on islam, breastfeeding and sexual relations
for all of you confused out there, there is a way to treat these subjects together...
ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts
http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA35507
Sunday, May 27, 2007
begging tips...on champs elysee
this will not be one my usually long and somewhat serious posts, so if this is what you are looking for, you light not want to read on.
unlike in most european countries i have been to, begging in france is an active activity. it is not at all about standing in the corner of a store, a market or a metro station, but rather about going out there actively to explain people the reasons why the situation has some about and why should should they be particularly touched by the beggar's particular story as opposed to that of competitors. i have gotten quite used to this sort of a strategy in the paris metro. bonjour madames et messieurs, je suis au chomâge...i can say i have heard this a few times before.
yesterday i have, however heard a new and i have to admit, a rather creative one - i was stopped to ask whether my phone can be borrowed to call the police. how nice of him, really, he was even taking the responsibility to call the police, after i am assuming he took off with my phone. now here i must give credit where it's due, this was not the usual chomâge story...
voila...some creativity lessons for all of us boring people out there
bon dimanche
this will not be one my usually long and somewhat serious posts, so if this is what you are looking for, you light not want to read on.
unlike in most european countries i have been to, begging in france is an active activity. it is not at all about standing in the corner of a store, a market or a metro station, but rather about going out there actively to explain people the reasons why the situation has some about and why should should they be particularly touched by the beggar's particular story as opposed to that of competitors. i have gotten quite used to this sort of a strategy in the paris metro. bonjour madames et messieurs, je suis au chomâge...i can say i have heard this a few times before.
yesterday i have, however heard a new and i have to admit, a rather creative one - i was stopped to ask whether my phone can be borrowed to call the police. how nice of him, really, he was even taking the responsibility to call the police, after i am assuming he took off with my phone. now here i must give credit where it's due, this was not the usual chomâge story...
voila...some creativity lessons for all of us boring people out there
bon dimanche
Thursday, May 03, 2007
On global warming, North Africa and French presidential elections
In a place called Texas, it may still be denied but in Paris it is a subject not only of the usual small talk but an earnest bewilderment and a honest debate. The weather. For those of you my dear friends who are still in Canada, please don't mumble terrible things about me when i say this but the reality we are hit with a tropical weather. I had to perform a sort of striptease on the way to the office one bright morning not so long ago in the following order - coat off, jacket off, sweater off...and I am sorry to be so boring but i had to stop there - not all parisians did.
I know april an august start with the same letter but i thought that all other parallels end there, apparently not - we now have august weather in april figure it. a sort of paris in the middle east phonemenon. so while all of you my dear canadians are still angrily scraping snow off your frozen wiendshields i am trying to figure out how to strip down without being indecent since, as those of you reading my previous emails know, Paris is not airconditionned. as a general matter of fact. I was explained succinctly once - c'est ne pas possible. that about summarises it. there is one obvious benefit of this global warming effects for me - aside from not having to scrape snow off my wiendshield - i am now in the same climate in morocco and tunisia and paris. which is not exaclty the same for those poor seals who one bright morning just took off on one large but melting piece of ice, titanic style from one of the north provinces of canada. yes, as you can see i read some canadian press although as you can also see not so attentively.
So, coming back to this banal topic of weather and middle east, which loyally finds its way into everything i write these days, i have to say at least i don't get sick travelling anymore, which is otherwise not so difficult given my 24-48 hours mission impossible style trips to North Africa. Yes, despite all our technological advances the idea of going to morocco or tunisia for 1 day sounded a little foreward to me, but exprience shows that if you move like an energizer bunny on a fresh battery, you can just squeeze it in without missing any planes, traines or automobiles (sorry I couldn't resist the reference to an all time classic). and if you don't believe me, i did it last week to paris-tunis-paris in that sort of style.
so i arrive at some time close to midnight and have to decide between a dozen of taxi drivers who are fighting over who will get this poor sucker that they can just tell they can rip off. so i pick a dude who looks the least scary of them all. Please remind me next time not to trust my intuition re: taxi drivers. I had to sit next to him while he drilled me the whole way about all the details about my personal life: he was rather suprised to find out I am married and with children. Just a little white lie to stamp out any adventurous ideas...
He didnt think I was that old...I didn't think he was going to be so anoying. so it seemed we were even until he pulled over somewhere in the bushes which was apparently a gas station and proceeded to explain that since I am his first client (it was now 12 at night) i have to pay for gas if i want to get to the hotel. To make a very long story very short, I don't think i can explain in words my relief when i finally saw the name of the hotel on the skyline and decided to take my finger of the dial button ( my brilliant strategy was to call home to tell my boyfriend i am lost with a wierd taxi driver in tunis). never underestimate the intelligence of a woman. but to give the dude a credit, he only ripped me off once although he could have done it many times seeing as how i would have paid anything to just get to my hotel. a sort of an honest rip off, if you will.
the rest of my taxi drivers where illiterate enough to take me for a french tourist and of course feeling comelled to share their political views on the french election with me. they all seem to support the socialist candidate who doesnt mind if the whole of africa settles in france. the socialists still have this cute a fuzzy idea that everyone call live here in a big happy family even without periodically setting everything on fire in some areas.
In my missions imposible, i have also had to drastically adjust my expectations of just about everything - hotels, travel habits, accent (better speak with Arabic accent otherwise no one understands street names!) I know this will probably astound most of you who know me or those of you who has seen me travel before. I went from Queen of England style of different suitcases dedicated to different parts of my warderobe plus a suitcase of reading to do on the plane to a roller case which magically fits all and in quantities that do not make the french security have panick attacks over possible explosives in my various parfume and other toiletries. I swear, next time they stop me i will just spray the whole bottle on myself before I surrender - just to prevent loosing another bottle of perfume on the security people, I am sure they have enough already!
I now even have a post missions impossible strategy. Once i get tired of them, I think I know what I will do - I will apply for a job with the Turkish government. I know this might again sound a little strange seeing as how I dont speak ay Turkish or do not know anything about Turkey except that the capital is Istanbul and that hourses share highways with cars and that no one except for store owners speak english - but...as a Turkish colleague convincingly explained to me recently: if one does not want to work ( and by that i mean at all); one gets a job with the Turkish government. Looking at him, I am starting to hear what the man is saying. Its sort of a flexible hours job with regular nap breaks in the middle. So the cat is of the bag i am afriad on my retirement plan.
But before i retire, i will probably stay a few more years in this sometimes puzzling place called france where the second most discussed topic (after the tropical climate) is the presidential elections which will stop mr. chirac's 12 years of monarchical rule in the country. its been a semi-comical thing watching the elections in france. in Canada, i never found the world of canadian politics any more interesting that the blues games (both just seemed so utterly boring, sorry for all of you sports fans out there) but here politics is a different kind of animal - with many more interesting faces. here, we even had a socialist-bordering on marxist-bordering on patient of a mental institution candidate who suggested...please fasten your seatbelts before you finish reading the end of this sentence...to dissolve the stock market. by that i mean, extermnate, irradicate, annulate...all in the name of social justice.
Yesterday for the first time since chirac faced mitterand 12 years ago, we had two presidential candidates debate their respective presidential pacts. In general, it resembled a middle eastern souk, where you bargain until you can no longer and the sale person tries to look offended in the end that he could be pushed this low. On Sunday the cat is going to be out of the bag...for the sake of the frenchies I pray that we do not have return to socialism in france, otherwise i might as well return to my native odessa, except i would have to rewind the clock as well.
So please all the prayers for all of us frenchies and frenchies-wanna-be during the sunday mass please...shabbat prayers accepted as well.
In a place called Texas, it may still be denied but in Paris it is a subject not only of the usual small talk but an earnest bewilderment and a honest debate. The weather. For those of you my dear friends who are still in Canada, please don't mumble terrible things about me when i say this but the reality we are hit with a tropical weather. I had to perform a sort of striptease on the way to the office one bright morning not so long ago in the following order - coat off, jacket off, sweater off...and I am sorry to be so boring but i had to stop there - not all parisians did.
I know april an august start with the same letter but i thought that all other parallels end there, apparently not - we now have august weather in april figure it. a sort of paris in the middle east phonemenon. so while all of you my dear canadians are still angrily scraping snow off your frozen wiendshields i am trying to figure out how to strip down without being indecent since, as those of you reading my previous emails know, Paris is not airconditionned. as a general matter of fact. I was explained succinctly once - c'est ne pas possible. that about summarises it. there is one obvious benefit of this global warming effects for me - aside from not having to scrape snow off my wiendshield - i am now in the same climate in morocco and tunisia and paris. which is not exaclty the same for those poor seals who one bright morning just took off on one large but melting piece of ice, titanic style from one of the north provinces of canada. yes, as you can see i read some canadian press although as you can also see not so attentively.
So, coming back to this banal topic of weather and middle east, which loyally finds its way into everything i write these days, i have to say at least i don't get sick travelling anymore, which is otherwise not so difficult given my 24-48 hours mission impossible style trips to North Africa. Yes, despite all our technological advances the idea of going to morocco or tunisia for 1 day sounded a little foreward to me, but exprience shows that if you move like an energizer bunny on a fresh battery, you can just squeeze it in without missing any planes, traines or automobiles (sorry I couldn't resist the reference to an all time classic). and if you don't believe me, i did it last week to paris-tunis-paris in that sort of style.
so i arrive at some time close to midnight and have to decide between a dozen of taxi drivers who are fighting over who will get this poor sucker that they can just tell they can rip off. so i pick a dude who looks the least scary of them all. Please remind me next time not to trust my intuition re: taxi drivers. I had to sit next to him while he drilled me the whole way about all the details about my personal life: he was rather suprised to find out I am married and with children. Just a little white lie to stamp out any adventurous ideas...
He didnt think I was that old...I didn't think he was going to be so anoying. so it seemed we were even until he pulled over somewhere in the bushes which was apparently a gas station and proceeded to explain that since I am his first client (it was now 12 at night) i have to pay for gas if i want to get to the hotel. To make a very long story very short, I don't think i can explain in words my relief when i finally saw the name of the hotel on the skyline and decided to take my finger of the dial button ( my brilliant strategy was to call home to tell my boyfriend i am lost with a wierd taxi driver in tunis). never underestimate the intelligence of a woman. but to give the dude a credit, he only ripped me off once although he could have done it many times seeing as how i would have paid anything to just get to my hotel. a sort of an honest rip off, if you will.
the rest of my taxi drivers where illiterate enough to take me for a french tourist and of course feeling comelled to share their political views on the french election with me. they all seem to support the socialist candidate who doesnt mind if the whole of africa settles in france. the socialists still have this cute a fuzzy idea that everyone call live here in a big happy family even without periodically setting everything on fire in some areas.
In my missions imposible, i have also had to drastically adjust my expectations of just about everything - hotels, travel habits, accent (better speak with Arabic accent otherwise no one understands street names!) I know this will probably astound most of you who know me or those of you who has seen me travel before. I went from Queen of England style of different suitcases dedicated to different parts of my warderobe plus a suitcase of reading to do on the plane to a roller case which magically fits all and in quantities that do not make the french security have panick attacks over possible explosives in my various parfume and other toiletries. I swear, next time they stop me i will just spray the whole bottle on myself before I surrender - just to prevent loosing another bottle of perfume on the security people, I am sure they have enough already!
I now even have a post missions impossible strategy. Once i get tired of them, I think I know what I will do - I will apply for a job with the Turkish government. I know this might again sound a little strange seeing as how I dont speak ay Turkish or do not know anything about Turkey except that the capital is Istanbul and that hourses share highways with cars and that no one except for store owners speak english - but...as a Turkish colleague convincingly explained to me recently: if one does not want to work ( and by that i mean at all); one gets a job with the Turkish government. Looking at him, I am starting to hear what the man is saying. Its sort of a flexible hours job with regular nap breaks in the middle. So the cat is of the bag i am afriad on my retirement plan.
But before i retire, i will probably stay a few more years in this sometimes puzzling place called france where the second most discussed topic (after the tropical climate) is the presidential elections which will stop mr. chirac's 12 years of monarchical rule in the country. its been a semi-comical thing watching the elections in france. in Canada, i never found the world of canadian politics any more interesting that the blues games (both just seemed so utterly boring, sorry for all of you sports fans out there) but here politics is a different kind of animal - with many more interesting faces. here, we even had a socialist-bordering on marxist-bordering on patient of a mental institution candidate who suggested...please fasten your seatbelts before you finish reading the end of this sentence...to dissolve the stock market. by that i mean, extermnate, irradicate, annulate...all in the name of social justice.
Yesterday for the first time since chirac faced mitterand 12 years ago, we had two presidential candidates debate their respective presidential pacts. In general, it resembled a middle eastern souk, where you bargain until you can no longer and the sale person tries to look offended in the end that he could be pushed this low. On Sunday the cat is going to be out of the bag...for the sake of the frenchies I pray that we do not have return to socialism in france, otherwise i might as well return to my native odessa, except i would have to rewind the clock as well.
So please all the prayers for all of us frenchies and frenchies-wanna-be during the sunday mass please...shabbat prayers accepted as well.
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