Christy Bergman's Anarchy Pages : Far left literature, art, comments, ...
Updated: 8/7/02; 11:33:22 PM.

 

 
 

Wednesday, August 07, 2002

Paul Verlaine

Dans ses poèmes, "Chanson d'Automne," de 1866 et de "Romances sans Paroles" de 1874, Paul Verlaine a exprimé un type de langueur qui a existé 8 ans ou plus. Il exprimait un ennui de la vie. C'est intéressant parce qu'il avait pendant ce temps-là une celèbre, turbulente liaison avec le poète, Arthur Rimbaud. Paul Verlaine explique lui-même que son ennui venait de lui-même. Apparemment, de sa vie, c'est vrai.

Comment Paul Verlaine exprimait sa langueur dans ses poèmes? Premièrement, il a utilisé le mot "langueur" pour décrire son coeur dans les premieres strophes des deux poèmes: "blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone..." et "quelle est cette langueur qui pénètre mon coeur?" Deuxièmenent, il a obtenu une longue, constante, langoureuse texture dans les deux poèmes. Le premiere poème est en dimètres qui coulent très vite usualement. Mais, son poème commence et se termine avec 6-vers strophes avec 3-vers strophes entre le debut et la fin. L'effet est celui d'un fil long tiré ou d'une note jouée. Le deuxième poème emploie les mots à plusieurs reprises sans chaque strophe: "pleure/pleut", "pluie", "raison", et "peine." L'effet et d'une bruine constante.

Je peux ètablir un rapport entre les sentiments qui vienne de la personne elle-même parce que j'ai eu une depression pendant 11 ans. Il n'y avait pas d'importance que j'ai eu bon travail ou j'ai eu petits amis ou j'étais engagée deux fois. Ma depression venait de moi-même. Comme Paul Verlain a dit, l'était "sans raison."

Chanson d'automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langeur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure.

Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.


de "Romances sans paroles"

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon coeur?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits!
Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie
Ô le chant de la pluie!

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui s'écoeure.
Quoi! nulle trahison? ...
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon coeur a tant de peine!





11:22:00 PM    


Saturday, June 29, 2002

La Vie des Cafés dans Paris (English version below)

Il y a un certain temps de nuit que j'aime à Paris. Il vient juste aprés le coucher du soleil en été quand l'air frais commence à glisser dedans les nuages et se les fait coaguler à partir d'une tache floue douce aux contours distincts. Parfois c'est un ciel obscurément tourbillonnant contre un milieu pour le plupart pourpre comme une peinture de Vincent van Gogh. À cet temps de nuit, puis le ciel enveloppe tous les bâtiments et personnes qui regardent dehors ou marchent entre, il semble une peinture de la vie immobile. Les peintures de la vie immobile me rendent toujours sentimental. Quelque chose sur leur détail et distance permet la visionneur la liberté des émotions d'examiner l'image plus approfondie.

9:21 p.m. Il est mon temps favorit de nuit. La lumière vient de partir. Je m'assieds à Au Depart, un café enface du Jardin Luxembourg. Le café est presque abandonné. Une jeune, attirante femme s'assied dans le coin par la fenêtre, vérifiant ses messages de SMS sur son mobile. Je songe à que je sois elle - jeune, belle, avec de longs blonds cheveux et nombreaux de gens me poursuivent toujours. À travers de moi s'assied un homme d'affaires, toujours dans son costume d'affaires. Il me regarde profondément. Peut-être il imagine à qu'il soit moi - une étrangere, d'un pays étrange, pensant des pensées étranges sur les drôles gens qui j'observe. La tour d'Eiffel est maintenant allumée, ses lumières scintillent dans le crépuscule.

Il y a l'air de langeur. Les gens se déplacent vers leurs destinations finales. C'est la période de la nuit où j'ai le plus sensation d'être étranger - quand j'observe chacun autre va "chez soi". Chacun revient à sa maison, sa famille, leur amis. C'est la période de la nuit où je sens je suis tout seul le plus profondément. Parfois je le savoure; d'autres fois je sens sa douleur. Je savoure que je peux observer d'autres détaché et voyeuristiquement. Je sais que je peux rester dehors et observe leurs nuits progressent. Je suis celui. Je suis chacun. Je suis celui qui que je veux être, celui qui je choisis d'observer. Je suis libre.


Il est 4:25 p.m. - entre le petit café et le pastis, ou comme on dit entre chien et loup - un temps de vacance, de vide, de silence. Le patron a quitté la caisse, on l'entend besogner dans la réserve. Le grand garçon donne un coup de torchon, ou fume une cigarette, appuyé à la machine à café.

C'est le moment que choisit pour entrer le quincaillier voisin (ou le boucher (ou le coiffeur)). Il ne dit rien. Le grand garçon pose soigneusement son mégot sur le bout du comptoir et verse un ballon de rouge (un blanc sec (une biére)).

Sans un mot, le client d'aprés midi tient son verre à la main bien posé sur le zinc. Le tourne dans ses doigts. Observe sa couleur.

Il ne dit rien. Il ne pense pas. Il est libre.

Léve alors son verre et le boit d'un trait. Jette le monnaie sur le comptoir, salue d'un mouvement de tête et s'en va.

Le grand garçon nettoie le verre vide dans le bac. Il s'essuie les mains, allume une nouvelle cigarette. Ils n'ont pas dit un mot.

Café Au Depart le patron de au depart



Reflets sur Ma Vie dans Paris

Je rends souvent visite à ma propriétaire pour payer le loyer, les forfaits, etc. Je m'intéresse á sa vie parce qu'elle est aristocrate. Il y a plus d'aristocrates en France qu'aux Etats-Unis. Sa habitation est un étage entier d'un batiment en face de l'école militaire dans le 7ième. Elle est gynecologue á la retraite. Elle est en corps trois idées grands qu'elles me impresse.

Premièrement, l'idée d'équalité entre des hommes. Mon appartment es trés petit, mais il a un balcon. Ma propriétaire a acheté pour moi une cafetiére, un cuvette, et un oreiller quand je l'ai demandé. Tout les gens en France vivent avec un bas niveau de confort. Deuxiémement, l'idée que chaque personne a sur sa profession. En France, chaque personne pense a son rôle. C'est différent aux Etats-Unis òu chaque personne pense au le travail - pas á son rôle. J'ai beaucoup d'examples raconter plus tard. Troisièmement, l'idée d'inevitabilité. Elle m'a demandé si j'avais eu besoin d'un médecin. Je lui ai dit qu j'étais eu bonne santé, mais elle m'a dit, "Tu sois, tout le monde a besoin de voir un médecin éventuelement."

Ecoutez! Hear it!



Café Life in Paris (Version français ci-dessus)

There's a certain time of night that I love in Paris. It comes just after sunset in the summer when the cool air starts slipping in and makes the clouds coagulate from a smooth blur into distinct outlines. Sometimes it's a darkly dramatically swirling sky against a mostly purple background as in Vincent van Gogh's paintings. At this time of night, the skyline, enveloping all the buildings and the people looking out or walking between, looks like a still life painting. Still life paintings always make me feel sentimental. Something about their detail yet distance allows the viewer emotional freedom to examine the picture more closely.

9:21 p.m. It's my favorite time of night. The light is just leaving. I'm sitting at Au Depart, a café across from the Jardin Luxembourg. The café is quite deserted. A young, attractive female sits in the corner by the window, checking her SMS messages on her mobile. I wonder what it's like to be her - young, beautiful, with long blond hair and lots of people always pursuing you. Across from me sits a businessman, still in his business costume. He is eyeing me keenly. Maybe he is imagining what it's like to be me - a stranger, from a strange country, thinking strange thoughts as I watch strange people. The Eiffel Tower is lit up now, its lights twinkling in the dusk.

There's a languid feel in the air. People are moving toward their final destinations for the evening. It's the time of night when I most feel like an outsider - watching everyone else go "home". Home to their houses, family, friends. It's the time of night when I feel my aloneness most keenly. Sometimes I relish it; other times I feel its pang. I relish being detached and able to watch others voyeuristically, knowing I can stay outside and watch their nights progress. I am the one. I am everyone. I am whoever I want to be, whoever I choose to watch. I am free.


It's 4:25 p.m. - between the petit café and the pastis, or as the French say, "between dog and wolf" - a time to let down, a time of emptiness and silence. The boss has left the cash register, one hears him working hard in the cellar. The manager swipes the bar with a cloth or smokes a cigarette, resting on the counter in front of the coffee machine.

It is the moment that the neighboring shop keeper (or the butcher (or the hairdresser)) chooses to enter. The client says nothing. The manager carefully balances his cigarette on the edge of the counter and pours a glass of chinon (a chardonnay (a belgian beer)).

Without a word, the customer of the afternoon holds his glass in a hand posed over the bar. Turns it in his fingers. Observes its color.

He says nothing. He does not think. He is free.

He takes the glass and the drink in one movement. He throws the coins on the counter, says goodbye with a movement of the head and leaves. The manager washes the empty glass in the sink. He wipes his hands, lights a new cigarette. They didn't exchange a word.



2:22:49 AM    

Back in May...

I'm up to 1/2 bottle of red wine per day now. It's so easy to do and the wine is so cheap and good. I'm also in the middle of this weird transition stage where I think I want something non-French to eat, so I go find Asian take-out (eating it there of course to save on unnecessary packaging), but when I come home I have to fight the urge to eat some bread & cheese and drink some red wine in order to feel like I've really eaten. I remember Tracy, my Chinese friend, telling me how her Dad would go out for an Italian dinner with pasta and still want to come home and eat rice. Wow, this French food really grows on a person! I'm consoling myself with passages from Edward Fitzgerald's original translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám where the Persian mathematician, astronomer, and sufi allegorically extols drinking red wine.

I always thought I was well-qualified to write something like George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London for the Central Valley California since I managed to live there comfortably for $5/week when I was an undergraduate including $14/month plot rental, utilities, school supplies (tuition was free due to scholarships), medical expenses, taxes (my parents still claimed me as a dependent even though I paid for everything myself), and incidentals. What struck me about his book was that it was written just shortly after Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, but it sounds he lived a much more miserable life on a higher daily stipend than Hemingway did. Being an OR person, the goal is maximum quality of life for minimum cost.

From my limited experiments so far, I have concluded you can live on practically nothing in Paris if you want. The biggest expense is lodging. (But I saw some permanent shelters under various bridges along the Seine. These wouldn't be allowed in the U.S., so I noticed them particularly here thinking one could actually live there comfortably and maybe even receive mail there. Imagine an address like: Mme Christy Bergman, sous Quai de Tolbiac, Paris 75013, FRANCE.) After that is food. I experimented the first week I was here: scrounging after the open-air daily markets for left-over produce and eating bread and butter. It seems possible to live a healthy existence that way if one wants. I managed that on less than $1/day. On the other hand, you can live lavishly for about $15/day with a multi-course french meal at most any common restaurant and a daily stop at a café. Considering that at my age I don't want to live on the rough if I don't have to, I've settled on a $9/day schedule (including tuition) which lets me live comfortably but not extravagantly by French standards. Taking advantage of my student status, I get 1/2 day in the classroom, access to all the Sorbonne facilities, medical insurance (I was uninsured in the USA for the last year - welcome to a socialist society!), 2 3-course meals per day on campus, as much chocolate as I want, a daily visit to a boulangerie, occasional visits to cafés, and red wine and coffee at home. That's my optimum for now.

I'm still exploring different lodging options, but don't want to go into them publicly.



Elections 2002 in Paris, France

I'm sure you've heard, the big deals in France these days are the elections. The 2002 Elections were the first time France faced a serious chance of a far-right extremist group gaining political power. This is the story. April 21 were the 1st round Presidential elections. In these, all presidential candidates ran. Since no one candidate got more than 50% of the vote, there was a run-off election on May 5. Surprisingly, Lionel Jospin of the Socialist party and the current prime minister came in 3rd behind Jacques Chirac for the Gaullist party and Jean-Marie Le Pen for the Front National party, FN. Le Pen raised national consternation because his following was unexpectedly strong, especially among the unemployed and in small towns with large immigrant populations (Le Pen got 38% of the unemployed vote and 26% of the blue collar vote in April). His shocking platform consisted of: taking France out of the EU, reverting the currency back from the Euro to the French franc (taking France out of the EC), and sending all foreigners out of the country. His message was that the reason for France's hardships were foreigners taking jobs and resources away from French people. He also made public anti-semitist comments and referred to the German 3rd Reich and the fact that one concentration camp was actually located within the borders of France as mere historic details.

I had a sort of Rosa Parks experience on the metro where I felt these sentiments. I was mindlessly sitting down when I felt a thump of the seat, a strong hand push, and some loud French cursings. It was coming from an older, white, drunk (probably unemployed) French man who did not think an asian should sit down in the metro. I went to a different part of the car and sat down while he cursed at me from a distance. None of the onlookers interfered or showed any reaction to the incident.

  pretty picture of bastille column bastilleBaseSouth bastilleBaseNorth

So, the May 5 run-off presidential elections were to determine between Chirac or Le Pen for President of France. There was lots of consternation because France is historically a liberal country and if Chirac won, it would most likely be because many voters chose to vote for Chirac as a vote against Le Pen and it was uncertain what voters would do. Rumor was many leftists wanted to vote for Chirac with clothespins on their noses as signs of protest that they were forced to vote for someone they didn't want in order to keep someone else they really didn't want in office. (Kind of like our Gore/Bush election.) However, if they did so, voting authorities warned that they risked having their vote disqualified. France is a democratic country and takes their democracy very seriously. There is no electoral college as we have in the U.S. It is not allowed to show your voting preference at the polls, the reason being there should be no doubt everyone voted of their own volition.

campus demonstrations

Given this background, between the April 21 and May 5 elections, there were riots at the Bastille and marches between the Places Bastille and Republic. (Rightists traditionally march on the side of the street closest to Joan of Arc's statue in the Louvre pavillion, while leftists march on the opposite side of the street.) Leftists usually rally in the Place Bastille or Place Republique which are working class districts. Rightists usually rally near Pyramides which is in the haute shopping district. I also saw lots of rallies in the 5th where I live, the student section of Paris. May 1st saw 400,000 people take to the streets, blocking all traffic through the Bastille and Republic. Some people in the Place Republic got trapped by the crowds and couldn't get out either by car or by metro for 2 hours. After the May 1 show, Paris police ramped up.

  old man no storming Bastille 1 no storming Bastille 2 no storming Bastille 3

I stayed away from that area on May 1 because I had been warned and I wasn't sure how dangerous it really was for a foreigner. But I went there on following days to see what was going on. First, I noticed the squadrons of police vans. The police set up temporary mobile headquarters near the scenes including a catering van that dishes out hot, multi-course meals. (In fact, watch to see which boulangerie the police visit and be sure to visit that one yourself. It's probably the nicest in the neighborhood. No bad donuts & coffee for French policemen.) Second, my impression was French people get very emotional, but generally, like New Yorkers, keep an undercurrent of practicallity. I saw some funny instance where mostly students gathered in the Bastille and sat in the street to block traffic. An old man, seeing this, took it upon himself to direct traffic away from the students, standing in the middle of the busy intersection. Of course, no one wanted to hit an old man, and everyone obeyed his hand wavings. Eventually the police stepped in and shooed everyone away. The police stood shoulder-to-shoulder forming a wall, dressed in riot gear and pushed the people away from their beloved 'steps of the Bastille' (really the steps of the Bastille Opera these days because the original Bastille was destroyed in the revolution). The police gradually drove everyone from the Place, across the street, and down into the metro. About the most violent thing I saw was when the police grabbed a woman who was holding a videocamera, ordered her to stop, and tried to take her camera. She yelled, clenched her camera tightly, and kept on rolling. I hid my camera in my coat and took off then. These are the pictures I have on my site. A police captain spotted me taking off and asked me what I was doing with my camera. I showed him some nice pictures of the Bastille column and tried to look as Japanese as possible. He smiled and let me go.

voting station for the 5th arrondisement

The big day, May 5 arrived. I went to a voting station to see what it was like. It was very quiet and hardly crowded. I guess because voting's on Sunday, they don't get the crowds between 6-9 p.m. like we do in the U.S. from everybody trying to vote after work. Separate papers each showing the choice of one candidate are prepared ahead of time . Each voter is required to pick up one paper for each candidate and take them all into their booth. In the booth, they put the paper of their choice into an envelope, drop the envelope into a slot, and discard the rest in the recycling bin. That way, there's no chance of "punching" the wrong hole or punching their choice incompletely. (Remember our last election fiasco? The final hand-count in Florida now declares Gore won after all.) The French ballots are counted by hand by the election officials on site. Election results were televised at 8 p.m. that night. (How did they do that so fast? The voting station near me didn't close until 6 p.m.) Chirac won 82% of the popular vote based on a voter turn-out of 81%.

The day after elections is an implicit holiday (versus an official holiday. I noticed it because the student cafeteria was closed, but no had said anything about it). There was a sigh of relief that Le Pen and his FN party didn't get their 30%. However, the story's not over. Parliamentary elections happen in 2 rounds June 9 and 16, and it's still to be seen how many FN party legislators get elected to the National Assembly and what will be the final make-up of the Parliament. (The relationship President/Parliament is similar to our President/Congress. Also, the relationships Parliament/Senate/National Assembly are like our Congress/Senate/House of Representatives.)



2:05:28 AM    


Tuesday, February 26, 2002

Job-Hunting

I'm almost finished building the house.  It's time to find a real job again.  I'm looking for a statistics or data mining position in France starting this summer.

My resume in:




10:25:08 PM    


Wednesday, January 16, 2002

How to go to South by Southwest (SXSW) for free

SXSW is the main music/film event for the Southern continental U.S. Don't pay the exorbitant fee! Volunteer! Here's how:

  • Register on the sxsw volunteer database (need to allow scripts to use).
  • email to sign up and arrange a visit after February 1
  • look for a cheap ticket at expedia or SWAir
  • contact a friend who lives in Austin for a free place to crash!
  • pack a sleeping bag
  • pack your own food staples (dried fruit, dried veggies, healthy grain snacks). You can get plenty of vegetable-less food or chips & salsa in Austin, but you'll need something to supplement it if you don't want to pay a fortune.


5:22:37 PM    


12:54:05 AM    


Tuesday, January 15, 2002

Privacy

There are 2 main intrusions on your PC these days: Spying on your surfing habits and spam email. Info from your surfing is used by companies to bombard you with pop-up ads. Not only is this a huge intrusion on your privacy, it also slows down your productivity, sucking bandwidth with those unwanted ad graphics. And, well, we all know about the feeling of invasion and time we waste deleting junk email!

I'll expand more on these points later. But here are some starter steps you can take to fight back:

  • Delete any spyware from your machine! I've found partial lists at technoerotica and OptOut. But, I haven't found a single, updated list yet. I will try to find such a list and put their corresponding filenames here for easier search/deletion from your hard drive later:
    • 24/7 Media,
    • Advertising,
    • Adware,
    • Alexa 1.0-5.0,
    • Aureate v1.0,2.0 + 3.0,
    • Avenue A,
    • Blue Streak,
    • Comet Cursor v1.0 and v2.0,
    • Cydoor,
    • Doubleclick,
    • DSSAgent,
    • EverAd,
    • EzUla,
    • Expedioware,
    • Fastclick,
    • Flyswat,
    • FTapp-BHO,
    • Gator,
    • Hotbar 1+2,
    • Interpolls,
    • OnFlow,
    • The Breast Cancer Site,
    • The Hunger Site,
    • The Rain Forest Site,
    • Transpondert,
    • TimeSink v1.0,v2.0 and v5.0,
    • Web3000,VX2,
    • Webhancer,
    • Wnad,
    • X10,
  • Install some anti-spyware software (blocks against known offenders)
  • get yourself personal firewall software (blocks against possible un-known email "bugs" (tiny .gifs found in bulk mail spam))
  • never open email attachments from people you don't know!
  • Crumble your cookies weekly (or daily if you are on the Internet a lot)
  • Change your browser settings to turn off unsafe/prompt for safe scripts
  • cut down physical junk mail by sending form 1500 to US Postal service
  • Let it be known you want privacy. Know your rights!

When I browse anymore, with my browser script settings, I just always hit "Enter" to deny any scripts. This saves me lots of annoying pop-ups! I only hit 'yes' to scripts if I'm filling out a form for something I want or browsing a non-profit art page that I know has streaming art media, not commercials!

If I'm feeling terribly paranoid and highly suspect a URL (e.g. a link you see in a possibly malicious email) or (not my case now that I'm self-employed) you're in a corporate firewall and you just don't want Big Brother Employer to know all your surfing habits, I use an anonymizer to hide my identity. It's a bit cumbersome to always go 1st to the anonymizer, then type your url, but it could save you a barrage of unwanted email or your privacy!

If you want to become a vigilante yourself, check out Steve's excellent pages. Download a packet sniffer and begin analyzing those traffic patterns. Use your data mining know-how to sniff out the sniffers! When you find a possible spyware offender, post it to a spyware website. They'll check it out. If it verifies, post it everywhere you can. This is one way we can fight corporate crime!




10:45:46 PM    

Gas Prices

After we bombed Afghanistan, gas prices went down. Why?

Essentially this is a prime example of corporate greed. The middle-east holds some 80% of the world's supply of fossil fuels compared to 20% in the rest of the world (see Goode's World Atlas thematic maps, I couldn't get their online links to work here). Yet, non-middle-east countries supply more than 50% of the world's market demand.

It should come as no suprise that countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia want a bigger piece of market share. Thus, the price wars. It's simple supply and demand principles. If the price goes down, demand should go up. Once demand goes up, non-Opec countries such as Russia (whose oil reserves reside mostly in expensive-to-mine Siberia), who can't produce as cheaply, won't be able to compete. The U.S. also won't be able to compete at such low prices. The Permian basin is almost dried out. Now Bush is talking about expensive pipelines from Alaska...

And Russia's oil industry "in the hands of dozens of mainly privately-owned companies." What does that smack of? Mafia. I've been to Russia. That's scary.

These days big corporations are the enemy of democracy. They are much more to be feared than government. At least government is accountable, corporations are not except to shareholders. And all that most shareholders care about is money.

Have you ever thought that gang/mafia leaders and corporate executives are alike? They both:

  • have turfs
  • expand their turfs unless stopped by outside forces
  • use underlings to do their dirty work
  • rule by intimidation
  • encourage members to put interests of the gang/company above their own
  • have gang/company lingo
  • have gang/company slogans
  • engage in black market/market manipulation
  • purchase politicians
  • deal with money and power



10:44:39 PM    

Art

I used to compartmentalize "art" as visual versus "music" as auditory. San Francisco (the last place I lived) is a great place to explore these boundaries. Some of my favorites are SYNTH, Pond (need to allow scripts to view), the Lab, ATA, and XLR8R Magazine.


My favorite music goodies:


Do not listen to you music on RealNetworks! In fact, if you've used Realnetworks in the past, uninstall it! It puts itself in your start-up registry and automatically reports through a cookie as you work!


 Some songs buzzing in my brain lately...

  • Cibo Matto - Aguas de Marco, je t'aime moi non plus
  • DJ QBert - Aphrodisascratch
  • DJ Food - Ageing Young w/Ken Nordine
  • Lesser - The Gearhound Suite
  • Joao Gilberto/Astrud Gilberto/Stan Getz (famous for "Girl from Ipanema")



In Austin, Audiogalaxy(*) works best for me. I suspect it has to do with their file-sharing design. When you do file sharing, you always have to route first through their central server (which in fact is a farm of 430 servers) based in Austin. When I was in San Francisco, Morpheus worked faster and Audiogalaxy slower. This makes me suspect, their "routing" algorithms might be Austin-preferent, which would explain the geographically-dependent download times. Hmm, maybe there's some optimization potential in this P2P stuff...

(*)If you install AudioGalaxy, be sure not to accept anything they bundle with the satellite! I mean this! (More comments in my privacy section below.) Especially mean is gator. If you do make a mistake and install any of the spyware accidentally, be sure to remove it promptly. Why let Big Brother multi-national corporation spy on your surfing habits?


9:38:28 PM    

Literature

In preparation for my move to Paris, I've been reading alternately:

  • Ernest Hemingway's posthumously-published A Moveable Feast
  • Adam Gopnik's recently-published Paris to the Moon.
Paris in the 20's would have been my favorite place/time to be alive. I'm trying not to get expectations too high for myself. Hem says that back then 2 people could live comfortably in Paris on $5/day. Today it costs 2 people $80/day (including mortgage) to live comfortably in Austin, Texas...

Reading Paris to the Moon makes me wish I had kept a diary when I was living in Germany. Details of everyday life that seemed mundane back then would be an interesting read now. Such foreign notions as:
  • declaring your religion on public forms and actually paying federal religious tax
  • legalized prostitution
  • government-sponsored clinics that give out free heroin to drug addicts in the interest of "public safety"
  • legalized marijuana possession for personal use (up to 1.12 grams or ~1/25th oz. is allowed)
  • practically-open showers and co-ed saunas (Europeans don't wear swimsuits in the sauna!)

getränkmarkts (drink markets) with kistens (crates holding 12 liter-size bottles) with glass bottles that are "recycled" simply by washing them out an unlimited number of times until the bottle breaks and pfand (deposit) on each bottle amounting to almost half the cost of the drink (70 pfennigs/DM 1,20 bottle vs. our measly 5cents/$1 can) which means practically everybody recycles

Recycling - a story by Christy Bergman.

Maybe someday I will write Moveable Eclectica: Perspective of an Asian-American Female Software Engineer in Germany...


9:36:13 PM    


© Copyright 2002 christy bergman.



 


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