All Hallows Eve, Paris Style

In honour of October 31st, I made my way to the Montparnasse cemetery in order to greet the dead. Père Lachaise? Schmère LaSchmaise! At Montparnasse, the underdog of Parisian dead people parks, I got to wink at Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who each blew me a kiss. Serge Gainsbourg was a little bit tipsy, but Baudelaire wanted me to give you a message... Happy Halloween!

Panda Express

It took me a while to seek it out, but I finally made my way to the Chinatown of Paris. It has a really cool grocery store that is bountifully stocked with great ginger beer, inexpensive coconut milk, and fake meat in a can. And while none of the restaurants in the area seem to have any tofu on the menu, food market tofu is varied and abundant, and only a tiny bit too chewy. Chinatown yes, but clearly still France! But I digress, this post is not about tofu, but about the "exotic products" variety store next to the Chinese themed McDonald's of the neighbourhood! Behold, peanut butter in a can! Alcohol free Guiness! Christian-themed candles? You heard it here folks. Christian candles are almost as weird as peanut butter in a can... whatever meaning you'd like to attach to that!

Birthday 27

Although there were no candles and red wine isn't always the best chaser for chocolate mousse cake, 27 was celebrated in style, with EJ in the daytime and Katherine in the eve. Thanks to everyone who helped make this birthday celebrated so far from home, not so forlorn after all!

Paris, you don't even know how snooty you are

The other day, I had to drop a French literature class, so I went to the French UFR (i.e. ze Frrench department) to see if this was possible. “What? You want to drop a class?” They joked. “Mais pourquoi?”
“Il y a un conflit,” I responded. They laughed.
“A conflict of interest!” mocked the lady.
“Um, no, a scheduling conflict,” I replied.
“Conflict is English,” said the lady. “Here, we say chevauchement.” At this point I got angry. Why are the French so adamant about correcting everyone all the time? Admittedly, the conflict might have been caused by an overlap, but it remained a conflict. Must I change every single thing I would normally say just because the French like it better that way?
“Listen,” I said. “I come from a place where when we speak French we don’t use words like email and weekend, so don’t you tell me that my French sounds English. There are other countries in the world that speak French besides France, and not everyone talks like you!”
The skinny lady and the leprechaun-like man were stunned. Yes French UFR faculty, it is bad form to criticise the francophone exchange students about the words they use you might not otherwise employ.

misadventures in the third

Once upon a time, a 20 something québécoise student walked into the bistro next to her Parisian studio.

student: est-ce que je peux avoir un café our emporter?
waiter: oui. mais pour emporter où? où voulez vous l'emporter ce café?
student: euh... dans ma maison!
waiter (with a crooked smile): dans ta maison! mais elle est ou cette maison? elle n'est pas loin j'espère?
student: euh... non.
waiter: alors! un café pour emporter dans ta maison!
student: oui...
exit waiter. enter waiter number two.
waiter 2: alors, on fait quoi?
waiter 1 (from stage left): un café pour emporter, dans sa maison!

Good grief, thought the student. Might there be a moral to this story? Aye. Mock not the French waiter who is trying to mock you lest ye be forced to endure the flatness of French unhumour.


P.S. Rue des Francs Bourgeois (pictured above) is not a pedestrian street.

Laundry Day

When I asked my landlady if there were any “buanderies” nearby, she laughed and said: “On dit une laverie, ma chère!” If having to leave the house to do laundry last weekend wasn’t bad enough, I also had to go and lock myself out of my home with no phone, no ipod, no watch, no friendly neighbours to open the door for me… Damn you, Paris and your self-locking doors! Though it wasn’t funny at the time, I knew I’d eventually see the humour of it all, so I decided to take some photos of the Laundromat in commemoration of my conundrum. The bulk of our lives are made up of mundane moments, after all!

Enter, Sandman...

"(Ger. Das Unheimliche -- literally, "un-home-ly") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.

Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize." [1]

Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian friends!

tic toc goes the easter clock

I really like how people glue artistic statements up in the streets of Paris, whether it be to share a rainbow that counts black among its 4 colours, or to compare time to a kit-kat bar.

word on the street

To be continued...

The great ban plea

Coloured toilet paper, please die and become a ghost!

Pompidou

An old friend just happened to swing by Paris last week, leaving me with a museum pass that was still good for a day. Since I am swamped with reading assignments all month, I didn’t have time to execute the grand museum tour of the town, but I did make a point of spending a couple of hours at the Museum of Fine Art, which just happens to be a few steps away from my tiny abode. The nice thing about going to a museum in Paris is you can actually take photos of the art. And to think I've almost been kicked out of New-York museums for boldly attempting such a feat! Behold: Buddha getting gutted, a Basquiat, a Picasso, not to mention a screening room full of empty chairs! The Syrian signs (depicting pop culture personae such as Michael Jackson, Lolita, and the like) were part of a non verbal film featuring random people brandishing them in public places and deserted middle eastern road sides. If that sounds like it might be unsettling, I will tell you that it was, but it was also soothing for some reason. Perhaps it was because I got to sit on such a lovely chair.

Ligne 5

Third Time Lucky

It's hard to believe that just one week ago, I was walking around lost in Thiais, looking to the closest IKEA outside of Paris. I had attempted this journey twice before, never getting much farther than where the RER dropped me off (I have an enormous fear of getting on the wrong bus and winding up in the town where Bart Simpson worked in a winery, having to cede his bed to a donkey.)
Luckily, last Friday was sunny and warm into the early evening, so getting lost enabled me to see a little piece of suburban France that I might not have otherwise seen. All this just goes to show how fast the weather really can change because today is damp and cold cold cold! To top it off, there seems to be a black hole in my room that is slowly gobbling up all things that are near and dear to me. So far, I've lost my watch, hairbrush, and hat. Oh, I really need that hat!

Oh, it's not THAT bad!

School started this week. Registering was really tough, and now the commuting begins. As you probably know, Paris is terribly overcrowded and no one has any manners. They cut you off, walk slowly, stand in the middle of very narrow sidewalks without walking at all. I've adopted a technique that I call "pretend you are at a packed rock show," because it's just like that. I must push and nudge and shove and growl my way through the city if I am to get anywhere when I am supposed to be there. In other news, I absolutely HATE French food, but I have discovered an authentic American diner around the corner from my house and I am going to Scope it out ASAP. If all goes well, I will get to have my first veggie burger in a very long time! Please don't disappoint me, Breakfast in America!

By the way, here's what my home looks like now that I've moved in and messed it up a little bit:

The Arc

Université Paris 3 is affiliated with a school called l'ESIT (école supérieur des interprètes et traducteurs) which i guess I'm sort of taking classes at, though they call me an intern rather than a student. um, okay. That aside, the classrooms of L'ESIT are located at Université Paris Dauphine, which is in the 16th arrondissement, not far from Les Champs Elysées and l'Arc de Triomphe. I just happened to buy my cell phone near there, but didn't see the point of taking a picture of the monument at that point... When I just happened to walk in front of it again, i thought, alright, alright, i'll take a bloody picture!

Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of framing myself in front of the Arc, so you'll have to use your imagination.