I'm writing it! No, wait. I write!

Our academic semester ended a month ago so I was surprised to have a student drop by my office this morning.  I asked her if she had been traveling after her coursework had finished.    “Non, je suis en train d’aimer mon copain,” she answered.  I’m loving my boyfriend.

It was clearly a grammatical error, but an adorable one.  Her use of the present progressive conjured up images of how one might dynamically and actively love one’s partner; I pictured her running home and shampooing his hair, for example.  

 It’s odd that the student made this mistake in the first place, as French does not have the distinction between the simple present and the present progressive or continuous that the English language does.  “Je marche” can mean I walk (as in I walk all the time for exercise) or I am walking (as in I am currently walking to the store) .  I’m sure what she meant to say was “Je suis encore là car j’aime mon copain.” I am still here because I’m in love.

McDonald’s runs an ad campaign which annoys me with its use of the present progressive.  “I’m lovin’ it” is what I see in posters plastered all over Parisian bus shelters and billboards, usually featuring a sundae or some McConcoction.   The immediacy of this exclamation irritates me.  What, you are loving a sundae RIGHT NOW?  Highly doubtful.  If I were eating a sundae at this very moment, that last thing I’d be doing is crowing about it.  My mouth would be too full of ice cream to utter anything more than a slurpy “yum!”

Students of French can be perplexed by the apparent ambiguity of the simple present, with no option for a –ing suffix.  What’s the workaround? they’ll wonder, when they want to express that “doing something right now” aspect of a verb.   My student was correct in framing her phrase with the “en train de” modifier, which does imply an action which is happening at this time.  (Although I’m sure she didn’t mean she was loving her boyfriend right there in my office.)   

The French have caught on to the use of the –ing suffix, as an add-on to an existing noun.  It’s a little thing they do when they want to Anglicize a word and make is sound not only English, but cool English.  So when you want to tell someone you are a runner, you say you do “le jogging.”  If you like to stretch, you do “le stretching.”  The latest thing on the French culinary scene is “le fooding.”  If this linguistic trend progresses in a logical fashion, my student will soon be able to come full circle, and tell me that she is in Paris, still, for “le loving.”

t's been awhile since I've dedicated a post to my dislike for Monoprix.  That doesn't mean that Monoprix has improved---in fact, today I saw something that was a 9.5 on the Stupid-Stuff-Monoprix-Does-Meter, but I'll get to that a bit further down.

Today's complaints will center once again on Monoprix's "logistics".

It's Saturday , which means that the Monoprix is swarming with shoppers--primarily mothers--during the morning hours . (Because we can't grocery shop on Sundays in Paris, Saturday becomes a crowded nightmare in any foodstore. We can, however, buy Adidas on the Champs-Elysees on a Sunday, because those stores are not under the "must rest on the Lord's Day" law.  And we all know how desperately we need tennis shoes on Sundays--and not butter or milk-- so I am very grateful to the French government for this particular law.)

Now if I were the CEO of Monoprix, I'd be sure to make arrangements to have more cashiers on the checkout lines on this particular day, and certainly during the hours leading up to the French lunchtime (13h00). I'd at least arrange to keep the checkout stations open which accommodate shopping carts (some checkouts are for shoppers carrying  handbaskets only) because it is Saturday and that is a day where many French people do a big big shop.  Like a shop which necessitates a shopping cart! 

Alas, there were neither extra cashiers on hand, nor more than 2 checkout stations open through which you could wheel a shopping cart .

One thing Monoprix does during the lunchhour on Saturdays is restock. That's right: conditions are PERFECT for driving your forklift into the already-too-narrow aisles and stocking bread products (but not the one brand I need today of course).  The store is so crowded it is a fire-code violation, people are cranky because their blood sugar has dropped, and you think it is a swell idea to fill in the shelves AT THIS PRECISE MOMENT.

Idiots.

Oh, and then they do this: Every single day I see tucked into some odd place a stray package of meat, or chicken or something perishable which must be kept in the cold zone. You know, stuff some shopper decided they didn't want but was TOO LAZY to put back in its rightful (and health-preserving) area. Today there was a pot of tarama tucked into the gum display near the checkout stand. Because the checkout girls are not allowed, under their union rules and regulations, to restock shelves (nor ask one of those fork-lift guys to take the item to its proper location) the stuff just sits there until some employee--working under the appropriate labor contract--will see it, pick it up and put it in the cold-foods section.

They may as well have a special aisle called "Food Which Has Sat Out Too Long And Will Poison You With e.coli And samonella. Reduced price!"

(Note to self: don't buy any tarama for a couple of days)

But let me come back around to what rated a 9.5 on the Stupid-Stuff-Monoprix-Does-Meter today.

I'm used to Monoprix laying out their store in all kinds of crazy ways.  Toothpaste on the upper level but toothbrushes on the ground floor.  Shaving cream tucked way back amongst the lightbulbs, razors nowhere in that vicinity.  When you shop at Monoprix, you have to think like a Monoprix "traffic flow engineer", that is to say never expect to find any related items grouped together.  This insane layout is not to encourage the shoppers to wander through the entire space and make impulse purchases.  That would be way too American in concept.  No, the sole and unique reason that Monoprix shelves their products in the most obscure and illogical way possible is it drive me crazy.

Today's example will illustrate this point perfectly.  I wanted to buy some little pots of creamer for my coffee.  I spy several brands shelved here in the "Breakfast items" aisle.  That makes sense, for a change.  See that shelf with the little packs marked "Gloria"?  That's where the creamers are.  

 But wait.  My favorite brand isn't there!  What happened to the "President" creamers?  I ask a "Breakfast Items" stockguy, who, of course, is STOCKING THE AISLE during peak shopping hour.  (You can see the edge of his forklift in the picture, in fact).

He indicates that this one brand of creamer--for reasons known only to Monoprix, is situated in the fresh milk/cheese aisle (even though it is not fresh; it is packaged in UHT tubs just as the other creamers are) at the complete opposite end of the store.

Rolling my eyes, I braced myself for battle as I make my way through the crowds towards the milk aisle, using my shopping cart as a ramming device.

And there it is...the Holy Grail of creamers, why, it's the President of creamers!  Maybe that's why it gets special treatment.

 At least there were no forklifts blocking my access to it.

French Health Care

he French national health system, la sécurité sociale, is often cited as one of the best in the world. It served as a model for ObamaCare and Michael Moore gives it ample laudatory footage in his 2007 film “Sicko”. But as with any industry where humans are involved, there is good and there is the not-so-good. And then there is the downright ridiculous, which I wrote about in the Papaya Cure.

As a longtime beneficiary of the health system here I’ve had lots of opportunities to observe and experience some of the terrific--as well as odd--services that make the French national health system one of the most talked-about when we talk about healthcare.

The Good and the Enviable: Cost

 “In France, you pay into the system according to your means. And you take out of the system according to your illness.”

I’m misquoting Karl Marx here, but this is the core philosophy upon which the French system is constructed. Outsiders often think that the French system of socialized medicine is free. Guide books will tell you that should you take ill while vacationing in France, you can walk into any emergency room and be treated “without paying a dime!”. But the reality is that it’s not free—we are taxed heavily (I pay 60% of my gross salary back to the government and they disburse it to several agencies, the healthcare system being but one of them). In that way, paying taxes is a bit like paying an obligatory insurance policy. If you have children, get sick a lot (or have children who get sick a lot), live to be old (and get sick a lot), you’ll be very happy that you and your fellow citizens paid all those taxes all those years. On the other hand if you are childless, in excellent health and age without incident, you’ll never get your money back out of the system. But you are helping the Community (which is, after all, one of the tenets of the French Republic) so that alone will get you in to heaven. (And with that sentence, I just violated another tenet of the French Republic, which is to never mix the sacred and the secular.)

I’ve already amortized my investment. Between birthing one baby on French soil and having a serious accident with a resulting year of physiotherapy, I’d say the French have put about 1.5 million dollars in me at this point. So you’ll never hear me complaining about the system here, unless it’s about the hospital food.

The less-than-stellar and sometimes irritating: Lack of centralized information

Every French parent knows the “Carnet de Santé.” This booklet is given at birth—one for each child—and you take it with you each time you bring your child to the doctor. Some are plain (my daughter who was born in America has a boring white one, given to us by the French consulate in San Francisco), some are fancy (her sister, born in Neuilly, has one whose cover features a sketch of a child going through her developmental stages), and there is an entire industry devoted to making cute protective covers for them. (Not included in your national health plan.) The carnet de santé is sacred.  You must not lose it, for inside is your child’s health history: vaccinations, milestones reached, height, weight, all illness ranging from the common cold to the more-serious. French people like to visit lots of different doctors, often for the same malady, so the carnet de santé is a sort of ambulatory health file. The doctors don’t keep centralized files on you. You do. For adults, this means you keep all your xrays, blood test results, MRI records…all the data you’ve obtained from the different places you’ve been treated. If you are sick a lot, you’d better have a closet dedicated to holding all your different films and paperwork, which you’ll have to carry with you each time you see a doctor.

Another problem with such disparate information is that the doctors in France only know their area of expertise. You cannot ask, say, your orthopedic surgeon, for a referral to a good physiotherapist. A surgeon only knows how to operate. He is not tied in to a larger community of healthcare providers. This is quite different from the States, where all these guys get together at lavish conferences in Hawaii and try to create lucrative networks. I speculate that the isolated nature of healthcare professionals in France may be a result of the lack of impetus in profit-making.

The usually kooky and often ridiculous: Medicine Douce, or alternative treatments

Homeopathic or “kooky” medicine is practiced right alongside allopathic, or “western” medicine in France. You could go to a dermotologist with a hideous rash all over your body and get prescibed cortisone-- a legitimate drug (‘take one every morning”) as well as apis mellifica, a voodoo treatment (“place five granules under your tongue every three hours”). The “real” medication will come in some boring vial or box whereas the “fake” medicine will have some elaborate system of delivery and some extremeley intricate and impossible-to-comply-with method for application. That is so that when the worthless sugar pill fails to live up to its promise, the fault is yours. I was recently told, when I purchased some snail slime, that I “should use it for two weeks. If you don’t see results, it means your body is not receptive to the product.” That makes sense. It’s my body that is not receptive, and not your product which is completely bogus. (I bought it anyway. And no, it did not work.)

Hopefully we will all enjoy good health and limited contact with any health care system, French or not. But if you do find yourself in a French doctor’s office, it’s important to keep your mind open and your mouth shut. The latter I learned first hand when one of my doctors brought out some medieval-looking hook which he wanted to use on me to break up some scar tissue. Fearing leeches next, I exited his office as fast as possible.

At the intersection of expectations and reality

ross-cultural confusion can be the greatest where expectations meet reality. I saw this clearly when reading some comments on one of David Lebovitz's blog posts which focused on Speculoos but also wove in a good chunk of Monoprix insanity. Both Lebovitz and his readers cited the refusal of the Monoprix clerks to provide change (to use the photocopier, or break a large-ish bill when purchasing a small item) as an example of French rudeness.

Yes, it appears to be rude. But the thing is, these folks were looking for change in the wrong place. In America you can ask a supermarket cashier to open her drawer and break a bill for you. In France, you can't. You have to go to the [poorly-named, one must admit] Customer Service desk, situated near the entrance to the supermarket, to get change. That's where you go to get an item refunded or exchanged as well. Not the checkout lady. But because the supermarket setup looks the same as in America, we expect the people working in the French supermarket setup to have the same job functions as back home.

This is always a source of frustration when traveling, and especially so when traveling to Paris because Parisians are by nature not warm and cuddly to Anyone Different, nor are they information-sharers.  So when we (Americans) go to, say, the French hairdresser and expect to have our hair shampooed before it is cut, because that is normal procedure in our country and we find out that that will cost extra (as will the cream rinse and the styling and blow dry after the cut), we think how odd. The place looks the same but the people don't act the same.

When I first moved to Paris, there were a million things that appeared similar to what I knew in America but which tripped me up until I learned the new cultural code of operations. The neighborhood café...I didn't realize, until a waiter told me so, that there was a three-layer price scale in that place: cheapest at the counter, mid-level seated indoors, and most expensive if seated outside. Where I came from, all prices/seats were equal in a coffee shop. So the first time I paid more for my coffee when sitting out in the sun compared with the cost the previous day when I had sipped it at the counter, I complained loudly to the waiter that he had overcharged me. His reaction was not customer-friendly. But it was I, in my cafe-price-scheme cultural ignorance, who was at fault.

One of the most-essential lessons I've learned as an expatriate is never to assume that things will work as they do back home, even if they look the same. From the way the post office functions (you can bank your money there) to how to eat a hamburger (with a fork and knife), it is always prudent to stand back and watch the natives first.

In France they don't serve you water automatically when you sit down.
But they will serve it to you automatically when you order ice cream.

Coquilles Saint Jacques

e have a sweet modest weekend home out in the Norman village of Verneuil-sur-Avre. One of the many architectural highlights of the village is its Gothic church spire which can be seen from as far away as Chartres and is mentioned in one of Proust's stories.

 During the Middle ages, Verneuil-sur-Avre was a stopping point for Christian pilgrims hiking the Saint Jacques de Compostelle trail, and the town remains quite devout today. While that piety was not a drawing point for us--we are more prone to be found at the village bakery than inside the church on Sunday mornings-- I do love this little emblem I spied this weekend embedded quietly into one of the village walkways:

This is a marker showing that this town is a pilgrimage site. In the background is the famous Mont-St-Michel which is an hour and a half away (by car for the non-pilgrims), and which certainly ranks higher than Verneuil on the hierarchy of religious stopping points. The shell and the hooked staff are traditional pilgrim talismans. St Jacques shells were easily collected from the beaches along the route then pocketed and used by pilgrims for sipping water from trailside springs. The shell also holds a metaphorical value: the many grooves coming together at one point symbolize the various ways to get to Santiago de Compostela, the town in northwestern Spain which is the endpoint for the pilgrims' journey. The staff was used as a hiking tool and with its hook, also became a carrier.

There are still people who hike the St Jacques de Compostelle trail today, some as religious pilgrims, others as secular nature lovers. I'm pleased when they come through our little town and I find it incredibly cool that there's this tiny secret marker lighting their path, right there between the bakery and the café.

Something you'd never see in a French election

his, from my absentee ballot for the California primary:

Living in secular France, this language shocks me.

May 1st and kooky rules

t's May 1st, the French Labor Day, which is celebrated  here in diverse fashions.  Some--generally the wealthy-- take a four-day weekend.   Others--generally union activists-- hold noisy protest demonstrations to show their displeasure with Sarkozy.  The Far Right pays hommage to party idol Joan of Arc.  And everybody offers the dainty muguet, or lily of the valley, which can be purchased on any street corner from those people whom the French government euphemistically refer to as "itinerant travelers," the bane of the Right.  It's an odd paradox  (or maybe it's entirely normal) that the only people working on this historically significant holiday are those who hold the lowest ranking in the hierarchy of immigrants.

The French come out with some kooky rules from time to time, and as we sit here five days from the conclusive round of the Presidential elections, this moment is no exception.  An edict has just come down from the RATP, the managing body for the capital's public transport system, instructing ticket-checkers to not check tickets during these "tension-filled days leading up to the election."  During the last election in 2007 some métro riders were caught hopping the turnstile and things turned nasty and riotous.  While the RATP insists this order, which is in place from now until May 6th, has "nothing to do with politics", it seems a bit suspicious.  But what do I care?  FREE RIDES ON THE METRO FOR EVERYBODY!  (Even the itinerant travelers!)  This is almost as good as the parking ticket amnesty that typically follows each presidential election, another kooky decree but one for which I wait eagerly every five years.