My Generation…

One of the coolest videos I’ve seen in a long time.

This is how it’s done…

A few weeks ago, an article drawing from a press release from PEER ran on skeptic.com that stated (I paraphrase here) that the US Park Service at the Grand Canyon Park Service Rangers were NOT allowed to discuss the actual age of the Grand Canyon due to pressure from the Bush Administration. I encourage you to read the article in its entirety.

The article inspired a this Doonesbury comic.

Some skeptic.com readers as well as one of the site’s writers investigated and found that the majority of the claims in the press release were bogus or highly suspect.

Since then, skeptic.com has issued a retraction and apology.

I’m happy to see integrity still exists and that people are willing to put facts before their sense of pride.

Now, I wonder, will Gary Trudeau issue a correction as well?

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Looking Back, Part 2: Orientation

Enter the Darcy Drunk

Shortly after our plane left the US, an attendant  broadcast a message to the flight - in French only, not in English - and I was lucky to have picked up on it.

“One of our three luggage containers for this flight has gone missing. If you discover that your baggage is missing when you land, please contact the United personnel at Charles DeGaul.”

I looked at Sunshine, she looked at me both knowing we would be one of those with baggage missing - and we were right, we didn’t receive our luggage until a week after we arrived in Dijon.

We arrived on a Sunday. Early Monday morning we had our first of two orientation meetings at the CRDP - which was located at the university where we were housed. We didn’t have to travel far - all of about 100 meters. Oddly enough, there was a bus stop immediately in front of our dorms and another in front of the CRDP. Yes, two bus stops no further apart than a football field.

The orientation was conducted entirely in French - which made sense, somewhat. We were expected to have 2 years experience in university level French (though I got in with just one year) -  since the orientation consisted of a mix of nationalities - there were people from all over the world speaking every language imaginable, holding it in French seemed logical. Further, we were promised that a second session that day would be held in our native language.

During the English orientation, the head of the Language Assistant program for Dijon spoke first. He gave us some weird analogy about coffee, tea, biscuits jam and toast (I think), soup and how, if you say them in the right order with the proper voice inflection, it mimics the sound of a train. I am not lying. That is seriously what he said.

“Coffee… coffee… coffee, tea and biscuits, tea and biscuits, tea and biscuits, jamandtoast, jamandtoast, jamandtoast, soooooooup! SOOOOOOOOOOUP!

It reminds me of taking the train as a child. Thank you, good luck in Dijon and have a good day.”

Somehow that was supposed to make us feel at home and comfortable. Instead, I felt the people in charge of the Language Assistants Program smoked a little too much pot. All us assistants stared around at each other, wondering what the hell that meant. I thought about it for maybe five seconds, realized I was jet lagged beyond belief and tired from having broken the lock to my room the night before, so I  fell asleep. Anyway, the rest of the orientation was in French and I couldn’t follow along at all.

We broke for lunch. We had hamburgers. Hamburgers! In France! The very food they make fun of U.S. citizens for eating. It was there, at the cafeteria, that I learned that French people can not queue. Not even remotely. The cafeteria was made up mostly of university students - several hundred of them. They all gathered in one massive mob trying to get food. This huge throng of people, pushing, shoving, yelling, trying to get food. It was surreal. There were British assistants everywhere weeping, holding each other, cowering in the corners. Who knew? Had the French simply tried to queue when the Germans invaded, perhaps they’d have scared them all off.

During lunch, I received word that my lock had been repaired. I headed back to my dorm, showered  - realized all my luggage was still lost, put on the same dirty clothes I had now worn for three days and headed back to the CRDP.

That evening Michelle and I went downtown to meet Jean-Luc, the liaison between SJSU and Dijon. He took us to H&M, a sort of Macy’s for France (actually, H&M is now in the U.S. - go check it out for yourself!) I went shopping for some winter clothes (real winter clothes, unlike these mild winters here in San Jose) and I quickly discovered how overweight I am. In France, the width of your pants is tied directly to the length of your pants. Here in the U.S. I wear 38 / 30. In France, that calculates to, literally, a 38 / 40 (compensating for metric here). And there is no way to get a length that works better for me. It’s 38/40 or nothing. For a week, I wore these pants that were WAY too long and I had to roll up half-way to my knees. I must have made a great impression.

That night, Jean-Luc asked us to meet him “at the arch”. Most large cities in France have two things: A cathedral called “Notre Dame” and a sort of Arc d’Triumph in the center or edge of downtown. Amber showed up shortly after we did. Then Jean-Luc. while we waited for Katie and Julia, a drunken man with a guitar strapped to his back staggered over to Amber. He tried to kiss her, she pushed him away, he started to make a scene. As I headed over to intervene, Amber made an even BIGGER scene, and he wandered off into the night, singing horridly.

Little did I know that he would become my nemesis while I was in Dijon. He is the man known only as “The Darcy Drunk”…

Looking Back, Part 1: Arrival

Dijon and Owls

My first memory of Dijon - well, actually, my very first memory will be the drug deal I saw go down outside the train station just after I arrived.

Beyond that, my first memory will be looking down at the ground at these brass or bronze arrows leading around the city. Occassionally, they’d have an owl on them, other times they’d be smaller, with no owl on them. Mostly they were just red brickish arrows - all of them leading to a “rare”, large, numbered square with an owl.

It didn’t take long to realize there was a touristy significance to all this “owls on the street” nonsense. What surprised me was the meaning behind it all.

Dijon’s main church, Notre Dame (and just about every major city in France has a “Notre Dame”), has a small owl - or chouette - carved into it. I had wanted to find it myself, but someone pointed it out to me. This was a good thing, I suppose, as I had thought it was on the front of the church, and I was somewhat surprised to learn where it really was.

When you find the owl, place your left hand on it and face right - then make a wish. If you do it wrong and face left, a dragon carved into the church will you eat your wish.

Dijon’s Owl Walk is all about this small statue. Each numbered owl signifies a special site in the city - some are historical, some architectural, others are simply nice to look at. The greatest irony of the walk - the carved owl is actually the focal point of one of the numbered owls. So much for the challenge of finding it on ones own.

I stayed in Dijon for six months - the last week I was there, I decided to do the Owl Walk with Katharina. It took two hours - and I ended up seeing some great little places I hadn’t known existed.

My only regret about my time in Dijon was the timidity with which I spent it. I never got to know the city. I had no idea that it held so many little secrets - tea shops, statues, crypts, gardens and even a zoo. I knew how to get to work, to two different gorcery stores, to the theater, to the train station and to my dorms. Outside of that, I had very little knowledge of the city. It’s how I live lived my life - afraid of venturing too far at the risk of losing something - thinking that losing anything would be too much. Irony being what it is, the several hundred Euro I saved by living a more cloistered life in Dijon is insignificant compared to the things I didn’t experience - and will never have a chance to experience again. I can go back to Dijon if I want, but I can never recreate the sense of community and friendship I had while there.

My left hand is on the owl, I’m facing towards the right, and I’m thinking about Japan again. Japan in 2010. I won’t make this same mistake twice.

Settling In

D.F. Phone Home

I’ve found a place to live. It’s in Cupertino, near Valco Fashion Park - and when did Valco start going through such a transformation? It used to be on the verge of dying, now there’s a ton of construction going on! Wow.

I’ve also begun biking to work. This past Sunday I biked the 17 miles round trip to my office. It took me just a few minutes shy of 2 hours, including stops/breaks, making changes to my directions and notes about where to go. And I only had one near hit!

My new place is awesome. The roomies are great, the house is HUGE, my room is 15′x11′ plus it’s own bathroom, shower and vanity area. I raided Ikea and I am currently in “Assemble Mode” as I put all my furniture together. I feel like I have purcased several very complex Lego sets. Once I get the furntiure ready and the room cleaned (the walls are dirty and there are cobwebs everywhere), I’ll purchase some curtains - cause what I have is pretty ghetto. The last owner apparently used butterfly clips to keep them together.

After the curtains - an aquarium. It feels nice to be settled in.

I’ll be right here…

I’ve been back for just over a month now. It’s odd. I try to remember living in France, and the memories are all vaporous. I reread my blog entries (which need yet another revision) and the things I wrote about seem intangible and unreal - like it was one long dream.

I’ll be blogging over the next few months about my time in France, reflecting on it sorting it out. Look for it in future updates.

“b” good

Mr. Nau, myself and a few other folks have started a site called 50 Words where we rate movies in exactly 50 words (no more, no less). Give it a look, check it out, leave us some feed back.

And for those of you who are curious - I’ll be reviewing my favourite movie of all time in the next few weeks.

Take care all, and try biking to work at least one day this week!

Less Crying, More Packing…

My last girlfriend - some two or three years ago - lied to me. Not a small lie. She lied about being in college, she lied about her relationship with her family. She lied about her ex-boyfriend.

When I found out, I kicked her out. She was cried. I simply told her, "Less crying, more packing." Immortal words now among my friends.

This saying has become a sort of in joke among my friends - and even appears on occassion in Fark conversations. However, in Dijon, it transformed into my own personal warcry.

Once I received word that I hadn't received the teaching job in Japan, I was ready to head back to the US to job hunt. The only thing that kept in France was my girlfriend. Other than that, I was burning time and money in France…

But, I received good news in March. The person who replaced me at Apple had moved to another position and my former job had opened back up to me. Granted, I had to reapply for it and there was no special treatment, but hey - a genuine job opportunity for me!

I applied. And of course, I got it. I was happy. It was then that I realized I had spent so much time being stressed out over work, that I hadn't taken any time to enjoy life in France.

I was so stressed at times that I couldn't sleep or even function. It was sick.

So, I told myself what I told my ex so many years ago, "Less crying, more packing"

I've since left Dijon and returned to San Jose. I regret not having enjoyed myself more in Dijon, but I leave for Europe again tmw to see my girlfriend. I'll make the best of every last second with her.

Ironic…

It’s an English lesson, it’s a song, it’s BOTH!

Alanis Morissette’s Ironic is an easy lesson. It has irony, metaphor and similes. This is by no means an original idea, but in the waning days of my time here in France, an easy lesson is always welcome.

All my students liked the song. Most of them were familiar with it and sang along. I love it when they sing along.

The lesson went well and they all asked for another song for the next lesson. I think I’ll do Jamie O’Niel’s There is no Arizona.

But, irony was the rule of the week:

Munich in Passing - 2

I received an email last week (supposedly) from Stephanie’s husband. Stephanie, as you’ll remember, is the crazy f’d up German who, though married, invited me to her parent’s home in Munich for Christmas. Of course, I didn’t know she was married until she arrived. Nice.

Her marriage is a shambles, so I did my best to listen and help her sort it all out. When I returned, I sent her an email to thank her for hospitality. She responded, telling me she was going to try to work things out with her husband. I won’t bore you with the details, but some marriages should end - this is one of them.

I was rather pissed at the lies. I decided not to keep contact with her.

Then I got the email (supposedly) from her husband. In it, he essentially thanked me for f’n his wife (I didn’t) and then boasted that now her *ahem* vagina is all his and that I, essentially, lose. Congrats, sir, on “winning” the affections of your unfaithful wife who quite looks like a man. In fact, I’m not so sure you own her vagina. You may just find a cock down there.
As an aside, I have a friend who was marginally unfaithful to her (now) ex-husband. He thought she was cheating on him with me. He was half right. She was cheating on him, just not with me.

The same applies here. Stephanie has been cheating on her husband, just not with me. Of course, as is oddly usual, when someone catches their partner cheating, they get mad at the other person. HELLO!!! Lay your pimp hand down with your partner, not with the other person. They may very well be ignorant of the marriage. BUT YOUR PARTNER CERTAINLY KNEW THAT THE TWO OF YOU ARE MARRIED!! It’s not that hard to figure out.

Anyway, I marked the email as spam, deleted it along with all her contact info.

Have fun in your f’d up marriage, bitch.

One final note on this. I say the email is supposedly from her husband. I can’t imagine how he would have found out about me. Either from Stephanie, her sister or her parnts. There was no one else. And then, how did he get my email address? Did she confess to him about me and then willingly give him my email address? And what is there to confess? Nothing happened - well, other than kissing in Yosemite. So… my theory, she either lied to him and told him we slept together and then let him find my email address, or she’s faking, the email is from her and she’s trying to get me to contact her.

And the main reason I think it’s fake. If he had snooped her emails, he would have read the three or four emails I sent her where I stated I would NOT sleep with her.

I can’t wait to put the Atlantic between her and I.

The Darcy Drunk Re-revisited.

That worthless drunk who enjoys trying to kiss and molest my friends and students broke his guitar. He was on the bus the other day crying about it. Loser.

What gets me is that not only are there apparently NO laws against being drunk in public, people continue to sell booze to God’s only mistake. I go to Monoprix (a sort of miniature Super Walmart) and while the store refuses to sell him anything, he just turns around to the person behind him and has THEM buy it for him.

HELLO!! Do you let child molestor’s babysit your daughter? No! Of course not. Why are your helping this stupid mofo get alcohol?

If only my French were better, I’d make a massive scene about it. As it is, I had to take out my anger at enabling behaviour on a homeless guy in London. I doubt that Red Coat will ever ask someone for “spare change” again.

And spare change? Yeah, I certainly have nothing better to do than GIVE away my money to people who don’t know well enough to quit drinking.

Rugby

Last Sunday we went to a local Irish Pub. We watched a rugby match (Six Nations) between France (the cocks) and the English (the roses).

I had a lot of fun yelling out my insults at the screen:

- Kill him!

- Rip his legs off!

- Fornicate with is wife!

- Burn him! (pounding my fist into my pal like John Cleese in Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

- Take his money! (but that was only used sparingly, as that is really the worst thing you could do to someone).

Some changes I would like to see to rugby:

- Robots. One robot per team, preferrably with lasers and missles.

- Periodically Lions and Christians should be released on the field.

- Someone should win a car at some point.

- You should be able to steal an opposing player’s soul and then sell it to Satan so you can win the game.

- Last, it would be nice if England could actually score a goal against the French.

Ou On Se Trouve Le Toilet?

Another one of my major French speaking coups: The first time I visited France, I had been studying French for less than a year; and that saying about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing - it’s true.

At Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I had to use the restroom really bad - as in Biblical proportions bad. The CDG is a huge massive maze of  screw me over confusion divided into two terminals, which we’ll call Labyrinth of Misdirection and Gianourmous Round Hallway That Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing and Accomplishes Even Less (sort of like dating at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, minus the drama).

So, I walked up to the closest airport employee and asked in French “On se trouve le toilet?” Sunshine came up and told me, “You left out the ‘ou’ or ‘where’. You just asked him, “Someone found the toilet?”

I eventually found the toilet, and amazingly enough, there was a bison there.

Really though, toilets in Europe (not just in France) are quite mind boggling. God bless Alexander Cummings for his invention (not Thomas Crapper, that’s a myth), but had he known how oddly bizzare they would become, he might have developed some sort of guidebook for building water closests.

Imagine you have to use the bathroom. To simulate this, drink five pints of water, a spot of tea, then go for a run - you should be good to go in a matter of minutes.

Now, hop on a plane to France and ask to use the toilet. Shock, there are none. They hide them. Where? Usually on the very top floor at the end of an incrdibly steep spiral staircase. Now, climb this staircase and then try to squeeze yourself into a matchbox. This isn’t exactly an accurate representation as matchboxes are much bigger.

Now, remember, you’re a traveller; so you have a big backpack to manage. Squeeze yoga style into the bathroom, remove your backpack and hang it on the nearly non existent nub of a jacket hook on the door. Oops, the lock didn’t engage, the door swung open and now you have to start all over again. By the time you finish preparing yourself to go, you’ll have soiled yourself.

When you do finish, you’ll have been so cramped into the tiny closet of a toilet that your legs will have fallen asleep. It’s a blast!

Now, flush. But, hey, where is the flush handle? Hell if I know. Oh, there’s a lever, try that. Nope, that made the sink run (and yes, many restroom stalls have a sink INSIDE as well as in the main part of the restroom). How about that button to your left? Nope, that’s for soap. That leash hanging from the ceiling? Wrong, that’s to signal passing aircraft. That  pedal on the floor? It summons the robots.

Honestly, there’s nothing intuitive about flushing the toilet. Literally it is different each place I go. And if you use the toilet on the train, there are usually even more buttons, levers and handles. I once spent two minutes in a bathroom trying to flush the toilet, pressing and jiggling anything that looked like it my do the job.

Turns out there was a HUGE button just above the toilet bowl - I hadn’t seen it because it was directly behind the lid of the toilet and therefore hidden.

There is one thing I do like about some European toilets. It’s a two button flush system. One is a half flush button for when you merely urinate. It’s not very powerful and saves water. Then there’s a second button for solid waste that is more powerful. I have only seen it once in the U.S. and I think they should be used more often.

However, as bad as toilets are, showers are worse - but I’ll spare you the details.

And People Wonder Why I Don’t Drink

I came to school today and found out one of my students nearly died this week. On Tuesday, he and his friend brought several bottles of fruit juice mixed with alcohol to school. They each downed a whole bottle in the span of an hour. During P.E. class, he got sick, passed out and slipped into a coma. He was quite sick with alcohol poisoning and, had he not been rushed to the doctor, he would have died.

Oddly enough, he was already back in class today. He was quite attentive and eager to participate. I suspect his parents gave him quite a talking to.

The Home Stretch

Less than two months before I leave. I can’t believe it. I’m quite anxious about returning home. However, it will be nice to return home and see my friends again. Not too excited about the job hunt, but I suspect I’ll be working again inside of two months - I hope.

The Transfer is Complete

I have finished transfering my old post from danielferrante.net to here. They are posted and active. I will reedit them as time allows (currently most if not all links to photos are dead).

Also, I recently signed up for a flickr account.  My photos wil be hosted here for the time being.

My next post will be about using the bathrooms in France - I promise.