Life, Love and Video Games

So I never play video games but I often think of them as metaphors. How pretentious, right?

Living abroad is like a video game (ok, I think of them as similes not metaphors, excuse me), an elegant intellectual one with good high-res graphics and many nuanced shades of grey (Paris is a very grey city) in that through trial and error you have to learn the right thing to do in different situations, the right words to use in a particular context or the right reaction to have and then this enables you to advance to the next level.

I have no idea how many levels there are total. Or what my all-time score is so far.

Welcome to the next level. Bienvenu au niveau suivant!