My day out at the zoo :: 12:42 PM :: easyjetsetter

I have never been to Brussels before. Or Belgium, for that matter, except for a frustrating few hours spent in the Midi station when the Dutch trains were in strike and I had to repurchase a ticket to make it to my firm's anniversary bash. Everything I know about Belgium and Brussles comes from two sources: first, that one man minister for tourism, Adam, and second, the blogosphere, specifically, EU Rota, Tim Worstall, and Nosemonkey at Europhobia (all linked to the right). This first meant I approached the town with open eyes. The second may have been my downfall.

Brussels itself is quite a nice town. It feels oddly nautical. Like Troon, or Oban, or Berwick upon Tweed, or even somewhere in Brittany. Possibly because all the hacking Dutch reminds me of the old consumptive people lining the streets in these towns, desperate to get the bracing sea air in their shrivelled lungs.

People are pleasant and clean, and they smile a lot more and smell a lot less than the French. Plus, I am, in comparison with most of the women I saw, slim and elegant. That was pretty cool, as I normally feel like a heifer in a sack most days on the streets of the world's capital for anorexia. The streets a small, but not poky, and there's a lot of leafiness. The buildings are either that seaside twoup twodown type, with big windows, or 1970's office blocks. The metro looks like the Glasgow underground, orange and old fashioned. The streets are cobbled and free from dogshit.... The prices of everything are halved. The beer is good. It is wee and pleasant.

I kept expecting officious people with clipboards to leap out at me and check the labels in my clothes to see if they were made in China and confiscate them if so, or at the very least that my % change in body fat was in line with outward growth. Or something. But nobody did....

I was just thinking, I could cope with this, when I arrived at the Parliament building. Now, for a start, remember that this is a job I applied for in November. The job is for an English speaker, they have similar posts for 15 or so other languages. There are exams being held in Brussels AND London today. I had assumed for all the posts at once, otherwise what could explain the delay, other than processing all those CVs for all those jobs?

As I registered, I came to the sudden horrific realisation that all 300 people who were signed up for the exam in brussels alone were there for the english language post, and they ranged from my age to 45 or so, all presumably long-term unemployed, as they all, presumably, applied last Novelmber too. This led me to the conclusion that they had not bothered to read our CVs, in which case this exam was a colossal waste of money when an afternoon with a waste paper basket could save a lot.

We were seated in a big old debating chamber with interpreter headsets (and informed not to touch sadly.) My name was magically turned into a double barrelled one, as they confused my somewhat masculine middle name with a second surname. I got bumped up a few notches in the alphabet andthe e at the end of my first name metamorphosed into an a.

So, I sat down to take the exam, and this is where my trouble started. There are three parts, and you have to stay in the room for all three, not even allowed to leave for what the invigilator called "a sanitary stop" or to eat anything you may have brought as "we may not know that it is food." The first part was a multiple choice paper on the history and construction of the EU, the second a synthesis in English of a French text, and the third a French essay on one of three English questions.

Here's the kicker: unless you get over 60% on the multiple choice, they will not even look at your other papers. FACT. And here is a sample question: What is the make up of the AFL-EU (do not ask me what this is): 70 deputies, 73, 75, or 77. It will be a miracle if I have more than 10 out of 35.

The speech was eight pages of drivel from the 1999 close of the German EU presidency, translated into French from German, to be condensed into a one page summary in English. It was repetitive and flowery and I have axe-murderer handwriting. I failed that one too.

But, here my crimes really begin. The essay question I chose to answer was: China is an increasingly global player in key markets. EU industry and way of life is under threat. What do you suggest?

Well, sadly, I had just come from reading an article about Chinese textiles in the Economist, and I flipped out. I pointed out that the Lisbon Agenda discounted China in its research as at the time it was not even on the list of top ten trading partners and now it was number two. That public perception of an imbalance of trade (yes, there is, but not as bad as the US with China) had led to panic and ridiculous protectionism following the lifting of textile tariffs in January (ultimately pointless as everyone knew about these for years and did nothing to prepare and the WTO shan't allow the new tariffs beyond a couple of years) and the top-up textile tariffs were only an attempt to butter up the French public before May 29th anyway. That the EU ignored or enraged China at its peril.

I suggested that Bolkestein needed to be more comprehensive, not restricted, that the SGP should be either adhered to or, better, abolished as it was harming the ability of country's to invest in themselves, let alone turning off foreign investment, suggested agriculture and manufacturing was finished, that Peter Mandelson was a twat (well, he is), and I think I used the phrase "we cannot put our fingers in our ears or our heads in the sand. We must liberalise or die."

I rather undermined my argument by forgetting what the French for 'trade' was, and hence what to call the World Trade Organisation... I settled for 'le WTO.'

Anyway, the EU now has me on file as a dangerous anglo-saxon revolutionary agitator with a handwriting profile to scare Hannibal Lecter's shrink. I will never work in this town again.

UPDATE: It is possible that reading this swelled my ego to the point that I thought I was cleverer than the exam.

UPDATE II: Home now, and dislike Brussels itself also. By the time I was done with the exam and doing the posts, I realised I had left my watch in the exam room. The security guards, despite the fact that i had a pass for the day, would not let me in to look for it, and couldn't find it themselves, and nobody handed it into lost property. It is the only watch I have ever liked, and was a present and someone has swiped it. Swine. Also, by this time it was 3 and I was super hungry, but everything shuts in Brussels at 2:30. Because it's not an internationally important cosmopolitan capital city after all, it is, as I said, a seaside town. I ate McDonalds for lunch.

Never play monopoly with an accountant, he will make you cry :: 01:35 PM :: easyjetsetter

I sauntered over to Neuilly last night to see Adam and Audrey who I had not hung out with for a while and who had suggested I come over for dinner.

Now, you would imagine that their insistence on Thursday night, before a big exam, would have raised some suspicions. As would have "you remember how to get here right? And eight. You must be here at eight."

But, as proven in my previous post, I am thick as shit.

So when they pressed a package into my hands I was surprised, as I had told them the whole "buy me a present for introducing you" thing was a joke. I opened it and Lo! It was monopoly set! Not just any monopoly, but modernised Paris monopoly!! One playing piece was a hamburger, another a cell phone!!!! The houses cost a million each now and are little high rise apartments instead of dinky bungalows. Inflation eh?

"I thought you could play it in London and think of Paris" says Audrey
"Oh, that's so sweet..."
"We should have a monopoly night sometime with everyone from the pub quiz."
"Wait, we're not going to play a round tonight?"
(Cue everyone jumping out of the bathroom shouting "surprise!" and me giving a hideous shriek and jumping about the foot in the air.)

So, we played monopoly, got pizza and ice cream, got drunk, especially Audey, I love drunk Audrey, she loses all mental filters and says everything on her mind which is inevitably hilarious. Adam began buying everything up and gradually got hyper competitive when his rent rose to 9 million or he hoarded houses. We all started shouting and arguing and slinging insults and Katrien taught me a new word: "penis wrinkle."

I had a bad time on my first two runs around the board and didn't land on anything to buy, so I went broke first. When Adam took all my property I actually shouted the words "cunt fucker!" a couple of times.

Of course, that's just my way of telling you all that I love you.

Life tip#1858703 :: 10:42 AM :: easyjetsetter

When making facetious suggestions, say, in response to a lively discussion on an email group, in response to a major news outlet asking a group blog of 16 writers to come up with 150-200 words on the G8 summit, and everyone is wondering how to represent everyone's views and stick to the word limit, do not, do not, do not, give in to the urge to show off your sad pathetic knowledge of literature by suggesting we do a Japanese collaborative poem, and then subsequently volunteer to edit people's submissions of Hakkus and Wakis. Otherwise, this might happen to you too.

Note that they chose to highlight the only line where the contraction means the syllable is missing.

PS The telly people liked something I (oh and some other people) did!!!

Pathetic Fallacy :: 12:24 PM :: easyjetsetter

I put a lot of value on my surroundings. I find my home to be a very important extension of myself. The town I am in, the area I live in, I like these places to reflect something about myself, and represent how I look at life. The flat is looking the way I will be feeling very soon.

As my parents were going to be in the south of england this weekend with the car anyway, it made sense for them to come and pick up the majority of my stuff, including my cd player and cds.

So the little flat is being gradually denuded of all the things that made it feel like home: the pretty lamps, the blue boxes, the photos, the postcards up on the walls, my books, my blue check quilt that covered the futon during the day and kept me warm at night (it's a bit stinky now), the pretty bowls and vases and north carolina pottery and cups and glasses I had collected, and my teapot too. Half my clothes are packed. I still have more than most normal people, but it's not a lot for me. I only have ten pairs of shoes and four handbags left.

Most of what is left can be chucked out when I leave: cleaning implements, old ratty boarding school sheets and towels. I am no way getting rid of the new ergonomic chair, nor the fan, but I am not traipsing on the eurostar with them, so I think I shall leave them in the keeping of Audrey or Florence, someone with a cave.

Pathetic fallacy is a literary term referring to when the landscape and natural images surrounding a character are reflections and extensions of his or her mood, so Victor Frankenstein lost in a dark wood, for example. Or bright shiny happy flowers dead and shrivelled.



That used to be a begonia by the way. As did this:



I'm going to miss my little flat in Paris.

Non aux J.O. :: 01:38 PM :: easyjetsetter

At the sharpener. Go see me thinking out loud in real time and giggle at the spelling mistakes.

More here. And here. And then here too.

UPDATE: Love it. Live it. Pyrrhic Victory.

My new home town :: 04:17 PM :: easyjetsetter

I put a post up about the bombings in London at 12 Paris time, but took it down about an hour ago. Neil says everything I want to say far better than I could. He also has links to everything I was reading and then a couple more things too. Go. Read.

'We won't be having that' :: 08:16 AM :: easyjetsetter

I took down yesterday's post as it was just a linklog in many ways. I also wasn't saying anything anybody else wasn't. Well, after further reading, and a bit of thought in the bath this morning. I've got something to say.

All but two or three of you know me as a Brit abroad first. I'm generally very denigratory about the UK, because I've always felt out of place in modern British culture. The national obsession with drinking until you fall over and/or pull and/or punch someone, the priding of sports over job/relationship/actual issues, the pride of place in the national consciousness that that pile of shit programming Big Brother inhabits and so on. I turned away in disgust from the mass hysteria following Diana's death.

Just when I am dreading returning to a country that takes it's political cues from a woman with big knockers in a newspaper designed for effective bum wiping, something real happens. And something happens to Britain and British 'culture.' They put it best themselves really.

From Andrew, who was on the train behind the one that was hit at Liverpool Street.

"To the terrorist cunts who tried to kill me today:

Fuck you. You missed me. Better luck next time."

From Jarndyce, who normally takes the number 30 bus, and intends to keep his policy of never sitting on the top at the back:

"A little message for you Mr Terrorist. I've been out pushing my daughter on the swings. Go fuck yourselves"

From Tim, in reaction to the boast of the fuckers that claimed responsibility that they had spread "fear and panic" across the UK.

"You know, I’m not sure that these people have quite understood us."

He writes this too contrasing the time the weather distrupted transport, and another when it was the IRA:

"The next day there were more people at work than on a normal day. There was no co-ordination, no orders went out, but the truly sick seemed insistent on dragging themselves into work, mewling and puling infants were farmed out to anyone at all so that parents could turn up. If the trains weren't working, then people used buses. If they were full, then they walked. The attitude seemed to be that sure, we'll take an extra day off if we can, but if you're trying to scare us, if you're going to kill some of us to make us change our ways, well, in the words of my favorite fictional character, 'We'll not be having with that.'"

A mystery journalist writes this:

"And that's because we're better than you. Everyone is better than you. Our city works. We rather like it. And we're going to go about our lives. We're going to take care of the lives you ruined. And then we're going to work. And we're going down the pub."

From Nosemonkey, whose blog has served as one of the online hubs where everyone gathered, Britons on the scene saying what was happening, and overseas wellwishers and expats, liveblogged the whole thing:

"Cheers for the messages of support. London's grateful. And we're going to keep our heads. Stiff upper lip and all that - wouldn't do to get all emotional. Hardly British - and if we stop being British about it, the bastards have won. So we'll have a few beers, make as many sick jokes about it in pubs up and down the land as we can, and get on with our lives as normal. Other than causing the grief of too many innocent people, these cunts will have achieved precisely fuck all. We shall not be moved."

He then directs us not to forget the Make Poverty History campaign. Otherwise, the terrorists won.

Yes, there's been the odd twat (in the american sense) trying to make a political point out of this, but I'm not going to link to Nick Griffith, George Galloway, Bob Crowe, and Kim du Toit (if you really care, go look it up), but today, my country exceeded my expectations. I'm very proud that I'll be calling myself a Londoner soon.

I'll leave you with this phone conversation with my father around 11:30 Paris time yesterday morning. I had just been emailed the news and was more than a little shaken imagining worst case scenarios such as CBRN attacks, such as the ones my sister's last employer had told her was inevitable, she could do nothing against and was best just to carry a mars bar, a bottle of water and 50 quid for a taxi with her at all times or ride her scooter against the prevailing wind.

The news had not yet broken in the States and I had sent an extremely silly email with an even sillier subject line that worried a lot of friends ("bombs go off in my new home town") as I thought they weren't getting any info and wanted them to logon to the BBC. They all thought I had already moved to London and was bang slap in the middle of the carnage. Anyway, this conversation calmed me down.

Me: Dad, call Fiona.
Dad: Why?
Me: Because there's been a series of bomb attacks in the underground.
Dad: Oh right. Hmm. Well, but she doesn't take the underground does she? I'm sure she's ok. I'll give her a bell a bit later.

Stoicism. Phlegmatism. Calm. Order. Stiff upper lip. Brilliant.

UPDATE: Another great linklog.

High (and Low) National Fidelity :: 02:16 PM :: easyjetsetter

I booked my Eurostar ticket today. Leave date: August 1st. I'll dump my stuff in my sublet, then I'll go home for a week, take in the Edinburgh festival, and then move into my Hampstead abode on the 7th, starting work on the 8th. This time last year I was leaving the States for Britain, en route for France. A few thoughts:

5 Things I still miss about the U.S.
1) Burritoes and NC BBQ
2) NPR, McSweeneys, Ira Glass, Dave Eggers, David Sedaris, Chris Ware, Sarah Vowell...
3) A written constitution enshrining individualism and liberalism.
4) Being a student. Things were easy. People gave me money and didn't expect a whole lot back. I was richer then than I am now.
5) The wife (and everyone else...)

5 Things I do not miss about the U.S.
1) Roger Ailes (& Michael Moore)
2) SUVs & total lack of pedestrians
3) Universal male circumcision in my peer group (little known fact - poor guys.)
4) My ex-dentist: Dinah B. Vice
5) Filling out my own taxes (it was a pride thing...I only got audited twice despite axe-murderer handwriting)

5 Things I am going to be glad to be leaving in France
1) Chirac: though not for much longer, 20% approval rating.
2) A lackadaisical approach to helping thy neighbor epitomised in my filmmaker landlord's inability to help me get a bank account, phone contract, or even a library card. I am officially a criminal in France.*
3) Reliance on the State (miniscule charitable giving for example) coupled with disregard for laws (renting out flats on the sly)
4) Demonstrations and strikes over entirely contradictory causes. I have come to hate the word "solidarity." Oh, and a spineless government giving in every time...
5) Hit Machine, Vivement Dimanche, Nouvelle Star, La Ferme: French TV is the pits.

5 Things I am going to regret leaving in France
1) The Metro: it's cheap, it's clean, it's fast, it's big.
2) Sarkozy: lovely chap, could change the face of France. Shame he's married.
3) The pub quiz: the egomaniasses came in second this week, despite my absence due to holiday in Provence (on which more soon.)
4) Excellent three course meals with half-decent wine for 10 quid. And my open market. And fauchon. And pipalottes. Oh hell, all the food.
5) My first friends. You know who you are. You taught me to like Europe.

5 Things I am dreading about returning to Britain
1) Big Brother and the sway it holds over daily conversation.
2) Txt-speak: "R u free 2nite?" and so on
3) Rupert Murdoch and all his works.
4) 24 hour drinking. And fighting. And shagging.
5) Guardian readers (and Telegraph readers.)**

5 Things I am looking forward to about returning to Britain
1) Time Team: prime time TV about archaeological digs. Mostly cesspits and pottery.
2) Having a job in the field I want to make my career (this was a tough decision whether to put under "dread" or "looking forward"...only time shall tell)
3) Proper tea. With real sodding milk. None of this UHT crap.
4) Proper swear words. The French have about three. Very dull for subtitlers.
5) Bootle. What an ace doggy. Pet passports prohibitively expensive. My poor spaniel hasn't seen me in so long he shan't recognise me.

*I have committed several felonies in the States too, but mostly because of old, inactive, morality laws. I was almost caught for one once, when I was stopped by the police for driving in a car wearing nothing but a (stolen) american flag and carrying a tray of mardi gras coloured jello vodka shots. Actually, I think that's three charges....
**I read both, but I would not characterise myself as a "reader" of either.

WAAAH! HIS legacy is bigger than MY legacy... :: 11:48 PM :: easyjetsetter

Francisco Petrarch, Renaissance scholar, theologian and lyric poet, spent his youth writing letters to dead Romans, such as Seneca (unaware that there were, in fact, two of them) pretending they were his friends, so that history would refer to him every time they mentioned these prominent dead Romans. He wrote a letter for posterity about ascending Mont Ventoux (in the region I just came from - Provence) at the time of the Avignon popes, about climbing the heights of the world, without actually going up the sodding mountain...

Following a week where the spotlight of history has been on my tiny island, and Our Thespain Prime Minister has had his legacy enshrined as "doubling aid to africa" and "making poverty history," another Third Wayer wants a piece of the action.

Not content with the eight most powerful men in the world, and Jacques Chirac, being present in the same room, makign decisions that effect us all, Clinton wishes to bring in other important people (including Rupert 'devil' Murdoch) to try and work out how government and the private sector can do good. Sounds suspicious to me.

Call me a naysayer, but real difference is incremental, not sweeping. Real action is cumulative, not cathartic. Real decisions are made in committee, negotiated, perhaps, watered down, but they happen. There isn't a big media circus, a flash of the paparazzi bulbs and everyone goes back to what they were doing before. People just do their jobs. I intend to be one of them.

A world of pure imagination :: 07:11 AM :: easyjetsetter

It starts today in France. I shall probably go see it after work, and report back.

Then I go to see firemen's balls for the fete nationale, le 14 juillet.
No really.

Tomorrow night I shall be sipping champagne on a picnic blanket on the Champ de Mars watching the fireworks go off over the Eiffel Tower. Hard life eh?

In other chocolate related news:

To tide me over.

And for your own, real-life, wonkalicious experience.

Pub Quiz report #4 :: 08:49 AM :: easyjetsetter

As I was in Provence last weekend(yes, I will do a post about it...) and will be in Germany this weekend, Nick is guestblogging the pub quiz. I got this email yesterday:

Well, since you were missing I took the liberty of typing up a quick report of the evening. Without giving any of the details. I would say it was a fun night with a few beers and a FEW friends, you slacker.

Act 1- The Team

In a rare turn of events the true power players of the Pub Quiz were allowed to form a team, unfettered by the Flemish or Scottish intellectuals normally making a mess of things. Since the team was missing our normal fearless leader, we considered naming the team "The Easyjetset Assassins", but we did not think we should dignify her absence with such a display. Since the team was also missing our favourite Flemish intellectual, we decided we could not use the team name,(or health warning in his case) "The Burning Sensation".

Instead the team name we choose was the reliable "Egomaniasses".

Act 2- In Unity there is strength

In a challenging pub quiz, focused on ancient philosophy, advanced physics, and rare species of the animal kingdom. The team of three (Annika, Mandy, and Nick) worked like a well-tuned orchestra of knowledge. One persons strength was filling the void of another weakness. Some of our answers: Pink Floyd, Karotin (or hair), and Fight Club are only a glimpse of the genius shown during the night.

Act 3- In victory we shall reign supreme

When the final tallies came in and the names were read in solemn reverence, and a fuck you every other word, The Egomaniasses came in a dignified and resolute 2nd , proud to share our winnings (red wine), like true sportsman and women, with our friends behind the bar.

Encore- To the victors go the spoils.

The bonus question- In what year was the Joker added to a deck of cards in the United States?

Our Answer- 1869

The Real Answer- 1865

The spoils- 26 euros

I guess it just goes to show that everyone wins with 69.

UPDATE: I have just decided that when I am in London I am going to try and convince a pub to let me do a quiz. I think designing and running a pub quiz will be an excellent outlet for my egomania at the same time as educational and intellectually gratifying.

The spirit of competition :: 09:49 AM :: easyjetsetter

Fi is in Vietnam, and is revelling in the french-style breakfast, but seems a little puzzled by the "lack of competitive spirit" between shops, blaming it on communism.

She writes: "I'm not sure if this is an example of communism in action, but there doesn't seem to be much of an idea of commerical competition here. By this I mean that if there is one paint shop on a street, there are ten. I know that if I was going to open a paint shop, then I wouldn't pick the place where there already were a whole bunch of them - I'd look somewhere else to fill the hole in the market. This hasn't yet occured to the Vietnamese, but like I said, it might be something to do with all that communism."

My reply: "OOOH, no, I can tell you why. It's the same in paris with the streets that cater to one specific industry. So, there's one street where all the guitar shops are, and another with all the antique stamp shops, and another with the porcelain and silver.

At first, I thought it was something to do with a lack of competitive spirit, and then I realised it was all about the bonnes addresses: in order to get the best product possible, you travel to the area which specialises in the thing you want. You shop around, you compare, you have infinite choice, you figure out which shop suits you best, rather than just going for the most convenient.

This taking of time over quality is a bit alien to us anglo-saxons, who like concenience, but think about it, at a farmer's market, there might be seven or eight people selling chickens or plums, but we wander around, selecting the best. It doesn't stop the same seven or eight chicken or plum sellers from coming the next week. it just incentivises them to come with better chickens and plums. It's a different kind of competition, not on price, not on convenience, but on quality.

La Chocolaterie :: 07:41 PM :: easyjetsetter

HAhahahahaha! I've seeeeeennnn it. Befooooorrreeee yooooouuu! This may be construed as overweening egotism, but hey, that's me. And I had to wait eight months for "the life aquatic," so I am entitled to at the very least a few raspberries: *ppppttthhhhssstt!*

So, to be a little less childish, and to ruin some of it for you (cause that's, like, waaay grown-up) I'll highlight some things that are better, some things that are worse.

The factory and the town in which the action takes place. It's like auschwitz in yorkshire. Really. The town looks like an old mining village ruined by Thatcherism and the factory looks like a death camp.

The Charlie child is the child from "Neverland" that played Peter to my delight with a serious face and a stuff upper lip. Less crying in this film. Just as much noble self-sacrifice. Very British. Except he says "vacation," "band aid," "candy" and "dollar." Luckily my dutch/antipodean companion had me along to translate, I tell you. (She brought candy...she's so, ahem, sweet.)

Helena Bonham Carter is still gorgeous with no makeup on. Charlie's grandparents are differentiated, to Comic Effect. They got rid of all the songs except for the oompa loompas, who look weirdly like the clone army in star wars II, who they remix as Ricky Martin, the Beach Boys, Queen and the Jackson Five. Not kidding.

It snows. (Big surprise, this is a Tim Burton movie.) There are puppets, and a burn victims unit. But the archetypal black and white stripes appear as blue and white ones. Things are, um, wonky, in true Burton style. They replaced the Easter Eggs with non-Christian squirrels. I hate squirrels, it was nice to see Burton agrees with me. The inside of the factory was waiting for CGI to be fully realised.

And Willy Wonka himself? Well, I shan't spoil it for you, except to say, he is much darker, but with a Freudian backstory, making it "ok" that he's a freaking lunatic. Those of you who know Fred, who happens to work in Hollywood and has almost definitely met Johnny Depp several times, will recognise the character....down to the voice and the mannerisms.

My favourite thing? Definitely the American kids. And the Ameircan parents. Absolutely epitomises a lot of people I knew. Brilliant.

Greatest line? When Violet, a karate champion, is a blueberry:
Pushy Mother: But how will she compete?
Veruca Salt: You could enter her in an agricultural fair.

The story is the same (bar the ending...) but the script is crackling. In my favourite way. It's very scathing about the wee bald humans while catering to them.

Quibbles:
- Verruca Salt, British character, WHY NOT HIRE A BRITISH ACTRESS??? Just a thought.
- The ending. It's a bit saccharine. But he shows us he knows it.
- Voiceovers are lazy writing. But he shows us he knows it.
- Tim Burton also makes fun of his worst film ever, planet of the apes. Look close and you'll see.

Firemen's Balls :: 08:19 AM :: easyjetsetter

Now, some of you were aware of my intention to drop in on a traditional firemen's ball at around ten, have a beer, then come home with the last metro and sleep like a good girl. Some of you know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, because I sent you emails at 4 am with the subject line "wahey!"

I blame Annika, Nick and Mandy. "Oh, it's the only chance you'll get..." "The music's not that bad..." "Have another glass of champagne..."

Les bals des pompiers seems odd to some. The traditional way of celebrating France's national holiday, Bastille Day, when the peasants stormed the prison, is by letting off fireworks on the 13th and 14th of July. Sometimes in each other's faces and crotches, if the behaviour of the old men on my street corner is anything to go by.

The sapeurs pompiers are a body of fine men, all with fine bodies, who serve as firemen, paramedics, territorial reserve and eye candy for me all in one. They are considered part of the army (well, defence budget), and are the only cause French people give their money to (ok, not strictly true, it's the only one people visibly give money to), possibly because they wash their trucks in the glistening sunlight without their shirts on and sell naked calendars to raise money.

On their busiest night of the year, what with all the fireworks, they throw open the doors of their firehouses, set up a bar and a band, and string up some lights. The idea is to have people in the firehouse INSTEAD of letting off fireworks in each other faces. That doesn't mean the chaps weren't called out a few times during the night, when they would all leap across the bar and rip their shirts off in a display of muscly manliness.

So, the four of us went to the one in the First, which was very pleasant indeed. Nearly Legless Nick had wanted to go to one that was "ibiza" themed, but we all rather preferred the "orchestra" which consistent of four men in white suits and three transvestites. The music was mostly terrible, but that has never stopped me having a good time ebfore.

We drank a bottle of champagne each in the end. I stole a hat. I shimmied my way through the men on the floor. I danced on the bar. No, really. I also smashed my right big toenail, pulled a muscle in my right calf so that I cannot actually straighten it, and have incredibly dirty feet, worthy of a Naples street urchin. I should also, I should point out, not be allowed near a computer when drunk.

I am also very hungover. Gueule au bois is the expression in French, literally, "wooden mouth." Dunno, feels more like sandpaper to me.

Tonight, I shall be sitting quietly on a blanket watching the fireworks, sipping from a bottle of water.

Did I mention I am working today? On a national holiday? Or rather, I will be, once I get the clay out of my oesophagus.

UPDATE: HA! I am not the only one. I can hear a neighbour throwing up. I am not at that stage, but getting that kind of drunk is very unusual in France. I feel a little less of an alkie now in comparison.

You people love me, you really love me :: 11:16 PM :: easyjetsetter

Made it into another roundup, this time the Carnival of the Philosophers. The host is very nice about me:

The dinner guests are beginning to grow weary of political discussion by itself. One of them asks another… “Did you hear about the potato farmers in Britain who are on a quest to have the term ‘couch potato’ removed from the dictionary because it gives a bad rap to potatoes and so they fear losing money?” A fine young lady named Katie Bartleby writing on location at The Sharpener overhears this question and rises to her feet. She has a chip on her shoulder and it concerns the nature of language and its politicization. After launching into a speech which she affectionately calls Ars Linguae/Ars Politica, she concludes with this moving statement - “From the heart of Europe, to the swamps of North Carolina, to the heights of French intellectual society, to the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, we see that while people will speak any way they please, language is so bound up with identity and thought that politics necessarily encroaches on it, often with adverse, or at least unintended, effects” Sitting down she looks at her plate and notices scalloped potatoes waiting for her to devour…

Pub Quiz Report #5 :: 12:00 PM :: easyjetsetter

Or, as Adam put it after a few beers: "the peeb kwuz." This evening was a very festive occasion indeed. Several members of the team who had been missing were back, and all the regulars were there. It was also Nearly legless Nick's last night in town, so it was imperative that much fun be had by all. Again, I had imported some talent from Germany. Adam and Audrey were fresh arrived from a ten day hiatus in Vienna and Switzerland to find some puppies and see the grave of Audrey Hepburn (super cute black and white springer spaniel puppies have doubled in price, I might add.)

By the time the quiz was due to start, it was obvious that the nine of us would have to split into two teams, the limit being five to a team. Apart from me and my Teutonic friend, Adam and Audrey, and Nearly Legless Nick, we had been joined by Annika, Julien, Katrien and Annika's friend whose name I forgot in about three seconds, and who was "hey you" for the rest of the evening.

I should point out that Audrey, a normally shy retiring girl who gets giggly after a glass of perrier, what Adam calls "her fuzzy water," was two drinks into the evening. "HEY," she said, around 9:45, "we should do BOYS AGAINST GIRLS." We all shouted her down, as we knew another boy was about to arrive, meaning there would be six guys and four girls, not only unbalanced but against the rules.

At about 10pm, Adam (sitting next to Audrey I might add) shouts "Hey, you know what, we should do boys against girls..." and this time the proposition was accepted. The last boy, another Adam, had arrived, and agreed to be Adamette. Us ladies breathed a bit of a sigh of relief as we don't do sports, and Adamette works for formula one racing.

Moving on the tricky conundrum of team names. "The dudes" and "the chicks" were roundly rejected, except by Nick and Adam, who kept putting their sunglasses on in the pitch black pub, high fiving each other and shouting "DUDE!!!" "The knocked up chicks" and "the culprits" was met with similar scorn. Adam doesn't really have the hang of pub quiz names. He is responsible for both "the sheepshaggers" and "the burning sensations." We finally agreed on "the pink ladies" and "the t-birds" and Audrey started drawing hearts on our shoulders with the initials "PL" in them.

Within minutes, it became clear that despite his fetching plaid shorts and black socks, Adamette was not going to be all he promised to be. The question was "Which team did Brazil beat in their first world cup win, and for a bonus point, what year was the first world cup?" We all looked expectantly at Adamette. "Look," he said "I don't know where you got the idea I know anything about sports. I mean, if you want to know what kind of toothpaste Alain prost uses I'm your man." Drunk Audrey interjects "Ooh, is it Colgate?" Negative. "Aquafresh?" Asks Katrien. "Colgate?" Asks Adam #1. Again, sitting next to Audrey.

It occured to us, watching the five alpha males arguing every finer point of every answer, that their team would lose because they would tear themselves apart, arguing over who was right. Nearly legless nick started making obscene gestures across the table, prompting katrien to reciprocate, and the rest of us to tease him about how he has no mates in Aberdeen. Me: "What will you be doing next Sunday? Eh? Eh?" Audrey: "You'll be sitting in your hotel room on your own, eating room service and WATCHING PORN!!" With the last word she jumped up and pointed, knocking over her beer.

Tricky questions included "what is a dactylogram?" Possible answers included the X-ray of the hand, but Audrey, who is a criminologist, make her little "I have the answer" monkey noise (ooh!oooh! Ooh!) and said "FINGERPRINTS!" very loudly. After shushing her, we said, "Are you sure? I mean, I know you work in the field..." and she replied "That's true. But I am also drunk."

Kudos to Annika on getting the lyrics to Elton John's Rocket Man. Loser. Apologies to Katrien and to Julien for the Phoenix Issue. Both my Teutonic friend and I, fresh from a game of trivial pursuit, argued in our respective teams "No, no no, that's FAR too obvious for the capital of arizona" and were justly proved wrong on our respective choices of "Flagstaff" and "Tempe."

We all used our sexual wiles to try and get answers from the boys, Audrey and I accosting my Teutoni friend and Adam in the bathroom, Katrien going for Nearly Legless Nick, Annika on her friend "hey you!" and Adamette humping Julien. To no avail.

The bonus question was "how many black cabs are there in London?" and was won by the Pink Ladies with their guess of 19,690 (always use 69) winning them 20 euros to be spent on something nice for the Belgian Beer Bash, hosted by our Flemish friends next Saturday. The final scores were read out, the Pink Ladies coming third with 24 points.

In second place, someone called "the booty slappers." The boys' table erupted into applause. Apparently "the t-birds" wasn't cool enough. Adam's ability with team names strikes again. He misspelled slappers though, and it was read out as "slaypers." "YEAH BABY!" said Adam, "we're the SLAYPERS!"

A Dilettante's Defense :: 05:25 PM :: easyjetsetter

Dr. K. spread out his long, elegant fingers over my spread-out poems and stories from my first semester at university, looked over his glasses and down his patrician nose at me, and took a deep breath.

"I do not believe you should consider pursuing a career in English Literature."

Now, I've complained before about being streamed very early in school. Mistaken at a young age for a prodigy, I was hussled into taking exams in language and literature early in order to add to the lustrous prestige of my self-aggrandising "special" school. I had tiny classes with excellent teachers devoted to making sure I got the best possible grades because that's what prodigies do.... A confusion of cause and effect if ever I saw one. It was rather ignored that I had the hand/eye coordination of a small dutch cheese and a mathematical ability that meant I subtracted 2 from 3 and came up with minus 1.

It was always assumed that I would study English and become a professor, because very intelligent people all have "phd" after their name. Right? I was supposed to write a book comparing the use of the periphrastic english "do" in wordsworth and sylvia plath and then write another one, exactly the same, but with a slightly different bad pun in the title every four years for the remaining forty years of my academic career.

And then, university happened. The American education system encourages a broad range of study to a late age, and indulging in many extra-curricular pursuits unrelated to that range of study. I joined ten clubs and switched the ten every year. I took 18 hours of classes every semester in subjects as wide-ranging as jazz, comic books, lord of the rings, social dance, self-defense, petrarch, jewish civilisation, symbolic logic and dostoevsky.

Dr. K. was right. I was not suited to a career in English Literature. I would not be happy studying one field, indeed, one part of one field (and actually, one ear of wheat in one quadrat of one field) for the rest of my life. He told me I should try comparative literature. He recommended a linguistics professor, a classics professor and a political philosophy professor. He told me I was a dilettante.

Entry Word: dilettante
Text: lacking or showing a lack of expert skill "many dilettante efforts to be seen at the sidewalk art show" -- see AMATEURISH, DABBLER.

And this is my confession. I am interested in far too many things. In doing so, I am not very good at any one thing in particular. Like a small child with shiny objects, I am very easily distracted. Like an old lady with a troublesome digestive system I graze throughout the day on several small meals instead of three square ones. I am a nibbler. A dabbler. An amateur.

However, there is one thing I am particularly good at: making it look like I know what I am talking about. Otherwise known as "bullshit." The key to making it socially acceptable to be a dilettante is to know enough about all your disparate interests and occupational flirtations to come across as knowing everything about them... At that point, because you act as though you know everything about many things people begin to assume you do....

But being a successful dilettante in this manner can be insufferable for others. Either because you come across as thinking you're smarter than them, or because you're running your mouth off about things you don't actually know a whole lot about. So to me, being a successful dilettante means knowing when to admit I don't know something....

I am always happy to meet an expert in the thing I am pretending to be an expert in, and have him or her correct me. It gives me more knowledge, which in turn makes me more expert and therefore more convincing as a successful dilettante.

For example, in college, and, frankly, in American society in general, it was fairly easy to appear knowledgeable about wine because I had a preferred grape variety not that many people had heard of and knew how they made the stuff. Unfortunately, as my preferred grape variety was Pinot Noir, thanks to a certain film, now bloody everyonesays they like Pinot Noir.

The point of being a good dillettante is not to know everything, but to know more than most people about everything. So, when most people start to like your dilettantish wine, you have to find a new one to like, more obscure, more rarified.

So you start reading about appellations and varietals. And *bang* you suddenly are a little less ignorant about wine. Not expert, just more so than 90% of the other people at the party. And if the remaining 10% are more expert than you, you engage them in conversation on their favourite topic to learn more so you will know more than 95% of people at the next party...and so on.

There are therefore, in my opinion, three necessary conditions to being a successful dilettante:

1) Be interested in lots of things.
2) Be very good at bullshit.
3) Be willing to be wrong.

Under these conditions I am very proud to be a dilettante. The word comes from the latin for "delight" and I think that sums up what the cause and the effect, the end aim and the beginning motivation of my dilettantism is: to take delight in what knowledge the world has the offer. I think that's as good a philosophy of life as any.

But of course, correct me if I am wrong.

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite :: 07:40 PM :: easyjetsetter

So, remember the day of solidarity?

You know how everyone was supposed to rise up in support of the old and the disabled and work an extra day? Remember how the plan failed miserably, with half of all salaried workers showing up? How 1 in 3 students stayed away from school, prompting an extra school day (about which teachers' unions intend to strike for an, um, day)? How the SNCF workers are working 1 minute and 52 seconds extra every day to make up for taking the holiday? And how it was supposed to raise 2 billion euros in increased tax revenue even though INSEE said the financial effect of the extra day would be "very close to zero"?

Well, the good news is, they have cancelled the "day of solidarity" for next year.

The bad news is, they're going to replace it with a day of brotherhood:

"Moreover, the committee proposed the creation of a "day of brotherhood," designed to make the French aware of dependency* and to underline the importance of acting locally"

I don't know about you, but I find this very amusing. It's like when my parents couldn't get me to eat aubergines, so they suggested I try eggplant instead. "But it's good for you" they purred...

Even the chap who heads up the committee mentioned above, responsible for examing the effects of the day of solidarity, was on the telly just now agreeing that "forced free labour for an extra day** will not solve the problems of the vulnerable," however, he then goes on to say "instead of an extra day of school, these children need to spend a day with their grandparents and really feel what it is to be dependent." Errrrmmm....

I was pointed in the direction of this article this morning, and it's very true and very right, but rather glosses over the fact that many French cadres, when they're not on holiday, work 70-hour weeks or more.



*This is one of those French abstract nouns that make one forget that social problems are, in fact, people suffering: they don't have elderly and disabled people, they have The Dependency. They don't have poor or disadvantaged people, they have The Exclusion. Another case of American being just like France, they don't have terrorists and criminals, but The Terror.

**Please note, a French work day is considered seven hours long. At least, by the unions.

I'm so funny :: 07:16 PM :: easyjetsetter

From the IHT, one of the excellent french companies out there, Danone, who do three products only (yoghurt, biscuits, water) but do them really really well:

"The Danone culture cannot be bought," Franck Riboud, the company’s president and son of Antoine Riboud, its founder, recently told a corporate meeting, according to Les Echoes, a business newspaper.

Which culture is he talking about? Streptococcus or Lactobacillus?

Sometimes I make myself laugh. It makes the day go faster.

Sidenote: the wikipedia article I lifted those bacteria names from mentioned that the company was named after the son of the founder, leading me to think that Franck Riboud has either a) his jugment clouded by family feeling or b) changed his name.

(via George)

Epicured :: 07:53 PM :: easyjetsetter

It's quite exciting to be going out to lunch with a cook and foodwriter. You know the food will be good. We were discussing business, but Clothilde's recommendation for lunch was inspired.

I've mentioned before that I live in a fairly foody area, and that rue des martyrs is the most foody of my local foody streets. My favourite Italian traiteur, Fuxia, has a branch there. They do huge plates of delicately flavoured pasta and gigantic platters of oily yummy antipasti, and they only charge you for how much wine you've drunk. The cheese shops, pastry shops, fish shops, wine shops and butchers that line the street are bonnes addresses for the whole foody community from all over Paris.

We ate at the Rose Bakery at number 46. Apparently the owners are a French woman and English man who used to be in London, but moved to Paris (as should you all) and opened up the same thing. It's just a little hole in the wall. The floors are bare stone, the walls white, the tables metal, and the chairs bleached wood. The dining room is cool and airy, and the front of the shop serves as a counter where people can pick up treats to take away and a little shop area, where you can get specialised products.

The Rose Bakery specialises in organic food, known as produits bios in French. The organic craze in Britain is not matched in France. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that it was in pursuit of faddish "organic" products that many britons experienced daily fresh food and took their time over eating for the first time, habits that the french have always had. So the enduring popularity (and consequent universal availability, range and choice, and lower prices) of organic food in the UK has as much to do with a new-ish culture of eating well than anything else.

The organic sections of the supermarket here are always tiny and very very pricey, but then the high quality of "regular" products mean people aren't willing to pay more for the same thing. So the sections stay small. But it's growing, thanks to places like the Rose Bakery. There are several restos bios in Paris, and not a few markets that sell only organic produce, that can be found here.

Another bonne addresse in my neighbourhood for you: although Clothilde is very familiar with the area, I was able to recommend her a restaurant that she'd not heard of. The Cafe Botak is tucked away in a tiny, lantern lit leafy square below montmartre, but above the marche st pierre. As my Teutonic friend and I discovered, they do godly things with a poivron confite, a goats cheese, and bee poo. They also always have a perfectly cooked fish, a cold soup, and some truly stupendous and rich steak tartare.

Anyway, you arrive at the Rose Bakery, and they sit you down with a brita water filter, a glass that's been pulled out of the freezer, and a sheet of brown paper to cover the table. The menu is simple and full of very English things, like "eton mess" and "ploughman's lunch."

They do a lunchtime menu of either soup or salad, bangers and mash and coffee, for 13 euros, which is, as Clothilde put it "financially interesting" but probably a bit much for lunch. Instead, we both ordered big plates of crudites with samples of all their salads for that day, for the same price. Clothilde mentioned that she often feels like eating salad as a meal is a punishment, but that this was different.

There were cucumbers in yoghurt and parsley sauce, bitter frise lettuce with sweet sultanas, roast potatoes with rosemary, a big floury tomato with fluffy mozarella and crushed basil dribbled on it, and grated carrots in a tangy honey dressing. I was too full for dessert.

Everything was nice about this place. They had yummy apple soap in the bathroom, with a little sign saying "if you like our soap, please don't steal it, we can tell you where to buy your own." They sell the ecologist and give out "go" a very hip english language entertainment magazine. They have a wee shelf with organic products including my favourite "green and black" organic hot chocolate. They sell cranberry juice, and brita water filter replacements, both very rare in france.

The dessert window was almost irresistible, they had nectarine compote, obviously handmade tart shells filled with glossy red fruit, and various gooey cakes and bread. Best of all, they sell brownies by the kilo....

I can't believe I only found this place two weeks before I leave. Does anyone know where the branch in London is?

Biggest news story of yesterday :: 08:40 AM :: easyjetsetter

I'm more than a little bothered that this isn't bigger news. It's a really big deal.

People have been pushing for this for months, no-one's entirely sure what is going to be the knock-on effect to the dollar, to the US trade balance, to the Chinese economy, and now....well, on the BBC news front page it is consigned to the business section, with a special report waaaaay down the bottom. Again, in the telegraph, business section (albeit top story). Guardian, it's four stories down on the "other news" bit.

Do I just have a distorted sense of proportion on this because I read the economist?

Or, as my friend Jim said on the 8th of July. "You know, people were finally beginning to talk about things that could actually make a difference to people, ending subsidies, trade policy, aid and development...and then the headlines were stolen by the war on terror again."

Well, I call that winning. Well done Mr. Salafist (it's a new word I learned.) They already won, see? We give them all this attention, we stop everything every time they act, even if it's exploding party poppers in the tube, and that, to them, is winning.

Update: Oh, and big sigh.

It's kind of amusing I suppose. Policy geeks, used to being the losers people spat on while handing out leaflets and wearing badges at university, when all the girls slept with the rugger buggers who went to eton and say "yah" instead of yes, means they still get a little flustered around women. Especially cute ones.

However, no mention of what these "babes" were doing there other than being eye candy. I bet a few of them were policy wonks. If I am cute, I don't want the fact of the cuteness overshadowing my wonkiness.

I want to be praised for being fetching and wonky! Dammit!

I guess the wee bald human has an excuse.

UPDATE: I am not, Tim, a policy wonk. Yet. Give me three years.

Are you a digital citizen? :: 01:39 PM :: easyjetsetter

This quiz from the BBC is a little silly (in that you'd have to be braindead to not get all of the answers...) but the links down the side, profiling various bloggers, explaining what blogs are, linking to various fabulous blogs (including my lunch companion on Tuesday - I had no idea she was quite so famous) and touching on issues in the digital world are truly excellent, especially for a lay audience. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up. And my big toes are pointing skywards too.

More incisiveness :: 02:08 PM :: easyjetsetter

Over at the sharpener. What will British English look like in 100 years? Click through to take a look.

It's a collective effort, though I edited it to try and make it mildly amusing. After that Renga I am getting a reputation for being the collaborator over there. Better than "token skirt" though...

Oops :: 07:02 PM :: easyjetsetter

The wife sent me pictures of her class gift and I got excited and wrote a post at the sharpener that I've been meaning to do for a long time. Go see. It's about the Old North State.

ICIGSITBOTH :: 12:42 PM :: easyjetsetter

My Mum sent me an email confirming all the doctor's/dentist's/optician's appointments she had set up for my week at home next week. My Mum writes emails as if they were telegrams and she were being charged by the word. The text is truncated so that the minimum of letters and words is used, rendering the text incomprehensible and vowel-free. She sometimes uses "STOP" instead of punctuation.

"Lrna snt me vg thng STOP In yr mob phn put ICE + dads mob # STOP"

I wrote her back to confirm the appointments and pointed out that ICE, standing for "in case of emergency," would have no meaning to the French emergency services, as they speak, um, French. I would therefore follow her suggestion and put ECU (en cas d'urgences) in there instead, and once I am back in the UK put ICE into that one.

Now, I've changed my mind. I am going to put ICIGSITBOTH (in case I get shot in the back of the head) instead. Obviously, only in the UK phone. Brazilian electricians are shot in the front of the head here in France (more likely to kill with a single bullet as it leave a massive exit wound removing your brain) because the CRS does not fuck about.

I know I am being flippant. Now for the serious bit.

On the one hand, yes, it was indeed an extra-judicial killing, and they're Not Good. Tim asks, would it have been better if he had been a terrorist after all? Well, I think it's understandable (not ok, just understandable) that he wasn't. I think the police, sorry, "plain-clothed armed men," did all they could under the circumstances. As my Teutonic friend mentioned, how else do you deal with suicide bombers?

The problem is, of course, that there is a poverty of information. Do would-be suicide bombers thumb their Korans, muttering to themselves? Are anthrax packages always addressed by hand? Do all plane-hijackers buy a one way ticket using cash? Or are they people wearing a bulky coat with darkish skin who run away from the police?

I sent an email to Andrew about this, following his last post at the Sharpener that suggested formalising Muslim clerical training.* I'm not sure it's the loudmouth clerics that are the problem:

"As it is, if I were recruiting for a terrorist organisation I would
not raise my profile by standing up in front of friday services. I'd
stand at the back, and watch which young men were the angriest and
which were the weakest. And then I'd take them aside for a quiet chat.
A white-water rafting trip maybe, painting myself as a lovely
benefactor. I'd be a father to them.

Extremism, real, blow-yourself-up extremism, is not visible, it's not
distinctive. Would-be suicide bombers often deliberately hide any
overt religiosity, so as not to attract suspicion. I suspect that the
loud rarely take the step to crime (or get caught first, because they
have been attracting attention). Fear the quiet.

This is why a Brazilian electrician was killed. Because there are no
definitive signs. A lack of definitive signs probably is a sign in
itself."

As soon as the authorities come up with a profile, would-be suicide bombers avoid filling it. At that point, acting normally becomes suspicious, putting all normal-acting people at risk. The problem with suspicious behavior is that it depends who’s doing the suspecting, and what they already find suspect.

*Also Sarkozy's suggestion for France. I heart Sarkozy.

UPDATE: Never thought I would say this. Hell hath frozen. Pigs CAN fly. Crime does pay. I agree with Cherie Blair. Run for your lives.

Peeing my pants :: 11:17 AM :: easyjetsetter

In my mailbox, aka, under my doormat, I feel a lump under my feet. There's a jiffy bag with a british stamp and unfamiliar writing. It contains the keys to my London flat. A little knot forms in my stomach and I get an overwhelming urge to pee (and it's not just the bladder infection: I have vile cranberry concentrate for that.) It is because I am getting excited about the move.

For a start, I am going to live in a flat where I actually like my landlord. I have not mentioned this yet, but a couple of weeks ago my filmmaker landlord decided to inform me that, actually, despite giving him the notice he had asked for (six weeks) he needed me to find someone to sublet the flat for the month of august because "it's difficult for me, and I never agreed..." except, you know, um, he did. So, despite frantic efforts on craigslist Paris, I am now sacrificing a fair portion of my desposit to be free of the fucker.

Once I move I'll post his address you can go egg his flat and moped (of course he has a moped) and then lobby to have his films banned. My new landlord (aka the girl I am subletting from) rocks. She also did an undergraduate degree in literature. She also realised recently that a graduate degree in something other people find very boring (in her case international judicial theory, in mine international policy negotiation) was exactly what she wanted to do. Also, the flat will have an actual bed instead of a futon, or, as my teutonic friend likes to call it "that fucking thing."

Second, my first day in London will feature a protest, which is quite exciting, especially because it's an ILLEGAL one!!! We'll be protesting not being allowed to protest. Very Magritte: ceci n'est pas une manifestation.

Third, I am going to spend the week before I start work at home. I will see my spaniel, not pay to do laundry, hug my parents goodbye (as they go on holiday three hours after I get home), then go to the doctor and figure out exactly what that lump on my head that I've ignored for nine months IS. I will shortly be joined by my teutonic friend, who will serve as a guinea pig to my yum-whoredom as I am in possession of an oven, freezer, dishwasher, and kitchen countertops for the first time in nine months. This post at Tim's got me all drooly about the prospect of cooking properly again. We'll go out a bit, of course, to see my only two friends in Britain, Olivia and Jessica, and maybe his two friends in Britain too. We'll join Nearly Legless Nick (now moved to Aberdeen) at Edinburgh for the first couple of days of the Fringe. All in all, a very nice holiday ahead.

Four: new job starts August 8th. I emailed my new boss, also German, to make sure we were still on and to ask if there was any background reading/preparation I could do (we've discussed that I am Hermione before no?). She seemed quite surprised and very impressed. This is the general effect asking if you can do work outside of work has on people. I got the 52 page PDF she wants me to read yesterday, and luckily, I've got a couple of long train journeys ahead of me. It's bloody interesting though, so I might read it in the bath tonight. It's still so novel to be doing a job where the field of activity is something I care passionately about and think about all the time. It feels so....self-indulgent.

A few steps to go though. I need to clean the flat properly to preserve what is left of my security deposit and pray he doesn't notice the way the sink tap wobbles and the loo seat is about to come off. I need to get rid of the 3600 books of matches on my shelves. I need to have my going away party (this saturday, email if you want to come, it will just be a very chilled dinner and drinks (sorry, I can't pay for other people...) at the foot of the butte de montmartre.)

And I need to get a decent haircut, because in Britain they cut your hair the way they think all hair should look, instead of actually paying attention to how your hair works. They also love straighteners which slick your hair down the side of your head, whereas my hair and face SUIT the slightly curly, flipped out, voluminous thing I have going on.

Oh, and one last pub quiz sunday night. We shall overcome.
Go out on a high note, like Lance Armstrong. (Who is officially a freak of nature, by the way.)

Glad to be leaving France :: 09:58 AM :: easyjetsetter

Unemployment, until recently at 10.2%, was announced this morning to have dropped 1.4% in June. This is the largest drop in five years. The groups amongst whom the drop has been most pronounced is under 25s, (at -2.6%) and the over 50s (at -0.8%) It has, however, increased among the long-term unemployed.

Dominique de Villepin, the poet prime minister, has been all over the telly smiling. He gave himself 100 days in office to lower unemployment or he would resign, but not a lot has been done on that front, except for parliament giving him the power to make decrees (that is, circumvent the parliamentary process) and make noises about apprenticeships and 3 million extra invested.

This morning, drinking coffee through telematin, the minister of tourism was there to warn people about traffic accidents and to reassure the public that the government was not selling the motorways. He was, however, asked about the drop.

Interviewer: But surely, the prime minister's plan for unemployment won't be put into effect until September, how can he claim credit for this drop?
Minister: Well, it's clear that if there had been in increase, he would have been held responsible for that. This is his good news.
Interviewer: For the extra people who have found work too
Minister: Of course, yes. Them too.

I have to say, I am not sure what led to the drop. I am pretty sure it wasn't the government, but based on my experience of working in france (and job-hunting in France) I am loath to give credit to companies either.

The rest of this post is going to be an illustration of why it is really really difficult to do business in France. It is (gasp!) about work, although the companies involved shall remain nameless. Now, it is the obscene government regulation that makes companies loath to hire unless it is absolutely necesssry, but this story will tell you what the consequences of not having enough people around can do.

A dossier of documents was due at the prefecture three months before an event we are hosting. I took it over the day before the deadline and was told that the contract with the venue had not yet been signed, and it needed both parties to sign it, or the dossier would not be accepted. This was a Friday, and my boss was on holiday until Tuesday. The lady agreed to wait until Tuesday.

At this point, I am thinking, perhaps naively in hindsight, that my boss can sign it, fax it to the venue, who can sign it, and fax it to the
prefecture. No. Absolutely not, says our contact at the venue, who we shall call "sylvie", we can only accept the original document with a real signature on it, and only then will we countersign.

Fair enough, but there is no reason why we cannot overnight the contract from our head office, have the venue sign it immediately and fax it over, before sending it back.

I tell the lady at the prefecture this, and she agrees to wait until
friday I am thinking, thursday at the latest, but you never know in
france.

I was so right, and yet so wrong.

The contract arrives 6pm on wednesday, when everyone has gone home. On Thursday morning I call and they confirm receipt and say it will be signed immediately and they will call once it's done.

Nothing.

I call Friday morning and they inform me that in fact, their director,
the ONLY PERSON who can sign the document, is on holiday, and won't be back until tuesday.

Why didn't you make sure it was signed before he left? Because he left
Tuesday, I am told, we just didn't know until just now....

I sighed, called the prefecture, and asked them to wait until the following tuesday, now one week after I had said it would be there, and ten days after the dossier was due. Luckily, the lady quite likes me. I have that effect on people.

So fast forward to Tuesday. I had not heard anything by lunchtime, so I called. Has he signed it? They said, but we told you, he only
gets back on tuesday! It is Tuesday, I say. We'll call you as soon as
it's signed. Click.

Wednesday morning I called again, and was told that Sylvie is "momentarily unavailable." I am told this again when I call at
lunchtime. I sent her an email after this, saying that the delay is
unacceptable, that it is impertive, that I will hold her responsible....and I get an out of office reply. She's on holiday.

I call the number I am instructed to call for any urgent business in
the email. This man tells me that he is not "au courant" with our
case, and cannot therefore help us, despite the fact that two promises
have been broken by them at this point. I ask if he can become au courant, and quick about it too. Mais non.

Call tomorrow, he says. Why tomorrow, say I. If Sylvie is on holiday until the 11th what can you do for me tomorrow that you cannot do today? Ahh, says the chap, her assistant will be here. Why isn't her assistant there today? But of course, her assistant never works on wednesdays.

Now, yes, I received a call first thing Thursday morning, and because I didn't trust them to manage a fax machine I went over there and photocopied the contract before delivering it by hand to my friend the lady in the prefecture, but it was so farcical.

It is not a good idea to string along the person who is responsible for rubber stamping your legal documents, as I had been obliged to do with the prefecture. If Sylvie had said there would be a two-week delay, I could have told the prefecture, "there will be a two-week delay." But "by the end of the week" followed by "by tuesday" followed by "errr, actually, the end of THIS week" is not so good.

It is head-bangingly frustrating. And this is just one contract. Imagine this kind of rigmarole, all day, every day, across the country. Just think about that.

UPDATE: I just checked out the minister for labour's stats, and it is much less exciting than it seems. Yes, that's 35,200 fewer unemployed people, which is great, but the decrease of 1.4% is from last month. Which means that unemployment has gone from 10.2% of the workforce in May, to 10.1% in June. Good stuff eh?

Home Truths :: 09:55 AM :: easyjetsetter

Let me state at the outset that I am not very interested in terrorism.

Of course, I want criminals who kill people caught and tried and jailed, and will support measures that do that effectively. That's a given. I just don't particularly care about root causes, or moral agency, or moral equivalence. They are never excuses for a crime. I don't have much truck with making terorism out to be an ideology, even to be refuted, I think it accords it too much power.

I, of course, hate that people died for no good reason, but that happens every day, and if I were to feel grief for every meaningless death, I wouldn't be able to leave the house. It is not for me to grieve, they were not my family or friends, although my thoughts and pity are with the bereaved. I don't understand people who are unaffected by the violence who feel the need to cry about it publicly. I believe they cheapen the deaths, and grief, of others.

However, the days of the terror attacks in the West, 9/11, 3/11, 7/7 and 7/21, I was afraid. But not of death, not for me or for anyone else. My fear came from the future. What will the consequences be? What reaction will my society have? And how will it change that society?*

All this guff about "they will not change our way of life" glosses over the fact that, ermmm, they have, rather, already. So, what I am trying to say is that I am not interested in "terrorism," but I do care a lot about what we do in the name of "anti-terrorism."

You may have heard the news that Sarkozy, my favourite politician in France (not a difficult set of laurels to win) is expelling 12 "Islamist preachers of hate" for inciting anti-western violence. 12 mosques in France are under constant surveillance as hotbeds of incitement to violence.

No big surprise. Britain is planning similar measures. It's a vogueish idea for fighting the absract noun du jour.

However, inside the articles about this is what I consider a much more important headline grabber. Sarkozy has said he will be reactivating forgotten parts of the penal code to strip hatemongers of their French citizenship so that they too can be repatriated. I want to get this right, so I shall quote him directly, via le Monde:

"Pour ceux qui sont de nationalité française, je veux par ailleurs relancer des procédures de déchéance de nationalité"
"As for those who are French nationals, I also want to start proceedings that will remove [alt: forfeit] their nationality."

This is a big step. A big, messy step. I am not sure yet whether I approve or disapprove. As Andrew has said, This is a new kind of threat, and requires people to think outside the box for how to deal with it. I don't have the answers, so I at least respect Sarkozy for having the balls to try to find them. I think he's sensible enough to abandon a policy that isn't working, and this is why I like him, even if I don't agree with all his actions. He takes a nuanced stand on things, and gives the impression that he's thinking.

Anyway, this step made me think about the difference between the European and the American "War on Terror" which is shaping up to be awfully like the War on Drugs, what with the poor, fooled, albeit criminal, foot soldiers going to jail and the overlords, the cause, the problem, sitting happy in their untouchability.

In the US, a great deal of the tolerance the general public has shown towards the curtailment of civil liberties and the abuse of constitutionally guaranteed rights has come from the fact that a lot of the measures are expressly aimed at foreigners. The main gripes that U.S. citizens have is having their list of library books kept by the federal government and the ease with which they can have their phones tapped.

Whatever you think about the War on Terror in the US, the problem is not "home-grown" in comparison with Europe. Americans, or at least the American authorities, have always treated foreigners with suspicion and dabbled in disenfranchisement, even before 9/11, so the general public's ability to accept certain "casualties of war" stems, in a large part, from a willingness to think that when the US citizenry's safety is at stake, it doesn't matter what the government does to a foreigner. This may, however, be changing.

The problem facing Europe now is that a lot of the current "anti-terror measures" memes that are imported from America across the continent have little to no effect on "home-grown" terrorism. Sarkozy's decision changes that. Now that one popular/populist politician has said it out loud, I expect others to follow suit.

I don't say this next bit out of partisanship. I merely note it as an interesting fact that those of us who opposed the war in Iraq, whatever our reasons, need to come to terms with. Since the war in Iraq started, both of the main "aggressors" have been reelected. There is no substantial figure who is popular enough to look like he or she will be chosen over Bush or Blair. I'm sorry, but that's just true.

Since the war in Iraq started, both of the main "detractors" have seen their domestic influence wane, and shatter. The stars rising to replace Chirac and Shroeder are Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel. Nicolas Sarkozy publicly mandates stripping naturalised French people of their citizenship and repatriating them to their country of origin. Angela Merkel wants the US to put Germany on a permanent seat in the UN security Council.

I think that the "chattering classes," "shiraz quaffers," "liberal elites," and "pseudo-leftists" (all very insulting terms, all of which probably apply to me) need to look square in the face why the populace is abandoning "appeasers" and taking up with those who will side with the "crusaders."

Please note, I am deliberately using language I personally find offensive, but again, I think, liberals need to confront. I can't begin to tell you where this comes from, but a fair bet is that the "working-class whites" have become the right's natural constituency**. I think we have to ask ourselves why.

I think it has something to do with an ill-conceived sense of nationalism. My mother, for example, once used the phrase "how could they do that to me in my own country?" Now the British Pakistani in question was indeed trying to take my mother for a ride, but my Mum's mindset was such that it wasn't just someone taking her for a ride, it was a foreigner, because he wore funny clothes and talked with an accent. I love my Mum, and her views are not unusual in either her generation or her socio-economic background.

I was talking to my taxi driver yesterday. Taxi drivers always have something of interest to say, they meet the whole spectrum of political opinions in their cabs, and they hone their articulatory skills with day-long debates in the rear-view mirror. I like talking to taxi drivers about politics.

He was 26, born Algerian and now a non-practising Muslim Frenchman. (He still said, "I am muslim" interestingly enough, as my bacon-sarnie eating friend still considers herself "jewish," begging the question, what is religion if it is not a set of beliefs expressed in a set of rituals that you no longer practice?) He was saying that the Western attacks, though tragic, had at least the consequence of waking up the West to a global problem that existed long before 9/11. He approves of Sarkozy's idea. He thinks it is about time someone took a stand.

All he asks is that people don't use the word "islamist" to describe these criminals. "That's not Islam," he said. "And it means people assume that all Islamic people are like that. People need to realise that we want them gone too. And that they are not like us."

* I think I should point out, I mean domestic policy and bombings on a given country's territory. Foreign policy is trickier still, and I really really care about that.
**Yes, I know Tony Blair purports to be on the left, but come on, you don't still believe in the Tooth Fair either, do you?

A storm in someone else's teacup :: 10:57 AM :: easyjetsetter

When an American blogger living in Britain and an American editor/journalist working on a British paper disagree.

Boys, I know you're enjoying yourselves immensely, but I was rather proud that the British blogging world wasn't as focused on "scalping" and "fisking" and such. Please go lower your own country's discourse.


Yes, Dilpazier Aslam is a tit and he said some idiot things. But there are lots of tits saying idiot things in Britain's newspapers. I'm bloody proud that we have a partisan press. It's a lot more interesting that dry, supposedly objective dusty tomes. There's a reason they call it dead-tree media over there.

I can't stand people like Polly Toynbee or Mark Steyn, I think they let ideology block their brains. But these partisan columnists in mainstream media are something to be proud of, even while I shout my disagrement at them.

Some of them are even members of extremist groups. I have it on good authority, for example, that that seemingly nice Boris Johnson chap who writes for the Telegraph may be a member of a shadowy organization that advocates a return to an oppressive, totalitarian regime called "Thatcherism."

Go piss in your own pool. I'm trying to swim.

Pinky and the Brain :: 12:25 PM :: easyjetsetter

Many of my formative philosophies of life stem from the animaniacs. For example, never piss of a giant squirrel with a handbag, and, always say your answer in the form of a question. But my favourite characters were Pinky and the Brain.

"Pinky: So what shall we do tonight Brain?
Brain: The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

When you're a bit of an egomaniarse, like me, you like praise. Lots. It makes you glow pinkly, but also feeds your desire for world domination. And your stat counter is your friend, because it tells you who has been praising you and bringing people to your site.

For example:

Now, Kat's a friend, so she loves me already, but it's still nice to hear her say it every now and then, and she gave me my own post:

"so go read her now, while you still can at this early stage. "i remember when...oh that bartleby."

Also through the Kat connection, Tom says some lovely things, that are, as all great compliments, also a little bit about him (well, all my compliments are a little bit about me, see above egomaniarse comment.)

I define my perception of greatness thus. Any of you who have been in the car with me, around me and a radio in the morning, afternoon or evening for that matter, will know that greatness means you have appeared on NPR. This morning I was removed from greatness by three steps for the second time...I am in bed, sipping coffee, trying to get the motivation to go to work when morning edition interviews a young Parisian, Clotilde Dusoulier, the author of the blog Chocolate and Zucchini. Now how can I be in the orbit of a young Parisian with a food blog?

Well Katherine has a friend Katie with a wonderful blog in the sense of an American in Paris. Having read Katies blog she is flying in the face of her academic critics and is in my opinion, well on her way to her own feature on NPR. Katie linked directly to Miss Dusoulier's blog well in advance of this NPR story. This makes her a WEB Maven (read the Tipping Point people). I claim orbit of such a Maven and thereby Miss Dusoulier, although in the same sense that 2003UB313 claims to orbit the Sun, another feature story on NPR this morning.

EU Rota, in a moment of temporary madness, decided to add me to his blogroll, despite the fact that I will be gratefully leaving the madness of continental europe behind and will no longer be in prime place to report something unique and interesting. Plus, you know, not working from home means the time I spend readings blogs (over coffee, while other people are in trains on their way to work) and writing blogs (while other people are in trains on their way home) will disappear, and I'll be writing a lot less. I pointed these things out to him in an email and his reaction was:

"my my. one sweats and slaves over blogger to update ones template and carefully cut and paste the particulars, what is the reward, a final act of frenchery with a slap across the digital face. of course i will keep you there. you just THINK you will be blogging less."

Finally, Martin Stabe, who has been following the first British blogging scalp story, and comparing it to American journalism, quotes yesterday's post about it:

"what ought to be the definitive statement on the whole Dilpazier Aslam brouhaha."

*blush*

and

*egomaniacal giggle*

For more solipsism, I'll be announcing a new project once I'm settled in Britain and have the blasted index on my book culled for meaningless page references (so around Tuesday.)