Nice weather, green cards, folies

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Perhaps today is also a beautiful day, but I haven’t been outside. But yesterday was definitely a beautiful day. People were sitting in groups on the grass at sunset, in the garden areas on the lower side of the Champs, on the large esplanade in front of the Invalides, and on the green belt in the middle of the avenue de Breteuil. I’m sure there were many more on the grass on the Champ de Mars, facing the Eiffel Tower, but my stroll didn’t take me in that direction. The temperature and light were just right for sitting on the grass with friends and socializing. It’s not something I would do, because I don’t socialize much and I fear what might be crawling around in the grass, but it pleases most people, and it’s pleasant to see, even if I don’t participate. Unfortunately, there were a few people consuming ethanol, but there are always a few losers in every crowd.

This week I tried to get my green card again. On the first try this week, I was told that only people with an appointment for the same day were being allowed in. Since this was actually my second try, having been turned away last week because the “computers were down,” I didn’t have an appointment for the same day, so they wouldn’t let me in. They told me to come bright and early the next day, so I did. And after two hours of waiting on the following morning, I finally got my green card.

So that’s nine months, four appointments, and €260 to get my green card in France. My American passport was renewed in six days, by mail, for about €100. Cultural differences, I guess. It was so much easier ten years ago, but I guess procedures have changed.

The new card is tiny. It’s even smaller than a credit card. But it has a cool chip on it, which I suppose can be read by some high-tech gadget at immigration stations or police stations. The writing is so small that I had to check it through a magnifying glass when I picked it up (yes, a magnifying glass is one of the many odd items I carry with me at all times). Or maybe I need glasses.

I was surprised that a member of staff at the entrance to the immigration office not only recognized me, but recalled that this was my third visit. Either he has a really great memory, or I look or dress significantly different from the other people in line at the office.

The visit to the immigration office was depressing. Not because of the office itself, which was clean, well-appointed and organized, and generally in good condition (with even a small play area for kids). It was the other immigrants I saw who depressed me. I seemed to be the only American, out of a hundred or so people. In fact, I seemed to be the only person from the Western world, apart from the staff working there. Everyone else was from Africa, the Far East, or the Middle East, in that order. There were a number of pregnant women with babies in strollers waiting in line, some dressed entirely in black (but with faces exposed, since it’s illegal to hide your face in France, and this was a police station). They didn’t appear to speak French. I have to wonder what kind of jobs they expect to get if they are pregnant, with additional offspring already in tow, and unable to speak the national language. Or perhaps their babies were born in France, and that’s their passport to a green card. Then they can just live on the dole, in a country where a month’s welfare payment is probably the equivalent of half the GDP of their home countries.

Yes, I know I’m being uncharitable, but I’m an immigrant too, so yes, as a matter of fact I do understand the position of an immigrant. But there are differences between myself and most of the others I saw. For one thing, I speak French, and I spoke French from the time I first arrived in France. I’ve never asked anyone to speak to me in English. The staff at the immigration office tried to speak English with those who had not bothered to learn French, but apparently some immigrants expect to be accommodated in Mandarin or Swahili, and of course they are disappointed.

When a staff member asked who had come to pick up a green card, people swarmed out of line like stray dogs to a scrap of meat, pushing at each other so much that the staff member had to tell them to behave. I merely observed in amazement. Do they plan to retain this behavior after settling in France? 

None of these people looked like political refugees, and none of them looked like people who might be immigrating to France simply because they liked France. And yet that’s why I immigrated. I took a 75% pay cut to live in France, since salaries here are dirt compared to the United States. I learned French. I’ve never received any welfare from the state, and in fact I haven’t even had to use the excellent national health care system, fortunately. But are all these rabble going to get regular jobs and support themselves and contribute to the economy? I have to wonder.

There are some mitigating factors. I saw no Western Europeans in the room simply because nationals of the European Union don’t need green cards to live in France. But I noticed no Americans, either, and no Japanese. The ones I recognized seemed to be mostly from countries where people still live in mud huts and regard clean water supplies and continuous electrical power as futuristic science fiction. Some were apparently Chinese, though, and that was a puzzle. I suppose China still has a massive lower class that is mired in poverty, even if the country as a whole is doing well. Or perhaps some of the Chinese people really do like France.

Anyway, it was a relief to get out of that office.

On the way back to my own office, I happened to pass the Folies Bergere, a very famous music hall that goes back some two hundred years. Back to French culture! Manet, Colette, Mistinguette, Josephine Baker, Maurice Chevalier … the list of famous persons associated with the venue goes on and on. A few years ago, I was disappointed to see that the famous Art Deco façade was literally coming apart, but I was very pleased on this day to see that it has been completely renovated, and looks very nice, in bright white and gleaming with gold on the huge Art Deco reliefs. Some of the tacky neon has been removed as well. I liked it. It looks pretty lush on the inside, too, although I’ve only seen photos. The current facade dates from 1926, and was designed by the architects Pilollenc and Morice. The fancy sculpture was made by Maurice Picaud, and supposedly represents the dancer Lila Nikolska.

The Folies Bergere are right next to a lesser-known Jewish quarter, not nearly as famous as the rue des Rosiers to the southeast, but still quite charming. Lots of kosher food shops, which always make me hungry. I had already eaten two delicious croissants after leaving the immigration office, which were so laden with butter that it soaked through the bag the bakery gave me. I was thus able to resist the food on this street (the rue Geffroy-Marie, if you must know). I did end up getting a bottle of vanilla yogurt just before hopping onto the Métro to go back to work, though.

Weather, tourists, Hermès, and cheese

The weather has veered from unseasonably chilly to unseasonably warm. Given my druthers, I’d prefer unseasonably chilly, for reasons I’ve already given maintes fois on this blog. It was 28° C (82° F) on Friday, which is 13° C too warm for me. In the tiny and unventilated office that I occupy much of the time as part of my work, it was about 29.9° C with 26% relative humidity (yes, I keep track of such things). The room has five computers in it, in addition to myself—I’m not a computer, but I generate about the same amount of heat—and no A/C, so it gets very hot.

It’s supposed to cool off a bit in days to come, but I am not optimistic.

Were the weather not so hot, however, it would be perfect (and indeed it was perfect a few days ago). Unfortunately I don’t have much time to go for walks these days, except on weekends, and on weekends I tend to sleep a great deal, but when the occasion arises to walk on official business in good weather, it can be pleasant.

The number of tourists in Paris continues to grow, and the majority of the growth seems to be coming from China. It seems like at least half the tourists I see these days are Chinese. I suppose that with a population of more than a billion, China can easily produce large numbers of nouveaux riches to come and visit Paris, even if most Chinese aren’t likely to ever be able to afford such a vacation. And apparently Paris is tremendously hyped in the Far East, making it an even more popular destination. I wonder if the Chinese tourists are happy or disappointed with what they actually see when they come to the city. Certainly people here are not walking around dressed in Dior originals, as they’ve apparently been led to believe. But by the time they discover that, they’ve already spent lots of money, so no problem, I suppose … at least from the viewpoint of Parisian merchants.

An increasing number of tourists from the Middle East are visiting Paris these days, too. They are easy to recognize, because the men always have facial hair, and many of the women trail behind their partners like family pets when walking, and dress entirely in black, with their faces illegally concealed. They favor the gaudiest hotels. They spend a lot of money, too.

The city has always been a magnet for tourists, of course, even though only a small part of the economic activity of Paris depends on tourism. They never stop visiting, but their demographics change from one decade to the next. American tourists have a reputation for cluelessness, but the Chinese may have them beat on that point, although I’m sure that Chinese tourists will gain in sophistication as time passes.

The city also continues to sign away chunks of its soul to the Satan of commerce, by converting institutions into tourist traps. The rumor is that the venerable Printemps department store is going to be converted into a sort of mall of overpriced, tawdry luxury goods, which will be a very great loss to the city indeed should it come to pass. Similar fates apparently await the Virgin Megastores (admittedly not Parisian institutions, but still preferable to tourist traps), and the BHV department store. One of the Quick fast-food restaurants on the Champs is being converted into a Tiffany store—I wonder if the staff will be as rude as those of other Tiffany outlets are rumored to be (there’s nothing that Tiffany sells that would interest me, so I’ve never visited any of their stores).

I did go into a Hermès store (their main one) some weeks ago. My favorite perfume for men comes from Hermès … a legacy of the days when I actually had money. I’ve not been able to overcome my preference for this fragrance, so every few years I go to their store and buy a new bottle of it. (I manage to make each bottle last for a really long time.) They are generally nice, although they look at me with a slight hint of anxiety as I walk in, as my unconventional dress apparently frightens people. (People don’t realize that unconventional dress does not equate to psychosis.) Once they realize that I’m sober and there to buy something, they relax. Their standing in my eyes improved considerably after they turned Oprah Winfrey away after hours, although their simpering public apology to the whale eroded that a bit later on.

Incidentally, if you’re on a street corner in Paris and you need to ask directions to Hermès, it’s pronounced “air mess.” Their flagship store is slightly off the main drag, not being on the avenue Montaigne or the Champs, but it’s still in an area with lots of glitzy luxury shops.

Which reminds me: I’m so tired of American tourists calling the Orsay Museum the “D’Orsay.” It’s not D’Orsay, it’s just Orsay. D’Orsay rhymes a bit with dork, which is exactly what you’ll sound like to Parisians if you insist on calling it the D’Orsay. I suppose D’Orsay sounds cool and sophisticated to Americans who do most of their shopping at Walmart, but few things scream stupid more loudly than using this misnomer in the City of Light. And also remember to put Museum after Orsay, because Orsay by itself can refer to lots of things (such as a city in the suburbs, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs). This doesn’t apply to the Louvre, by the way, because the Louvre is the actual building, which happens to house a museum, whereas Orsay is a place name, after which the museum happens to be named.

Anyway, moving right along … yesterday I ate a proper lunch, which is unusual for me, as I often skip lunch and even when I eat it, it’s usually something simple and cheap. This proper lunch consisted of a freshly-made baguette (still warm from the oven, although the oven was at a supermarket, not a bakery) and some Caprice des Dieux cheese. Caprice des Dieux is a very popular and tasty brand of cheese that goes extremely well with a hot baguette. Its name is a bit of deliberate hyperbole: it translates to “whim of the gods.” I rather doubt that deities on Mount Olympus are having industrial cheese delivered to them from a French supermarket, but it was good enough for me.

Nice days, green cards, and time wasted on travel

The weather was great today. Unfortunately, the day was wasted for me. I had to go to the prefecture to pick up my new residency card, but when I got there, the computer was broken, and so now I’ll have to ask for another day off and try again next week.

I have an operating policy that says that nothing ever requires less than half a day. No appointment requires less than a half-day, no matter what’s on the schedule. This holds for anything that requires going anywhere outside your own office building. In theory, it should only take a few minutes to pick up a card. But in fact you wait in line for two or three hours. And then there’s the time required to get there and get back, which involves public transportation, waiting, and walking. All in all, half a day is the minimum required. Very often, meetings can blow a whole day. People who think they can do three meetings in three different places without a team of handlers to shuttle them from place to place at exactly the right times are dreaming.

Traveling by air (which I despise, even though I like airplanes) is another example. No trip by airplane lasts less than four hours, no matter what the time actually spent in the air. That’s because getting to and from the airport, waiting, checking in, going through paranoid security, and putting up with universal delays adds four hours to the trip, even if the flight itself lasts five minutes.

It follows from this that any trip that can be completed using another mode of transportation in less than four hours should not be carried out by air. This is certainly true here in Europe, where high-speed trains make train travel faster, easier, and more comfortable if you’re traveling less than 1000 kilometers (which nearly covers all of France). The Eurostar challenges this by creating air-travel-style delays, but most trains are more efficient than that.

Anyway, I never go outside Paris except for an occasional visit to Disneyland, so travel is irrelevant to me. My last few passports have been blank, since I never go outside France.

Today’s nice weather probably won’t last. If the temperature was ideal today (about 16° C, which is nearly ideal for me), that implies that it will get warmer tomorrow, and eventually it will get hot. We’ll see.

Demonstrations a-plenty!

Well, there are at least four demonstrations scheduled in Paris today, most (all?) of them objecting to homosexual marriage and adoption. For some reason, I seem to live near one of the preferred routes for demonstrations (irrespective of their purpose), and as I write these words, I can hear one of the demonstrations passing nearby.

It started with booming music in the distance. Right now, I can hear the muffled cries of the leader of the demonstration. Every demonstration in Paris seems to be led by a middle-aged, leather-lunged male extrovert endowed with preternatural enthusiasm for the cause, who exhorts the following demonstrators to maintain their movement and interest in the demonstration. Usually he repeats slogans over and over, to a tune that is uncannily similar to that used by children in nursery schools when they taunt each other. The tune is pretty much the same no matter what the cause. The slogans are usually exercises in hyperbole.

Usually the demonstrators are quiet and just move along with the crowd slowly. However, if TV crews appear, they start yelling in reply to the leader’s slogans, in order to improve the chances of the demonstration being seen on TV. Of course, on the rare occasions when a few losers start throwing a few rocks, an appearance on the nightly news is guaranteed, with the said rocks being shown over and over.

Demonstrations are a common sight in Paris, and I exhausted the novelty of watching them long ago. I think the last demonstration I actually paid any attention to was the annual May Day parade in 2012, and I only did that so that I record it on video. Demonstrations never seem to have any actual effect on anything, yet the French adore them. They prefer to demonstrate, rather than simply elect people who already have their desired goals as part of their campaign platforms. It seems like an exercise in futility to me. However, it seems to be a fun social event for many of the participants, and when they demonstrate on weekdays, it can also be a way of legitimately playing hooky from school or work.

Unfortunately, sometimes people who have no interest at all in the cause being publicized by the demonstration sneak into the crowd and cause trouble, by assaulting demonstrators, or tangling with the police, or looting businesses along the parade route. The police allocate forces to demonstrations based on their estimate of how likely a dérapage in the demonstration is likely to be. In many cases, only a few officers keep an eye on the demonstrators, but for large demonstrations on controversial subjects, buses filled with police dressed in riot gear may line the routes, just in case. Still, big trouble is quite rare, although occasionally there are a few angry young males who get arrested along the route.

Anyway, I have no place to go today, so the traffic disruption won’t make any difference to me. I have enough milk to last until tomorrow (running out of milk always motivates me to sneak out to the grocery store if possible).

My space heater

Well, after going for several days with no building heat and watching the temperature drop steadily in my apartment, I finally went out looking for a little space heater that I could use to compensate.

I started at Darty, where I usually buy all my household appliances. Unfortunately, they were sold out of space heaters, despite claims to their contrary on their woefully out-of-date Web site. I then went to Leroy-Merlin, a DIY home-improvement store near the Pompidou Center. They were sold out, too, although they had some cool little fans, and I bought one of those, along with some cheap thermometers. Then I went to the excellent home-improvement basement at the BHV, which is close by. They had both ultra-cheap and more expensive space heaters still in stock. The ultra-cheap ones looked like they’d catch fire in no time, so I opted for one of the more expensive ones.

In the old days, I would have tried La Samaritaine, too, since they had a fabulous DIY basement. But then LVMH bought it and tried unsuccessfully to turn it into an overpriced, chichi tourist trap. When their conversion failed, they abruptly and fortuitously found building-code violations that required closing the entire store and firing all the staff. The store still hasn’t reopened. I guess LVMH still hasn’t found a way to make a fast buck with the property.

At least BHV still has their basement, but the rumor is that they are itching to make the same expensive mistake that LVMH made with La Samaritaine. If that’s the road they choose to follow, I hope they lose their shirt on it, just as LVMH did. Does every store in Paris have to cater to clueless, nouveau riche tourists from the Third World?

Leroy-Merlin doesn’t appear to be planning any changes, though. It might be the last home-improvement store in Paris left standing. There aren’t many inside the city itself, since people tend to live in small rented apartments that don’t lend themselves to tenant improvements. But you do see a lot more stores like this out in the suburbs, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, after having paid far more than I intended to, I arrived home with my little space heater and turned it on. To my delight, the little heater worked perfectly, and in a few hours my apartment was again comfortable, with a temperature of 21° C instead of barely 17° C.

A few days later, the heat was finally turned back on in the building. So now I’m running the A/C periodically to remove the excess heat from the building heating. I actually think it’s cheaper if they leave the heat off and I use the space heater. That way I’m not paying for both heating and cooling at the same time.