Alan R blogs

According to this article, there are now high school varsity cricket teams in the U.S.!

According to the BBC, the debt of Indian small farmers will be forgiven. This makes me wonder whether these guys below might not have won a match recently:



Update: Apparently it was a good day for Indian cricketers across the board yesterday. Their Under-19's won the world championship, and the big boys beat Australia in the first final match of the ODI tri-series.

The Sous-Préfecture. Haven't I ranted enough about it already? No! Every time I go there I'm amazed at how it's worse than the last time.

A little background: Every year I need to renew my residency card. I began the latest round of renewal 7 months ago, and I still haven't gotten the card. Even though it takes them at least 4 months to get the card ready, they can only authorize me to work for a 3-month period until I get the card. So last week I realized I needed 1 minute of a bureaucrat's time to get the renewal.

The system I'd grown accustomed to at the sous-pref was the following: You show up, press a button to get a number, and then wait an hour or two until your number is called at one of the windows for foreigners.

Last week I went there (which, by the way, is roughly a half-hour trip each way for me on foot and by public transit), and the machine would not give me a ticket. I went to the windows, and they were all closed. There were paper notices everywhere, full of fine print, but no coherent explanation of why things were closed. I went to the driver's license department across the way, because there was an open window there, with a woman doing some paperwork while one French guy was waiting for her to stop ignoring him. I asked her, in French, whether the windows for foreigners were just temporarily closed or if it was for the whole day, and she replied in an unpleasant tone that it had nothing to do with her and I should go talk to them ("them" being the people who were not there). The French guy waiting for his license overheard the conversation, said one word, in English: "Welcome." I laughed out loud. Then I went to the welcome desk, where there was no one, but there was a notice that certain activities happened there 4 days a week between 10 and noon and between 2:00 pm and 3:30 pm.

So on Monday I came back at 10:30 in the morning to find that there was no one at the welcome desk except a growing crowd of people. The ticket machine was out of paper, and we waited 20 minutes for the welcome desk lady to bring new paper. That took care of everybody but me, since the machine no longer gives tickets for foreigners, but with an aggressive interrogation I was able to get the welcome desk lady to tell me what the new system is: Foreigners can only get tickets at 9:00 a.m. She also confirmed that there was no written notice anywhere about this change.

So yesterday I came back at 9:00 a.m. (despite the fact that I had caught a nasty cold over the weekend - I start a new job next week and needed to get this done), and despite some cold, rainy weather, there was a line of people stretching around the building. There were 81 people ahead of me, and they had a police officer to keep order.

Having no idea how long it would take for them to process the 81 people ahead of me, and given that there would be no possibility to get another ticket if I missed my call, I decided to camp out there with a book. Around noon I went out to get some food and then came back. In early afternoon some woman lost it and had to be escorted away, sobbing, by 4 cops. A bit before 3:30, I got my minute of bureaucrat time, and I'm eligible to work until late May. After 6 and a half hours, I could go home.

So the final score is 10 hours of my life wasted for 1 minute of a bureaucrat's time. The next stat to look for is whether I will get the convocation for my new card more than 6 months before the card expires.

Here's a photo I took a couple weeks ago from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

If things have seemed too quiet here on this blog, it's because over the past 4 months or so I've been busy dealing with a number of events which I can't really share with people. To make matters worse, this week I lost maybe 1/3 of my potential readership when my father passed away unexpectedly. I will miss him.

I'm very pleased about France's new smoking ban, but I haven't really had a chance to take advantage of it yet. I've had a tendency to avoid restaurants and bars where people smoke, and I've been struggling to get over a nasty cold since before the ban took place. But things are changing, indoors, at least. Outdoors I'm still amazed that people can walk at a fast pace while smoking. Or at least trailing smoke for others to breathe. Back in California, I was accustomed to people neither walking nor smoking, so the combination of the two seems extraordinary to me. It is commonplace in France, though. As is smoking outside around people who are standing in line. If I could replace France's current anti-smoking law with a different one I'd let the smokers have their polluted little bars in exchange for clearing them away from places where I have to stand in line.

In other news, the DVD of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix finally came out this week in France. I watched it today, and found it well done, and almost as much fun as the inane and yet brilliant YouTube-based copyright violation known as "Wizard People". I highly recommend listening to all 35 "chapters" if you have even a passing familiarity with Harry Potter. I had to get a few chapters into it to begin appreciating it, as it is beyond amateurish, but it ultimately made me laugh and at the same time view the Harry Potter movies with a slightly different perspective.

This news article in French left me stunned. It says that this New Year's eve was "relatively calm" in France. It goes on to specify that only 372 vehicles were burned that night, down 6.72% from the 397 burned on New Year's Eve the previous year. It goes on to state that of the 372 burned, only 273 were burned "voluntarily", and the other 99 simply caught fire because they were next to cars that were lit on fire. Well, that's reassuring...

Imagine if, in the U.S., which has 5 times the population of France, 372 cars were burned in one night. How would the news networks react? How would politicians react? Food for thought. Here in France this article was the only news I found relating to that night's car-burning festivities.

One thing which occurred to me is that people who don't have or need cars are probably a lot more relaxed about the idea of people's cars being set on fire. It also makes me wonder about the reporting that was done on the car-burning frenzy of 2005, which made headlines around the world.

There were a lot of memorable phrases uttered in 2007, especially in the U.S.

Which of the following is your pick for phrase of the year?

I have a wide stance.
-Senator Larry Craig (R-ID)

Don't let nobody out this room. Mother (bleep)!
-O.J. Simpson

Don't Tase me, bro!
-Andrew Meyer

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.
-Lauren Upton (Miss Teen USA candidate)

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator. An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator.... these are NOT three separate devices!
-Steve Jobs

Apparently he had more than just water to drink.
-Eric Boever (Belgian journalist, referring to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's news conference with Vladimir Putin)

I looked like a fat pig.
-Britney Spears

In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country.
-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

You may have noticed that this blog hasn't been updated in a while. In solidarity with striking entertainment workers in the U.S., I've decided not to write anything interesting. And in solidarity with striking French transportation workers, I've decided not to go anywhere interesting, either. Actually, they kind of decided that one for me.

Starting tomorrow night there will be a massive transit strike here - probably the biggest since 1995. I will probably walk to work, but not everyone has that option.

Sometimes an internet marketing event takes on a life of its own and becomes a headache to the marketers. This week there was a fine example of this in the U.S., but at the same time there was (and still is) one for the ages in France. Hasbro in France decided to release a new edition of Monopoly based on French cities rather than streets of Paris (as in the existing edition) or Atlantic City (the original version). Someone in their marketing department had the bright idea of determining the cities used by a poll on the internet, with the cities getting the most votes to occupy squares with the highest monetary value.

A week or so ago they decided to stop showing the current results. The last posted results can be found here.

A couple of observations about the results: 1) France's 2 largest cities - Paris and Marseille - did not make the list at all. 2) The big winner (the equivalent of Boardwalk in the original game - the highest-priced square) seems to be the tiny village of Montcuq. What's so special about this tiny town? Well, it's the name, which in French sounds a lot like "mon cul", which means "my ass", and there was a grassroots campaign in support of it. The final results won't be announced until next month, but something tells me that if you land on my ass it will cost you a lot of money.

France's World Cup dream was literally ripped from their hands last night, but it was still a memorable evening full of energy and excitement. The crowds near the Eiffel Tower were huge and excited. I decided to go out before the match to capture some of the atmosphere.

First I went to "RugbyTown", where there was a lot of drinking going on, and a lot of noise considering that it was more than an hour before the match. At one point the French were all chanting "Allez les Bleues" ("Go Blues"), and the English were singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". A lot of patriotism was on display.







Then I made my way to le Champ de Mars - the big open area on the other side of the Eiffel Tower. On the way, I got a good look at the tower itself.








Eventually I reached the big video screen. Here's the back of it, behind the equipment truck and news vans from various networks.



On the other side were people as far as the eye could see, with more and more gathering there each minute.

The BBC has a nice blog entry about yesterday's rugby festivities in Paris, but I've already moved on to the next major upset to celebrate. I was pleasantly shocked to read that Stanford has beaten mighty USC in football. I say "read" because I have been unable to find any video highlights online on the usual sports sites that have college football clips. One wonders whether the likelihood of anything other than a crushing USC victory was considered so great that no one even bothered to bring a TV camera. One of the pluses of being in France last year was not having to see the weekly pounding that the team I'd followed since age 6 was suffering last year. This year things seem to be still a bit ugly, but yesterday was a massive sign of recovery, and as a bonus I understand the LSJUMB has emerged from rehab this season.

Well, we've had a bit of honking tonight. It's not as much as there was for France's World Cup run in soccer, but France is going to the semifinals of the Rugby World Cup! And it's kind of a surprise, because history seemed against them. New Zealand was the favorite to win the whole tournament, and they had defeated France the last 7 times the two teams played, and they had never failed to make it to the semifinals before. It didn't help either that it was the only quarterfinal match not played in France (it was played across the Channel in Wales). On the plus side for France, the All Blacks had not really faced a tough competitor in the tournament. The best teams they had faced in their group chose not to use their best players against New Zealand, focusing instead on assuring second place in the group.

I haven't had time to write anything interesting. This is the real nose-to-the-grindstone season for all of France, and I've not been an exception to this.

There are a few things to report:

- I received a small package from the UK which arrived in just 9 days. That's cause for celebration, given the way the French post office works.

- Champion has started selling grocery bags for 3 centimes each. They're better bags than the ones I used to fight about, and I see this as progress, though it makes it hard to justify the way they hassled me with their environmental message.

- The rugby continues here. There was a match last night in Paris, which snarled traffic. It looks like France will probably get to the quarterfinals.

- It's frickin' cold here, and our heating system has not kicked in yet. I think I'm fighting off a mild cold, too.

- I'm going to miss my 20th high school reunion. Time keeps on slippin' into the future...

Interesting article about cricket on Microsoft's Redmond Campus.

My favorite quotes:

"There are probably more women playing cricket here than in all of India."

On the World Cup: "I can tell you Microsoft saved a lot of work hours because India got knocked out early."

Well, the big story here in France is the Rugby World Cup - a tournament featuring both my country of origin (the semi-amateur "Eagles" of the USA) and my country of residence , which is also the host country. So far team USA is still on track towards its objective (which is to reach the quarter finals... in 2011 - this is their documented objective). They actually played reasonably well today in a 28-10 defeat by England. The French, on the other hand, have already fallen behind their much loftier ambitions by losing a tense opening match to Argentina. Now, on only the second day of a 6-week tournament, everyone expects New Zealand (who slaughtered Italy 76-12 in their opening match today) to win it all.

Around here there was a lot of interest in the rugby before France lost to Argentina. I'm not sure whether the interest will continue now, but France still has a chance to advance out of their group.

The rugby is fun to watch, but I've been more focused on listening to cricket. England just won an exciting 7-match series against India 4-3, with a couple of the matches going down to the wire. Next week there's the first-ever World 20/20 (a sort of world cup with cricket matches that only last about 3 hours) in South Africa.

There's also a France-Italy soccer match going on as I type this, so it's definitely a busy period for sports fans.

I've slowly started returning to Champion from time to time in the aftermath of the big showdown in the Spring. They've now changed their policy from grocery-bag fascism to non-grocery-bag-fascism. Basically, in order to feel that they're helping the environment, they no longer give out any grocery bags to anyone (although they do sell large re-usable bags). I actually like this policy better, because I know exactly what to expect when I go there. I have a hard-won collection of old bags at work, and if I go there, I'll bring a bag and only buy a few things (and then use the bag as a trash bag for lunch). They would make a lot more money from me if they did give bags out, and I still question whether this policy actually does any good for the environment, but now I have no moral objection to going there to pick up a sandwich for lunch - at least until my collection of bags runs out.