13 june 03>>friday the thirteenth, yeah...
07 may 03>>motivational words
07 may 03>>about haircuts and politics
06 may 03>>A little goodish news
06 may 03>>I've thought it before, and i'm sure i'll think it again, and i'm definitely thinking it now
15 april 03>>the moral musings of an addict
4 april 03>>hmm... and the name is...
25 march 03>>things i've been called
24 march 03>>quotes again, in lieu of actual writing
21 march 03>>critical mass
7 march 03 >> it doesnt take much to make me happy
3 march 03 >> freedom kissing!
27 february 03 >> it's when i'm not working!
27 february 03 >> someone's reading! i'd better get writing....
14 february 03 >> chocolate
29 january 03(22h30) >> i'm ASSIMILAAATIIINNNGGG!!!
29 january 03>> ok, fine. comprends
23 january 03>> i'm not a creep -- i'm just a dealer!
21 january 03>> some lies i tell in french
14 january 03 5 cool comics….
14 january 03 poetry, a daily dose
13 january 03 happiness is a warm bed
13 january 03 travelling companions
10 january 03 irony? Well, maybe just funny.
06 january 03 just say no to sweet potato gnocchi
04 january 03 fight on Trojans
?? january 03 thoughts for the newyear
30 december 02 the only dispatch from finland
Scouting Report. (inserted to fill a gap)
03 december 02 california dreaming
29 november 02 yesterday was thanksgiving
27 november 02 I am bridget jones. Damn.
27 november 02 tomorrow is thanksgiving.
15 november 02 regime change — ish....
15 november 02 regime change... please
14 november 02 the barefoot doctor is my guru
10 november 02 (~3am)jesus loves me more than I will know
09 november 02 courage
08 november 02too short for a title
07 november 02 is it cultural?
06 november 02 organic EVERYTHING
05 november 02 retail therapy (but I hate shopping!)
30 october 02 regime change begins at home
28 october 02 my addiction, where’s the social change?
15 october 02 more exercise, less silicon!
09 october 02 my life, soundtrack available on…
it's friday the thirteenth. AND i have cramps. yuck. so if anything goes wrong today, i am just perfectly set up to take it completely personally, falling down crying in the middle of the street because the light turned red or something.... let's just hope it's smooth sailing. i'm going to a champagne tasting tonight, and i do NOT want to get a cork in the eye.
maybe last weekend i earned enough good karma to last through the day..... i was at this music festival, and it was a lot of fun, but i was there with
Do you ever slow down, Gemini? Even just to pee? How is life in the fast lane, anyway? We've always been curious, but we're too friggin' out of shape to find out. You've got so much good stuff going on that everyone wants to be by your side. We hope at least one of them can keep up.
"Dear Dr Laura Robin BENEDETTI....The Scientific Committee ... has accepted your scientific contribution entitled.... This interesting contribution has been selected for oral presentation (15mn+5mn discussion) in Session …S03.. ...."
shit. now i have work to do. and a lot of it. a poster you can blow off when you know your data is crappy (which mine is). a talk, um, definitely less so.
07 may 03>>About haircuts and politics
SO. john kerry is getting 'blasted' for having expensive haircuts in the drudge report. oh, gee, a 75 dollar haircut. for someone who's on television alot. i've spent that much on a haircut.... and just because it made me feel nice. there's a big difference between a bad cut and a good cut. AND you wear it everyday. so, i say, BIG DEAL. there are much worse money sinks in washington politics, NO DOUBT. (for equally silly starters, he's probably wearing a several hundred dollar suit, and a different one everyday... so in comparison, 75 isnt much.... and with a good cut, you need trims less frequently.) [not to mention the outrageous amount of money that was spent on jetfuel and maintenance so W could fly onto an aircraft carrier that was just off shore. and for that matter the amount of fuel spent repositioning the carrier so that the background for bush's speach would be open sea and not san diego (i'm not making that up).]
whatever. the point i really want to make is this:
"**Update: Kerry Confirms Cristophe Hair Cut Late Monday; But Salon Claims Men Shampoo and Cut Only Runs $75, not $150."
THIS is the real scandal. there is no reason that men's and women's haircuts should be different prices. a simple all=one-length-but-long cut is way easier and less time consuming than a carefully layered short cut. and plenty of women have short hair and plenty of men long. it's like when everyone found out that womens shirt's cost 5 dollars to dry clean but men's shirts are 99 cents. it should be a feminist outrage.... but again, i think kerry should be able to get his hair cut wherever he wants.
06 may 03>>a little goodish news
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/science/06ACAD.html
06 may 03>>I've thought it before, and i'm sure i'll think it again, and i'm definitely thinking it now
There are a lot of reasons i think i want to return to the states to live. The USA is my home, and it will always be. Despite the consumerist nature and the mean politics. Despite the fact that I really mean california, and i dont have a lot in common philosophically with a lot of the rest of the country. Despite all that, it's my home and my "people." I think.
All that said. I dont really want to go back to a country that kills its own people. The death penalty is the ultimate insult to the sanctity of life. It's cruel; it's mean; it's disgusting. Not to mention that the system doesnt work. Just living among people who think it's ok to kill other people wears me down. (and for the record, many, if not most, of my friends and relatives don't think it's ok, but it's still the societal norm.)
When I saw Al Gore in 2000 on the News Hour, wearing a beige polo shirt and arguing vigorously for the death penalty, it was like the idealistic goggles fell away just a little bit more. Even the LEFT has been corrupted by hate.
So, even more than getting Bush unelected, if you want me to come home, make like Illinois.
15 april 03>>the moral musings of an addict
I'm trying to take a little vacation (2 weeks) from my drugs. (i was going to write "vices", but i'm DEFINITELY not giving up everything!) two weeks doesnt sound so long, really, to go without coffee, alcohol, and chocolate. And particularly after last week at the conference in nice, where it seemed like i was constantly searching for or drinking coffee between 9 and 5, and then doing the same thing with wine between 5 and 12 (+/- 2). my body is definitely ready for a rest and a little clarity of mind.
4 april 03>>hmm... and the name is...
wow. that's all. so much to write, so much work todo, but instead i'll just read otherpeoples' blogs to find super-cool things on the web to put into my blog.
oh my! and here's another one!... i LOVE it when other people put more effort into something i've thought of.... then i get the result (nifty satire) without having to do the work.
25 march 03>>things i've been called
l'etranger: ok, this one (foreigner in french)is getting a little old, but still well used. and for a while i was really digging it. something about it made me want to offer candy to little children.
l'experimentatrice: somehow, it just sounds SO much cooler, and well, cuter too, than "experimentalist"... not to sound too girly or anything, but i could absolutely imagine a couple of friends talking, in a cafe or something, "oh! i just met this girl.... she's an experimentatrice!" and it works in a way it just wouldnt with experimentalist.
la copine americaine: the american girlfriend, as in "mamy francoise, the american girlfriend says your soup is very good," to which francoise, friend's sister's fiance's mother, snorts, "yeah, but she's american, all they eat is crap"... and the table erupts with laughter. Sure, i laughed too, but i suddenly was a little defensive and wanted to tell the world about THE BOX, the organic,local produce that i used to have delivered each week when i lived in berkeley. and i kinda wanted to mention that even though i'vehad some good meals in france, i'd generally say my quality of eating has gone down since berkeley. (though, to be fair, i'm eating meat here, which is the only thing keeping me from a diet of soggy vegetables, and i wouldnt probably be doing that if it werent for the fact that it's mostly sold by small butchers who know something about the farm conditions, and Nobody here would knowingly eat something that came out of anamerican feedlot.)
anarcho-granola-punk: by shrey, my literary hero of the day, if only because i can relate to a self-described book polygamist, "once i've slept with a book i start to lose interest." anyway, thanks, shrey, you sure know how to make a girl feel good about her pigeonholes.
Yup, that's me, robin, the strange anarcho-granola-punk experimentatrice.
24 march 03>>quotes again, in lieu of actual writing
from michael moore:"We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man who's sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts"
from general wesley clark:"Rather than presenting the international community with a problem and asking its assistance in helping to resolve it, the United States government effectively presented the solution and asked for countries to agree with its views. And too many didn't. "
from Paul Berman(about george w.): "He's presented his arguments for going to war partly mendaciously, which has been a disaster. He's certainly presented them in a confused way, so that people can't understand his reasoning. He's aroused a lot of suspicion. Even when he's made good arguments, he's made them in ways that are very difficult to understand and have completely failed to get through to the general public. All in all, his inarticulateness has become something of a national security threat for the United States."
now, whoever said how smart he was didnt matter? last night raf told me he had been watchign documentaries on tv all night... about the war, about the us. and his very first comment was , "your president is dumb"... and it is true, the world doesnt trust us because as a first step, they dont trust him to be able to make the right decision.... but i think paul berman is right.... the more our administration tries to present an argument for what theyre doing and it doesnt make sense. the more people shift from "there must be information they're not giving us for security reasons, but i trust our government to be acting in my interest" to "there must be some reason for these actions that my government is hiding from me. and that must be because it's not in my interest"
but. just for the record. this whole thing is fucked up. because the equinox just happened. and i should be writing about drumming and dancing to celebrate the role balance plays in the world.
more from berman:
"But I should add that although Bush is hugely to blame for this -- it's just tragic that the United States is led by such an inarticulate and intellectually confused and unattractive figure who personally makes me cringe -- other people should be standing up and trying to fight for issues of humanitarianism and social solidarity, of women's rights and liberal freedoms. "
oh boy do i agree with that.(i have Bush-Related Tourette's Syndrome)
"One of the scandals is that we've had millions of people marching through the streets calling for no war in Iraq, but we haven't had millions of people marching in the streets calling for freedom in Iraq. Nobody's marching in the streets on behalf of Kurdish liberties. The interests of the liberal dissidents of Iraq and the Kurdish democrats are in fact also our interests. The more those people prosper, the safer we are. This is a moment in which what should be our ideals -- the ideals of liberal democracy and social solidarity -- are also materially in our interest. Bush has failed to articulate this, and a large part of the left has failed to see this entirely. "
YES YES YES!!! one of the things which makes me completely uncomfortable about being in france. and i'm sure would be uncomfortable, but to a lesser extent were i still in the US, is that i dont feel that i can go to the peace marches with a complicated opinion. there is no debate that starts with "saddam sucks and what are we going to do about it?" and the peace manifestations in france are in my experience at least 50% pro=palestine/pro-iraq demonstrations. saturday we saw people waving saddam hussein flags.
he's right[not sadam, berman]. nobody is yelling and screaming and demonstrating and trying to change the world for the things that matter most: the conditions underwhich people are living now, both the oppressed people of iraq, and the american people who are giving up our civil liberties, the only thing that we actually stand for. it's completely messed up.
21 march 03 >> critical mass
From the New York Times online:
San Francisco was the antiwar movement's epicenter. Demonstrators made the Bay Bridge and about 40 intersections impassable during the morning rush hour, set fire to bales of hay in the shadow of the Transamerica Building, opened fire hydrants and smashed police car windows.
here's what i immediately think about that: the people in san francisco, they were prepared. they have been staging critical mass demonstrations on bikes, closing down streets to cars to make room for bicycle transit, once a month for years. and i think that's great. to take what we've learned for one issue and use it on another! and i also think it's great, that so many people were wiling to say, "look. today is not just any other day. you CANNOT behave as though it's business as usual, you cannot just go to work like you do everyother day. because there is nothing everyday about war and death." ... ok, maybe i would have stopped short of attacking police cars, but other than that, i'm proud to be of the bay area.
7 march 03 >> it doesnt take much to make me happy
today i got access to inspec. inspec is a database of scientific literature. it's a useful tool to find out what other people have already done... so as to be able to climb on the shoulders of those who came before.... rather than work blindly only to find that one is doing nothing new, or one is walking in a direction already known to be a cliff or a brambly forest.
so i've been here a year. and for that year my literature searching would best be described as "inefficient google searching occasionally augmented by the bibliographies of papers i already had." hardly exhaustive. hardly confidence inspiring........ but today i got inspec. and i am happy.
let's not be distracted by the fact that it's been a year.... that it's been a few months since the cea got inspec, but i could never connect to it... that in the end it turned out that a special character in my password just crashed the system, never telling anyone why, just failing... and it took those two months for someone to decide it was time to help me (after which it took only 10 minutes to find the problem)..... no. let's only be ecstatic at the prospect that my literature searching and my personal library can join the post-modern era!!!! let's only be hopeful that this seemingly-small thing can help me to organize the chaos of my desk, and perhaps my mind.
it's ok, you dont need to understand. just nod, and smile. and think how nice it will be to not have to listen to me complain about this one thing anymore. (oh, sure, i'll probably find others... but perhaps they'll be slightly more interesting, slightly more entertaining complaints. this one was way stale, even to me.)
3 march 03 >> freedom kissing
tom tomorrowdoes it again!
How do you think the french would react to that? maybe it's not a bad pick-up/weed-out line: "i'm into freedom kissing. are you?"
27 february 03 >> it's when i'm not working!
i've done a lot of complaining in the past year. ALOT! so, now, i'll tell a story about the good. Tuesday night i went to a reading in a mostly english language bookstore. it was an african-american writer who lives in paris (jake lamar), in honor of black history month.
his readings were quite cool (too bad all the books are out of print, unless you want to read the French translation).... but the best part was in the talking. someone asked him if moving to paris allowed him to be a better writer, and he responded, "it's not that the writing is better here. it's that the life when i'm not writing is so much better."....
It completely resonated with me!! just insert "working" for "writing" and you get my current life. and perhaps i had to find myself in a job that i didnt like to let myself put so much more energy into my "life"... but now, when i'm more motivated to actually work (with deadlines coming up, generally being slightly motivated to rewrite rejected papers, and just in general, it's a bit more interesting to me) it's slightly too late.
every day it seems i say, "i should work late, or i should work at home tonight, but i cant, i have a reading/dinner engagement/poetry slam/concert/capoeira class/manifestation/dance...." and the list of things i havent tried yet, but really want to, just gets longer and longer.... and my spring / summer is already seriously filling with going to sevilla to visit my cousin, having my cousin come to visit me in paris, visits from friends, trips to nice and bordeaux (ok, that's work), travelling all over france as a groupie for my latest favorite french band, going home for a week in may to watch pete graduate from college (and surf everyday)....
there just isnt time for work and life... and i've made adifferent choice than i did 4 years ago.
27 february 03 >> someone's reading! i'd better get writing....
i guess there's nothing like the motivation of looking at the page views and realizing that there's going to stop being hits if there's no new entries..... plus, i have stuff to talk about.... there's just this teeny matter of work getting in the way.
but, on H-DIPLO (the diplomatic history news group i mysteriously got subscribed to and havent bothered to unsubscribe from because it's a lot of interesting reading, especially now... though, just to add even more to the aside, it is part of the reason that my socrates email account is constantly full and mostly just a repository for bulk mail. when you consider the 20 mails a day for that, plus the viagra ads i'm getting, it's pretty easy for "personal mail" to get lost) i just read a very good line. Wyatt Reader, making a comparison between iraq and the cold war, points out that government analysts of the cold war said the strategy of containment was all about patience, acknowledging that it may be decades before countries are ready to change. (which seemed to work at least a little, looking back.... ) So why are we so impatient now?:
" Is this the impatience of "ideologic" driven politics or those who do not believe waiting until h.... freezes belief,some sort of weakness and handicap, rather than resolution? Waiting 12 years with UN inspectors driving about Iraq for that entire time, while seemingly a tiring scenario, still offers 12 years of peaceful time to a world, very tired of just another mass slaughter of innocents and guilty alike. Perhaps the donut hole of despotism isn't worth the eating."
and... as long as i'm just justifying myself this morning with quotes from historians i've never met, i'd like to begin to address the French/American situation. I'm sure i'm not even going to approach being finished with it. I'm starting to feel more than a little harrassed and defensive at work about my nationality. (and, for the record, i have french friends too, and they dont seem half as bent out of shape as my colleagues.) People are SO worried about what the americans think and are saying about them, and actually seem to be vaguely worried about their physical safety should they go to the US.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to say what i believe, but in the meantime... here's a few points of view just to show that the american opinion is far from onesided:
From: Edwin Moise
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 12:20:34 -0500
>From: "Kaiser, David, Prof."
> Amidst all the French-bashing going on in Washington, in the media, and
>on this list, one possibility seems rarely to occur to anyone: that the
>French might know something we don't.
This is indeed a point worth making. To put it bluntly, the French have
had a lot more experience dealing with Arabs than the United States has
had.
From: Eric Bergerud
[i deleted most of the post, which really was a reasoned analysis of the situation...]
As for the "French bashing" I don't regret a bit of it. (I say this
confident in the fact that nothing truly bad will result from popular
culture food fights.) Much of the French press and intelligentsia has
portrayed the U.S. as a nation of rubes, yokels, cowboys and barbarians.
Hollywood & MacDonalds have been pictured as leading a full scale assault
on European civilization - rather like the Goths beating down the gates of
Rome. Except for the "We are all Americans" cease fire after 9/11,
visceral anti-American feelings have been easy to find on all sides of the
French political spectrum for years. However, until the Iraq crisis
surfaced, most Americans didn't know or care. Now they do and a lot of
Americans are mad. And if Americans retaliate via the words of David
Letterman, Jon Stewart or Homer Simpson (Homer once described the
Luftwaffe as "the Washigton Generals of the History Channel", so he's
passed his jaundiced eye toward Germans as well as the "cheese eating
surrender monkey" French) let's not be too suprised. They're our most
powerful weapon in this Kulturkampf, and I don't see the French being able
to match them.
sorry for the hiatus... i was having a bit of trouble with geocities..... something which keeps making me consider the 19 or 29 or 39 dollars for blog software.
[then it would be easier, i think, but then i wouldnt be a diy-punk-blogger anymore.... i'd be a part of the masses. eek!]
but before i get to the back up of great stories about dancing and snowboarding and slampits, here's just a teeny tidbit. Salon today has an article about labor conditions on chocolate farms. The most important thing i learned from reading the article is that despite the fact that there is a fair trade certifying organization for chocolate (which, fine, the certifications may not be perfect, but they are better than nothing; they are making people change their practices)
ANYWAY, less than 5% of the chocolate that is farmed to fair trade standards can be sold at fair trade prices to fairtrade organizations!!! (SO, great, some small amount of the unlabeled chocolate you're eating may well be produced under decent working conditions, but we're not actually passing the benefits on to the farmers this way.... and then how are we going to encourage more farmers to change their practices?? i ask you that!)
so, eat your chocolate!!! but look for the fair trade label. please. i'm going to.... (and that's a tough choice to make because i have to make a teeny tiny sacrifice in quality to go fair trade -- i have to go from >70% cacao to 64% -- but it's worth it.)
having trouble finding fair trade chocolate? try these sites for more info:
http://www.fairtrade.net/index.htm(worldwide)
(did you know they even certify fair trade footballs?)
http://www.maxhavelaarfrance.org/ (france)
29 january 03(22h30) >> i'm ASSIMILAAATIIINNNGGG!!!
tonight i sat down to dinner at 950pm.
and when i look in my fridge, despite the fact that there's almost NO food, there's a lot of condiments and 6 different kinds of cheese. and i have 4 bottles of wine in the kitchen. (which is about the right amount: because the rest should be in the cave. but since i dont have a cave, it's a little low. but it's still a lot for me.)
it's not complete assimilation yet, though: also in there are tofu, seaweed, and green curry paste. And there are 3 different kinds of lentils on my shelf, and 3 boxes of luna bars on the floor.
(ohmygosh! only 3!! what am i going to do in a month!?!?)
29 january 03>> ok, fine. comprends
14 jan + 21 jan =
even my french lies are misspelled.
it's comprends; je comprends; je ne comprends pas.
just for the record, they are pronounced EXACTLY the same way.
there is NO pronounciation of the s.
or the d for that matter.
evidently no french people are reading my blog -- that's probably a good thing.
23 january 03>> i'm not a creep -- i'm just a dealer!
So, here's another story along the same lines.
It was a saturday night (1 and a half weeks ago), and i had been out dancing. It was, in fact, a great night. This club had moved for a one-time event to a great location, just 10 minutes walk from my house. (saving me 8 euros in cab fare home, and i like that.) Furthermore, the music was spectacular, and the dancing fun, and i talked to not-just-one-but-three!! french people (a record).
I left around 3 to walk home, so excited that i could walk, that i could easily predict when i'd be home and in bed. Soon after i started out, though, a man came up to me and started talking. i didnt really understand what he was saying, but he was a "little more" in my personal space than i liked, particularly for 3am. I used the "je ne comprend pas"... he asked in english if i wanted marijuana. I said no.
Thinking that was it, i started walking toward home. But he kept following me. He kept talking, and i often did not understand. Confused, and a bit uncomfortable, i changed direction to go back to the club where there at least were people.
At that point, he realized how uncomfortable i was, and uttered a line destined to be a classic:
"Look, i'm not a creep -- i'm just a dealer. Do you want marijuana or cocaine or not??"
I said no again, and we easily went our separate ways.
The whole thing just makes me laugh.
But at another level, it makes me really angry. Not at him, at all. But at a society that makes men-in-general, and slightly-drunk-men-with-boundary-issues-in-particular more scary than drug dealers. Because the interaction with the drug dealer was really quite professional, and i'm sure it would have been moreso if i spoke french.
Very simple: here's my service, do you want it or not?
But the interaction with men on the street puts me much less in control.
I think i'm supposed to "appreciate" the attention. but i dont.
I know i'm not supposed to make eye contact or say hello to someone if i dont intend it as a flirtation. but that's not my instinct, and i dont want it to be.
And i think, relatively, I'm skilled enough to usually get away, to say i'm not interested and keep walking. To generally understand when someone is really a threat and when they're probably just drunk and annoying. But they're still annoying. And it still is something i dont think i should have to put up with just because i'm walking on the street, and i'm a woman.
21 january 03 >>some lies i tell in french
i know. the truth is always better. but it seems to lose a bit more often in french than it does in english.
"je ne comprend pas" (i dont understand)
while it is often true, i also use it when i am too lazy to try to understand, when i dont really care what they are talking about, and especially when someone is trying to sell me something on the street.
often this something is themself.
"je comprend" (i understand)
sometimes it's pride... not wanting to admit that even the 5th time you said it more and more slowly and simply, i'm still an idiot. sometimes it's impatience, wanting to avoid having to hear it slowly 5 times.
sometimes (as above) i just dont care and dont want to put in the effort.
"j'ai une petite amie" (i have a girlfriend)
ok. i've only used this one once. but i'm still chuckling a bit. tonight i was walking home. and i passed this guy and he said "bonsoir" ("good evening")
so, the american in me said bonsoir back. (the
french person would have known better)... he thought
that was an invitation... followed me for a block and
a half... talking the whole time (i didnt understand a
word of it -- i thought he was talking on a mobile
phone). Then he started talking directly to me,
asking me (i think) why i encouraged him, if i wanted
to come out with him... etc... why was i not
interested in him? he's handsome, he's great -- why?
[btw -- "je ne comprend pas" had already failed...
even though it was true.]
so i figured i'd resort to the "well, i am involved and i'm going home to where my boyfriend is waiting" line. but i slurred my words enought that he asked, "un petit ami" or "une petite amie"?? (they sound exactly the same except for the first syllable.)
so i figured, hell, why not make myself just a little more out of reach? i'm making this person up anyway... so i said "une" (meaning a girlfriend)...
but it didnt exactly get rid of him. then he wanted to know all about what it was like to be with a woman compared to a man. (so typical!!! "which is better? how is it different?" men are SO fascinated by lesbians....)
he didnt try follow me any farther toward home though.
i dont know if i'll add it to the repetoire.
i dont really like to think that i have a repetoire of things
i say to have a certain effect regardless of their
truth. but if they work, it's hard to argue too much.
and, ofcourse, the blog one….though you've seen it already.
I love Doonesbury!
14 january 03 poetry, a daily dose
my spoken french is
an insult to gender roles
well, that's my story.
(and i'm sticking to it.)
of course it's also an insult to conjugation, and my written french is an insult to spelling, but I don’t already have anything against either of those. The fact that I use whatever article (la or le) I feel like, and I don’t bother with gender agreement is certainly one less thing I have to worry about, but it's also my tiny piece of feminist subversion.
And, just in case my poetry's not enough for you daily dose, here's another:
CAUSA BELLI
The read goodbooks, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elect ions, money, empire, oil, and Dad.
-Andrew Motion, British Poet Laureate since 1999.
13 january 03 happiness is a warm bed.
Paris is cold! Really cold!
Sure, Finland was colder ouside, but paris is cold on the inside.
That's not (necessarily) a metaphor (this time).
It's just that my whole apartment is being heated by a tiny, but expensive, electric heater situated just beneath a drafty window. Comfortable temperatures are only achieved in a 12 - 20 inch radius. Last week I lay in bed, with both of my sleeping bags on top ofmy quilt, for over an hour before it was warm enough to sleep. [and so, if you're considering visiting me, either wait 'till it warms a bit, or bringyour own blanket.]
Now, the most efficient way to heat a bed is to put two people in it, but that's not in my life right now…. so, on theadvice of Clementine, who grew up in a drafty 16th century house in Switzerland, I bought a hot water bottle. It's gre at!covered in soft fabric, with an orange flower on a blue background, it's like a HOT teddy bear!
(If only I had a fireplace, I'd want an old-fashioned bed warmer…. They make sense now in a way they never have before. But the hot bottle will do for now.)
13 january 03 Travelling companions
When my friends Carrie and Scott returned fromtheir yeartravelling around the wor ld, they responsibly hada medical checkup, giving all the "appropriate" samples, and it turned out that they had a parasite.
As I recall, carrie was pretty excited about it: as long as it's found, and easily treatable with antibiotics, what a cool story/souvenir? (How many of your friends can drop, "Well, when I was in china, and I had a parasite, …" into a conversation?)
But, both times I came back from the developing world, it was with an iron stomach, intestines that were inhospitable to stowaways. However, it turns out that I've harbored microscopic hitch hikers both times.
When we came back from India and Asia, Kristine and I had both had this creeping sort of rash. She had it first, and worst, but it had all gone away, while I just had a small patch left on my tummy. It was a small patch of….
SCABIES.
So I had to do this treatment that involved rubbing a cream into every sqare inch of skin…. What a mess!
On our last trip, I noticed that I had an odd sort of rash in Namibia, on my leg and also my back, but it was pretty subtle, and difficult at the time to be certain it wasn’t heat rash or acne brought on by all the sweating. But I still hadit when I got back to the states, and when I finished the diss., and when I moved to france, and when I finally figured out how the health care system works, and when I visited the dermatologist.
The "you'll pay me a fortune because I speak english, but I'm still going to look at your back and la ugh that it's just acne, and don’t you have any moles to show me?" dermatologist.
So she gave me an antibiotic for the acne, which didn’t do anything, and then my internist gave me the same antibiotic again (same result).
And now, finally, more than a year later, I've cycled to a new dermatologist, trading language skills for medical skills,in order to find out that I've been carrying around a stowaway fungus.
I got to go to the lab and have my back scraped and probed and cu ltured to be sure.
And now I have another one of those "makesure you get it everywhere" treatments. (though, this one is worse! It needs to be appllied, then you just stand there in the shower for 5 minutes before rinsing it off. And if you read th e last entry, you might begin to imagine how cold my bathroom is and how unpleasant this standing in the shower for 5 minutes is going to be.)
This doctor was SO good…. He looked me over really carefully. Then he said, "it's on your thighs too, right?" I didn’t think so, but we checked, and … Voila! Wow. I want my money back from the first one!
10 january 03 irony? Well, maybe just funny
Wednesday I invited two of my friends, chris and gabrielle, over for dinner. They had just returned from christmas with their families in the U. S., andit was nice to have them back. (though, for the record, they both carry european passports also, and speak excellent french, so I let myself believe that hanging out with them isn't being completely insular.)
Anyway,the character of my friends is not the story here.
It's the meal.
Wednesday's dinner was pretty impromptu: "I'm thinking about making risotto, wan na come? I think I have enough ingredients…" andvery informal. I managed toget all three of us working in my one-person kitchen. And in the end we had mushroom risotto, salad, and bread with cheese. It was a pleasant and yummy meal.
Thursday night I went to my friend clementine's for dinner. She had invited me a week before, and it was my first chance to see here new apartment and to meet her boyfriend, Abdou, who has finally gotten his immigration approved and moved to Paris.
[Clementine is Swiss; abdou is from burkina faso. Since switzerlandisnt part of the EU, despite the fact that it'sonly a few hours away, she had to wait for her carte de sejour (long stay visa) to wind it's way SLOWLY through the bureaucracy before she could get his started]
Anyway, the immigration of my friends is not the story here.
It's the meal.
Clementine served mushroom risotto, salad, and bread with cheese. It was a pleasant and yummy meal.
The coolest bit is how similar the meals were: two women and one man; same food, at least by name; pleasant conversation, but at the same time, how it didn’t feel too similar at all. The meals were both good, food I really like, but the slight variations in ingredients made them quite different. So it didn’t feel at all like leftovers or déjà vu. And the conversation Thursday night was mostly in french (well, for the first ~2 hours. After that I was too tired, and clementine became the translator.) So we spoke more slowly over a somewhat more limited variety of topics, but definitely nice.
In retrospect, it reminds meof a Keith Tyson art project thatnever completely came to fruition. This was the idea: He wrote:
"I will assemble a smal l, tabletop sculpture out of commonly available materials. Then I will have someone else write a description of it -- no pictures -- only words. Then you follow the written description to build your own, and after have a different person wriat a description of it. You send me a photo and the description, and then I'll send you a certificate of authenticity making your sculptureand originial Keith Tyson. And, I'll post your description for the next person to create from."
So it was to be a giant artists' game of telephone.
I think these dinners were the exact same thing. It's as though we were working from the same instruction manual, "how to throw a party," but ofcourse, we each brought our own background to the meal. {and the best example of that is that at my dinner, the bread and cheese was what we ate while we were cooking because it was late andwe were already starving. Clementine served it as a cheese course between the meal and dessert.. samething;completely different.
6 january 03 just say no to sweet potato gnocchi.
That's all. I wrote a long blurb in my journal, but all you need to know is in the headline.
4 january 03 fight on Trojans!
The orange bowl. Yeah. A little touch of new years….
American style.
A very little touch.
Oh, I suppose, I did my best…. I made it to the moose bar, at what I thought was the appointed time. I wore my SC baseball cap. I thought sunny california thoughts…. But there's only so much it can feel like home
when you know you're the only person in the room even looking at the screen, let alone concerned about the results.
When the sound is off on the TV, so you don’t even have the voice of the commentators to tell you why it matters.
When you're watching on arabic ESPN -- so all the commercials have arabic script. I'm sure it would have been true in the US,
but I saw the same commercials over and over...
the one for the soap opera
the one for the televised inter-arab league soccer, which kept cutting
between your standart great soccer plays and presumably famous players
celebrating and crowds of men, identically clad in white gowns,
clapping precisely in time and/or drumming.
nonetheless,
the trojans prevailed... so much for all the preview commentary: "iowa, no doubt", "iowa, by 10". and i felt vaguely less stupid/embarrassed as the ultimate american in the canadian bar.
and i went home and put my trojan marching band cd on the stereo so i could run all over the apartment to Tusk.
?? january 03 thoughts for the new year
i am definitely planning to see the tour de France this summer.... last year i tried to follow it, and i did watch it as it screamed past me through downtown paris. it went like this blue-blue-blue-blue-blue-blue-blue-yellow-blur....all in about 2 seconds... sure i knew they were alot faster than me... but wow.
next year i'm going somewhere in the mountains, where they'll be going a little slower, and they'll be all spread out so it's not wait 2 hours for 2 seconds.
i think a lot of this year has been figuring out how to do certain things right next year... like the tour, like camping... i only went once, but now that plus the talking to people and more time on the trains means i think I can plan better trips now... and like the beach. i finally went surfing in october, on the atlantic coast. it was fun, but super hard, with a straight beach break with really big swell, it was all about the paddling (and i'm just not strong enough yet)... but once i abandoned all pride and worked really hard jsut to catch the foamy ends, i had a great time. but now I know a little bit more where to go, and i know a few people to possibly go with, so once it starts warming up a bit, i'm excited to get to the coast a bit more.
christmas was fun. i met pete in finland, (hey--look at the pictures!) and we did lots of cross country skiing and walking in the snow. saw the aurora twice, spent some time in the sauna, reindeer sleighs, dog sledding. most of the time i was wearing long underwear + 3 wool sweaters. only NOW is it finally on the news that this is one of the coldest years ever...
I think i knew it was one of my coldest years ever the moment i got off the plane. [incidentally, I've always had this thing with my toes going numb in my bike shoes, snowboard boots, etc. well, ofcourse when you add in the cold, that happened a lot in finland.(even though i try to be good about both having warm socks and giving my toes room to move and moving them alot). but when we went dogsledding it was COLD : -30C, and both of my feet went numb and took a long time to come back. so long that my big toe Is still tingly and painful. i went to the doctor in finland that night, who said, "wear socks"... but i'm going to go again tomorrow... cuz you just cant live with a big toe that you can't rely on for balance.... not to mention that i can't wear fashionable shoes... (big problem, right)... if in the end i learn a little something about anatomy that helps me learn to prevent this problem when biking, hiking, and snowboarding, i think it will have been worth it. if not. well, then, perhaps i'm not so built for the cold.]
new years was lame because i came back from finland to paris to see the eiffel tower, champs elysee, etc... but all of my friends turned out to not be in paris (i had 3 different people say, "i'm not sure if we'll still be with the family or come back to paris... i'll call you if we return". so I figured the odds were that ONE would be back, but no. ) and since I had just come back from travelling, i was tired... so i spent the evening reading a novel... then popped champagne when the radio told me to.
part of the problem for me was not really knowing what the french "do" for newyears... and i wanted to have an appropriate cultural experience, but everytime i asked people, they just said, um, we dont go to downtown, we go to friends' parties... (not too helpful). only this week, did someone finally tell me that the party usually goes oysters before midnight, champagne at midnight, party, then french onion soup around 1 am or so.
NOW i know something to do for next year (there's that next year again)...
even if i have to plan the party myself.
30 december 02 >>the only one from Finland
The guidebook says Finns drink 9 cups of coffee per day.
i was stunned, but...
Our dog sledding guide said that sounded about right.
I'm so cold right now, though,... i could drink 9 cups of coffee.... easy.
Perhaps the trembling would keep me warm.
I'm beginning to understand fur and leather.
and i kinda want the reindeer skin boots.
head to toe wool is just not enough....
not nearly enough!
that said, i get it: fur coats, leather pants, boots with sheepskin on the inside, and even snowsuits.
extremely reasonable, if at varying levels of fashionable.
but i'll never understand fur ear muffs!
if it's that cold, you need a hat!
here's a question i had never considered till now. is sheep skin different than wool??? do the sheep die for that???
c
(originally 14 march 02)
some of you may know that when kristine and i are travelling, i am the bathroom scout.
(some of you may not. the short story is that i drink a lot more water .... so she can ALWAYS wait for me to check out the bathrooms... and she can usually wait for a few rounds until i find a nice one.)
now, that relationship seems a little less than useful, since we are separated by thousands of miles (i could never get the information to her in time)
so im going to branch out a little, and do some scouting for all of you.
a little background: there are western toilets (probably what you have in your bathroom), and there are asian toilets (basically a small basin around a hole in the floor, with obvious places to put your feet). these can be as primitive as two boards over a pvc pipe (burma) or shiny white porcelain. generally, though, my experience has been that asian toilets are less accomodating to paper since the flush mechanism often involves a bucket.
in general the names have been accurate: western toilets in the west (and expensive western hotels in asia); asian toilets in asia; both in africa.
imagine my surprise, then, to come across asian toilets in bars and restaurants in paris. sure, it’s quite hygenic. and if you’re going to squat, you might as well have a toilet which is made for that. i find it much nicer than spain where it was generally western toilets without seats (grimy) or paper. but here it’s a combination.... because these toilets flush.
(and here’s where the scouting report comes in) when youre in an asian style toilet, and youve taken off your backpack (because it’s enonugh work to squat without your backpack to throw you completely off balance)
so youve taken off your pack and placed it as far to the corner of the very small room as you could.... so that it’s on floor which is "mostly dry"
when youre in that situation, here’s a tip.
pick up your backpack before you flush!!
because someplaces, it’s a powerful blast of water that comes out of the floor!
there you are.
i give such bathrooms 2 and a half stars. the wet floor is a real detractor, but they generally dont smell, and there’s usually paper and a place to wash your hands.
3 december 02 California Dreaming
i had a weird dream sunday night.... in which i was in a bike race with henry's girlfriend. (i dont even know if he has a girlfriend, weird)... but she came in second. and the prize was that she got to have a job working at a fish shop, cutting up fish. (really, this was a good prize in the dream) so he moved with her to wherever the job was, put on chain mail too, and took a job cutting fish.
how did i do in the bike race? i dont even know... i think i was just pleased to have finished....
i think it's a pretty interesting way that my real life issues of being really sore from capoeira and having just read fast food nation, in which i was astounded to read that people who cut up meat wear chainmail under their white coats to protect themselves from being cut, combined to have me be in a bike race where the prize was a food job... and how somehow, if there's going to be bikes involved in my dreams, hal's there somewhere. (as far as I can tell, it's really pretty simple symbolism, and not some deep and bloody metaphor about my past….)
then, last night i dreamt i was taking my prelims at berkeley and i had to do paper mache as part of them...
the dreams are weird, but somehow they're all taking me back to berkeley
other than my weird dreams, i had a nice thanksgiving (well, the part where i stayed home sick with a sore throat and one of those sinus headaches that makes it difficult to stand up wasnt so good) but the part with the turkey and sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie was nice....
and the part where it was at a french family's home, so the mother, along with the whole american meal, added the french touches of an appetizer course of champagne and pate and salami and pickles and octopus pie and a cheese and salad course after the turkey, was interesting.
it was really like an american thanksgiving surrounded by a french meal.
it's starting to get really dark here... but apparently not dark enough for me, because i'm planning a trip to finland/lappland for the winter solstice and christmas.
(after whichi'm sure i'll spend all of january trying to plan a trip to greece or morocco or something. something tells me i'm going to be cold)
29 november 02 yesterday was thanksgiving.
Turkey, stuffed with veal,
And afterward, a cheese course.
Thanksgiving in paris.
Dorothy knew it,
But not until she was gone,
There's no place like home!
27 november 02 I AM bridget jones!
Oh my gosh! I have become Bridget Jones! (or, really, take your pick of pathetic/lonely bacherlorettes from novels and movies): tonight my dinner was just-add-hot-water miso soup and 4 papadums with mango chutney.I only meant to make one, but I was trying to learn how to do it without a microwave. It took four tries for me to figure out that if the oil isn’t hot enough, the papadum doesn’t get crispy — it just soaks up the oil.
What’s so pathetic is that I ate all four tries. now I am a greaseball, and the whole time I had a kitchen full of yummies (zuccini, carrots, fennel, spinach, potatoes, squash, lentils, risotto, pasta…) just waiting to be cooked before they rot… but I was just too lazy.
(did I mention that I drink orange juice out of the container too??)
Somehow I don’t think sinking to these levels is increasing the odds that hugh grant/tom cruise/matt damon is about to knock on my door……... despite everything hollywood has to say in the matter.
27 november 02 tomorrow is thanksgiving
I am already starving for turkey! More like for mashed potatoes, thick and lumpy, and stuffing and gravy!! Today was turkey brochettes in the cafeteria at work… it was good, but it only made this desire for a whole table full of harvest food greater. Do you think I’ll spoil my enjoyment of tomorrow’s dinner if I make myself mashed potatoes tonight?? I don’t have any gravy…. In honor of America, this weekend I’m going to go see the new james bond film.Some days, do you just feel crappy? … Like nobody loves you? … like you cannot take it anymore?… click here!
SHIT.... how did this happen? I have lost the motivation and energy of my youth.... but i havent yet acquired that wisdom that comes with age that allows you to make up for the lack of energy. It doesnt seem like it’s supposed to work that way......
15 november 02 regime change — ish....
I’m kinda optimistic about Nancy Pelosi becoming house minority leader. Sure, she definitely is playing the politics game; she definitely is a politician (she’s no paul wellstone, sadly). But she is a liberal, not a "moderate," and she’ll always be re-elected (or not) by a liberal democratic district (SF). So it will always be less in her own interest to just go along with the White House (than if she represented, say, Iowa or texas).
It’s also nice that she’s a woman.
I think.
A woman AND basically liberal..... it seems like one of the few progressive things that's happened in washington in a long time. (i kinda foresee a lot of jay leno type jokes though... about the woman leading the house, a woman’s place is in the house, etc....
along the lines of that cool NOW bumper sticker from the 1992? Election
"A woman’s place is in the House.... and the Senate."..
only maybe not so nice...
15 november 02 regime change... please
How can we argue that regime change is the only solution, the only way to be assured of real change (or the only way to enable real change)?
How can we argue that a necessary (if not sufficient) part of "reforming" iraq is removing the leader?
How can we do that and AT THE SAME TIME decide that it doesnt really matter if we find osama bin laden (because we’re "really" inhibiting the network).
How can we be so inconsistent (please dont email me an answer)?? How can we be so absurd?I want to write "how can they possibly expect us to agree, to believe, to follow?" but i guess i must write "how can we be so forgetful, so trusting, so uncritical, so passive?"
The following regimes need to change: USA, Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Burma. I guess i bought into 2/3 of the axis of evil, but i’m tired of seeing pictures of starving korean children....
14 november 02 > >the barefoot doctor is my guru
I bought yet another of his books while I was in London — "Liberation" — it just came out.
It’s supposed to teach me how to liberate myself from all those unhealthy thoughts that become depression and jealousy and fear of failure. The barefoot doctor is really BIG… there were ads for this book in all the metro stations in London… right there with the ads for Mama Mia and The Lion King. And in retrospect, I can barely b elieve how anxious I was to get it once I saw them. [it must have just come out — because amazon.co.uk emailed me yesterday to tell me if I bought it through them, I could get a discount.
Anyway... i wanted to say more about that... but all i did was write
down a single quote:
"It’s obvious that when your experience is
wholly intellectual and without passion you become a dried up old fish whom
noone wants to talk to, not even you."...
Luckily my current experience is almost completely lacking in intellectual pursuit. (don’t tell my boss)
Ok, I may be trying to be Taoist and calm and all that, but I’m still Californian to the core…. Don’t impede my path to enlightenment with your highway to hell!
http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?itemid=1404810 november 02 (~3am) >> jesus loves me more than i will know
Sofia and I just crashed a high school dance.
I decided, "when in rome" (sorta like in Paris when I dress to blend in) and let the 20 year old Italian pick me up. But I only let him kiss me AFTER I taught him to swing dance to The Beatles, The Doors, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and AFTER I taught him "pickup rules for grown ups"( like "I will not kiss her until after I’ve asked her name").
When did I become Mrs. Robinson??
[and just for the record, we did not intend to be 10 + years older than the average age; we just looked in TimeOut Magazine, which is usually a good bet, for a club that sounded fun.
And this one was described as indie (good), fun (good), and close to our hotel (very good)…. It was only when we walked in that something seemed a little off… and the average age was easy to overlook at that point because they happened to be playing one of my favorite songs by the Offspring.
I still may have had a better time than I’ve ever had clubbing in paris: I did like that they played music I really thought was fun almost the whole night, and that people were dressed and dancing in all manner of ways. So there really was NOTHING to feel self-conscious about. The whole Parisian and gothic sense of aloof watching was just gone! Though maybe it has something to do with the fact that I could no longer care LESS about what a 17-year old thinks of me (I wish I’d felt that way when I was 17).]
09 november 02
In the pub. Drinking a pint of courage. Not metaphorically. That’s the brand. There was a whole range of bitters to choose from (according to the barboy with the pierced eyebrow, "based on how pissed I want to get, and how fast")Yay.
Not about getting pissed, but about having a selection of yummy, not-yellow beer.
I just got out of the Tate Britain gallery (formerly known, I think, as simply the Tate Gallery, but now there’s also the Tate Modern (which I really wanted to go to this weekend but didn’t get to) so they have to differentiate somehow (when British became the antonym of Modern, I don’t know… but as long as it’s not some other country saying it, it seems fine)) where I saw the exhibition of artwork for the Turner prize. Four artists under age 50 have been selected as finalists; they each put up a one-room installation; on December 8, one of them will win 20,000 pounds. I loved it! Some of it was highly conceptual; some I liked more… but I thought the whole thing was cool…. Sofia was bored.
But among my favorite things was a drawing/painting by keith Tyson… it’s a design for a sculpture to be called "molecular compound #8. and in the descriptive text, it says, "…. So that the piece is constantly changing its form (underlining my belief that sculpture and form are simply information leasing matter)."
08 november 02
Just one thought. I’ve been in London for 15 minutes.
I haven’t yet gotten on the subway
Or even seen the sky.
But I have a bike map with all the bike lanes, separate traffic lanes, and "quiet streets" marked.
I still haven’t even heard of such a thing in Paris.
Perhaps if it’s not raining Monday, I’ll have to rent a bike!!
07 november 02
ok. i guess i'm petty.
i was having a conversation last week with a certain french person, and his
position was that Americans are fatter than French people, and similarly
people from lower-social economic situations are fatter than rich people,
entirely for cultural reasons: what you choose to eat and how you live your
life are entirely cultural choices.
my position was that it was much more complex than that. That it was almost certainly a combination of factors, some of which might be: more sedentary lifestyles/more time spent working so less time to exercise /and less availability of nutritious food. That part I was basing on living by USC, where the nearest supermarket, if you could call it that, was small, constantly crowded, difficult to manage your way through, and more importantly, seriously lacking in produce or healthy food. There was no giant super-store, with piles of beautiful fruit and aisles and aisles of well arranged food, no major chain.
however, there was a jackinthebox, a wendys, a taco bell, a del taco, a green burrito, a sizzler, and a starbucks.
it seemed really obvious, that there wasnt the incentive for a big, bright supermarket because there wasnt the "purchasing power" of a more upscale neighborhood. and, as everybody knows, usc is in an "economically-challenged" neighborhood. (as long as you dont count the students)
but now i feel totally vinidicated. researchers just found the same thing (well, at least that the presence or absence of a supermarket in one's neighborhood was a stong factor in whether one's diet had fruits and vegetables, and also that there were less markets in predominantly black neighborhoods)
read it yourself. 06 november 02
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=594&e=1&cid=594&u=/nm/20021107/hl_nm/diets_supermarkets_dc
so there.
last night i bought organic gin at the supermarket.
did you know they make organic gin?
i didn't, but i couldn’t pass it up.
(they also make
organic vodka, but yuck. i'm sure I could find organic baby corn too,
but why?)
gin is my clear drink of choice.
only in europe can you be an
organic drunk.
apparently, though, organic gin brings out the
rockstar in me. i just found myself jumping up and down playing air
guitar to the song "lump" in front of the window that looks out on the
pompidou center.
(it's like a big mirror because its dark outside.)
have you ever seen me play air guitar?
no.
has anyone?
no.
i do not play air guitar.
until now.
now i'm thinking, "dude! i need to be on stage!"
....
excuse me "love shack" is on... i gotta go be a sexy rock and roll singer.
05 november 02
i'm a bit shitty because my paper just got rejected (again)... and, in fact, a series of not necessarily important to anyone but me things have been kind of falling apart recently, and i'm finding it a little disturbing.
but, i have been fighting it with retail therapy, which usually isnt a big part of my regime, but right now buying warm, wooly sweaters, and fresh organic vegetables and bookshelves seems to be working... it's as though i really can reach my heart by warming from the outside with thewool, and the cleaner environment, and also from the stomach. tonight i might buy a winter coat.... then there will be nothing left to buy, i hope.I vote today.
And I just have one question:Hey! What happened to the left?!?!
I don’t mean, "Why are the democrats so moderate?" (Though, I don’t like that either,)
What happened to the extreme (and slightly unusual) left parties that are not the democrats?
>What happened to the peace and freedom party? And the communists? And the socialists?
And wasn’t there another?
<>Who’s on the ballot to balance the libertarians, the reformers, and the natural lawyers??
Perhaps it’s that I’m so far away…. Perhaps I didn’t get all the voter materials….
But I miss reading the candidate statements peppered with lines like, "married to the lovely Tatiana"… And I miss thinking that the progressive left was big and broad and diverse. Now I just hope that the progressive left can survive without succumbing to hawkish hoopla.
28 october 02 I love daylight savings!
This morning I got up in time to eat BEFORE I left the house (some soy yogurt I just found — it occurs to me now that it has no calcium, so what 46;s the point?… but it’s blue berry and tasty) And more importantly, I was early enough to get coffee and the paper on the way to the bus. In fact, I was the first person at the bus stop. Which is stunning! Since often I’m the last — no, not just the last, the last possibl e. … running across the street, possibly dodging traffic, after the bus, yelling "attend!" … or arriving just seconds before, having run the whole way from my apartment. (something which is very unfrench and gets strange looks, or maybe it isn’t that un-French since the run, then the sit in the warm bus in my wint er coat, then the freezing cold outside, then the heat of the office seems to make me smell stereotypically, and typically, French.) So… this coffee… not exactly "on the way" to the bus. More like seven-minutes-out-of-the-way of a 5 minute journey. But what it is is an American style coffee bar I first tried yesterday, the Columbus Café. Absolutely modeled on starbucks and cafes in new york (according to them). (though, I’d say, the name plus the logo of a big bear are more evocative of san Francisco than new york.) The only cardboa rd cups in paris. (including teeny Dixie cup size shot glasses for espresso) Nice, foamy cappuccino with your choice of cinnamon or c hocolate on top. "Barristas", who are actually called barristas, and a tip cup. Muffins (c hocolate-chocolate chip and blueberry) and an oven to bake them. Fresh squeezed juice already in the plastic glasses with lids. Mochas with chocolate and whipped cream. And a drink called the "San Francisco Steamer": steamed milk with a shot of syrup….. though, I think if they were remotely true to the name it would be steamed organic soy milk. Thi s morning I said to the barrista, "Hier soir, j’ai revi que vous avez de lait soja" ("last night I dreamt that you had soy milk") and she just laughed. "never.< span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> I think in the states you drink it because some people can’t drink milk. Noone likes the taste. We can drink milk." …. Sniff. I’m nobody. Oh, well, I’ll keep working on it. At least I got a yummy cappuccino with cinnamon on top in my travel mug. Which already feels like a victory. Even if I did spill some on my jacket on the way to the bus. At least it was only my jacket and not my shirt. (note to self: put lid on travel cup rather than carrying lid in other hand.) 15 october 02i had my own sort of bi-athlon weekend... i went to lacanau for surfing. surfed twice a day. and did tai chi once a day. so im a bit sore now. and even though the surfing did not go so super well, (waves too big, and not well formed at all... so i did a lot of getting pounded and a lot of paddling), i had the greatest time.
i just love being in the water, surrounded by the hugeness of it all.... i miss that so so much in paris.
of course now i and my apartment are total wrecks. me for having not slept enough because my train came in SO late on sunday night, and that sadly put me in a stay up late habit that i reinforced by seeing a french film last night, and my apartment for not having had any attempt at a weekend clean. instead there are still the regular items: laundry to do, dirty dishes in the sink,... and also extra towels and wetsuits and swimsuits hanging everywehere, and also all the pieces for this project im working on (lo ng lengths of copper piping, cold solder, newspaper everywhere to keep the cold solder off the floor, stains where i missed the newspaper)-- i'm building shelves out of copper pipe. to hold my shoes... how girl y!... but i have a lot of shoes and i have to do something with them.
what else is up with me?? i guess not too much... i'm still the opposite of jazzed about my job, and sometimes it really gets me down, both because it's just not fulfilling and i'm just not accomplishing anything, and lately, because im really worried that the result will be that i wont be able to get another job in the states afterward.
and i really dont knwo what im going to do when it finishes in a year and a half. the only thing i do know is that i wont have a job lined up because i dont seem to be applying for anything this job cycle.< /span> on the other hand... i'm really trying to use this as an opportunity to learn how to disconnect my profession from my life. which is different from how i've bee n a lot of my adult life: it's always been part of how i identify, and a lot of who i am, being a grad student and a scientist.... now i'm trying to really focus on the rest, which is all there anyway, and make friends based on on surfing and dancing and stuff... and to really keep doing all those other things... have the hiking and biking and rollerblading and enjoying paris be the things that make me feel good at the end of the day instead. i guess that' s probably a valuable lesson to learn.and it's making me want to get a bike again!!!
im thinking about a cyclocross... cuz i still want something that can go on trails... something that can take me most places, but i want that extra-large wheel fastness... i guess i should do some test-rides ... as im not actually sure i'll like the drop-bar profile.
it hasnt been a very good time for me and "stuff"... i lost my celphone and cracked the screen of my laptop. i am now trying to do the slightly-overdue backup onto cds before i take it in to find out just how much it wi ll cost.... a lot i am sure. and wow! i had no idea how much i had come to depend on that phone!! i mean, i am not that social, especially here, but wow! it's like i cannot have any social engagement without it , because they're all based on, "well, get off the metro and then call me..."
oh well, again, all the more reason to have my life de-tech a bit... more exercise, less silicon!!
9 october 02what is new with me?? i got an ipod when i was home in september.... and it has changed my life!! it's like my life n ow has a soundtrack.... and somehow that makes everything i do cooler... plus, it makes being in the lab NOT SUCK. and the rest of my trip was pretty fabulous too: burning man (weird and wonderful and the opposite of france in almost every way), visiting t he parents, surfing nearly every day, 1 week in hawaii, which is good on its own but was better because it was for kanani's wedding, which was beautiful, and it also meant that it was time with friends, and the ocean every day.... so so sonice. here's a note: do not order a bloody mary in france. i've had these very strange cravings over the past few months == like in july when it was really hot, i found myself daydreaming about oysters and champagne, which is odd because i had never really had o ysters. but when i finally went out and had the combination, it was divine. it was like eating the sea, and it was exactly what i needed.... and then last weekend, after a dificult time at esrf, i was in this, "i just need a drink" mode. and i wanted it to be a bloody mary. again, not something i've had a lot of to really know when i should crave one. i had one at burning man (and it was delicious), and if i've had another, it was probably with you, but im not sure..... nonet heless, on sunday, it was completely what i CRAVED. so i was in this french restaurant in grenoble, and i said, "en fait, je voudrais une cocktail americainne -- a bloody mary"... the waiter nodded and brought me one... but it was just tomato juice vodka and lime. ick. i guess it's a little like buying brie in a seven eleven in texas.... just not a good idea. what else? not too much... im trying trying (still) to construct a life that i like here... lately ive been rollerblading more places, which is fun even if i;m not very good at it. one of carrie beam's housemates from berkeley just moved here... so i have one more friend who understands me a little more. (though she's swiss, so she's having a much easier time of adapting) since i stopped going to french classes, life is nicer,.... because i have more time to just do what ever i want... this week i'm building a shelf for my shoes out of copper pipes. i discovered this "cold solder" stuff, and it's opened a whole new world o f making stuff... like tinker toys!