Gifts and Orange Juice

The Christmas Season is upon us. Generally speaking I claim to dislike the Christmas season because of what it means along the lines of consumerism. Just over a week ago I was watching people trample each other in attempt to get the new PS3. Thinking about it now it reminds me of images I’ve seen coming from countries that are suffering from famine, as people press toward supply trucks. Friday of course was ‘Black Friday’ or as I prefer ‘Buy Nothing Day.’ I bought some cheese, whipping cream, chocolate truffles, bananas, and a shopping bag. I had completely forgotten about Buy Nothing Day until I got home and listened to an NPR story in which a man had waited outside of a Best Buy starting at 8 PM the night before to buy at computer monitor. My intro paragraph is getting away from my point so I am going to leave it there.

“This year instead of drawing names and exchanging presents we are going to buy presents for children of a nearby community.” This announcement was made by one of the supervisors of La Maison Hereuse, the residence for developmentally disabled individuals, where I live. To this the more vocal residents cheered. “We will still draw each other’s names but we’ll only exchange cards with nice messages. We will not exchange gifts. The gifts will be for the children.” Then there was more cheering and excitement at the prospect of giving gifts to the children.

I don’t have a cohesive response to this event so I will simply note some thoughts.
What have we done to America?
Consumerism is as bad here, so, what have we done to ourselves?
Giving is good. Receiving is good.
What happens though when giving gifts encourages the development of greed?
I have already received an advance on Christmas presents (a milk frother) this year.
Frothy orange juice tastes really light and airy and good.
I bet fresh squeezed frothed orange juice would be amazing.

Violence and Cultural Misunderstanding

Last year at the end of October violent protests rocked the suburbs of Paris as hundreds of cars were burned. This was the manifestation primarily of immigrants frustrated with life in Paris. Two weeks ago, a bus was burned in Marseilles a southern coastal city of France.

There a man desiring to gain entry to a bus between stops was not let on. Angered, the man threw a molotov cocktail at the bus causing it to erupt in flames badly burning one passenger. One might surmise that this man was looking for a reason to torch the bus. Protesting for their security mass transit workers held a 30 hours strike closing down over a hundred and fifty bus and metro lines last week. Another strike is planned for the end of this week.

This evening on my way home I experienced a similar though less destructive rage. The bus I was on had left its first stop having gone perhaps ten feet when a man ran up and pounded on the bus signaling the driver that he wanted the back door opened. The bus stopped at the red light another twenty feet later. The man ran to catch up and again pounded on the bus signaling the driver that he wanted to enter the bus through the back door which was in front of me. When the light turned green the bus slowly turned the corner. The man ran yelling into the road in front and to the side of the bus. He had the look of an immigrant. As the bus passed him he reached into his shopping bag and hurled a liter and a half bottle of water at the side of the bus. It bounced off the bus and down the road forty or fifty feet. Everyone was thinking of the bus in Marseilles.

The heart of this issue is cultural. In Bolivia there are no bus stops and to catch a bus one simply signals the bus driver. In Guatemala one can enter the bus from any door and the driver's mate will collect the tariff. This evening the man assumed he was target of racial prejudice. However it is law that a passenger must enter through the front door of the bus so as to pay and the non-white bus driver felt no need to stop until the next bus stop. The man would have to wait six minutes for the next bus.

Bureaucratic France

Today I visited the sub-prefecture of Antony. I did this in hope of securing my Carte de Sejour. I was foolish to think that there was any possibility that I would walk out of there with my ID card before lunch.

I will start by saying that the whole journey of attaining the proper legal papers for my stay in France began with the quest for my student visa. This required a number of documents that I made sure I had by simply always counting that I had six of them. They ranged from proof of finances to proof of studies and a plane ticket. Though it turned out that they also wanted my transcripts from EMU I managed to attain the visa.

The long stay student visa allows you to enter the country and then apply for a residence card. Along with the visa I was in need of five other documents along with photocopies and id photos (3). Upon securing I had gone to the prefecture in Paris but they informed me that since I lived in one of the suburbs I needed to go to a sub-prefecture in a neighboring suburb. I went to the sub-prefecture at 11:00 am one morning about a month after my arrival. Here I found out that unfortunately as I had come in so late in the morning there were so many people in front of me that I should come back on another day. They informed me that I needed to be there by 9:00 am to take a number as all the numbers they served in a day were normally given out by that time.

So this morning I got up at 5:45 and arrived at the sub-prefecture a half hour later to be the 21st person to get in line. The office opened at 8:30 as the number of people in line reached 150. Unfortunately of the two people who could handle my specific case neither were there as one was sick and the other was stuck in the metro. Finally at 10am my I got to meet with the man who had been temporarily stuck in the metro and after five minutes I had managed to secure an appointment for the 9th of January.

On the 9th of January I will now go with all of the documents that I have accumulated in hopes that they will be enough for me to finally after 5 months receive my residence card which will have 7 months left of its year long validity.

Photo Gallery: Nuit/RUE

Simple Delights

I had been thinking that I would write about the depression that can result from living alone in the city with a minimal social life. But alas at this time I am too content with life to write about being depressed. On some other occasion I will write about the lack of community in a city setting. Instead I will talk about the (relatively) simple pleasures of life.

A fresh baguette when both warm in you hand and your mouth as you bite into it is one of the simplest delights. Crispy and crunchy with a soft fluffy center the baguette is one of the many gastronomic successes. It is typical to purchase such a baguette from the artisan bakery near by then as you walk home you nibble on the end. The nibbling phenomenon is so prevalent that several people have mentioned it to me.

I recently purchased a sharp kitchen knife as there was only a small paring knife furnished in my studio. This knife pared with a ripe tomato results very clean slices of tomato. It is difficult to explain how the cleanliness of these slices makes me salivate though I just finished eating the a for mentioned tomato.

If one was to then cause the meeting of the baguette and tomato mentioned above with a slice of light (in flavor) creamy cheese the result would be the instantaneous evaporation of all the pressures of city living. I say light in flavor because on all cheeses in France is marked the fat content and the cheese of preference this evening was 50% fat. Alas it is a small price to pay for such a shedding of life’s pressure.