“What is a…a…‘jheek’?”
This is the inevitable question from a student whenever reading one of my favorite English-lesson news articles, an Economist special report about how wireless technology has impacted society. The piece drops the words ‘geek’ and 'nerd' a couple times, and so reading it is always a game of waiting for the quizzical look and the mispronunciation of two of America’s most endearing insults and/or status labels, depending on how you look at it (or where you live).
It’s not as if hearing the correct pronunciation renders the words any more comprehensible to the French. The first problem is that there isn’t any translation in the French language. The closest French gets is intello, which really means ‘intellectual’—a term that’s far more Nietzsche, ethics seminar, and tweed than Star Trek, LAN party, and pocket protector.
The second problem runs deeper than language. The fact is the concepts of ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’ just don’t exist in this culture. And herein we can analyze the wide cultural gap between Euros and Americans. Europe has played host to centuries of ground-breaking thinkers. Intellectualism is as much a part of their history as is architecture or food. Educational achievement is of utmost importance in French society, yet the education system only awards the highest honors to a select few. French students are therefore pushed to the point of breaking, and only a few of them make it to the top. There has never been a celebration of the jock over the nerd, because football may reign supreme, but studies are way more important. You’d think some would rebel against the intellectual status quo, yet it seldom happens. As depressing as it could be, people still aspire to greatness even if they know they may never achieve it. In adult life, most people strive to know what’s happening in the world, present a solid analysis of it, and be right about it, to boot. Being smart (or at least appearing to be smart) isn’t just cool—it’s a survival skill.
Now, I’m not saying America is a polar opposite. We of course have had great minds, countless innovations, and many high-performing students. We have our bubble world of the educated elite. But we also tend to prize athletic achievement and strength over brains. (If you look back to our country’s origins, it was all about brawn—conquering the wilderness, the Manifest Destiny. Could this have something to do with it?) The jock vs. nerd rivalry codified in 1980’s teen comedies has faded, but not quite into obscurity. I worked in public schools for two years—the athletes still get all the glory, while it’s uncool to be so unabashedly, nerdily, in love with one’s studies. (“Don’t worry,” I’d tell my over-achieving students, “It won’t matter anymore in college.” Well, maybe except at a Big 10 university.) And in 2004, we experienced the triumph of someone who inexplicably bluffed his way through Yale (family money helps a lot!) over someone whom the American people felt was too much of a “European intellectual.” I wasn’t a fan of Kerry’s longwindedness either, but at the time I, like many others, was infuriated that a term celebrating smarts had been transformed into an insult.
However, we’ve turned a corner in American culture. Nerdiness may still be cause for mockery, but geekiness is another beast altogether. Living in the SF Bay Area for nearly a decade, I witnessed the ascension of the Geek firsthand. And now the word is less rooted in the realm of technology or educational achievement, and more casually tossed around to refer to anyone who’s an avid fan of just about anything. I could call myself a tea geek, my sister a Pilates geek, my angler student a fishing geek…etc.
But back to the French, the idea of nerdiness and geekiness just don’t translate. I have slaved away at trying to explain the words to many French friends and students, sometimes even aided by other Anglos, and it always fails to come across and really gel in a French person’s mind. To define geek, the best I can come up with is un fan (a fan). To define nerd, it gets a bit trickier. I usually have to resort to acting out the role of a stereotypical nerd, which involves talking in a high-pitched whiny voice, adopting a hunched posture, and pushing my invisible glasses up the ridge of my nose. Basically, it’s my rendition of the super-nerdy kid on “The Simpsons” who recruits Lisa into his league of nerds. It’s a pathetic impersonation and I think it leaves the French pitying my apparent mental disorder rather than experiencing the dawning light of realization.
17 September 2008
06 September 2008
Des Voleurs, Degagez-Vous
To start with a painfully clichéd phrase, “Today is the first day of the rest of my life”—because yesterday my entire post-adolescent life was robbed. Literally. Some asshole broke into my apartment and stole my laptop, which contains all my writing (and I’m not just talking blog posts, but articles, freelance copywriting, college and post-grad papers, original poetry), all the curriculum I’ve developed as a teacher (lesson plans, projects, notes, research), tons of emails, and a host of other important documents and information. Namely, I’ve lost my entire body of work to date, the groundwork for future work, and things I can’t even begin to recall. All gone. Game over.
It all begins with the living room window, with which N and I have fought an oftentimes losing battle for the past year. It’s extremely difficult to shut firmly, and doing so requires a team of at least two to three people. Sometimes it pops open after it’s been firmly (or semi-firmly) shut. To my knowledge, it was shut when I left the apartment yesterday morning, but one never truly knows.
Then there’s the scaffolding that’s lining both sides of my apartment building, as the property manager is finally renovating the facades after a 20 year lapse. For the past two months, there has been a team workers entering and exiting my building complex, working directly beside my apartment, waking me up with horrible banging and drilling, dusting up the stairwell—a constant nuisance, not to mention something that’s made me slightly uneasy. Who likes having lots of strangers hanging around near their home for a prolonged period?
You can probably put two and two together at this point. I came home yesterday from a full workday followed by gym workout (still in my sweaty workout clothes) to find that the window that I’d thought had been shut and the curtains that had most certainly been fully closed were open above a pile of dust on the cushions and carpet. I immediately knew my laptop was gone before I even looked toward its usual spot on my desk. Sure enough, gone it was, and it was the only thing taken. There were several other small, valuable items the culprit could have pinched, but a shiny white iBook seemed to do the trick. Plus, the thief needed a getaway bag so he dumped all the contents of my deskside trash and took the plastic garbage bag. Gee, thanks.
After feverishly checking and rechecking that nothing else had been taken, I called N, who as luck wouldn’t have it is away on business in the States, and he tried to talk me down. Everything that occurred afterwards was surreal and almost comical. I went downstairs to tell my super, and to enlist his help in calling the police, as my robbery-addled brain wasn’t operating at normal capacity and my French was coming out painfully wrong . He, his wife, and their daughter were very sympathetic and sweet and helped me without hesitation. The teenage daughter dialed the cops and what ensued was a family sitcom scenario of her speaking on the phone, the mom continuously yelling at her to ask for their exact address and Metro stop, and the dad continuously yelling at the mom to stop yelling at their kid. This went on for several minutes and at one point I did let out a little giggle that I had to stifle with a cough. Ahem. We determined that I would walk to the police station and in the meantime the super and his wife would alert my downstairs neighbor, who was a victim of the same crime exactly a week before (unbelievable, right?). They told me Mme G could give me useful information on how to proceed. Cool.
My mind was then racing with the multitude of things I had to immediately do: get the damn window shut, go to the police station, of course shower because in France walking around in one’s sweaty gym clothes automatically lowers one’s credibility, and uh oh, my friends visiting from SF (who thank goodness were spending the night) were due chez moi in two hours so I’d have to leave a note on my door instructing them to wait at the café downstairs while I tended to the emergency. I decided to tackle the window first, unaided (big mistake) and was getting so worked up emotionally that I absentmindedly placed one hand on a pane of glass in the window while putting pressure on the frame in order to get it closed. The next thing I knew, my hand had gone straight through the glass, without even so much as a crashing sound effect. Pffff, pop! was all I got. (This is so like me. I am the most closeted clumsy person in the world. I appear to have it all together, but every now and again I have a really bizarre or just plain foolish mishap—usually none involve injuring myself, though.) Don’t worry, I was super, super lucky to only sustain some shallow cuts on my hand, but at the time I was bleeding and in shock and so I just lost it. Explosions. Nuclear meltdowns. Call in the haz-mat crew, a.k.a. my beloved N, who could barely make out what I was saying, I was in such hysterics. He was attempting to talk me down yet again, when suddenly the doorbell rang. And this is when Mme G, the downstairs neighbor whose laptops were stolen last week, entered the picture and the fires started to get put out.
I first put her on the phone with N, because my French was becoming more and more second-grader by the moment. They exchanged stories. Hers was even worse! The workers had broken one of her windows in the course of their work and offered to help patch it up with cardboard. Two of them actually went into her apartment to apply the temporary fix. About a few days later, she left her apartment for two hours, only to return to the cardboard slashed, the window open, two computers gone, and a trail of dusty footprints leading to her front door (which is so cartoonish it’s almost funny…well, really, it’s just horrible).
Anyhow, I eventually said goodbye to N. Mme G took one look at my haggard expression and knew she had to take charge of the situation. And she did so in the kindest, most gracious way. We agreed I should wait until the next morning to go to the police given the additional fracas with the glass and my hand, plus the simple logic that it could wait until tomorrow. She called my household insurance company; she called the police. Finally, she insisted that she accompany me to the police station the following morning and gave me her numbers in case I needed anything.
Then more neighbors started showing up to express their sympathies and concerns. (Wow, news spreads fast in this building.) One neighbor and the super helped me finally get the window very firmly shut. I patched up the hole in the glass with cardboard and packing tape. Once the excitement died down, I was able to take a long shower and reflect. Yes, this is a terrible loss of something priceless. Yes, whoever did this is a real MF and has left me feeling violated and unsafe in my own home. Yes, I am such an idiot for not backing up my data despite knowing better, yet being too lazy to deal (believe me, I will probably beat myself up over this one for a long time to come). But really, despite all the negativity generated from this incident, I have to look on the bright side, because I’m a stereotypical positive American, dammit, and that’s how we do. So: I’ve learned an important lesson (always back up! wasn’t this a Sex and the City episode?), and now I have a fresh start. Tabula rasa. I will have to keep telling myself that when the sadness and anger seesaw back into play.
To help put things into perspective, I decided to read the news. Hurricane Hanna, Iraq, and Sarah Palin…yeah, my problems are pretty small. I eventually received my wonderful friends, whose presence calmed me down immensely—to the point that they were marveling at how calm I seemed (you should’ve seen me a couple hours ago, friends)—and in no time I was laughing and having a fun evening. As an extra precaution, they also helped me move the sofa in front of the windows, in effect blocking the windows from being opened. I don't like having a hole in the glass with scaffolding adjacent to my apartment, but moving the sofa made me feel better and I don’t think the jerk who broke in would be so bold as to attempt it again. (I’ll get a real glass replacement on Monday, anyhow.)
I had a semi-sleepless night, in part because I kept hearing fishy noises on the scaffolding outside my bedroom window. Paranoia started to get the better of me. (It’s him/them, he’s/they’re back with a crew of thieves and they’re going to clean the place out. Must…protect…Rock Band gear and Goonies DVD! Haha, just kidding.) Finally I worked up the nerve to take a peek. Pfew! Just a tarp attached to the scaffolding twisting and rasping in the wind. Girl, you’ve seen way too many scary movies.
My neighbor accompanied me to the police station this morning and I filed the report. It was a fairly painless procedure—I didn't need 14 documents, the police were nice, I managed fairly well with my French, and my neighbor picked up the slack when I couldn't. Then the police sent over a "police technique" (forensics) person, who arrived with his smart-looking forensics briefcase. I was expecting a little CSI action—dusting for fingerprints or at least some inspection of the premises—but he only asked me the same questions they did at the station, wrote down the same information I’d reported at the station, and explained there was nothing more he could do. DUUUUUUUUUUUH. Um, why did you come in the first place? (Ah, France. Such a high unemployment rate and therefore some pretty pointless jobs.) He did share one bit of interesting info: He said the police gets tons of these reports any time there's travaux (renovations) done on a building. In a way that makes me feel better, but in a way it’s even more infuriating.
Mme G and I returned to our building only to learn from the super that there had been a third incident, this time in the building across from mine. The workers have been painting and so an elderly resident left the windows open to air out the apartment, only to return home to find one of the workers standing in the apartment. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! The resident is scared to report it to the cops in case the worker threatens or hurts him. Three incidents in one week? That’s it, these guys have to be fired. My downstairs neighbor, my landlord, and my super are all pressuring the building manager to crack some heads at the contractor’s. As the French would say, c’est insupportable.
Later, I went to the gym to channel my aggression and focus on something else. Pumping iron really works! I felt good and strong and sweaty and alive. Some comforting phone calls with family members, delicious white tea, and a hot shower later, I’ve managed to put a lot of the negativity behind me and I’m awaiting yet another set of visiting friends. (I’m quite grateful to not be spending the weekend alone in my apartment given the circumstances.) Moreover, I’ve returned to one of the most relaxing exercises I know: writing. I am rebuilding the temple, so to speak. So thank you for sticking it through this super long account; it’s been an important cathartic step.
It all begins with the living room window, with which N and I have fought an oftentimes losing battle for the past year. It’s extremely difficult to shut firmly, and doing so requires a team of at least two to three people. Sometimes it pops open after it’s been firmly (or semi-firmly) shut. To my knowledge, it was shut when I left the apartment yesterday morning, but one never truly knows.
Then there’s the scaffolding that’s lining both sides of my apartment building, as the property manager is finally renovating the facades after a 20 year lapse. For the past two months, there has been a team workers entering and exiting my building complex, working directly beside my apartment, waking me up with horrible banging and drilling, dusting up the stairwell—a constant nuisance, not to mention something that’s made me slightly uneasy. Who likes having lots of strangers hanging around near their home for a prolonged period?
You can probably put two and two together at this point. I came home yesterday from a full workday followed by gym workout (still in my sweaty workout clothes) to find that the window that I’d thought had been shut and the curtains that had most certainly been fully closed were open above a pile of dust on the cushions and carpet. I immediately knew my laptop was gone before I even looked toward its usual spot on my desk. Sure enough, gone it was, and it was the only thing taken. There were several other small, valuable items the culprit could have pinched, but a shiny white iBook seemed to do the trick. Plus, the thief needed a getaway bag so he dumped all the contents of my deskside trash and took the plastic garbage bag. Gee, thanks.
After feverishly checking and rechecking that nothing else had been taken, I called N, who as luck wouldn’t have it is away on business in the States, and he tried to talk me down. Everything that occurred afterwards was surreal and almost comical. I went downstairs to tell my super, and to enlist his help in calling the police, as my robbery-addled brain wasn’t operating at normal capacity and my French was coming out painfully wrong . He, his wife, and their daughter were very sympathetic and sweet and helped me without hesitation. The teenage daughter dialed the cops and what ensued was a family sitcom scenario of her speaking on the phone, the mom continuously yelling at her to ask for their exact address and Metro stop, and the dad continuously yelling at the mom to stop yelling at their kid. This went on for several minutes and at one point I did let out a little giggle that I had to stifle with a cough. Ahem. We determined that I would walk to the police station and in the meantime the super and his wife would alert my downstairs neighbor, who was a victim of the same crime exactly a week before (unbelievable, right?). They told me Mme G could give me useful information on how to proceed. Cool.
My mind was then racing with the multitude of things I had to immediately do: get the damn window shut, go to the police station, of course shower because in France walking around in one’s sweaty gym clothes automatically lowers one’s credibility, and uh oh, my friends visiting from SF (who thank goodness were spending the night) were due chez moi in two hours so I’d have to leave a note on my door instructing them to wait at the café downstairs while I tended to the emergency. I decided to tackle the window first, unaided (big mistake) and was getting so worked up emotionally that I absentmindedly placed one hand on a pane of glass in the window while putting pressure on the frame in order to get it closed. The next thing I knew, my hand had gone straight through the glass, without even so much as a crashing sound effect. Pffff, pop! was all I got. (This is so like me. I am the most closeted clumsy person in the world. I appear to have it all together, but every now and again I have a really bizarre or just plain foolish mishap—usually none involve injuring myself, though.) Don’t worry, I was super, super lucky to only sustain some shallow cuts on my hand, but at the time I was bleeding and in shock and so I just lost it. Explosions. Nuclear meltdowns. Call in the haz-mat crew, a.k.a. my beloved N, who could barely make out what I was saying, I was in such hysterics. He was attempting to talk me down yet again, when suddenly the doorbell rang. And this is when Mme G, the downstairs neighbor whose laptops were stolen last week, entered the picture and the fires started to get put out.
I first put her on the phone with N, because my French was becoming more and more second-grader by the moment. They exchanged stories. Hers was even worse! The workers had broken one of her windows in the course of their work and offered to help patch it up with cardboard. Two of them actually went into her apartment to apply the temporary fix. About a few days later, she left her apartment for two hours, only to return to the cardboard slashed, the window open, two computers gone, and a trail of dusty footprints leading to her front door (which is so cartoonish it’s almost funny…well, really, it’s just horrible).
Anyhow, I eventually said goodbye to N. Mme G took one look at my haggard expression and knew she had to take charge of the situation. And she did so in the kindest, most gracious way. We agreed I should wait until the next morning to go to the police given the additional fracas with the glass and my hand, plus the simple logic that it could wait until tomorrow. She called my household insurance company; she called the police. Finally, she insisted that she accompany me to the police station the following morning and gave me her numbers in case I needed anything.
Then more neighbors started showing up to express their sympathies and concerns. (Wow, news spreads fast in this building.) One neighbor and the super helped me finally get the window very firmly shut. I patched up the hole in the glass with cardboard and packing tape. Once the excitement died down, I was able to take a long shower and reflect. Yes, this is a terrible loss of something priceless. Yes, whoever did this is a real MF and has left me feeling violated and unsafe in my own home. Yes, I am such an idiot for not backing up my data despite knowing better, yet being too lazy to deal (believe me, I will probably beat myself up over this one for a long time to come). But really, despite all the negativity generated from this incident, I have to look on the bright side, because I’m a stereotypical positive American, dammit, and that’s how we do. So: I’ve learned an important lesson (always back up! wasn’t this a Sex and the City episode?), and now I have a fresh start. Tabula rasa. I will have to keep telling myself that when the sadness and anger seesaw back into play.
To help put things into perspective, I decided to read the news. Hurricane Hanna, Iraq, and Sarah Palin…yeah, my problems are pretty small. I eventually received my wonderful friends, whose presence calmed me down immensely—to the point that they were marveling at how calm I seemed (you should’ve seen me a couple hours ago, friends)—and in no time I was laughing and having a fun evening. As an extra precaution, they also helped me move the sofa in front of the windows, in effect blocking the windows from being opened. I don't like having a hole in the glass with scaffolding adjacent to my apartment, but moving the sofa made me feel better and I don’t think the jerk who broke in would be so bold as to attempt it again. (I’ll get a real glass replacement on Monday, anyhow.)
I had a semi-sleepless night, in part because I kept hearing fishy noises on the scaffolding outside my bedroom window. Paranoia started to get the better of me. (It’s him/them, he’s/they’re back with a crew of thieves and they’re going to clean the place out. Must…protect…Rock Band gear and Goonies DVD! Haha, just kidding.) Finally I worked up the nerve to take a peek. Pfew! Just a tarp attached to the scaffolding twisting and rasping in the wind. Girl, you’ve seen way too many scary movies.
My neighbor accompanied me to the police station this morning and I filed the report. It was a fairly painless procedure—I didn't need 14 documents, the police were nice, I managed fairly well with my French, and my neighbor picked up the slack when I couldn't. Then the police sent over a "police technique" (forensics) person, who arrived with his smart-looking forensics briefcase. I was expecting a little CSI action—dusting for fingerprints or at least some inspection of the premises—but he only asked me the same questions they did at the station, wrote down the same information I’d reported at the station, and explained there was nothing more he could do. DUUUUUUUUUUUH. Um, why did you come in the first place? (Ah, France. Such a high unemployment rate and therefore some pretty pointless jobs.) He did share one bit of interesting info: He said the police gets tons of these reports any time there's travaux (renovations) done on a building. In a way that makes me feel better, but in a way it’s even more infuriating.
Mme G and I returned to our building only to learn from the super that there had been a third incident, this time in the building across from mine. The workers have been painting and so an elderly resident left the windows open to air out the apartment, only to return home to find one of the workers standing in the apartment. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! The resident is scared to report it to the cops in case the worker threatens or hurts him. Three incidents in one week? That’s it, these guys have to be fired. My downstairs neighbor, my landlord, and my super are all pressuring the building manager to crack some heads at the contractor’s. As the French would say, c’est insupportable.
Later, I went to the gym to channel my aggression and focus on something else. Pumping iron really works! I felt good and strong and sweaty and alive. Some comforting phone calls with family members, delicious white tea, and a hot shower later, I’ve managed to put a lot of the negativity behind me and I’m awaiting yet another set of visiting friends. (I’m quite grateful to not be spending the weekend alone in my apartment given the circumstances.) Moreover, I’ve returned to one of the most relaxing exercises I know: writing. I am rebuilding the temple, so to speak. So thank you for sticking it through this super long account; it’s been an important cathartic step.
02 September 2008
Rentrée Sickness
Yesterday, the first of September, is known as la rentrée, or the return. It is a grand return indeed: everyone’s back from their lengthy August vacations, school is again in session, the city is coming back to life, office activity is picking up. And therefore, everyone is feeling down. Including me, except not for the same reasons most Parisians are.
It’s just that I’m sick of all the complaining. I’ve grinned and bared it and I’ve tried to be sympathetic in the face of it, but frankly, I’m over it.
Parisians complain all the time. It’s practically an academic exercise. The running philosophy goes that if a Frenchman finds something worth complaining about, he has analyzed the situation craftily enough to identify an obvious or, better yet, a hidden fault. If you don’t find any fault, you are mentally lazy. He is therefore smarter than you. To boil it down into simpler terms…Complacent = stupid. Happy = downright moronic. Maybe I’m looking at this from a limited point of view (or maybe I’m just dumb, since I’m often in a good mood), but what does it say about a culture that devotes all this mental energy to actively not being happy? It isn’t a shock, then, to discover that 20% of French adults are on antidepressants. French adults are also the world’s biggest consumers of tranquilizers. Holy smokes.
Combine an already pessimistic national character with a return to work after the summer and Paris starts to feel funereal. You can feel it on the Metro and watching the hordes of workers surge past in the business district. Every student I’ve seen since yesterday morning has complained about something or other. I asked one, whom I hadn’t seen in two months due to her sprawling summer holiday, how her trip went, smiling expectantly. She said it was fine and then immediately launched into a long and bitter diatribe about how shitty the public transportation system is. All this because she got to work 15 minutes late today. I think we’ve crossed over from glass half empty to can’t see anything in the glass at all.
I read a piece in the IHT yesterday that went beyond my small sample size. Apparently, this is a “particularly morose” return because people are hesitant about the slowing economy and decreased purchasing power. Well, these are legitimate causes for concern, but there are reasons the French economy is stagnant (beyond the ripple effect of the American market crisis) and part of it has to do with the lack of dynamism and resistance to change. It’s the French paradox of complaining about how bad things are but then complaining (translation: striking) when something is poised to change. In fact, there have been rumblings about a major strike coming to theaters near us this fall—which may succeed in slowing down the economy further if it causes a prolonged period of preventing people from getting to work.
Clearly, I’m a product of my own culture. Surely, no one likes coming back from vacation and financial woes are not trivial matters, but where I come from we pick ourselves up and get things done and don’t waste too much negative energy bitching about it. Because that’s just what we do. And if we don’t like the situation we’re in, we try our best to change it or something about ourselves in order to better deal with it. We don’t wait around for the other shoe to drop or for the state to come pick it up and put it back on the rack where we think it belongs. We’re certainly not perfect, and we’ve made plenty of mistakes, but we at least make an effort to control our own destinies. (Ooooooooooh, she took it there.) It’s strange how after a year of living outside America, I realize how much of an American I truly am.
Oh, but of course not all of the French are dark, dreary, and dour. And I adore France. Just not for the reasons outlined above.
Yes, this is my day to rant, people! And don’t think the irony is lost on me. I fully acknowledge that in my attempt to vent about the complaining that surrounds me, I am, in fact, complaining. Maybe this re-entry sickness is more powerful than I thought.
It’s just that I’m sick of all the complaining. I’ve grinned and bared it and I’ve tried to be sympathetic in the face of it, but frankly, I’m over it.
Parisians complain all the time. It’s practically an academic exercise. The running philosophy goes that if a Frenchman finds something worth complaining about, he has analyzed the situation craftily enough to identify an obvious or, better yet, a hidden fault. If you don’t find any fault, you are mentally lazy. He is therefore smarter than you. To boil it down into simpler terms…Complacent = stupid. Happy = downright moronic. Maybe I’m looking at this from a limited point of view (or maybe I’m just dumb, since I’m often in a good mood), but what does it say about a culture that devotes all this mental energy to actively not being happy? It isn’t a shock, then, to discover that 20% of French adults are on antidepressants. French adults are also the world’s biggest consumers of tranquilizers. Holy smokes.
Combine an already pessimistic national character with a return to work after the summer and Paris starts to feel funereal. You can feel it on the Metro and watching the hordes of workers surge past in the business district. Every student I’ve seen since yesterday morning has complained about something or other. I asked one, whom I hadn’t seen in two months due to her sprawling summer holiday, how her trip went, smiling expectantly. She said it was fine and then immediately launched into a long and bitter diatribe about how shitty the public transportation system is. All this because she got to work 15 minutes late today. I think we’ve crossed over from glass half empty to can’t see anything in the glass at all.
I read a piece in the IHT yesterday that went beyond my small sample size. Apparently, this is a “particularly morose” return because people are hesitant about the slowing economy and decreased purchasing power. Well, these are legitimate causes for concern, but there are reasons the French economy is stagnant (beyond the ripple effect of the American market crisis) and part of it has to do with the lack of dynamism and resistance to change. It’s the French paradox of complaining about how bad things are but then complaining (translation: striking) when something is poised to change. In fact, there have been rumblings about a major strike coming to theaters near us this fall—which may succeed in slowing down the economy further if it causes a prolonged period of preventing people from getting to work.
Clearly, I’m a product of my own culture. Surely, no one likes coming back from vacation and financial woes are not trivial matters, but where I come from we pick ourselves up and get things done and don’t waste too much negative energy bitching about it. Because that’s just what we do. And if we don’t like the situation we’re in, we try our best to change it or something about ourselves in order to better deal with it. We don’t wait around for the other shoe to drop or for the state to come pick it up and put it back on the rack where we think it belongs. We’re certainly not perfect, and we’ve made plenty of mistakes, but we at least make an effort to control our own destinies. (Ooooooooooh, she took it there.) It’s strange how after a year of living outside America, I realize how much of an American I truly am.
Oh, but of course not all of the French are dark, dreary, and dour. And I adore France. Just not for the reasons outlined above.
Yes, this is my day to rant, people! And don’t think the irony is lost on me. I fully acknowledge that in my attempt to vent about the complaining that surrounds me, I am, in fact, complaining. Maybe this re-entry sickness is more powerful than I thought.
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