Americans and French have different ways of saying how much they like something (in a positive way). This has been brought to my attention several times, and it’s often a way people like to make fun of me. Let’s say an American & a French person are eating a cake and they both enjoy it very much.

The American: This is the best cake I’ve ever had!

The French: C’est pas mouvais! (“It’s not bad!”)

Another example, just to clarify the point: An American woman & a French woman both see a really attractive guy:

The American woman: He’s great lookin’!

The French woman: Il n’est pas moche! (“He’s not ugly”)

This may seem kind of funny, or even silly, but it really does show just how different French & Americans see things. Americans are, in general, very optimistic, give out compliments very easily, and are quick to use superlatives (“My mom makes the best chocolate chip cookies!”). While on the other hand, the French are, in general, pessimistic less optimistic, are stingy much more conservative with their compliments, and never rarely use superlatives. And the French find it quite funny when Americans do these things. They find it “fake”. On the other hand, when everything is compared to something worse, I find it a bit depressing.

Now this is interesting, not knowing about my blog, my wife shared with me a little story about finding these shoes for our daughter. She was with her coworker, an English woman, who found the shoes on their lunch break. So she calls her husband (also English) on the telephone “Honey, I found this fantastic deal on a pair of shoes!” My wife told me that if she had called me, she would have said “I found some shoes that are pal mal” (“not bad”).

So she shares this with me and I can’t believe it. “Guess what I blogged about today on the bus on the way home?” “What?” “That!” So I read my blog to her and we couldn’t believe that only a couple hours before her sharing of the story, I was writing about the same thing!

As the story goes on, the husband wasn’t too impressed (how excited could a guy get about a description of a pair of shoes over the phone?) and she didn’t buy them. So my wife bought a pair. My wife says that this is why the Americans are much stronger in sales & marketing than the French, and I think she’s right.

So which way of seeing things is better? Well there is no better way, there are just different ways. And what do I think of the shoes? I guess they’re pal mal!

I just read on CNN that San Francisco has voted to ban non-recyclable plastic garbage bags. It’s funny when I read stories of new environment-friendly laws being passed in the US while it’s already the case here in Paris. Well unfortunately these plastic garbage bags haven’t been officially banned here in France but almost all large grocery stores have reduced the number of check-out lines with these bags thus discouraging their use and cutting their costs at the same time. That means if you don’t want to wait in line, you have to have your own bags, buy recyclable bags, or buy a large heavy-duty re-usable bag. We bought these big re-usable bags which are quite nice except they have one major flaw: You must remember to take them into the store with you. And since our major grocery store is in the shopping mall (kind of weird for the US but here in France it’s common and quite convenient) it’s hard to remember them. Some of the smaller grocery stores make you pay for bags, encouraging you to bring your own. And then a few small chains try the “we don’t hassle you with the bags” and give out the non-recyclable bags for free. So there is a mix. But what I think is important is that the movement is being led by the grocery stores themselves and not by a law. And we’re almost non-recyclable plastic bag-free.

This isn’t the only area where France is ahead of the US. The smoking ban, which will take place in 2008 is another. And that one I find quite ironic because France has been, up until this law, the most tolerant country in the world when it comes to smoking.

And one final bit of irony, I’ve never seen so many car batteries on the side of the road as I have here in France. It’s a unique concept: Buy a new car battery, change it in the street, and just leave the old one on the sidewalk. You may think I’m exaggerating but it happens more than you’d think, as in quite frequently. So I find it ironic that a country banning smoking and shopping bags lets people put their toxic batteries on the sidewalks. And what happens to those batteries anyway? Wait, I don’t think I want to know..

It’s been unusually warm here in March, 16 C today (x F). It’s a welcome change from the harsh cold just a week ago. A week ago, I suggested that a friend & I eat our sandwiches outside at La Défense on our way back to the office. By the time we finished our sandwiches we were so cold we had to save the desserts for the office! Today was the opposite. We went to a local Italian restaurant and they had tables set up outside on the sidewalk. That’s one thing I love about Europe, eating out on the sidewalk. It was quite sunny today and if one side of my face is red tomorrow you’ll know why. So after lunch we go back to the office and, because we were outside in the fresh air, it feels really hot in the office. Yet no one wants to open the window! Now this is my second day at the client’s site so I’m not going to be difficult but it was like a furnace in there. The afternoon sun blazing against our side of the building. So finally I couldn’t take it any longer, I was about to burst into flames. “Aren’t you hot?” I asked my coworker. “Yes but Isabelle is cold.” he replied. “She can put on more clothes but we can’t take ours off!” I replied. We both laughed. Then later Isabelle came back to our office and I guess he couldn’t take it any more either so he opens the window and says something like if she’s cold we can shut it. And guess what Isabelle says? “I’m hot too!”

So later we’re in a conference room where it’s nice and cold due to the air conditioning and they tell me they’re going to move our office into this room. I say “Great, there’s air conditioning here!” My coworker replies “We have air conditioning in our office too.” “So why aren’t we using it?” “Because Isabelle gets cold.”

So why don’t the French like air conditioning? There are several reasons. The first of which is that in general, the French are more cold natured than the Americans. And I must admit that after living in France for many years, when I go back to the US I am freezing cold due to the air conditioning! So it’s really one extreme versus the other. Sometimes when my wife works late I go pick her up from work. When I walk into the office I immediately break out into sweat like I just ran for an hour. I can’t believe how hot it is in her office. She works with 4 other women, so they don’t seem to mind, but the other guys in the office think it’s hot too.

Another reason is that the French don’t like air conditioning. They say it’s not good for the health, and I think they’re right. It’s not good for the sinuses but I’m not sure about the allergies (opening the windows could be worse). Take cars for example, most cars, including ours, don’t have air conditioning. On our last vacation at the beach it was in the upper 90’s and our hotel didn’t have any air conditioning. The list goes on and on. Pretty funny compared to the US where even the elevators are air conditioned.

The final reason is the French are super paranoid about wind blowing on your face. They’ll do anything to avoid it. Once we built a tunnel out of large sheets of flip chart paper and taped it to the ceiling so that we could direct the air from the AC vent to the other side of the room. It was there for over a year until they remodeled a bit and had to take it down.

This is definitely one part of French culture to which a hot-natured American will have a hard time adjusting. It took me many years to get used to 46C/115 degree heat in Arizona (but it’s a dry heat!) and now it’s taking me years to get used to the hot & humid non-air conditioned Parisian heat.

A week ago, Capital (a 60 minutes type news show) talked about the issue of working on Sunday in France. Believe it or not, it’s illegal except in certain conditions. I didn’t see all of the report, it’s actually a common topic that I’ve seen before. So I don’t know all of these conditions, but in general it’s not legal to work on Sundays. I was quite surprised at this when I first came to France, on Sundays almost all the stores are closed. And since stores usually close between 7-8pm during the week, that means 60 million people going shopping on Saturdays. Combine that with the limited space for developing new stores in the Paris area and you’ve got the most crowded stores I’ve ever seen. In the US people avoid “Black Friday” (the day after Thanksgiving, which is taken as a holiday resulting in the biggest shopping day of the year). Here in France, every Saturday puts “Black Friday” to shame. And don’t even mention the Saturdays in December!

So to alleviate this problem, some stores are starting to open on Sundays. Now there is the question about if it’s legal or not. One of the laws says if it’s in a tourist area then the store can be open. Store owners tend to exaggerate that one especially in Paris. Here in our town, the hardware store is open and that’s it except for the grocery stores. I don’t know how they get away with it. Some stores risk the fines and some just go ahead and pay them. Like Ikea, the big furniture store. They’re open every Sunday.

Now having a law against being open on Sunday seems very strange to me, but even stranger than that is that many stores find ways around the law. (That’s one skill the French have honed to perfection.) I don’t like the government telling me what I can and cannot do, as long as no one is hurt (including animals). So who could possibly be hurt by having a store open on Sunday? I can think of a few reasons:

If one store opens on Sundays then its competitors will be forced to follow. That could set off a chain reaction resulting in all stores open on Sundays. That would mean the owners would have to pay more in salaries. But would it increase sales? On one hand I think sales would not increase, if you’re going to buy something you’d be forced to buy it on Saturday. It’s not like I say “if the store’s open today I’m going to go buy that watch, otherwise I’ll wait another year!” But on the other hand, people get bored on Sundays and if they go to the mall they’d be more likely to purchase something than if they were staying at home. So I guess it could increase sales.

The more I analyze it the more I don’t see the problem. Neither do my non-French friends. The Monday after the reportage, a Brazilian friend asked me “Did you see Capital last night? Can you believe it?” At least it provided us with some good material for discussion.

So what do you think? If you’re American, would you like to see all stores in the US closed on Sundays? And if you’re French, would you like to see all stores open?

Today we spent the morning looking at a couple of houses. We’ve been doing this for over a month now. We’ve found a couple serious contenders but we haven’t made up our mind about where we want to live and how much we want to pay. We’re looking at two main areas: Saint Germain-en-Laye and Chaville. Both are near schools with a bilingual curriculum (French & English). The one in Saint Germain is more selective and very difficult. The other school is in Sèvres, and it seems to be pretty good. Houses in Saint Germain are “affordable” (I use that term loosely, what I should say is “more affordable” because nothing near Paris is really affordable) and they’re newer, but it’s farther away from Paris and the buses stop after 10pm. Houses in Sèvres are outrageously expensive, so Chaville is the city next door.

What it’s coming down to is a very nice house about 20 years old in Saint Germain, 145m2 for 600k Euros ($800k USD) or a 50 year old house 100m2 for the same price in Chaville. That’s a big trade off to be closer to Paris with better public transportation. Saint Germain is, as a result of the international school, very international with people from all over the world. Sèvres & Chaville are for the most part mostly French where people are not as sociable and most people don’t even know their neighbors.

So here’s what happened today to give you an idea of how it is going. This week my wife found a new listing on the De Particulier à Particulier (litterally “from private to private”, it means basically “for sale by owner”). She made an appointment for 10am this morning. The owner was very nice, did an excellent job of presenting his house and describing it. Before we left, another couple arrived for the next appointment. After seeing the house, we drove to a real estate agency that we saw and discussed our options with the agency. He had a house to show us just a couple minutes walk away. Nice presentation, no pressure. I like that. We preferred the first house, and are trying to decide between this Saint Germain vs. Chaville thing. We can always go one more city away from Sèvres where it would be a little cheaper, but just a little farther from the school, work, Paris, etc.

So that’s our current situation. If you want to follow along, follow the home buying tag.

I thought it’d be a good idea to answer some of the most common questions I’m asked. We can put them in two lists, questions asked by the French and questions asked by Americans (or more generally, non-French, since a majority of my friends here are either not French or not of French ancestry). The top few are asked almost every time I meet someone new. Yet I never get tired of answering the good ones.

So the number one question I get asked by both French and non-French is:

“Why did you decide to move to France?”

I had been to Europe twice on vacation, both of them starting in France (and the second one ending in France). Of all the big cities I saw (London, Paris, Munich, Vienna, Rome) I preferred Paris. I had been living in the same place for 9 years. I didn’t really plan on staying there after the university but a girlfriend and a good job kept me there. And after 9 years I had had enough. I wanted to live in a big city and I wanted to learn a foreign language. So the foreign language part ruled out New York and London, leaving France and Germany. And France won. Actually, Paris won. And when I first moved here, I proclaimed that I’d never move back.

And there you have it. Pretty simple really. Just pick a dream and work on it until it happens. The “how” will be detailed in a future post. Just follow the tag FAQ.

Last week my boss informed me the the CTO of a Fortune 500 company was coming to visit our office and he asked me if I’d be interested in giving a presentation. My boss was supposed to be on vacation that day, and my coworker (who is my mentor and has been teaching me a lot about the subject of the presentation) didn’t want to do the presentation in English. I love to do presentations so I jumped on the opportunity! “Yes, I’m interested.” I said. “It’s not ‘Yes I’m interested’, it’s do you want to do it or not?” “Sure!” Ok, so I didn’t sound too enthused, but that’s only because I didn’t want to take this opportunity from my coworker, who frankly should be the one pushing our services, especially since I had only been in this business unit for 6 weeks now. He assured me he was OK with it and agreed to coach me, so I couldn’t refuse.

I spent a day translating an existing presentation into English and then revamping it, learning it top to bottom. For some unknown reason I was a bit more stressed about it than usual. I think it was because this was a very high profile person, and also because it was in English. What? Yes, you heard me right. I’m so used to speaking French when talking about my profession (information system architecture) that I actually find it hard to do it in English. This is because I’ve been here for almost 7 years now and a most of what I know about architecture I’ve learned in France, in French.

I practiced with my wife both Monday & Tuesday night, and with my coworker during the day. Then the hard part: Finding a few jokes. I tried them out on my wife and she didn’t think they were funny at all. Nothing. A big zero. On the second joke, she even said “You’re not going to say that one are you?” I said “Why sure!” Hmmm.. usually the jokes just come to me on the fly but I like to have a few planned just in case. I find starting off a rather technical presentation with a bit of humor puts people at ease and at the same time gets them interested. You know, different is good.

So this morning I go and we set up and they come in, the CTO and 3 of his associates. I make my first joke, which wasn’t even really that funny but it was a hit and they laughed. Ok, cool. Now I’ve got the momentum to carry me through. Keep it going. I show the agenda and slip in the second joke very casually as I continue to the next slide. This one really gets them and they all start laughing, while I slyly carry on as if I didn’t even realize I just said something funny! Sorry but I won’t say the jokes here because without my delivery they just won’t be funny. Plus I may have to use them again. So now two jokes down and I do the mandatory audience participation. I asked where they’re from, because I was presenting a topic that is not popular outside of France and I wanted to know if they had heard of it. They say they’re all living in the US. “Good, that will make this a lot more interesting.” More laughter. Then one of them asks me where I’m from. Then another asks if I’d be interested in moving to the city of their company’s headquarters. “I don’t know, I’ve never been there.” I reply. “It’s great!” they say. And we’re all off to a great start.

Now I may be wrong but I have a hard time imagining these exchanges with a French audience. Don’t get me wrong, the French laugh at my jokes (usually), but while the part about asking me to move to their city may seem very subtle, I believe it’s a big difference between the American & French cultures. The Americans are kind of dreamers, anything is possible, and they are casual enough to say it and talk about it. The French are more realistic, even pessimistic, and generally think things over a great deal before making such a statement. The thought process kind of kills the spontaneity and then the moment is gone.

The rest of the presentation wasn’t as animated but it went real smooth and I was definitely at ease. My performance was pretty good, and at the end they commented on how much they enjoyed my presentation. A big success.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve been asked to do a presentation because I’m American and the audience was American or English. And I’m sure it won’t be the last. It’s an advantage I really enjoy, and I must admit there was an instant bond between me & my audience that just wasn’t there with the other French presenters. This was the first presentation that I’ve done in English in over 4 years. Usually when presenting in French I get a pretty good feeling too, and I think that’s because of my accent. That and I smile too much a lot.

Anyway, not much point in all this except to say sometimes Americans get the break. And when we do, we must enjoy it!

I’ll be writing more on this topic, so follow the tags. It’s like Seinfeld’s gorgeous blonde girlfriend Nikki who gets whatever Jerry wants just by her good looks. Well I’m not attractive but fortunately for me the French love the American accent.

There are a lot of things to complain about in France but health care isn’t one of them. In fact, I had no idea just how bad the American system has become until I moved here. Two seemingly unrelated and separate incidents will convey the point.

My wife & I had finished a house visit Saturday morning and we were walking down the main street in our small town which is just outside of Paris. We were heading towards another agency when we passed the doctor’s office. “I forgot to make an appointment with the doctor” I said. It wasn’t urgent, but I did want to see her that day. I could have waited another week if need be. “I’ve got my phone, call her” my wife said. So I called, “Hi, would it be possible to get an appointment today?” It was 11:30 and I figured, if it were even possible, that I’d have to come back later in the afternoon. “12:00?” the doctor replied. “Perfect!” I said. So we walked to the agency and then on the way back I went to see the doctor. I did have to wait 15 minutes but I didn’t mind. At 12:30 I was leaving the doctor’s office and crossing the street to go to the pharmacy. No one in line! Yeah! I got my prescription and was home in time for lunch with the in-laws.

Ok, now today it’s Monday and I’ve long forgotten about my miraculous appointment with 30 minutes notice. However, the daycare called my wife to say our daughter was sick (again!) with fever. My wife called the pediatrician and got an appointment for 6:15pm. She arrived right on time and so was the doctor. No wait! After the appointment, she walks next door (I’m not exaggerating, it really is next door but that shouldn’t be a big surprise because there are pharmacies everywhere here) to the pharmacy and gets the prescription.

I must say France has this health care system worked out really well. The only problem? The government is losing money. I’ll be writing more on this topic as it’s a very serious issue for the French. And if you’re in the US, dealing with 1-2 week waits for doctor’s appointments and then 1-2 hour waits in the waiting room, I feel for you.

It’s Sunday morning and with a slight headache I think about our dinner party last night. The planning for this dinner party was almost a year in the making (OK I’m exaggerating here, but with a young baby all plans seem to slow down while at the same time the time passes by so fast). Last year a coworker who had become a good friend invited us to his place for dinner. It wasn’t the first time we’ve been invited for dinner..

Here I’ll pause and tell you that, unlike in the US, being invited to someone’s house for dinner is not very common in France and is a sure sign of the beginning of a more serious friendship. The Americans are very casual about making friends and having people over, the French are very reserved. This would be a good subject for a future blog so I’ll save it for later and get back to the story.

This wasn’t the first time, but it was the most classy: champagne, fois gras de maison (“duck liver” “home made”), mouton (“lamb”), and of course the best wine from Bordeaux. We were blown away, it was perfectly executed, with a level of service surpassing many fine restaurants (ones that we can afford anyway). And there the thought began: “What are we going to do to reciprocate?” My wife, who is French, started thinking of how we could pull off something of the same level. It was obvious to me that we’d need Tom Cruise. (I’m proud of myself for tactfully fitting his name into my blog, not because it’s a not-so-subtle reference to Mission Impossible but because it will also double the hits for this page!)

Fast forward almost a year.. I changed jobs and suddenly I wasn’t eating lunch with my friend, which had been a daily ritual for almost 2 years. At my pot de départ I told him and another friend that they would be invited to our place in the near future. You know, the kind of thing you say after a few glasses of Champagne Mousseux.

After a month and a half, another one of our friends (also in the lunch club, who is now at the client’s site and therefore out of the lunch club as well) reminded me of my generous offer. I talked it over with the wife and we decided to take a Saturday off from house hunting and have the four of them over. With my new business strategy skills, I decided the plan was not to compete with the chic French (a battle I’d certainly never win), but to do it American style (a battle in which the French have no chance). So the plans were in order. The theme would be Mexican, and it would be very casual.

The two couples arrived between 7:30 & 8:15pm and we started each with the “welcome drink” – a shot of my favorite Tequila, smuggled back to France from Mexico, complete with lime & salt. The menu we chose was, with the exception of a few small items, completely de maison (litterally “of the house” which means “homemade”):

drinks: margaritas & piña coladas
appetizer: shrimp quesadillas
dinner (first round): beef enchiladas
dinner (second round): chicken fajitas
dessert: carrot cake & pecan pie
liquor: Mozart white chocolate liquor or tea

All set in an casual ambiance with Mexican music (Chingon among others) and our very American dinnerware (a gift from my mother that we had to haul back to France on the airplane). I think we broke every French rule about food that exists, but not only our French guests didn’t seem to mind, they really seemed to enjoy it!

The biggest surprise, according to one of my friends, was that I did most of the cooking. He even asked the day before, “What time does your wife plan on serving the meal?” to which I replied “First off, I am doing the cooking. Second…” I have to give my wife credit for the desserts, that’s her specialty, and they were great. She’s done a great job learning to make American desserts, although she is a little stingy with the icing.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details of our intimate evening, I’ve hit the highlights here. I’ll end in saying that hosting a French dinner party doesn’t have to be difficult for an American, if you do it American style. Just save the Domino’s Pizza for later, once you’ve become really close friends.

This morning I had to go to the prefecture (courthouse) for an interview for my request of French nationality (I’ll be writing about this real soon). So I took the bus to the metro station which is just a few minutes from the courthouse. There is an underground passageway because there is no crosswalk to cross the street. But most people take their chances and cross the street anyway, because the underground passage is a lot longer. So I lined up with 5-8 other people (there’s safety in numbers right?). We waited for the lights to change so that there will be a break in the traffic. Once that happened, we started to cross the street. It’s quite big with several lanes of traffic. About half way across, a few cars started coming, ones that turned right at the light. So most of us stopped, to allow the cars to either stop and let us go or for them to go by so we could continue. I say most of us stopped because a young girl was reading something as she was walking across the street and wasn’t paying attention. Neither was the driver of a small car that was going quite fast. It all happened in less than a second, no time to react. The car sees the girl and slams on his brakes as he passes by, just missing her by 3-4 feet. Then everyone starts yelling at the driver, who speeds away as if nothing happens (actually he didn’t even come to a complete stop).

It was a very close call. A few seconds of inattention on the part of two people almost caused a fatal accident. And from what I hear, it happens a lot. With 11 million people and thousands of cars, it’s quite a problem. Running red lights, the lack of lanes on the roads (yes most of the roads in Paris do not have lanes), speeding drivers, the big city stress, motorcycles that drive on the wrong side of the road and/or in between lanes, etc. all adds up to a dangerous situation for pedestrians.

Here is a chart of the number of accidents in Paris (this doesn’t include the suburbs):

Here is the breakdown:

1,944 pedestrian accidents in 2005. That’s 4.5 per pedestrian accidents a day! 58% were due to pedestrians crossing the street outside of a crosswalk. Next time I think I’ll use that underground passage.

For more information, see Paris Accident Statistics (in French).