With our second baby due in just a few weeks and a potential career move in the works, I just haven’t had time to write lately. I am becoming an expert at putting together baby furniture and service-oriented architecture but you probably wouldn’t be interested in that. Also the site hasn’t been getting as much traffic as I had planned. The site has been online for 6 months now, and I expected more activity. A lot more. There are several repeat visitors and I’d like to thank all three of you for your patronage (especially you mom, sorry you find my posts disturbing!). But we need more than that to keep the site going. We need more visitors, more comments, more ideas.
So, I thought I’d throw this out. If anyone out there is interested in writing for this site, let me know. Maybe you’ve thought of starting a blog but have put it off. Or maybe you spend a lot of time participating in other blogs. The pay sucks but it’s a lot of fun. And hopefully the site will continue growing. Obviously you’ll need to live in France but I think that’s the only requirement. Well you should probably enjoying writing. A sense of humor is an added bonus. Oops, I just excluded all the French writers! Just kidding. See? It’s not so hard.
Seriously, I need some ideas because I’m about to be seriously short of sleep and time. So let me know if you have any ideas.
In my last post I wrote about a strategy for getting a good seat. A few days later I came across another one, but this time I was on the receiving end. Let me explain.
My wife kept our daughter home from daycare so I took the train to work instead of the usual metro. Despite it being the vacations, the train was pretty full. I mean usually it is standing room only, which isn’t a big deal really since it’s only 12 minutes. But last Friday, I got on and there was 1 seat. And it was full of stuff.
I looked around, debating if I should go for one of the fold-out seats by the door or go for the nice, well protected stroage seat window seat. All in 0.01 seconds I might add since if I didn’t take it someone else would. So I went for it.
Usually if there are plenty of seats I’ll avoid one with bags and coats on it. I’m a nice guy. But when it’s the last seat, no way! So I went to the seat and just stood there. The two guys look up at me, with a very disappointed look on their face. Yes, one of them would be holding his bag and the other would be holding his suit coat. What’s the point of a suit coat anyway if you’re not going to wear it? That really bothers me those guys who carry their suit coats around all the time.
They complied and I got my seat. A very nice one too. Obviously this strategy doesn’t work all the time, but it’s always worth a shot.
I thought I’d share my strategy for how to get a good seat on the train in Paris, it works for the metro too (even better).
My current assignment has me working in Levallois-Peret, one of the cities that borders Paris. It’s so much like Paris that you wouldn’t even know you weren’t in Paris. My way home from work is to take the metro to the St. Lazare train station. Since it’s the train station, you can take your time and walk along the train and pick a good spot.
The seats are arranged in fours, with the groups of two facing each other. This is handy because the train runs in both directions and 1/2 the seats are always facing the right direction.
My strategy is simple: Pick a seat that no one else wants. This means picking a seat next to someone that no one else wants to sit next to. That way we are two people for four seats, sitting diagonally from each other there is plenty of leg & elbow room.
So who is the best candidate? Obvious a homeless person but I don’t want to sit next to them either. So lately my choice has been big black guys. Before you think I’m a racist, I remind you that I want to sit by them and no one else does, so that makes me the only person who isn’t a racist. 
If I don’t find a big black guy, any big guy will do. But black guys work the best. I got lucky and got a really big one the other day. Every other seat on our wagon had 3-4 people in the four seats while the two of us were sitting comfortably.
One cool thing about my current assignment is we usually eat together. There are about 4 of us “regulars” who always eat together, and then there are usually a few others who join us, often a different few each time. That makes lunches interesting and fresh. Today, they decided to go to the Moroccan restaurant.
We ate there last week and it was really good, but really smokey. Today one of my coworkers was coming with us and he hates cigarettes more than I do (if that’s possible). So I told him how last time we were next to the window and we opened up the window to avoid suffocating let all the smoke out. You really can’t imagine how horrible it is to be in a very small restaurant (maybe 12 tables total), with all the windows shut, and cigarette smoke all over. Makes you want to stop-drop-and-roll. In fact, my condition to eat with the group is that we only eat in restaurants with non-smoking sections, which is very uncommon in France. Fortunately my coworkers don’t mind accommodating my request. In fact they don’t like cigarettes either. We’re all non-smokers.
So I had a feeling the Moroccan restaurant would be a problem but I wanted to go with the flow. We arrive and ask for a table for 6, non fumeur (“non-smoking”). It was pretty empty when we arrived. But towards the end of our meal it started getting busy (around 1pm). Then to my horror I hear
Normally I’d say something to the waiter. I’ve done it before. Something really polite, like “Excuse me, we asked for non smoking yet they’re smoking right next to us?” I don’t bother any more because usually non-smoking in France means there is no one smoking within 10 inches of you. (The standard distance between tables in most French restaurants is about 5 inches). So lately I just don’t bother. I figure it’s easier to just never go back. Not that they miss me, the restaurants are full of people. All smoking mind you.
My coworker who hates cigarettes more than I do (if that’s possible) couldn’t take it any more. He gave us his money and he split. Walked back to the office by himself. I wanted to do the same but there was a guy still eating (he’s from the south and eats real slow, unlike us Parisians). I gotta hand it to them (the one who split, not the slow eater). If everyone just got up and walked whenever there was a smoker it’d be pretty funny. But the restaurant owners would be happy because it’d free up the tables. For more smokers.
I think that’s the last time I go there. There are other restaurants that are just as good and that have real non-smoking rooms. Not many, but enough to give us a variety during the week.
In January 2008 all this will change. We will be able to go into any restaurant and enjoy a nice meal without breathing cigarette smoke. Until then, I intend to give my business to the restaurants who appreciate those who don’t want lung cancer. I can’t tell you how many times someone has sat right next to us and lit up a cigarette, with the smoke going right in our faces. Even when my wife is pregnant! Probably the same people who abandon bathtubs in the street.
And btw, the bathtub is gone! Today was the day of the month where they haul away large items. If only they’d haul away the smokers too.
If there’s one thing that really bothers me about the French, it’s that they really don’t care about other people. A common French expression is ils sont foutent which means “They don’t give a crap”. As you probably already saw in our wonderful parking spot the other day, the French don’t give a crap but the dogs do.
But it’s not only the dogs that are leaving things in the street. Take this lovely item for example, that was conveniently dropped off in front of our building:
This item suddenly appeared over a week ago. We, like everyone else in our building, thought it’d just disappear. But it hasn’t. And worse, people walking down the street think it came from our building. The two buildings on both sides of ours are brand new, so it didn’t come from there. So where did it come from? And how did they choose our building for it’s new home?
Even funnier is that it isn’t in its original spot. People have been moving it as needed to make room for their cars! In France there is a rule that you can’t leave a car on the street for more than a week without moving it. So I’m hoping the police will give it a ticket and maybe even haul it away.
Slim chance of that happening. I asked my wife about it tonight, she said it doesn’t bother her. Which I think sums up the problem rather nicely. The French not give a crap about anything really. Well except for American politics, then they’re real activists. Sorry if I seem bitter but my building has turned into a junkyard .
And if you’re thinking why don’t I do something about it, well I’m open to suggestions. Just what does one do with an abandoned bathtub in front of their building? The only thing I know to do is to wait until the Thursday when they collect oversized garbage. Only thing is I don’t know which Thursday it is so it might be a few more weeks.
Today (Saturday) we drove to Paris to go to our favorite baby supply store. Usually parking spaces are very hard to come by but this time we saw a spot right away. A very nice big spot. Highly unusual on this street. Then we realized why. Here is the view from our parked car:
I thought it was kind of funny, my wife was too stressed that one of us were going to step in it. I must admit, for the first few years in France (and even on vacation before moving here) I thought it was totally disgusting. Actually I still do, but I’m used to it. I’ve accepted the fact that I live in Paris, the dog poop capital of the world.
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