Food on the rue Saint Antoine, and MSF

I managed to go for a walk recently in the excellent weather of the past few days (before it started to get hot), and I found myself on the rue de Rivoli, which runs roughly parallel to the Seine River from the place de la Concorde almost to the Bastille (it becomes the rue Saint-Antoine just prior to arriving there).

I took the Métro to Châtelet, right in the center of town. From there I walked east along the rue de Rivoli. I noted that the scaffolding that had hidden the Saint-Jacques Tower for years has finally been removed, revealing a nicely restored Gothic monument (the church to which the tower was attached is long gone, but the tower itself is still impressive, especially now that it has been restored).

From there I continued to the Hôtel de Ville—that is to say, City Hall. (Hôtel in French means any large building, not just a hotel, and ville means “city,” so a hôtel de ville is a city hall.) The ice rink was gone, now that warm weather has returned, but there was a small trailer and table from Médecins San Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) sitting in one corner of the plaza.

A lady in a MSF t-shirt walked up to me and asked if I wanted to know about MSF and how they were dealing with malnutrition. Actually, I did know: They use products like Plumpy'nut.® I told her so, and she seemed surprised (I suspect that hardly anyone she talks to has ever heard of Plumpy'nut, but I take an interest in such things).

Plumpy'nut is a remarkable product invented by a French scientist ten years ago to fight starvation in children. It is manufactured by Nutriset, a French company dedicated to products for humanitarian organizations. Plumpy'nut is interesting in that it can rescue a small child from death from starvation by providing all the nutrition a child needs to return to a fair state of health. It contains peanut paste, oil, milk, sugar, and a ton of vitamins and essential micronutrients, all in a sealed foil pack that has a shelf life of at least two years and requires no refrigeration. It's ready to eat right from the pack, and needs no added water or other ingredients. It's soft, like watery peanut butter, so that even a child too weak to chew can eat it. One pack contains 500 kcal of nutrition, and two packs a day for a month can save a starving child, for a cost of about €21 (around $25). Given the ingredients, it's incredibly fattening, but of course that's the whole idea when you're trying to keep a child from starving.

I was very intrigued to see that samples of Plumpy'nut were on a small table in front of the trailer. The manager of the exhibition came over to see me while I was looking at the Plumpy'nut, and we talked. I was able to taste a sample of Plumpy'nut … and it tasted great. Like the peanut butter in a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, only softer and somewhat sweeter. Children are very willing to eat Plumpy'nut because of its pleasant taste, even when they are not starving, and children suffering from malnutrition adore it.

Somehow I talked myself into pledging a tiny amount to MSF. They wouldn't take one-time donations, so I signed a paper to give them €4.33 per month. That doesn't amount to much, but since my bank account is often empty or negative, I couldn't afford to pledge any more than that—I'm not even sure that I'll be able to cover that amount each month, but I'll see what I can do. It should work out to two people saved from starvation per year.

It occurred to me that the trillions of dollars that the United States is printing in order to allow certain rich people to avoid the consequences of their greed would be sufficient to save all starving children in the world many times over. In fact, one trillion dollars would buy enough food to feed all the starving children in the world from birth through their teens. I guess it's more important to use the money being printed to pay the bonuses of AIG and GM executives. But I digress.

Anyway, after spending some time watching a video inside the tiny trailer that described MSF's work during 2008, I continued walking along the rue de Rivoli. There was some sort of free cartoon expo going on at City Hall, but I'm not into stuff like that, and the line to get in was very long. There's almost always some sort of exposition taking place there, as there's an exhibition hall available for such things. The last exhibition I saw was a 1960s photo retrospective by a celebrity photographer, showing all sorts of (French) teen idols from those days.

There are lots of cool shops along the rue de Rivoli as you move east of City Hall, with all sorts of things on both sides, although the south side tends to have a lot of food shops and cafés whereas the north side is more clothing and other things. I walked on the south side because it's more charming and in the shade.

Of course, in France, we have no problems with starvation: you can get any kind of food you want here, and you can get the best quality, too. Just walking down the rue de Rivoli proves this. Today was a market day in the open market next to City Hall, so there was food there as well (even fresher and more expensive than the other stuff). There were also lots of flower shops … I'm not sure what Parisians do with all the flowers they buy, but they buy enough to keep many florists in business.

There are specialty shops that sell only produce or just fruits or only dairy products. And many butcher shops have large rotisseries out in front that cook chickens all day long—I think they put them outside because the delicious smell that wafts from them down the street brings in customers. By the time you buy the chicken, the tender meat just melts in your mouth, and the butcher will usually throw in some gravy and potatoes that have been soaking in it along with the chicken.

I had not eaten anything so this all made me quite hungry. Rather than actually buy something, which I can't afford (and I'm supposed to be trying to diet, anyway), I walked home to get some exercise, going through the Latin Quarter.

The tourist season is about to start, and I can already see an increase in the number of people in touristy areas. I have no problem with that; everyone likes Paris.

In the Latin Quarter, for some reason, you see endless concerts advertised on every available flat wall space. They are generally classical music concerts, sometimes of famous works but occasionally also of obscure works. Sometimes they are free, often you have to pay some sort of admission. There are so many posters for them, and they are scheduled in such profusion, that I wonder how the organizers keep track of which posters they've put up where—but sometimes they even manage to put stickers on the posters when they sell out a concert, so perhaps they have some vast computer back at the office that knows exactly where the posters are. The posters always seem to be in simple black lettering on white or brightly-colored paper, and occasionally there's a grainy picture of the composer whose work is being featured, or the venue. I wonder how many tickets they manage to sell to these things. I couldn't afford to attend even if I wanted to.

After going through the Latin Quarter and getting a huge cup of ice cream at my favorite ice-cream place therein, I walked the rest of the way home. The weather was excellent all the way. Spring is definitely on the way.

Spring is here, and the transformation of the Champs

The equinox has just passed, and the weather has started moving towards that nearly ideal combination of temperature, sun, fluffy clouds, humidity, and wind that makes spring in Paris justifiably famous. It's a pleasure to walk around the city at this time of year. The weather is wonderful, at least by my standards—some people might still find it a bit chilly for their tastes (daytime temperatures are around 12-15° C, or 54-59° F).

Recently I was walking around on the Champs and kept smelling some sort of perfume (and it must have been strong if I could smell it). I couldn't identify who was wearing it, and I started wondering if some wildly popular perfume had recently come onto the market. It finally dawned on me that the smell was coming from trees on the avenue. I don't know what kind of trees they are, but they looked like something was growing on them (can you tell that botany is not my specialty?), and apparently the part that was growing was also producing a fragrance. I only got whiffs of it intermittently, but it was pleasant.

Speaking of the Champs, multiple informed sources tell me that the avenue gets a bit dicey in the wee hours. In the old days, the avenue was busy 24 hours a day, and it still is, but the character of the crowds now changes by around 2 AM. By that time, various dregs from the suburbs have rolled in on the subways, and several species of low life, including drug dealers and the like, are frequenting the increasingly disreputable strip clubs that have been moving into side streets of the avenue. There are a lot of nightclubs just off the avenue, and some of the younger clubs attract a very rowdy clientele. Clubs staffed by entraîneuses (women dressed in underwear who will cheerfully talk to male patrons in close proximity as long as the latter buy overpriced bottles of cheap alcohol at regular intervals) have moved into the area, whereas one used to see them only in places like Pigalle. Sometimes fights break out on the street between drunken, angry young males, and occasionally gangs decide to fight each other on the avenue. I guess turning their own communities in the ’burbs into garbage heaps wasn't good enough for them, and now they want to effect the same transformation on Paris itself.

I rarely walk the streets in the wee hours these days (more out of simple disinclination than out of any feeling of insecurity), but it's still unfortunate to hear that there are so many troublemakers on the Champs. Paris is generally a safe city at any time of day in just about any neighborhood, but some areas are less recommendable than others, and now the Champs is moving onto the seedy list, at least between 2 AM and 5 AM or so.

If you can't get an Oscar, try a César

Yesterday the Césars ceremony was held in Paris. The Césars are cinema awards similar to the Academy Awards in the United States, except on a microscopic, specifically French scale. They are named after a sculptor who created the statuette for the awards, which looks very much like a washing machine that has been sent through a trash compactor.

The Césars are terribly famous in France, but essentially unknown everywhere else. Many of the awards go to people and films that will never be exported. It's interesting to see how people become fixated on something and give it tremendous importance, even as it is completely unknown and ignored elsewhere. It's a blend of the big-fish-small-pond syndrome and the local-celebrity syndrome. The Césars are front-page news in France.

It reminds me of the frequent (American) claim that a billion people watch the Super Bowl. Of course, that claim isn't true. In theory, a billion people could tune in to see the Super Bowl, but in fact nobody outside the U.S. actually does so, so the real audience is limited mainly to the United States (around 100 million viewers). But I still see American visitors in France asking what people thought of the game when Super Bowl season comes around, and they are surprised to learn that nobody here even knows what the game is.

If you want an audience of a billion, try World Cup soccer. But that event has virtually no viewers in the U.S. The world is a big place.

Anyway, the Césars are like a mini-Oscars, with a smaller budget, smaller attendance, smaller impact, and so on, but with big ambitions. I don't watch the Oscars, and so I'm certainly not going to watch the Césars. I've heard that Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture at the Oscars, but that's all I know, and that's more than I know about the new crop of Césars.

As for Fouquet's, where the stars come after the ceremony, it's a strange place, right on the fabulous Champs-Élysées. The name, with its apostrophe, is a deliberate anglicism. In front of the main entrance, there are brass plaques in the sidewalk listing winners of the César award. The place is said to be expensive and chichi; I've never been inside. Part of the café has been designated a historical monument. At the same time, back in 1994, the establishment was cited for multiple health regulation violations, with cockroaches in the kitchen and flies on the potatoes (the then-director claimed that every restaurant has flies on its potatoes, which is news to me). And in 1999 there was a bit of a scandal over the fact that the venue wouldn't admit unaccompanied women, because it considered them to be prostitutes—I don't know if that 18th-century policy is still in place, but for me it's reason enough to stay away. Right now, there are several parties suing and counter-suing each other in a dispute over who actually owns the building in which Fouquet's is located.

In any case, I won't set foot inside Fouquet's, ever since one of their rent-a-cops assaulted me on the sidewalk in front of the café some years ago.

But I digress … let's see, who actually won the Césars? Let me look this up … Okay, a movie called Séraphine won the Best Picture César, and an actress named Yolande Moreau won the Best Actress award. Now I know more about the Césars than I do about the Oscars. I'm not sure if that's good or bad; I think it's mainly unimportant.

So why do I write about the Césars at all? Well, mainly because the festivities interfere with traffic on the Champs, that's all.

Not that I don't like movies. I enjoy movies, even a few French films, although I tend to find American films more entertaining (and if I watch a movie, it's mainly because I wish to be entertained). And I'm not alone: if you walk around Paris, you see that seven out of ten films at the cinemas are American films (usually dubbed, sometimes subtitled), so it seems that even the French aren't fond of French films.

The world of French cinema is kind of complicated. Maybe I'll discuss it in a future blog post.

Paris Hilton sold out, Diana mostly forgotten, Vélib's disappearing

I was quite astonished to see recently that the Paris Hilton, a landmark hotel in Paris near the Eiffel Tower, has sold out to Pullman, a rebuilt up-market brand of the European Accor group of hotels. This had been a Hilton for nearly half a century, since 1966, and I hardly expected it to change hands, but it has.

The first time I noticed this, there was a film crew making a moving at the hotel, so I thought it was just a change for the movie, especially since the Pullman signs seemed stuck on as an afterthought. But no … the hotel has actually been sold, just this month. With their flagship hotel gone, Hilton now has only the smaller property near the Arc de Triomphe within the city limits; it's a nice hotel, but not as historically significant as the one near the Eiffel Tower. True, the Eiffel Tower property was showing its age—the 1960s architecture has dated badly—but it was still a nice place. I wonder where Bill Gates will stay during his trips to Paris now? (Supposedly the ex-CEO of Microsoft preferred this Hilton.) And this also ruins all sorts of Paris Hilton jokes (the Paris Hilton with big feet, not the landmark hotel).

Walking to school to save a Métro ticket (I had only 50 cent in my pocket, and no prospect of additional income until mid-March), I ran across no less than three different movie location shoots. There are about nine location shoots a day in Paris, and if you walk around on a weekday there's a reasonable chance that you'll run across one of them, but three in one morning was quite exceptional. One of them was at the aforementioned ex-Hilton. I don't know what any of them were for. You get used to seeing this sort of thing. It's like living in Los Angeles.

Passing the replica of the Statue of Liberty's flame on the Alma bridge, I noted that it was pretty clean, apart from a few graffiti and other junk still rambling on about Princess Diana. I suppose her groupies are all grown up now, and of course none have replaced them, since she is no longer with us (PBUH).

And strolling past one of the innumerable Vélib’ stations in the city, I was reminded of the recent complaints of JC Decaux (which has the contract for the bicycle system) that vandalism and theft are costing it huge amounts of money—supposedly nearly half of the inventory of bicycles has been stolen and has required replacement, at some $500 per bicycle. But JC Decaux has very juicy and exclusive deals with the city, so I take their complaints with a grain of salt. On the way home, by coincidence, I actually saw a Vélib’ boat carrying bicycles; perhaps that's an efficient way to redistribute them or something.

What else did I notice on my walk to work? Hmm … oh yes, there was the latest of Jean Nouvel's eyesores, the Musée du Quai Branly (there's something about that name that somehow seems appropriate for JN's masterpiece, but my desire to not nuire à la bienséance prevents me from going there). I tried to avert my gaze from the psychosis-inducing architecture of the museum itself, but I did take a look at the vegetation wall, to see how it was doing. This wall is an exterior wall that is designed to actually serve as a sort of vertical planter for all sorts of real, living plants. It still seems to be in fairly good shape, especially considering that this is wintertime. It's the only interesting and aesthetic part of the building, but it's not enough to compensate for the rest. Unfortunately, passing this building brought to mind depressing thoughts of Jean Nouvel designing a new eyesore to replace the Parc des Expositions on the south side of the city, a project that has been bandied about lately, but perhaps the current economic depression will stop that project (in which case at least something good will have come of the crisis).

I pass the Eiffel Tower quite often, and passing it today wasn't unusual in any way, but I did notice the “Eiffel Tower Rules” while passing beneath it, and I just had to take a picture. These rules are so typically French! There are about a thousand different rules, in type so tiny that you have to practically press your nose to the sign to read them, and they are chock full of interdits and non autorisés and Article 392 bis’s, and all those other frightening, absolute phrases that the French love to put in their overly-complicated and routinely-ignored rule collections. I doubt that anyone reads these rules, least of all the French. But complex rules are part of the ingenious system of selective enforcement upon which French society is based. Everyone knows that nobody can follow all the rules to the letter, so everyone is breaking a rule. However, breaking the rules is normally “tolerated,” so it doesn't matter. But when the French establishment wants to single someone out for punishment, it looks at all the rules, and finds a rule that the unlucky victim has broken, and then prosecutes. Thus, the illusion of equality and democracy is maintained, while the reality of inequality and favoritism is practiced. Of course, France isn't unique in this respect—it is quite common in Latin countries with their Napoleonic statutory laws.

Speaking of rules, I was looking at welfare programs for renters a few days ago, at someone else's suggestion (because I'm very poor, I have to try to find ways to save or make money at every opportunity). I did a calculation on the Web site of the CAF (the agency that handles many types of welfare), and sure enough, I theoretically would qualify for help with the rent, based on my meager income. There's just one problem, though: the law requires that any apartment for which this assistance is received be equipped with hot and cold running water in the “kitchen corner” (an alcove that serves as a kind of kitchen in apartments too modest to have the real thing) … and mine lacks the hot water. Oh well. You have to fill out a 2,458-page dossier with DNA samples from your great-grandparents and pay slips from the last Ice Age to apply, anyway, so I suppose it probably would have been refused on some other basis in any case.

Horses for courses

Paris regularly hosts at least one salon du cheval (horse show) and I keep meaning to attend one of them one of these days, but money and time constraints get in the way. I'm not a big fan of horses but I'm curious about many things and I'd be interested in seeing what it is about horses that creates fans.

Anyway, for what seems like quite a long time now, I've been seeing advertisements for a new video game, called Horse Life, which is unusual in that it actually seems to target girls. Most video games are created by teenage boys for other teenage boys, and thus never have much to them beyond what teenage boys like, and teenage boys don't have many interests beyond intense, repetitive action and violence. In practice, this means that the video game market is plagued by a permanent epidemic of first-person shooters, and very little with any intellectual content. So it's nice to see something targeting a different market. This title is unusual in that it seems to have been given quite an advertising budget. I've seen advertisements throughout the Métro and on sidewalk displays.

As I've said, I didn't go to the most recent Salon du Cheval, but informed sources tell me that this game had a booth and that there was quite a crowd of young girls playing with the game on display. So much the better. I'm so sick and tired of first-person shooters. Even games that claim not to be FPS typically really are. And that pretty much completely locks girls out of the picture, since few of them are interested in blowing up monsters for hours at a time.

In my own case, I tend to prefer simulation games, such as Flight Simulator, or The Sims 2, or Second Life. I did play Doom for a while long ago, although it gave me motion sickness and I soon exhausted the novelty of the game. Modern games are essentially the same thing with more eye candy.

Anyway, I think Horse Life (now in version 2, only months after the first version was released) comes from Germany or somewhere. The heavy advertising makes it exceptional. I visited the Web site and the trailers and screenshots looked okay, although apparently players are constrained to a single avatar that looks a lot like Ellen Whitaker, the celebrity endorser for the product. And little pink hearts (but no green clovers, thank goodness!) bubble out of your horse when you treat it well.

In contrast to this, I got Grand Theft Auto IV not long ago, at a discount price, and I almost installed it—until I discovered that Sony has its hands in the product and that it installs a rootkit. I don't like rootkits, so I skipped it. Too bad … it has a reputation so fabulous that I was willing to try it even though I don't like the angry-young-male style of FPS games.

What does all this have to do with Paris? Well, the ads for Horse Life are all over the town, or at least they were a few weeks ago, so I figured I'd comment on it.

A Stroll through Sin City

In halcyon days of yore, I had the money and time to take daily long walks (usually around three hours) through Paris. That's how I racked up no less than 50,000 kilometers of walking in the city over the years. Today I have neither money nor time, and so walking is a rare treat for me. Today I decided to take a modest stroll of about 2.5 hours in the city, for enjoyment and for health.

I took the Métro up to the place de Clichy. This is a large roundabout in the northwestern part of the city that is surrounded by restaurants and cinemas. It's fairly animated most of the time, and today was no exception, despite the chilly weather (temperatures around freezing).

Along the east side of the boulevard de Clichy, there are lots of restaurants. They range from McDonald's and KFC to standard Franco-French places like Charlot (well known for its shellfish—unfortunately I hate shellfish) and Wepler . It has a pleasant, not-too-chichi atmosphere.

As you move up the street, past the grim-looking Jules Ferry high school with its barred windows (all schools in Paris have barred windows—it makes me wonder what they do if the place catches fire), you enter infamous Pigalle, which Americans like to pronounce “pig alley,” although the correct pronunciation is “pee-gahl.” Pigalle was a French sculptor who would probably be horrified to learn what his name has become associated with. The name of this district has become synonymous with sex and naughty night life, although today it doesn't really offer anything that you wouldn't see in hundreds of Western cities. At one time it was quite unique and risqué.

I walked along the boulevard de Clichy, which is the main drag of Pigalle. On either side of the boulevard, you see mostly restaurants and sex shops (including the gigantic Sexodrome and an “erotic supermarket”). There are also a few live theaters, both legitimate (i.e., showing regular plays, nothing to do with sex) and “erotic” (sex shows). The restaurants are mostly simple places, and tend to blend in with pubs. There are quite a few Middle-Eastern places that serve sandwiches and other food to go.

Perhaps the best-known place in Pigalle is the Moulin Rouge (“Red Mill”) dinner theater, which has a very fancy stage show and also offers drinks and dinner. It's expensive but I'm told it's pretty good (I don't do dinner theaters myself). Today you can see the same or better in Las Vegas, but here again, when the Moulin Rouge first became popular, there was scarcely anything else like it; they were doing elaborate shows when Las Vegas was still filled with tumbleweeds. The place gets its name from the large red windmill that adorns it (the original burned down years ago, but it was replaced).

Another moderately famous place is Madame Arthur, a cabaret that features top female impersonators. I've never understood the attraction of female impersonation, given that real women are so much better looking and so much more female, but this venue has been around for ages. It has kind of a swirly orangish facade that's easy to spot, although it's on a side street off the boulevard. I've never been there.

Another place less known to tourists is the Musée de l'Érotisme (Erotica Museum). It's a museum dedicated to sex. Contrary to what you might think (and contrary to many other establishments on the boulevard), it is quite tastefully done, with seven floors of exhibits. I've been there once. I'm not interested in sex, so it wasn't very engrossing for me, but it's well organized, not the seedy sort of thing that you might expect.

In times past, one of my favorite spots in Pigalle was a little shop that sold all sorts of obsolete audio and video equipment. It was fascinating to look through their stuff and see how movies, video, audio, and photography have advanced in past decades. When you compare a U-Matic portable video set-up with a modern DV Handicam, you realize how far things have come in a relatively short time. Unfortunately, this little shop has disappeared. I guess it was hard to make money selling obsolete equipment. It was more of a museum than a shop, I think.

Further down the boulevard are some other stores that I like, which sell sound and music equipment. There's a guitar shop and a drum shop, too. Very cool stuff. I am interested in music, sound, and images. I bought a compact gadget at one of these shops once that combined a mixing table with a four-track cassette recorder. It was very cool, although I wasn't sure what to do with it (I used it once or twice). I can't even remember what happened to it. I must have sold it. That was in the days when I had money.

As you continue down the boulevard de Clichy and it becomes the boulevard de Rochechouart, the sex shops gradually disappear and are replaced by discount stores selling all kinds of junk. The atmosphere becomes a bit seedier after the rue de Steinkerque (which leads up to the Sacré-Cœur basilica on the Montmartre butte), and tourists are replaced by mostly Third-World immigrants (Africa, Middle East, some from Asia). It's usually very busy but not very glamorous. Eventually, you end up behind the Gare du Nord train station.

In my case, though, I turned south at the place Pigalle and walked down towards the Opéra district. There are some side streets here with shady bars that are filled with women in underwear who beckon to people outside. They have a habit of shafting customers who come in in search of female company, and sometimes they get nasty. I wonder why a woman would be willing to sit all day at a bar in her underwear; I guess it's a living, like anything else (a woman with this job is called an entraîneuse, which means “someone who drags (you in),” because her job is to entice people into the bar and then persuade them to buy a lot of overpriced liquor).

Lower down this street (the rue Frochot, if you must know), there's a place that has some gambling (permitted in certain ways and circumstances for private clubs). And at the bottom of the street, there's a private residence (I think it's a residence) next to a private drive that includes a beautiful stained-glass window. It's kind of incongruous, given what surrounds it. Stranger still, in the window I recognize what seems to be inspiration from The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, a woodblock print of a tsunami created by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai around 1820—quite an odd subject.

Below that, I eventually reached the rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, which is lively as it approaches the boulevard Montmartre. On the latter I turned east, past the Max Linder cinema, one of a handful with giant screens still in business today (another is the Rex, which is just down the street). There are lots of shops on the boulevard, starting out chichi near the Opera, and then gradually transitioning into discount shops as you move east. There are also a great many restaurants of just about every type you might want.

When I reached the wicked rue Saint-Denis, I turned south. If you go north on this street, you pass all sorts of ethnic groceries, and it's pretty interesting, but that was out of my way, so I went south, down a street best known today for its prostitutes. The street has been greatly improved over the past few years, with new sidewalks, new cobblestones for the streets, and so on, and it looks very nice. The prostitutes are discreet, and there were few of them out on this cold evening. Most of them usually look exceedingly weatherbeaten, making me wonder how they avoid starvation, but I saw two on this evening who had cute faces, at least (the rest was hidden under fur coats).

Occasionally you see a group of men on the street standing across from a doorway. Often these are men waiting for very cheap sex with a prostitute who accommodates one client after another, usually under duress. The men want to have sex because they think it is necessary for their health (this is not a French belief, so most of the men are in fact not French), not because they are truly interested in it, so any sex will do for them. Not a pretty picture. I read a report once about a woman who had left a convent, trusted the wrong people, and ended up being one of these assembly-line prostitutes for several years until she found a way to sneak away and escape (actually, leaving was easy, but finding someplace else to go was hard).

Glancing into sidestreets, I saw a fair number of men standing alone near some buildings. They looked like—and probably were—either drug dealers or their clients. The USA has been exporting its obsession with drugs (and its drug dealers) to Europe for years, and every year it gets worse here in consequence.

As you move south on the rue Saint-Denis, the sex shops and prostitutes fade away, to be replaced by trendy clothing stores, restaurants, and bars. By the time you reach the Forum, the change is complete, and there are a lot more people around. Here you find yet another McDonald's and KFC (not to mention another Pizza Hut, another Starbucks, another Subway, and so on). I continued through this area and on down to the river.

I crossed the river onto the Île de la Cité, noted that the Sanisettes on the island had been turned off (more paranoia, I suppose), and continued past the big Christmas tree in front of Notre-Dame to the Left Bank. The Latin Quarter was especially crowded, as it always is, and the atmosphere was wonderful, as it always is. I stopped at the McDonald's here (yes, another one), ate dinner, and hopped on the Métro to go back home.

Score = zero

Well, the massive strike of Thursday is history now, and just about everyone has already forgotten about it. Looks like it wasn't nearly the megaevent that it was supposed to be. The country did not come to a standstill, and the trains still ran (albeit more slowly than usual in some cases). There was indeed a tremendous demonstration in Paris, but that was about it, and the government pretty much ignored the demonstrators.

With my luck running as it usually does, I had to walk through the tail end of this demonstration near the Opera after school. Lots of people had been brought in from the 'burbs and from the provinces in buses, mostly rabid union members who love to be in every demonstration, as far as I can tell. They seemed to be having a good old time, oblivious to the disruptions they were causing in the city and the futility of their actions.

It's still not clear what they were demanding. It probably doesn't matter. I think it was along the lines of more money, fewer working hours, more jobs, lower taxes, and the like. They might as well have demanded that golden toilet seats fall from the sky. But they were able to ditch a day of work, at least.

Around the Opera (the old Opéra Garnier), there were riot police (the CRS, part of the regular municipal police force) blocking the major avenues leading away from the Opera so that the demonstrators wouldn't get any ideas. The police wore their usually attired of body armor, shields, and mental screen barricades mounted on their trucks. Demonstrations rarely get out of hand in Paris, but the police remain prudently ready for anything, as once in a while angry young males at the bottom of the bell curve will start a disturbance. This crowd was tame, though. Most people seemed to be more interesting in laughing, chatting, and smoking cigarettes than in crashing through any barricades.

Of course, it took a long time to get past all this. Demonstrations always seem to happen right between me and the places I want to go. I had to cross this one twice as a result. The Métro was running, but too poorly to be worth using, so I just walked the entire way. The night was clear and chilly and I needed the exercise, although I could have done without the aggravation.

On the way home, seeing the clear sky, I looked for stars. That's usually a waste of time in a big city like Paris, and this night was no exception. I could see the Moon and a very brilliant Venus. All of the other lights that looked like stars turned out to be aircraft. Sometimes the roof of a building is darker than the sky in Paris, thanks to the frequent clouds and mistiness of the sky above the city and the brilliant lights on the ground below. The city itself is very pretty at night.

To the barricades … again.

(My last post here was intended for my flight blog; sorry about that. I've deleted it. —AA)

Today is an important media day because much of France is going on strike. People in France go on strike all the time, of course, because that's how they force progress (or, more often, that's how they prevent it). Hundreds of years ago, the French demonstrated in the streets because that's all they could do against the royals, and today, they seem to still prefer that inefficient way of working the popular will, even though the country is nominally a democracy with elected leaders. Old habits die hard.

So lots of organizations are going on strike today. In France, it's mostly government organizations that go on strike, whereas the private sector is less often affected (it helps that just about every large corporation is partly owned and operated by the government, anyway). That's just the opposite of the United States, where strikes usually affect private industry. And in France, the only strikes that really make a different are transportation strikes, and they are extremely common in consequence. Transportation workers—especially the national railways and the Paris public transit system—will almost literally strike to protest a rainy day, even though they have more privileges than anyone else in the country. Given an inch, they choose to take a mile (or should I say that given a centimeter, they choose to take a kilometer?).

This means that it will be extremely difficult for people in the Paris metropolitan area to get to work today, since many live in the suburbs and commute into the city (a small minority do the opposite). I'm lucky, because I can walk to school, but many of my students cannot, so it remains to be seen if anyone will show up for class.

The exact reason for the strike is … well … actually, I'm not sure, and nobody else seems to be sure, either. Everyone wants to “protest,” and get a day off from work (at least for those participating in demonstrations—the day will be hellish for those who have to go into work). They want more money, more job security, fewer layoffs, the usual stuff, although the precise goals are a bit fuzzy. Most strikes don't accomplish anything except perhaps to maintain the status quo, and that's how I expect this one to turn out.

There was a strike some weeks ago by people working in television who were protesting the elimination of advertising from taxpayer-supported public networks (pictured in this post). As I recall, these same people protested the introduction of advertising many years ago. What they really protest is change. Everyone jealously guards his perks and his measly salary and lives in fear of any change at all in the society. The Economist said once in an article that France is among the most resistant to change of all societies in Europe, and I believe it.

Meanwhile, I'm so poorly paid that I'm considerably below the radar when it comes to things like this. Essentially everyone makes more than I do, and has better benefits and privileges. This being so, it's hard for me to relate. Others manage to pay their rent timely each month, whereas for me that is an ambitious goal and a constant source of stress (among many others). I see government workers who get $100,000 a year for driving a train and retire with full pensions at age 50, and I wonder. The country runs at two speeds: one for the good old boys and bourgeoisie with French last names, well-placed friends, and diplomas from a handful of crusty old elite schools with more reputation than substance; and another for the rest of the population.

Some people ask why I stay in France when I seem so cynical. I stay because I love Paris. If you've ever lived in Paris, you understand what I mean. But no matter where I live, I always see problems that can be solved and things that can be improved, and I'm always surprised to see that nobody does either.

Oh well. I've spent the past 24 hours laboring to get my e-mail and Web site running again, using borrowed equipment that is literally held together by pieces of tape, as I don't have the means to do any better than that. In times past I was paid to fiddle with computers, and when your only job is to build and configure computers (as opposed to actually using them for anything productive), it's a pleasant-enough way to make money. But when you have no funds and no time and you must depend on computers to do real work, wasting hours and days and weeks slapping together bits of hardware and struggling to configure and install software gets old really, really fast. I just hope everything continues to run now for a while (like decades), because I have no resources left.

I almost stopped at a Häagen-Dazs a few days ago on the Champs for some ice cream. When I saw that three little scoops cost $10, though, I passed. That would be an hour and a half of wages just for some ice cream.

That hideous Ferris wheel on the place de la Concorde has been taken down, which lifts my spirits a bit. And the city has turned off the blatantly energy-wasteful blue lighting that it had on the Eiffel Tower last year (see my photo), and has turned on the regular lighting, which looks a zillion times better.

A modest attempt at catching up

Well, if I can just relax for a moment … what can I relate about this long period during which I've been unable to post significantly to my blog (roughly since the start of December)?

Some days ago I walked to school after one of many problems on the Métro prevented my line from taking me where I wanted to go (worse yet, the station where I'd normally change was closed—it's just one thing after another these days). Anyway, I can actually say that, yes, as a matter of fact, I did walk through several miles of snow and ice before sunrise just to get to school! And I have a picture of the Eiffel Tower at sunrise to prove it (although you can't clearly see all the snow and ice nearby).

Until a few days ago, the weather in Paris was unusually chilly, below freezing almost continuously—whereas normal weather would be just above freezing during the day and only occasional dips below during the night. It had also snowed lightly at the beginning of the cold snap, so there was snow on the ground, which later turned to frozen slush and then to hard, slippery ice. Not fun to walk on, as I trudged to school in a fat parka and fleece jacket that kind friends had given me. It took a long time to pick my way over the ice, and I was late for my first class.

As I write these words (long after the events in question), it has warmed up to the middle 40s (Fahrenheit), and it has been raining for several days. So tomorrow I'll be walking in the rain instead of through snow and ice. I don't like walking in the rain, but it's safer than sliding over ice.

Oh, and I checked out the Christmas decorations at the big department stores (the grands magasins) some weeks ago, but thanks to the many crises I've already described in other posts, I haven't had time to post any pictures. The decorations for Printemps were lame this year; they must be on a tight budget. But the decorations for the Galeries Lafayette were bright and colorful. Both stores followed their standing traditions of decorating store windows with animated displays for children. And the stores were very, very crowded; at least someone seems to have money in Paris these days.

Indeed, you see little indication of any economic crisis on the streets of Paris. Maybe there are enough rich people here to mask it, or perhaps it just isn't as bad here, although my bank lost $1 billion to a certain Ponzi-scheme fraudster recently (I'll remind my banker of that the next time she alludes to me being any kind of credit risk myself).

Christmas decorations are still on the Champs, and that hideous Ferris wheel is still on the place de la Concorde, and the free ice rinks in front of places like City Hall and Montparnasse are still open (at least until February, I think). They've hardly had to refrigerate the ice lately, since it has been below freezing, but it's warm again now.

I know this is boring, but …

… since it has been occupying all of my time, I haven't had much opportunity to stroll around Paris, except to and from the computer warehouse store.

The problems I've been having with the Internet seem to have passed, after months of malfunction—at least I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I finally connected with someone who sounded like a real technician at France Télécom, during banking hours, and after making it clear to him that I was not a standard dolt and that we could skip all the cookbook questions (“Is the PC plugged in?” “Do you see the Web page in front of you?” and so on), we spent considerable time discussing the problem and my test results. He managed to convince me that it might be the router on my side, even though this didn't seem entirely congruent with the symptoms I had seen. It was certainly a possibility, but I considered it remote, since things like routers tend to be pretty simple and should run indefinitely without a problem, and they aren't the sorts of devices where you picture packets being dropped or delayed under normal conditions. Nevertheless, since the line checked out squeaky clean (7900 kbps, only 100 kbps from the theoretical limit), and there weren't too many other options short of asking FT to trace everything on their end, I agreed to replace the router.

Several hours and three days' salary later, I had the router, modem, and hub replaced (I wanted to make sure I excluded absolutely everything at my end). Miraculously … it worked. Download speeds up to 7400 kbps and uploads at nearly 1 mbps. It has been working for several days now, so I am optimistic that the problem is solved. It looks like it wasn't upstream of the DSLAM after all. I just wish I had been able to find a real technician at FT sooner to troubleshoot the problem.

But that was hardly the end of the crises. The Internet problem was my first holiday surprise. The next problem, right after New Year's Day, was the total failure of the desktop machine I've been using. More trips to the computer store, made possible by the kindness of others who were able to buy and loan components to me in order to cobble something together. After several days of work, I got something up and running, although it will be weeks before it matches what came before (installing software is a nightmare).

Oh, and the screen for the Web server failed, too. No replacement for that as yet, but it looks like I might be able to share the remaining monitor for that purpose, for reasons that I'll spare you here.

Then, yesterday, the Web server failed—my fourth holiday surprise, I guess. It looks like a bad disk, but I'm not sure yet. It might be a bad motherboard. We shall see. Looks like I'll be depending on the kindness of others again. In the meantime, I have no Web site and my standard e-mail address (anthony@atkielski.com) isn't working.

So I've spent every single day off I had over the holidays resolving one crisis after another, and there are plenty of other unresolved problems. And I don't get paid for days off to begin with (I only had them off because I didn't have any classes).

Anyway, I'll try to post something more Parisian as soon as possible, now that the Internet connection seems stable. Although I don't think anyone reads this blog.