Sight bites

Funny thing I saw today down in Ye Olde Red Light Districte (Pigalle). I go there every couple of weeks to have a friendly chat with the lady taking charge of my unemployment situation. When you sign up for the dole, you actually have to sign up at two places - one is the Assedic, who are responsible for the payments, the recorded telephone messages to tell you no-one is available to take your call, and the curiously lengthy delays in processing your monthly payment. The other is the ANPE, who are responsable for training, advertising work placement and personal job searching assistance (which is in turn outsourced to another service provider). Are you following? Good.
So I had the option of signing up for personal assistance, which I decided I might as well do than not, especially as the monsieur gets fidgety when I ask him to look over my application letters.

'No, you can't say that', 'What are you trying to say there? I don't understand'
'Oh I don't know, write this instead' (writes some terrifically convoluted passage)
Me: 'er, could you make it shorter and less complex?'
'I give up! I don't know, I can't tell you why you can't write it the way you did, you just can't, can I go now?'
Me: 'Can we at least finish the first paragraph?'

Anyway, I figured someone who was being paid to look at my cv wouldn't develop a sudden need to go and buy a loaf of bread in the middle of our discourse, and the meetings are actually quite cool and laid-back. Today's session, for example, was about 85% chitchat and 15% brass tacks.

Anyway, it was on my way to the red light post office that I saw this amusing transaction. I don't know why this couple caught my eye - maybe because they were speaking English. At first I thought this guy was being led around by a friend who knew the area. Then;
Lady: 'Let's just stop at this club for a minute'
Gent: 'Ummm, well, I'm not really sure'
Lady: 'Don't worry, just for a minute ok?' *Handshake* Look I guarantee you it's fine, we'll just quickly stop here'
Gent: (famous last words) 'ok, but I'm not spending any money'
(Look up: Peep show/ Live Acts/ Kiss your cash goodbye)
Yeah, you show her who's boss tough guy! Ha! I laughed so loud I inadvertently caught the attention of a magnet (you know, the ones that try and draw you into their establishment) - and had to quickly readjust my 'do not mess with me or I will poke you in the eye' makeup.

So this other strange thing I saw, I was walking past a shop on one of my local street when I spied with my little eye, something beginning with 'that's one of my photographs'
The local Kodak guy, doing a bit of 'get your digital camera shots developed here' advertisment had 'borrowed' FOUR

of my pictures (out of a total of five) for his flyer. First off it caught me by surprise, seeing my pictures unexpectedly like that, and I popped in to say 'hey, these are my pictures!'. Though after getting home I did ponder more over the fact that each of those pictures is copyrighted on Flickr, and technically he's taken these pictures without permission and is using them for commercial purposes. But on the other hand it's only a small business and I get my pictures developed there.

So I'm not totally sure about what to do about it - I decided perhaps the next time I go in that I'll let him know that he's used copyrighted images, and to ask permission next time - and to get his assurance not to distribute the images either.

Speaking of disregarding legal responsibility, some moron broke my mobile phone - not actually mine, a friends that was loaned to me that I had intended to return this weekend. It was a Saint Ouen flea market salesmen (I was buying a battery) who dropped it on the pavers, and it's been acting up ever since (and the markets are only open on weekends, and a full of notorious ripoff merchants and 'fell off the truck' salesmen). Between people ripping off my photos, breaking my phone, and the next door cybercafé sleaze who tried to get my phone number when I went to print up my cv, made me wait 20 minutes for a free computer and didn't bother to inform me that his printer had no ink....I'm staring to wear my molars out. Fixed the printer problem buy yelling at my boyfriend ('How am I expected to work under these conditions?!?' ....'er, let's go buy a printer shall we?'), the phone by switching batteries (ingenius), and I'll book a dental appointement next week...

tripe and trivialities

Lille Horloge
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

It's been at least a week since I've had a decent nights sleep, the heat had been oppressive, and I have not stopped missing my precious overhead fans. As another Australian has been quick to clarify, it's not the HEAT that we are having trouble tolerating, it's the pollution, the reflected heat off the cement, the stale air that doesn't move. The only thing that makes air circulate in the greater Parisien region is the fumes coming out of exhausts.

So when I woke up on Thursday morning, to the sight of a pinkish brown haze out of my kitchen window, I figured a long weekend out of town might be in the best interests of my lungs.
With the heat and humidity becoming heavier, and a thickening dark cloud covering the sky in a very Mordor like fashion, we got a taste of the flipside of the heatwaves....storms. A decent tropical style storm. Except this isn't the tropics...and the water conduits are not designed for a months rainfall in 40 minutes. Roads flooded, cars became immersed up to their headlights. We were already on the way out of town when all hell broke loose. A combination of peak rainfall and peak hour. Water cascaded down stairs into metro stations. Traffic was blocked in every sense.

Well, onto the North. Where - can you believe it - it was even hotter. 41°C on Saturday. But cleaner at least.
Stayed once again at the pseudo inlaws. Lovely people, really. But Flemish down to their little meat and potato-toes. Call me finicky, but when its 36°C, give me a tomato and a carrot.Do not drown me beneath a barrage of creamy sauces, meat, potatoes and various other stodge.
One night at a restaurant - perfect occasion to order a salad, finally. Now I was the only person at the table that seemed to consider vegetables as a food group - but how did they foil my perfect enjoyment of my luscious salad? They ordered tripe that's what. THREE.OF.THEM.
Really, I'm fairly open minded when it comes to food, but I draw the line at fried pigs intestines. Well, nothing to do but smile weakly, discreetely cover my nose against the wafting sewer odours, and chomp down on my lettuce.

In pursuit of more tasteful cultural activities, we went to see the 'festival of the Giants' in Lille. Enormous wickerwork creations - every town or village has their local giant personnage, and it's a tradition dating back to the middle ages. Several times a year, they dust themselves down, and participate in any one of several regional cultural events.

But for now, back to repairing the nutritional damage of this past weekend, wait for the next set of storms (later today), and track down a nearby swimming pool.

A mind field

It was really great to switch back to speaking english for a bit. Kind of like a vacation for the brain. Rattling on at 100 miles an hour, not wondering when I'd stumble across a missing adjective, awkward sentence construction, whether that was meant to be a feminine or masculine plural (more difficult to disguise than my generic gender 'leh', which, if you say it quick enough and softly enough, can pass for either). Once you get into plural adjectives though, there's less room for bluffing.

While all of that stuff is a bit stressful for the language centre, every now and then it provides a great source of amusement - for others (it's character building to be laughed at right?) This mostly happens with words that SOUND similar, or have an english equivalent which SEEMS logical (faux amis - false friends)

Which has resulted in the following examples:

orteil - toe
ortie - nettle
As in 'toe tea is a good blood purifier'

preservatif - condom
conservateur - preservative
As in 'The amount of condoms in food is really worrying'
(note, said during a date...)

une ride - wrinkle
un rideau - curtain
As in 'we need to buy some wrinkles'

London Calling

Funky ride
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

So in an effort to get away from my partner for a few days, blow some cash and hang out with a girlfriend (all for the sake of boy-girl diplomatic relations...what with this heat and both of us now loitering round the apartment *teeth grinding*), I decided to take a quick jaunt over the channel and spend the weekend in London.

Ahhh, London. Where people apologise for the mere possibility that they might have almost got in your way, where drivers stop to let you cross the road even if you don't have right of way...Makes a nice change from getting perpetually whacked in the solar plexus by enormous briefcases carried by completely oblivious businessmen, and run down on pedestrian crossings when the walking man is green.

(This could be a gripey post, someone downstairs is renovating an apartment, and I've had a constant whack whack whack whack background noise all day)

London was great though, we had brilliant weather (the start of the latest heatwave), got a sunburn, burnt a hole in my wallet, visited the markets, went to Kew gardens, watched BBC, went 'how much?!' a lot, spoke nothing but english for 2 and a bit days. Lovely.

Got back, happily exhausted, only to find Ben had locked us out of the apartment (we only have one 'uncopiable' key, and the inevitable 'locking it in the apartment' finally occurred). Ideally I'd have preferred this didn't have to happen after I'd spent 8 hours on a bus though...(post travel serotonin wearing off as need for shower and bathroom facilities becomes more and more pressing).

So after a call to a locksmith, an industrial strength grinder, an annoying downstairs neighbour looking up at us through her door, window, window, door, clutching her child like WWIII was about to start (call it revenge for the number of times the little person has woken us up at 3am), a conversation with the across the hall neighbour whose boyfriend wanted to scale the wall over to our open kitchen window (ie kill himself), and about 2 hours, we finally got inside. Luckily we were able to do the standard 'the burglars tried to get in' declaration and claim it on insurance, because I don't want to scare non francophile readers into knowing how much that sort of business costs. But it's at least as much as a plane ticket to the other side of the world (always a viable plan B if you couldn't face the cost I guess).

The only other major news is that there isn't any. We're still in major indecisiveness territory about where we're going and what we're doing. Toulouse is still an idea, but so are a few other locations - including Bens hometown of Lille (which I also quite like, though the weather isn't exactly south of France). In the end, I probably will refrain from discussing anything more on the subject until we have made a firm decision.

And finally

London Big Ben
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

Off to Londonium this weekend

Glee!

How many MORE of my favourite things can possibly be combined in one event? Roald Dahl, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp! Oh the torture of impending release dates.

Don't touch that, you never know where it's been

I caught a shrew!
I just thought I'd share that with everybody.
Actually, someone's pet cat caught it first. I just swooshed in to do some rescuing and exclaim over it's extreme cuteness and pointy noseness and such.

This is about as exciting for French countryside residents as saying you caught a mouse, but it was a shrew, and I'd never seen a real live shrew before.

That is all.

June in the Dunes

Dunes
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

Feels like I haven't blogged for a while, nothing much to discuss recently. But this past weekend was a fun trip up to the northern coast to hang out at the seaside(ish) apartment in Merlimont (if you can't find it on a map, it's near Touquet - or Boulogne if you can't find Touquet)

After the always-fun exercise of getting Ben out of the apartment and into the car, and removing yet another parking ticket from under the windscreen wiper, and getting onto the highway, getting lost, and after the unfailing interrogation of 'did I pack this and that and the toothbrushes' (and after inevitably turning back because he's forgotten something), and geting lost again, we arrived several hours later at the little town of Merlimont

(which, for all future reference, is where his parents have bought a holiday unit - in one of those detestable model village home affairs that always has an artificial lake in the middle)

We spent a large part of the time in the neighbouring town of Touquet,

a resort town that was once particularly fashionable with the English upper crust (post WWI) and has the dubious honour of being the place where PG Wodehouse was arrested by ze Germans in WWII. Nowadays it's an overpriced tourist resort whose highrise beachside apartments and nighttime flashing neon signs drown out the charming belle epoque style buildings. But it's worth a tour nevertheless.
Our night was spent enjoying a sunset

trek along the dunes, a drink at an overpriced pub playing bad 80's music, and a meal at an overpriced restaurant serving bad italian table wine (which we sent back after failing to find any alcohol content in it whatsoever - the waiter placated us by saying it was a hit with English tourists. Lesson 1 in how to placate French diners; insult the English).

Sunday was more of the same - with more beach and dune exploring and less time in town - oh, and another parking ticket (!!) because contrary to pretty much everywhere else in the Western world, Touquet (who have decided they're not quite rich enough yet), only charge for parking ON THE WEEKENDS, and not on weekdays. And how many people - lured by icecreams and carousel music - get caught out, do you think...?

Oh, and in very mundane yet exiting news, I drove back. My first time behind the wheel in a year (!), and my first time driving on the opposite side of the road. Ben was quite calm (despite being a bit driving instructor-ish, ahem, I have been driving for longer than him, nyarnyanyar) - though driving though Paris' outer districts was a little nerve-racking, I must admit. Still, it's another step towards integration - once I start using my hasard lights as a method to override any illegal double parking manoeuvre and honking my horn at anyone who dares execute a left hand turn into a side road in front of me - even if they're indicating, then, then I'll be the real deal

Not a lot really

It's actually been a slow few days, and I must shamefully admit I have not been profiting at all from the sunshine nor life in Paris. The thing about living so close to such a famous city is that there's something of a self-imposed 'pressure' to be constantly taking advantage of that fact. Especially when one decides to blog their adventures online...call it performance anxiety.
Even though I have been a hermit, there have been some developments in the works. To answer the Toulouse question (in case you're wondering), Monsieurs job interview didn't bear fruit - pity.
While I don't want to go too much into detail regarding his work and personal life, I will say that here in Paris he works for an IT outsourcing business (ie they post IT professionals to work on temporary projects with other companies). Lately (for the last year), he's been getting the run around - from having no work for quite a long while last year (though he still got his salary) to being posted to a real bitch of a project since January - long hours, stressful workload, no payrise, and not exactly his field of specialty either. The job was starting to have consequences with our relationship also, as the stress of the job had caused changes in his personality - changes that I was having trouble absorbing as I have my own particular issues and worries - those that come with a change of country, lifestyle and language (and limited financial freedom).
Last week he found out he was being taken off the project and replaced with someone else (as was his senior associate, who actually suffered a nervous depression during his 6 months on the job) - which has actually been a great relief for both of us. We're taking the opportunity to make a break with our life here and move to a more regional area - probably Toulouse after all, as we both liked it a lot. Monsieur might go back to studying, and as for me - I'll figure something out.

In the meantime I'm working on my 20th reiteration of my motivation letter...migrainus merdum.

Went to see Star Wars last weekend, here's what I learned;
* Wookies are from Vietnam
* The effects of the incredible instant vacuum caused by a window breaking in a spacecraft can be negated by hanging on real tight
* Darth Vader is actually a cultural metaphor for George Bush ('if you're not with me, you're against me')
* It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Disposable Society

One thing that gets on my nerves even more than those stupid appliances that are designed so that if one tiny very breakable piece actually breaks then the whole contraption is buggered and not worth or able to be repaired, is that fact that once this inevitably happens, there is often no way to 'ecologically' dispose of it.

By comparison - yesterday, on my way to do the volunteering thing, I came across a couple of shock value posters of strangled dolphins and slaughted leopards as part of a publicity campaign recently started by the Nicolas Hulot Foundation (ecologist) - to startle people into being a little less energy hungry round the house, switching off lights and fixing leaking taps and the like. So I get to stare at an an artists rendition of a dolphin on a living room floor strangled to death by an electrical cord of a light that's not been switched off, while I am crammed into an overcrowded method of public transport, which is taking me to the WWF headquarters to do volunteer work, (where I get to see one of their PAID employees casually flicking her cigarette butt onto the street), and unable to block out the sounds of the squawling baby behind me because a tiny little plastic tab off my walkman which used rechargeable batteries has snapped off, and I have to now chuck it in the bin because big business is unwilling to take responsibility for disposing of the waste it helps create.

So I damn well hope you took the effort to recycle your rubbish today. Grumble grumble. ;p

ps; June 6 is World Environment Day, Be nice!

Who's that hiding in the bushes?

Oh, I nearly forgot, I unknowingly participated in a new and original experience while I was sitting in the Toulouse Botanic Gardens over the weekend.
We were sitting under the sun, enjoying some cool drinks, when I look over and see this guy slowly walking towards us, bandaged head, two bandaged arms - one of them braced directly out in front of him. There he was, inching zombie like along the park garden paths on a Saturday afternoon. He catches my eye and I make an involuntary *thats gotta hurt* type wince before returning my gaze somewhere more discreet. He passes behind me, and I can't help it. The microsecond image of his zombie gait is playing over in my brain like a B grade film, and I turn my head and start silently shaking with laughter. Moments later, I hear shouts of alarm,and then indignation coming from our neighbouring table. I look over and realise the guy is now on the ground. At first I thought he'd fallen over and, I hate to say it, I'm laughing even MORE by now. Though in my defence I'm laughing more at the ridiculousness that someone could actually BE that unlucky. Ok, fine, I'm mean if you prefer. Then it seems that he didn't actually fall, he was pushed! And the culprit is walking gradually away (a little too gradually? a little too casually?) Hmmm, 'something does not compute' I say to myself as I do some tennis match type head turning. Madame at the next table is indignant and sends her husband off to apprehend the evildoer!
Surprise! The guy gets up off the ground, unharmed...
Smile, you're on candid camera ;)

No time Tou-louse

toulouse capitoleum
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

ok, that will only be funny if you're a Monty Python fan, but I couldn't resist.

Well, one weekend and a lot of kilometres later, and I can now say I've seen at least a little of southwestern France.

Leaving late on Thursday night, we drove the 700 odd kilometres down to Albi (a town just out of Toulouse where we had a free bed waiting). Arriving at around 2am, we didn't see much of the town, but opening the shutters to a hot southern sunny day, we were greeted with a very green view of the river Tarn, and more than a little jealous that this wasn't OUR daily view!

Albi is a town of about 50,000 people that is known for its massive ancient cathedral, and of being where Toulouse Lautrec is from. When we weren't in Toulouse, we spent time exploring the medieval streets, red brick buildings, restaurants, and surrounding river Tarn (full of fish, frogs and birds).


Monsieur had his job interview Friday, so we'll see what the ensuing days bring, but I'd be happy to move down there. Toulouse (otherwise known as la ville rose) is a vibrant small city - with a large student population (1/4 of the 400,000 residents), rivers, canals, parks and characteristic rose brick buidlings. The atmosphere was a pleasant mix of Barcelona, Nice, Amsterdam and a little of chez moi back in Darwin. Still taking things as they come, I won't pin all my hopes on a move there, but it's definitely on the list of places I could live.

on yer bike

retro metro
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

My boyfriend'€™s been a little bit cursed by the bicycle gods lately. My recent (as of 3 months ago) fancy that I most absolutely have a bike seemed to have an infectious effect on the male party of this couple, and while I was still busy pouting over which week I'd be able to afford the expense, he dashed off and bought himself a nice shiny new two-wheeled transport (just to spite me, according to my own cynical philosophy).

Now, while we both bought our bikes at the same shop, I've had a little more luck with mine (touch wood...dammit, no, that's chipboard...gah! so is that, aha! a wooden elephant statue, whew! lucky...). First off, within about 3 hours of usage, one of the bike pedals came off. Unfortunately because the place of purchase was located in the major business district of La Defense (read my previous bicycle article re the horrors of trying to get in and out of this area on a bike) we had to trickily arrange it into the back of his small car, in much the same manner as those rope and wood puzzles that you buy at markets just so you can taste a little insanity. Two days and 3 hours of bike usage later, the pedal broke again. He had no option but to leave it chained up inside the perimeter of his place of work until he could fetch it with his car. Of course, the obvious ensued, and it was stolen. Karma curse them with a shitty bike I say. So,€“ being a man, he bought a better, flasher, shinier one (with theft insurance) and immediately began beligerently pestering me to join him in trying to kill himself in Parisien traffic.

So this weekend we took a very long hike up to the forest of Saint Germain, which, while being a very lovely forest, involved quite a lot too much road and not nearly enough forest time to make it a calm green destressing kind of experience that a forest visit should be. We actually had to try twice, because on the first day, his chain broke! (really, how much luck can one person get?). But it did mean that we tried a completely unexpected route along the bords of the Seine (a river whose borders change remarkably during its traverse through the greater Parisien region). Finding a small rarely used backwater track through a lot of charming shrubbery, we were soon confronted by a different side of life in the outer districts. That of several gypsy encampments, in disused condemned overgrown buildings, and ramshackle dwellings of their own construction. But what was really an eyeopening experience was arriving at the base of a massive double highway spanning the Seine river. Traffic 24 hours a day; giant concrete pillars and the noise amplified by the natural amphitheatre form of the surrounding land. There, in the middle of these two vast and trunkless legs of stone was a forgotten building, several stories high, whose top stories were mere metres from the base of this colossal double highway bridge. The residents couldn’t have been renting such a rat infested monstrosity in any legal sense of the term, river views or not, and in the end I didn'€™t really know what to make of it at all. Forgotten? Conveniently overlooked? or not worth the effort..., whatever the case, quite a few cars parked around the vicinty were not altogether shabby. It was a bit of a puzzle all round.

Now in other news, my dear Monsieur, while having somehow annoyed the bike dieties, does have a job interview in Toulouse this Friday. So this weekend will be spent in the southwestern part of France, one of the major geographical bits I haven'€™t yet seen, and who knows? Maybe this roving reporter will shortly be changing location...?

The regime of the regime*

curvy
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

Mince! si seulement j'étais mince!

One thing the French are very good at doing, is reminding you of how very fat you are and how you should be doing something about it. Which is difficult to reconcile with the other thing they're very good at, which is the art of food. In addition to the fact that they quite shamelessly intersperse ads for chocolate inbetween their multitudinous get slim ads, it's enough to drive anyone barmy.

The directive to slim down is, of course, standard in all westernised countries. What France excels in is the sheer QUANTITY of messages. Coming into summer season, as we shortly will be (tomorrow , so I'm led to believe), the advertising gears have been shifted into overdrive, and ones evening session of telly watching can quickly degenerate into an aggressive display of cellulite free bottoms and inner thighs that know what a breeze feels like. Now, in Australia, the large part of this advertising is directed towards magasine sales, subscribed dietary programs or late night infomercials ('I stuck my finger into this plug socket and lost 58 pounds!' Yes! You too can lose inches off your waistline and years off your life expectancy simply by ordering our special patented finger socket adaptor for the special price of $299 + $75 miscellaneous unexplained charges. Watch those calories fry!)

In France, by contrast, a large part of this marketing is directed towards actual snakeoil products; lotions, potions, creams (try as you like, you will never convince me that rubbing anything short of an organic solvent onto my legs will remove centimetres of diameter off them), and - quite hilariously - water. Diet water. I need to sit down for a moment and mentally digest that one. Most of this overpriced foolishness is what you come across in Australian health food shops, whereas in France it's sold in the first refuge for the hypochondriac - the pharmacy. Now here's another thing I've not yet explained about France - the sheer abundance of pharmacies; green neon crosses flashing signs of a saviour promising sanctuary from the evils of owning a body.

Every year, the health system refunds a staggering amount of presciptive medicine (though they managed to save themselves a packet last year by encouraging people to buy generic medicines) and French citizens happily continue to stock up on any number of remedies, for real or imagined problems. In fact the last time I went to the pharmacy - the sales assistant seemed quite puzzled and irritated by my reluctance to buy only one product and my dogged refusal to buy every single product he was recommending to me. I suspected for a moment that he was going to refuse to sell me my anything at all by way of punishment.

Now if you'll excuse me I have an unexplained urge to go and eat a bar of chocolate.
* regime(fr): What the above sentence expressly forbids one should do.

Over the borderline

One minute it’s café au lait…and the next you’re in Belgium.
One thing I find startlingly difficult to get the hang of, is not so much the sudden changing of countries (and the fact that all the signs suddenly switch language during a microtime where you've been preoccupied with cleaning your fingernails), but the total absence of fanfare when crossing a border in these parts. In Australia, by contrast, there are many big signs in place to WELCOME YOU TO A DIFFERENT PART OF AUSTRALIA. WHERE THE NUMER PLATES ARE A DIFFERENT COLOUR!!!!AND EVERYTHING IS THE SAME!!! THOUGH OUR POLITICAL PARTIES MIGHT HAVE MORE QUESTIONABLE MORALES THAN YOURS! OR VICE VERSA!! WE MIGHT ALSO HAVE A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF GIANT SCULPTURES OF STRANGE OBJECTS FOR NO APPARENT REASON!

That said, if you enter any other country via a major highway (or England via any form of transportation including a flying broomstick) you will be treated to a giant sign that makes you feel special. And if you’re extra lucky, you’ll get sniffed by a customs dog (not the time to play friendly with the puppy, just for some general travellers advice). Which reminds me of that time that we all got hauled off a bus and had to remove our luggage to be ceremoniously sniffed. Not so much an extraordinary event in itself, but you’ve got to wonder how seriously they’re taking their job when you get the following situation:

‘Has your bag been checked by the dog?’
‘Yes’
‘And there was nothing in it, you’re not carrying any drugs?’ (ok so I haven’t washed my hair for a while, but it’s not that serious)
‘No’
‘Really? Are you certain? Because if you’re carrying any drugs you’d better let me know’
‘Well your dog doesn't seem interested'
‘ok, that’s fine, off you go’

(Oh wait hold on, there was that HUGE bag of cocaine, but since my bag has been passed over 3 times and you haven’t bothered to notice that I’m still standing here tapping my foot impatiently, and because you subsequently interrogated me anyway, and because you then simply took my word for it, I’m going to keep that piece of information to myself)

Anyway, where was I before I got sidetracked into pretending I was a drug smuggler..? Ah yes, Belgium. Rattling along through northern rural france, a few fields, some cows, and suddenly you’ve got the Belgian version of, well, exactly the same thing. Except that it’s in Dutch. I find the Dutch language frankly hilarious, and spend ages amusing myself with the similarities between this language and English, the way I imagine it was spoken 800 years ago. Like Warme Drankken, translates to Hot Drinks. Funny no?

Anyway, I went to Belgium to consume some of their caloriffic food and giggle at the menus(Flemish food, for the uninitiated, is mostly various forms of potatoes and dead animal. Vegetarians be warned).

Half Baked Goods

I have a friend (in fact, I luckily have several, all very fascinating and mildly deranged individuals) who, in addition to causing me to run up a huge phonebill this month, used to have a particular habit of asking me to translate random phrases into French. Not regular, useful expressions, mind. Not the sort of things that you would ask an old gent in the street while squinting at a phrasebook. No, they were more along the lines of what you’d say to a judge if you were angling for a ‘clinically insane’ verdict to get you off the hook.

‘What’s French for “Kill the Big Pink Pig?”’
‘What’s French for “Mesopotamian wall hanging?”’
‘What’s French for “Pineapple leaves?”’

(ok, two I made up because my memory’s a little frayed, but the first one is true, I swear)

Which begs the real question;

What’s French for Self-Raising Flour?
(I’m serious)

Honestly, I’m standing there in the baking goods aisle looking at a range of numerically coded flours, with not one of them hinting it might have a trace of bicarb. Do no French recipes call for self-raising flour? (no, not yeast laced flour, that’s different again). I have several recipes that use this product in my startlingly adventurous and anally categorised recipe book. But I do have bicarb, and regular flour. So for the uninformed, 1c flour: 1t bicarb, and Bob’s your transgender aunt.

Because I don’t want to spend any more of this blog entry discussing flour, that would be much too dull, I’ll do my best to make last weeks visit to the dole office sound as interesting as possible. Despite an extreme moral and psychological resistance to the idea of going on the dole, the only other option is not having any more money in a couple of months or going back to doing crappy time wasting work when I need to be working (even for a pittance, or temporarily for free) towards my career.

I was called up to the empty waiting room, nothing but long corridors of blue doors all firmly shut and not a person in sight.
‘You know, this hall of blue doors setup you’ve got here is pretty creepy actually’ I tell the lady who is processing my dossier, after being summoned to her office by a big red number (Standard greetings are just so passé don't you think?)
According to my existing on-file information, I was born in Bulgaria, which is interesting to discover. But on hearing of my actual birthplace, I was peppered with questions throughout my entire appointment (in that rapid-fire, bullet-like, social services sort of way)
‘And have you lived in Australia’
‘What’s it like there?’
‘Is it better than here? It’s better I guess. Is the quality of life better? Do you like it here? Which is better? Is there an agreement between Australia and England? Can you live in England? Have you tried living in England? I’d like to go to Australia, ça fait rever…
‘Do they have unemployment benefit system in Australia? Does it pay well? (eh?) What’s the unemployment system like? ’

(to respond) ‘A dark hole of despair and depression that serves to crumble your morale into a tiny thousand pieces so that you will be grateful for the first underpaid shitty job that comes your way’

‘Oh, that’s bizarre. Well, it’s not like that in France. Still, you won’t be unemployed long, you need to do x, y, and z and make another appointment when you’ve got the rest of your paperwork ready. Good day’

Well, that was that was quick and painless….and…odd

Heat wave

Montmarte resto
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

Wouldn't you know it, I go and buy myself the first bunch of flowers since arriving in France and suddenly we have a mini heat wave. Poor wilty flowers.
I could berate myself for having such poor skills for coping with the heat, for someone who has lived a long time in the tropics, but the sudden jump in temperature by about 10 degrees was enough to make anyone rethink their choice in quilt thickness. But it's a foretaste to how well this apartment will shield us from the summer sun. I'm optimistic that because we have windows on all sides, and are high up enough to get a breeze and be less bothered by radiated traffic and road heat, it should be quite pleasant. Fingers crossed.

So in an effort to get a little pigmentation back into my skin, me and about 16823 like minded individuals (including the gypsies with their postcards) thought it would be a nice idea to wander around Montmartre (where I ate at this restaurant, whose interior is as pleasant as its façade, though the food is only average), the Eiffel tower (too much construction work going on around the base to be worth the effort when one can be choosy about visiting times) and the Palais de Chaillot (that I admit to have never really taken the time to explore before, and this days visit was only brief as my mother had decided to visit me with only NEW shoes in her suitcase and consequently wasn't up to a long walk anywhere).

Right, enough slacking, back to the jobsearch...

Summer time, and the living is….sleazy

It’s coming up to a year since I’ve left Australia so I’ve only had one of each of the European seasons up til now. But one thing I did quickly learn is that the weather warms up, so does the blood of the would-be Parisien Casanovas. So it was with this knowledge in the forefront of my mind that I slipped on my mock wedding ring before heading out on an afternoon jaunt round the right bank and Notre Dame.
Though I know it's no-where near as bad as some places, a woman walking alone gets a lot of ‘bonjours’, smoochy sounds and general leering on a warm day in Paris.

So, wandering airily round the Seine, camera in hand, the word TOURIST was clearly visible on my forehead to the standard array of hawkers who were trying to liberate me from some of my money. I picked up a couple of ‘speak English you dummy!’ books for the boyfriend before returning back home to massage my temples after one too many smoochies, gypsys bearing postcards (I have no idea...), hordes of german school groups and multiple demands to paint my picture because I am so verreh be-yu-tee-full.

On another subject, teaching your native language to a foreigner can be an eye opener at times. I've recently been confounded by the discovery of groups of things called denominable nouns and indenominable nouns existing in singular and plural form, and those that can be both depending on the slant of your eyebrows and the lilt of your voice and irregular plurals (really? We have all that?)

Today was also Phase II Integration Procedure Day as the application for my social security number (supposedly made by my temp agency in September last year) has evidently vanished. So more tickets and queues and waiting rooms and stamps and assurances that things will shortly be arriving in the post (works hard for its living does my letterbox), but still, it got me out and about on my bike in the spring sunshine. Though it seems that crazy French motorists are not the only thing to beware of (and frankly that's already more than enough),cue one wasted beyond all forces of gravity woman who managed to veer off the sidewalk by a good 3 metres as if summoned by the magnetic forces of my precognition (which played the entire scene out before she even smacked into the pole that sent her reeling into the oncoming traffic like a pinball). So after picking her off my handlebars, I advised her it might be better to keep to the footpath. There might not be a precognitive cyclist there to stop her ending up in the path of an oncoming bus next time. I feel confident my message got through to her.

The pen is mightier than the sword

Though getting into a swordfight with only a pen in your hand doesn’t strike me as the most intelligent thing to do.

Frequently mentioned among Parisien Anglophone expat bloggers, is the Abbey bookstore – a great new and used English language (mostly) bookstore located in the heart of the Latin quarter. Since conveniently being shown its location by a fellow Aussie expat-lured-to-stay-in-France-by-a-wily-Frenchman, I have since visited a couple of times and enjoyed the thrills of trying to extricate a book that is ¾ of the way down a precarious tower of tomes without toppling over 3 other adjacent towers (that place is the jenga of the bookshop world I tell you).

I seem, without quite knowing why, to have started a habit of reading books by authors regaling their experiences of an expat living in France. As I said, I really don’t know why I do it, I think it may somehow be linked to the carcrash syndrome – there’s an accident, you shouldn’t stare, but you can’t resist a little peek nevertheless. Years ago I read the ‘Year in Provence’ series by Peter Mayle, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but have thus far been pretty disappointed by related books that I have read since. ‘Almost French’, as previously mentioned (despite having some well penned observations), was overall a bit of a flop for me, but I have persevered in the hope of finding a Mayle equivalent. More recently I bought ‘A Year in the Merde’. Now it’s a pretty apt title, only vaguely semi non-fiction, but not excessively well written and too much sex. I’m no puritan (there was that time I had a verbal disagreement with the ticket seller at the Amsterdam sex museum who decided he should be the first prick of the exhibition and refuse to take any small change for ticket sales, while the ticket PRICE was a very small change attracting 2.50. Idiot. Only disagreeable Dutch person I came across, as an aside). Where was I?..oh yes, the too much sexness…I dunno, it just didn’t really work in favour of the story. So then the Abbey owner recommended ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ by David Sidaris, though only half of it concerns living as an expat in France. It was ok, but it only took me 3 hours to read, which altered the expense:enjoyment ratio somewhat. I’ll continue with my treasure hunt, if anyone wants to post up suggestions.

Still on the topic of the English language, sometime round 9.27pm last night, monsieur suddenly blurted; ‘You have to teach me to speak English. Now, right away, it’s critical’ (he said that all in French though I should add). There’s probably something behind this bonnet-inclined bee, but I didn’t bother to probe. His reluctance to take advantage of my English speaking skills (for once a guy doesn’t want to take advantage, go figure), has been a long standing point of consternation for, well, pretty much everyone (who all seem to assume that our couple communication is conducted in English). Again, as an aside, the people who assume this are conversing in French with me at the time, so I’m not sure what leads them to this conclusion. I have tried to encourage him, and we’ve had short bursts of conversation, but it quickly lapses back into French. It doesn’t bother me that much, he knows quite a bit of English already, it’s just a question of practice. Knowing English is also advantageous in the French job market, so it's mostly for his own sake that I'd like to see him converse more anglo.

There followed, last night, one of the longest English conversations we’ve had thus far. And despite the general delight I take in showing off how very informed and knowledgeable I am, I make for a very crappy English teacher. The thing is (monsieur'sjaw dropped when I explained this), I don’t know very much about the rules of English grammar – more specifically, why things are said or written in a particular fashion. I know what words mean, and I know how to write correctly, but I have a feeling that this is more intuitive than the result of instruction. Aside from Past, Present and Future, for example, I do not know the names of any other verb tenses in English. I can only give French names to verb groupings in English because at some point, it ‘went out of fashion’ to teach this aspect of grammar at high school. We were taught about nouns and adjectives, but never about hyperbole and irony. There were quite a few points that I could not explain – this kind of bothered me. So I need some teaching aides it would seem.

'We'll practice speaking English every night, for a month, in a month, I'll be fine'

*I raise a sceptical eyebrow*

To be continued!

nothing but blue skies

do I see

Quite a nice day today, especially appreciated after my sojourn under the Breton Sun (ie a raincloud).

So, I did a trigenerational matriachal thing over these last 5 days and went off to Brittany (must see a therapist regarding these masochistic tendencies I have) as my mother - who's also a bit of a masochist as far as I can tell (well, she married my father for one), is visiting HER mother on this part of the planet - for a limited time only. Like a special edition hamburger. If anyone wants clarification on the term TRIgeneration matriarchy, despite not having children, I am the only genetic representaive of my parents' DNA, that qualifies me enough in my opinion.

After 2 days I started to seriously examine the wisdom of my decision to stay a full 5 (my grandmother blew a few granny circuits with all the visitors coming and going and got a bit difficult), but I made it out alive (thanks to my good friend the alcoholic beverage, and some shopping).

Good news on the administrative front. I appear to have survived the first integration phase relatively unscathed. I turned up at the tribunal this morning and settled myself in to a nice long hours wait (note to self, bring more rations next time - think campout) to present my dossier of paperwork that proves that I am actually hopefully French enough to get the bit of paper that says so. I'm thinking to myself, paranoically, throughout the waiting period, that they're going to find fault with SOMETHING in this packet of paper. Most notably my proof of address, which I could only supply on my lease agreement (which could've easily been a knocked up a replica using Word) - in addition this lease agreement has the wrong building number on it (because the owners are suffering from chronic stupidity). I decided to bring along a copy of a phone bill for verification, but my boyfriend has rather thoughtfully left my name off every bit of official documentation that he possibly could think of. A great specimen of lateral and forward thinking, that one. Anyway, to my surprise, they accepted it simply on my assurance that we lived together (*insert eye boggling and jaw dropping*). Maybe she wanted to go to lunch.

The problem with the local tribunal (where you get your attestation of French nationality which you need to supply to get a French ID card) is not only that they are only open from 9-12, monday to thursday. The main problem is that you can't call them for any queries. If you're not sure about something, you have to turn up in person, before 11.15 (when they stop taking people), collect your ticket number, and wait.a.very.long.time. So I'm glad I bluffed my way through it with minimal waste of living time.

No luck on the job front yet (and let's not discuss the home internet connection issue either). Though according to my spectacularly negative relatives over there in Asterix land, I should expect to be unemployed forever now that I'm part of the nonworking plague masses. Through I do have some very nice relations also, most of them think they haven't done a good days work until they have lowered your morale by a good few degrees.

Otherwise I just had a grand time wandering round in the damp forest next to my grandmothers, gleefully identifying and learning the French name for all the spring flowering 'wildflowers' (most commonly known as weeds).

pigs in spaaaace, the continuing stoooory

Apparently my written French is a bit ‘lourd’ (heavy) – so sayeth the bloke. I am a verbal elephant stomping through a field of delicate daisies that is the French language, trumpeting ‘IF I SHOULD SO CHOOSE TO GATHER A FINITE QUANTITY OF PRESENT SMALL WHITE ASTERACEA SPECIES FOR AN OFFERING WOULDST THOU BE AMENABLE TO ACCEPTING SAID GESTURE?’
(Here is a copy of my cv for your consideration).

So I’ve been part of the nonworking masses for a whole week now, and so if you, one of my 20 squillion dear readers, are anxiously biting your nails wondering why I’ve dropped off the face of the blogosphere, well that’s entirely down to a lack of access to internet, except at either one of the two lousy neighbourhood cafes in the area (that and blogger’s off picking it’s nose in a swamp somewhere every time I go to post something).

Café 1 is cheap, but only has 2 computers, and a connection with terrible performance anxiety. Café 2 is next door, has a better connection, and is run by what I suppose is a father and son team who have a genetically inherited condition of being complete morons. Lined by a series of telephone booths that generally has someone shrieking loudly at someone very far away (so you need to talk loud so they can hear you all the way over there in Tunisia), the owners add to this cacophony by having a decibel charged argument with every second customer. Their regular chitchats with passing visitors also tend to be held at jumbo takeoff volume. I’d like to say the home connection is coming soon, but that is a saga that’s outdoing Homer at present (with our freebox out swanning about somewhere on the isle of Lesbos).

But between the jobsearch phonecalls and the shrieking Magrebs, I have managed to get some things sort of accomplished. The first on the list was my French identity card (the French love to have as many forms of documentation as possible to identify you, and once you are suitably identified, you have to consistently prove that you are alive, as my mother, now getting a little pension money, is discovering). Well I naively thought it would be a simple affair of presenting my passport at the mayoral office and asking for an ID card to go with it (foolish, foolish, the French will not pass by an opportunity to make you go to as many different offices with many different waiting rooms for as many different pieces of paper as they can possibly justify). So for an ID card, I first need a certificate of French nationality from the tribunal office (my passport isn’t sufficient) – cycle through mad traffic, another waiting room... For my certificate of French nationality I need a recent copy of my birth certificate from their foreign office in Nantes (it would be funny to say I had to go to Nantes, but lying is naughty). Anyway, that’s just the basic paperwork thread, there’s a lot of accessory papers to go with it, bien sur.

Shall I tell you the story about our constantly failing gas heating system? Oh, maybe later. Just imagine getting ripped off for astronomical sums of money and having a heating system that, despite huge cash payouts, is still not functioning. Oh well, might worry about it after summer – we have hot water at least (sort of…Mr Give me all your Money fix-it Man has managed not only to not temporarily fix the original problem, but has also reduced our hot water time to about 5 min. Which is ecologically correct, but a pain in the posterior nonetheless).

Apart from all that, we’ve had a couple of visits – one of Bens friends (over from London), and my mother (over from Australia), who conveniently arrived at 7am (as mothers are wont to do), and gave us a much sought after taste of Paris highway traffic during rush hour. Heuuuuuu :-/
And then more socialising over the weekend at another friends place in a sleepy town called Meung-sur-Loire, close to Orleans, oh the drunken hilarity, oh the cigarette smoke, oh the drinking games with such complex rules that they had to be repeated at every round for 3 hours (which essentially prevented anyone from getting overly smashed). I, of course, as a very mature and respectable almost 30 year old do not participate in such degenerate activities and tranquilly sipped my glass of red ;) teehee (Actually what happened was that about 2 years ago one of those ‘never again’ post debauched half dead alcohol poisoning regret sessions actually came true).

The only downside to the social weekend was that we had to transport Mr Smug and Self Satisfied from up the road. Mostly I just wanted to strangle him, but kept my homicidal tendencies in check. And he in turn was kept in check by my Monsieur who kept ruthlessly beating him at chess, which was enormously satisfying for my part. *sinister chuckle*


Right, back to your regularly scheduled program.

Follow the white rabbit

Black and White Bike
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

I thought things might have improved a little by now, I've certainly made the effort. But no matter how hard I try I am still suffering from a severe dose of acute underestimation disorder.

'This activity will take x amount of time' I say
I'll give myself 10 minutes extra allowance to be safe though (try 30, moron)

Oh, the old habits, sigh.
I don't know why I still automatically assume that if I get a bit lost-ish, I should be able to generally correct my trajectory within a few moments.
I don't know why I think that simply because the route between two identifiable points is a straight line, that I will be able to locate and follow that line.
I don't know why I still think everything should take about 20 minutes.

I went to buy a bike today during my lunch hour. It's a couple of kilometres to La Defense from where I work, and its dead straight up the road.
Now by the time they'd got my bike all sorted, I was already running a little late, but still, only a short dash back to work, no problem.
La Defense, however, is enormous. And there are a multitude of exits. Chances of picking the wrong one if you don't know what you're doing are pretty good.
Never mind, I should be able to find a sign somewhere around here that will point me in the right direction (and suddenly back on the road again and a little unsure about what I'm doing).
So about half an hour later, it's pretty clear that while the neighbouring district of Puteaux has an interesting proportion of very big hills (and a name that I like to phoenetically translate to 'whore waters' haha), I'm not going remotely in the right direction. After finally finding a couple of arrows both pointing to the bridge I was looking for - but pointing in opposite directions - and after realising that to follow the arrows advice would mean certain death along a road strictly designed for nothing but cars, I rattled along a very cyclist unfriendly footpath (sort of) to get myself to the base of my long sought after bridge. At the base mind you. My work is on the other side of the bridge, and short of swimming across the Seine or climbing a ridulous number of steep steps with a bike, I can't see any way of getting up to the bridge. So I cycle all the way down to the next bridge (by now I'm practically halfway home, and tempted to continue)just to cross the river.
* Time elapsed: 1h30min
* Late for work by: 1hr
* Points for effort: 10/15
* Bonus points awarded for style - responded to a rude motorbike man with my middle finger (French women probably don't do that as a rule right?)
* Points subtracted for falling off bike
* Points for achievement 1/15

What's my total? ;)

I did get a slight telling off, and my colleague noted I had some issues with punctuality. He's right though, and his comment was deserved. But whats stings, is that up till moving to Paris, I have been, as a rule, Little Miss Punctuality. In a town where ideas of time and punctuality were lax, I was on the dot. In a city where punctuality is a must, I'm off chasing the white rabbit.

These are a few of my favourite things

Here Be Squirrels
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

The running theme of the week appears to be -
Free

I finally found those penultimate French style markets that have been drattedly elusive - mostly because I haven't been looking very hard - right at the end of our street. Our magical street that seems to have every possible shop you could want selling every possible thing you could imagine. It's like a Paris microcosm...though not actually IN Paris per se.
Anyway, they're open 3 times a week, including Saturday morning, so I can reinsert my long standing tradition of 'doing the markets' on a Saturday morning (though Darwin market cater only in fruit and vegetables and food stalls - rather than French markets which have all food groups covered, in stunning abundance)
anyway, the gourmet baker guy gave me a loaf of something or other (tastes like an anglo christmas cake to me) as a bonus - and I only bought one thing! Nice! I think I need to market my 'foreign-ness' more. People might give me more free stuff to try :D

Sunday was a leisurely walk through a nearby forest - Meudon, where the ground is currently blanketed with small white flowers of an annoyingly familiar plant that I can't remember the name of. Saw frolicking baby squirrels (ahh) and did my good deed civic eco-duty by removing all the rubbish I could find - though I did leave the shopping trolley for someone else to remove...
Speaking of ecology though, there's only 3 more days left at my current job, so my brain is going into hyperdrive for people to bug. I've noticed enough park and nature websites with large gaps in what they consider to be their 'english language' version of their site to be tempted to go into freelance translating as a side career!

And speaking of work, finally my temping cash cow came in, with the contract drawing to a close, today was the day they chose to host the rare event of 'this assortment of lingerie has a slight defect that makes us unable to sell it at its regular horrific price, so take your pick' (for those who aren't in the know, I temp at a French lingerie company, very expensive French lingerie).

Someone told me after that there is really actually technically a limit to how many items you can nick off with - but I shall pretend I'm ignorant of that, just like everyone else did.

Right, next temping assignment, a shoe factory! ;)

Please leave your message after the beep

'Hello, Brain? Hi, it's your feet. Yeah, you haven't heard from us for a while I know, but here's the thing. You see those shoes there? Well, get them for us would you? NO, not the sensible shoes, put DOWN the sensible shoes, a little to your left, no, your other left. Yes! Those ones. The ones that are more air than shoe. We're dying down here...'

Now while I have the arguably enviable chance to be living in one of the world's fashion capitals, it's a formidable strain on my materialist muscle to wander past all the luverly shops full of luverly things and not make better acquaintance with any of them. I'm a bit puzzled how I could have worked 35 hour weeks for 7 months and still have no mu-lah. There must be a scientific equation out there waiting to solve that problem.
This is a big part of the reason that I'm leaving my current job in a week (that, and that I hate it). I'm actually not sure how it is legal to allow an employee to work on one placement for so long without receiving the benefits of any holidays or sick days, one or two months I understand, but not 7. And they would've extended it to a year if they could've! But the temp market is designed to weave around labour laws as far as I know. My horrible boyfriend on the other hand, who as far as I can tell has been perpertually on holidays since I met him last year, has another 8 DAYS of holiday up his sleeve that he needs to use up before May. And he owns more shoes than me. Oooooo how I hates him! (no, not really! ;) )

There's a squillion people in the world who don't have access to running water, let alone shoes. I realise that. I'm just a horribly incurable western materialist with hot feet :D

liberté, egalité, fraternité.

The rain is starting to fall in heavy drops, why did I choose today to wear my long black skirt? The hemline has practically absorbed half of the surface water in my immediate vicinity by now, so I dash in to the nearest metro at Saint Michel to take a connecting line at Chatelet.
Getting towards the end of peak hour, but still a bit squishy. As the door closes, I see the faces of a hesitant American family of 4 still waiting at the platform, clearly unsure about how to negotiate the surge of people that is the Parisien public transport system during peak hour(s).
Only a short trip, 2 stops, lost in random thought. Suddenly there is a commotion behind me and two men start wildly throwing punches. Some shouts and screams from surrounding passengers;
‘stop, STOP, you’re mad! Stop it!’
The train has (luckily) stopped at the next station, someone triggers the alarm, the doors have opened and curious passengers spill out onto the platform, while within our own carriage the fight continues, unheeding of any bystander that hasn’t got out of the way fast enough.

The conductor rushes to the scene, it’s a woman in her mid 30’s, blonde, quite attractive, probably not much over 40kg.
‘So they’ll stop’ I think
‘These guys aren’t going to keep throwing fists with such a petite lady in the middle’

Wrong.

I’m really worried for her. She’s so small and she has no chance to stop these guys apart from using her voice and physical presence to draw back the red curtain of rage that has clouded the vision of these two crazed commuters. What can I do? Should I try and help her? I don’t know the first thing about breaking up a fight between 2 grown men. Crap! Why isn’t anyone DOING anything? By anyone I really mean –anyone in the man department. I'm all for equality, I bash things with a hammer, and do simple plumbing jobs and ask my Dad to show me how I go about repairing bits of my car. But I don't kid myself that I can stop a fracas between 2 grown men.
I’m frozen by shock, my voice paralysed. Not because of the fight itself, having lived over a decade in a modern version of a frontier town, with redneck tendencies, truckies, beer, croc Dundee types, it’s not like I haven’t seen a few fights, and almost lost a couple of drinks along the way. What I have never seen though, is a woman, of any size, left to take care of it.

There is a guy in front of me, early 20’s, fit, plugged into his music, shifts his position slightly to face more of his back towards the problem, a look of irritation as he receives the effect of a wayward shove. I see a resolute look on the face of an older guy, maybe around 50, glasses, tragic choice in pullover fashion – short fellow but he manages to get one of the men in an effective headlock. The fight surges towards the platform. Finally, one girl has had enough. She’s been pushed around for the last 5 minutes, stuck in a bad corner with no real way to get out. One of her eyes looks a bit odd, I don’t know if she’s been struck at some point. A rebel ‘P!nk’ type, she starts verbally laying in to one of the men; ‘Where’s the respect? Are you crazy? You lack respect totally, what’s wrong with you?’
Respect seems to be the key word, this guy is cowering under her verbal lashing, and half runs, half staggers off into the crowd. P!nk girl now turns her anger to her fellow commuters.
‘No-one MOVED, you just looked, no one MOVED!’
‘Yes, well that’s the French mentality’ says the conductor as she rushes off to disactivate the alarms and get the metro moving as quickly as possible. She’s bleeding from the mouth, thanks to a wayward blow, but is more concerned with getting the train back in action. The departure alarm sounds, and everyone gets back in the train. The silence is more pronounced that usual, maybe thinking about the conductors last retort, maybe thinking about their dinner, I don't know - in general people don’t often talk in the metro, everyone just stares randomly, quickly pricking up their ears to listen in to any of the few conversations that might be taking place.
And what was the fight about? As far as I can tell it was because one of them had a cigarette.

Surgeon Generals Warning: Smoking can seriously affect the health of those around you, and make the trains run late

you know you're in France when...

You observe the street corner flower sellers that are having a turf war at your local produce market.

it's just a game...

pfffshwwwt! what a fizzler of a long weekend. I can warn you right off that I didn't get to Etretat, or anywhere for that matter, grrrrr....
Being newly installed in our current district confers the extreme pleasure of being virtual neighbours to Mr and Mrs Smug & Self-Satisfied up the road, a recently married couple of teachers (yes, well therein lies your first problem*) that my boyfriend has known for a while.
We get a call from Mr SSS Friday night, would we like to come over for dinner on Saturday? Monsieur automatically agrees, reorganises our entire weekend schedule (and as far as I’m concerned sacrifices our entire Saturday so we can go to this dinner thing). Ok, admittedly since moving to Paris, I feel a little uprooted, and I need plans – especially for weekends. It helps me feel grounded and gives me something to look forward to during the week. And if the plans get changed in any serious way, I get quite surprisingly upset. This is a pretty recent neurosis, so I do hope I get over it.
Anyway, the dinner was fine, Mr and Mrs SSS were tolerably smug, and there were a couple of other mutual friends over as well, one of whom had brought a stack of board/strategy/society games with him.
Let the games begin.
So, I’m approaching the third decade of life, but there are some things that don’t evolve much beyond childhood. One of those things is probably boardgame politics. I’ve learnt to lose (ahem, relatively) gracefully (well, I don’t storm out of the room anymore at least). But another thing I’m used to is a standard initiation process of explaining the actual rules before the games massacre. The first game we played, well I lost in the ‘came last’ sense. Which didn’t bother me overly much, what did bug me was the general obsession coming from my left (Mrs SSS) regarding how many points I had throughout the entire game. Even though I had less than her, it wasn’t enough to keep her happy. Even though she finished quite ahead of me, she managed to throw this little barb my way;
‘but if I hadn’t had my bonus points I would’ve had one point less than you’
(say it in your best snipey voice, no - snipier, yup, better...)
?????! Evidently I’d committed a severe faux pas in not losing by enough.

Never mind.

The next day we ended up there again, for more board games (joy), in which we went through the same process of vague explanation of rules and you’re on your own. After another abysmal failure I got the hang of some strategies and tried to get a bit more proactive in the second game. This is where Mr SSS decided to quash any ideas I might have had about competing and proceeded to launch an attack on me at every turn. Let me point out that I wasn’t winning, I wasn’t going to win, I was simply holding my own. And then HE criticised me for playing to remove the handicaps he was continually putting in place (second faux pas, trying to stay in the game).

This all sounds terribly childish in the end, but it really irked me. And I don’t want to play with them anymore *pout*

*no intention to imply that all teacher to teacher marriages result in insufferable couples, if you're a teacher and reading this, and getting upset enough to want to write a big red F on your computer screen....

whaddya mean you don't get good friday off here?

trumpeting elephant
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

Sooooooo, Good Friday doesn't exist as a public holiday concept in this country. Which strikes me as fundamentally wrong. I mean some John Lennon preincarnation type dies horribly in a freak carpentry incident and gets shoved in a cave and such like 2000 years ago or whatever. Surely that entitles me to an extra paid day off sitting on the couch scoffing chocolates, right?
(By the way, if you're particularly religious or god-fearing and you read my blather at all regularly, I'd advise that you, well, don't).

And it's fine outside, damn it! Waaaaa!!! And I'm stuck in my little oven of an office (this box has 2 climatic extremes, freezer or oven, there's evidently no middle ground), sniff!!
And from tomorrow on it will surely rain because no matter what latitude I happen to be living on, it always rains at easter (divine justice?)
Anyway, on the off chance that it doesn't rain too much, I'll be off up north again, finally convinced the Monsieur to take me to Etretat.

Happy easter everyone!

la voila!

chocobird on rue st honoré
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

my chocobird as promised. Isn't he delicious?

Oh, so I've decided to start a new segment here on microcosmic
'you know you're in France when' inspired by a young boy I overheard today while walking home (out of the mouth of babes...)

So

You know you're in France when;
5 year old boys very seriously instruct their grandmothers as to how they'd like their asapargus cooked differently the next time so that they might appreciate it better...

dreams

are probably something I can't imagine I'll often talk about, for a start they don't have much to do with my skewed and twisted cynic PoV of living in a big european city vision of a blog (where I gets to moan a lot), but they are nevertheless quite an interesting subject matter in the general sense. Especially how the process differs between individuals.

When I dream (relatively frequently), I tend to do so quite intensely. We won't get into the weirdness factor. I know, everyone thinks their dreams are weird, but I thus far I remain pretty underwhelmed by the craziness of other peoples dreams. Except my Mum. She has the sort of dreams that make me suspect my father of slipping something into her tea.

I can remember a few snippets of last nights adventure (something like a Dali vision of Barcelona through the architecture of Gaudi, in case you're interested). They say you should have a dream journal and scribble stuff down as soon as you wake up, if you want to remember (based, of course, on the theory that you should afterward be able to read and understand whatever nonsense made it onto the page). But I am generally fighting the wake-up demons at this time and have levels of coherency somewhat akin to 'shoot the pink poodle, where are my pants?, give me coffee', so controlling a pencil and cataloguing some random weird images is pretty much beyond me.

Anyway, the other day I was having a conversation with my boyfriend about a bizarro nighttime experience, which I assume is normal by virtue of the fact that it happens (applaud my logic), where I wake up during the night with no recollection of where I am, or even who I am. This ego-less state lasts for a few seconds until my brain catches up with my change in sonambulous circumstance, and I'll drift off again. It is, granted, a rare event, but judging by the 'did you just grow another head?' look I got from my monsieur, it doesn't happen to everyone equally. In trying to explain that it wasn't really that odd, I actually had to come up with some reasons why (that's the standard system I believe).

So I argued that, when we dream, we generally do so with very little self awareness. The reality of our life enters into our dreams and we recognise it and 'react' to scenes that vary from the mundane to the insane in a variety of ways, but one generally doesn't wander through one's dreams thinking 'I am me, I like blue and cats and I work with Bob' (that's called lucid dreaming, which is a whole other matter).
Sometimes I am aware of my entire body (swimming running walking, flying if I'm lucky) though sometimes I feel as if I exist only as a pair of eyes that never blink, ego-less, absorbed and observing. If I wake suddenly from that state, my brain has to scramble to catch up, so the result is that I stare at the window puzzled for a while till my brain points its finger frantically on the 'you are here' of my reality map.

See, it's not just me....even they hate themselves

a streetcar named yellow
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

(sourced from expatica)

French drivers rude? Mais oui, says survey

PARIS, March 23 (AFP) - Any visitor to France who thinks the country's drivers are pushy, rude and prone to parking wherever their cars might conceivably fit on Wednesday had confirmation from an unlikely source - the drivers themselves.

According to a survey carried out by AGF, an insurance company, and APFC, an association for preventing road-rage, six out of 10 French drivers believe their fellow motorists are impolite and aggressive behind the wheel.

"Civic behaviour, politeness, respect, patience and commonsense are concepts which seem to totally escape the French when they are behind the wheel," APFC said.

The list of galling Gallic transgressions on the road remains long - and dangerous.

Half the respondents felt drivers did not respect pedestrians.

The pollsters pointed out that the pedestrians themselves had a much lower regard for motorists with 87 percent saying that they often or sometimes had difficulty crossing a road. Much of that could be attributed to the peculiar French blindness of crosswalks and a fondness for speeding, even between traffic lights.

More than one driver in three admitted that he or she "regularly parked on the sidewalk".

And one in five of all the respondents - and one in three of the respondents aged 18-24 - also confessed to using a mobile telephone while driving.

APFC, which held the survey before a national Day of Politeness Behind the Steering Wheel to be held Thursday, said the French behaviour contrasted with that in Britain, where motorists were seen to be calm, orderly and considerate.

Chocolate can even make a banker smile

One thing I haven't been discussing cos-I've-been-too-absorbed-in-my-petty-issues-of-day-to-day-living-and-trying-to-figure-out-which-personality-disorder-I-have-come-down-with-today, is...CHOCOLATE!
(trust me, in terms of food, we've got a lot to thank South America for)

Generally at some point every couple of weeks or so, I'll find myself lost, ahem, wandering casually through a posh area of Paris, and stumble across what I can only describe as an example of an Haute Couture chocolate shop.

Now, with Easter approaching, there is a torturous assortment of chickens, rabbits (and for some reason I can't fathom, gnomes - one chocognome I spotted was meant to have a chococarrot in his chocohand, except that the carrot had sort of slipped elsewhere down to his choco-netheregions and he was looking pretty excited about Easter is all can say) in the window of pretty much every other patissier, while the High Class chocolate get on with their weird and wonderful creations as part of the day to day showing off...er, business, and they chuck in the odd chicken to prove they're paying attention.

Yesterday night, while displaying my astute knowledge of the layout of inner Paris ('where the hell we NOW? And where's the putain de metro station gone?')to a visiting friend, we found ourselves (intentionally of course) on Rue Saint Honore (think Cartier), I passed by the creme de la creme of all the chocolate concoctions I've seen thus far. A giant exotic bird made of dark and white chocolate with a chocolate waterfall in the background. Wonder if they've managed to scrub my nose print off the glass yet?

the tell tale heart

This is the poster for a upcoming film, a remake of the 1978 film 'Fingers' - about the son of a mobster whose life is divided between a career as a pianist and a mobster debt collector (and I thought I had an odd mix of jobs when working as both a quality officer with red cross blood service and as a library shelver). It's not so much that this is a very interesting peice of news in itself, simply that in my opinion this is a really fantastic movie poster. The simplicity of attire, one bloodied hand, the assemblage of overlayed squares within the photo slightly off centre - creates an idea of a fractured existence. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Roman Duris is pretty hot. Nothing at all.

apres la pluie, c'est le beau temps

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

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


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

pavlov! aaah...

some stuff I still do that puts my brain back in tropical Australia;

* think small green objects are frogs
* duck my head instinctively whenever my head approaches ceiling height, to avoid the (non-existant) overhead fan
* imagine I can get anywhere within 10km in 20 minutes
* assume movements out the corner of my eye in my apartment are giant cockroaches (yeah, can't say I miss that much)
* have trouble understanding why quite so much paperwork is necessary for absolutely every little thing you do
* expect to find coriander in the supermarket
* say 'it doesn't matter' a lot (seems to scare Parisiens)
* put more stuff in the fridge that really needs to go in there
* generally remember to buy beer for my boyfriend (oh, isn't he the lucky one?)
* keep an eye out for animals on the highway (yeah right, like there ARE any)

sproiiiing!

That was the sound of Spring sproinging. I dunno, is it just me? Is it possible to 'go Spring' overnight? Even the weather people were a bit stunned;
'so yes, well, it's not an illusion, it's going to be 17°C today'
17! It was snowing 2 weeks ago!

I must be getting old, I talk about the weather way too much

Speaking of Spring though, rabbits. For our little getaway vacation, we had to get to Porte Maillot to catch the shuttle bus to the Beauvais airport (at 5.45am, ouch). There's basically one 'stupid' exit at Porte Maillot. Despite knowing Porte Maillot metro station pretty well, I take the stupid exit a bit too often for my liking (and those smug ideas of my intellectualism). This exit leads to the middle of a roundabout, which is itself in the middle of a major arterial route. Once you're there, the only way off is back through the same exit as crossing the road on foot reduces your life expectancy to about 12.8 seconds. It'd be a nice spot for lunch, it's a decently big green space, but the exterior cars kind of kill the atmosphere a bit. It's just a dumb exit designed to confuse people like me. So of course I took the dumb exit, and immediately after my standard homer simpsonism, I noticed a rabbit. Then another rabbit. Then about 12 other rabbits.

'There's rabbits!' I exclaim intelligently
thought bubble ('not again')
To explain that, I have an Alice in Wonderland type mental condition. Rabbits always turning up in the oddest places. Less often in the normal places though, now that I think about it. I thought I'd be protected from this kind of Leporidan persecution in a major capital city.

Another thing about the first twitterings of Spring, the booming nursery trade. Paris appears to do a nice vegetation and accessory turnover as people try and reintroduce whatever nature they can into their small environment (I'm steadily turning our apartment into the jungle that I believe it should be, and am happy to have a chance to play with those European plants that don't work in tropical climes).

So, having a good hour to myself yesterday as I was barred from entering my work building thanks to the road being blocked off due to a car gas leak, I took some time to check out the plant shop close by my work place, which is cheap enough if you want to get small plants, but rapidly escalates in price once you add some age and height. Noticed a small DIY plastic glasshouse thing - essentially 2 tubs - a lower tub where you put the soil, and a larger transparent tub that fitted on the top. 70 euros they wanted for that. It wasn't even a very big tub. 70 euros. Doth there exist, therefore, people who are prepared to PAY this price? Did they not learn how to make a teepee glasshouse using sticks and plastic sheeting in primary school? Still, in winter they were charging 5 euros for a couple of small pine branches. People obviously don't get out much here.

still olive, er, alive

I really don't know what the recommended RDI for olive oil is, but I've surely passed my monthly quota in 3 days.

Despite the shuttle too-ing and fro-ing that a "cheap" low-budget airline flight involves (which becomes progressively less cheap once you tack on all the shuttlefares), plus the guilt of the carbon miles (am I redeemed cos I don't own a car?), my mental health is thanking me, though whining a bit that I couldn't stay longer.

While I was studying, one of my temp jobs was in a library and I remember coming across this big blue book on Gaudi, who'd I'd never heard of before, and at once I developed an interest in organic arcitecture and visiting Barcelona. I couldn't help thinking back to this moment, when my impulses demanded I see these buildings someday, as I wandered round the sights of this city. The sun was shining, the olive oil was flowing, and Spain was already well into it's strawberry glut (I could go on about the food here at length).

Well, essentially monuments were explored, sites were visited, garbled Spanish was attempted and I sucked it up and played tourist for a couple of days, abandoning all self-delusion that I was a TRAVELLER, pounding the pavements of the earth with my beat up sneakers, sleeping on buses, wearing my cruddiest clothes, not following my map, not wearing my watch, not photographing everything in my path...Nup, I was a bona fide sellout. Tragic. And so yeah, I forget pretty much everything I learned in that 16 week Spanish course, apart from how to say hello and order coffee. But at least I got to Spain. Forgot my bloody sunglasses though.

Go bio

One of the things I love about food shopping in French supermarkets (or the old fashioned outside ones, when I get the chance) is the lovely choice to 'go bio' (organic) with almost all products on the shelf - particularly the important staples of rice, flour, coffee, sugar and milk. I kind of like it when my fresh produce doesn't come with a side serving of pesticides either, but you really need to go to bio markets for that.Despite the fact that it's not just me that likes the bio, I was surprised to discover that only 2% of France is set aside for cultivating organic produce. Of the land that has been set aside for this activity, 2004 saw a 3% decrease in total surface area undergoing conversion (a process whereby land is set aside for organic production but has not sold any produce, a process which takes 2-3 years). So as this goes against the growing trend in consumption, it means that France currently imports around 50% of it's agricultural produce. Doesn't make it so simple to 'think global and buy local'. But I try anyway.

wot I lerned on the telly this mornin'

For the weight conscious:
1 hours shivering is equivalent to a 6km walk. So you know, if you've had one too many chocolates, and it's winter, go stand outside for an hour in your underwear.

Here's a worrying story, from the personal files. Monsieur comes home after finishing work at a stupidly late hour last night and over the course dinner casually mentions how he was 'shot down in flames' (a pleasingly accurate translation)that morning during a work meeting.
'oh' I say casually 'what happened?'
Bear in mind that I still wear a heavy mantle of naivete regarding common decency towards other human beings, even if you do happen to think they suck. So I'm not imagining anything particularly serious here.
'well, I was asked after the outcome of some tests done last week and I couldn't really give an answer, so I was sort of a bit exposed in front of everyone'

Now Monsieur is a very passive person all round (unlike yours truely), and isn't possessed of too much in the way of aggressiveness or even really much defensiveness for that matter. But I figured there might be a little more to this story, so after a few probing questions I uncovered some pretty disturbing results. Not only had he not been provided with those data asked of him to start with, but he was not ever actually informed that the tests had taken place. Ok, so that's pretty unfair for starters. But his 'dressing down' (bear in mind that this occurred during a work meeting, in front of a multitude of colleagues) took the form of aggressive threats of being fired for his ignorance, did he really want this job?, there were hundreds of other candidates just like him. Essentially that he was a lowly bit of computer technician chaff. This tirade came from someone that he had never seen or spoken to before. In addition, Monsieur has been in his current placement for approximately 6 weeks.

I am informed that this is not unusual for the info-tech domain in Paris. But I have to confess to being totally shocked at some of the stories I hear regarding workplace ethics in this part of the world. I'm sure businesses in any big corporation in any country can be like this, but God, is this what workplace society is coming to? Now that large numbers of service providers are outsourced - it kind of cuts them off from the 'work team' environment, and makes them convenient scapegoats.

It also presents the tricky problem of how I convince Monsieur that he needs to get more defensive. Not agressive as such, but you need a sort of barrier and language that effectively bursts the ego bubbles of supreme workplace arseholes. Otherwise I fear for him being eaten alive, or supremely taken advantage of at least. He agrees with me on that point, but I'm not convinced he's going to put it into practice.

'So is there much call for info techs in Australia'? he asks
'As much as anywhere I imagine, but you're going to need to brush up that English of yours first'

(yes, a sad state of affairs, but our wall ears hardly ever hear English spoken, except when he wants to try a few phrases out, or I'm off on one of my long winded mutters)

oh yeah, and we're breaking all sorts of cold temperature records or some such thing, snow ice cold, blah blah.

bar-thhhhhe-lona

I'm going to Barthhhhhhelona next week (Monsieur tells me they talk that way thanks to some bygone king who had a lisp, and it sort of stuck). I haven't actually confirmed that story as true, I just stuck it in for 'sounds good' value.

Anyway, I bought a couple of Ryanair tickets, cheap (and whose terms and conditions read something like a 'it's your funeral buddy' citation) but didn't bother with the insurance - like, what's the worst that can happen in 3 days man? (Watch this space)
Yes, if Sarah is reading this I know you've just slapped yourself on the forehead haven't you? You know, if you do that too often, you can make your forehead go flat. I'm proof (actually it's probably how we lost our brow ridge, a slow and gradual cognition of the extreme stupidity of others "d'oh, *slap*, ow!")

I could say I was losing whatever point I was trying to make, but I'm not convinced I was making one to begin with.

Anyhoo, so, Barcelona, should be interesting. Have had a hankering to go there since discovering Gaudi - you know that he died by being hit by a tramway - and that was back when they hardly existed, how unlucky is that? (reconsiders travel insurance)

Now would be a good time to start remembering those spanish lessons I took last year (*searching memory banks*)
What's spanish for 'hey that guy just nicked my wallet and passport!' ?