Virus hysteria hits home

Last year, my employer of the time went bankrupt. Management had somehow succeeded in borrowing some €15 million from several banks, based on wildly optimistic projections of future revenue that were ten times greater than the company's existing annual revenue of less than €4 million. The company then burned through the loans in barely over a year. Ultimately it was forced into liquidation by its creditors, and a competitor bought what was left. The buyer retained me, probably because I was on the employee committee. But this buyer already had too many IT employees and consultants, so I was a bit in limbo, mostly doing development work. I had been IT manager, developer, sysadmin, and everything else for the previous company, where I was the only IT employee, out of 300 (!).

Then came the Deadly Virus hysteria this year. France entered lockdown in March. My employer refused to set up télétravail so I could work from home. Instead, I was furloughed with a reduced salary on March 17—probably because the government was reimbursing businesses for this on an emergency basis to avoid layoffs. But my employer started losing a lot of money despite extensive furloughs and other cost-saving measures. And so, a few days ago, I was notified that I'm being laid off due to the company's financial problems.

Although I'm well qualified, I'm old, so I don't know how difficult it will be to find another job. Age discrimination is very strong in France, even though it's technically illegal. I've never had to file for unemployment in France so I don't even know how it works.

Montmartre, Parisian ghost town

 I went up to Montmartre and Pigalle recently to see how the hysteria has affected it. The number of people was actually pretty normal—for normal city streets. But it was a chapter from The Stand compared to the usual crowds in Montmartre.

One of many tall stairways in Montmartre

There were no tourists at all, of course. There were Parisians strolling about, so it wasn't deserted, but it might as well have been so as far as the souvenir shops were concerned. Locals aren't very likely to be in the market for Eiffel-Tower key chains or I 💓PARIS t-shirts. And the famous restaurants up on the Butte had only a handful of customers, whereas normally every table would be occupied. Parisians do have to eat, but not necessarily at the overpriced restaurants around the place du Tertre. Heck, I wouldn't mind eating there myself, but I can't afford to pony up €22 for a steak haché avec frites. Some of the best-known restaurants were closed, too, which I found worrisome on a weekday afternoon. Tutti Sensi was open, so I bought a big cup of their excellent-but-pricey homemade vanilla gelato.

There was no line for the Montmartre funicular, which is unusual. I haven't the energy to climb the many stairs up to Sacré-Cœur, so this was nice. The cars are unventilated, and with crowds and warm weather they can be unpleasant, albeit still preferable to a heart attack from climbing the stairs.

There were more people down in Pigalle. All locals of course, walking up and down the pedestrian median on the boulevard de Clichy. Lots of bicycles in the adjacent bike lanes, too; I had to take care not to get run over. The beautiful weather surely helped lure people outdoors. And I was surprised by how much all the trees have grown on the median. I recall when they were first planted, years ago, as shadeless, skinny saplings, taped to sticks to keep them from falling over. Time flies.

I noticed that the sanisettes in the area are now equipped with hand-sanitizer dispensers. I wonder how much difference that can make when so few people wash their hands after using the toilet already. If they are not afraid of gastroenteritis, the Deadly Virus seems unlikely to worry them.

The Moulin Rouge is still closed. I wonder if it will ever reopen. There were two security guards standing in front. The "Red Mill" was not turning. Deadly Virus oblige. Not to mention those ridiculous giant flowerpots installed to discourage bogeymen and terrorists. Or maybe they're afraid of Gilet Jaune protestors. Or strikers. Or Islamist fanatics. So many things to be afraid of! People are afraid of their own shadows these days.

I've made a little video of my explorations, below:

My new bestseller

I've self-published the second edition of my book on public transportation in Paris on Amazon.  The previous (first) edition was published last year: it had 35 pages and sold perhaps half a dozen copies. There's not a lot of demand for guides to the Paris subway.

The new edition includes some additional material, updates, and notes. I don't expect it to fly off the shelves any faster than its predecessor.

This started out as just a sheet of instructions that I gave to coworkers visiting from the States three decades ago. It evolved over time, until I finally formatted it as a book. I put it on my web site. Much more recently, with the advent of easy, no-cost self-publishing, I published it to Amazon as an eBook and paperback, just to improve its availability. The Kindle version only costs a dollar (the lowest price I was allowed to set).

In theory sales should earn royalties for me. But I spent more money registering the copyright than I'm ever likely to earn from sales of the book.

Lockdown ends, for now

The government has ended the lockdown it forced upon citizens in its overreaction to virus hysteria, and Parisians have somewhat timidly come out of their homes again. There are still restrictions, though; freedom is hard to win but easy to lose.

The most striking thing about this post-lockdown Paris is the complete absence of tourists. I've never seen that before. I suppose this is just one more aspect of the hysteria that has not been seen since the Occupation, which was decades before my time. It's spooky—and it's bad news for the part of the economy that is linked to tourism (about six percent). This is especially obvious in touristy areas like the Champs-Élysées and the Latin Quarter. Museums like the Louvre are completely closed. Bicycles have replaced cars on some streets, such as the rue de Rivoli. Restaurants, bars, and hotels are closed, although restaurants can sell take-out food. Some other stores are open. Places like home improvement and phone stores are open and seem to have a lot of customers. They are all Parisian, of course—even before they disappeared, tourists did not often shop for plumbing fixtures or wallpaper.

There are many restrictions on using the Métro: everyone must wear a mask, every other seat is forbidden, and so on. There isn't a lot of traffic.

Actually, the restrictions imposed by the authorities are about as stable as the wind. I have trouble keeping  track of what is open and what is closed, and what I'm permitted to do without fear of fines or jail. The government is simply inventing random rules in order to create the impression that it is Doing Something to stop the Deadly Virus, even though there really isn't anything that can be done so long as there is no vaccine or cure.

The great mystery is … why? Mortality of the Deadly Virus isn't much different from that of the flu. Why does society have to come to a grinding halt? Why must people be thrown out of work? Why must businesses be destroyed? Why must the population be kept frightened? This has never been done before for other, similar virus epidemics.

I'm about the last person to suspect conspiracies, but this hysteria baffles me. The hysteria is not supported by the science—so who started it, and why?

Anyway, I went out and made a little video a few days ago, to which I've linked below. You can see how things are for yourself.

 

On the technical side, I shot this with an iPhone. It actually seems to have better image quality than my crusty old video camera (although that might be partially due to a change in workflow, too). It doesn't have stereo audio, but I only record ambient sound, anyway. What I miss more is the optical motorized zoom, but it's perfectly possible to shoot nice video with fixed focal lengths.

Lockdown

The streets of Paris are deserted today. No tourists at all; a handful of locals. Sure is quiet. Too quiet. It's eerie.

Champs-Élysées at rush hour

A species of hysteria seems to have gripped much of the world in recent weeks, including France. It is unlike anything I've previously seen in my lifetime. It concerns a flu-like, relatively innocuous viral respiratory infection, COVID-19, which has begun spreading rapidly worldwide, and which—for reasons unknown to me—seems to be causing a baseless panic. The disease is not particularly dangerous, with mortality in the same league as seasonal flu, but many governments and populations have gone off the deep end of the hysteria pool. It is astonishing and worrisome to see.

None of the actual data I've seen seems to warrant any great concern. The infection fatality rate seems scarcely worse than the flu, i.e., less than one percent. This is not smallpox (30% IFR) or pneumonic plague (98% IFR). And yet government officials are issuing "executive orders" (not necessarily with legal authority to do so) confining people to their homes and shutting down businesses, trampling civil liberties and destroying the economy.

Currently you need a special authorization just to go outside in Paris, and you can only do so for certain purposes. Scofflaws risk fines or imprisonment. All "non-essential" businesses have been ordered closed. The last time things were like this was during the Occupation, eighty years ago.

Employees at most companies have been told to work from home. My employer refused to set up remote working for me, even after I explained how to do it (after all, computers are my profession). I don't think their many consultants know how to do it. Instead, I was furloughed, with reduced salary. The company is probably itching to get rid of me, now that I've served my purpose during the buyout. This hysteria may provide them with an excuse. The lockdown is costing them a fortune, no doubt about that.

And so the streets of Paris are empty, even at rush hour on a weekday. I was only able to capture the video below because I had to go out to buy food. It's crazy. It's scary—and not because of the virus.

Time flies

I can't believe it has been six years since I last posted to this blog. Like the title says, time flies.

Over the past few years I've spent most of my waking hours at work, watching as my employer has been merged and sold and purchased several times over. Until the most recent takeover this summer, I was both the manager and the sole staff member of the company's IT department—which is remarkable in a company of some 300 employees (normally you'd expect to have perhaps four or five people in the department). I sometimes slept at the office, and rarely went anywhere except to and from work. This was in sharp contrast to my previous habit of going for long walks in Paris. There was simply no time for walks.

Anyway, the situation has changed. My employer went bankrupt earlier this year, and I'm now working for a new company that bought what was left of the old one. I'm still putting in overtime, but nothing compared to previously—no all-nighters or weekends. Perhaps I'll have some time to go for walks again.

Long absence

For quite some time now, I’ve found myself shifting from primarily my desktop computer to primarily a wireless tablet. Most of what I do on a daily basis with a computer at home is more easily done with a tablet.

An exception, however, is blogging. Blogger allows me to enter text from a tablet easily enough, but it makes the addition of photos very difficult, and formatting them hardly seems to be possible at all. And since I like to put photos in my posts, that’s a big problem. As a result, I haven’t posted much since the shift to mobile devices. I’m not sure what the solution might be.

I’ve looked at the Blogger app in more detail. It seems that you have to give it unfettered access to all your photos, then upload them to Google’s cloud before you can insert any of them into a blog post. Obviously I’m not going to do that.

Another problem is that I am doing a lot of casual photography with my phone, so if I want to use photos from the phone on my blog via the PC, I have to transfer them to the PC, which is a pain. This would also be true with any other camera, but now I’m rather spoiled and I don’t want to take the time to constantly transfer and reformat photos for my blog.

Perhaps I’ll resort to simply writing text in my blog entries, with no photos. It seems that, more and more, doing anything online requires giving multinational corporations a copy of all your intellectual property, so that they can resell it or extort money from you to allow you access to it.

Strolling in Paris (again)

I took an unusually long walk home today, through the Opéra district, down through the garment district and the rue Saint Denis, then through the Latin Quarter and then home.

I took a few pictures. The weather was excellent, clear and neither too hot nor too cold. Recent rains had reduced pollution to a low level, so the air was very clear as well. And I wasn’t the only one who had noticed this, as this was a very busy Friday night, with people everywhere.

Louis XIV's arch

In addition to pictures, I sometimes shoot video, or even make stereo recordings of ambient sound on the streets of the city. But nothing can adequately convey the actual atmosphere of Paris on an evening like this, when everyone is out and about and relaxing for the weekend in fine weather. The sun is already up late (it doesn’t set until well after 9 PM), and every major street of the city is awash in pedestrians. Streets like the boulevard des Italiens and other broad avenues are lined with restaurants, bars, clubs, theaters, shops, and cinemas, and all of them are open and doing excellent business. Paris is a city with many open terraces at eating and drinking establishments, so thousands of people are sitting at small tables on the wide sidewalks sipping drinks, eating dinner, smoking (alas!), and chatting with friends. This continues late into the night—I was out until around 9:30 PM, and yet the evening was only just getting started.

I am a very strong introvert, and yet, for some reason, I enjoy living in a densely populated city, surrounded by people. I don’t feel very inclined to interact with them personally, but I find their presence reassuring. I could not live the life of a hermit, or even out in the countryside. Pretty scenery gets old quickly, at least for me. But living in Paris is very nice. The city is pretty, even though the scenery is man-made rather than nature-made—but I actually rather prefer man-made scenery, as long as it is pretty, which it is in this case. There is something reassuring about knowing that the city is constantly active and alive, even when I’m asleep or sitting at home staring at my smartphone.

The Forum park and St. Eustache

I can understand why people like Manhattan, which has many of these same advantages. But I found Manhattan to have an old, dilapidated look to it, compared to Paris, which seems cleaner and newer … even though buildings in Paris are often more than a century older than those of Manhattan. Buildings from the early twentieth century somehow seem more ancient and decrepit and dated than buildings from the last nineteenth century. And the latter are aesthetically less pleasing than the former, at least to me. And it doesn’t help that so many buildings in Manhattan are tall, leaving you in a sort of sharp-angled ravine, whereas in Paris, years of strict building codes have restricted the height of most buildings to only a few stories. I can understand why someone might want to live in Manhattan—but I prefer Paris, thank you.

As in any densely populated big city, you move from village to village as you walk. Each village has its own atmosphere, even though they all have traits that tie them together and make them Parisian.

The Rex cinema

The area near and east of the Opéra, the grands boulevards, has traditionally been one of the most animated parts of the city, and remains so today. There must be a zillion restaurants in this area, plus tons of cinemas and shops. You can wander around there for days, and never eat in the same restaurant or shop at the same store twice. This is where one of the Chipotle restaurants I’ve previously mentioned is located (the other one is in the Fifteenth, and I think there’s a third one at La Défense). There’s also McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, the Hard Rock Café, various wannabe Tex-Mex and American restaurants, Italian restaurants, Asian (especially Chinese and Indian) restaurants, innumerable Anglo-Saxon bars, and of course many traditional French restaurants and cafés. Truly something for every taste.

In this same area is the Rex, a cinema from the golden age of cinemas that is still standing and operating successfully. You can take tours of the Rex, although I haven’t done so. I’ve seen one or two movies there, long ago. Most Disney premieres in Paris are at the Rex, in which cases there’s a canopied red-carpet waiting line set up outside.

As you move east, you come across several monuments. The big arch commemorating the military escapades of Louis XIV is still standing, and is still clean and in good condition, despite being constructed back in 1674, more than a hundred years before the founding of the United States of America. The arch is a bit incongruous today with its surroundings, since Paris has continued to evolve around it. On the north side is a street lined with ethnic grocery stores. On the south side is the garment district, and the wicked rue Saint-Denis, known for its prostitutes, although hundreds of years ago it was a royal parade route. The prostitutes are not as numerous as they once were, and they contrast with the wholesale garment distributors and manufacturers that line the street (interspersed with a handful of sex shops and—increasingly towards the south end of the street—restaurants).

I took the rue Saint-Denis down to the Forum des Halles area, and then across the river into the Latin Quarter, where I hopped onto the Métro to go home. By the time you get to the Forum, all the prostitutes and sex shops are gone, and instead you have restaurants, bars, and trendy clothing stores. The Forum itself is being completely reconstructed. The western end of the park has been finished and is very nice. The shopping center is still being rebuilt, with an odd “canopy” roof that looks like it’s in the midst of collapsing. There are tours of the construction site on Saturdays, but I haven’t been able to summon the energy to sign up for one.

All of these areas are always filled with people. When I compare this to the dust-blown, blazingly hot, totally empty streets of my hometown in the Great American Southwest, the contrast is amazing, and hugely favors Paris. My nightmares about being stuck back in the hellhole where I was born have largely subsided over time, but I’m still tremendously glad to be living in the City of Light. Like the saying goes “and now for something completely different” … that could not be truer in this case. If only it weren’t so expensive—or better still, if only I actually had enough money to maintain a decent standard of living. But it’s better to be poor in Paris than poor elsewhere.

From tobacco addicts to e-cig addicts

I’ve mentioned before that smoking has actually increased in France since the total ban on smoking indoors went into effect a few years ago. And now it seems that people are no longer smoking tobacco alone—the electronic cigarette has entered the scene, giving people addicted to nicotine new options for accommodating their mental illness.

Just in the street where I work, there are two e-cig stores. Pleasing odors waft out the front doors of these stores, but I know that people who use electronic cigarettes are not looking for pleasing odors … they are looking for their nicotine fixes. And the liquids vaporized by the gadgets generally contain heavy doses of nicotine. The gadgets are so new that the risk they present for non-smokers—if there be any risk—has not been quantified. But I know that if the liquid container ruptures and the liquid contacts, say, the skin of a child, it can causes seizures and death, thanks to the highly potent nicotine contained within (nicotine being an extremely poisonous neurotoxin).

I don’t see a lot of people inside these stores, other than salespersons, so I wonder how they are doing. And I wonder how just one small street can support two of them. But who knows? Walking home a few days ago, I passed several of them. I’m sure (and I hope) it’s a fad to some extent for now, but time will tell whether or not it will catch on for the long haul. To me, it’s just another drug for people who are prone to drug addiction.

We even have problems with these gadgets where I work. Some of our students (we teach adults), want to “light up” their toys during classes. Smoking tobacco indoors has been illegal for years, so the tobacco addicts must wait until break time and then go outside to get their fixes. But those addicted to e-cigs want to do their drugs right during class. It’s not illegal, but it’s certainly irritating to non-addicted students and teachers. Whether or not it should be formally prohibited is an open question for the moment. I’d be happy with a prohibition—anyone who can’t wait ninety minutes to snort his e-cig is clearly an addict—but others are not so gung-ho as I am.

On the street, you don’t notice it too much. And on the street, the e-cig addicts are still vastly outnumbered by the tobacco users. They sit or stand in any open area outside their clubs and restaurants, puffing away, rain or shine. Their cigarette butts litter the sidewalks in front of the entrances to every office building. During the day, there are always a few addicts standing around in front of the building, smoking and smoking. How glad I am that my life is not tied to a little roll of tobacco (or a little vaporizer dispensing the same drug)!

Trash containers return to the Champs!

One of the new trash "cans"

Walking home today, I was shocked to see a trash container on the Champs-Élysées. In fact, I saw not just one, but several, where there had been none before.

For many years, there have been no trash containers of any kind on this avenue. Trash containers are plentiful elsewhere in Paris, but they had been entirely removed from the Champs years ago, by a government inspired by the example of American cowardice. Apparently politicians felt that the imaginary bogeymen haunting the thoughts of their friends across the pond would abandon their nefarious plans for the destruction of society if they discovered that there were no handy trash containers in which to conceal their improvised explosive devices. (I guess the bad guys would never think of hiding something in, say, the hundreds of cars parked freely along the avenue throughout its length.)

Whatever the reasons, trash containers had long since disappeared on the Champs. The pedestrians who crowded its broad sidewalks day and night had no choice but to throw trash directly onto the ground. The city was spending some €750,000 a year on continuous, all-day cleaning of the avenue by city workers and subcontractors. It now seems that someone has finally been able to face down the irrational fears and restore hygiene to one of the world’s most famous streets. It’s about time!

In the olden days, the trash containers were closed, cylindrical affairs, brown in color with gold tops, and moderately fashionable. Today, they are just simple metal frames holding clear plastic trash bags boldly marked with vigilance propreté (“vigilance [and] cleanliness”). I gather that the clear plastic would allow passerby to see and promptly report sticks of dynamite or blocks of plutonium or other suspicious objects in the containers. It’s not very aesthetic, but at least it’s a bit cleaner.