"Castanyada" in Barcelona (I)

Finally, this year I've managed to be in Barcelona for the "Castanyada", "Tots Sants", etc. For a week, I'm enjoying meeting many of my old friends and even being this time of the year, even having the chance of going to the beach and getting all the good weather I can before going back to Paris to weather the long and cold winter there.

A book: "A year in the merde"

You start a new book at around midnight on a Saturday evening, and you don't notice the hours pass by till you only have a few pages left and it's 6AM and you've barely stopped a few times to change the music and to get some more nibbles or sthg to drink. All the while you are concerned that you are often laughing so loud that you are going to wake up your neighbours. That was at least my experience of "A year in the merde", by Stephen Clarke.



The story is about this young and ambitious British manager who accepts a job in Paris to launch a chain of tea-rooms, but not only that. The book is a description of all aspects of the culture shock of a Briton (any foreigner, really) arriving in France: language problems, work etiquette and attitudes, body language even, food, restaurants, the housing market in Paris, the continuous strikes, political ethics, the French health service...

A terrific book, and indispensable reading if you have lived or are going to live in Paris for a while, and although you might think sometimes it is borderline psychedelia (if you have not experienced living in Paris yet, that is), it's all true (probably). And best of all, it's a book with very little concessions to political correctness.

Just one last warning: if you are French, you might not like it.

Exhibition: "Venice & l'Orient" at the IMArabe

Work in progress.... but here you have a picture... (a bit moved, but...) ;-)

http://www.imarabe.org/temp/expo.html

Musee Quai Branly: D'un regard l'Autre

This week I've had the pleasure to go to the Musee Quai Branly in Paris and visit the temporal exhibition "D’un regard l’Autre" (http://www.quaibranly.fr/). Although it was late and we had to rush through the different rooms containing a very heterogeneous collection of exhibits, and at first I was a bit puzzled by the organisation of the exhibition, I have to admit that once I've had time to reflect on it I've found it very original and informative.

The exhibition shows the evolution of the image of the 'exotic' places seen from european/western eyes along the ages, from the middle ages to the present time. starting with the scary images of salvage men and women, who would only be covered with their own fur (!!) and who would enjoy tearing apart and eat any lost explorer, as depicted in many medieval books, to the present assimilation of african, asian and native american art in contemporanean art, passing by the treasuring of exotic materials and items and later the catalogation and detailed description of animals, plants, buildings, cultures and customs with the birth of the scientiffic method and ethnographic disciplines.

Saturday Night Music

What could be a better plan for a relaxed Saturday evening, after having spent the afternoon walking around in Paris than going to some bar with a friendly atmosphere where a good band is playing? Well, that was exactly our plan last Saturday. I had met Ainhoa in the early afternoon and Hans a bit later and after having an early dinner at our favourite creperie in the Quartier Latin, we headed for some concert that was supposed to start at 20h in a bar that is actually on a boat moored in the Seine.

Unfortunately, when we arrived there, nothing was happening, the place was empty, dark, abandoned even... We got a beer from a 'terrace' outside, and waited for about half an hour, and nothing was happening. A few people walked in and asked us about the concert, to which we could only reply that we were also waiting for that. After a while we decided to go elsewhere and we found this small 'bistro' close to 'Grands Boulevards' where a band called 'feeBidou' was about to start playing. The style and sympathy of the band easily got everybody in a very good mood and cheering and following the tunes. The type of music reminded me of the music of the old silent films, where a piano was giving the rhythm to the action.  In this case, the three musicians were playing double bass, accordion and banjo, and you could really visualise the story they had told before starting each piece. So with them we followed the Tour de France, and some memories of the accordion player in his favourite bar, playing table football, the adventures of Batman in Rumania, and finally even one of their pieces was an homage to Melies.

 

I'll be looking for their next concert, and for their third CD that should come out any time soon. You can find more about them at www.freebidou.com

On the real cost of things and services

Spending some wonderful weeks in Thailand during my summer holidays this year, I've had the chance to reflect on many things, and I've come to confirm some concerns I had about the real cost of certain items and services and what we end up paying for them.

When you make your first acquaintance with economic theory, you are told about equilibrium points between offer and demand, with some obvious concessions to product cost. But of course, that implies a few very hard conditions which include perfect competition, no barriers of entry into the market and all parties involved having perfect information. Obviously, none of those conditions apply fully (sometimes not even remotely) in the real economy, and therefore, the pricing of many things are severely distorted.

Before the last ones of you fall asleep, an example. Where should a bottle of French wine cost more, in a restaurant in Bangkok or in an equivalent one in Paris? Of course, you've guessed that it was a trick question, and you've got it right: The equivalent wine, in a similar restaurant, costs about 20% less in Bangkok than in Paris. And that is only an example, the same meal in each of those restaurants will probably cost double or more in Paris that in Bangkok. Anything you buy in a department store, from clothing to electronics will present the same difference in price.

Some of the arguments people will use to justify that difference will involve that the items involved are manufactured in the region (well, somewhere in the continent, which might not be just around the corner) so the difference includes the transport costs. However, as much as that argument *might* (I don't use *do*) explain the difference in the price of electronics and clothing, it does not explain the bottle of French wine being cheaper in Thailand than in France. So that argument *might* explain some small variations in specific items, but it cannot be accepted as *the* general explanation.

Another argument will run in the line of comparing the average salaries, cost of living and tax pressure of each country, and say that as the wages and the cost of running the restaurant (shop, department store, ...) are lower, then the product offered can be sold at a lower price and still make the same margin (economists might start talking of purchase power parities here...). Well, that *could* have more chances to explain the difference, even for our bottle of French wine, but there are other examples that are more difficult to explain.

As I was on holidays, and I was making the trip I had been planning for a few years, and being a very mean person myself, I wanted to make everybody very jealous, so I decided to send a few dozens of postcards to friends and family. You will agree with me that the distance between Paris and Bangkok is the same that between Bangkok and Paris, and that sending a letter (or a postcard), should incur in, basically, the same costs no matter in which sense it was sent, as the distance is the same, and assuming that the amount of people incurred in classification at origin are probably similar to the amount involved in delivery at destination. So, if the costs are the same in both directions, I would be very obliged to anyone that could explain me why sending my postcards from Bangkok to Paris (or Europe in general) coasted me less that half of what it costs me to post a postcard within Paris!! ;-)

At this point is when I would like to introduce one point. May be there are many things that are priced by *how much people are willing to pay*, instead of by *how much does it cost*, even in the case where demand is not that high. A clear example could be any small plastic item that is cheap and more or less widely used but not essential: Take the nylon loop people use to hang their mobile phones or MP3 players or keys from their necks, or any other item like that. It is an industrial product that is probably produced by the millions, with a cost of about a couple of Euros for a thousand units. How much does it cost in a shop? Probably if you buy it with your MP3-player it will cost you at least 10-15 Euro (but it will come in a nice branded blister). If you buy it in one of those wonderful 'bazaar'-shops you have in any town and city, run usually by old ladies or sometimes by people belonging to visible minorities, and stocking all sorts of different stuff, it will probably cost you only 1-3 Euro (and it will come without the packaging). You can find the same phenomenon with hardstore items like plug adaptors and extension cords, can openers, etc. Probably it is the same for many drugstore products and for some services as well, like posting a letter or sending an SMS. I would say that it's just a matter of there being a price that people are willing to pay without considering looking for a lower price. One could say that below a certain fraction of the purchase capacity (i.e. income) of the individual, the price of an item looses its comparative meaning.

One of the corollaries of that is that because we don't care about the price of some things as long as they are below a certain price threshold, this part of the consumer economy where we live becomes inefficient, and we pay the costs (as usual), and someone else gets rich because of our indifference.

Another example, the cost of sending an SMS from your mobile: you might have noticed that all mobile phone operators in your country (and I don't mind which country do you read this from) charge the same price for each SMS you send, and from time to time they offer some free SMSs as special promotions. In fact, and trying not to go into too much technical detail, the mobile phone network and your phone need to be in more or less continuous communication, to assess the level of signal, and to know when to switch your connection from one area of the network to the next as you move (from one "aerial" to the next one, if you wish). That communication is just a stream of data, and it does not matter if it's more or less random data or if it includes a few SMSs, so the real cost of sending an SMS is naught (zero), because the communication has to be done anyway. But everyone is happy paying a few cents of an euro for each message sent, without realising that at the end of the year, the phone company is getting most of their profit from your SMSs. (for me, with an average of a couple of SMSs per day, amounts to about a 100 Euro a year).

Anyway, just in case there's anyone still reading, and to finally stop rambling: the thing I wanted to share was my disappointment on realising how little criticism we apply sometimes when purchasing items and services, which lead to big inefficiencies (meaning that we have to pay dear for things that are actually very cheap), only because we are sometimes too lazy to look around and punish those who overcharge us by the simple method of shopping elsewhere.

'Voila'. That's all folks. I've finished.

14th of July in Paris

It's the middle of the summer... The quicksilver in the thermometer only climbs and climbs, and of course when a three day weekend shows up to celebrate some French national day or something like that ( ;-) ) people leave Paris like if the plague had broken loose in the city.

Surprisingly though, when we headed to the Champs de Mars, to enjoy the firework display that was about to be launched from the Eiffel Tower, we found out that everybody had come back to the city and was standing there, all 20 millions of them (and a few tourists as well, filling the spaces). In any case, the fireworks were really astonishing (as you can see in the picture), and the crowd not too annoying (Big thanks to Alexey for the excellent picture of he fireworks).

The other traditional event that marks the festivity is the usual military parade in the Champs Elisees on the morning of that same day. Of course I missed it, I had much more exciting and intellectually satisfying things to do, like helping a friend to move out from her flat, than waste my time watching a few infantry companies, tanks and jet fighters pass by, but I could not avoid hearing about it on the radio. And it made me start wondering...

I do sort of understand that in the middle ages, as may be a century ago, the influence and power of a nation was defined almost exclusively by its diplomatic influence, backed of course by military power, and therefore those parades were the perfect occasion to show (off) to everyone who would care to watch, how disciplined, powerful, and frightening, the armed forces of that country were. In fact, most of the times, the aim of the exercise would not only be to fill with pride the citizens of that proud and powerful nation, but also to fill with awe and respect (call it fear), the representatives, ambassadors and other visitors of foreign countries.

But nowadays, after two world wars and the cold war period, someone with a naive mind like mine would think that for most cases, in this globalised world of today, the influence that our nations are able to exert would not be a reflection of such imperialist and primitive ways, but based instead on economic prowess and human, technological and scientific development.

After reflecting on that, and on the obsolescence of those military parades for a few days, I can only think that the only reason to keep those parades is to justify the expenditure on defense but specially because they have become a tradition the logic of which no one has yet seriously dared to contest.

On the other hand, I do have to admit that a bunch of soldiers parading in their 'Sunday' uniforms, some rumbling tanks that are too heavy for the pavement of the city, and a few noisy jet fighters and helicopters, are surely more colorful to watch than the equivalent amount of scientists, businessmen and engineers.

Again at the Paris Jazz Festival

Again and again we keep going to the Paris Jazz Festival, but we cannot help it. Music is usually brilliant, and the surroundings gorgeous, and even if you are not interested at all in the music, you can always sit on the grass and enjoy the sunny and hot weather.




Highly enjoyable was the blues weekend, with the concerts of Patrick Verbeke Quintet and Jean Jacques Milteau Quintet, that included one of the best guitar players I've listened to recently. But not only that, at first all of us had the impression that the singer in the band of Jean Jacques Milteau had a rather soft voice for a blues singer.... until she stopped holding herself, stepped aside from the microphone and started singing with her full voice!! (and probably a few people at the end of the open concert hall were projected into the lake behind!!). Another CD to order from Amazon...




On the following weekend the concerts might not have been that interesting, but the weather and the park was, so... we had a nice picnic with pleasant jazz background music.

B-)

"Paris, je t'aime"...

"... le film evenement de la saison". Or, the film-event of the season, as the publicity of the film descrives it. And at least in terms of the people that have colaborated to the realisation of the film, it does seem to be a big event, or the cinematographic version of a jam session at least.

 

Over 20 directors and scriptwriters and scores of well known actors and actresses have colaborated to create this great jamboree of short stories, of all different sorts, shapes and colors. Well, not all shapes, they all had to fit in the two hours of film, which in the end made that some of the stories were overtly simple, a bit of a cliche. But well done cliches can still be very enjoyable, and many of these stories are. There are all sorts of situations, always revolving around love and Paris. Sometimes classic romantic love, sometimes the sadness of a lost chance, the longing for a deceased loved one, the pain of breaking, the memories of a past love, misunderstandings in the metro of paris, or even the lust for blood and ethernal love.

 

Not all the short films are of the same quality, or may be it will more accurate to say that not all short films will appeal equally to all audiences (I do personaly reckon that some of the stories could have been dropped and allow some others to be developed in more depth; but of course, i never liked mimes... ;-)). It would be very hard to choose one of the stories, but I specially enjoyed the situation devised by the Coen brothers in 'Tuileries', the interpretation of Juliette Binochein 'Place des Victoires', the story 'Faubourg Saint-Denis' with Nicole Portman and Melchior Beslon, and the story that closes the film, '14eme arrondissement'. I would say, that may be I might not have liked some of the stories on their own, but i did enjoy the film as a whole (even as I was a bit sceptic about it beforehand), and specially I found some of the stories specially moving, or hilarious, or sad... From my point of view, a good film.

 

 

 

Having lunch with four charming tourists from Spain...

Paris Jazz Festival 2006

Paris has a very special relationship with Jazz. It was here, in the quartier of Saint Germain des Pres, after the Second World War, that Jazz music landed in the continent. Jazz not only stayed here, but over the years completely new styles have been created in these caveaus.

In any case, it's not going to be me who starts rambling about the history of Jazz in Europe, so I'll get to the point and introduce a couple of pictures taken las Sunday in the Parc Floral (the botanic garden), where the jazz festival is held during the months of June and July.

These are Mina Agossi and Curtis Stigers & his trio, all of them excellent artists, but my favourite band so far is definitely the one composed by Petra Magoni and Ferrucio Spinetti, that played on Saturday the 10th.

Good friends visiting Paris

Summer weather has finally arrived to Paris (well, more or less), and with it, the long days that are so suitable for a pleasant stroll in the city.

And how could it not be pleasant with my good old friends coming to visit and to wander together in this nice city?

Thanks Florence, Evelina, Marc, Didier and Daniel for your visit, and to help me to explore and discover Paris!!

:-)

Easter visit to Belgium, meeting many friends from LLN. In the pictures having coffee in Brussels with Marc, Didier, Boriss and Sebas, and beer and crepes in LLN with Marc and Didier (again) and Arnaud. :-)

Easter visit to Belgium, meeting many friends from LLN. In the pictures having coffee in Brussels with Marc, Didier, Boriss and Sebas, and beer and crepes in LLN with Marc and Didier (again) and Arnaud. :-)

Remember, remember, the 5th of November...

"V for vendetta": The graphic novel (1982-1985) and film (2005):

The last film produced by the Wachowski brothers is again a piece of work worth of the authors of Matrix (as opposed to the two improvised sequels of such film). It has to be said that much of the merit should undoubtedly go to the graphic novel by Allan Moore in which the film is based. However, the screenplay is a faithful adaptation of the story, and the film is excellently directed. The action occurs without leaving time to wander off. Obviously, there are parts of the graphic novel missing (the film is already over two hours long), but the main aspects of the story are there, although it might sometimes require a bit of extra attention to get some details.

"V for vendetta" was written by Allan Moore after the shift to the right of British opinion that brought to the power the Tories and Margaret Thatcher. In the graphic novel, Moore presents a British society subjugated by a extreme-right-wing government, oppressing and controlling its citizens in the process of 'protecting' them from the disastrous state of chaos that ravages the rest of the world (there are continuous references to the civil war and famine in what had been the US, not to speak of other countries). Television offers the usual share of totalitarian state propaganda and hatred against foreigners, 'deviants', and 'terrorists; there are night curfews, the state-police are free to harass and take advantage of citizens... Until someone dressed like a Shakespeare contemporary and wearing a smiling mask, starts getting the attention of the government and the population by performing daring terrorist attacks. The story shows the progress of the vengeance of such character and his terror campaign to bring down the government, and his attempts to wake up the rest of the citizenship from their sheepish compliance.

Given the appalling outcome of previous attempts to adapt Allan Moore novels into the big screen, I was pleasantly surprised that finally this time the film contains all the grim view from the original novel and not only the fancy characters or the surface story. It is specially refreshing in these times of ultra-mild Hollywood cinema, where the most anti-social activity of villains is to smoke, that the script keeps the original darkness, sometimes pessimism, and specially that it is uninhibited by political correctness conventions. "V" is a hero, but in more ways than one is an evil hero. He pretends to save British society from its apathy in front of a tyrannic government, and any mean is acceptable to gain that end. During the process he also takes revenge on those who wrong-did him and many others in the covert chemical and bacteriological research centers of the government. Quoting from the film "What they did was monstrous, (...) and they created a monster".

The story contains some weak points, specially how a lone man could build single-handedly the infrastructure to perform those daring terror attacks, but that could be taken as a literary licence (this being a story originally addressed to teenagers and young adults), being that the important message is not the 'how', but the 'what' and 'why' and more important still, the 'to what end'. I guess another quote that would summarise the moral of the story comes from close to the end of the film "(...) because behind this mask there's an Idea, and Ideas are bullet-proof".

Game review: "Niagara"

Niagara is a board game that is easy to play, and really fast to start, but can be lots of fun. The board is assembled on top of the box of the game, and it is shaped as a river, with, surprise, surprise, a waterfall at one end.

Each player has a couple of canoes and the aim of the game is to row up and down the river collecting a number of gems from various locations (or steal them from other players canoes). Players move their boats by playing some cards with movement scores on them.

The quirk of the game is that, once all the players have done their moves, the natural flow of the river occurs by shifting the different places along the river a number of positions downriver, taking the canoes with them. Of course, if a canoe is pushed beyond the edge of the waterfall... well, the player will have to pay one of his/her hard earned gems get a new one.

Have fun!!

Reception at the Hôtel de Ville, Paris

Last evening I had the pleasure to attend the reception organised by the Mairie de Paris and the BACE (Bureau d'Accueil des Chercheurs Etrangers) that was held at the Hôtel de Ville.

 

This type of event has surelly the political intention to show the effort that the City of Paris is doing to attract good foreign researchers in all fields (this is a time when everybody, and all administrations specially, agree that the support for research in very much needed, but unfortunatelly, not all the agents involved are actually doing all they could do about it). At least in this case, they seem to be doing their bit, and at least, they are showing it in style.

 

Hence, I found nicelly rewarding to be invited to a reception in such a luxurious environtment as the Hôtel de Ville, with champaign and canapes, life background music and have the chance to meet other people in the same professional situation, from all over the world, and by chance, even from a neighbouring village to my own!!

 

I'll be looking forward coming events like this one... ;-)

Film: "Renaissance" (2006)

Yesterday I went to see the last film by Christian Volckman, "Renaissance". I didn't know anything about the film beforehand. Let's say I like sci-fi and animation films, and I was appealed by the poster of the film and the little bit of information you get in the magazine of the cinema where it was shown.

I have to say that I was very impressed by the look and general design of the film. Everything is done in black and white (not just as opposite to *color*, but pure and plain *black and *white*). The image and design of Paris in mid 21st Century is amazing, combining the magic of the city,
with its characteristic architectural style, with a *future-retro* athmosphere mixing structures on the style of the Eiffel tower, and ultra-modern buildings, with some influences from even "Metropolis".

The story itself has a promising beginning, but after a while it becomes rather topical of this genre of films, and although it's still enjoyable to watch it becomes a bit dull and previsible at some points.

In a nutshell, I'd say that it's a film with brilliant image design, (and special effects), but the story it tells, without being bad, could have been much better.

Visit to Chartres Cathedral

A couple of weeks ago, and in spite of the cold and snowy weather, we decided to go to Chartres (about a 100km south of Paris) and visit one of the greatest gothic-(and Romanesque) cathedrals in France.

The present cathedral was finished in the early 13th century (1223) after a fire had partly destroyed the previous Romanesque one (the south tower and the façade are what remains of thRomanesqueee cathedral). During the Revolution it was decided that such a monument should be not only vandalised, but demolished, but of course, such enterprise had to be carefully planned and a commission was set to see to it. Fortunately, the discussions of the commission took so long that they never managed to finish the demolition plans, and the cathedral survived.

Our visit started by a short walk around the medieval quarters of Chartres, and by checking the schedule of guided tours to the cathedral. As it was freezing, we had almost two hours to the guided tour, and it was about the right time, we decided to go for lunch to one of the 'bistro' recommended in out tourist-guide. What we didn't know was that that precise weekend Chartres was celebrating the anniversary of the crowning of Henry the 4th (the only French King crowned here... the other ones were crowned at Reims), and all restaurants were very busy, serving the same menu (it seems that Henry the 4th was known to like a type of chicken soup). The problem with that was that it took about 3 hours to have the four courses (skipping coffee), so we missed by about 1 hour the guided tour we wanted to take. Anyway, it was fun, and the food was really excellent (I should include the menu on the blog).

Anyway, finally we made it to the cathedral, and we were astonished by it. We were late to take the guided tour to the cathedral, but just in time to the one of its crypt, which contains some of the most interesting aspects of the visit. To start with, the hill where the cathedral stands was considered by the druids to be a site of great power, and it had been used for a long time for their rituals. It is possible to see on the side of thcryptpt a round well with a square bottom, with its wallperfectlyty oriented to the cardinal points, that was used in those times for some rituals. Thcryptpt holds the Sancta Camisia, a tunic that was supposed to belong to the Virgin Mary, brought back from thcrusadeses, and donated to the Cathedral by Charlemagne. In the same chapel of the crypt there is the reproduction (the original was lost in a fire), of the Virgin of the Underworld (named like that in the Spanish and French versions of the brochure of the visit, but not in the English translation), a famous Black Virgin. The term Black Virgin refers to those images of a woman with child, that although nowadays are revered as images of the Virgin, they were possibly images of early goddesses previous to Christian influence.

The crypt itself was the last stage of the pilgrimage to Chartres. Pilgrims entered it by the South Tower (the old one, symbolising the Old Testament), and walked all the circa 130m of the corridor that is the crypt, raising into the main nave of the church, and into the light, by the North Tower, which symbolises the New Testament.

On the floor of the nave of the upper church there's a labyrinth (unfortunately mostly hidden by chairs and benches), which was also a symbolic representation of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Hoping for beginner's luck...

OK, this is a first try to build a blog, and this is the first post. :-P

Well, let's get to it: The aim of this blog is to tell friends, family and acquaintances about the weekend activities, and the experience in general of living in the banlieue of Paris. There will be a lot about touristy outings, visits to museums, jazz concerts and parties, but also about the culture shock of moving to and settling in France.

Of course it has taken a loooong time till I've made my mind (and found the time) to start writing this blog, so there's a huge backlog of events and ideas that I'll eventually include on it. One of the main issues was in which language should it be written. I don't discard that I might be swapping between English, Spanish, Catalan and (rather poor) French, may be totally at random, but at the moment the thing will start in English.

Anyway... I should stop rambling now, and let you explore the rest of the blog (as soon as there's sthg to explore!!). Enjoy!!