Awhile ago I posted about the Parisian dream which I suggested was to be a fonctionnaire, send your French children to a grande école (a top university) or to have a country house in Normandie. I was kidding. But not really.
Here's an update. The Parisian dream, what we want but what remains unattainable to all my friends (French and foreign alike) and me, all kidding aside, is this: a CDI or a permanent job.
This is the magical French sentence that means you have succeeded in French life as we know it: je suis passé en CDI.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Los Numeros: Week Recap
Desperately Seeking Stability...
Number of emotional breakdowns about how unstable my job is (hourly wage, no guaranteed number of hours per week or per month, etc.) brought on by only having half the teaching hours I need this week and feeling really financially precarious: 2.
1 of these breakdowns resulted in me bursting into tears in the metro and 2 women who were complete strangers to me were really conforting. I was amazed.
All immigrants want is some kind of stability in a foreign country. It seems like you have to be willing to invest 20 years in your adopted country, though, to achieve this. I, of course, am undecided about how much more time I want to spend in France, and, well, more or less everything at the moment. Undecided. C'est moi.
Money is my greatest source of stress in France and I'm so tired of worrying about it.
But on the bright side, number of possible job interviews this week for a more stable postion: 1. At a good international company.
Number of lengthy discussions (in French, English and very very broken Spanish) about new strategy for said possible job interview: 4.
Number of Spanish/English conversation exchanges: 2 (!) One was at my house and the other was at this big British Colonial Empire type cafe called Le fumoir. Fun to go to a new place!
Number of delicious Indian dinners: 1.
Number of workouts: 3. Ran 5 k twice this week (and I always stretch and do crunches for half an hour after) and did Body Pump (a weight training class that resulted in unbelievable back and arm soreness) and Body Balance (yoga) yesterday.
Fastest running pace: 9:05 minute miles.
Dismal total number of teaching hours this week: 9.5. I need double that per week to have a decent salary. Sigh.
Number of fun evenings with friends: 4. The good social life makes up for the unstable professional life a little, though.
Number of emotional breakdowns about how unstable my job is (hourly wage, no guaranteed number of hours per week or per month, etc.) brought on by only having half the teaching hours I need this week and feeling really financially precarious: 2.
1 of these breakdowns resulted in me bursting into tears in the metro and 2 women who were complete strangers to me were really conforting. I was amazed.
All immigrants want is some kind of stability in a foreign country. It seems like you have to be willing to invest 20 years in your adopted country, though, to achieve this. I, of course, am undecided about how much more time I want to spend in France, and, well, more or less everything at the moment. Undecided. C'est moi.
Money is my greatest source of stress in France and I'm so tired of worrying about it.
But on the bright side, number of possible job interviews this week for a more stable postion: 1. At a good international company.
Number of lengthy discussions (in French, English and very very broken Spanish) about new strategy for said possible job interview: 4.
Number of Spanish/English conversation exchanges: 2 (!) One was at my house and the other was at this big British Colonial Empire type cafe called Le fumoir. Fun to go to a new place!
Number of delicious Indian dinners: 1.
Number of workouts: 3. Ran 5 k twice this week (and I always stretch and do crunches for half an hour after) and did Body Pump (a weight training class that resulted in unbelievable back and arm soreness) and Body Balance (yoga) yesterday.
Fastest running pace: 9:05 minute miles.
Dismal total number of teaching hours this week: 9.5. I need double that per week to have a decent salary. Sigh.
Number of fun evenings with friends: 4. The good social life makes up for the unstable professional life a little, though.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Etoiles filantes dans le métro
Métro, ligne 4. Les passagers ne se regardent pas dans les yeux, personne ne parle ni sourit, et tout le monde a l'air impatient et énervé, comme d'hab. Puis, tout un coup:
Mec, vous ne cherchez pas un batteur par hasard?-- mec cool assis qui a l'air jazz/soul.
Si, on en cherche un!-- mec debout très mince indie rock avec une guitare et les cheveux en bataille.
Les groupes de rock cherchent toujours un batteur.
Je suis batteur de rock depuis 10 ans, je vous file mon numéro.-- mec jazz/soul.
D'accord, je le prends, cool. On s'appelle.-- mec indie rock.
J'ai souri en sortant, les gens qui échangent et créent même un lien, ca n'arrive presque jamais dans le métro. Chaque personne est normalement sur sa propre planète dans les transports, mais aujourd’hui il y avait un rare contact entre deux étoiles filantes qui faisaient tous les deux partie du même univers : celui de la musique.
Mec, vous ne cherchez pas un batteur par hasard?-- mec cool assis qui a l'air jazz/soul.
Si, on en cherche un!-- mec debout très mince indie rock avec une guitare et les cheveux en bataille.
Les groupes de rock cherchent toujours un batteur.
Je suis batteur de rock depuis 10 ans, je vous file mon numéro.-- mec jazz/soul.
D'accord, je le prends, cool. On s'appelle.-- mec indie rock.
J'ai souri en sortant, les gens qui échangent et créent même un lien, ca n'arrive presque jamais dans le métro. Chaque personne est normalement sur sa propre planète dans les transports, mais aujourd’hui il y avait un rare contact entre deux étoiles filantes qui faisaient tous les deux partie du même univers : celui de la musique.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
5K Family Fun!
So, like many people, after saying, oh, I have to get to the gym this week and I really have to go running and doing nothing all week and thus wasting yet another week of expensive gym membership, I'm serious about getting back into running shape. The benefits are endless. Your legs look fantastic, you feel little guilt if you eat chocolate and can always rationalise it by saying, I just ran 3 miles. However, most importantly, it's great for stress management. When I was in my best running shape of my life, it was also when I had the most stressful job in my life and I really think regular runs kept me sane despite finding myself in daily life-or-death situations (I worked in animal welfare).
The big motivation here is that my Dad just started running and recently ran a mile, his first since before I was born (and, er, I'm in my 30s!) Go, Dad! So we decided to do a 5K run together in the US when I'm there in August for my annual vacation, and we're both psyched about it. For the past 2 years, my mom and I have done an annual 5K together when I visit. She walks and I run. This summer, the whole family (it's just the 3 of us) will be out 5K-ing!
I'm feeling inspired. If my Dad can get back into running shape, I can certainly get back into doing regular 5ks or more-- I've only been running once every 2 weeks or so lately, which is terrible. 4 years ago when I lived in Healthly Lifestyle Land (San Francisco instead of Paris), I did regular 4 mile runs at least 3-4 times a week, a weekly 10-miler and 3 half marathons. Since I was in good running shape at one point in my life, I am still generally lucky enough to be able to manage 30 minutes on the treadmill, even if it's been months since my last run. But I'd like to retrouver la forme, as they say.
I also feel like there are lots of things in my life that I can't control at the moment, but deciding to run for 30 minutes and then doing it is one of the few things that I do control and that depends only on me and no one else.
Bonne course, alors!
The big motivation here is that my Dad just started running and recently ran a mile, his first since before I was born (and, er, I'm in my 30s!) Go, Dad! So we decided to do a 5K run together in the US when I'm there in August for my annual vacation, and we're both psyched about it. For the past 2 years, my mom and I have done an annual 5K together when I visit. She walks and I run. This summer, the whole family (it's just the 3 of us) will be out 5K-ing!
I'm feeling inspired. If my Dad can get back into running shape, I can certainly get back into doing regular 5ks or more-- I've only been running once every 2 weeks or so lately, which is terrible. 4 years ago when I lived in Healthly Lifestyle Land (San Francisco instead of Paris), I did regular 4 mile runs at least 3-4 times a week, a weekly 10-miler and 3 half marathons. Since I was in good running shape at one point in my life, I am still generally lucky enough to be able to manage 30 minutes on the treadmill, even if it's been months since my last run. But I'd like to retrouver la forme, as they say.
I also feel like there are lots of things in my life that I can't control at the moment, but deciding to run for 30 minutes and then doing it is one of the few things that I do control and that depends only on me and no one else.
Bonne course, alors!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Psychosis and the City
I was thinking about how some cities have their own correpsonding psychological disorder. Like the Stockholm Syndrome, for example. Although as I understand it, this doesn't literally have much of anything to do with Stockholm itself or the Swedish urban experience. Which is probably for sale at Ikea, but you have to assemble it yourself with no real tools except a little metal turn-y thing.
Not to be outdone by Stockholm, Paris is also part of the proud and the few with their Own Unique Syndrome. And unlike Stockholm, this is really about the experience of Paris itself. The Paris Syndrome is a documented psychological disorder mainly found to affect Japanese people who come to Paris. It's more or less a nervous depression brought on by how little the real Paris lives up to romanticised Japanese notions of Paris, and probably exacerbated, I think, by larger cultural differences between the east and the west. In the 80s, a psychologist studied patients, treated them and most of them returned to Japan. If you don't believe me, you can google, wikipedia or whatever-other-website-names-have-now-become-English-verbs Paris Syndrome... It's even in that big red book of all the psychological disorders known to man.
Paris can sometimes seem to do its best to cause nervous depression, I know lots of people who probably suffer from this psychological disorder. The lack of sunlight all winter is fairly brutal and the skies, buildings, streets and people all start to take on the same shade of Hausemannian grey stone from the mid-19th century. But I think in a strange way, we do have a community and I'm grateful for the form that this takes. I am part of an international community for the first time in my life and I appreciate what a cosmopolitan a place I live in.
Within this cosmopolitan world, most people I know are looking for better jobs and better apartments. There's an element of being on a constant quest here that is by turns inspiring since we're all looking for something and striving towards this elusive goal and that's the human condition, really, but also by turns depressing in that it means that Paris has a high concentration of currently dissatisfied people.
Organised cultural events also help. Community building events in Paris are the annual fêtes when you can tour national monuments for free, the nights when the museums stay open for free and a day when musicians perform on the street all night for free. While most people appreciate these events and participate in them, we also simultaneously hate being in crowds in public...
In the film Crash, one of the characters said something about how we're all just reaching out to try to touch each other and interpreted car accidents as an attempt to find human contact. While car accidents are obviously caused by poor driving and not urban alienation, I do think that being part of a crowd in a city is simultaneously a lonely and violent experience. Just ride the metro during rush hour sometime.
Although everyone is very much in their own world of suffering in the metro during rush hour each morning, for example, I think a recent blogging trend shows how much people want to try to feel connected to those who share their urban experience. Blogs like L'inconnu dans le metro and others give short profiles of everyday people on the metro, or foreigners visiting Paris, or people who work in specific industries in Paris. My new blog also fits into this urban community outreach catagory, too. (It's a collection of profiles of different language teachers in Paris as a way to share and compare teaching experiences). We're curious about each other. We'd like to get to know each other. But maybe just not too up close and personal, despite-- or because of-- how we're always crowded into the same small public spaces. We'll still keep our digital distance over the internet. Where we can comfortably analyse our relationship with crowds and public urban spaces without being IN them and diagnose our own brand of the Paris Syndrome...
Not to be outdone by Stockholm, Paris is also part of the proud and the few with their Own Unique Syndrome. And unlike Stockholm, this is really about the experience of Paris itself. The Paris Syndrome is a documented psychological disorder mainly found to affect Japanese people who come to Paris. It's more or less a nervous depression brought on by how little the real Paris lives up to romanticised Japanese notions of Paris, and probably exacerbated, I think, by larger cultural differences between the east and the west. In the 80s, a psychologist studied patients, treated them and most of them returned to Japan. If you don't believe me, you can google, wikipedia or whatever-other-website-names-have-now-become-English-verbs Paris Syndrome... It's even in that big red book of all the psychological disorders known to man.
Paris can sometimes seem to do its best to cause nervous depression, I know lots of people who probably suffer from this psychological disorder. The lack of sunlight all winter is fairly brutal and the skies, buildings, streets and people all start to take on the same shade of Hausemannian grey stone from the mid-19th century. But I think in a strange way, we do have a community and I'm grateful for the form that this takes. I am part of an international community for the first time in my life and I appreciate what a cosmopolitan a place I live in.
Within this cosmopolitan world, most people I know are looking for better jobs and better apartments. There's an element of being on a constant quest here that is by turns inspiring since we're all looking for something and striving towards this elusive goal and that's the human condition, really, but also by turns depressing in that it means that Paris has a high concentration of currently dissatisfied people.
Organised cultural events also help. Community building events in Paris are the annual fêtes when you can tour national monuments for free, the nights when the museums stay open for free and a day when musicians perform on the street all night for free. While most people appreciate these events and participate in them, we also simultaneously hate being in crowds in public...
In the film Crash, one of the characters said something about how we're all just reaching out to try to touch each other and interpreted car accidents as an attempt to find human contact. While car accidents are obviously caused by poor driving and not urban alienation, I do think that being part of a crowd in a city is simultaneously a lonely and violent experience. Just ride the metro during rush hour sometime.
Although everyone is very much in their own world of suffering in the metro during rush hour each morning, for example, I think a recent blogging trend shows how much people want to try to feel connected to those who share their urban experience. Blogs like L'inconnu dans le metro and others give short profiles of everyday people on the metro, or foreigners visiting Paris, or people who work in specific industries in Paris. My new blog also fits into this urban community outreach catagory, too. (It's a collection of profiles of different language teachers in Paris as a way to share and compare teaching experiences). We're curious about each other. We'd like to get to know each other. But maybe just not too up close and personal, despite-- or because of-- how we're always crowded into the same small public spaces. We'll still keep our digital distance over the internet. Where we can comfortably analyse our relationship with crowds and public urban spaces without being IN them and diagnose our own brand of the Paris Syndrome...
Friday, December 10, 2010
Reve General? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the French Dream
Lots of people are familiar with the American Dream. My French students have even asked me if I believe in it, if I feel like my family illustrates it. Originally, it was of course for immigrants to come from their home countries to the new land of opportunity where the streets were paved with gold and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make a better life for themselves and their children, since at that time there was no food in other countries like Ireland. Ellis Island, Lady liberty, give me your poor huddling masses, or whatever. In the more crass commercial terms of today, the American dream is to make loads of money with no academic education and few, if any, real qualifications. However, in reality, considering the global crisis-induced recession post-bailout economy, to find the kind of opportunity that America was once known for, you’ll probably have to go to China instead.
Which makes many expats abroad think about the national dreams of their respective chosen countries. Since Parisian life is very different than life outside of this great city, I thought more about what a Parisian dream would be, rather than the French dream. I don’t feel like I know enough about the entire country to generalize here, only having lived in Paris.
In Paris, I think there are a few contenders that rest below the collective consciousness as secret cherished hopes. The first one that comes to mind is to have your children attend a grande ecole(the equivalent of an ivy-league university) and thus be assured future success in the French ruling classes. Almost all politicians or people in impressive managerial positions in France attended not just a grande ecole, but probably the same one.
Another possibility is becoming a fonctionnaire (a French civil servant or state employee), possibly just because this is MY Parisian dream, and thus being garunteed lifetime job certainty regardless of actual job performance. This system, while great for the fonctionnaire, is highly illogical and makes it impossible for everyone else who has to try to work with fonctionnaires, like the general public. It explains a lot about why the bureaucracy is the way it is...
So what is the Parisian dream, ultimately? I often joke to the French that to me, it seems that the Parisian dream is to have a country house in Normandy. This is like having a big stamp of approval (stamps are important in the fonctionnaire-run bureaucracy here) of being bourgeois and successful. Country houses are shared within families and passed down among the generations like rare jewels. The best ones are in remote scenic areas within a 1-2 hour drive from Paris that get lots of sun and have strategically placed cows that dot the landscape. This is both aesthetic and functional. Pretty to look at and ensures locally available dairy products, which all French people are obsessed with.
The most successful Parisians then are those who can leave Paris every weekend if they want. On any given Fri evening, traffic getting out of Paris is so bad that it often takes about 3 hours just to get on the beltway and get the access ramp to the highway you need for your remote country house destination.
Sometimes Parisians look offended when I reveal my irreverent observation. Sometimes the laugh and agree by admitting that oui, bretagne est moins bien que normandie (see the bit about sunny weather). The thing about Paris is that although it’s a huge tourist destination, all actual residents love to leave Paris and spend the weekend in remote countryside villages instead. Paris is crowded, people are rude and everyone hates taking the metro. It’s polluted and “speed” (meaning fast-paced) and stressful. The countryside, however is the opposite of all these things. Petting the neighbor’s scenic goats or hiking through attractive forest trails or picking non-poisonous mushrooms or eating cheese on your terrace and sipping cocktails outdoors are apaysant and reposant, these are all the ways in which nature helps us forget the trials and tribulations of the city of light. The weekend in the country house in Normandy is not only relaxing, but allows urban escape, brings a family closer to the region where some or possibly most of its members grew up and reaffirms that generations of that family worked hard to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make a better life for future Parisian generations.
Which makes many expats abroad think about the national dreams of their respective chosen countries. Since Parisian life is very different than life outside of this great city, I thought more about what a Parisian dream would be, rather than the French dream. I don’t feel like I know enough about the entire country to generalize here, only having lived in Paris.
In Paris, I think there are a few contenders that rest below the collective consciousness as secret cherished hopes. The first one that comes to mind is to have your children attend a grande ecole(the equivalent of an ivy-league university) and thus be assured future success in the French ruling classes. Almost all politicians or people in impressive managerial positions in France attended not just a grande ecole, but probably the same one.
Another possibility is becoming a fonctionnaire (a French civil servant or state employee), possibly just because this is MY Parisian dream, and thus being garunteed lifetime job certainty regardless of actual job performance. This system, while great for the fonctionnaire, is highly illogical and makes it impossible for everyone else who has to try to work with fonctionnaires, like the general public. It explains a lot about why the bureaucracy is the way it is...
So what is the Parisian dream, ultimately? I often joke to the French that to me, it seems that the Parisian dream is to have a country house in Normandy. This is like having a big stamp of approval (stamps are important in the fonctionnaire-run bureaucracy here) of being bourgeois and successful. Country houses are shared within families and passed down among the generations like rare jewels. The best ones are in remote scenic areas within a 1-2 hour drive from Paris that get lots of sun and have strategically placed cows that dot the landscape. This is both aesthetic and functional. Pretty to look at and ensures locally available dairy products, which all French people are obsessed with.
The most successful Parisians then are those who can leave Paris every weekend if they want. On any given Fri evening, traffic getting out of Paris is so bad that it often takes about 3 hours just to get on the beltway and get the access ramp to the highway you need for your remote country house destination.
Sometimes Parisians look offended when I reveal my irreverent observation. Sometimes the laugh and agree by admitting that oui, bretagne est moins bien que normandie (see the bit about sunny weather). The thing about Paris is that although it’s a huge tourist destination, all actual residents love to leave Paris and spend the weekend in remote countryside villages instead. Paris is crowded, people are rude and everyone hates taking the metro. It’s polluted and “speed” (meaning fast-paced) and stressful. The countryside, however is the opposite of all these things. Petting the neighbor’s scenic goats or hiking through attractive forest trails or picking non-poisonous mushrooms or eating cheese on your terrace and sipping cocktails outdoors are apaysant and reposant, these are all the ways in which nature helps us forget the trials and tribulations of the city of light. The weekend in the country house in Normandy is not only relaxing, but allows urban escape, brings a family closer to the region where some or possibly most of its members grew up and reaffirms that generations of that family worked hard to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make a better life for future Parisian generations.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Stikes, Spares and Globalisation
Bowling alleys are the same the world over. Same lanes, balls, terrible shoes, video games, American pop music, smells and noises of pins going down and balls spitting out of the machine ready for you to pick up to knock down more pins.
I went to "Bowling Sympa" in Paris tonight and this is how I'm now able to make important cultural generalisations of this kind. The words strike and spare are even the same. Except that it's a boule, not a ball and the pins are called quilles (pronounced "key"). I drank a pastis instead of a beer while waiting my turn but we threatened to kick each other's butts (although in French) and double high fived each other for good coups, or shots, as I would have done at home.
I am unashamed to admit that I had a great time bowling as I kind of love any mixed up cultural mishmash experience because that's more or less my life-- I'm an American with British dual citizenship living in Paris...
Although bowling itself is naf and tacky, the last time I did in in California, it was fantastic, since it was with my coworkers who all embraced it ironically but had fun sincerely. Lots of San Francisco hipsters did things ironically. There was even an article about it once in one of the free weekly papers (themselves hotbeds of hipster coolness) that described this attitude with the image: "look, Kyle, I'm bowling. Just like dumb midwesterners. How ironic of me."
The only time I bowled since the coworker party was on a Wii at my cousin's house in the US and believe me, real anything is better than the virtual video game version...
My French friends had a great time, too and it was even their idea. We intended to go to an agressively hip bowling alley/night club on the Champs Elysees (the idea of chic bowling is highly surreal-- it's like Sex and the City meets The Big Lebowski and the Dude developed a thing for Prada) but it was rented out for a chic private bowling party in prada that night. Shocked that anyone else in Paris could possibly be seized with the urge to bowl at 6 pm on a Saturday, we located another bowling alley thanks to another American export, the iPhone. Who knew there was more than one bowling alley in Paris? I was, however, already well aware that there are probably easily about 10 million iPhones in Paris.
Politically incorrect as it may be, I enjoyed this instance of globalisation (I even recognised the brand Brunswick which seems to design the lane and pin placing machines since I remember seeing it in American bowling alleys). I like the side of France that finds tacky American stuff fun, just becuase I do, too. This makes up for other more infuriating apects of life in France, like negativity, French men always thinking they know everything, the administration and no one ever doing any work. So spare me your strikes, France. The next greve will just make me think of bowling...
I went to "Bowling Sympa" in Paris tonight and this is how I'm now able to make important cultural generalisations of this kind. The words strike and spare are even the same. Except that it's a boule, not a ball and the pins are called quilles (pronounced "key"). I drank a pastis instead of a beer while waiting my turn but we threatened to kick each other's butts (although in French) and double high fived each other for good coups, or shots, as I would have done at home.
I am unashamed to admit that I had a great time bowling as I kind of love any mixed up cultural mishmash experience because that's more or less my life-- I'm an American with British dual citizenship living in Paris...
Although bowling itself is naf and tacky, the last time I did in in California, it was fantastic, since it was with my coworkers who all embraced it ironically but had fun sincerely. Lots of San Francisco hipsters did things ironically. There was even an article about it once in one of the free weekly papers (themselves hotbeds of hipster coolness) that described this attitude with the image: "look, Kyle, I'm bowling. Just like dumb midwesterners. How ironic of me."
The only time I bowled since the coworker party was on a Wii at my cousin's house in the US and believe me, real anything is better than the virtual video game version...
My French friends had a great time, too and it was even their idea. We intended to go to an agressively hip bowling alley/night club on the Champs Elysees (the idea of chic bowling is highly surreal-- it's like Sex and the City meets The Big Lebowski and the Dude developed a thing for Prada) but it was rented out for a chic private bowling party in prada that night. Shocked that anyone else in Paris could possibly be seized with the urge to bowl at 6 pm on a Saturday, we located another bowling alley thanks to another American export, the iPhone. Who knew there was more than one bowling alley in Paris? I was, however, already well aware that there are probably easily about 10 million iPhones in Paris.
Politically incorrect as it may be, I enjoyed this instance of globalisation (I even recognised the brand Brunswick which seems to design the lane and pin placing machines since I remember seeing it in American bowling alleys). I like the side of France that finds tacky American stuff fun, just becuase I do, too. This makes up for other more infuriating apects of life in France, like negativity, French men always thinking they know everything, the administration and no one ever doing any work. So spare me your strikes, France. The next greve will just make me think of bowling...
Friday, October 29, 2010
Baby, You Can Drive My Car
"Can you drive?" a friend asked me yesterday. "Of course I can, I'm American," I replied. Although I couldn't resist adding smugly that unlike most Americans, I can handle a standard shift transmission with my eyes closed. Although not literally, as this is a dubious driving technique. Which many Parisians, in fact, recommend. "The key to successful driving in Paris," they explain to me in tones reserved for revealing the greatest secrets of the universe, "is NOT to pay attention to what other people are doing and just continue on your way. If you have to turn, turn. If you have to merge, merge. You can't look at the other cars, otherwise you'll be paralyzed and unable to go anywhere."
Right. This gives you some insight into the safe, sane and legal traffic maneuvers regularly practiced in the City of Light.
Another highly strange traffic law in this country is that merging traffic has the right of way. This is called Priorité de droite. If you're already on the highway, up to YOU to make room for traffic coming off the on ramp onto the road; they have the right of way, not you.
Despite the obligation of allowing merging traffic to cut ahead of me for no real logical reason, I love nothing more than headin' out on the highway, lookin' for adventure.
Or not.
Although this isn't an area that I've researched much yet (que les recherches commencent!), I'm sure getting a French driver's license is annoying, lengthy, expensive and Kafka-esque in its bureaucratic complexities-- or caprices. I've already heard wildly different testimonies about the ease/difficulty of getting a French DL if you're a foreigner with a valid license from your country. I've gotten advice ranging from "go to the prefecture to request a "validation" and then wait a year" to "I drive on an expired American license and have never had a problem" to "go to Ireland and that the test there; it's much cheaper." And cost estimates for lessons and the exam fees in France for folks who already have a foreign license have ranged from 100-200 euros to 850 euros... Still less than the expected 1 or 2 grand that French kids are expected to pay, however.
This seems about right, the lack of helpful standard information. This is France, after all, where the policy du jour depends on which civil servant happens to be in the office that day. I once had my ATM card stolen and had to make cash withdraws at the bank in person for about a month. For the 3 withdraws I made, EACH one involved a different process. Because each time, someone different helped me.
If this is what the bank does, imagine what happens when the national legal system is involved. Especially considering a driver's license in France is valid for LIFE. While you may think that police involvement would suggest an actual easy transparent process that would be the same for everyone, think again. It probably makes it all the more complicated and secretive and will require even MORE of the usual French scavenger hunt (go where for clue #4?) to find all the relevant pieces of information needed to complete an administrative task... It's sure to be a long and winding road without clearly marked exits. And YOU, as a driver on this road, don't even have the right of way.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Disco and pedagogy...
"I never liked English in high school until I discovered this one anglophone singer." [I assume she'll say Freddie Mercury or David Bowie, both singers capable of changing someone's life and inspiring a newfound appreciation of the English language and wait for it. But no, hang on, what's this...?] "His name was Rod Stewart. The song was Do You Think I'm Sexy?"-- Adult student in my Toeic prep class.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Bad Romance and Post-Feminist Thought 101
My cousin, upon seeing Lady Gaga's weirdo Bad Romance video with all its futuristic sci-fi latex: "There are probably students at Bryn Mawr writing papers about this right now."
Monday, June 14, 2010
Ice Breaker
Me to a new student: Hi, there, I'm Blythe.
Student: Me, too.
Me: No, you're not! That's my name. It's not an adjective that means pleased to meet you!
Student: Me, too.
Me: No, you're not! That's my name. It's not an adjective that means pleased to meet you!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Next Level in 21st Century Dating
"I feel like I'm in so much more of a legitimate relationship, now that we've made friends on a social networking site."
Planet of the Absurd
"...So at the RATP (Parisian Transportation Authority), each department gets an end of the year bonus. Like people who work on weekends get one, people who work evenings, people who did extra hours, people who were injured on the job, etc. There's even a bonus for people who don't get bonuses."
Monday, February 22, 2010
Life, Love and Linguistics
L'amour est comme le 'e instable' en phonétique française-- parfois il est là mais non-prononcé, parfois il n'est pas là et c'est juste une erreur de pronunciation...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Iguana Alerts, Non-Violent Neighbors and Unpronounced 'H's
Some recent quotes:
A friend in Fort Lauderdale on the cold in Florida: "hibernating iguanas have been falling from the trees; the news said to watch out for falling iguanas."
My neighbors when the lights were out on EVERY floor in my building and I ran into them in the dark coming home at 2 am Sunday morning : "Don't worry, Madame, we're not going to attack you."
At a dinner party:
Me, reacting to hearing an anecdote: "What, another story about you in your underwear!?"
On discovering the joys of agriculture: "Woofing-- you know, that program 'Working On Organic Farms...'"
On English sentence structure (or um, the French advantage):
Me: So, in English we use compound nouns which often make English sentences shorter than French ones. Remember when I checked your translation? Everything is longer in French.
Male student (flirtatiously) : Why, thank you.
Me: I meant sentence length.
After a recent theater date:
Me, to my French cavalier: "I swear, I had no idea there would be so many naked men in this play..." I think he was traumatised, haven't heard from him since...
At the Irish dance lesson:
French announcer explaining a new step: "This is called 'i-gate.' For those of you who've studied English, it's spelled with an 'h'."
Me, to my adorable French partner: "yes, and you have to specify that because it's not like anyone in France would actually pronounce the 'h'..."
A friend in Fort Lauderdale on the cold in Florida: "hibernating iguanas have been falling from the trees; the news said to watch out for falling iguanas."
My neighbors when the lights were out on EVERY floor in my building and I ran into them in the dark coming home at 2 am Sunday morning : "Don't worry, Madame, we're not going to attack you."
At a dinner party:
Me, reacting to hearing an anecdote: "What, another story about you in your underwear!?"
On discovering the joys of agriculture: "Woofing-- you know, that program 'Working On Organic Farms...'"
On English sentence structure (or um, the French advantage):
Me: So, in English we use compound nouns which often make English sentences shorter than French ones. Remember when I checked your translation? Everything is longer in French.
Male student (flirtatiously) : Why, thank you.
Me: I meant sentence length.
After a recent theater date:
Me, to my French cavalier: "I swear, I had no idea there would be so many naked men in this play..." I think he was traumatised, haven't heard from him since...
At the Irish dance lesson:
French announcer explaining a new step: "This is called 'i-gate.' For those of you who've studied English, it's spelled with an 'h'."
Me, to my adorable French partner: "yes, and you have to specify that because it's not like anyone in France would actually pronounce the 'h'..."
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Smile, C'est La Revolution!
The Disillusioned Suburban Youth who usually drink, smoke and sexually harass women in one of my neighborhood metro stations (obviously, the sleazier one) had a new one for me today with was oddly sincere, charming and made me smile even bigger:
"You look happy, Madame, what happened in your life today?"
Normally, no one smiles in Parisian public transport. It's kind of against the Parisian code of life as we know it. I think I've never smiled in the metro ever before for this very reason.
Instead, you have to put on your "metro face" which is stony and expressionless yet also hints at deep overwheming depression and untold suffering induced by being forced to share space with your idiot fellow commuters and the bumbling RATP bureaucracy (the French transportation authority) that morning. Your general attitude should say something like, no one has ever experienced such soul crushing existential merde as I have this morning. It also helps if you sigh dramatically (the ever eloquent French "pfft" sound) and roll your eyes a lot.
I was glad that the local neighborhood thugs, in their devotion to rejecting the dominant paradigm, appreciated the deviant social behaviour which is a rebelliously irrepressible smile in the Paris metro.
"You look happy, Madame, what happened in your life today?"
Normally, no one smiles in Parisian public transport. It's kind of against the Parisian code of life as we know it. I think I've never smiled in the metro ever before for this very reason.
Instead, you have to put on your "metro face" which is stony and expressionless yet also hints at deep overwheming depression and untold suffering induced by being forced to share space with your idiot fellow commuters and the bumbling RATP bureaucracy (the French transportation authority) that morning. Your general attitude should say something like, no one has ever experienced such soul crushing existential merde as I have this morning. It also helps if you sigh dramatically (the ever eloquent French "pfft" sound) and roll your eyes a lot.
I was glad that the local neighborhood thugs, in their devotion to rejecting the dominant paradigm, appreciated the deviant social behaviour which is a rebelliously irrepressible smile in the Paris metro.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Becoming Parisian, It's Easy...?
I had a drink with an American friend who loves to make these great vlogs (video blogs) and recently did one about the top 10 reasons that she'll never be Parisian and the top 10 ways in which she HAS become Parisian.
It's very Anglophone to have lists like these. My Dutch and Italian friends, for example, are UNABLE to name their top 5 breakup songs of all-time, if you can imagine. It is no coincidence that the author of High Fidelity (featuring about 5 million lists of this kind) is British.
Among the reasons in favor of Parisianess was that she now uses non-verbal communication. I must confess that I do, too. To express disdain, frustration or annoyance, the French (and some expats, too) just sigh dramatically. They huff and puff in annoyance. This sigh is even transcribed verbally in books, text messages and IM chats as "Pfft."
I've also noticed that when I visit my family in the American university town where they live, I am horrified on a daily basis by American college students who wear baggy sweatshirts, sweatpants and running shoes on a daily basis. To me, it looks like they're wearing their pajamas. In Europe, people only wear sweatpants when they're exercising. Which they don't do in public, but only in small, overpriced gyms or city parks.
For me, I think one of my most French habits, besides sighing and a physical aversion to baggy sweatsuits, is the use of terrible sentence structure in English. In French, you often introduce a noun or idea and then subsequently make a comment on it using the pronoun "it" with an understood antecedent. For example, "the snow, it's pretty." This is pure French ("la neige, c'est beau."). Obviously, in English, we would say, "the snow is pretty," as normal sentence structure is subject, verb, object.
Or as the French would phrase it: normal sentence structure, it's subject, verb, object.
But normal, what is it?
It's very Anglophone to have lists like these. My Dutch and Italian friends, for example, are UNABLE to name their top 5 breakup songs of all-time, if you can imagine. It is no coincidence that the author of High Fidelity (featuring about 5 million lists of this kind) is British.
Among the reasons in favor of Parisianess was that she now uses non-verbal communication. I must confess that I do, too. To express disdain, frustration or annoyance, the French (and some expats, too) just sigh dramatically. They huff and puff in annoyance. This sigh is even transcribed verbally in books, text messages and IM chats as "Pfft."
I've also noticed that when I visit my family in the American university town where they live, I am horrified on a daily basis by American college students who wear baggy sweatshirts, sweatpants and running shoes on a daily basis. To me, it looks like they're wearing their pajamas. In Europe, people only wear sweatpants when they're exercising. Which they don't do in public, but only in small, overpriced gyms or city parks.
For me, I think one of my most French habits, besides sighing and a physical aversion to baggy sweatsuits, is the use of terrible sentence structure in English. In French, you often introduce a noun or idea and then subsequently make a comment on it using the pronoun "it" with an understood antecedent. For example, "the snow, it's pretty." This is pure French ("la neige, c'est beau."). Obviously, in English, we would say, "the snow is pretty," as normal sentence structure is subject, verb, object.
Or as the French would phrase it: normal sentence structure, it's subject, verb, object.
But normal, what is it?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Flirting Through Firewalls
Once women waited for men to call. Now we look for each other on Facebook or wait for them to email (or respond to an email) and worry that their spam filter-- or ours-- might prevent the beginning of a beautiful friendship...
As the Bangles asked in the 1980s, "is this burning an eternal... firewall?"
As the Bangles asked in the 1980s, "is this burning an eternal... firewall?"
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Our Father Who Art in English Class
I have a new student whose last name is God. No kidding, I'm teaching God English.
As you might expect, his level is quite good. God is from another country (God's country) and in his native language, his last name refers to a little black snake that brings good luck. If you see one, something good will happen.
This is why I enjoy teaching-- for the cultural exchange, what I learn from the students and exposure to different perspectives. Depending on the country, one small word can mean either 'basis of world religion' or 'good luck snake!' And both are culturally important, just in different contexts.
As you might expect, his level is quite good. God is from another country (God's country) and in his native language, his last name refers to a little black snake that brings good luck. If you see one, something good will happen.
This is why I enjoy teaching-- for the cultural exchange, what I learn from the students and exposure to different perspectives. Depending on the country, one small word can mean either 'basis of world religion' or 'good luck snake!' And both are culturally important, just in different contexts.
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