Busy Week

Just a quick post to catch up before I head out to see "Uncle Vanya" at 16:00. Things have been quite busy, but in a good way.

Brad arrived on Tuesday morning, bringing the good weather with him (as he always does) - the man has excellent meteorological karma. Here he is, on the street outside the apartment, last night:

On Wednesday morning we had our improvisation class instead of normal lessons. Not to brag, or anything, but I was quite proud that the person voted as having given the most convincing Carla Bruni impressions was moi! Despite some stiff competition from my charming Italian classmate Ilaria (who, one would think, had the a priori advantage, what with having the Italo-French accent down and all).

Wednesday evening I was invited to dinner at my friend France's apartment in the 6th arrondissement. Among the other guests were Doug Bates, former professor of statistics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and his wife Mary Ellen, both Canadian. France embarrassed us completely by toasting us with champagne, telling us that our books (Bates and Watts, Davidian and Giltinan) had played a seminal role in her statistical education, and that she never dreamed that we would actually be dinner guests in her apartment some day. It was embarrassing, but let's face it, also really kind of flattering. A very nice ego boost - I only wish my partner in crime, Professor Davidian had also been there to savor the moment. France has been extraordinarily kind to me on many occasions since the start of my Parisian adventures and it was a lovely evening.

Thursday afternoon was the regular sortie pedagogique with Anne. We visited various remnants of medieval Paris in and around the 6th:

Yesterday afternoon I wandered over to the Pompidou Center where I visited the Brancusi studio and stumbled across a potential clue to future career options. More about this in a subsequent post, but here's a hint:

Class this week was a lot of fun. As always, the quality of the discussion largely depends on the particular mix of the people in the group, and this week we had an especially lively bunch. For me the definite high point was yesterday morning's discussion. Earlier in the week we had talked about the French-Algerian war, as the 50th anniversary of the peace agreement was on March 19th. One of the more interesting guys in the class is called Manne from Sweden. A former personal trainer and mixed martial arts competitor in Sweden (in the U.S. the closest description would be "cage fighter"), he looks very much the part, stocky muscular build, reset nose, cauliflower ears. About a year ago he decided to undergo a career change and came to Paris to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. So, in the class discussion about the difficulty of pinning down a single version of history, it was hilariously disconcerting to have him chime in with Habermas's critique of Foucault's views on history. One of the other students is Ben, a very smart, very sweet, Chinese guy in his twenties who had spent two years in DC as a reporter. Hearing the two of them discuss Fukuyama's "The End of History" in (extremely good) French was a slightly surreal experience, and a memory I will long cherish.

Last night Nancy and Gabriella came by to see the apartment and to meet Brad and the four of us went to dinner at the excellent Italian restaurant at the corner. It was lots of fun, and I think Brad was glad to have dinner companions who spoke English.

Right now (Saturday 15:00) he is out and about, enjoying the sunshine, and it's time for me to head out to see "Uncle Vanya". I loves me some culture!

A la prochaine !

The arms of Morpheus

What a difference 24 hours can make. Up until last night, this was me -

But, thanks to the wonders of melatonin, I fell right asleep at 11:30 pm last night, woke up once at 4:00 am, drifted right back to sleep, and woke at 7:45 am totally refreshed.

So I'm hoping to do the same right now, and let the big old world just keep on turning without my actively worrying about it -

Bonne nuit, mes enfants.

Out and about in the Neighborhood

A few pictures from my recent ramblings:

Faith, Hope, and Charity.

If we can have a "Rue du Croissant", why not a "Bagel Boulevard"?

I love that there is a bookstore dedicated to the horse!

Note how I manage to sneak in a cat picture here.

Insomnia is improving slightly. I have high hopes for quitting the cycle this evening, due to some melatonin that I managed to score earlier today (no need to go into the details, but in the end your true friends are those with the good drugs). Brad arrives tomorrow morning, so I am excited about that. And tonight it's "Top Chef, France" !

In other news, on the political front, the slate of 10 candidates for the first round of the presidential elections on April 22nd has been finalized
. The three front runners are Sarkozy, Hollande, and the vile Marine Le Pen. In general, nobody gets an absolute majority in the first round, so that the final selection will be decided on Sunday May 6th, in a runoff between the two front-runners in the first round. I have already been invited to an election night party at Rodolfo's (the charming upstairs neighbor of Nancy and Gabriella). And I fully intend to go.

The whole country is stunned by the assassination in cold blood, earlier today, of a teacher and three students outside a Jewish school in Toulouse. People seem genuinely horrified -- even the politicians are showing an unusually united front in condemning the atrocity.

Only 14 weeks of Parisian bliss left

Not that I'm one to rub it in. Nosiree, Bob, not me!

Today was a nice lazy day. I've been having difficulty sleeping since I got here and last night was no exception. I finally drifted off around 5am, didn't make it out of bed until 11am. But then I basically walked all over the city (stupidly forgot my camera), to try to tire myself out for tonight.

I may, however, have sabotaged myself by going to see "La Dame en Noire" at the Rex at 22:00. (Or, if you prefer, "Harry Potter and the Woman in Black") The good news - apparently this is the "weekend of the cinema" all across Paris, so tickets to everything were a uniform price of 3.50 Euro. Further good news - the movie was pretty damned good; once you bought into its creepy Gothic-horror logic, it was very well done.

The bad news -- it scared the bejasus out of me. So now I am sitting here, sipping Sancerre, trying to screw up my courage to turn out the lights and go to bed.

In the meantime, here is another fine cat poem for your amusement:

JUSTICE

You expect, Puss-in-Boots
to go on treating my house
as your house
after treating my pet partridge
as a comestible?

No, pet partridge!
Over the bones of his treat
the cat shall be slain,
and you honored in blood rite:
as Pyrrhus, recall,
(rightfully) slew
Polyxena
over the corpse of Achilles.

(Agathias, translated by Peter Whigham)

Beannachtai na Feile Libh go Leir

Or, if you insist on having it in English: "May the blessings of the holiday be with ye all".

The holiday in question, of course, being that most beloved of all Irish-American occasions for celebration, Saint Patrick's Day. Like many native Irish people, I remain firmly convinced that this is a holiday that is celebrated with far more vigour outside of Ireland than at home. Maybe they honour the day with green beer in some Irish pubs these days, but they certainly never did so in my time.

But, as an expat in Paris, I couldn't let the occasion go completely unmarked. So I celebrated by having a nice dinner at my neighborhood restaurant -
Le Vernissoir
When I say "neighborhood" I really mean it. I am at #16, they are at #18, so their bar is just on the other side of my kitchen wall.
The meal was great, and they were very welcoming -- I got to practice my French quite a bit, and the owners were very encouraging. When I got there at 9pm, only three tables were occupied, but a big party of 20 or more arrived around 10:30pm and things were hopping when I left at 11.

To make up for some of that caloric excess, I went for a nice brisk walk to the Louvre and back after dinner. Who knew Paris had so many fake Irish pubs? Revelers overflowed into the streets, but this being Paris, even the drunks were polite. I managed to make it home without acquiring a whimsical Guinness hat.

Right now Kurt Masur is conducting the National Orchestra of France in Beethoven's Ninth on Channel 3 and I am hoping that my earlier walk will finally cure me of the insomnia that has plagued me since arriving here on Sunday. I leave you with a little cat poem, taken from the awesome book of Cat Poetry Paddy sent with me as a St Patrick's Day gift. Even though her card was well off the standard of tackiness we have come to expect*, her gift more than made up for it:

CAT JACKS by Shel Silverstein

Do not play jacks
With the Jaguar cat -
You'll never ever beat her.
If she don't win,
She'll start to whine.
If she gets an eight,
She'll pick up nine -
She'll say she didn't,
But you'll know she's lion -
She's such an awful Cheetah.

*: this year's tacky Saint Patrick's Day card contest is now officially closed, and this year's winner is .... BRAD. (Details in a future post)

Friday night in the Marais

I had thought of going to see "La Dame en Noir", but then I remembered that Friday night is the NCIS marathon on Canal 6. So I have been brushing up on my French, courtesy of the bizarrely dubbed voices of Gibbs and Co.

It's been a great week. I eased back into things at school by going every day except Wednesday (when I took the opportunity to sleep in). This time around, unlike the fall, I have a lighter program scheduled - just 26 hours a week (5 morning classes and two afternoon workshops). I may eventually add some private classes with Danielle, the tutor I had last fall, independently of school.

One of the workshops is the regular Thursday afternoon "sortie pedagogique". Yesterday, we went with Anne to visit the Mairie du 10e (the mayoralty of the 10th arrondissement) and afterwards we walked along the Canal Saint Martin. The Mairie du 10e is quite impressive - probably the fanciest of all the 20 arrondissements - the architect was Garnier, famous for also having designed the old opera house. There was a lot going on - people were getting married, people were attending adult education courses, and the star of the show was this little sweetie, who was having the time of her life:

(Yes, I think her T-shirt says "Chicken is good").

Here is Anne, and some of my fellow classmates:

Smugness goes before a fall. Earlier this evening I had returned from a little shopping excursion at Monoprix, to get a decent corkscrew, a delicious baguette, and some groceries. Just as I was pouring myself a glass of wine, and gnawing on some delicious baguette, thinking how good life was, I reached for my Kindle. Uh-oh where was my Kindle? So I had to retrace my increasingly panicked steps to the Monoprix bakery, where - luckily - the very nice young lady said "We've been expecting you" and called over the security guard, who had been holding on to my Kindle.

Sometimes I wonder how I manage to survive at at all. But at least this story had a happy ending.

Also, earlier this evening my friend France dropped by with the books I had left with her over the winter. Now that I have my assorted grammar books and dictionaries, I feel much better equipped to face the weekend. There's a Robert Doisneau exhibition at the Hotel de Ville that I certainly need to check out before the lines get too long in the morning.

Meanwhile, the NCIS marathon, he continues. Life is good.

Back in business as Mister Bean

I hope all my Whipping Cats readers will be pleased to read that this blog is officially back in business. The adventure continues in 2012 -- I arrived back in Paris just about 24 hours ago, and already it seems as if I was never away.

Started back in class again this morning. This spring I have a new apartment, but it's just one block away from last spring's location, so I know the quartier fairly well already. The apartment owners were terrific - most welcoming and - in a personal DG first - this time I managed to bring all the correct cables and adapters, as well as a mouse and an alarm clock, so for the first time ever I may not have to go out and buy duplicates of stuff I already have at home. I even paid the extra $25 to have an actual Paris number instead of the dodgy Estonian number that came with last year's international SIM card. And yes, I know that those of you with IPads are rolling your eyes at my general technological backwardness, but - hey - if you are reading this, then I am at least able to get things to function to my own level of satisfaction.

Apparently my new persona for the spring is that of Mister Bean

The apartment is seriously chic:

and very comfortable. Though that spiral staircase may be the death of me. Guests will appreciate the downstairs bathroom (as will I).

Also, from its former days as a boutique jewelry store, there is an external "rideau metallique" (metal curtain) that still works downstairs, so when Brad gets here, if he needs to block out all external street noise and light, he will be able to do so.

Jet lag is starting to hit, so it's time for a little nap. A demain !