Well, elections came and went, although there’s a
second round now coming up for any election in which a single candidate didn’t
win by an absolute majority (that’s how elections normally work in France). I
haven’t been keeping track of it, although I note that several candidates seem
to have a platform that consists mainly of being passably cute this time
around. Women are still rarer than men in French politics and somewhat of a
novelty, although that is improving.
The weather turned a bit chilly again, but today it
was seasonal. A bit more pollution because of another inversion layer.
It took forever to get to work this morning
because the entire area around the Champs was blocked by police for the visit
of the Chinese president. Why the whole area must be blocked for two days just
for the visit of His Highness is a mystery to me. They wouldn’t even let
pedestrians cross the avenue at street level yesterday, which is unusual. But
the president was nowhere to be seen. It delayed me by an hour, since I must
cross the Champs as part of my daily commuting.
It’s interesting to see how much more elaborate
security is for visiting heads of state than it is for the French head of
state. I’m not sure whether this represents wildly exaggerated courtesy for the
former or simply a tacit acknowledgement that the latter is not one of the
world’s major movers and shakers. (Although France has the second-largest
economy in Europe, after Germany and is technically a leading world power.) An
entire neighborhood is sealed off for the Chinese president, but apparently the
French president gets around on a scooter sometimes, at least while visiting
his girlfriends, according to media reports I’ve encountered.
One nice thing about the Champs being blocked is
that it’s incredibly quiet. All you hear is the myriad footsteps of pedestrians
on the avenue—minus the deafening traffic noise that usually afflicts the city
(the one thing that the travel guides don’t mention about Paris is the noise).
It’s also interesting to see how the security
around embassies reflects the importance of the countries they represent. The
greater the influence or the higher the profile of the country, the more
paranoid the security of the embassy tends to be. So naturally embassies of the
United States and Israel are fortresses of paranoia, while some other countries
are so insignificant that you can walk right past their embassies without
noticing their existence. In some cases I suspect that the cost of running the
embassy in Paris represents a substantial portion of the entire government
budget for certain small nations.
Sometimes the diplomatic corps of the smaller
nations are manifestly stuck up as well. You can just see it in the way they
carry themselves. Apparently a post in Paris is a tremendous perk, and actually
living in a country with running water and electricity counts as life in the
fast lane for the foreign service of these banana republics. Every country in
the world has an embassy in Paris, no matter how small. Even if the country
must sell its entire yearly crop of bamboo or borax to pay the rent, it will
still have its pint-sized embassy, filled with corrupt diplomats with egos so
large that they can barely fit through the front door. You can bet that the
used Mercedes out in front probably cost the country half of its yearly GDP.
Anyway, I should try to take more pictures, but it’s
still usually dark outside by the time I head for home. Spring is here, but I
work late. The useless move to summer time (DST) will occur on Sunday, so it
will be a bit lighter in days to come.
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