Maybe There's Something to This....

Eastern Medicine in Effect
After getting two doses of accupuncture to the face in Singapore last month, I thought my experiment in Eastern medicine was over. Not exactly. The accupuncturist, who is a doctor in her world, prescribed me some herbs to take. Every day I have to take 5 of these little balls.

As well as two each of these tablets. They smell like various things: wet leaves in the fall, brown sugar, moldy graham crackers.... But truth be told, I have not even had an inkling of a sinus issue since I've been taking them. The real experiment is just beginning. If I continue to be sinus-issue-free in NY, in Syracuse, over months and months then I will actually believe they are working.

Failing, Yet Again....

Doh!
Here is Pingle's "why did you procrastinate so long to buy the orange juice squeezer" look. The facts are these: she and I agreed I should get one, I procrastinated, then finally went to a store in Paris to buy one. I found the one I wanted, but this being Paris, there were no sales people to help me and you could only buy one from the salesperson of that area. I'm sure they were outside smoking or drinking wine in a nearby cafe or having a quickie with there "5-7" (I'll explain later what that is.) So, she got here and nope, I didn't have one.

Today I went to a different store and found it. We immediately assembled it and put it to work on some Spanish oranges. It was pretty delicious and only cost about 2 Euros as opposed to 12 Euros at a cafe. It even has a "controleur de pulpe", which I am sure you can translate.

After a glass of OJ, pingle was back to her smiley self - see below.

Puffin is Back in Paris

She Arrived this Morning
My partner in crime is back on the Paris scene, thank goodness! Seems like I haven't seen her in ages but I think it's only been a few weeks. Amazing how that works. We'll be here about a week and then it's back to Brooklyn for a few days, followed by Syracuse for a few days and then back to Paris (booooooo.)

Street Art is Back....

Ok, It Never Really Left
Here is a rather racy mural in the 11th, about 100 feet from my office in La Bastille. Only in Paris! Some kids from the nearby school probably scribbled in the name "Zidane" and the number 9. He is one of the stars of French soccer.

Here's a good one stenciled onto a street in the 3rd. Perfect for my coming trip to NY in one week.

I assume these guys are responsible....?

Here is Why Work Sucks....

In a Big Way.....
As you know, I work for an advertising agency. The business is changing - slowly moving onto the web and out of print. That being said, what did we do? We went out and purchased a financial software that is oriented to manufacturers. Our job is to adapt it to our business. I always knew we were screwed because of this but it became crystal clear during training this week. All of the talk and examples and verbiage in the system relates to "raw materials" and "plants" and receipt and delivery of goods. Here is a shot of my notes, a weak attempt to map some terms to our world. We are screwed........

A Night at the Movies

Putting a Poor Grasp of Languages to the Test
Tonight, on a whim, I went to the movies to see the latest Almodovar film called "Etreintes Brisees." I imagine it will be called Broken Embraces when it hits the States, if it hasn't already. This was a first for me - watching a film in Spanish that was subtitled in French. In other words, I couldn't cheat. It put all 22 of my neurons on overdrive.

As you can imagine, my Spanish is pretty rusty and I only speak cafe French. At times I understood the Spanish perfectly and looked at the French subtitles when I didn't. I can't say that reading French while listening to Spanish while also trying to keep an eye on the action worked all that well. When Penelope Cruz was topless I lost track of everything. I'm pretty sure I caught all the major plot lines and important dialogue but until I watch it with English subtitles, I really won't know, will I?

Walking in the 11th

Looking for Nothing in Particular
I took a long walk this morning in the 11th (where I work) to familiarize myself with the area. I walked over from my neighborhood in the 3rd and after about an hr of walking I saw some interesting street art. Pret a porter means "ready to wear." It portrays the best way for a man to see the city - but I didn't have Ping-Ping here to carry me.....

I found a cupcake store that some commenters recommended to me. I wrote it up here. On my way back from cupcakes and coffee I stumbled into an interesting park. It was small - perhaps 40 yards square. What was fascinating about it was the density of the greenery and the fact that there were only a few walkways across it.

One enjoys the park from the outer ring or by walking through one of the walkways. About 90% of it was inaccesible. I cannot imagine this being allowed in NYC - people would be up in arms. I sat on a bench and enjoyed the fragrances and quiet.

Here's an overhead shot from Google maps.

I finished the day off by playing 9 holes of golf with Laurent and two of his buddies: Cyrille and Tomas. We played in a small suburb to the west of Paris called St Cloud (pronounced "san cloo".) The course was inside a racehorse track - which was pretty amazing. I didn't have my camera with me, next time. We teed off at 6pm and were done about 8:30pm and then had a few beers. That was when I experienced the biggest culture shock of all. When we were saying our goodbyes, the fellas gave me a kiss on each cheek. Yep, even the men do that here if they are close friends. Caught me off guard. I guess that means they like me? Oh boy......

The Kickoff Party

At Least the View Was Good
After work today we had an official kick-off party for the project. It was the usual rah-rah "we're a team, let's go get em" horseshit that even a high-school football player wouldn't fall for. It was held on the terrace of our headquarters, which are on the Champs Elysees near the Arc de Triomphe. It's an impressive set-up: a roof garden on top of the building. That's the Arc in the background.

From the south side of the terrace, you get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. I really like that the've got pine trees growing on the roof, 7 stories up.

Here's a clear shot of the Arc, with La Defense in the background. I sure don't miss La Defense at all. We now work in La Bastille, a much hipper, cooler, lively hood.

Here's a shot looking west back towards my neighborhood in the 3rd.

Other Things I Detest....

About Paris
The ridiculously overpriced, expensiveness of everything. There are only two cheap things in Paris: bread and wine. Everything else is ridiculous. Case in point, the lunch of assorted cold cuts and cheese with a side of cabbage: $75. Or, let's say, the cup of coffee for $8. Or, how about the bagel and cream cheese for about $7. Yes, I am on an expense account, yes, I am reimbursed for everything. Still - it is ridiculous.

The weather. Second in horrendousness only to Wales in terms of places I've lived. You need to have the following with you at all times: a sweater, sunglasses, rain gear, umbrella, shorts. The weather starts out one way, then changes for the worse, then better, then worse. I stopped looking at the forecast - it is worthless.

Coming soon - even more things I hate about this place....

Forest Golf

No Better Way to Spend a Sunday
My co-worker Laurent is a golfer. He invited me out with his buddies to play at a course about 25 miles south of Paris. I took the train to his apartment and then we drove to the course. Along the way we got a bit lost so we arrived just in time to change our shoes and run to the first tee. The course is literally carved out of a forest - it was super-duper tight. It was also hilly, many shots to the green were uphill. Here is a shot of the guys: Tomas is swinging, Bruno is in the foreground, followed by Laurent and Cyril.

Just about every tee looked like this. You had to hit out into the unknown, trees packed along each side of the fairway. Laurent's buddies were fun. You could tell they like to tease each other and talk a lot of crap. I also got the sense that they wanted to beat the "American." Bruno is pretty good - we battled to a tie on many of the holes.

Look how narrow this tee shot is. Che, it's even narrower and tougher than the forest course in the Cuse, remember that one? We walked - apparently it's very rare to drive a cart in Paris. The pace was good, there was almost nobody there. I played kinda up and down and finished with a 90. I didn't care - I was so thankful to be out there. This should make me smile the whole week..... (I think.)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Invitation Only
There's only one black man that they shut down the city for and it ain't Eddie Murphy.

I was out buying my morning bread (yes, I am trying to fit in) and was amazed to see that a major street like rue Beabourg is shut to traffic. Pres O is in town to hang out with Sarkozy. I know they cannot be worried about French terrorists - they're still sleeping at 9am.....

Five Things I Hate...

About Paris....
These are in no particular order.....

Having to pack your own groceries. So, I gotta pick em out, carry em around in a basket, pay for em AND pack them in a bag? Seems to me this may be one of those ways to not have too many employees....

Smokers. I hate them in all countries, not just France. But France seems to have more of them than any country I've been to. Thank goodness they have to smoke outside now.

Dog shit on the sidewalks. It is everywhere and if you aren't on the watch for it, it will get you. Compared to NY, not so many people clean up after their mutts here.

Sleepy, empty streets in the morning. Nobody gets up early and if they do, they take their sweet-ass time getting to work. This means, of course, that I don't have to get to work early, which is nice. But imagine, it's a Saturday, you sleep in late, walk slowly to the newspaper stand, arrive at 10am and the goddamn place is STILL not open yet....

The slow pace of just about everything. Especially when you go to eat at a restaurant. It is truly painful sometimes. Even fast food is slow. I went to get a panini at a sandwich spot yesterday. Nobody was there but me. I ordered and then watched the guy build it one molecule at a time and then press it in a panini press for 7 minutes. 20 minutes later he slowly handed it to me and it took him another 4 minutes to make change. I wanted to beat him with the sandwich....

Working on the Game....

Paris Style.....
After work today I went to hit some golf balls at the range. Cool thing is, this range is in the middle of a turf horse track. You have to walk cross the track into the center to reach the range. I stopped half-way across the track and took a shot looking up the home stretch. That is a hedge running across the track and lemme tell ya, it is eye-level - really high. I cannot imagine being on a horse going 40 miles an hr and going over that hedge.

Here is a similar shot but from the inside rail. On the inner portion of the track there is a water hazard right beneath the hedge - even scarier.

Here's a shot looking at the stands from inside the track. Just to the left of where I am standing is the range.

The range itself is pretty good. There are two hitting stalls on either side of this field. There is also a small area where you can work on your short game. This place will be my saving grace - I plan to go 2-3 times a week. It was funny to watch Parisians hitting golf balls. Almost all of them were over-dressed, fancy-style, as they seem to always do. Many of them were in suits, probably came straight from work, jacket off, tie off, swinging away in their dress shirts.

Here's a shot of the track from above. If you look in the lower part of the track you can see a small oval field - which is the range. The track is part of a large park on the west side of Paris called the Bois de Bolougne. Roland Garros is about 200 yards away and since the French Open is going on right now, the crowds were pretty thick coming out of the subway.

Back to the Third World

Paris, That Is...
I know, I know - I'm overdoing it by calling Paris a third world city. But, really, am I? So, today was the first day in our "new" offices. Of course, that just means "new to us", not new as in newly constructed. The office/tech people knew we were arriving today to begin a month of training. Which means of course that nothing was ready. See the cables hanging from the ceiling? Yeah, well, it's hard to do training with no internet access.... Have another coffee or three - we'll be starting training kinda late today.....

They tell me that the building was a bank in a former life. It has a giant vault in the basement which is where we have all of our European servers. Something tells me the word "vault" is a misnomer too. I picture a cage with a bunch of dusty computers stacked on top of each other. The middle of our floor has a giant glass roof, which looks really cool. Of course, it only looks cool....

The poor people that work under that roof have resorted to putting up cafe umbrellas over their desks to reduce the heat and glare. Yes, this photo is a shot of the INSIDE of the building. They tell me that summer is great - apparently they all wear coats and gloves in the winter because it is absolutely freezing.

We have an "open plan" which is French for "a bunch of desks arranged in a room with no separation or walls." See the open window? Yeah, well that is our air conditioning. Yep, we don't have any air conditioning at all. Gotta love it. Our company is listed in the French CAC - the equivalent of the Dow 30. Hard to believe, ain't it?

Housing Styles

They're Plenty Varied
A lot has changed in Singapore in the past 60 years with regards to housing. In just one generation they went from two-story shophouses to ultra-modern skyscraper condos. You can still find the shophouses in certain sections of Singapore. The ones below are in Chinatown.

These are downtown on Telok Ayer St - which is the street Ping-Ping works on. I like shutters on these.

What's nice about the shophouse setup is the built-in covered sidewalks underneath the second floors. This comes in handy when you are trying to avoid the sun or the rain.

Around 1960 or so, the government started building high-rise apartments due to land scarcity. I can say, without hesitation, that the great majority of these are extremely ugly cement block monstrosities. They are fine on the inside - I am referring to their exterior. This government housing is referred to "HDB flats", which stands for Housing and Development Board. About 80-90% of Singaporeans live in HDB flats. These are owned, not rented, leading to a home ownership of close to 90%. There are rules however - you have to be married to own one or if single, you cannot own one until you reach 35 years of age. Foreigners cannot own HDB flats.

As the economy started to hum, the government began to auction off land to private developers who built much nicer looking high-rise condos. These are available for purchase by anyone, including foreigners, so they tend to be pricier.

Here's a high-rise condo that is next-door to Ping-Ping's mom's building. Many of the recent condos have large balconies and are painted in watercolors. I think these are what gave me the first impression of Singapore being a greener, hotter Miami.

In some neighborhoods, you get the juxtaposition of old and new which can be jarring. A good example is Chinatown. In the foreground are colorful shophouses, with an HDB flat peeking above them and on the horizon are some towering private condos under construction.