The Christmas Season is upon us. Generally speaking I claim to dislike the Christmas season because of what it means along the lines of consumerism. Just over a week ago I was watching people trample each other in attempt to get the new PS3. Thinking about it now it reminds me of images I’ve seen coming from countries that are suffering from famine, as people press toward supply trucks. Friday of course was ‘Black Friday’ or as I prefer ‘Buy Nothing Day.’ I bought some cheese, whipping cream, chocolate truffles, bananas, and a shopping bag. I had completely forgotten about Buy Nothing Day until I got home and listened to an NPR story in which a man had waited outside of a Best Buy starting at 8 PM the night before to buy at computer monitor. My intro paragraph is getting away from my point so I am going to leave it there.
“This year instead of drawing names and exchanging presents we are going to buy presents for children of a nearby community.” This announcement was made by one of the supervisors of La Maison Hereuse, the residence for developmentally disabled individuals, where I live. To this the more vocal residents cheered. “We will still draw each other’s names but we’ll only exchange cards with nice messages. We will not exchange gifts. The gifts will be for the children.” Then there was more cheering and excitement at the prospect of giving gifts to the children.
I don’t have a cohesive response to this event so I will simply note some thoughts.
What have we done to America?
Consumerism is as bad here, so, what have we done to ourselves?
Giving is good. Receiving is good.
What happens though when giving gifts encourages the development of greed?
I have already received an advance on Christmas presents (a milk frother) this year.
Frothy orange juice tastes really light and airy and good.
I bet fresh squeezed frothed orange juice would be amazing.
29.11.06
27.11.06
An International Community
Saturday night I went to a birthday party for an Italian friend of an Italian friend. The emphasis on the Italian is a result of a running joke about Italians being crazy between myself and a Spanish classmate. At this point I have had an Italian in at least one of the two classes that I take each week. Part of the reason that Italians are crazy is the fact that even when they speak French they sing it like it is Italian. The cool thing about them though is they tend to be socially uninhibited.
Back to the party. In this city when you are invited to a party you are given a time, an address and apartment number along with the necessary pass codes to the building. The Italian apartment is on the 5th floor of building on a bit of hill in the 18th. That part of the 18th seemed to have a larger African immigrant community as evidence of the ethnic restaurants and publicities that I saw. The apartment opened into a large living room/dining room/kitchen area that is on a rounded corner of the building. One bedroom went off to the side and stairs went up to another bedroom on the floor above. The big room at the party’s height held about thirty. Over the course of the night the musical variety went from beetles to elvis to radiohead to Andre 3000 and a similarly varied Italian Selection. As the music changed different people would start dancing where ever they were maintaining a minimum of five or six dancing to any given song. Again the dancing offered a spectrum from the twist to something else that made me think it was Israeli. The people who were at the party were also of a spectrum: an Italian crashing somebody’s couch who implored me to visit his beautiful town of Venice; a German who has a girlfriend living in Paris who he met in Poland; A Parisian who works with developing artists; A couple Italian students; A Czech visiting for a friend for a week; And 4 American college girls that showed up near the end. I didn’t talk with the Americans, I guess because they made themselves into a little group.
I am continually amazed by the diversity of nationalities that I come across. Last week I had gone to a party at some Finnish people’s apartment and there was a similar diversity of nationalities. Maybe it is just that I am a part of a loosely organized international community.
Back to the party. In this city when you are invited to a party you are given a time, an address and apartment number along with the necessary pass codes to the building. The Italian apartment is on the 5th floor of building on a bit of hill in the 18th. That part of the 18th seemed to have a larger African immigrant community as evidence of the ethnic restaurants and publicities that I saw. The apartment opened into a large living room/dining room/kitchen area that is on a rounded corner of the building. One bedroom went off to the side and stairs went up to another bedroom on the floor above. The big room at the party’s height held about thirty. Over the course of the night the musical variety went from beetles to elvis to radiohead to Andre 3000 and a similarly varied Italian Selection. As the music changed different people would start dancing where ever they were maintaining a minimum of five or six dancing to any given song. Again the dancing offered a spectrum from the twist to something else that made me think it was Israeli. The people who were at the party were also of a spectrum: an Italian crashing somebody’s couch who implored me to visit his beautiful town of Venice; a German who has a girlfriend living in Paris who he met in Poland; A Parisian who works with developing artists; A couple Italian students; A Czech visiting for a friend for a week; And 4 American college girls that showed up near the end. I didn’t talk with the Americans, I guess because they made themselves into a little group.
I am continually amazed by the diversity of nationalities that I come across. Last week I had gone to a party at some Finnish people’s apartment and there was a similar diversity of nationalities. Maybe it is just that I am a part of a loosely organized international community.
16.11.06
Violence and Cultural Misunderstanding
Last year at the end of October violent protests rocked the suburbs of Paris as hundreds of cars were burned. This was the manifestation primarily of immigrants frustrated with life in Paris. Two weeks ago, a bus was burned in Marseilles a southern coastal city of France.
There a man desiring to gain entry to a bus between stops was not let on. Angered, the man threw a molotov cocktail at the bus causing it to erupt in flames badly burning one passenger. One might surmise that this man was looking for a reason to torch the bus. Protesting for their security mass transit workers held a 30 hours strike closing down over a hundred and fifty bus and metro lines last week. Another strike is planned for the end of this week.
This evening on my way home I experienced a similar though less destructive rage. The bus I was on had left its first stop having gone perhaps ten feet when a man ran up and pounded on the bus signaling the driver that he wanted the back door opened. The bus stopped at the red light another twenty feet later. The man ran to catch up and again pounded on the bus signaling the driver that he wanted to enter the bus through the back door which was in front of me. When the light turned green the bus slowly turned the corner. The man ran yelling into the road in front and to the side of the bus. He had the look of an immigrant. As the bus passed him he reached into his shopping bag and hurled a liter and a half bottle of water at the side of the bus. It bounced off the bus and down the road forty or fifty feet. Everyone was thinking of the bus in Marseilles.
The heart of this issue is cultural. In Bolivia there are no bus stops and to catch a bus one simply signals the bus driver. In Guatemala one can enter the bus from any door and the driver's mate will collect the tariff. This evening the man assumed he was target of racial prejudice. However it is law that a passenger must enter through the front door of the bus so as to pay and the non-white bus driver felt no need to stop until the next bus stop. The man would have to wait six minutes for the next bus.
There a man desiring to gain entry to a bus between stops was not let on. Angered, the man threw a molotov cocktail at the bus causing it to erupt in flames badly burning one passenger. One might surmise that this man was looking for a reason to torch the bus. Protesting for their security mass transit workers held a 30 hours strike closing down over a hundred and fifty bus and metro lines last week. Another strike is planned for the end of this week.
This evening on my way home I experienced a similar though less destructive rage. The bus I was on had left its first stop having gone perhaps ten feet when a man ran up and pounded on the bus signaling the driver that he wanted the back door opened. The bus stopped at the red light another twenty feet later. The man ran to catch up and again pounded on the bus signaling the driver that he wanted to enter the bus through the back door which was in front of me. When the light turned green the bus slowly turned the corner. The man ran yelling into the road in front and to the side of the bus. He had the look of an immigrant. As the bus passed him he reached into his shopping bag and hurled a liter and a half bottle of water at the side of the bus. It bounced off the bus and down the road forty or fifty feet. Everyone was thinking of the bus in Marseilles.
The heart of this issue is cultural. In Bolivia there are no bus stops and to catch a bus one simply signals the bus driver. In Guatemala one can enter the bus from any door and the driver's mate will collect the tariff. This evening the man assumed he was target of racial prejudice. However it is law that a passenger must enter through the front door of the bus so as to pay and the non-white bus driver felt no need to stop until the next bus stop. The man would have to wait six minutes for the next bus.
9.11.06
Bureaucratic France
Today I visited the sub-prefecture of Antony. I did this in hope of securing my Carte de Sejour. I was foolish to think that there was any possibility that I would walk out of there with my ID card before lunch.
I will start by saying that the whole journey of attaining the proper legal papers for my stay in France began with the quest for my student visa. This required a number of documents that I made sure I had by simply always counting that I had six of them. They ranged from proof of finances to proof of studies and a plane ticket. Though it turned out that they also wanted my transcripts from EMU I managed to attain the visa.
The long stay student visa allows you to enter the country and then apply for a residence card. Along with the visa I was in need of five other documents along with photocopies and id photos (3). Upon securing I had gone to the prefecture in Paris but they informed me that since I lived in one of the suburbs I needed to go to a sub-prefecture in a neighboring suburb. I went to the sub-prefecture at 11:00 am one morning about a month after my arrival. Here I found out that unfortunately as I had come in so late in the morning there were so many people in front of me that I should come back on another day. They informed me that I needed to be there by 9:00 am to take a number as all the numbers they served in a day were normally given out by that time.
So this morning I got up at 5:45 and arrived at the sub-prefecture a half hour later to be the 21st person to get in line. The office opened at 8:30 as the number of people in line reached 150. Unfortunately of the two people who could handle my specific case neither were there as one was sick and the other was stuck in the metro. Finally at 10am my I got to meet with the man who had been temporarily stuck in the metro and after five minutes I had managed to secure an appointment for the 9th of January.
On the 9th of January I will now go with all of the documents that I have accumulated in hopes that they will be enough for me to finally after 5 months receive my residence card which will have 7 months left of its year long validity.
I will start by saying that the whole journey of attaining the proper legal papers for my stay in France began with the quest for my student visa. This required a number of documents that I made sure I had by simply always counting that I had six of them. They ranged from proof of finances to proof of studies and a plane ticket. Though it turned out that they also wanted my transcripts from EMU I managed to attain the visa.
The long stay student visa allows you to enter the country and then apply for a residence card. Along with the visa I was in need of five other documents along with photocopies and id photos (3). Upon securing I had gone to the prefecture in Paris but they informed me that since I lived in one of the suburbs I needed to go to a sub-prefecture in a neighboring suburb. I went to the sub-prefecture at 11:00 am one morning about a month after my arrival. Here I found out that unfortunately as I had come in so late in the morning there were so many people in front of me that I should come back on another day. They informed me that I needed to be there by 9:00 am to take a number as all the numbers they served in a day were normally given out by that time.
So this morning I got up at 5:45 and arrived at the sub-prefecture a half hour later to be the 21st person to get in line. The office opened at 8:30 as the number of people in line reached 150. Unfortunately of the two people who could handle my specific case neither were there as one was sick and the other was stuck in the metro. Finally at 10am my I got to meet with the man who had been temporarily stuck in the metro and after five minutes I had managed to secure an appointment for the 9th of January.
On the 9th of January I will now go with all of the documents that I have accumulated in hopes that they will be enough for me to finally after 5 months receive my residence card which will have 7 months left of its year long validity.
2.11.06
Simple Delights
I had been thinking that I would write about the depression that can result from living alone in the city with a minimal social life. But alas at this time I am too content with life to write about being depressed. On some other occasion I will write about the lack of community in a city setting. Instead I will talk about the (relatively) simple pleasures of life.
A fresh baguette when both warm in you hand and your mouth as you bite into it is one of the simplest delights. Crispy and crunchy with a soft fluffy center the baguette is one of the many gastronomic successes. It is typical to purchase such a baguette from the artisan bakery near by then as you walk home you nibble on the end. The nibbling phenomenon is so prevalent that several people have mentioned it to me.
I recently purchased a sharp kitchen knife as there was only a small paring knife furnished in my studio. This knife pared with a ripe tomato results very clean slices of tomato. It is difficult to explain how the cleanliness of these slices makes me salivate though I just finished eating the a for mentioned tomato.
If one was to then cause the meeting of the baguette and tomato mentioned above with a slice of light (in flavor) creamy cheese the result would be the instantaneous evaporation of all the pressures of city living. I say light in flavor because on all cheeses in France is marked the fat content and the cheese of preference this evening was 50% fat. Alas it is a small price to pay for such a shedding of life’s pressure.
A fresh baguette when both warm in you hand and your mouth as you bite into it is one of the simplest delights. Crispy and crunchy with a soft fluffy center the baguette is one of the many gastronomic successes. It is typical to purchase such a baguette from the artisan bakery near by then as you walk home you nibble on the end. The nibbling phenomenon is so prevalent that several people have mentioned it to me.
I recently purchased a sharp kitchen knife as there was only a small paring knife furnished in my studio. This knife pared with a ripe tomato results very clean slices of tomato. It is difficult to explain how the cleanliness of these slices makes me salivate though I just finished eating the a for mentioned tomato.
If one was to then cause the meeting of the baguette and tomato mentioned above with a slice of light (in flavor) creamy cheese the result would be the instantaneous evaporation of all the pressures of city living. I say light in flavor because on all cheeses in France is marked the fat content and the cheese of preference this evening was 50% fat. Alas it is a small price to pay for such a shedding of life’s pressure.
French School
This is a repost from my other blog Oct 12:
French school in Paris provides an opportunity to put yourself into a global community. In my french class on M/TU/TH there are currently three other Americans, a Brazilian, a German, a Cambodian, a New Zealander and a Bulgarian. It was observed by an American and the Brazilian that a lot of the people that they hang out with speak english making it harder to learn French.
Two weeks ago I was walking down the street with a friend and we were speaking english. A woman pushing a stroller with a baby in it stopped next to us and asked in a semi frantic voice with metropolitan American english, “excuse me, have you seen a pink shoe?” The child in the stroller was missing a small pink shoe. My friend apologised and said that we hadn’t then stopped as it was sitting on a pile of leaves in the gutter in front of us.
A couple of days ago I walked by an older American couple in the metro discussing directions to Boulevard Montparnasse with an American english speaking student. They were looking at a map thirty seconds later. I was next to the map and assured them that they were waiting for the right train in my best American english.
In many ways Paris is the New York of France. By this I mean that there is a Parisian attitude toward life that everyone has. In New York City there is a distinct attitude toward life that everyone seems to share. It is something that can be felt as soon as you reach customs in the airport or when you step off the Chinesse Bus on East Broadway or leave the platform of Grand Central Station. In Washington D.C. this type of attitude isn’t as palpable because a lot of the people who are there, at least in the city center, are there on their way toward somewhere else. They are working for an interest group with the hope of working for an international interest group or heading up an interest group in some other part of the country. The attitude is one of transience. Paris has an attitude of being “a la mode.” When you are in Paris you become Parisian no matter where you are from. It is an attitude of refined simplicity. There are many other elements but I am still trying to figure them out.
French school in Paris provides an opportunity to put yourself into a global community. In my french class on M/TU/TH there are currently three other Americans, a Brazilian, a German, a Cambodian, a New Zealander and a Bulgarian. It was observed by an American and the Brazilian that a lot of the people that they hang out with speak english making it harder to learn French.
Two weeks ago I was walking down the street with a friend and we were speaking english. A woman pushing a stroller with a baby in it stopped next to us and asked in a semi frantic voice with metropolitan American english, “excuse me, have you seen a pink shoe?” The child in the stroller was missing a small pink shoe. My friend apologised and said that we hadn’t then stopped as it was sitting on a pile of leaves in the gutter in front of us.
A couple of days ago I walked by an older American couple in the metro discussing directions to Boulevard Montparnasse with an American english speaking student. They were looking at a map thirty seconds later. I was next to the map and assured them that they were waiting for the right train in my best American english.
In many ways Paris is the New York of France. By this I mean that there is a Parisian attitude toward life that everyone has. In New York City there is a distinct attitude toward life that everyone seems to share. It is something that can be felt as soon as you reach customs in the airport or when you step off the Chinesse Bus on East Broadway or leave the platform of Grand Central Station. In Washington D.C. this type of attitude isn’t as palpable because a lot of the people who are there, at least in the city center, are there on their way toward somewhere else. They are working for an interest group with the hope of working for an international interest group or heading up an interest group in some other part of the country. The attitude is one of transience. Paris has an attitude of being “a la mode.” When you are in Paris you become Parisian no matter where you are from. It is an attitude of refined simplicity. There are many other elements but I am still trying to figure them out.
This is a repost from my other blog from Oct 11:
It is just over three weeks that I have been living in Chatenay-Malabry. I have determined that if I leave my studio apartment by 7:39 on my alarm clock, I can get out the gate in time to see the bus when we are both 50 meters from the stop. I end up having to run half the distance, half of the days. I take the 195 six stops to the Robinson RER. The RER is an extension of the Paris Metro. At the Robinson I wait less than five minutes for the 294 which takes me another eight stops to Chatillon. In Chatillon I start work at 8:20 in an industrial park of sorts.
I have begun to recognize some of my fellow commuters. Today on the 195 I saw a young man of perhaps 17 or 18 years of age, potentially of Algerian decent. He always dresses professionally but he is not from an affluent family as I conclude from his attire. His attire has an air of being worn now by a second generation. His shoes are black leather. Pressed kaki pants, a white sweater and a brown suit coat that is a couple of sizes too large complete his outfit. He carries with him a leather briefcase with a flap closure. It sat between his legs as he held onto the pole. He disappeared as he exited at the Robinson.
On the 294 I sat across from a young woman about my age. Last time she was carrying a similar paper "etam" bag. "etam" is a designer label that has stores in every shopping center. Once the bus starts moving she pulls out a small circular mirror that she uses to check her lipstick and eye make up. She ruffles her long dark kinky hair. The ends of her hair is bleached as though from the sun. She puts away the mirror and ruffles her hair once more. Her nail polish is a dark red and always wears pointed toe leather heals with blue jeans. Unlike many of the young and fashionable, she does not have music wired to her ears. Today she stared at a spot in the air somewhere between us with her lips tight but one corner raised in an expression of, "I will determine the solution to the dilemma in my head." I always get off the bus before she does.
It is just over three weeks that I have been living in Chatenay-Malabry. I have determined that if I leave my studio apartment by 7:39 on my alarm clock, I can get out the gate in time to see the bus when we are both 50 meters from the stop. I end up having to run half the distance, half of the days. I take the 195 six stops to the Robinson RER. The RER is an extension of the Paris Metro. At the Robinson I wait less than five minutes for the 294 which takes me another eight stops to Chatillon. In Chatillon I start work at 8:20 in an industrial park of sorts.
I have begun to recognize some of my fellow commuters. Today on the 195 I saw a young man of perhaps 17 or 18 years of age, potentially of Algerian decent. He always dresses professionally but he is not from an affluent family as I conclude from his attire. His attire has an air of being worn now by a second generation. His shoes are black leather. Pressed kaki pants, a white sweater and a brown suit coat that is a couple of sizes too large complete his outfit. He carries with him a leather briefcase with a flap closure. It sat between his legs as he held onto the pole. He disappeared as he exited at the Robinson.
On the 294 I sat across from a young woman about my age. Last time she was carrying a similar paper "etam" bag. "etam" is a designer label that has stores in every shopping center. Once the bus starts moving she pulls out a small circular mirror that she uses to check her lipstick and eye make up. She ruffles her long dark kinky hair. The ends of her hair is bleached as though from the sun. She puts away the mirror and ruffles her hair once more. Her nail polish is a dark red and always wears pointed toe leather heals with blue jeans. Unlike many of the young and fashionable, she does not have music wired to her ears. Today she stared at a spot in the air somewhere between us with her lips tight but one corner raised in an expression of, "I will determine the solution to the dilemma in my head." I always get off the bus before she does.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)