Full disclosure

Accounting regulators are buzzing around with new rules about book vs market financial accounting for banks, but for those of you who are not accountants, and who are already getting bored reading this, I have good news for you: this post is not going to be about anything to to with accounting. It is going to be a sort of a personal disclosure statement , accumulated after being tested in different geographical, cultural, and political circumstances.

This is more of a five year, rather than annual report. Management discussion of key findings and forecast for the years to come follows. Note that these are no in particular order, so if your last year's gift for my birthday does not appear first, don't go into cardiac arrest. In any case, unless you are in Paris, I will likely not be able to do much for you in this case.

I guess I'll start with all the little... let's call them Parisian paradoxes. The woman in front of my window who takes a shower in the fountain located midway from my window and a restaurant, who screams on the people on the terrace of the restaurant to stop staring at her. The neighbour, happily deaf in her ripe post retirement age who listens to great jazz at one in the morning and complains the next day if she hears as much as sneeze in the afternoon. And of course, the entire population replacement which happens in August as every Parisien or Parisienne flees Paris at the same time as tourists from every corner of the world congregate here for the ultimate tourist congress.

Other things that I heart for in Paris, again in no particular order.

Driving on the Quay - or better even, being driven on the Quay de la Seine. After almost five years in Paris, I still love to abstract from the frustrated bikers, drivers and the like and watch the buildings go by: diverse, perched on top of the other, surviving all the remodelling the city has endured and adapted to over the years. They are like old neighbours who know each other well enough not to bother with banalities but giddy with all the glamour of their new liposuction.

readings at Village Voice bookshop - a little explanation: the Village Voice bookshop is a petite bijoux hidden in the narrow streets of Marché Saint Germain which is owned by a fiery French woman more passionate about English literature that any professor of literature. On the minusculous chairs hosed up on second floor of her tiny bookshop she hosts readings which gather a crowd as colourful as the authors she invites (Daniel Mendehlson, Michal Chabon, etc.)

anything between boulevard Saint Germain and la Seine - I don't care about the now centuries old rivalry between Cafe Flore and Cafe Les Deux Magots. Getting lost in the galleries and the brasseries of Saint Germain des Pres is a dream. The ideal living location is the hotel particuliere on rue Bonaparte in front of the Ladurée. I have to admit I find it entirely unfair that some editing house has the privilege of squatting in my perfect home. Editing house beware I am coming to get you!

my balcony - or, more precisely, installing myself in the little black chair that measures exactly the width of my balcony and putting a glass of white wine on the little table which fits to the millimeter in the restricted area in front of the little black chair. Who ever said paradise has to be the size of a hippodrome? My paradise measures exactly the size of my behind, between the rail of the balcony and the door.

stumbling onto expos - walking into an unknown expo, unplanned, unprepared, with no preconceptions of what you'll see is, more than the greatest Charlie Chaplin movie, being transported in time and space. The Bettina Rheims exposition at the Biblioteque Richelieu was just one such little, unexpected and inspiring miracle.

speaking English outside - and pretending no can understand me. Of course, my putting up a wall between me and everyone else in English is a total illusion. But, after all, aren't illusions what makes us go on? In my illusionary world, I am having a totally private conversation in a totally public space.

court yards - Parisian courtyards, in all their diversity have so much character that they simply evade description. They are a place of gossip, of undried laundry of pots of disarranged flowers on random balconies, or crooked doors which have seen more than they are willing to let on. Parisians don't like courtyards because there is no view, but in a way there are more view than people care to notice or admit.

reading and writing in cafes - first, I have to disspel the myth, unfounded as they usually are, of Parisians sipping wine at lunch on a daily basis, installed comfortably in their neighbourhood cafe. The reality is that there are two types of cafes in Paris, those whose rotating front door welcomes new visitors every day and those whose used but faithful chairs welcome "les gens du cartier" with the warmth of their own apartment. Whichever it might be, observing in cafes has got to be one of my favourite things to do. After all, in a different era, Hemingway, who lived just around the corner from me, did the same.

And here, I am afraid, comes the unpleasant part of the management discussion. But then, things have to be true to their form. First comes...drum roll please...rather predictably, the customer service. I still haven't frankly figured out what the translation for this bizarre concept might be in French. "Service clientele" seems somehow wrong, and in any case, it is so illusory, it might as well be a fiction of my imagination.

Customer service - or really, the lack of it. Customer service, where are you? the answer is: checked out permanently. This, as I realised, is not just some sort of a forgetful or unintentional omission in France. Its entirely voluntary and requires a strategic response from the client. Some fellow expatriates have suggested playing a victim which apparently incites the person on the other side of the counter or phone to feel pity and therefore "soften up". My advice is to marry a French lawyer or have someone of that profession available.

Air conditioning - or lack of it. It seems to me that I am blessed with a particular talent to go places where the airconditioning, on that particular day, has gone out of order. The other day, a pal at the entrance of what I heard was a chic gym proudly told me that of course (god forbid!) they do not have air conditioning. Why would they have such a terrible thing that leads to such grave respiratory illnesses or the like? Riiiight.

The taxi deficit - semi-permanent and especially accentuated on Friday and Saturday nights, i.e. go get them when you most need them! Walking in the middle of the winter from the Louvre all the way to my flat in the sixth at four in the morning, despite all my futile attempts at charming every cabbie going by, I realised that a driver is not a luxury, but a necessity in Paris.

Real estate agents - an especially despicable category of humans, who deviate slightly from the general homo sapiens model with an extra bullshit chromosome. Beware particular characteristics include: publishing especially attractive ads for apartments which would not qualify for a walk in closet. And I am not talking about Carry Bradshaw's walking closet.

Romantic walks on Pont des Arts - more specifically, this applies when I am wearing my favourite Gaspard Yurenkevich shoes. Sorry, I am not the type of gal who will wip off her shoes and walk barefooted or better even shove them in some oversize bag overflowing with makeup. And the terrifying image of being stuck between two planks of wood, immobile in disgrace, is just too unsexy to contemplate seriously.

Restaurant chefs - particularly those who refuse to understand that salads are on the menu for those either trying to loose weight or vegetarians. In any case, ham is not the essential ingredient, really. Not to mention that there are these funny people calls muslims and jews that don't eat it.

Being mistaken for a tourist - my ultimate favourite is when people ask me when I am leaving. Hmm...leaving where? Well, back home, of course - they reply increasingly hesitantly to me. Well, right after I am done here, I live around the corner. Blank look.

lines - in airports, shops, post offices, grocery stores, brunch places. Being put on some sort of a list does not usually help calm my anxiety at the sight of frustrated people waiting for something they should normally be getting without wasting their time. But the French have a particular affinity with lines and love to discuss the order of everyone in line and complain how long it takes. Well, my advice is, next time they guy at the front of the line tells you it's been two hours he's waiting, turn your heels around and click "buy" on this new great thing called the Internet.

Well, dear friends (and others), as you can see, I wrote this as a kind of stram of concsiousness. However, as I was about to publish this post, it occurred to me that except for driving on the Quay to the office, all the other little insignificant things that I love to do in this city have taken a back seat to all the other routine things that need to get done in a sort of a check-list tradition. Line ups take away from my reading time, dealing with customer service chops into my cafe pauses. So I guess with that my 30 year resolution, if there is such a thing, is to shrink my check list and enlarge my reading list.