Two rare cool days, La Défense, smart phones, holidays

Monday and Tuesday were unseasonably seasonal, that is, the temperature was in line with historical norms for this time of year. That’s unusual these days, because an endless succession of heat waves has been more common in recent years. And in fact these two days were just a brief respite between two heat waves. People thought it was chilly, when in fact it was just normal. It was nice. I even walked around a bit, mostly to and from La Défense, where I had to go on business. Today another heat wave is predicted to start, however, with temperatures 22° F above normal (which translates to over 100° F on the street).

Walking to La Défense is somewhat of a hike, especially since it is slightly uphill from the Champs, my starting point. It took slightly more than an hour. I didn’t want to waste the (relatively) cool, overcast weather. And La Défense is pleasant to visit on a weekday, because it’s a very popular business district with tons of people walking around. It has a lively, modern, upbeat atmosphere about it, since most of the people walking around have decent jobs and salaries.

Originally, this business district had a vast open plaza surrounded by high rises. The plaza is still there, but the organization that manages the district—no doubt motivated by the desire to make money, which is all anyone really cares about in the final analysis—has allowed the plaza to become more and more crowded will all sorts of junk: restaurants with vast terraces, special events, little kiosks of all sorts, and so on. Some of them are temporary, others are permanent. The openness of the plaza is gradually yielding to “monetization,” although I’m sure the EPAD (the aforementioned organization managing the area) would deny that money is the motivation behind the changes. It’s rather sad. But money is everything, after all, and apparently the lure of filthy lucre is irresistible enough to justify sacrificing the aesthetic environment of the district.

Today is the first day of August, and the period between mid-July and mid-August is the quietest time of year in Paris. The trend towards diversity in vacation periods continues in Paris, meaning that the city doesn’t suddenly turn into a ghost town during August as it did half a century ago, but there is still a noticeable decline in traffic and crowds during August. However, the influx of tourists makes up for the outflow of Parisians during the summer. You still hear some French on the streets, but often it is drowned out by English or (these days) Mandarin. If there’s no heat wave in progress, the sky is very clean and clear because there is less traffic, but during the repetitive heat waves, inversion layers tend to keep the air dirty despite fewer motor vehicles moving about.

Back in the olden days, just about everything closed during August, too. Today, that’s mainly true for small shops that don’t have enough staff to stay open during August. Bigger stores and most other businesses remain open. That’s fine with me, as I wouldn’t like being stuck in a ghost town for a month. The travel guides are always behind the times, and some of them still claim that Paris closes up shop during this month, but that’s no longer true, and hasn’t been for many years.

Because of the heat waves nowadays, I do spend a lot more time indoors in summer, listening to the air conditioner run. It’s noisy, but it’s no longer possible to live without it in 100° F heat. I can still remember the days when you didn’t need A/C in Paris, as they weren’t that long ago. But it seems that those days are gone now.

Paris Plages is in progress, too. It gets a bit more elaborate each year. I’m not sure that that’s a good thing. It’s intended to provide some relaxation for Parisians who don’t leave the city in summer (and more and more of them stay). It’s not a tourist attraction, although some tourists who know about it do visit it. I’ve not been there so far this year, because it’s just not fun once the temperature rises beyond a certain point. It’s nice when the temperature is seasonal.

Since I got a smartphone, I’ve been observing others a bit more in their use of smartphones. Paris was always an early adopter of wireless technologies, and today it seems that at least two thirds of the people you see on the street have a smartphone in their hand. The proportion seems to be even higher in places like buses, subways, park benches, cafés, or just about anywhere where people tend to sit down for a moment. I confess that I’m not sure what all these people are doing with their phones. Even though I’ve stocked mine with apps that I consider useful, I still don’t walk around with it in my hand all the time. I presume they are making calls or texting, which are things that, ironically, I don’t often do with my phone.

In Paris as in many other cities, theft of smartphones is the single largest source of petty crime. Both pickpocketing and snatch-and-run thefts of smartphones are common. They represent more than half of thefts in the Métro. But there are so many people using smartphones that the numbers still work in favor of those who carry them. There are tons of people with smartphones, and relatively few thieves. Indeed, I wonder exactly what thieves do with their stolen smartphones, since it seems that everyone who wants a smartphone these days already has one.

You’d think that in such a pretty city, people would look around and admire the environment around them from time to time. But in fact a lot of them are staring at their phones. Perhaps they are looking at pictures of Paris on their phones. I suppose that residents can be forgiven for this, since they live in Paris and see it all the time. But it’s a bit harder to understand when you see tourists peering at their smartphones as they stand at the base of the Eiffel Tower or in front of the Mona Lisa.

Anyway … in addition to Paris Plage, there’s also the summer carnival in the Tuileries Gardens. I go there sometimes to eat junk food, although I’ve only been there once so far this season. There are places with good gyro sandwiches and granites (slushy frozen fruit drinks). It can be a bit dusty if it hasn’t rained. But as usual, the main problem is that it’s often just too hot to walk around. On those increasingly rare days of normal weather, it’s fun to visit.

More and more heat, street performers, iPad photography

Pont au Double

A major heat wave has begun. Yesterday it was 86° F in the little office where I work most of the time, at 8:30 AM. It got worse as the day wore on. By early afternoon, I was exhausted and very sleepy, and I accomplished essentially nothing. I returned home not long after 5:30 PM.

You don’t know how exhausting heat is until you are forced to live in it without air conditioning. But my apartment does have A/C, so at least I can relax and sleep once I get home. And I seem to sleep a lot.

  

Visitors to Paris still ask if they should look for a hotel or apartment with A/C. The answer is always yes, if they plan to be in the city any time from April to October. Heat waves can occur at any time of year, and when they occur during these months, they tend to bring temperatures that require air conditioning.

I’m not sure why some people insist on avoiding A/C. Are they in the army, or playing some sort of wilderness survival game? Do they really want to be miserable during their entire vacation? Do they really want to visit the emergency room of a French hospital? What exactly is the problem? What is the nature of the taboo that compels them to refuse air conditioning?

Is it bad for the environment? Well, air conditioning requires a lot of energy—electricity, mainly. But so does heating. And the laws of physics are such that air conditioning is more necessary. The human body produces heat, which must be removed. In cold weather, the heat is removed by the environment. If it gets too cold, simple insulation in the form of warm clothing slows the heat loss and keeps a person safely warm without any need for additional expenditure of energy. But in hot weather, the heat from the body is not lost to the environment, so it must be forcibly removed by active cooling. That active cooling consists of sweating, which only works up to a certain point, and then must be supplemented by active mechanical refrigeration at higher temperatures and humidities.

There’s no way around these laws of physics. No amount of voodoo or wishing can make them go away. And people who think they don’t need to be actively cooled in high heat and humidity sometimes end up in the hospital, or worse. To me the logic is impeccable, but I suppose some people manage to avoid logic entirely.

iPad photography

Other than that, well, not much else. Before the heat really set in, I ran some errands on the way home (a few days ago), and saw some street performers, which I’ve shown here. Both were near the Latin Quarter. One was actually a band, not a very good one, playing on the Arcole Bridge north of Notre-Dame, and the other was a woman manipulating a small puppet on the Double Bridge just south of Notre-Dame, with music by Édith Piaf (“Mon Dieu,” a real tearjerker of a song) playing in the background. You see lots of performers around the Latin Quarter, whenever the weather is tolerable. Some are good, many are so-so, and some are pretty bad.

I notice more and more people taking travel photos with their iPads, which looks really weird, but I guess some people just can't be bothered to bring a proper camera, even for an important trip to a great city. You'd think that a small, normal camera would be easier to drag around than an iPad. Very strange.

Caving for a smartphone, customer non-service, and walking around the Opera

Although most people don’t know it, Paris and Europe hold a central place in the history of modern cell phones. The GSM cell-phone standard, developed more than thirty years ago, was conceived in Europe to replace the old first-generation radio telephones. And in the early days of GSM, Paris had more cell-phone users than any other city in the world, except Hong Kong. Today, more than 80% of the world uses GSM—more if you count descendants of GSM as well.

I was one of those early adopters. I remember buying my first cell phone quite well. It wasn’t much bigger than cell phones are today (most of the size was taken up by the battery), and it worked just about everywhere. It was quite cool, even though I almost never used it because I’m not much interested in talking on telephones.

Fast-forward to the present day, and smartphones have replaced a significant part of the cell phone market. Paris today is just one of many large cities in which just about everyone is holding a phone in his hand or in a pocket. Cast a glance around any of the many crowded boulevards and avenues of the City of Light these days, and you’ll see dozens of people using cell phones and smartphones.

Although I was one of the first users of a GSM cell phone, until a few days ago I hadn’t moved much beyond that, other than to periodically buy new phones. I’m an extreme introvert and I don’t have anyone to call, and virtually nobody calls me. But the advent of smartphones intrigued me a bit, since they could do other things besides handle telephone calls. The idea of having instant access to the Internet from anywhere was the part that interested me, because I’m constantly using the Internet at home.

Even so, I resisted, mainly because of expense and my poverty. Prices came down, but not down far enough. Until a few days ago, when I got some extra money and decided that it was a good time to make the jump to a smartphone. Too many times, I had found myself wishing that I could quickly look something up on the Web while out and about in the city, and a smartphone would fix that. So I bit the bullet and bought into the newer technology.

I tend to favor established mainstream vendors when buying technology. I’ve learned the hard way that being a pioneer in technology means endless grief as you work out the bugs in something new without being paid for it. So I go with the brands that are the best established. In this case, that pointed to Orange (a bizarre brand name for France Télécom) and Apple.

So a few days ago, I walked into the large Orange store on the Champs in the mid-afternoon, when business would (presumably) be slowest, and asked the greeter inside the entrance if she could sell me a smartphone and subscription in less than half an hour. She held up her cute little tablet and looked, and told me that twelve people were waiting in line ahead of me. I thought to myself, Bienvenue en France, and told her “Sorry, you lose, thanks!” (in French)

and walked back out of the store. I’ve long passed the point where I’m willing to put up with standard French customer non-service. There was no way that I was going to waste an afternoon just to get a phone.

Next stop, a few days later, was the Apple Store. There are two in Paris, one by the old Opera, and one in the shopping center next to the Louvre. I decided to try the Apple Store because (1) they have a reputation for being customer-friendly, which is extraordinarily rare in France, and (2) I had already decided that an iPhone would be my best choice.

Sure enough, when I walked into the Apple Store on Friday, not long after it opened, someone was instantly available to assist me. And after filling out the inevitable pile of paperwork—two pieces of ID, receipts for gas and electricity, a passport, a credit card, bank references (the infamous RIB), etc., I walked out with an iPhone. Fortunately, I knew about French bureaucracy, so I had come with the requisite ton of papers. Things went smoothly and as fast as can be expected when there are so many forms to fill out. And the Apple Store people were kind enough to set up my smartphone for me on the spot.

Had I gone to the Orange store at the same time, I’d probably still be there now, waiting in line for the slugs they call employees to do their jobs. As it turns out, Orange lost my business, because the only affordable plan they had was sold only via the Web, and I wanted the Apple Store to set it up. So I went with an inexpensive plan from Virgin. I would have preferred Orange, because France Télécom is second to none from a technical standpoint, but I just couldn’t spend my life waiting for them to move.

And so today, the day after acquiring my phone, I went back to the store to get an extra charger and a little box that lets me access the Internet at home via Wi-Fi from the smartphone. That gave me an excuse to go outside, which I rarely do these days. The weather was excellent, except for the late afternoon, which was rather hot. The breeze and low humidity made the rest of the daily fully tolerable, with seasonable temperatures and sunny skies.

To profit from the nice weather, I walked up to the store from home, which took about an hour. The city was overrun with tourists. In a day or two, the Parisians themselves will leave en masse on vacation, and the time between around July 15 and August 15 will be relatively quiet. But even if the locals are on vacation, the tourists are here in ever-increasing numbers (most of them speaking Mandarin these days), so the city stays crowded, but with less pollution.

Man playing piano by Opera

I did see a few traces of French snootiness even at the Apple Store. Some employees are less well trained than others. One employee near the entrance, to whom I asked a question about the gadget I had bought, became perceptibly irritated when I repeated the question for confirmation. Clearly, he had written me off as a dork, no doubt because of my age, my dumpy attire, and my hobo-like affect, but he could not have been further off the mark. But I let it slide, as I have more important things to worry about than inadequate customer service at a store (if you stress over something like that in Paris, you’ll quickly go barking mad).

As it is rare for me to leave my apartment these days (too little time, too little money), I splurged a bit while I was walking through the wonderfully-busy Opera shopping district (made all the busier because summer sales are in progress). I got a Frappucino at Starbucks (vanilla, although it always makes me cough for some reason). And then I got a millefeuille vanille at Fauchon, which cost $8.50. It was a mess to eat, but that is the nature of this type of pastry. It was tasty, but not tasty enough to justify $8.50. And Fauchon’s policy of having you order at the counter, then pay at the register, then return to the counter to pick up what you bought, is a bit archaic for my tastes, although, to be fair, it’s pretty common to do things that way in France.

Near the Opera I saw a guy playing classical piano rather furiously on the corner. He played very well, albeit a bit too quickly for my tastes. What really intrigued me, though, was trying to figure out how he got his Yamaha glossy-black upright piano to and from the street corner. I noticed a wheeled cart of sorts behind the piano, but still, an upright piano weighs hundreds of pounds, and I saw no car or van, and I couldn’t imagine him hauling it through the Métro, so I had to wonder how he moved it. I always think about strange things like that in such situations—it is my natural engineering bent that does it.

By around 4 PM it was starting to get too hot for my tastes, so I returned home. I decided to skip the grocery shopping I had been thinking about, as lines were long (as always), and I had enough in the fridge to hold me for a while.

Weather, parades, and a carnival

I know that discussions of the weather are often regarded as a form of small talk, but I’m not so convinced of that as I once was. It’s true that in places like my hometown, America’s Hellhole, where the weather is sunny, hot, and clear every single day of the year, there’s not much to say about the weather—but here in the City of Light, where the weather changes significantly, it’s a legitimate subject of conversation. Weather is environment, and environment has a huge influence on the activities in which you can engage, and whether or not you enjoy them.

So, speaking of the weather … it has been nice (read: cool) for the past few days in Paris, so I am content. I hope it lasts. We’ll soon be in July and we’ve mostly escaped heat waves, so I hope that continues, especially since I’ll be out and about for much of next week. At least we are not afflicted with the weather prevailing back in the Valley of the Sunstroke, where today’s high is predicted to hit 118° F. That’s about 60° F above the predicted high here, and also about 60° F above what I can comfortably tolerate outdoors. Of course, we have 81% humidity here, and it’s only 18% back in that desert dump of a town, but at 118° F, even zero humidity doesn’t help. It just dehydrates you faster, and you die sooner.

Despite the nice weather, I don’t plan to go out today, except maybe to do some laundry. There’s a parade of homosexuals planned for today, no doubt with lots of ear-splitting music and people dancing in underwear, and I can do without that. (I know that it’s politically incorrect to not immediately salivate when any homosexual rings a bell these days, but I’ve always been a kind of polite rebel.) In fact, I tend to avoid parades generally, since they are usually loud and occasionally degenerate. They are sometimes good photo ops, but I don’t take many pictures these days, since I had to sell all my equipment to pay bills. If I’m not taking photos, there’s no reason to go anywhere near a parade. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on whether I want to see it or not), many parades seem to choose routes that take them very near my apartment. Even if I don’t see them, I can often hear booming music and people chanting.

I noticed a Ferris wheel at the Tuileries, which means that the summer carnival has come to town. It used to come twice a year, in summer and around Christmas, but I haven’t seen the Christmas version show up for several years now. The summer one is nice, though. There’s lots of junk food to eat, including a stand that sells great gyros (sliced roasted lamb in a bun with fries). There’s a place that makes nice granitas too (they are mostly like flavored slushy drinks in France).

Solstice music

Friday was a nice day, at least by my standards. The sweltering heat of previous days let up for a while, and apart from a few drops of rain, it was very pleasant. And it was quite cool considering the date, since Friday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year (summer began at 7:04 AM local Paris time).

And where there’s a summer solstice, there’s a Fête de la Musique. I’ve talked about it before. In the early days, it was a license for every wannabe rock group to set up a few amplifiers on a street corner, crank them all to eleven, and allow everyone in the local galactic cluster to discover their utter lack of talent. Fortunately, those days are mostly gone. These days, the Fête de la Musique is mostly a set of official concerts and Major Media Events,™ although some of those are scarcely any improvement over the amateur bands of old. But at least the streets are no longer alive with the sound of non-music.

Near the Alexander III bridge

I worked late on the solstice and had no desire to visit any of the concerts or other events planned for the evening. I ate at one of the McDonald’s on the Champs. This McDonald’s tends to be filled with dregs from the banlieues sensibles outside the city, and the service is very slow, but it’s cheap and convenient, and their Maxi Big Mac menu with a cookie stick closely matches the face value of my Ticket Restaurant.

After eating, I walked home. There were several groups of young males, also apparently from those same banlieues, performing on the broad sidewalks of the Champs. Of course, they didn’t bother to pay for performance licenses for the recorded music they were using, and they provided a highly useful distraction for pickpockets loitering behind their audience. I always ignore them, as I am not interested in being relieved of my wallet, and I don’t care to support rogue performers who don’t feel that they are bound by the same rules as professionals.

On the Left Bank

Extensive work has been done on the Left Bank of the river to convert an expressway into a more pedestrian area, similar to what has been done on the Right Bank near the Hôtel de Ville. On the solstice there was an open house of sorts and there were many people down on the riverbank. It was difficult to tell if the work is done or not, and I didn’t bother to read the signs in detail. And the lighting was eerie: It was close to sunset, and the sun was hidden by clouds, but reddish reflections of sunlight from odd directions lit the area … and for some reason I found that troubling. As a result I just walked past it, but didn’t stick around.

The army band at the Invalides

On the Esplanade des Invalides, there was music, more or less. On the west side of the esplanade, there was an excellent army band playing jazz and popular favorites with relatively little amplification. They were very pleasant to listen to. Unfortunately, on the other side of the esplanade, there was some sort of son et lumière event with non-music playing. It sounded like distant fireworks and was heavily amplified, and interfered with the army band, even though the band was much closer to me. I didn’t cross the avenue to see what was making the noise on the other side, as it was already very loud from where I was standing and I knew I’d have to wear ear protection to see it up close. Besides, I liked the music that the army band was playing.

Eventually it started getting really dark, what with sunset coming up and the sun obscured by clouds, so I continued on home. Not only that, but my teeth were hurting a lot (several of them are rotting away, since I can’t afford dental care), and I needed to take something for the pain.