay in this area, and part of the nostalgia we both have about this neighborhood made us chose the apartment that happened to be located on his old street. I like to think that no matter how far our travels take us, we can find home just about anywhere.

So, last Friday, after spending a month in a hotel, the movers came and unloaded all our things at the new place. We still don’t have telephone or internet (not until December 12 anyway), but at least we have an address.

Those of you that know us personally have likely figured out that Diego and I seem to like making big life changes all in one go. Life would be so boring otherwise, don’t you think? Last year, for example, we got married and moved to Paris all within the span of two months. Every time I hear a bride-to-be complain about the logistics of wedding planning, I feel a smug sense of superiority, imagining that this not the sort of woman who could plan a cross-Atlantic move at the same time as she picked out what font to use on an invitation.

True to our pattern, we have now embarked on our second international move, this time with a little kiddie-to-be in tow. That’s right...I’m pregnant! We won’t know the gender until next month, but really, all we both care about now is that we have a healthy baby.

Luckily for us, we live in a country that, despite all the misconceptions Americans have about socialized health care, has great prenatal care, regardless of the mother-to-be’s economic or legal status. The first time I went to the doctor here, I could not provide the proof of address needed to register for the UK’s National Health Service. But, the doctor’s office found a way around that technicality by simply registering me as a temporary patient until I could provide proof of address (they did not even ask to see my visa). This meant that, even though we were still living in a hotel, I was still able to see a doctor and get referred to the prenatal clinic and midwives’ office at the local hospital. Throughout the entire process, no one asked to see any proof of NHS registration or of even my legal right to be in this country.

I love America, but health care is one area where it lags behind even third-world countries. Most people here simply cannot believe that there is no guaranteed health care coverage for Americans, and many ask me if the stories they hear about health care in the US are indeed true. Sad to say, they are true...and quite incomprehensible considering taxes for those earning a middle-class income in the UK are not that much higher than in the US. That said, I am hopeful that things will change in the near future, as we finally have a President that does not misunderestimate the concerns of the average American (and for those wondering, yes, we both voted, although Diego had to try about three times before he was able to do so...but I guess it’s not really all that surprising when you consider that we vote in Florida, where dead people’s votes count more than the votes of the living). Until that moment comes, I’ll just sit tight right where I am, drink my tea and have a crumpet. Cheers, mate.

Welcome to the crunch

2008-10-13T22:37:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since we've posted but that's because things have been very busy for us and our lives have been very unstable.

I started my new job in banking in the City of London on the 8th of September. Maki came and joined me a few weeks later. I went back to Paris the first few weekends (in spite of the fire in the channel tunnel: that's another story) to help with our move out. We finally moved out of our place in Paris at the end of September, after I had to disassemble and get rid of all the kitchen cabinets I bought when we moved in. All our stuff is now in storage until we move into our new place in London, which we won't be able to move into until the 28th of this month. In the meantime, we're staying in temporary accommodation.

2008 has been quite a roller-coaster of a year for us, as those of you who know us will be aware. Trust me to start a job in the banking sector the very week that global financial markets go into meltdown. It's been...interesting to say the least! Every day I'm hooked on the bloomberg watching everything crash and burn and wondering how much longer I'll still have a job.

On the upside, "the crunch" has brought with it all sorts of bargains. All the shops near my office are practically giving the nice men's suits away. Even the restaurants are now offering special "crunch lunches" as seen below.

I'm amazed that 6.50 is considered a bargain for lunch. Some crunch this is! I'm sticking to the 2.99 chickpea curry they sell at the place right inside Moorgate tube.

In tough times, however, not all consumption goes down. People will tend to spend more on the things that give them comfort. I'm happy to know that my street offers vice at a discount price. Now this really is crunch friendly:

A Nomadic Life

2008-10-01T11:21:00.000+01:00

It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve posted on le blog, but it’s because we’ve been busy with preparing for our move to London. Diego already started his job there, and I’ve stayed behind in Paris to tie up some loose ends (read: do all the things I never got to do when I was a law firm drone). As I type this, the movers are taking out the last piece of furniture out of the apartment and into storage until we find an apartment in London.

You might wonder how people manage to move large furniture in and out of itty bitty Parisian apartments and buildings that often do not have elevators (and even when they do have elevators, they are barely big enough to fit two adults, let alone furniture). They do it by using a contraption like this one:

The movers place the elevator where it will reach a big window or door (in our case, the French doors on our balcony), and then load all the furniture and boxes onto it. The elevator then takes everything down to street level, and from there it gets loaded onto the moving truck.

Moving out meant we (hereinafter in this paragraph defined as Diego) had to undo a lot of the work we did when moving in, such as taking down the kitchen cabinets, curtain rods, and overhead lighting. Here is an action shot:

It’s strange to think that five men managed to wrap up our lives into 102 boxes in about eight hours. Although I feel like we have too many things, all the movers that came to survey our apartment seemed to think we do not have that much. I suppose that a lack of clutter is one advantage of moving frequently. Despite the advantage of a less cluttered life, however, I do not want to have to go through this again for quite a few years. Whatever its drawbacks might be, we’re staying put in London for a while (mind you, that’s what we said about Paris too!)

5 frenchies à Miami

2008-09-13T12:02:00.000+01:00

Diego went off to London last weekend and sadly cannot return this weekend because trains have been cancelled as a result of a fire in the Eurotunnel. This means that I spend my evenings watching TV, or, to be more specific, French TV.

If I was in the US or UK, an evening watching TV perhaps would not be so terrible (though even in the US, I often had the so-many-channels-so-little-to-watch feeling). But I have a very hard time following American or English programs that have been dubbed into French, so I am left watching original French productions. And original French programs can be quite bad. Some of them are so bad they are actually amusing.

One example of one of these bad-but-amusing shows is 5 frenchies à Miami, where five single men are sent to Miami - land of beautiful women and luxurious cars, according to the show - for 3 ½ days to see which one is worthy of the title le French lover de l’été. Why they use Frenglish is beyond me, but I assume that there is no French phrase that has the same connotation as the English phrase “French lover.” The contestant that manages to accumulate the most french kisses (also said in English with a French accent) is the winner.

To make this into more than just a hooking up contest, there’s an additional difficulty. The contestants do not have any money and must earn it at the rate of $5 per kiss. This means that they end up sleeping and showering on the beach and do not have access to basic toiletries like toothpaste and deodorant (which of course makes it harder to hook up with women) unless they earn money.

The contestants are also occasionally given certain challenges where the loser gets eliminated and/or the winner gets a prize, such as a toiletry item or a night in a hotel. The challenges involve things like pull-up contests on the beach, trying to kiss as many women as possible while wearing a Borat-style banana hammock, and having as many passersby as possible spank them on the street.

Since I am all alone and feeling a wee bit homesick (probably because we are rather rootless at the moment, what with being in between countries and all), it was a lot of fun to see five French people whose English is as bad a my French trying to navigate familiar places in Miami.

Here’s the promotional clip for the show as well as a clip of the banana hammock challenge, featuring the two finalists. Enjoy!

Licensed to drive: the saga continues

2008-09-06T14:08:00.000+01:00

Right as I am about to permanently leave France, the French bureaucracy has decided to give me one last gift of a humorous anecdote. Consider it the French state's contribution to this blog: it delays my having to come up with British-related humorous content.

You may recall my driver's license saga from a post on this blog back in April. If not, here is the link.

When I left you last time, I had been sent away to return with a high-school transcript proving that I was a resident of the State of Florida on an arbitrary date that I made up as being the date my first driving license was issued.

Fast forward a couple of months until sometime in June when I take yet another morning off work to go back to the "prefecture" with my transcript and five payslips proving I've been living in France for at least six months. The young lady looked through my documents and says "congratulations, you've been approved for a license but first you must go to a medical examination". She wanted to schedule me for an appointment in October, but I knew I'd have left by then so I come up with some story about how I'm going travelling for business for three months bla, bla, bla. Luckily, she had availability for Thursday the 4th of September (day before yesterday) early in the morning. She told me that as soon as I had the medical "ok" I could come straight back to her office and get my license.

On the 4th, I take the whole day off of work (mind you this was the day before my last day of work) so that I can go take care of this. I go in the morning to the medical office where I'm asked to strip down to my underwear and shoes and then walk into the doctors' office where there are various doctors and nurses of both genders hanging around. Quite intimidating. I get my medical certificate and hightail it back to the Prefecture to make the most of this day. As soon as I arrive at the driving license office I show the receptionist my medical certificate and he asks me : "why did you get a medical certificate? You don't need one of those." I tell him that I had been required to get one last time I was there and he looked puzzled. This was at 10:45 in the morning. He gives me a number and four hours pass before my number is called. In the meantime I strike up a conversation with a couple from Michigan who is there, like me, to exchange their license for a French one under reciprocity laws. It's their first visit. I tell them all my horror stories trying to convince them that they'll be sent home in search of their great-grandfather's death certificate. They seem all chipper and confident; and don't speak a word of French. I'm rubbing my palms together waiting for them to be fed to the sharks, but they get called before me, spend a few minutes at the counter, and walk off with a shiny new French driving license. As they leave, the guy gives me a thumbs up and says "I think they just don't like you here." A sensible conclusion!

But anyway, way past my lunchtime I finally get called to the desk. I see the man start preparing my license, putting it through the printer and attaching my photograph to it. As he's doing this he asks me for my passport. I give him my EU member state passport and he says "don't you have an American passport?" "Oh, no, here it comes!" thinks I. I explain that I do have one but not on me as I only brought the one that proves my legal right to work in France. He tells me that the reciprocity agreement only applies to citizens of the countries in question and he therefore cannot give me a license unless I prove that I am a US citizen. Mind you, at no point during any of my previous three visits did ANYBODY tell me that I had to be a US citizen nor did I ever show them, nor did they ever ask me to show them a US passport. I desperately dig through my documents trying to see what I can come up with. I find a Miami-Dade county voter's registration card. "Look!" I say "You can't vote in America if you aren't a citizen. It's even written in Haitian Creole which is almost like French so you can understand it!" "Sorry, only a passport will do."

At this point, I decide to do away with all the British stiff upper lip that I'd been working on developing and get a little South American on his ass. Roots, yo! My voice raises a few decibels and I start running through the whole sad saga from day one about how many visits I'd already made, how many hours I'd waited and how I didn't understand why nobody had bothered to inform me of this requirement. The man looked frightened. I thought he was about to press a button to call security. Instead he asks "Why are you yelling at me? You're leaving here with your license." "What? I am? So what's the problem, then?" "Oh, there is no problem I assure you, go to desk G and wait until you are called."

By now I'm convinced that this is all a ruse and that desk G is where the goon squad is going to come get me to eject me from the premises. But no, soon enough my name is called and I'm given this:

Success!! That phone call to Mr. Sakho really did pay off, I guess. Mind you, the document is so sloppy and amateurishly done (my details are filled in with a dot-matrix printer of the sort I haven't seen around since 1984) that I could easily have saved myself the trouble and made it at home with my ink jet. The most amusing part is that it states that this license was issued in substitution for Florida driver's license number XXX issued on the 29th of January, 1989. Yup, that's the date I made up off the top of my head.

Lessons to be learned from this:

1) The employees of the French DMV make up the rules as they go along. If you're refused the first time, come back again and speak to somebody else. The requirements will probably be completely different and you might just get lucky.

2) Based on the experience of the couple from Michigan: don't speak French. Ironically, and despite anything you may have heard, being a non-French speaker is actually an asset when dealing with French bureaucrats. I think they just get tired of having to deal with you so they just stamp you right through.

Madmen and English Cows

2008-09-02T21:16:00.000+01:00

You all know we're moving to England by now, so in my attempt to transition this blog from a French theme to an English theme, I 'll share an observation that somehow reflects on the relationship between the two countries.

I've noticed since being in Paris that most cafes and restaurants have signs up, like the one below, specifying the origin of the beef they serve.

I've never seen any similar sign disclosing the national origin of the vegetables or the chicken or the fish. No, it is beef that the restaurant patrons are concerned about. You might, as I did, wonder why this is so. Is this simply some patriotic marketing effort of the French cattleman's association trying to persuade the local public to buy local? While most places do seem to have French beef, there are usually plenty of other countries listed, as above. I have seen beef from as far afield as Brazil and Lithuania proudly listed on restaurant chalkboards.

To unravel this mystery, we need to focus not on the countries that ARE listed on the restaurant chalkboards but rather those that are NOT. The most glaring and obvious answer is Britain. They do have Irish beef, as can be seen above, so we know that this is not due to any hesitation about shipping cattle across the channel or anything like that.

You may remember the "mad cow" scare that took place in the UK, oh, about 10 years ago. At the time, France, along with many other countries banned the import of British beef. Eventually, years later, when it became clear that the affected cattle had been elimitated in Britain, most countries relented. Not France. Britain took the case up with the European Union, who said that member states could not refuse to accept British beef. The French, as they so often seem to do, ignored this directive.

As far as I know, now British beef can be and is imported into France, but the French still resist their neighbors' beef by proudly advertising that they don't serve any in their restaurants.

Moving Away

2008-08-26T10:05:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I noticed that August has been the slowest month yet this year on this blog. In an effort to up our August post count, I thought I’d put up a post explaining our personal situation at the moment. I can imagine that September might be an even slower month as Maki and I have a lot of things going on. Mainly, we’re moving.

For those of you who don’t know, a few months ago I accepted a job in London. Meanwhile Maki (thankfully) abandoned the world of big law and we are both headed up to warm and sunny England in September. For good. Or as “for good” as anything can be in our mad, nomadic lives.

Alas, we will be leaving Paris, a city we have both grown to love, and our neighborhood, which we love even more far too soon. Just as we were starting to settle in, make friends and understand the mysterious ways of the locals, we’re off.

But well, an exciting new life awaits us in the land of warm beer and crooked teeth. We will miss freshly baked baguettes and the fresh seasonal vegetables from our “Primeur”. But then again, we look forward to enjoying nice pints down the pub as well as good Indian food. The famously eccentric natives should also provide us with a few quirky anecdotes to share with you.

I start my new job early next month. We will keep our Paris apartment until the end of September as we have not yet found a place to live in London, and we cannot go look for the time being as Maki has not yet managed to get the proper visa to allow her to move to the UK (I’ll leave that story for her to tell). Hopefully, we expect to be settled in London by the end of September. I stress the world hopefully.

By then, we hope to keep updating the blog and sharing our lives with our friends and a few random people who seem to pop by here from time to time.

Obviously the theme of the blog will change, as it will no longer have a French or Parisian theme, but I’m sure we’ll think of something. We should probably change the name, too, since we’re no longer “à Paris”. We haven’t thought of a clever new name yet, though. Any suggestions?

Amerikanski Aeroflot

2008-08-22T12:02:00.000+01:00

One of my closest friends got married in Puerto Rico this past weekend. While the wedding itself and all the festivities surrounding it were a lot of fun I got to catch up with friends I had not seen in a long time, getting to the wedding itself was an ordeal I hope never to repeat. Alas, I have no one to blame but myself for this travel horror story, as I opted not to pay extra money for a ticket from a real airline and instead decided to fly out on Amerikanski Aeroflot, aka American Airlines

Mind you, I refer here to the old Soviet Aeroflot because Diego has flown the post-Soviet Aeroflot and he assures me it is far superior to today’s American Airlines; to boot, they are not stingy with the vodka. I already expect a lesser standard of service from U.S. airlines, and I can do without the TV dinner and miniature alcoholic beverages if need be. But even if the skies are no longer as friendly as they used to be, at least I don’t expect them to become downright hostile.

The trouble started on the Paris – JFK portion of my trip. We were lucky enough to be served by some disgruntled flight attendants that make the stereotypically surly French waiter look like a perky TGIF waitress. One flight attendant in particular would sigh heavily anytime a passenger asked for something, or else would ignore requests altogether. For example, during one of the beverage services, she neglected to ask me if I wanted a drink, and forgot to deliver my seatmate’s requested tea. She also had a disgusting habit of chewing gum with her mouth open and scratching her head while serving the meals. And when faced with some of the French passengers whose English was not 100% correct, she would loudly call out to her fellow flight attendants and state that those passengers did not speak English. I’ve gotten better service from pimply teenagers at my local McDonald’s.

The real fun, however, started on the JKF-San Juan leg of the trip. Some of the Puerto Ricans at the wedding told me that the American Airlines flights from New York to Puerto Rico are dubbed la “gua gua voladora,” (the flying bus), and I can see why. First, the flight was delayed because of severe weather in New York. Although not even the flight crew knew when we would be able to depart, they decided to board the passengers after the plane was cleaned. Little did we know that we would be stuck on the runway for about three hours in a stuffy, unairconditioned cabin (in the middle of August) with nary a drop of water to drink (when the water did finally come, it was not from a bottle, but was instead served from a carafe and had an oddly sweet taste to it...I’m trying not to think too much about where it might have come from).

During our time on the runway, I was the first person to use the bathroom; although the plane has been supposedly cleaned before boarding, the toilet was lined with wet toilet paper. Not only that, but the bathroom itself was falling apart. As soon as I pulled on a piece of toilet paper from the wall dispenser, the wall opened up, scattering paper towels and toilet paper all over the tiny, dirty bathroom. Since I could not put the wall back up, I had to hold it up using the toilet seat for leverage as I peed. Good thing I’m bendy.

Worst of all, the plane staff was thoroughly unprepared to deal with frazzled passengers. At one point, some passengers began yelling and complaining loudly enough for the whole plane to hear, asking to either be let off or given a drink, yet it took about an hour before anyone from the cabin crew did anything about it. I have the slight suspicion that the mostly American staff was somehow scared by the rowdy Caribbean crowd, because it was a Puerto Rican flight attendant that bravely came forward to deal with the crowd. Although the passengers were not able to convince him to give them free alcoholic drinks, at least they calmed down afterwards.

After three agonizing hours, the pilot finally came on the speaker to announce, in his official pilot-speak, that we have been cleared for take-off and would be the third plane to take off. Immediately afterwards, the Puerto Rican flight attendant gets on the loudspeaker and his Spanish translation of the pilot’s message was very succinct: “¡Gente, nos vamos!” (translation: “People, we’re off!”)

The rest of the flight was calm and I mostly slept as I was jet-lagged. I did wake up shortly before landing because, while we were still up in the air, the passenger behind me starts making numerous calls on her cell phone! Turns out her mother’s JetBlue flight was also delayed, and her abuelita was getting worried about them. Good thing they all had cell phones to keep in touch mid-air.

Luckily, my flight back from Puerto Rico was much less eventful, although I was puzzled by some of the marketing speak bandied about by the flight crew. In particular, as the attendants stand up to showcase the snacks for sale (mind you, that an airline even has to charge for potato chips is pretty pathetic), they stated that they had “complimentary beverages and snacks for sale.” How can the items be complementary if they are for sale?

Note to self: next time, fly with a real airline!

Solidarité

2008-08-19T16:49:00.000+01:00

“Solidarity” is not a word one hears very often in the Anglophone world, perhaps due to its association with bolshy Socialist ideology. Growing up in Latin America, however, this word creeps into all sorts of discourse, not merely political. “Solidarity” is generally considered a good trait for a person to have, sort of like altruism, but associated less with “charity” given by the high-up to the lowly and more with doing for others what you’d like them to do for you in similar circumstances. It’s a more democratic and egalitarian sort of altruism.

The term is also quite popular here in France. Unsurprisingly, it is a term often bandied around by striking unions and activist political groups. Solidarity is what explains the peculiar tolerance that the average French person has for strikes in spite of the hassle and inconvenience that they cause. Most Parisians don’t raise an eyebrow at the idea of public transport being shut down for weeks due to a strike and having to walk long distances to and from work. While your average expat, like myself, becomes angry and impatient, the average French person tends to support the strikers. Their attitude seems to be that today it’s you having to fight for your job/wages/benefits, but tomorrow it might be me, so I’ll support you in the same way I hope you’ll support me.

The solidarity of the Parisians, however, is most touching at its smallest and most personal. For all the Parisians’ haughty and aloof reputation, I have witnessed some wonderful acts of collective kindness here which I would not expect to see in other large metropolises.

Some months ago I had made a comment here about a long line at my local supermarket willing to wait for an elderly woman to go back to the shelves to find her diabetic products. A few days ago, I had a similar experience on the metro.

I was waiting for the usually horrendously crowded line 4 and the trains were coming more packed than usual. So packed that I couldn’t even get on the first two that came. For the third train, I decided to go all the way to the very front of the platform since there often tends to be more space near the ends of the trains than in the middle. Indeed, I was able to squeeze in along with a few others. As I did so, I noticed that a woman who was sitting on a bench on the platform starts talking excitedly to the conductor, pointing towards the back of the train and saying something about a “pregnant woman”. The conductor got out of his “cockpit” and walked towards the back of the train. Soon, he showed up at the front door escorting the pregnant woman and asking the passengers crowded by the door to make room. Within seconds, people had cleared out, shifted to other parts of the carriage and several empty seats were offered to her. Meanwhile, the packed train was, of course, waiting on the platform. But there were no sighs or grumbles. If you were pregnant, you’d certainly hope to get the same treatment, so you don’t complain when it’s given to others.

Weekend in the Loire Valley

2008-08-08T08:22:00.000+01:00

What do you get if you mix 600 kilometers, three castles and two cathedrals? Our weekend in the Loire Valley. Diego and I rented a gas-efficient Fiat (only ¾ of a tank for the whole trip, which mind you, still cost about 45€) and armed with a few guidebooks, headed to France’s equivalent of the heartland.

The trip got off to a slow start because without thinking about it, Diego and I planned our little road trip on the first Saturday in August. In France. We were competing for highway space not only with every French family headed south to the beach, but also with a great deal of Brits headed to Dordogne.

Our first stop was in Orléans, where Joan of Arc defeated the English in 1429, and which boasts a cathedral dating to the 13th century.

We then visited the extravagant Chambord castle, the largest of the Loire Valley castles.

We spent the night in Beaugency, a town that still feels like a small medieval village and which, as Diego said, “is high on the cuteness factor.” Take a look at this (the bridge was strategically important for France during the Hundred Years’ War):

On Sunday, we saw the castles at Blois and Chenonceau. My favorite castle was the Chenonceau castle because it looks like it came straight out of a fairy tale and is built right over the River Cher. I even felt like a princess as Diego rowed a boat around the river.

On our way back to Paris, we stopped at Chartres and visited the city’s stunning 12th century gothic cathedral, which contains a cloth that belonged to the Virgin Mary and the largest collection of medieval stained glass.

From Chartres, it was back home to Paris. Because we knew we would be getting in at around 10 pm, Diego and I started chanting in hopes of winning over the parking gods while we were on the road. We must have done something right because for once, parking in our neighborhood was plentiful, even on our street. Then again, it was the first weekend in August. But I like to think that the parking gods were thinking of us anyway.

Weekend at Paris Plage, Strasbourg and Baden Baden

2008-07-28T20:18:00.000+01:00

I decided to give myself a long weekend and take a day off from not doing much. So Friday I went to Paris Plage, now in its eighth year. Paris Plage is a two-mile long man-made beach on the banks of the Seine (this year it has been extended to other parts of Paris, but I just went to the one on the Seine) created by trucking in 1,800 tons of sand and almost 300 umbrellas. According to the city’s website, the sand used is no ordinary sand, and represents the perfect compromise of grading and comfort for visitors’ feet. (I am not making this up).

If lounging around soaking up sun on the banks of the Seine is not to your liking, there’s plenty of other things to do, like:

- taking a dip in the pool or cooling off in the “showers”

- playing petanque

- dancing

- and even practicing your fencing skills

There’s also concerts and a few cafes, but alas, I have no good pictures to share with you.

On Saturday we took the TGV to Strasbourg to visit some friends and their adorable baby. We had window seats and were able to enjoy the beautiful French countryside on our way, replete with rolling pastures, cute cows, and soft sheep (they looked soft at any rate!)

We spent the day touring the old part of the city, including the cathedral. The area has such strong Germanic influences that it is easy to forget you are in France. I took this opportunity to enjoy some wines, like gewurztraminer and riesling, that are not as widely available here. Our friends prepared a lovely dinner, which we enjoyed while sampling some local wines and chatting on the balcony (I do hope the nice dinner and the elaborate brunch our friends prepared has not spoiled my husband!).

Feeling very international, on Sunday we took a little road trip to nearby Baden Baden in Germany. We could tell we were in Germany not just because the town is in the middle of the Black Forest, but because our friend accidentally left his camera bag (which had his wallet) on a ledge, and it was still there when he went back to look for it 20 minutes later. I cannot imagine it would have still been there in Paris.

Diego and I used this trip to Baden Baden to buy rich coffee that smells almost like a dark 70% chocolate and enjoy a final ice cream before returning home.

Aromatic Europeans in the Summertime

2008-07-25T16:01:00.000+01:00

One stereotype that Americans have about Europeans (and most especially the French) is that their personal hygiene leaves something to be desired. Many people assume that this is down to a lack of regular bathing or an aversion to deodorant. I can attest that every local person I know here does bathe or shower daily (or at least claims to) and that deodorant is, at the very least, widely available.

Yet now that the weather has got warm (well, sort of), I’m starting to notice some rather unpleasant odors around, especially on the metro. What is most alarming is that on some days these odors seem to follow me home…all the way home. On those days I notice that the source of the ponk is…ok, I’ll admit it…myself.

Now I know some of you think I’ve gone native and therefore imagine that I’ve stopped showering and/or using deodorant. I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.

So what, then, is the cause of my malodorous condition, you ask? By unraveling this mystery, we can come one step closer to knowing why the natives reek.

Alas, the answer remains elusive to me. I can only speculate as to the cause of my fetor. First of all, I get the idea that our highly space, energy and water-efficient European front-loading washing machine doesn’t do a particularly good job of washing. This despite the many hours it takes to complete a cycle. I sometimes notice a bit of armpit-effluvium emanating from my shirts when I iron them. (Yes, I do iron. In fact, I iron my wife’s shirts. How’s that for a 21st century man?)

A second theory is that the deodorant here is simply not as powerful as the one back home. Why the likes of Procter & Gamble would sell weaker deodorant in France than in America I don’t know. Maybe there’s just a higher tolerance for B.O. over here, so they can afford to get cheap with the ingredients. I missed my chance to buy some Right Guard last time I was in Miami. I could have tested this theory.

In the meantime, the source of the notorious Eurofunk will remain shrouded in mystery. Truly a riddle for the ages.

Weekend in the Park(s)

2008-07-22T15:32:00.000+01:00

Diego and I spent another weekend biking around, trying to soak up as much of Paris as we can before we move. On Saturday, we biked to a park in the 15th called Parc André Citröen. This park blends industrial design elements – including a slanting cement waterfall, dancing fountains, and a giant helium balloon in the middle – with expansive green areas, two greenhouse pavilions, and smaller decorative flower gardens.

And although the dancing fountains had a sign prohibiting park visitors from playing in them, lots of kids were running around trying to catch streams of water. It was a cold day for this Miami girl, but the kids chasing after the dancing fountains looked like they were enjoying their urban water park.

After visiting the park, we biked along the river all the way past the center of Paris to Bastille, and from there made our way back home via the Canal St. Martin area, where naturally, we stopped to get our afternoon aperitif.

Our bike ride on Sunday was not nearly as long, but just as fun, as we had a picnic at Parc de la Villette. Once again, I found that the locals out-picnicked us. While we had what I consider a respectable picninc - an assortment of cheeses and charcuterie, wine, and chocolate for dessert - our neighbors not only had food, but included champagne and coffee in their picnic.

Parc de la Villette is probably my favorite park here, not necessarily because of the park itself but because of the atmosphere created by the people there. First, the people who go to this park all seem to know each other, and consolidate their picnics when they run into friends. Second, every time we go, there’s at least one group of people either performing or practicing dance and music. The first time we went, we stumbled on what appeared to be almost a hundred people playing with drums hanging around their necks, dancing to the rhythms they were creating.

This Sunday, we were lucky enough to catch the tail end of a concert by a Brazilian group that blended indian and eastern european sounds into music with a hip tribal beat.

We also saw a group of people playing African drum music, with lookers-on dancing along.

All in all, we had a fun and relaxing weekend. I’m sure Diego was sad to see the weekend end, as he had to go to work on Monday. But, hey, someone in this family needs to work!

Yo Hablo Miami Patois

2008-07-17T19:02:00.000+01:00

Ok, after our return from our first trip back “home” since being in Paris, I thought I would share some quirky thoughts and observations about that weird and wonderful place called South Florida, also known as the Hong-Kong of the Caribbean, the Third-World Banana Republic and Cuba Libre.

The English language has been entirely forsaken in Miami-Dade County. Every time we were approached by random people, whether it was sales-assistants at shops or people who were angry in traffic, it was always in Spanish, or should I clarify and call it “Spanish”. Mind you, I’m a native Spanish speaker and not one of these linguistic jingoists, but it’s just a little too much; a little out of control already. I don’t like it when foreign tourists here in Paris blurt out in English without even asking whether their interlocutor speaks it, but those are just tourists: how much worse would it be if the majority of the resident population did that? Never mind: it would be Montreal.

This phenomenon would be mitigated to some extent if the Spanish being spoken was a true and correct representation of the language of Cervantes, but alas, it is not. It is a highly Anglicized mish-mash full of expressions like “Mira que nice”, “ese restaurant es muy fancy”, “Estoy vacumeando la carpeta”, “el avión está full”, “Ay, que cute”, etc. One of the funniest I ever heard was “deliberar groserías”, as in “to deliver groceries”, though in actual proper Spanish it means “to deliberate vulgarities”. As a result, I concluded that since most locals in Miami do not speak proper English OR Spanish, they are neither bilingual nor monolingual but in fact alingual. Did I just coin that phrase? If so, please mail me some royalties. So yes, a city full of alingual adults.

Alingual is one way of looking at it. The other way to look at it, from a Linguistic point of view, is that the local people in Miami speak their own pidgin dialect. I now officially christen this dialect Miami Patois. Again, don’t forget my royalties. I confess that I too start speaking it after spending a few days there. The problem with Miami Patois is it has no fixed rules or regularity. It’s only defining characteristic is that languages must be switched suddenly and frequently mid-sentence. The switch takes place depending on 1) whether it is shorter or easier in one language than the other, 2) whether the word pops into the conscious mind more quickly in one language than the other, for whatever reason and 3) generally whichever language’s version of the word or phrase requires the least effort. As such, it is a very individual dialect and every person’s version is a little bit different.

I’ll give an example from my recent trip. I walked into Publix looking for a cash machine, so I went up to one of the employees and, like a stupid tourist, asked the question “Where is the cash machine?” To this question, I received the predicable answer: “¿Que?” So I tried again: “¿Donde está el cajero automático?” Another puzzled expression, followed by “¿El que?” So I try to think like the local that I was not so long ago and ask a third time: “¿Donde está el eitiém? (A.T.M.)” to which I received a prompt and coherent reply.

Welcome to Miami, Bienvenidos a Miami

2008-07-15T11:01:00.000+01:00

As we mentioned in our earlier posts, Diego and I just got back from a two-week vacation in Miami. My sister got married and Diego had something of a family reunion (his niece is having her 15th birthday party, so his sisters were in Miami visiting from Uruguay). It was our first time back since moving to Paris, and both of us were sort of surprised at some of what we noticed.

First, the bread is just awful in the US. And, yes, I even mean the bread you get in the fancy bakery section of the supermarket, which is allegedly fresh-baked on the premises (don’t even get me started on the croissants!). My parents think that the best baguette in Miami comes from Sedano’s, but to me, it tasted like Frankprix baguette. What I don’t understand is how every single baguette looked exactly the same every day, even though it is supposed to be fresh-baked. My favorite local baker has some days where the bread comes out more cooked than others, so I have to ask for it pas trop cuit. But I figure that the small inconsistencies are the trade-off for getting locally fresh-baked goodness.

Second, the fruit is pretty awful too (except for the mangoes from my parents' backyard, which are deliciousness personified). Actually, "awful" is not the right word...tasteless is more like it. The fruit usually looks good, but it has no smell or flavor. I’ve been on a fig- and strawberry-eating frenzy since getting back, and I love how it makes our kitchen smell.

Lest you think the US has no culinary delights to offer, it was wonderful to have access to a large selection of international wines. It’s pretty hard to get a good selection of non-French wines here, so I lived it up by having wines from South America, California and Australia. The meat, too, was fantastic, especially our parents' asado. I think I ate enough meat to feed a small village.

Third, shopping, eating and drinking out, while cheap, is more expensive than it used to be. Sadly, this created a bit of a moral dilemma for me. I found a pair of very cute animal print shoes that were massively discounted and cost less than $70 (that’s about 45 euros!). While my inner animal rights activist felt guilty because of the materials used in the shoe, in the end, I simply could not bear to see them end up on someone else’s feet. And hey, women here wear entire coats made out of cute furry animals, so my one pair of shoes is a negligible environmental faux pas in comparison.

Last, being back in SoFla reminded me of how much I hate sitting in traffic. I missed biking, walking or metroing everywhere. I-95 with two lanes closed and half of the drivers talking on the cell phone is no fun (why, oh why, hasn’t Florida followed suit and banned cell phone use while driving, like the rest of the civilized and uncivilized world?)

Oddly, neither Diego nor I experienced our usual post-vacation sadness. Maybe it’s because we know we are leaving Paris soon, or (for me, anyway), the fact that I did not have to come back to a job I dislike. But, regardless, it felt good to be back.

International Underwear Smuggler Busted at Paris Airport

2008-07-08T19:15:00.000+01:00

Maki and I just got back from a trip back to Miami. Maki will have more interesting observations on that in the coming days. Naturally, while in Miami, we took advantage of the ridiculously cheap Bushlandian Dollar to do some shopping and update our wardrobe, so we hit the nerve center of the Miami-Caracas shuttle trade known as Dolphin Mall. I had actually wanted to buy some indentured servants and mail-order brides to bring back with us but Maki held me back reminding me that we wouldn’t have enough room for all that in our suitcase. So we were discreet and only bought a few shirts, handbags as well as the usual socks and underwear from Sam’s Club. Furthermore, a family friend (who shall remain nameless) gave us a bag full of clothes to bring to her son (who shall also remain nameless) who is a student here in Paris.

Well, when we arrive in Paris, we are about to leave the baggage hall when we are called back by customs agents. Customs???!!! I honestly didn’t even think they had such a thing here. I’d never even seen them before, neither at the airport nor on the chunnel. You may recall that when we first moved to Paris we arrived at the airport with a ridiculous amount of suitcases, cardboard boxes and even paintings and we breezed right out of the airport.

Anyway, the customs agents start asking us all sorts of questions about how much stuff we had bought, how much money we had spent, etc. (mental note: next time do NOT speak any French: might as well make their job more difficult. Advice to anybody else who gets pulled over by French customs: speak in the thickest Texas drawl/Cockney/Jamaican Patois you can muster. Chances are high they'll get bored of you and let you pass.) Obviously they didn’t find our answers very convincing, as they proceeded to open all our suitcases and rifle through all our clothing. One guy even opened a letter in my suitcase (it was my American Airlines AAdvantage statement) and started reading it. That part really made me livid: he seemed fascinated by it. I really felt like asking him whether I had enough miles for a trip to Cancun or not.

The story gets bizarre when the customs lady (three of them to go through our socks and underwear: it must have been a slow day at CDG) opens the bag sent by our family friend. There are some Calvin Klein underwear in it and she asks me: “are those real?” I shrug and answer “I sure hope so”. She replies “Well, I hope you didn’t pay too much money for them because they aren’t”. That’s right folks: fake underwear!!! It seems Miami is a hotbed of this activity, despite the fact that you can buy the real thing at Costco for $9.99 a dozen. Who would bother to fake them is beyond me, but hey, a French customs inspector can’t be wrong: can she?

The worst part is that as soon as she tells me this , I look up at the wall behind the customs lady and there is a poster with dire warnings about the stiff legal consequences of bringing fakes into the country. Apparently, being the home of Louis Vuitton, they’re quite sensitive about that kind of thing over here. So here I was, imagining that I was going to be thrown in the nick over some underwear that didn’t even belong to me. I figured they would at the very least confiscate them, but no, she let me through, undies and all. Like I said, it must have been a slow day at CDG. Oh, and a certain nameless young friend of ours in Paris will not have to go commando, but will be forever henceforth known as Calvin Fake.

El portero eléctrico: Uruguay en la vanguardia de la tecnología.

2008-07-01T23:43:00.000+01:00

Desde mi mas tierna infancia, o sea, los años 70, me acuerdo de haber vivido en apartamentos con portero eléctrico. Y esto en un país supuestamente subdesarrollado del tercer mundo.

Ahora que vivo en Francia, un país supuestamente desarrollado y del primer mundo, he descubierto que el humilde portero eléctrico es considerado un lujo descomunal y demasiado “jai-tec” para la mayoría de los habitantes. Lo que se tiene generalmente es un teclado al lado de la puerta donde hay que poner un código (27Q3, por ejemplo). En nuestra casa hay dos puertas, cada cual con su teclado y su código distinto. Hay que saberselo de memoria, sino no se puede entrar.

A este descubrimiento lleguè gracias a unas frustraciones vividas recientemente esperando un paquete con documentos muy importantes que me mandaron de Londres. Como no hay timbre desde la calle, DHL no puede entregar nada en mi edificio si no tienen los códigos de las dos puertas. Por supuesto que no los tenían o sea que no pudieron entregar. Llamé para dàrselos, pero los anotaron mal o sea que tampoco pudieron entregar al día siguiente. Al final tuve que dar toda clase de vueltas por la ciudad para ir a buscar el paquete y demoró más en llegarme que si lo hubiesen mandado por correo común y corriente (que si tiene los códigos y entrega en mi puerta todos los días).

¿Como hacen las visitas entonces? Cada vez que invitamos a alguien a casa: hay que darles los códigos, sino no hay manera que entren. Hoy en día que todo el mundo tiene celular, no es muy difícil el tema, ya que siempre pueden llamar nuestros amigos desde la puerta. Pero me imagino que en la época pre-celular, si uno perdía el código del edificio no podía ir a la fiesta. A nosotros ya nos paso una vez yendo a una fiesta en casa de unos amigos: perdimos el código y justo cuando Maki va a llamar desde el celular, se quedo sin batería. Nos pusimos a gritar desde la vereda y por suerte alguien nos escuchó.

¿Porqué tienen este sistema tan complicado acá? No lo se. En Uruguay con nuestros porteros eléctricos nos llegan nuestros paquetes y nuestros amigos.

Fashionable Women

2008-06-25T07:03:00.000+01:00

There are a lot of myths surrounding French women in the Anglo-saxon world, mostly centered on the notion that French women are the epitome of elegant beauty, feminine mystique, and sexual allure. But, as with many things, the reality is not the same as the myth.

Granted, women here are not walking around in white marshmallow sneakers and peacock-colored track suits. But neither are they wearing Chanel suits with Louis Vuitton handbags. The everyday French woman is somewhere in between, and her look typically reveals her financial status or profession. Younger women, who presumably have less disposable income, mostly look like they have come straight out of H&M, Zara, or La Redoute. Lots of them wear tunics or dresses over pants or leggings, Converse sneakers or brightly colored ballerinas, topped off with either a cell phone or an iPod. Older women are more likely to live up to the stereotype of the parisienne that is peddled abroad, wearing the same suits year after year, sometimes designer, sometimes not, regardless of the season (it does not get very hot here, so it is not unusual to need a jacket or blazer even after springtime is officially over).

Professional women fall somewhere in between these two extremes. And, unlike in the US, people who are well-off, but not necessarily rich, will indulge in some designer items. For example, in the US, most female lawyers of middle-class background like me would never think of buying designer clothing or accessories on a regular basis (unless it was at Filene’s!). But, women of my same background and profession here do shop at designer stores regularly. Of courses, this might have something to do with the fact that there are no Ann Taylor or Banana Republic shops in fancy office neighborhoods here. Instead, we have Bally’s, Celine, and Louis Vuitton. It made for fun window-shopping at least!

Now that I’m no longer a working girl and can spend rainy Saturday afternoons exploring cafes in quirky neighborhoods, I’m seeing a different type of parisienne, one who seems to fit in with her environment just as much as the professional women fit into theirs. For example, when I wrote this, Diego and I were in a bar called Culture Rapide in Belleville. It’s the kind of bar that has a huge Cuban flag draped on one wall, hosts poetry readings (and even gives you a free drink if you read a poem), and where many customers have dreadlocks. The girl seated next to us as I wrote this was wearing pinstriped pants, a striped blue and white shirt left open over a red undershirt, a black bowler hat, and converse sneakers. And as I sat observing her outfit, I noticed that, on the other side of the street, two kids, about 10 and 14 years old, were trying to steal a bike. And somehow, it all made sense.

Your Ugly Face (book)

2008-06-15T21:45:00.000+01:00

This post has nothing to do with life in France, but oh well. I mentioned in my last post that I sometimes spend a lot of time at work waiting for my colleagues to “relancer”. Back in the days when Macrui was in the gilded cage I also used to spend long evenings at home alone. What better way to pass the time than doing random things on the internet. When not writing witty posts for this blog, or watching domestic animals dance the “dutty wine” on YouTube, I like to commune with 75 of my nearest and dearest friends on Facebook.

You can tell I am too old for Facebook by the fact I only have 75 Facebook friends. My young sisters and cousins have upwards of 800. I don’t understand how somebody can actually know 800 people…if I had to make a list of 800 people I know, I’d probably have to include the cashier from Franprix and the guy who begs for change outside the Jules Joffrin metro.

Furthermore, I will confess that my 75 Facebook friends include at least 3 people I’ve never met before in my life, and probably a good 20 that I’ve only met once or twice (but I love you anyway, if you’re reading this). I’ve turned down friend requests from people whose names I didn’t even recognize. Maki apparently accepts them. I think that Nigerian guy who wants to wire me 60 million dollars is on her Facebook.

As a result, I have spent hours keeping up with the musical career of a girl I met at my step brother’s wedding (I’m not sure I actually remember her, but she seems to remember me and is a very fine singer).
I’ve stared awestruck at stunning pictures of Afghan villages taken by a friend of my cousin’s (that I’ve met three, maybe four times) who is now in the military in Afghanistan and is quite the photographer.
I’ve browsed the iTunes list of some girl I met at a party three months ago and haven’t seen or heard from since, but is into some pretty funky trance-house music.
I’ve received numerous requests, most of them from people I temped with seven years ago, to sign up for applications with names like “hug me”, “flirt with me” or “tell me how much you think I’m worth; buy me!”. Ummmm...no.

On the plus side, I have managed to find some long lost friends on Facebook and am now back in touch with people I knew in high school and college. I also get to see (and comment) on pictures posted by friends and share mine with them. Besides, the real lives, loves and travels of my almost-friends are frankly more interesting than most of what’s on television in this country.

Relancer, Nickel and Yes.

2008-06-11T22:50:00.000+01:00

As I’m sure you’ve guessed based on Maki’s last post, things have been a bit hectic chez Makietdiego lately, which explains why we’ve had other things on our minds than posting on the blog. I have my own “big news” brewing: or then again maybe not, so I’ll keep you in suspense for now. Apologies to our loyal readers and to the random people who get sent here from Google (no I don’t know how you dial a toll free number from a public telephone in France). Hopefully things will be back to calm and normal soon. Oh, and big up whoever is reading this in South Korea, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Google Analytics rules! You also realize that by reading this blog you are legally bound to let me crash on your couch when I visit your town/country/tropical island paradise. Just thought you should know. Please encourage all your friends who live in tropical island paradises to check out the blog.

But enough with the personal business: the purpose of today’s post is to teach you a few French expressions that I’ve picked up from my colleagues at work.

1) Relancer: Literally means to re-launch. The real meaning is more like pestering somebody to do something. I hear this one every day at work. See, I’m really not that busy. That’s not because I don’t have a good deal of work to do. It’s because I’m waiting for various of my colleagues to provide feedback/input/contributions to the projects, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting. All my colleagues seem to be much busier than I am (never a good sign), or at least far to busy to get around to what I need them to do. Of course, I then have to pass the work on to other colleagues who are waiting for me. So whenever they ask me what the status is, and I answer “I’m waiting for Francois/Pierre/Claude to send me their documents”, they will tell me “il faut que tu relances”. In other words, you have to go pester Francois/Pierre/Claude or otherwise they’ll never get around to you. There seems to be an awful lot of relancer-ing going on in my office.

2) Nickel: A particular favorite of my immediate supervisor, this word means, in the slang sense, well done or perfect. When I do a good job, my supervisor tells me “c’est nickel” which is better than “who's a good boy?”, I suppose.

3) Yes?: You know this one. Actually I don’t hear this one so much at work, but pretty much everywhere else. Shopkeepers and waiters are especially fond of it. Notice the interrogatory mark at the end. This should make it clear that this word is not used here as an affirmative response to a question, but rather as a brief and grunted “what do you want?”. For example, you’ll walk into a shop and the person behind the counter will glance up at you, give you a look that asks “why are you interrupting my reading of this celebrity gossip tabloid?” and then say “yes?”. Why they say it in English, I have no idea. At first I thought they only said it to me because I looked foreign, but no, it’s said all the time to everyone. Maybe the French believe that monosyllabic grunts sound somehow classier in English than in French. To me, it sounds about as pretentious and ridiculous as the cashier at Publix/Safeway/Tesco* saying “oui?”

*note that this blog is multi-region friendly. If I knew the names of major supermarket chains in South Korea, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates I would include them, too, but alas I do not.

Looking Ahead

2008-06-06T17:28:00.000+01:00

I know that it seems like Diego writes most of the posts on this blog. That’s probably because, well, he does. The good news is that after next Friday, I’ll be joining the ranks of the chômeurs (unemployed) and will have lots of time to soak up Paris in the springtime and write. I’m not sure what I’ll do next professionally, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

On another bit of good news, I got my 10-year residency card yesterday, so I am no longer a sans papier. It feels very liberating to know we can stay here even if I am an unemployed bum. Diego, however, is concerned about the power dynamics in our relationship now that he can’t threaten to report me to la Migra. After all, isn’t the threat of deportation what every good marriage is based on? I’m sure that’s what kept gramps and grandma together for over 60 years.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Just another day in the Village

2008-06-01T21:17:00.000+01:00

To begin with, I lost my golden opportunity for a Sunday morning lie-in thanks to our next-door neighbor’s loud music at 10 a.m. The walls are so thin he may as well be playing it in our bedroom. In an earlier post, Maki mentioned how our neighbor was fond of playing “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” repeatedly. Well, his taste in music has moved on, but alas, not his penchant for repetition. His fave is now song called “Merci, Merci” and we must have heard it five times this morning. I don’t know if those of you who don’t live in Europe realise how long the days are here now (and how short they are in winter). Right now, it’s light out around 6:30 a.m. and at 11 p.m it’s still dusk, but not dark. My biological clock rhythms have shifted completely as a result. Whereas a few months ago I struggled to get out of bed in time for work, I now find I’m wide awake long before the alarm sounds and I fear I’m not getting enough sleep, so I really appreciate any opportunity to still be in bed by 10 a.m. and am particularly vexed by the repeated renditions of “Merci, Merci”. I guess the sleep habits of our building are only as strong as the weakest link.

But anyway, this Sunday’s planned activity was our weekly shopping. Maki and I had decided to check out the open-air market at Barbés, the colourful multi-ethnic neighborhood I have mentioned before where the “juju men” hand out their fliers

According to a guidebook I have, the market is on Sundays. Maki checked on the Internet and also got the impression it was Sunday. Alas, we got there and no market. Turns out it’s only on Wednesdays and Saturdays. You can’t trust everything you read. So we decided to walk up to the usually open market area in “La Goutte d’Or”, certainly the most exotic part of the neighborhood: a chaotic street scene full of sketchy street hawkers, men in djellabas and women in multicolored African garb with babies slung across their backs -- a scene more reminiscent of Marrakech or Kinshasa than Paris. At one point, I rather forcefully (accidentally, of course) ran into one of the aforementioned African-garbed women. After offering profuse apologies, she begins to excitedly yell something to me about my “chemise” but I couldn’t quite understand through the accent. After I wandered off, I soon realised that there was a big, red, perfectly imprinted lip mark on my shoulder. This leads me to conclude that:
1) Girlfriend gotta lay of the lipstick. I mean, that’s just TOO much
2) Thank God Maki was there to witness the incident, otherwise I don’t know how I would have explained that perfectly shaped kiss on my shoulders.

It only took about 30 seconds for the next bit of weirdness to happen (do I attract this stuff or what?). I have already mentioned the sketchy street hawkers around this neighborhood. There were a bunch of them on this street (and by a bunch, I mean shoulder-to-shoulder) selling counterfeit Dolce & Gabbana belts and Prada sunglasses. Why they all sell the same thing instead of diversifying and finding niche markets is beyond me. Anyway, it was obviously too close for comfort because an altercation promptly broke out, voices were raised, fists started flying and soon there were small fragments of fake Prada all over the pavement. We probably witnessed our neighborhood’s version of a mob turf war. We walked into the “Ed” (“hard-discount” supermarket chain) for shelter from the affray. As we were waiting in line to pay for our Euro 1.35 bottles of wine, the elderly woman in front of us, who is having her items scanned, shows the cashier a little box of sugar cubes and asks her if they are (of all things) a special sweetener for diabetics. The cashier tells the old dear that no, it’s sugar and therefore definitely not a good idea: “go back to aisle 3 and look for your sweetener, don’t worry, we’ll wait for you and you won’t have to wait in line again”. The old dear was apprehensive because she didn’t want to slow down the line, at which point we heard a chorus of clucks and tisks behind us, with several people chiming in” “that’s OK, go get your sweetener, we don’t mind waiting.” “Go on, don’t be silly”. Then, even people who were in different lines chimed in: “the woman has diabetes, we’ll all wait. She should go get the sweetener.” Despite the entire supermarket’s sense of bonhomie, camaraderie and persuasion, there was no moving the old dear and she did not go back for the sweetener, instead looking very frazzled as she packed her groceries into her bag.

It’s moments like these, however, that allow us to feel the real fabric of our community and to make us appreciate living in a “village in the city”.

Riding Bikes

2008-05-29T18:33:00.000+01:00

Remember when you were a kid and discovered that riding your bike meant that you could see a whole lot more of your town than ever before? Suddenly, you could take your allowance and ride your bike to the nearest pizza parlor and order food in a restaurant like a real adult. Well, much the same thing happens here in Paris. Since the city is physically not very big, a bike can really take you places.

Of course, as with many things, the French don’t ride bikes the way Americans do.

In the US, when people ride their bikes, they put on helmets, athletic clothing, and are all geared out with water bottles, clip-on shoes, and bike repair kits. Here, riding a bike is just another mode of transport. And similar to how people in the US do all sorts of things in their cars, people here do all sorts of things on their bikes. I've seen people on their bikes:

(1) talk on the cell phone,
(2) write text messages,
(3) listen to their ipod,
(4) eat a sandwich or an ice cream,
(5) read a map,
(6) haul around large, bulky items, like paint buckets, potted flowers, and toys, and
(7) smoke a cigarette
(8) do two or more of the above at the same time

Here’s an example:

Although I’ve had the camera with me on many occasions, I rarely get to take the pictures of these daring riders, usually because I am on a bike myself. And unlike the French, I have a hard time riding a bike and doing something else at the same time.

The Velib system is amazing, too. Basically, 29 euros a year lets me use any a velib for ½ hour at a time without getting charged. It’s a great way to get to work, especially if you live on top of a big hill like we do, and only really care to ride downhill. Sadly, lots of people have this idea, and getting a bike in the mornings – especially on sunny days – is not always easy.

On the whole, though, I love riding my bike here in a way I didn’t in DC. I’m no longer afraid of cars, since most streets have bike lanes and cars generally know how to behave around cyclists. I no longer bemoan having to wear a hot, sweaty helmet, since I just don’t wear one. And I no longer worry about not being athletic enough to ride a bike, since it’s not really a sporty activity here. Basically, I feel like a kid on a bike, which feels as wonderfully freeing at the age of 34 as it did at the age of 12.

Prix Choc!!!!!!!

2008-05-26T18:03:00.000+01:00

When I was in France as a student many, many years ago some of my American classmates remarked wryly that there was no French word for cheap. It’s true. If you want to say something doesn’t cost much in French, you say it’s “pas cher”, which means “not dear”. Even back in 1996, the greenback didn’t get you very far in France, but that’s not the point. The point was that the French are more or less accustomed to paying through the nose for things and the concept of “cheap” is not that ingrained here.

Maki and I have noticed that in shops around Paris they like to advertise items on sale by putting a label that says “prix choc”, usually followed by lots of exclamation points!!!!! So naturally I remarked that for the French, it is indeed shocking to not pay an arm and a leg for something. This last Saturday at our local Monoprix we saw lots of things with “prix choc” but I actually found them shockingly expensive. If these prices are considered low enough to be shocking, then I imagine that a French person would go into cardiac arrest when entering a place like, say, Wal Mart. Luckily for us there’s a Giga Store across the street, which likes to bill itself as “le paradis du pas cher”. Can you imagine that as a slogan: the paradise of the not dear?

OK, enough whingeing about how expensive everything is. It could be worse: it could be London. Besides, when I go back to Miami at the end of June with my Euros I'm sure I'll be living large.

I Survived Operation Stack, Phase II

2008-05-22T18:23:00.000+01:00

Forgive my relative inactivity lately, but I’ve been literally on the road.

I’ve spent most of this week away on a business trip: attending an event in England. Not in London (so don’t be offended if I didn’t call you) but in some tiny little village out in the middle of the proverbial bush. (It's more like flower filled springtime meadows than actual bush, but you catch my drift).

Since we had to carry a lot of heavy equipment back and forth, it was decided that my colleague and I should rent a minivan and drive there and back. ROADTRIP!!! Excellent! I felt like I was a college student all over again. Of course, in the great road trip tradition, my colleague and I stopped at an overpriced highway service area and stocked up on all sorts of greasy, salty and generally unhealthy road trip munchies. And Red Bull, of course. A roadtrip isn’t a roadtrip without Red Bull. They actually don’t have Red Bull in France, they have something called “Dark Dog” instead. To paraphrase Crocodile Dundee, you can drink it but it tastes like shit. It does what it needs to do, however, which is keep me awake above the din of the bad music they play on provincial radio stations (I'm happy to report that the 80's are alive and well in Northern France and the English home counties. Austria and Germany, you're not alone!)

Being in England made me realize just what a snob France has turned me into. First thing was the food: I was turning my nose up at some of the microwaved stodge I was being fed (though I admit that I stocked up on yummy English bacon, farmhouse cheddar, Maynard’s wine gums and my secret guilty pleasure: Walker’s prawn cocktail crisps). The portions, too, were a little shocking. Much larger than the ones in France. I’m sure I must have added a few inches to my waistline this week. I can’t image what it will be like to go back to the USA. Cheesecake Factory would probably send me into fits right now. You could feed a French family for a week on a starter from that place.

The results of large portions can be seen, too. I was aghast at the number of overweight people in England. Seriously overweight. Remember, this wasn’t London, it was the provinces. The womenfolk seem fatter, on average, than the men. I think the only thin women I saw during the trip were the hotel’s Eastern European gästarbeiters, who compensate for their good looks with straight-outta-the-Soviet-Bloc surliness and indifference. Even asking for my coffee in Polish the fifth time around didn’t do the trick.

Ok, I know I’m no Adonis, but come on. Whenever you hear a Brit mocking Americans for being fat and eating junk food, rest assured that it’s the pot calling the kettle black.

The most interesting part of the trip, however, was the return journey. I was afraid we’d get stuck in traffic on the M25 (London’s equivalent of the Capital Beltway) but it was all smooth sailing until we got to the M20 headed towards the Channel Tunnel. About 30 miles out of Dover, the motorway turned into (quite literally) a parking lot. At one exit, only trucks were being allowed to stay on the motorway, while all car traffic was being diverted onto the local side roads. It was bumper to bumper on the winding country lanes of South Kent.

The radio was abuzz with news of a strike by French fishermen who had blockaded all the channel ports, keeping all the cross-channel ferries from sailing and causing gridlock in Kent. They repeatedly made it clear that all this botheration (it’s really, really bad out there. Stay at home if you can) was the fault of those dastardly frogs and their bolshy fishermen. At one point I was seriously afraid that our car’s French number plates would provoke some kind of primitive mob justice from all the frustrated motorists stuck on the road behind us.

Then suddenly, the radio DJ’s stopped mentioning the French fishermen and started blaming the traffic on “Operation Stack: Phase II”. None of them bothered explaining what this might be, but every radio station traffic update was going on about “Operation Stack, Phase II” causing “traffic chaos” all across the region. My colleague and I reached the conclusion that this term didn’t need to be explained because everybody in the world (or at least South Kent) except ourselves was already familiar with Operation Stack: Phase II. I was still harbouring a fear that this was some secret code for “Operation hunt down the Frenchies and club them to death like baby seals”.

I began to contemplate the great potential that Operation Stack : Phase II offered as a generic, cover-all excuse. I figured if Maki ever asks me why I didn’t vacuum or take out the garbage: sorry, it’s on account of Operation Stack: Phase II. Why didn’t I complete my assignments at work? Operation Stack: Phase II. Why didn’t I pay my taxes this year? Operation Stack: Phase II. Very hush-hush, you understand: on Her Majesty’s secret service and all that. Need-to-know basis. I could explain, but then I'd have to kill you.

Finally, a kindly radio DJ took pity on us and unveiled the mystery. It had everything to do with the striking French fishermen. Operation Stack is apparently the name given to the process of dealing with road traffic during Channel port closures. In order to avoid all the continent-bound trucks from clogging the ports, a segment of the M20 is closed off to traffic and turned into a giant truck parking lot. Traffic is diverted onto secondary roads for a few miles and then allowed back on the motorway. That way thousands of trucks can wait for their cross-channel ferries without wreaking havoc on the local traffic in Dover, Folkestone, etc. Apparently during long strikes or inclement weather, the trucks can sit there for weeks.

So we’ve already seen that the French deal with the uncertainties of life in their country by resorting to sorcery. The Brits, on the other hand, seem to have this shit down to a science. Cool as cucumbers, those Brits. You have to wonder, though, if there's any equivalent to Operation Stack in France. What do all the Britain-bound trucks do? I'm guessing probably not. That's probably just one of those things: strikes in France cause all kinds of problems in Britain while in France everybody just gets on with their business and hardly notices. The truck drivers probably go find some cafe somewhere and shrug their shoulders. It's kind of like the difference between snow in DC and snow in Chicago. DC gets an inch and shuts down. In Chicago nobody notices.

I still feel somewhat relieved to have survived intact, however. Let me tell you, the atmosphere on some of those roads on Wednesday night was tense, and we were getting some seriously evil looks from the other motorists. There's thousands of years of tribal hatred spanning the English Channel, going back at least as far as William the Conqueror. I don't want to be the spark that rekindles the fire.

Rolling in my Smart Car

2008-05-14T22:46:00.000+01:00

Last weekend we had yet another long weekend with spectacular weather. Maki and I decided to rent a car and take a trip to the countryside. Since we hadn’t made any hotel reservations, we were initially uncertain as to whether to take the whole weekend or to make two day trips, possibly inviting friends along on one of them.

Well, our hands were forced as far as inviting friends out with us because when I arrived at the car-rental agency I was given the keys to a nice-and-cozy Smart for two:

No idea what’s up with the Spanish number plates, but my hat’s off to whoever drove that thing over from Spain.

First observation: the car has pretty much everything it needs to have, but in miniature. Little a/c console, little radio, little glove box, little dashboard. Ironically, the only exception is the oversized ashtray, with cigarette lighter included:

You know you’re in Europe when…

Even the gearbox is tiny, and not very intuitive. Unusually for Europe, it has automatic transmission. I think they just couldn’t manage to fit a manual gearbox. The gearbox has only three settings: forward, neutral and reverse. Forward can be set to fully automatic or to “manual” automatic, which requires shifting gears by pushing the lever forward:

Unfortunately, the “manual” setting is default. To go into full automatic mode, you have to press a small button on the lever. I occasionally forgot and found myself driving around in first gear for prolonged periods. When on the fully automatic setting, I found that gear changes were very jerky.

Asides from that, the car drives fairly well. We got on the motorway and were driving at pretty good speeds, even passing some larger cars. It “feels” like a larger car when driving on the highway: unless the wind is blowing hard, in which case you have to struggle a little to keep it on course.

When we got back to Paris on Monday, we decided to drive out to the DIY store to buy some large pots and plants for our balcony. Amazingly we managed to fit our two selves plus a bunch of stuff in the little Smart. Too bad we didn’t take the camera with us, that would have been a funny picture.

By far and away the best thing about the Smart is that we didn’t have to search long for street parking in our neighborhood when we got back home (as we normally have to do when we drive) because you can easily fit into the tiniest of spaces left between parked cars. You can actually fit two smart cars into the space you would need for one “normal” car.

Well, that's my inner gearhead vented for a while now.

Just what I need: Driver's License Juju!

2008-05-08T08:50:00.000+01:00

Our arrondissement, the 18th, is known to be one of the most ethnically diverse in Paris. This is one of the things Maki and I most enjoy about it. There are really all kinds of people around and lots of cheap, good ethnic food. A few weekends ago we went out for a meal at a Cote d’Ivoirian restaurant, where I had a fish soup that came with the fish scales, head, eyeballs and everything. Very Indiana Jones. “Rootsy”, as a Trinidadian friend of ours would say (this is my official favorite word of the month. I’m managing to sneak it into every other sentence).

Particularly the area around the Barbes Rochechouart metro station has a very exotic feel to it. It has a bit of a seedy reputation, but I’ve never really felt threatened there at all. There’s lots of street life: hawkers of all sorts and you get the feeling that you’re in some sort of African bazaar. Among the “mealie ladies” flogging corn-on-the-cob “maïs, maïs, maïs”, and the sketchy looking dudes selling Marlboros and counterfeit Dolce Gabbana belts, there are a bunch of people handing out advertisements like the one below:

I’m starting to build a small collection of these.
Monsieur Sakho is what is known locally as a “marabout”. Those of you in Miami might recognize that as a “santero”. For the rest of you: a witch doctor or juju man. In this bold piece of advertising, Monsieur Sakho promises to “resolve all problems: don’t hesitate to contact me whatever your problem, there is always a solution. If you want to be loved or if your partner has left you for somebody else, that’s my specialty. You will be loved and your partner will come back to you. I will build a perfect understanding between you based on love. He or she will run after you like a dog behind its master.” Hmmm, like a dog behind its master, eh? Monsieur Sakho sounds like a kinky devil. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

Even more interesting, below that he advertises his services in the fields of “marriage, luck, success, exams, contests, business, drivers license”. Did you catch that last one? Drivers licenses! You may recall from my post last week about how difficult it is to get drivers licenses over here that I’m having quite a hard time with it myself. Well, now I know that that whatever my problem, there is always a solution. I now understand how the local people manage to get around bureaucratic hassle in this country: sorcery! Instead of going to the US Embassy and calling my high school, I should have gone to see Monsieur Sakho. Next time, I’ll know. I wish I had known about Monsieur Sakho when I lived in DC, he might have got me out of paying some parking tickets.

The land that 1990 forgot

2008-05-05T19:18:00.000+01:00

Last Thursday was a public holiday here in France (so is next Thursday and the Monday after that: it’s not really that we have so many, it’s that they come in bunches) and like many people here, we took Friday off as a “pont” (bridge) and took a quick trip out of town. We certainly needed a little change of scenery. We found a good deal with flights and hotel to Munich, so there we went.

First impressions: I have to say that Munich seems like a great “guys” destination: the sort of place you’d go for a stag weekend. The city is most famous for beer and cars. These last four days I have been eating a LOT of swine, drinking a LOT of beer and hauling a LOT of ass on the autobahn. (Well: as much ass as one can realistically haul in an Opel Corsa). My overgrown boy’s heart feels content. I fear karma for this trip will be that next long weekend we’ll go someplace like Milan where I’ll have to look at shoes and handbags all weekend.

On Friday we had a rental car and drove around the Tyrolean alps and visited Innsbruck as well as the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein (only saw it from the outside, though, as the lines were worse than Disneyland). The alpine scenery on a cloudless day really was so stunning that it was kitsch. There were even flowery springtime meadows serving as foreground to the snow capped peaks crowned by a deep blue sky. If you saw a picture of what we were seeing hanging on somebody’s living room wall, you’d cringe. I almost felt embarrassed taking pictures. See what I mean?

Throughout our trip, Maki began to notice and point out lots of people with real 1980’s style hairdos. Women with big puffy hairspray ‘dos and men with rawkin blond mullet-type thingies or whatever they’re called. As we drove around on Friday, I realized that it isn’t just the local hairstyles that are stuck in the 80’s, but the local radio stations, too. A scan of the airwaves gave one the choice between Spandau Ballet, the Culture Club, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, and even Debbie-flipping-Gibson (I don’t think I’ve even heard her name uttered since I was in high school) with the only variety offered by the occasional station playing the real “oldies” from the 1970’s. Can I say, they LOVE Boney M over in Deutschland. Yes, Boney M. Rah-rah Rasputin. I bet the mere mention of their name is as much of a blast from the past for you as it was for me. Oh, and I can inform you that Falco (Rock me Amadeus) is
firmly entrenched in the pantheon of Austria’s national heroes. He’s better known and loved over there than the Terminator Ah-nuld himself.

As if that wasn’t enough, I started to notice a truly 80’s flashback phenomenon everywhere: punks. No, I don’t mean Goths or Emos, I’m talking real-live actual punks, like with brightly colored Mohawks, leather jackets, Doc Martens and pierced noses. Yes, the sort of punks that used to roam the streets of London before 1989 or whenever it was that punks magically morphed into Goths and Emos (and relocated to suburban shopping malls) in the rest of the civilized world. The really interesting thing is that most of these punks were not aging bitter-enders trying to hold on to the remnants of their youthful rebellion. No, these were actually young kids: teenagers. Most of them probably weren’t even alive during punk’s heyday.

We didn’t get the impression that this was some kind of retro revival, either. Maki did a year abroad in Germany when she was a college student and she seems to recall a penchant for 1980’s fashion even back then. No, it’s more like the 80’s just never really ended in Germany and Austria. I can’t really explain this phenomenon. Maybe their civilization peaked sometime around 1987 and they’re trying to hold on to that vibe for as long as they can, kind of like those hippies in Berkeley who never quite came to terms with the passing of the 60’s. The end result of our trip is that I need to detox and diet for the next week or two, and I have a sudden urge to download random crappy music to my IPod (…I know this much is TRUE, oo-oo-oo-ooooooo)

Bush, the French DMV,my grades in high school and how all these things are connected

2008-04-30T07:13:00.000+01:00

I graduated high school in 1990. I remember needing my high school transcript to gain admission into college that same year, but to the best of my recollection, that is the last time I ever needed it. Well, skip forward 18 years and I’ve needed it once again: this time to be allowed to drive in France. Logically, we wouldn’t want to have any high school dropouts on the roads over here: it’s well known that dumbasses cause accidents, after all.

I should start off by saying that I don’t really need a driver’s license over here since I don’t own a car. On the rare occasions when I rent one, my US license will do. But ever since I found out that Florida and France have a license reciprocity scheme, I figured I might as well get one, knowing that European drivers’ licenses are notoriously difficult and expensive to obtain. Getting a drivers license here involves paying many hundreds of euros for many hours of drivers’ training, and I’ve met many a foreigner who has been driving in their own country for ages who has failed the driving test over here. The testers here apparently get an almost sexual thrill from flunking foreigners. According to a friend of mine, it’s all a racket to feed more business to the “auto-ècoles”.

So the idea that I could just trade my Florida license (which a properly trained pomeranian could probably obtain without too much difficulty) for one of these precious and pricey items instinctively seemed like a good deal.

The adventure begins when I go down to the “prefecture” (same place we go to for our immigration papers: this is a highly centralized country), wait for a while in line and explain my situation to the clerk. This was back in February. He then gives me an appointment to come back in April and gives me a list of all the papers I will need to bring with me. This list includes all the usual “attestations”, including, of course, my electric bill. That’s all standard stuff. The more complicated part was that I needed: a certified translation of my US license as well as an “attestation” stating when I obtained my first license in the state of Florida. (the date my current license was issued is irrelevant). The man told me I could get this “attestation” from the US embassy. I tried to explain to him that the US embassy, a part of the federal US government, was unlikely to be able to certify licenses issued by the government of the state of Florida, which is, for all intents and purposes, just as administratively “foreign” as the Kingdom of Tonga. Here in France, of course, everything is centralized so the gummint is the gummint is the gummint.

So I call the US embassy to see what kind of stamped, official-looking document I can get from them. I’m of the theory that any document that looks official and has lots of stamps on it will do the trick with the French bureaucrats. The US embassy tells me the best they can do is have me write a sworn affidavit and notarize it for me. Good enough, thinks I, so I take a morning off of work and go stand in line with all the Haitian visa seekers, empty my pockets, hand over my cellphone to the biggest, meanest looking Filipino I’ve seen in my life, go through metal detectors, assure everybody that I’m not Osama bin Laden and I don’t have a bomb so I can then sit in a room with a third-world dictatorship-esque picture of El Presidente Bush staring down at me from the wall. It wouldn’t be so creepy if there wasn’t another one of Cheney right next to it. His eyes follow you around the room just like the Mona Lisa’s.

It turns out that the US embassy actually has a special form for this purpose (wish they had told me that on the phone). Basically I get to translate my own drivers license into French and the kind State Department officials will put a little stamp with an eagle on it, all for the low, low price of 30 euros (note to self: nice gig if you can get it). Among the fields to fill on the form is: date of issue of initial license. Now like I said, I don’t know the date of issue of my first license and it doesn’t say it anywhere on my current license, but oh well, I assume it was sometime near my 16th birthday, so I pick a random date in 1989. Voila, the date I just pulled out of my backside is officially Bushisized and I’ve got my translation and my attestation all in one shot.

I take another late morning from work to go to my appointment at the prefecture. I hand over all my prized documents and the lady shakes her head and says “non, non, non”. In a World War II movie, this is the bit where I would hear “Ihre Sokumenten sind nicht in Ordnung” and I’d be dragged away by goons. “How can you prove that you’ve actually been in the country for more than six months?” she queried. I point to my six month old electric bill. “Yes, but that only proves that you’ve had an apartment here, not that you’ve been living here. You could just be keeping an apartment here while living elsewhere.” Of course: doesn’t everybody summer in Paris and winter in Mustique? And then the rather more curious “how can you prove that you were living in Florida on the date that you obtained your first license?” (yes, remember? The date I made up) I didn’t dare ask what relevance this has to anything. Maybe I just popped by the Florida DMV during a layover between Mustique and St. Tropez. The conclusion is that I need to come back with: six months’ worth of payslips proving that I’ve been working in France and proof that I was a resident of the state of Florida on February 2, 1989 in the form of a high school transcript. Kafka would be having a field day right about now. You couldn’t make this shit up if you tried.

Since I’ve only been at my job for two months, this means I’ll have to wait four months until my next visit. On the plus side, I called up my high school and had an official transcript in my mailbox three days later. Thank you Gulliver Prep and the United States Postal Service. Maki decided to get her transcript, too, just in case, but she went to (gasp!) public school so she had to mail them a dollar bill (I’m 100% serious) and still hasn’t heard anything back. My parents will be glad to know that they got their money’s worth sending me to the Junior Colombian Cartel Country Club.

R.I.P. Trixie Q.E.P.D

2008-04-27T18:02:00.000+01:00

I was going to post something funny today, but we're both a bit bummed.

For those who knew and loved Trixie, we're sorry to inform you that he died this past Saturday.
May his soul fly free.

Para aquellos que conocieron a Trixie:

Lamentamos informarles que murió el sábado pasado. Maki y yo estamos tristes :-(

Que su alma vuele libre.

Enamorándome

2008-04-24T20:27:00.000+01:00

Como podrán darse cuenta, últimamente nuestros mensajes de blog tienen mucha foto linda y poco texto. ¿Quien quiere ponerse a bloguear estando los días tan lindos? Mucho más vale salir a caminar, a andar en bicicleta o a visitar los jardines de Monet. Desde que los días están mejorándose, Maki y yo estamos en plena vida deportiva y social. Hemos florecido con la primavera. Sentimos como que estamos en una luna de miel con nuestra vida en Paris. Tan así es la cosa que a veces los lunes, despues de haber tenido un fin de semana lleno de actividades divertidas, sentimos los dos una especie de bajón como el que se siente típicamente al volver de las vacaciones.

En mi caso particular (Diego), se amplifica esta mejora en la calidad de vida con el hecho de que encontré trabajo. Si bien esto quiere decir que no tengo el tiempo para pasear por la ciudad como tenía antes, ahora no siento la presión que sentía antes entonces siento que puedo aprovechar más tranquilamente el tiempo que tengo. El romance con Paris es total por estos momentos. Me imagino que ya pasará, pero a veces camino por las calles y pienso: "En que belleza de ciudad me tocó vivir".

Hoy te tarde tuve uno de esos momentos. Tengo un viaje bastante largo desde mi trabajo a casa. Como quería hacer un poco de ejercicio, me bajé en Place de la Republique y me fui caminando hasta casa desde allí. Decidí tomar por un camino nuevo que no conocía. Al pasar un rato, llego a esta iglesia que ven aquí, detrás de ese jardín divino con las flores blancas de los cerezos (creo que son cerezos).

Me puse a pensar: en cualquier otra ciudad del mundo, esta iglesia sería un monumento conocidísimo. Todo el mundo sabría cual iglesia es y seguro que vendrían turistas a verla. Aquí en Paris, es una iglesia más: totalmente anónima. Yo, por lo menos, no tenía la menor idea como se llamaba la iglesia. Me fijé en mi "indispensable" (libro de mapas de la ciudad) y descubrí que se trata de St. Vincent de Paul. A mi no me suena (el santo sí, la iglesia no). ¿A ustedes? Seguro que la mayoría de los Parisinos que no viven en el barrio no deben tener idea que está allí y dudo que la visiten muchos turistas. Cuando se vive rodeado de tanta belleza, nadie se fija en una iglesia más.

Giverny

2008-04-20T15:02:00.000+01:00

We spent yesterday in a town about 40 km away from Paris called Giverny. Abby, Flavia, and Jamie went with us (actually, Flavia organized the trip, so we owe her a big thanks for the wonderful day!).

We took the train to the nearest town, Vernon, and there rented bicycles to get to Giverny, which is a pleasant 5 km ride away.

We first visited Monet’s house and the gardens. Monet lived in Giverny for over 40 years and his gardens there were a source of inspiration for his paintings.

See if you recognize this one:

Fancying myself a bit of a cross between Ansel Adams and Georgia O’Keefe, I took a lot of pictures of the flowers in Monet’s gardens. Here are a few of them:

After touring Monet’s house, we decided to bike around the town and along the river.

Because it was raining around the time that we got hungry, we had our picnic underneath an ancient bridge on the banks of the Seine. One of the local specialties is cider, and Diego seemed to think it was quite tasty:

It was so nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of Paris and have a country get-away. As you can see, even the locals are friendlier once you leave the big city.

Biking and jazz last weekend

2008-04-16T20:49:00.001+01:00

We keep meaning to make our blog more photo-ey, since, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words and writing is like, hard work.

But we're not really the photographer types and we nearly always forget to take our camera when we go do fun things.

This last weekend we remembered to take a few, however.

It was a great weekend. The weather was lovely. Saturday we did a grand tour of Paris by bicycle, starting off at the Musee d'Orsay, where we saw some impressionist paintings and had lunch at the very impressive looking restaurant, where this cute picture was taken by the nice Japanese tourists in the next table:

Then on Sunday night, we went to a jazz concert to see a friend of a friend of ours from New York who sings jazz. Her name is Aimee Allen and she has a great voice. We had already seen her in concert (at the very same place) back in November. Check out her website. And here is a picture of Aimee singing, yes I know the quality is not great, but I had no Japanese tourists to outsource the job to this time:

Le boulot

2008-04-15T06:16:00.000+01:00

I've been at my new job since the beginning of March, so that's nearly a month and a half already. Now given the stories about people who get sacked for blogging about their job, I'm not going to put any revealing information about the company or my colleagues, but, being the only non-native francophone in the office, there's a few interesting cultural observations I can make:

First of all, following on my earlier blog post about the protesters in front of the building: they're still at it. Yes, they've been going at it for a month and a half...non-stop, more or less. They aren't there every single day, but most days they're there. Sometimes it's a huge crowd making lots of noise and hanging around for many hours (they suddenly show up in a huge band, I've even seen the riot squad following them) sometimes it's just a modest little group that barely can get a chant together for an hour or two. Anyway, they obviously haven't got what they want, but one must admire their stamina.

Second: I get so many paid holidays it's sick. I'm not going to say how many because if I did, you'd hate me.

Third: I had heard that offices weren't "sociable" here in the way that they are in the U.S. It's true that my colleagues don't really do happy hours or socialize much with each other outside of work, but we do all go have lunch together (not the whole company, but at least my department does, occasionally with some of the people from other departments). We usually go to the little cafe across the street where we have a proper sit-down meal. We nearly always have the special of the day, which will typically be something like a quarter chicken with green beans and rice. My French is, naturally, improving dramatically. The "boys" (yes, we're mostly male in my department) like to talk about the usual things guys talk about over lunch: sports, girls and off-color jokes. It's still a bit of a challenge to follow it all, and I still tend to tune out for most of it, but I'm now managing the occasional bit of non-faked laughter. We also tend to meet and have a little chat in the office kitchen for our morning and afternoon coffee breaks, but asides from that, people don't really chat by the water coolers or hang out in each other's offices. There's not a lot of long meetings, either (which is a relief). The rest of the day, people are pretty much sitting at their desks and working (or maybe playing Tetris for all I know, but they're definitely not chit-chatting).

Fourth: Every morning when people get to work, they go around the whole office and greet everybody. I'm not just talking about waving and saying "bonjour" as they walk by. No, they walk into every individual office and/or cubicle and shake the hand of the occupant, saying "bonjour" and occasionally "ca va?" . At first it struck me as weird and I didn't do it. I asked one of my colleagues and he told me: you don't really have to, but it gives a good impression if you do. So now I, like the others, do a little morning tour of the office, greeting everybody along the way, including Zebigboss himself.

Fifth: We're not at a cubicle farm, there's proper offices. Some of them individual, some of them shared between two people. The windows open, and it seems everybody likes to leave them open a crack to let the air circulate. I think that's a fine habit, but there's no need to do it when it's freezing cold outside. Also, it seems people don't like to turn their lights on. Most of my colleagues like to work in the relative dark...only late in the day when it's getting darker outside do they turn on the lighting in their offices.

Sixth: The 35 hour workweek is a bit of a myth. My hours are fairly normal (9:30 to six), but still more than 35 hours and I know that my colleagues do occasionally stay in the office reasonably late. I've stayed till 8 o'clock once or twice and there were still people there. I think that's part of the reason why I get so many holidays: the company gets around the 35 hour restrictions by offering us a few extra holidays (and the standard here is quite generous by US standards).

Seventh: What I pay in taxes here is not much more than what I used to pay in the US, roughly the same if you figure DC local taxes, but here I get free good health care and lots of other benefits. Nice, isn't it?

So what do you do?

2008-04-11T03:15:00.000+01:00

I've noticed that the types of careers that people have here are different than in the US. For example, when discussing Carla Bruni's past exploits, the public and the press bring up her affair with the philosopher Raphaël Enthoven. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone described as a philosopher in the US. Instead, someone like Enthoven would probably be described as a philosophy professor. In the US, in other words, Enthoven would be defined by his occupation, teaching students. In France, however, the philosopher is defined by his role in society.

Maybe the French are just really into their philosophy. Bernard-Henri Lévy, for example, is something of a pop star. And while lots of metro riders are reading the latest Harlan Coben bestseller, a not insignificant number can be seen with books by Sartre and de Beauvoir.

Diego thinks that the metro riders brushing up on their philosophy are posers trying to look smart, but I'm not so sure. Let's just say that I was definitely a little self-conscious when I pulled out a romance novel on the metro one morning (at least I was reading it in French!). I started to wonder whether my fellow commuters were also half-expecting me to pull a Big Mac out of my purse. Oh well, at least I wasn't, like one fellow commuter, reading the Marquis de Sade's finest!

Velo & chocolat

2008-04-06T21:13:00.000+01:00

Here's one for the quirky local commerce file: we recently visited this bicycle shop/hot chocolate bar. Those two things go together like a horse and carriage.

As the weather has started to get nicer (on some days more than others: it's freezing and hailing as I type this), Maki and I have taken out our bikes, which came with our move from DC. Unfortunately the bikes suffered some minor damage on the way out (the tires needed to be replaced) so we found this bike shop not too far from our place, on the bassin de la Villette in the 19th arrondissement. That area used to be quite run-down and seedy, but is in the process of gentrification (yuppies are known in this country as bobos - bourgeois bohemians, and these are the kind of people who pay inflated rents to live in the ghetto over here just like they do in DC, although the chances of gettin' a cap busted in yo' ass are probably statistically lower here than in Logan Circle). The bassin is a body of water that is an extension of the canal St. Martin (a canal that runs through the center of paris and still carries some barges and tour boats) and on weekends one sees rowing crews racing on it and small children sailing little remote-control boats. There's a cinema and a couple of nice cafes along the side of it and it's quite pleasant.

But anyway, back to Velo & Chocolat, they sell bikes, hot chocolate, organic crunchy granola type of fruit juices and most important, they also have a bicycle repairman, so it's very handy. His rates are very reasonable, but the work ethic is relaxed to say the least, which is where the hot chocolate comes in handy - you'll probably have to drink quite a few before they get around to you. If they let you, that is. Yesterday I went back to get something else fixed on my bike. When I got there, the entire staff of two was sitting down to lunch. After a few minutes of hanging around, one of them deigned to lift his head and ask me what I wanted. He then told me it would take a while for them to get around to it. I told him that's ok, I'll wait. He clearly didn't like that idea: way too much pressure to have the customer looking at you while you have your lunch, eat your dessert, drink your coffee, smoke your cigarette, etc. He told me to go away and come back in an hour, so I went to have a greasy doner kebab. But hey, the total bill came to 5 Euros, so who's complaining?

The best part of the day, though, was when I got the bike back to my house and chained it to one of the bike racks down the street. I was having a hard time removing the front wheel, so a "committee" of the patrons from the bar across the street (who were, of course, outside having a cigarette) started yelling technical advice to me (did you disconnect the brakes? The nut is too tight, you've got to loosen it) and one guy even came over to have a go at it himself. Next time my bike needs repairs maybe I'll just take it down to the bar, they've obviously got expertise.

Sunday Dinner with Jim Haynes

2008-04-03T16:01:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago we went to a Sunday dinner at Jim Haynes' studio in the 14th arrondissement. For the uninitiated, Haynes is one of those rare people who lived and loved in the 60s and 70s and who did not afterwards buy a station wagon and a ranch home in the 'burbs. Instead, he spent his time doing more important things, like meeting beautiful lovers while globe-trotting, creating a World Passport issued by a World Government that a friend used to get out prison in Bangkok, and writing his manifesto, Workers of the World, Unite and Stop Working: A Reply to Marxism.

Every Sunday, Haynes hosts dinner for 50 – 80 people, not necessarily his closest friends, making sure that all the guests feel included and are having a good time meeting others. The concept is simple: call or email for a reservation and arrive promptly at 8 pm. Please do not bring wine or flowers, although a donation of 25 euros is requested (more is okay too, but so is less).

The night we went, Diego and I met an Irish journalist, a couple of American expats living in Spain but traveling through France, long-term British expats, a couple of writers (including an erotica writer from Miami and a Finnish writer attending the book fair), a few students, and some native Parisians.

In DC, Diego and I often attended events where we did not know the other guests, but these events were typically full of lawyer-lobbyist-politico-diplomats. In contrast, at Haynes' dinner and in Paris generally, we meet lots of people who don't spend the evening dropping names that are supposed to sound impressive, who don't ask about your job when they first meet you, and who like to talk about ideas and experiences unrelated to their careers.

Now that we've been here a while, I find it jarring to meet other Americans and have them ask me the quintessential cocktail question, "So, what do you do?" It's a question that really will only elicit an uninspired response on my part, and is often followed by unimaginative barbs about my profession. My all-time favorite is "But you seem too nice to be a lawyer!" As if being nice is necessarily a good thing! Besides, if we get a paper cut, do we not bleed too? I think from now on, I'll start using answering that question with "Nothing too dodgy," a response Diego used when he first moved back to the US.

At any rate, I've totally digressed from the point of this post. Basically, if you are looking for an interesting adventure next Sunday night in Paris and don't want to have to answer typical networking cocktail questions, give Jim Haynes a call.

La borrachera

2008-03-31T07:10:00.000+01:00

In Vino Veritas.
Si esto es cierto, entonces en sus momentos de borrachera podemos ver la verdadera naturaleza de las personas, y por ende de las culturas.

Yo fui estudiante en Estados Unidos, y como cualquier estudiante universitario en Estados Unidos les confirmará, les puedo contar que los estadounidenses, cuando se emborrachan, se acuestan con quien sea. Cuando una mujer es muy, pero muy fea, los hombres dicen que es una "two kegger", o sea que tendrían que tomarse dos barriles de cerveza para acostarse con ella. Cuanto más cerveza toman, más bajan sus criterios de belleza. Este debe ser el lado oscuro del puritanismo religioso que está de moda en ese país.

Luego viví unos cuantos años en Inglaterra, y los ingleses, por su parte, son una raza muy, pero muy bebedora. ¿Y que les gusta hacer a los ingleses cuando están borrachos? Agarrarse a las piñas. Los únicos momentos en que sentí miedo viviendo en Londres fueron en el tube los viernes y sábados de noche tarde cuando volvían todos los borrachos a sus casas y buscaban peleas. No debe sorprendernos que los ingleses sean una raza brava; al fin y al cabo en su momento fueron dueños de la cuarta parte del mundo y eso no se logra diciendo "I'm sorry" y "Excuse me". Se logra mamándose hasta las patas y curtiendo a los nativos a patadas.

Ahora que estoy viviendo en Francia, puedo confirmar que los franceses, aunque se hagan los muy civilizados y se burlen de los gringos borrachos, también toman...mucho. Se emborrachan con frecuencia. ¿Y que hacen los franceses cuando se emborrachan? Cantan. Mal. Horrible. Los escuchamos desde nuestro apartamento en Montmartre todos los viernes y sábados de madrugada, cantando sabrá dios que canción mal entonada y mal cantada. Los hemos visto en el quartier latin y en les halles de madrugada, subiéndose a los noctilien (colectivos nocturnos) a las cuatro de la mañana, haciéndose los Edith Piaf y los Charles Aznavour.

Por mi lado yo, que me emborracho con frecuencia también, no suelo querer ligar con chicas feas ni pelearme con extraños en el metro. Cuando estoy pasado de copas me gusta cantar mal. Horrible. O sea que por lo menos eso tengo en común con la gente acá.

I love this town

2008-03-24T19:38:00.000Z

If you’ve read any of our earlier postings, you might get the impression that we do not like France: we go around stepping on enormous dog turds, we get mischarged for basic services, and we’re dehydrated because drinks are expensive (not the wine, thank goodness). This weekend, however, we played tourist guides to Diego’s sister, Carolina and her friend, Caroline. In showing them around our new hometown, I was reminded of all the things I love about this city: our neighborhood (Montmartre), testing the baguettes, croissants, and pain au chocolat at different neighborhood bakeries, and the amazing public transport system.

I had a ball taking the girls out on our Saturday morning errands in the neighborhood market. They were amazed at how delicious all the fruits and vegetables looked, and had fun looking at all the meats at the butcher shop. We also spent the better part of the day popping in and out of boulangeries, and probably driving the baker crazy because we could not decide what to buy. In only two days, the girls have, in addition to bread and pastries, tried lemon pies, pizzas, merengues, and eclairs. Our next mission is to get some maracons.

In addition to sampling all the culinary delights, we’ve also visited the traditional tourist attractions. On Saturday, we went to the Eiffel Tower and from there walked over to the Champs, the Arc de Triomphe, and Concorde (stopping at a cafe en route, bien sur). We spent Sunday morning at mass at Notre Dame (If all churches were this beautiful, I’m sure people would become more religious), and then went to flea market and the Louvre today.

While it’s been fun to see the sights all over again, dealing with the hordes of tourists is annoying. I can’t even begin to imagine what August will be like. To make matters worse, many of the tourists make very little effort to speak French. At the Louvre, for example, I had about five Americans speak to me in English without first inquiring as to whether I speak English. At one point, as I was standing in an area that was blessedly free of people, two young American women behind me said, “Excuse me,” because they wanted me to move (I don’t know why they could not simply walk around me). They made no attempt to speak in French and expected me to respond to their English-language request. Feeling a bit mischievous, I pretended not to speak English and did not respond. Instead of rephrasing their request in French, they walked around me, saying, “Some people can be so rude.” Some people can be so clueless.

The natives are restless, bwana

2008-03-19T20:18:00.000Z

At my new job, I am fortunate enough to have an office with a window (that even opens!) instead of the usual cubicle. It's meant to be a shared office, but there's nobody else in there for now. I'm on the first floor, facing the front of the building, so I can easily hear what's going on on the street below.

The building across from mine is apparently the local education administration building. For the last week, there have been loud "manifestations" (protests) going on in front of that building every single day. As a matter of fact, there were protests going on there the day I went in for my first interview at the company.

France has a long and proud history of public protest (which occasionally involves head-chopping, apparently), and it shows. While It seems to me that the protesters are getting louder each and every day (today they were banging on drums and blowing trumpets) and I find it distracts me terribly from my work, most of my work colleagues seem to be completely unfazed. I've asked some of my colleagues what all the fuss is about and most of them just shrugged, with my boss pointing out that "en France, c'est normal". At lunch the other day, when I again complained about the noise, one of my colleagues scratched his head and said "oh, yeah, I think I read something like they were going to reduce the number of teachers at one of the local schools." What's funny about this is that it's very obvious that the protesters are trying to make noise and be a nuisance to the education administration staff in order to get what they want. In doing so, they are being just as much of a nuisance to the people who work in all the adjacent buildings, who can hear all the racket just as clearly. Yet in my office, I seem to be the only one that's even remotely bothered by the noise. Nobody else seems to care...to the point that nobody has even bothered to find out what it is these protesters want, how likely they are to obtain it, and therefore how likely they are to stay for days weeks or months making noise outside our windows. En France, c'est normal. So obviously it really isn't that much of a nuisance, the education administration staff probably gives about as much of a damn as my colleagues do and therefore their efforts are ultimately futile.

What I have noticed, though, is that the protesters take nice long lunch breaks. They're usually pretty quiet by about 11:30 and they don't get started again until 2 o'clock or so. En France, c'est normal.

Move over, Kentucky

2008-03-17T20:52:00.001Z

oh sweet, sweet Euros

2008-03-16T17:12:00.000Z

All right, so for all my friends who aren't in on the good news: I (Diego) have officially found and begun my first Parisian job. Now given all the horror stories out there about people who get canned because they blog about their jobs, I'm not going to make any wry observations or snarky comments about my job here (even though I would have so much delicious material to work with!). So I'll just leave it at the following:

1) I have 7 weeks of paid annual leave and you don't, beeotch! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Don't hate me when I send you a postcard from some tropical beach to your grim and poorly lit cubicle. Hey, what can I say? It's good to work in France. I really don't feel I've gloated enough. I want to gloat some more, only it's very hard to gloat on the internet, but I'll try. Here goes: gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat. 35 working days. For real. I shit ye not. I'm being seriously serious. and that doesn't even include bank holidays.

2) I'm earning Euros. It doesn't even matter how many, I can finally stop making the conversion in my head every time I walk into a shop. With the ever diminishing value of the dollar, this turns every trip to the grocery store or the cafe into an excruciating experience. Now I can finally order a $10 beer at the local watering hole and think "that's not such a bad price". Pity Maki, she is still earning the Bushlandian pesos, which makes her an even poorer creature in this town than a Canadian, and that's pretty damn low ;-P The other side of this is that next time we visit the States, I'll probably be able to afford to buy a few indentured servants to bring back with me. We'll be raiding the Dolphin Mall like Venezuelans with a PDVSA contract. Before moving out here, Maki and I joked around that I would end up finding a job flipping burgers at McDonalds and that soon enough I'd be earning more Euros than her with her glamorous legal job. I'm beginning to wonder if it will actually come to that. In the meantime, maybe if I flash around my Euros, I'll get all da honeyz and the bling-bling just like Jay-Z.(follow link to see article)

French Accounting, Part Deux

2008-03-10T19:30:00.000Z

In January we compared French accounting skills to the Mayan math we experienced on our trip to Belize. We will not be doing so in this post because we figure there is really no need to drag the proud and noble Mayan people into this sordid tale.

Imagine our shock last month when we received an electric bill for 615 euros (that's over $900). It turns out, luckily, that the bill was based on a mistaken meter reading. Every couple of months, a technician from the electric company (EDF) comes to our apartment to read our meter. Our meter at that time read something along the lines of 71,000 units, but our bill stated that we were in the 74,000 range. So, somewhere along the bill processing line, someone must have confused the 1 in our meter reading for a 4. At this point, we were not at all alarmed by this seemingly innocuous case of numerical dyslexia. After all, who hasn't at some point transposed a number or two when jotting it down?

Actually, Diego and I were rather happy because we were able to solve the problem with a simple call to EDF's customer service. In that call, EDF assured us that they would send a fax to the bank and we would not have the 615 euros deducted from our account. But, alas, that was not to be and shortly thereafter our bank account showed we had a 615 euro debit. As soon as we saw our bank statement, trooper Diego called EDF once more to clear up the mistake (at least their customer service number is not a special rate number). It turns out that EDF had, as promised, sent a fax to the bank asking for a reversal of the automatic debit. Unfortunately for us, EDF sent the fax to the wrong fax number, which was off by one digit!

To add insult to injury, this Saturday, March 8, we received a letter from EDF stating we owe them 18 euros in transaction fees because our bank charged EDF to reverse the charges! And, as a final straw, the letter states we need to pay them this transaction fee and the new correct amount (which is still a steep 330 euros) by Saturday, March 8 or else we will owe them 45 euros in late fees and risk having our power cut off. In other words, EDF's letter basically states, "Pay us your bill today or we'll cut off your power." All this because someone at EDF confused a 1 and a 4 on a meter reading.

Diego had a second encounter with this odd numerical dyslexia on his recent trip to London. On February 27, Diego took the Eurostar to London and had to go through both French and English immigration at the train station. Mysteriously, the French immigration stamp on his passport states that he left France on February 26. I think the English authorities must be used to this because no one seemed at all concerned that Diego's three-hour train ride looked like it had taken 24 hours. Or perhaps the English public sector is suffering from the same numerical dyslexia.

Luckily, things seem to be looking up. For the first time in the seven months that we've been here, our bank finally charged us the correct monthly fee. There's no telling what the future holds for us.

French porkyness

2008-03-05T07:30:00.000Z

Our friend Heather runs the world's greatest bacon blog, where you can feast your senses on all things porcine. Apparently, she has appointed Maki as the blog's official Paris correspondent, and we've even had some of her readers send in questions about French bacon culture, as it were. Unfortunately, at the time, we were French bacon heathens and thus failed miserably in our roles as local correspondents. Anyway, now that we've been here a little longer, we felt it was time to delve into the strictly non-Kosher/Halal and report back.

I decided I was in the mood for a cooked breakfast so I went out to try and procure some bacon. For starters I should say that the dictionary translates bacon into French as "lard". Indeed, the most popular form of bacon in France is "Lardons" which are tiny little cubes of meaty bacon which are sold in all supermarkets and convenience stores. Their use is primarily in salads (French salads are not necessarily healthy diet rabbit food; I've ordered salads at cafes here that came with fried potatoes and bacon) and are similar to what you sometimes find in the US labelled as "pancetta" (I've also seen lardons there, probably only at chi-chi places like Whole Foods).

So I went to the local butcher shop and asked for "lard" and was given a mocking glare in return. Ok, obviously that's not what people buy here. I looked through the counter and found something that looked quite like bacon and it was called "poitrine" (which means breast in French) and there were two kinds: regular and smoked. I ordered a few slices of the smoked kind. While trying to figure out how thick he should cut the slices, the butcher asked me what I wanted to eat it with. I was too embarrassed to tell him I intended to eat it for breakfast: one mocking glare was quite enough for me, thank you. I did see that they also had something called "bacon" at the butcher but it was round, way too lean and looked like what's called "Canadian bacon" in the US.

I took some home and cooked it up. First observation: there was a little tiny piece of bone in it! Not a bad thing, mind you, but I had just never had bacon with bone in it before. Taste: great. Tastes like bacon only meatier than the kind you get in the US but not quite as meaty as British style bacon, more like something in between.

I'm actually a big fan of British style bacon and you can get it here in Paris at the Epicerie Anglaise near Place de la Republique. I've stocked some up in the freezer for next time I have a serious hangover. That with some eggs and some Heinz baked beans is the second best hangover cure. The first, of course, is to drink more.

The Cow that Laughs Last

2008-02-25T03:44:00.000Z

It's no secret that the French are thinner, on the whole, than Americans. Indeed, a number of popular books have capitalized on the idea and have promised scores of Americans that they, too, can be like the French women who don't get fat.

Although I am by no means a nutritionist or doctor (nor do I play one on this blog), I think that generally portions are smaller here. Granted, some items here do come in large portions, especially sandwiches at a boulangerie, the ubiquitous kebabs, or the pizzas at our local Italian restaurant (which, incidentally, is worthy of its very own blog post at some point later on, as a result of its colorful clientele). Most regular food that you buy at a supermarket, though, does come in smaller portions. For example, drinks come in liter bottles, rather than gallon jugs, and yogurt is sold in half-size, rather than full-size cups. And you'll be hard-pressed to find a ginormous bag of tortilla chips on the supermarket shelves.

Even some French products that are sold in the US come in different packaging. Laughing cow cheese (la vache qui rit), for example, is sold in the US in a round package with eight wedges. Here, the same round package contains twelve smaller wedges. I can just imagine the company meeting after it decided to start its international expansion:

-Marketing Dep't: "Zince vee have had difficulties breaking into the American market because our fromage is considered too stinky and mouldy, vee av deezided to market a cheese product to zee Americans."

-Naysayer: "But, we cannot sell zees petit triangles in America, it will never fit on zee wonder bread."

-Marketing Dep't: "Ah, zen, vee must increaze zee size of the wedges....ouahahah."

So, folks, you heard it on this blog first: the French are thinner because their cheese product comes in smaller portions. I wonder if I can write a book about that.

Mange du Kebab

2008-02-18T02:25:00.000Z

Hace un tiempo atrás les comenté de las sandwicherías turcas que hay en Paris. Aparentemente, nuestro barrio (Montmartre) es uno de los que más de estas tiene. Es como que algo típico de acá.

Últimamente se me ha dado por ir a almorzar a uno de estos lugares de "kebab" en el barrio, donde por solo 5 Euros me puedo comer un tremendo sandwich de carne de cordero con ensalada y papas fritas. Siempre me dejan elejir que salsa quiero con el sandwich, y generalmente elijo mayonesa con "harissa" (salsa picante) aunque ultimamente se me ha dado con la "sauce blanche" que es de yogúr con pepinos.

Hace un tiempo mi primo Martin me mandò este video filmado en una sandwicheria turca:

Lo primero que pensé al ver el video fue: seguro que eso queda cerca de casa. Efectivamente, me fijé en internet y resulta que ese restorán existe y queda a pocas cuadras de acá. El otro día fui a comer un kebab allí. Me alegró ver que la fama no les ha llevado a subir los precios, ya que cobran los mismos 5 Euros que toda la competencia. Sin embargo, me desilusionó el hecho que los mozos no cantaban. Ni siquiera tenían música prendida (en el lugar donde voy yo, siempre tienen un televisór sintonizado a una especie de MTV Turco) a pesar de que en la canción del video dicen "il y a de l'ambience et de la musique".

Cry me a river

2008-02-11T20:03:00.000Z

Spotted off the boulevard Magenta near Place de la Republique.

No, I don't know what it means, either, but surely it must meen something existential and tres profond. Either that or it's the name of a gay club.

Ne pas fumer

2008-02-11T19:28:00.000Z

January 1, 2008 marked a major historical milestone in France. On that day, the new smoking law came into effect. France has effectively followed the rest of the civilized and not-so-civilized world on the puritanical bandwagon of banning smoking in all public places. Who knew the French had it in them? Between that and all the latest giggling adolescent titillation over their president's love life, I'm beginning to wonder if the French aren't stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Now if they could only get good customer service...

But I digress. Knowing in advance that this new law would come into effect at the beginning of the year, I was seriously worried that the entire country would be nicotine-jonesing and thus in a very grumpy mood indeed. I seriously worried about my personal safety and briefly considered taking a trip somewhere just to be away from it all. I know from personal experience that nicotine withdrawal can make one awfully testy (and since I decided to join the French in kicking the habit this year, Maki can corroborate). Surprisingly, though, people have remained remarkably nonchalant about the whole thing. I have thus far only witnessed one incident of aggression between a law-abiding bar owner and a nicotine-starved patron. (no, it wasn't me, I swear)

What has been funny, though, has been observing gaggles of smokers crowding outside bar and restaurant doors having their quickie smokes. I've also noticed that the "sidewalk cafe" phenomenon has suddenly exploded (despite the cold weather) to ridiculous extremes. I mean,there are certain establishments that have nice and wide streetfronts and are thus meant to (in nice weather) have tables outside. But now, just about any little hole in the wall has pitched up a couple of plastic tables and chairs on whatever little bit of narrow pavement they can claim so their customers can sit outside and freeze to death.

See what I mean?

A few weeks ago, when it was freezing outside, it was kind of funny to watch people sitting in these chairs, drinking their coffees and smoking their Gauloises.

Now that the weather has turned warmer, Paris suddenly feels springlike with masses of people sitting outside in the most unlikely places.

Maki seems to think that the new smoking law is unloved and unpopular and thus will not last long. I suppose she imagines there will be some sort of mass civil disobedience. But from what I've seen, people have pretty much adapted to the new reality. The only real long-term implications will be more butts (cigarette and human) on the ever-narrower sidewalks and more cases of pneumonia in winter.

Anglophone beggars

2008-02-06T22:10:00.000Z

I've noticed one phenomenon here in Paris for several months now.
It seems that just about every time I find myself at some touristy spot, like the Champs-Elysees, I'll be approached by a gypsy-looking woman and asked "do you speak English?".
The first few times I answered "yes", imagining that this was some poor tourist lost in the urban jungle, only to have a little note (written in English) shoved under my nose with some generic sob story about being a refugee from Bosnia (I feel like telling them to update their conflicts: Bosnia is SO last decade) so gimme, gimme, gimme.

Naturally, whenever they ask me the question now I answer "non" with all the Gallic disdain I can muster...and the funny thing is: they walk away. They only beg from you if you speak English. Francophones (as well, I suppose, as speakers of Ukranian and Lingala) are not expected to contribute to the allegedly-Bosnian-purported-refugee-of-a-war-that-ended-years-ago fund. This mystifies me. First of all, if you're going to beg in France, shouldn't you learn how to do it in French? Second, It really isn't that hard to outstretch your palm and look pathetic. Most people will get what you're on about. I've been begged in many different languages before and I knew exactly what was going on even if I couldn't make out the specifics that were being said. I even learned how to beg in Hindi after a trip to India. (Goreh, panj rupieh, no mama, no papa or something along those lines).

Yet it seems these ladies specifically target speakers of English and deliberately leave all others alone. This simply doesn't make sense to me. Why ignore all the potentially rich non-anglophone pickings? There must be more to this story than meets the eye. Nature abhors a vacuum, so it must be filled with an official Diego® conspiracy theory. Et voila, here is the first Diego® conspiracy theory to be posted on this blog (and don't go spreading it without paying me royalties, now):

The gypsy ladies have an arrangement with the cops. The cops leave them alone so long as they don't harass any of the local taxpayers. Stick to the tourists and we won't take you out back and beat you. Today for the first time I saw "les flics" (the cops) rounding up a bunch of them on the Champs-Elysees and clearing them from the area. I can only conclude that they must have been begging "En français". Consider: the local taxpayers are more likely to complain if they are being hassled on the streets. The police will be expected to do something about it. Tourists are unlikely to complain about it, so as long as the townies are left alone, "everybody is happy" in a Tony Soprano sort of way. Maybe the cops even get a share of the take, who knows? Badda bing, it's a beautiful ting.

La Migra and lawyers

2008-02-05T18:47:00.000Z

I never thought I'd have to worry about “la migra” over here in France, but now I do. Theoretically, processing my carte de séjour (residency card) is easy. I don't know how, but things have suddenly become rather complicated, and I may soon become a sans papier or “without papers.”

The extremely frustrating part of all this is that the lawyers handling the process initially represented that my situation was very easy. I think that, after five years of practicing law, I finally understand why others dislike lawyers so much. They rarely return phone calls, manage to complicate even the simplest matters, and it's the client that pays the consequences.

As a result of the stress caused by this situation, now, whenever I see signs at schools or other buildings expressing solidarity with the sans papiers, I feel a small sense of support, as though it is confirmation that I am meant to be here. I am fortunate in that my situation is not at all like that of a poor immigrant trying to make a home in a new country under adverse conditions, and I am fortunate in that, although things might be a bureaucratic mess, I (probably) won't get kicked out of the country on a one-way ticket. And aware of how fortunate I am, I can empathize with and have sympathy for the demonstrators that march in our neighborhood streets every few weeks, chanting “Qui sommes nous? les sans papiers! qu’est ce qu’on veut? des papiers!”

Parisian soundproofing

2008-01-30T15:34:00.000Z

I don’t know if this is a Paris-wide phenomenon, but we can see and hear absolutely everything our neighbors do. I can usually tell what the next-door neighbors are having for dinner just by going into our bathroom (I like it when they make the beef with pan-fried onions), figure out when a dog has walked past the building based on the downstairs neighbor’s dog barking, and understand the feelings behind the gardien’s wife’s surly looks based on the fight she had the previous night with her husband. I also know that the man that lives across the street eats dinner on his couch while watching TV (he puts his feet up on the coffee table, too), that a pretty good pianist and a less good vocalist live nearby, and that the hunched over little old lady I see walking around the neighborhood has some nice antique furniture. And based on the version of Knocking on Heaven’s Door one of our neighbors likes to play, I also know that I like Eric Clapton’s version much better.

Diego has a theory that people here care more about their looks than people in the US because everyone can see what you are doing. A lot more of your life also takes place in the public sphere, as opposed to in the privacy of your own home. For example, if you are wearing sloppy sweats around the house, the neighbors will know for sure. Also, you won’t typically spend a Saturday night watching a movie on your home entertainment system. Instead, you’ll be out at the movies where others will see you. Likewise, you might not have big dinner parties or barbecues at home if you live in a small apartment and will instead meet with friends for dinner at a restaurant or a picnic in a park.

Which makes me wonder: what do the neighbors see and hear about us? They can probably tell that we like wine by the number of bottle we throw into the recycling bin every couple of days and that Diego is not stingy with the garlic when he cooks. They also probably know that laundry days are Tuesdays and Fridays and that we use (thankfully for them) the “short” cycle on the washing machine (if you have one of the European front-loading washing machines, you know why I put the word “short” in quotation marks). They might be confused by the fact that we listen to music from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa while speaking a weird mix of a number of languages. As for anything else the neighbors might be able to see or hear, well, let’s just say I’d prefer not to think about it too much.

Truth in advertising?

2008-01-22T15:31:00.001Z

all righty then.

Obsesión arácnida

2008-01-22T12:43:00.000Z

Bueno, primero mil disculpas por no actualizar el blog en tanto tiempo. Me faltaba inspiración. Será la oscuridad del invierno. Ahora que los dias se hacen más largos, la creatividad renace.

Bueno, aquí les muestro una foto de mi gran compra de hace unos meses. Teniamos unos cables horribles colgando del techo y un dia caminando por el "marché aux puces" vi esta preciosa araña antigua y pensé que iría bien con nuestros muebles antiguos.

Maki quedó de lo más impresionada con que nuestra arañita parece una version miniatura de las que hay en los palacios y restoranes paquetones por ahí.

La vendedora enchufó a la araña andes de que yo la comprase para mostrarme que sí funcionaba.

Al llegar a casa, yo me puse en onda "bricolage" e instalé la araña en el techo, hice las conexiones eléctricas y todo.

Voy a prender la luz, y encienden tres de las seis bombitas. Me imagino que será un problema de bombitas quemadas, entonces salgo y compro tres bombitas nuevas, pero igual no funcionan.

Entonces pensé que los cables viejos dentro de la araña estarían gastados o mal instalados.

Hace una semana le pedí prestado al portero del edificio su escalera para ver que se podía hacer. Vi que la araña solo estaba conectada a dos de los cables que colgaban del techo. Según leí en internet, el tercer cable sería tierra y no es necesario conectar la tierra, pero enfin, por las dudas, reajuste los cables de la araña para que hubiesen tres en vez de dos. Hice una conexión nueva de los cables (la vieja estaba bastante gastada) y conecté la araña a los tres cables del techo.

Resultado: ahora funcionan la seis lamparitas, pero dan una luz muchísimo más debil de la que daban antes. Tan debil que no tiene sentido tener la araña prendida: no da suficiente luz.

La volví a desconectar, jugué un poco más con los cables, pero nada. Seguimos en la misma. No soy muy experto en temas eléctricos, pero la verdad es que no entiendo como una conexión eléctrica puede funcionar pero más debil. A mi criterio, o la conexión está bien y funciona, o está mal y no funciona. La electricidad no es algo más o menos: es absoluta. O funciona o no funciona. Esto de funcionar pero con pocas ganas me resulta muy extraño y frustrante. Por eso lo pongo aquí, a ver si alguno de ustedes que sea más "bricoleur" que yo no tenga alguna idea. Ayuden, por favor, no puedo dormir de noche y a Maki la tengo media saturada ya con el tema!

French Accounting Reminds Me of Mayan Math

2008-01-13T17:04:00.000Z

Before launching into today’s blog post, we want to apologize for our lack of blog postings lately. One of our New Year’s resolutions is to update the blog more consistently. So, here is today’s post:

Mayan Math is a term that we made up in Placencia, Belize, a sleepy beach town of about 500 residents. We were on the last leg of our honeymoon and wanted to send postcards from Belize to thank all of the lovely people who gave us wedding gifts. When we saw that we did not have enough postcards, Maki reluctantly put down her planter’s punch and went in search of more postcards. It was a Sunday, and not many stores were open (for that matter, there are not that many stores in Placencia), but Maki found one small tourist shop selling handmade Mayan artifacts and – importantly for the day’s only mission – postcards.

We needed a total of 30 postcards, and each of the postcards cost 75 Belizean cents. After gathering up her postcards and a few souvenirs, Maki approached the counter, where the shop owner, a young Mayan woman, rang up her purchases.

Although Maki was not sure how much the total should have been, she was nevertheless surprised when it came to about $160 Belize (about $80 US). Mentioning her surprise to the owner, the owner breaks down the bill for Maki. It turns out that the postcards alone accounted for over $40 Belize! Although Maki was not sure how much the postcards really should have cost – she went to Law School, not Math School, after all, and she had drunk two tall glasses of planter’s punch before venturing out for postcards – she knew for sure that since each card cost less than $1 Belize dollar, the 30 cards should cost less than $30 Belize. Law School, after all, taught Maki to think in terms of analogies.

As Maki and the shop owner were discussing the price of the postcards, the owner (obviously not believing Maki’s wild tales of multiplication and postcard prices) offered to show Maki how she arrived at her figure of about $43 for the 30 postcards. The owner laid out the postcards and divided them into groups of four, and for each group of four postcards tapped in $6 into the cash register; she also tapped in 75 cents for each of the postcards that did not fit into a group of four.

Earlier in the trip, we had visited the town of Caracol and learned about the Mayan counting system, which is based on the number 20 and uses a series of dots (each representing one unit) and lines (each representing five units) to write numbers. Maki assumed that the saleswoman’s decision to divide the postcards into groups of four was based on ancient Mayan counting techniques. Which would have been fine, except that, apparently, in the Mayan counting system a group of four postcards that cost 75 cents each somehow adds up to $6, rather than $3.

Considering the sophistication of the Mayan calendar, we believe that our shop owner simply did not know how to add. Granted, this is odd if your livelihood consists of owning and running a shop, but hey, the Math calculations always worked out in the shop owner’s favor. We want to clarify that we don’t think she meant in any way to trick us, since she made the same mistake when we returned to buy additional cards (our Math is also not that great and we could not seem to figure out how many postcards we really needed).

Alas, it’s not just the balmy Placencia air that dulls mathematical skills. France, an entire continent away, seems afflicted with an appalling lack of proper accounting procedures. And, like the Mayan shop owner’s calculations, the Math never works out in our favor. French accounting is worse than Mayan Math, though, because it is all fully automated. Absolutely everything here is done by automatic debit straight from your checking account.

As a result, we’ve been overcharged by our bank, which cannot seem to figure out how much our monthly fees really should be, for the last few months (luckily, our account manager is quite nice and manages to get the charges reversed when we complain). The company that manages our apartment building also does not seem to have a solid accounting system, and in November, sent us a bill for thousands of euros of allegedly unpaid rent. And before you start to think (based on our inability to figure out how many postcards we really need) that perhaps we forgot to pay our rent bill, our rent gets debited automatically every month. France Telecom has also managed to make some euros out of us: although we only had phone service with them for about three days before switching to a much cheaper phone provider, they charged us for two full months of service (they have kindly offered to credit us some of the money if we decide to go back to their service in the future).

Like the Mayan shop owner, French institutions are also very nice about fixing their bills when we complain. But it would still be nice if they got the bills right from the get go.

I'm cooler than you because I know Le Chat's cousin

2007-11-28T14:51:00.000Z

Recently, our friends Will and Erica were in town. Walking around the neighborhood with them, they noticed a piece of graffitti on a building just down the road from us which features a cute, grinning cat. I had never noticed it before, but now I see it all around Paris. Here's a picture of the one at Place Jules Joffrin:

Last weekend another friend, Angela, was visiting. We were at Gare du Nord and she noticed a girl carrying a big cardboard cutout of the cute, grinning cat. I went up to the girl and asked her what was the deal with the cat and she said her cousin was the cat's creator. Indeed, her cutout cardboard cat was autographed "Le Chat est mon cousin".

I was excited, kind of like if I had just met some minor celebrity: the cousin of a prolific graffiti artist.

Hey, I don't get out much.

But I know Le Chat's cousin and you don't, so there.

But from now on, I will carry around my camera and try to capture any "Le Chat" spottings to post on this blog. Watch this space!!

P.S. I just saw this website that talks about "Monsieur Chat"

"Toll Free" French style

2007-11-28T14:07:00.000Z

In the States, I, like so many others came to complain about calling customer service numbers where you're made to spend ungodly amounts of time listening to recorded voices telling you to punch on keys, only to then be put on eternal hold and eventually transfered to some call center in Hyderabad where a thickly accented "Bob from Atlanta" will ask you to repeat all the information you just spent the last half hour punching in to the automated system.

But hey, at least they don't make you pay for it.

Here in France, the concept of "toll free" isn't very widespread. Most customer service numbers start with 08. 0800 numbers are free to call (but good luck finding a company that actually has one). Other 08 numbers are special rate.

A few weeks ago, our phone service was cut off. I wanted to call the company to check on the status of the line, but I can't call "special rate" numbers from my cell phone. I tried calling from a public phone on the street, but that wouldn't work, either.

Every time I call IKEA to check whether a sofa we want is in stock yet, I have to call a special rate number that starts with 08.

Virtually every customer service number in France is a special rate number starting with 08. Some of these numbers are "local rate", meaning that theoretically you will be charged the cost of a local call no matter what part of the country you're calling from. Our phone plan actually includes unlimited free calls to all land lines in France, but of course, that doesn't include 08 numbers, so we would still have to pay to call "local rate" numbers.

I can kind of understand customer service helplines making you pay for the call (as long as I get to speak to a human being promptly, I don't really mind). But the French carry this idea to lenghts which seem, well, a little absurd.

Even numbers you call to BUY stuff are special rate. Who is going to want to call one of those?

Some of the more extreme examples are pictured here:

That's right, if you want to order a pizza from Pizza Hut, you don't just call a local number, you call a special rate number that charges 0.15 Euro per minute (more expensive than most international calls! I might as well call and order my pizza fresh from Napoli!)

Even more surreal is the following: a public service ad posted on a cigarette warning label.

"Get help to quit smoking: call 0825 809 810" That's right, 0.15 Euro per minute. Hmmm, maybe I'll just keep smoking! Or I could call my mother in Miami and get her to make me stop smoking: it will cost significantly less than calling the number advertised on the cigarette package.

Oh, and phone bills in France are sent out every two months...so if you're the sort of person who likes to call tech support, just imagine what a nice little surprise might show up in your mailbox after two months.

A smuggler, a lesbian, a racist African, a stowaway and two tourists are in a train compartment...

2007-11-09T15:09:00.000Z

Sorry for the long absence. As some of you may know, we were away in Italy for my brother Seb's wedding, and after we got back the whole tribe descended on Paris and I showed them around.

So, some observations: it's COLD in Italy. I took a bathing suit but no warm jacket. I had to purchase one of questionable quality from a street hawker in Florence. Italians are much better looking and much better dressed than the French: so much for the world capital of Chic and La Mode. On the other hand, are they ever temperamental. I can't count the number of times I was yelled at and told to "va fanculo". The reserve and indifference of the French was a welcome relief on our return.

The title of this post is not the introduction to a bad joke, it is a description of our return journey on the overnight Rome-Paris train. As soon as we take our seats in our couchette compartment, a large group of Africans laden with ridiculously oversized luggage comes into the comparment, places as much of the aforementioned luggage as they can squeeze into our compartment's luggage rack and then disappears to the neighboring compartment to stow the rest of it. Their senior member, who shall from now on be referred to as "el coyote" took his seat in our compartment briefly and then disappeared. Then came the butch French woman who was chatting up a storm, and then a fellow from the Cape Verde islands. Soon after leaving the station, the conductor came around and asked for everybody's tickets and passports (they keep these until you arrive in Paris, supposedly so when the Swiss border officials come on board in the middle of the night, they don't have to wake you up). He asks "el coyote" for his passport and he replies "I don't have one", laughing the whole while. Some sort of discussion ensues outside our compartment and all is apparently resolved.

The Cape Verdean then decides to lie down in one of the top couchettes, scooting a few suitcases out of the way in the process. A while later, el coyote comes back to the compartment, sees the Cape Verdean lying in "his" couchette, and proceeds to kick up a stink. "Hey, what are you doing there? That's MY bunk, look at my ticket. Did you move my bags? Why did you move my bags? How dare you touch my bags without my permission, what's wrong with you? I don't go around touching your bags without your permission". Maki, Butch and myself exchange nervous glances, wondering whether a fight is about to break out and we should scram. Cape Verdean moves out of the bunk. You would think, at this point, that El Coyote would take his place in the bunk he fought so ardently for, but no, he closes the door and goes back to the compartment next door. Cape Verdean man goes on a rant about how "these Africans think they own everything and they should all be sent back to where they came from" (like Cape Verde?) I reach an accord with our cabin mates that if Swiss customs comes and asks us questions about the ownership of the bulky suitcases in our compartment we will all shrug and look the other way.

The train stops in Florence and a stinky young backpacker is added to this bizarre menagerie. He takes his position on one of the top bunks. The train conductor comes to our compartment and asks "anybody boarded in Florence?" Silence. He then looks at Mr. Stinky and asks him: "did you get on at Florence?". Mr. Stinky replies "no". Conductor takes out a piece of paper and starts counting and recounting us. El Coyote wasn't there, so we were only five. His paper said five, so he figured it was all right and left. Is it just me, or does anybody else suspect that Mr. Stinky doesn't have a ticket to ride this train? Mr. Stinky leaves and doesn't return. Cape Verdean tells us a story about how a stowaway bribed the conductor on the train he took to Italy.

In the dead of the night, I am woken by the sound of banging on the door of the next compartment. "Swiss border police, your papers please!" I look out the window and we are stopped at a place called "Brig". El Coyote is nowhere in sight. A loud discussion ensues: "what do you mean no passport? No residence permit? Sorry, you have to get off the train. Hurry up and get all your things, now. The train is leaving." More loud discussion. El Coyote enters and leaves our compartment repeatedly. The train starts moving. I fall asleep.

The following morning, El Coyote is soundly asleep in his bunk. All the bulky suitcases are there. I take a look at the neighboring compartment and all the Africans (along with their bulky suitcases) appear to be there, too. How that was resolved, I have no idea, but apparently nobody ended up in the Brig. At this point, El Coyote is christened thus as Maki and I conclude that he's probably a smuggler of humans rather than goods.

There ends our little adventure. Stay tuned for more craziness when we visit Amsterdam next weekend.

Call me Mr. Bricolage

2007-10-10T17:01:00.000+01:00

I've spent the last few days doing "bricolage", which is the French word for Do-it-yourself. Since our kitchen came stripped, I've had to install kitchen cabinets, shelves, etc, as well as curtain rods for the curtains.

Keep in mind that the walls here aren't drywall, they're solid cement. Well, actually, the walls that should be strong enough to support the weight of cabinets are drywall, and the ones which don't really matter are solid cement, but I digress.

Fortunately, our building's "gardien" (caretaker), who is a nice Portuguese fellow, has lent me his power drill, ladder, saw, etc. The power drill was particularly important: I had to make lots of holes in the cement. We hope the owner doesn't mind if we fill them up with toothpaste when we leave! The gardien also helped me put up the kitchen cabinets and find the right sort of anchors so they could be put on drywall without crashing down from the weight (we hope).

The funny thing is that since I really haven't done that much DIY before moving here, I have now learned a series of French terms for tools and equipment that I simply don't know how to say in English. I imagine someday I'll be at Home Depot at Mall of the Americas asking for chevilles or boulons a expansion. That's OK, the people who work at Home Depot at Mall of the Americas probably don't speak English either. (¿ Y este pa' que me habla en haitiano?)

I must say, though, that after a few hard days' work, I'm quite proud with the results, which I will share with you in these before and after pictures.

French prices are driving me to drink

2007-10-07T20:35:00.000+01:00

Ok. so the dollar is tumbling against the Euro and Europe is not exactly a cheap place to be for those of us living on the modest greenback. Even so, many things in Paris aren't nearly as expensive as one might imagine (while others are just incomprehensively outrageous). There sometimes seems to be little rhyme or reason to the pricing regime here. A few weeks ago I went out to our local vegetable seller to buy some vegetables for dinner and ended up spending close to 30 Euros for some mushrooms and some salad. Turns out these mushrooms (cepes) cost 40 Euros a kilo, and they aren't even the magic kind!!! I figured I must have stumbled upon some rare delicacy along the lines of truffles from Perigord, but then I saw that another vegetable shop around the block sold the very same cepes for only 12 Euros a kilo. What gives? Did I just happen to stumble upon a pirate vegetable seller? Not really: many of his other products were very reasonably priced, some less so than the local Leader Price (cheap-o supermarket).

Why this big difference in prices? I have no idea, but you really need to check the prices before you buy in this town, and it pays to shop around.

Which leads me to the price of eating and drinking out in cafes and such. While a night out on the town in Paris is certainly not cheap, the prices of food in Cafes is not necessarily that expensive compared to the US, when you consider that what you see on the menu is what you pay (taxes are included and you normally don't have to leave big tips, just round up if the service was good). Many Parisian restaurants and cafes have some sort of fixed price deal where you can get appetizers, mains and dessert for a set price (around 11 Euros at the cheaper sort of establishment). The real profit generators seem to be the drinks. Maki and I have noticed that we don't hydrate well when we're out and about, but that's because a small bottle of water or a canned soft drink costs no less than 4 Euros at most places, so it kinda hurts to go get a can of coke or a bottle of Evian when you're thirsty. But here's the funny part: at just about any restaurant or cafe a half-pint of beer or a glass of wine costs about the same, or maybe only 50 cents more. At those kind of prices, why bother drinking water? If you're going to plonk down the cash, you might as well get some alcohol, right? Water??? Fish have sex in water.

So, it seems the pricing system for drinks in this country is driving the population towards alcoholism (or us, in any event).

All moved in

2007-09-30T18:18:00.000+01:00

As you can see from the before and after pictures below, we have arrived.
Friday was our first night spent at our new apartment. Maki had the day off and we rented a van and did our final move from the temporary place. When we were done, we drove up to Ikea and loaded the van up again, this time with Billy bookcases and all the other usual stuff. Driving the van around the Etoile wasn't as bad as I expected. Yes, you just kind of have to be brave and go into the busy roundabout (no traffic lights or anything), but I guess my guardian angel was looking out for me that day and all went without a crash, scratch, or dent. As you can see, I put the missus to work!

¡POR FIN NOS MUDAMOS!

El viernes de noche fue nuestra primera noche en el apartamento nuevo. El viernes Maki se tomó el día libre, nos alquilamos una camioneta y mudamos las últimas cosas del apartamento temporario. Despues nos fuimos a Ikea a cargar la camioneta de cachivaches. Manejar por Paris resultó más facil de lo que temía. En el etoile, hay que tirarse a lo macho, nomás, pero me imagino que mi angel de la guardia estaría trabajando ese día porque fuimos y volvimos sin incidente. Como podrán ver por las fotos "before and after", nuestra presencia ya se siente en el apartamento, que parece más bagdád que paris. Poco a poco iremos organizando. Ya tenemos heladera y cocina. El martes nos llega la lavarropa y el 10 esperamos el horno.
Como podrán ver, la hice trabajar a la doña.

Suburban Bliss

2007-09-24T15:39:00.001+01:00

This last weekend was spent heating up the old credit card. On Saturday, we bought all our electronic equipment for the kitchen (except an oven) at Darty, www.darty.com France's answer to Best Buy. We considered buying some of this equipment used, but then again we'd have to hire movers to deliver each and every single item, which would work out to cost a fortune (not to mention the hassle factor). Darty offers free delivery and apparently good post-sale service, oh, and their prices are no worse than anybody else's.

For those who missed the earlier post in Spanish: apartments here in Paris tend to come with stripped down kitchens: no fridge, no oven, no cabinets even. The tenant has to purchase all these things (or bring them from their former place). This means that when we eventually leave Paris, we'll have to get rid of all this stuff we just spent a fortune buying. Oh, well. I was happy to discover, however, that our apartment does come with a lovely doormat to scuff our shoes before entering the apartment. Very thoughtful of the landlord, but I would have preferred an equipped kitchen. C'est la vie, as the French say.

Anyway, after buying lots of "electromenagers" on Saturday, on Sunday we ventured out to the 'burbs in search of an oven and kitchen cabinets. Where else but Ikea? A train ride plus a bus ride took us out to a nondescript strip mall near Charles de Gaulle airport. From the attached pictures you'll be able to see that Paris isn't just grand boulevards and Haussmann style buildings. The French can do ugly, random suburbia, too.

The Ikea at Roissy is laid out exactly like the one in College Park, MD. Even the cafeteria selling the same Swedish meatballs is located in the same part of the store and looks exactly the same. They sell exactly the same stuff, too. The only thing that reminded me that I was in France and not Maryland was the presence of beer and wine in the aforementioned cafeteria. Dorothy: you're not in Maryland anymore. Furthermore a bottle of Swedish beer or a glass of wine (presumably not Swedish) costs exactly the same as a bottle of water or a coke (more on this in a later post: watch this space). Naturally, I had a Spendrup's with my Swedish meatballs.

Apartamento nuevo, por fin!!

2007-09-21T15:56:00.001+01:00

IMG_1068
Originally uploaded by dmoppett

Bueno, ayer firmamos el famoso "Baille", el contrato de alquiler de nuestro nuevo apartamento.

Esto es un alivio porque aquí, el famoso baille es prueba vital de nuestra existencia y residencia en el país. Hoy Maki ya tuvo que mandar como 5 copias del contrato por fax. La aduana francesa no deja pasar nuestra mudanza sin ella. "La migra" no procesa los papeles de residencia sin ella. (o sea: ya vamos en camino a mejorar nuestro estatus de "espaldas mojadas"). El banco no puede mandarnos nada por correo sin ella. Es mas, hasta la necesito para cancelar mi contrato de teléfono celular en Washington como prueba que me fuí del país y no con la competencia.

Aqui pueden ver una foto desde el balcón.
Si se fijan, esa torrecita blanca que se ve arriba del techo del edificio, es la puntita más alta del Sacre Coeur de Montmartre.

Y aquí pueden ver nuestra cocina para enanos, que no solo es diminuta, sino que no tiene una sola pared ni superficie recta! Esperemos que los electrodomesticos quepan. Como se habrán dado cuenta, la cocina viene sin electrodomésticos y sin estantes. Básicamente viene sin nada. Esto es típico en Paris. Generalmente la gente se lleva todas esas cosas cuando se mudan. Me parece muy poco práctico, ya que los electrodomésticos en Francia no son caros, pero la mano de obra para subirlos a apartamentos (generalmente por escaleras chiquitas o por la ventana) e instalarlos sí lo es.

Bueh. ¡Por suerte hay varios "cafés" en la zona o sea que de hambre no nos vamos a morir!

Nuestro baño también es de lo mas eccéntrico.

La ducha está a como medio metro o más de altura...hay que treparse. Nos prometieron escalones, pero ya veremos cuan "demain" es el "demain" de los Parisinos. (me parece que ya andamos por apres-demain) Me pregunto como haría la gente que vivía en el apartamento antes: seguro que eran alpinistas. Como veran, el baño tiene un "look" de lo mas moderno y minimalista, medio japonés con piedritas en el piso de la ducha. Nada que ver con el resto del apartamento y sus espejos y estufas de leña (no funciona ninguna, pero son un lindo toque decorativo).

The mystery of Parisian merde

2007-09-17T05:55:00.000+01:00

Paris is a very chien-friendly city. People here can take their dogs into stores, banks, and restaurants (and, we dare say, the dogs understand more French than we do). Parisians seem to prefer small breeds, like yorkies, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, lahsa apsos, and even the stereotypical poodle. And no wonder, considering that the size of the typical Parisian apartment is about the size of a California closet.

Although we both love dogs, we dont' like stepping into merde. Sadly, there are no "poop and scoop" laws in these parts. Some neighborhoods have posted signs stating, J'aime mon quartier, je ramasse (I love my neighborhood, I clean up), like the one below. Most Parisians, however, seem to barely notice these signs exist. Indeed, Parisians pay about as much attention to these signs as CDG customs officials pay to "tourists" bringing their entire household into the country in oversized suitcases.

Walking around the city, though, we've noticed a strange phenomenon: despite the small size of dogs here, these itty bitty dogs have enormous crottes! Can someone explain the following to us?

-MD

Estereotipos

2007-09-15T16:31:00.000+01:00

Uno llega a este país con cierta idea de como son las cosas, o como deben ser, o como uno se imagina que son. Por supuesto que al pasar el tiempo (aunque solo sean dos semanas), uno se va llevando sorpresas.

Primero: todos sabemos que los Parisinos son arrogantes, maleducados y poco amistosos; que detestan a los turistas y a los extranjeros en general. Pues, desde que llegamos todo el mundo nos ha tratado muy bien. Nos ha parado gente en el ómnibus a ver si estabamos perdidos y necesitabamos ayuda. Hasta los notorios mozos de los cafés nos han charlado con buenisima onda. Hablar un poco el idioma ayuda, sin duda, pero igual en la zona donde nos estamos quedando (que a veces parece una especie de ghetto anglosajón), nos hablan en inglés con gusto y hasta en español a veces. Ahora eso sí, les importan mucho los modales y la formalidad. Cuando he entrado en tiendas y he empezado "Pardon, madame, est-ce-que vous avez de...¨, me interrumpen y me dicen ¨bonjour, monsieur¨, como haciendome acordar que no las saludé.

Segundo: los Parisinos son todos flacos porque comen comida sana en porciones chicas. Juajaa.... Es cierto que no hay tanta gente gorda aquí como en los USA, pero los gorditos (y gorditas) no son tan escasos como uno se imagina. Eso de las porciones chicas es un cuento, también. Cada vez que hemos salido a comer por ahí nos hemos ido bien, pero bien satisfechos. Claro, nada como Cheesecake Factory, pero igual son generosas las porciones. El otro día me comí un choucroute que hubiera alcanzado como para tres. El couscous de la noche anterior casi no lo pude terminar (imaginense: ¡yo!).

Y eso de comer sano, bueh. Ya saben que la comida francesa puede ser bastante cremosa y grasosa. Aparte, no es por nada que esta ciudad esta llena de McDonalds, su imitación local que se llama Quick, y unas sandwicherias Turcas que hacen unos Shawarmas grasientos enormes. No es ningún complot del capitalismo yanqui ni turco. La explicación es muy sencilla: ¡a los franceses les encanta! Los McDo están siempre llenos y se ve pilas de gente sentada comiendo sus Big Mac en el jardín de Luxemburgo. También les encanta Starbucks y cuanta otra gringada haya flotando por ahí.

Ah, y acá tienen dulce de leche. Hoy comí un helado de ¨confiture de lait¨y no es excactamente igual, pero bastante parecido al nuestro.

-DM

Ecosse 1 France 0

2007-09-14T09:20:00.001+01:00

We're in the middle of a sporting bonanza here in Paris. The Rugby World Cup is going on, having brought some remarkably well behaved rugger fans from around the world. It hasn't caused nearly as much excitement as the soccer match between Scotland and France the night before last. It seems like the entire male population of Caledonia descended upon Paris to cheer their team on. I have been in Scotland before, but never have I seen so many kilts and tartans as I have in Paris over the last few days. The bottom of the Eiffel tower seems to have been ground zero for the Pictish invasion:

It's clear that these lads believe that you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning. Oh, and I want to be the importer of Timberland shoes in Scotland, as they seem to have become a part of the traditional tribal costume by now.

But hey, at least those unruly Pictish hordes have some spirit, and they know how to kick back and have some fun. Which leads me to wonder, where are all the French fans?? From the proportion of fans on the streets the past couple of days, anybody would have thought Scotland was playing Equatorial Guinea. Do the French not care whether their team wins or loses? Or are they too buttoned up to sing and cheer on the streets?

-DM

Apartment search

2007-09-10T09:34:00.000+01:00

We've spent two long and tiring days looking at apartments. We saw roughly 20 apartments in different parts of the city, mostly concentrating our search in the 9th 10th and 18th arrondissements. We were accompanied the whole time by our agent, and at each apartment had to meet up with the landlord's agent, so don't let it be said that French real-estate agents don't work hard for their living.

Most of the apartments we saw were charming turn-of-the century apartments with wooden floors and some even with fireplaces. We also saw some more modern ones with cheap wall-to-wall carpeting, but we figure if we're living in Paris we might as well live Parisian style.

We've narrowed down our favorites to three:

Even though the last one is a bit out in the suburbs, it is our favorite of the three because it has lots of mirrors, plenty of closet space and a nice view over a park with fountains. We heard a rumor, however, that the previous occupants were beheaded by a mob, so we're a little concerned about the safety of the neighborhood.

(Y para los que entienden de estas cosas: que conste que en el Versailles de Paris no hay ni arroz moro, ni café con leche, ni pastelitos de guayaba)

Nous sommes arrivés

2007-09-07T17:06:00.000+01:00

Well, we're finally here in Paris: our home for the next few years.

On arrival everything has gone smoothly, aided by the universal WD-40 of corruption, which is always an encouraging sign!

Mostly we're thrilled to finally be on our own again, considering that we've spent most of the few months that followed our wedding sleeping on the Aerobed in Maki's parents' house...always a good way to start off married life.

Ok, so back to the corruption: for starters, we showed up way too early to check in our bags at the Miami airport (they're not supposed to take them more than 4 hours before the flight). Our bags were also overweight. Oh, and by the way, you're not supposed to do curbside check-in for international flights. Fortunately, we WERE in Miami, where there's no problem that can't be solved with a smile and $40. (if you can't muster up a smile, the $40 alone shold do the trick). So, off we went, trying not to think too hard about what other sorts of things can be bribed onto aircraft at MIA.

Next on our arrival in Paris; where we should have been interrogated, searched and possibly deported, we were waved through by some very bored looking officials. Note to smugglers and illegal aliens: Charles de Gaulle terminal 2A: you heard it here first!!

My fears about kafkaeske bureaucratic catch 22's have proved unfounded. It undoubtedly helps to have "the professionals" behind one. All it takes is to know what form you have to fudge in order to satisfy whatever requirement. Luckily, plenty of people have been willing to help us do the fudging. This is a place where it pays to know people who know people.

The last couple of days we have been touring Paris with a relocation consultant whose job it is to help us find an apartment. We've seen about 20 apartments. Apparently, laws in France are very friendly to tenants and it's very difficult to get evicted. For this reason, landlords are understandably picky about who they rent to and will require all sorts of things like cosigners, bank guarantees, etc. Some will flat-out refuse to rent to foreigners (yes, go ahead, blame it all on us foreigners, everybody else does.). Having the help of our consultant is apparently very important.

For instance, landlords won't rent to you unless you can show proof of a bank account that they can debit for the rent. Banks generally won't open an account for you unless you have proof of address in the form of a lease agreement or a utility bill (utility bills are apparently crucial pieces of identification in France and are required for all sorts of transactions). So the question arises: how does one go about obtaining either a lease or a bank account without the other?

The answer is: somebody has to be willing to fudge some papers for you somewhere along the way. If you have relocation consultants being paid to help you, that's no problem. If you're some poor sucker who just showed up here, then you'd better go out and make some friends very quickly if you don't want to end up living under a bridge.