Question: Can I learn a little French before my trip to France

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I got a new idea.. since there hasn’t been much activity on the site, I haven’t been posting! It’s quite simple really, with 2 kids, work, and a career change in progress, it’s hard to dovote time to the blog if I’m not seeing any evidence that people are reading it.

So, if you’re out there reading the blog, post a comment or send me a private message. Tell me what you’d like to see. Ask me some questions. If we can get this more interactive then I will be motivated to spend more time on it. This blog is for you the reader. Help me make it better.

Today’s question comes from William. He asks:

I am planning a trip for January to France, but do not speak any French. I
am linguistically challenged, but between now an then I should be able to
learn a few common phrases. Can I make it with a limited language
connection?

Hi William, thanks for your question. I make it a point to learn a few words and phrases whenever I visit a country. As an example, in Turkey I really loved their coconut icecream. So I asked a vendor to teach me how to say it. Then whenever I needed an ice breaker with a food vendor I’d ask him if they had coconut icecream in Turkish. It was a big hit. They loved it. How could an American know the word for coconut icecream in Turkish?

I also learned basic phrases like “thank you” that I remember to this day. Here in Paris when I go to a Turkish restaurant (Turkish sandwhich places are all over the place) I try to work in a “thank you” in Turkish. They love it.

Back to France, I’ve used the same technique in every country I’ve visited. It always works. People love it when others make an effort to speak their language, especially languages that are uncommon to Americans. The French are very proud of their language so they love it even more.

You definitely want to start now. We learn words and phrases through repetition. Think of how a baby understands his first words. It’s because she’s heard them hundreds of times. My older daughter (almost 3) doesn’t usually ask what a word means. She just gets it through context and reptition. Which is why I recommend Pimsleur. I’ve used Pimsleur to relearn Spanish and also I tried to learn Mandarin with it. I had to give up on Mandarin because it was impossible to learn the tones without practicing with a native speaker (actually I got a native speaker but even with lessons I couldn’t do it!). Don’t worry, French is much easier than Mandarin.

French I, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand French with Pimsleur Language Programs is the best if you’re serious about learning some French. It may seem expensive but in my opinion it’s not because it is much cheaper than French lessons with a native speaker.

French I, Conversational: Learn to Speak and Understand French with Pimsleur Language Programs (Pimsleur Instant Conversation) is a cheaper scaled down version. I’m not sure exactly what this very covers so I’d read the reviews of both before making a choice. My guess is that the cheaper one will leave you wanting more and you’d have to buy the complete one, so why not start with the complete one to begin with?

There are other packages out there such as Michel Thomas but everyone agrees Pimsleur is the best.

The most important phrase to learn is: “Excuse me for bothering you, could you please help me” - “Excusez-moi de vous deranger, pourriez vous m’aider?”. The second is “Do you speak English?” - “Parlez-vous anglais?” (Most young French do and they love to speak English, but older people don’t like it when people assume they speak english). With those two you could also say “Excusez-moi de vous deranger, parlez-vous anglais?” You win them over with those two, and in most cases that is the only French words you’ll need because they will immediately recognize your English accent and want to speak English!

Here is a list of other important words:

  • Thank you - Merci
  • Please - S’il vous plait
  • Hello - Bonjour
  • Good evening - Bonsoir
  • Bye - Au revoir
  • I like _____ (you can point to what it is) - J’aime
  • tapwater - l’eau du robinet (to keep them from selling you expensive bottled water. France has great tap water, as good as Evian and the other bottled waters.)
  • Mister - Monsieur
  • Mam - Madame
  • The check please - L’addition s’il vous plait”
  • How much is it? - C’est combien?

You should be able to learn these from any French language tapes. The key is to pronounce them well. Even after living here 8 years people who aren’t used to an American accent often don’t understand me the first time and I have to repeat myself and then they understand.

Let me know who your learning goes and how the trip went once you return.

Bon voyage!

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Customer service at Darty

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We were looking at microwaves last weekend and we went to Darty, one of the biggest electronics stores here in France that is known for their customer service.

We debated between two models and after discussing with the salesman, we opted for the more expensive model (350 euros). The salesman looks it up on the computer and then we go back to the microwave and he opens the door and inspects the contents. Then he says “Ok, it’ll be this one.”

Whirlpool JT 355

“What?”

“The demonstration model, it’s our last one.” We then discussed about whether a demonstration model was new or not. I pointed out that it had been opened and shut a thousand times. I said “I don’t want a demonstration model, when can you get a new one?” He looked it up on the computer and said he couldn’t get one, it’s the old model.

“Is there a discount on this demonstration model?” My wife & I had agreed that for a big discount we’d take it.

“No, the discounts are already taken care of by the purchasing department.” So then we looked at the newer model on the computer. For just 15 euros more, we could have the newer model. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t tell us that this was the old model and the new one was only 15 euros more, that’s typical of the conflicting interest between a salesman and a customer. But I was surprised that he wanted to sell us a demo model for the same price as new.

And that’s my point. Customer service still doesn’t exist in France. In the US no one would buy it without a discount. It’d sit there on the shelf for years. But the fact that they do this in France tells me that it must work. Someone will come by and buy this microwave.

Customer service is making progress, but they have a long way to go. It’s interesting because in the US we say things like “If you don’t take care of the customer someone else will”. In France they say “No one else is taking care of the customer so why should we?”.

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Just for fun

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Ok, after a long vacation from the blog I’m back at it. That Seattleite in Paris really scored big because my post about her blog was on the top spot for a long time. The bill is in the mail.

One of the reasons I hadn’t updated my blog was because I was in the process of changing jobs and I had to keep quiet about it and lots of other interesting details that I can’t talk about due to “imminent litigation”. But I can talk about what I’m doing now and that will be the subject of a post in the near future.

In the meantime it’s Sunday night and according to my stats I get a bigger share of hits on Monday mornings. So this is something fun to put off work for another 10 minutes. I was checking in on Sam de Bretagne’s blog and saw this typing test. I haven’t done a typing test since high school, and my speed hasn’t changed much. It’s fun so give it a try.

85 words

Touch Typing

Only 1 incorrect word. I was going for accuracy, not speed. Thank god for that typing class in high school. That single class has served me even more than all those science and math classes combined.

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A new blog from a Seattleite in Paris

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I don’t get many comments but when I do I always read them and if there is a link, I check out the person’s site. I recently got one from someone (anonymous like me) who has started a blog titled “A Seattleite in Paris”. There are only a few entries, and what is there is interesting yet short and to the point. That’s what I like in a blog, something that’s quick to read. So without further ado, here is the link:

A Seattleite in Paris.

Tell her I sent ya. ;)

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Another strike

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It’s hard to believe that almost a month has gone by without an update on the blog. And what a coincidence that my previous post was about the transportation strike, and there is another one scheduled for Wednesday. The next one is supposed to be serious, because a week later there is a strike of teachers and utility workers, and the transportation workers think it’d be cool to combine the two. Why they don’t wait for them I don’t know, so the plan is to strike and renew the strike every day and make it last until the others strike.

Almost 7 years ago there was a big strike that lasted several weeks. It was really difficult for me since I was new to the area and didn’t know the system. Now it’s not so difficult. When there is a strike, I either go to work really early or really late. Same for leaving. There is a big impact on productivity, but it seems to be acceptable. Companies just deal with it.

I asked to work from home during the strike, I’ll be very happy if my client allows it. And it’s to his advantage that I work 8 hours at home instead of 6 in the office. I’ll ask again tomorrow.

There will be more posts for the next few weeks, I promise! :) And again, if anyone is interested in writing articles for the site just let me know.

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Transportation strike stops Paris to a crawl

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I was looking forward to my badminton match tonight when I get a call from my wife. “The strikes starts tonight at 8pm, not tomorrow!” she says. So I look on the net, all I find are details about the schedule tomorrow. I ask my coworkers and they confirm. I send an instant message to my badminton partner and give her the bad news. We decide to cancel, afraid of being stuck far away from home.

This is one of the biggest strikes in a long time. All the unions are participating. Tomorrow the traffic will be 15-25% for the metro. Already when it’s 100% the metro is completely saturated, with people pushing, shoving, and often arguing just to get on the next train. Even just 50% would be totally unusable during rush hour, but 15%? Forget it. And the 15% was for rush hour, outside of rush hour there will be practically no metro.

I sent an email to my boss and our assistant saying I was changing my RTT planned for next week to take 2 days this week. No sense in fighting a loosing battle I thought. My coworkers started making arrangements as well. The “good” ones were given the opportunity to work from home.

The only metro line operating at normal capacity is line 14, which is completely automated and doesn’t have a driver. That’s pretty cool I thought, replace all the metro drivers with computers and we wouldn’t have this problem. And people are complaining about computers taking their jobs!

Also, what are all the tourists going to do? I came to France three times before I moved here. Two of those trips occurred during a strike. But it wasn’t a total shutdown like this one.

I actually don’t mind them making me late for work, etc. But don’t screw with my badminton matches damnit!!

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Polish beatles

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Eating my lunch on a park bench in Paris today, I was thinking I should write more about little day to day stuff. But then I realized that my day to day is actually pretty boring and who wants to read that? Anyway, let’s give it a try, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Today I had to go to a hospital in Paris to pick up a special medicine that I can’t get in the pharmacies. I already mentioned this in a previous blog The witch at the pharmacy (I haven’t seen the witch in a long time).

I go in and there’s 6 people waiting. Great, I’m screwed. It’s going to take an hour I thought. See there’s no line, no “take a number”, nothing. Just a room full of strangers who are bound by the unofficial French code that forbids talking to strangers in public. It was like this at a laboratory I used to go to. Total chaos.

I remember one incident at the lab, two people came in together. My seat had an empty seat next to it so I got up to give them my seat and another. I thought it was very thoughtful. 15 minutes later when the woman says “next” I get up to go to the counter and the guy to whom I generously gave my seat goes up to the counter as well. His wife claims that he’s next, as if she’s an official judge handing out a verdict. I can’t believe what’s happening. I told them I was next and I pulled out my paperwork for the secretary so that there would be no discussion.

Were they doing it on purpose? I really don’t think so. I think the French don’t pay any attention to strangers and all they think about is being next. They probably thought I was leaving, and then saw the other me sit down after them and figured they were there before me. I know it sounds crazy but I do think that’s what happened. But then again I’m naive.

It’s sad but after a few experiences like that, one stops giving up their seat and other nice gestures. Get burned one too many times and you learn your lesson. And when you share a city with 10 million other people who’ve also learned their lesson, it can get a little unpleasant.

Back in the pharmacy, one of the employees came in to call one of the people waiting and I politely informed her that I had this special medicine which can only be dispensed by an intern (not sure why, I think it’s an attempt to make the interns do the more difficult work). A few minutes later a woman calls out “the patient with the ATU”. I heard her but before I could even think of moving a muscle a woman had practically ran to the counter. I’m not sure if she didn’t understand or if she was just trying to avoid me effectively cutting line (technically I was in a different line, one that fortunately for me happened to be empty). The intern threw a bag of medicine at me and I was out of there in no time. Cool.

I found a large quiche at the boulangerie (bakery) next door and got a piece to go, along with an almandine which is a little round tarte full of pate d’almonds (almond paste) complete with a fake cherry on top. I found a bench across the street in in the park that wasn’t occupied by drunk SDF (homeless people) like the others and had a nice relaxing lunch devoid of cigarette smoke and slow waiters. The quiche was pretty good, and the almandine better, all for 5.60 euros.

On the way to the metro I walked past a small fountain that presumedly comes from a spring under Paris. I once saw a report on tv about them, they’re all over. And the water that comes out is as good as the bottled water you buy. In fact, in some cases, it *is* the bottled water you buy. One company actually bought the rights to bottle it up and sell it. The whiff of urine kind of distracted from the experience though and I sped up as fast as I could. This is insane I thought to myself, usually the urine smell is in the metro and I’m in a hurry to get out.

As I’m writing this, On the metro back to work, a musician gets on and I instantly recognized him and his song. “Imagine” by the Beatles. It’s funny hearing a Beatles song with a Polish accent. The song instantly took me back to 4 years ago when I used to hear his music on the train to Saint-Lazare in the mornings. I know he’s Polish cause I spoke with him once as we got off the train. He seemed pretty nice and I wonder how he’s doing. Obviously he’s making money at it or he would be fixing faucets by now.

Just a few more stations until I’m back at the office where I’ll quickly post this and get back to pretending to be working (just kidding!)…

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Crazy lady on the metro

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Darn, I should have taken a photo with my mobile. Anyway, here goes:

Riding the metro is rarely fun. The SDF (Sans Domicile Fixe - this term literally means “without a permanent address”, it’s part of an attempt to restore dignity to everyone, even the homeless) get on the metro and then they’ve got you captive for 60-90 seconds. But the other day we got a special treat. It is the period of Ramadan, and since several of my coworkers are Muslim I’ve become more familiar with this religious holiday.

Anyways, a Muslim woman gets on the metro and we take off. Then she takes off. Starts saying it’s unacceptable that they sell alcohol during Ramadan. She pulls out a small book (maybe the Koran?) and just keeps on preaching. At least the SDF get off after one or two stops. Then she starts in on Jewish people. Then homosexuals. I have to give her credit, she found a way to insult practically everyone in the subway car!

Usually on the metro you’re not supposed to look at the person in front of you (who has their knees just inches away from your most sacred possessions) but with crazy lady on the train we couldn’t help but look at each other, make faces, roll our eyes, etc. Some people were flat out busting with laughter.

And she continued. Apparently god turned the homosexuals into monkeys. I’m not quite sure that fits into Darwin’s theory of evolution. We finally arrived at Saint-Lazare, a big station where the subway car practically empties out and then fills up again all in just 20 seconds. As we left the car we were laughing while crazy lady kept preaching to us, having moved on from the monkeys to another subject. And the looks on the faces of the people waiting to get on was quite amusing. What the heck? There’s a crazy lady in the wagon! Yet they got on as we got off .

This reminds me of one other time, although the lady wasn’t crazy. She was also Arabic but I am by no means saying that all the crazy people are Arabic! She gets on and gives us a sad story about needing money and stuff. Not too convincing because no one gave her money. Then as she was getting off she starts cursing at us in a mix of French and Arabic. Yelling and screaming! Everyone was relieved when she got off, and even more relieved that we hadn’t given her any money!

A week or so later I just happened to see her again. Same sad story. I wanted to yell out “Don’t give her anything! She’s going to curse us all!” but I held back. A woman gave her some coins. And same as last time, as she was getting off she starts cursing us again! That can’t be good for business. I haven’t seen her since.

So I’m not sure if crazy lady is only crazy during Ramadan or if she’s always like that. But next time I’ll be prepared with my camera.

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Doctors, August, and the ER

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First sorry for the lack of updates. It’s been a very busy 3 weeks since my daughter was born. She just fell asleep after her 6am bottle, which gives me some time to update the site before I drift off into unconsciousness.

Doctors, August, and the ER. What do these three things have in common? Quite a bit actually.

At 8 days our daughter had diarrhea pretty bad, over 6 times a day. The next day it continued and we didn’t know if that was normal or not so we called our doctor. The message on her voice mail said she was on vacation and gave the name of another doctor who was filling in for her. So we called him, he wasn’t there (a secret vacation maybe?). So we called our family doctor, she’s on vacation. Ok, her usual replacement. She’s on vacation too. Darn. Look up pediatrician in the yellow pages. The other one in our town is on vacation.

At this point I walk down to the pharmacy. The usual pharmacist is on vacation too. Her replacement is from the neighboring city and gives me the name of a doctor there who is supposedly not on vacation. I asked her if I could buy what I call “fake milk” which is actually a milk replacement for babies with diarrhea. She tells me that we can’t take chances with a 9 day old baby and that we should go to the emergency room. So I take the bad news back home. We call the pediatrician but of course she’s not in. While I was gone my wife located another replacement doctor and she tells us to go to the emergency room.

We get there and the place is totally empty. There was one kid being treated but other than him there was nobody there. Kind of cool. Cool that no kids are sick or injured, but very cool that we don’t have to wait! So after the kid is let go our daughter got the attention of the entire staff. And at 9 days old she was bringing them in from all over. I didn’t know it took 3 nurses and a mom to give an IV to a baby but it was quite difficult to find the vein. And instead of crying our daughter fell asleep during the process. Amazing.

They weighed her and she hadn’t gained weight (we couldn’t say if she had lost weight cause we hadn’t weighed her since we left the maternity). So they did a suite of tests (urine, poop, blood) and gave her an IV. Then they said she’d have to spend the night until we get the test results back.

Olivia in the hospital

Now here I will point out my conspiracy theory as this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a hospital here keep someone (a few times it was me) for a few days when you know in the US you’d be kicked out the door as fast as you came in. During these vacation periods the hospitals are empty. Normal because Paris is empty, everyone is of course.. on vacation. So the hospitals keep you a few days because then they can bill you for it. Now the bill is paid 100% by the social security and insurance, but the end result is money flows into the hospital. Money that wouldn’t be there had they not kept you.

To make the rest of the story short, the tests were all normal but they wanted to keep her a second night so they could do more cultures on the urine tests to be sure there wasn’t an infection. They let her go after 2 nights. We took advantage by getting full nights sleep at home. Yes we felt like terrible parents for leaving her “alone” at the hospital but we were on zero sleep. I slept a record 16 hours that night. The pediatrics ward was mostly empty so our baby got lots of attention and wasn’t “alone” at all.

They sent us home with a prescription for a milk without cow proteins. Yes the fake milk I asked for in the first place. This seemed to help a lot. It is expensive but of course it’s paid for by the insurance which is very cool. We could afford the milk but some families couldn’t so I think it’s great that the French system provides it free of charge so that families in need don’t have to make the difficult decision of buying the special milk or buying other necessities. And in an indirect way our taxes are paying for the milk so we don’t even have to feel guilty about getting free milk.

So the lesson in all this: August 15 is a big holiday here, I think it’s the holiday where Mary goes up to heaven although I don’t remember that story from my Christian childhood. If there is one week where people use up one of their 7 weeks vacation it’s the week of August 15. The city is totally empty. It’s like a scene from a science fiction movie. But luckily the ER is empty yet adequately staffed. And once again, France has made us grateful for its wonderful health care system.

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I am not George Bush

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So on the way home from the hospital this morning (more on that in the next blog entry) we stopped at a boulangerie (bakery). I went in and did the polite bonjour and then asked for deux bagettes s’il vous plaît (two baguettes please).




I’m not sure how to translate baguette, it’s the basic bread here that is long and skinny. I remember the first time I bought one when I arrived in France. I was very disappointed when the next morning I went to eat some of it for breakfast and it was soft and chewey. Yuk! What happened? Well it doesn’t conserve long at all. Which means you must buy them fresh, sometimes twice a day.

Ok so what’s two bagettes have to do with George Bush? So the baker, hearing my petit accent asks me if I’m from American (which is very good because 90% of the French think I’m British) and I say yes I’m from the US. And then she looks at her coworker and they say “Ahh George Bush”. I said Je suis venu en France pour échapper George Bush (I came to France to escape from George Bush). That really made them laugh. I paid my 2 Euros (about $2.75) and we said goodbye, still smiling and laughing.

It’s funny how many times George Bush comes up in a conversation immediately after me saying that I’m American. It’s like some kind of test. I have to say I’m against Bush to be accepted. Now this is easy because I’m not a fan of George Bush. But do the French really think every American is behind Bush? The polls in the US show otherwise. And his support is dropping. I need a pin that says “I do not support Bush”. I’m sure I’d get applause from people in public that I don’t even know. It’d be a fun experiment.

I wonder what they’ll be saying in 2009 when I say I’m American. At least it won’t be George Bush.

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