Dongurigal

Just click it

2006-09-29T06:06:00.000+02:00

The new, the improved (sort of), the costly Dongurigal.

And in case that link doesn't work, since I can't see it, try this:

http://dongurigal.typepad.com/dongurigal

Rain Rain, don't go away

2006-09-25T05:57:00.000+02:00

The Vietnamese woman we were having coffee with held up four delicate fingers and said, "Four months."

"No, three months," argued Hubs, who held up three not-as-delicate fingers.

"I'm very sorry. Four," she smiled sadly as if she alone were responsible for whatever it was they were discussing.

"Four? Three? Four months of what?" I asked.

"Rain."

Non-stop rain. For three months, four months, whatever.

And as if to prove both their arguments, the rain pattered the tin roof of the cafe and splashed into the ceramic pond next to our table.

I'll probably feel guilty (or stupid) for admitting this, especially if, after three or four months of rain, this region is inundated and people lose their homes, livelihoods, and lives, but I like it when it rains.

First, when it rains, it isn't too hot to go out. Right now, it is not raining. The sky is a clean blue dotted with wispy clouds, but step out the door and whoosh, the humidity and heat knock you down. I have about as much tolerance for heat as most people have for the sound of finger nails scratching a blackboard, so I am somewhat trapped in the hotel room between the hours of 10 and 4. Thank God for ADSL.

Second, if I put on my lovely burgundy rain poncho, all the rage here in Quang Ngai-- I might add--no one can see that I'm a foreigner. At least not initially. This is a good thing because you can go for a walk by the river or through the town relatively unbothered. Not enough can be said about the blissful privacy a layer of opaque plastic affords you.

Third, because of the rain, it is so damn green here. Green is my all-time favorite color. I look out the window and see one-hundred shades of green, and even though I am trapped inside, I am soothed.

Giving credit and answering comment questions

2006-09-25T05:43:00.000+02:00

The hotel is fine, valances and all. Today, I made it to breakfast before the crowds and the ants.

And I haven't seen a cockroach since the day I spotted one in the bathroom. Pardon me, give me a minute to knock some wood.

Hubs and I will move to an apartment by the sea probably in late October or early November. It is still under construction.

I forgot to give credit to Problogger
for the idea of writing a "How to" style post. (I was too late to enter the contest.) I've just discovered Mr Problogger's site. He's one of those bloggers that actually makes real money, as in 6 figures, from the various blogs he writes and then is willing to tell you how. I really like his writing ideas and suggestions.

At the moment, I'm not sure if I want a blog that makes money. At the moment, I just want a blog that I can see.

How to live in a Vietnamese 3-star hotel in the middle of nowhere

2006-09-23T06:44:00.000+02:00

If the idea of living in a hotel brings to mind Somerset Maugham sipping Singapore Slings on his balcony at Raffles Hotel, all the while jotting down his observations about colonial shenanigans in a little writer's notebook, (aaah the romance of it all), then perhaps life in a Vietnamese 3-star hotel in the middle of nowhere is not for you.

But then again, perhaps you have no choice in the matter. In which case, these 5 tips will help you adjust, quickly and with grace, to life in a Vietnamese 3-star hotel in the middle of nowhere.

1. Buffet breakfast is served...

At 6am. If you are not downstairs in the restaurant by 7:30am, most of the food will have disappeared into the hungry mouths of touring Dutch cyclists and Chinese businessmen. You will be left with an ant-infested bun, several slices of the end pieces of fresh fruit, a couple of discolored hard-boiled eggs, and stewed coffee.

Get there early, or starve.

2. Gekkos are your friends

They eat mosquitos. Sure, they are skittish and kind of creepy looking and make you squeal when you see them scurry up a wall, but they do you a big favour in slurping up those aggressive Dengue-fever spreading bloodsuckers.

Cockroaches on the other hand are not your friend. Learn how to say Boric Acid in Vietnamese.

3. Wear goggles in the swimming pool

Not necessarily because the water is dirty, but because the geezer who's in charge of the pool likes to sit and stare at your fish-belly white legs while you are doing the breast stroke. It's just easier not to have to look up at him looking at you everytime you take a breath.

4. The smell of mildew is exotic

It's true. Mildew means that you are in the tropics during a monsoon where nothing dries, ever. Indeed dry things, like the blue carpet and the synthetic pillows, become damp. How exotic. Really. How very exotic.

5. Learn to like window treatments

Preferably butter-colored polyester drapes, lacey white curtains and pleated drapery panels and valances. (You bet I had to look that up on google).

And no, you can't redecorate. You're in a hotel, remember.

By following these 5 tips on how to live in a Vietnamese 3-star hotel in the middle of nowhere, your life will seem as romantic as that of Somerset Maugham's.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's past noon, I have to find myself a Singapore Sling.

Bloggity blogging during an almost monsoon

2006-09-20T06:22:00.000+02:00

The palm trees outside our third-storey room window are swaying violently, the river in the distance has miniature white water caps. Though there is no downpour, it's all very monsoony and tropical. Yet I am here to tell you all about my blogspot situation.

Look, it's nearly noon, too hot and windy and potentially rainy to be outside.

I cannot access blogspot blogs. Funnily enough, I can sign into Blogger to post, fix up my template, and do other nifty things, but I cannot view my own blog. Nor anyone else's.

To counter that frustrating little problem, I signed up for bloglines which allows me to subscribe to blogs, news sources, etc and when each is updated, this shows up in the bloglines folder.

Normally, I can read an entire post of a blog, but sometimes the posts are cut off midway. There doesn't seem to be a specific reason such as word length. For example, today, or at least in the last 24 hours, L posted. I could only read the first paragraph. Sniff.

Anyway, I have written to bloglines to find out why this happens.

In the meantime, I am considering switching blog hosts. Some blogs I read are hosted by TypePad, but you have to pay a small fee. Not interested. For now.

I am now researching WordPress. In the testimonials section, all the eager WordPress users sounded very very HTML and Java Script savvy. Frighteningly so. A lot were guys speaking in Tongues. I couldn't relate. I just want to be able to upload the odd picture from time to time.

So for the moment, dear readers, I will stick with Blogger. Let it be known that I am reading those of you who have blogspot blogs (when bloglines shows the entire post), but I cannot comment.

Oh gosh, a palm frond just crashed to the ground, three storeys down, along the very path I took this morning to swim in the hotel pool. Like I said, monsoony and tropical. And I'm safely tucked inside my air conditioned hotel room.

Me and the cheeky cockroach and the two skittish gekkos.

Honk if you're horny, or, if you're in a big SUV

2006-09-18T11:57:00.000+02:00

Hubs greets me at the Danang International Aiport (that's almost as funny as calling the airport in Regina, Saskatchewan, international) with a kiss and a reminder that Vietnam is a very relaxed place. Life is slow here, everything takes a long time. I'll have to be patient. Don't get angry or irritated or sour. At least not right away.

Hubs knows I can be a little intense. Easily stressed out. In a rush. It is a subtle warning.

Ok, maybe not so subtle.

It would be no lie to say that by Tuesday evening, three days after arrival, I'll want to have explored all the shops on each and every street of the town of Quang Ngai, bought a bicycle and SIM card, started an expat woman's group, discovered the best little Pho cafe in town, lined up a volunteer placement at the local orphanage, visited the nearby white sandy beach for a swim as well as the depressing site of the Mai Lai massacre, found a couple of side jobs teaching English as a foreign language, and learned enough Vietnamese to bargain at the local market.

"What? You expect me to pay 30 cents for 5 kilos of rice. Outrageous!!"

Back at the airport two days ago, and Hubs tells me that he's become more relaxed, more laid back here. The pace of life is slow, very slow.

We then hop into the company SUV and our driver maneuvers out of the aiport parking lot and onto a main road.

Gaaaaaaaah.

Two and a half hours of terror down Highway 1, and I thought flying was bad.

Slow pace of life, eh? The roads are crammed with speeding motorcyclists, nonchalant bicyclists, looming trucks that convert a two-lane highway into a three lane one, and at least one hasty SUV that beeps a constant message to the slowpoke cyclists ahead to move out of the way and carries a newly laid back French engineer and his petrified wife.

As for my list of things to be done by tomorrow evening?

It's just too damn hot and humid. I think I'll follow Hubs' advice for once.

He'll be so pleased.

The latest updates

2006-09-14T17:54:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow I'm on a plane to Vietnam.

Today I am at the internet cafe sending off a last minute email to my parents, just in case my plane crashes. I have a ridiculous fear of flying. Ridiculous. I know. But still, I'd hate to be thinking, as my plane went down, "damn I should have emailed my parents."

The other reason I'm here, instead of at the Louvre, on my final day in Paris (confession: I haven't been to the Louvre yet. Yep, ridiculous. I know.), is to update my blogroll in case I can't access blogger to update my template while in 'Nam. I've been meaning to update it for a long while and now I've done it. Apologies to anyone I've missed. I only checked the most recent posts.

I'm still not sure why blogger is inaccessible where Hubs is because there is an NGO blogger in Vietnam that I read from time to time. The work he does with street kids is inspirational. Hmmm while I'm here, I think I'll blogroll his blog, too.

So, we'll see. In the meantime, I can blog by emailing myself and if you want to comment, your comments will be sent to my email address. Unfortunately, if you blog using blogger, I won't be able to read you. Sniff.

C'est la vie.

I wonder how you say that in Vietnamese?

A test post via email

2006-09-08T12:37:00.000+02:00

Hubs has told me that he has been unable to access any blogspot blog
including mine in Vietnam. At first we thought it was his company blocking
it, but he hasn't been able to access them at internet cafes either.

So, I might need to post this way from now on. Oh dear, oh dear.

And as for reading other people's blogs, oh dear, oh dear.

Liberte, Fraternite, and uuh, what was the other one?

2006-09-06T17:48:00.000+02:00

*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of one very unlucky-to-be-married-to Dongurigal hubby.

Grumpy and jetlagged, I dragged myself to Agence National de l'Accueil des Etrangers et des Migrations, aptly initialed ANAEM and, no I can't translate it for you, but suffice it to say that it's there I had to get an XRay and a quicky medical, as well as listen to a lecture on integrating into French life.

I need to do all this so that I can pick up my titre de sejour (or residency card) that will expire in less than a year while I am in Vietnam. But, whatever. I finished my 4-year journalism degree many years ago when it was clear to me by second year that I would never be a journalist. If I could do that, then I can do this.

Back at ANAEM, we foreigners also watched a stimulating video on integration into France. Essentially to be integrated means to not be a radical Muslim.

I guess I'm integrated by default because I believe in freedom of religion and equality for women, the two areas of French life stressed most vehemently during the lecture and in the video.

Apparently in France, religion is a private matter and woman are accorded full rights under French law. Woman are not bound to their husbands nor their fathers. They cannot be forced into marriage. Indeed, women cannot be forced to do anything.

Except one thing.

Video, lecture, and one-on-one interview over--where it is determined that my French is passable enough for me to be considered well-integrated, I am directed to the medical offices for the XRay, etc. I hand my documents to the nurse. She fills in my medical form.

"Uh, pardon, my last name is Dongurigal, like in my passport."

"No, your last name is Grumpyfrenchguy. That is your name, Madam Grumpyfrenchguy."

"Uh, no, I didn't change my name. That is my husband's name. My name is Dongurigal. Please put Dongurigal in that section of the form because there might be problems later if it's a different name from my passport."

"No, this is FRANCE! In France, you take your husband's name. Your name is Madam Grumpyfrenchguy. That is how it is done in France."

She hands back the form. A sarcastic quip about the video I just watched forms in my mind, in English unfortunately. I say nothing, defeated but livid.

Jeez, me and the radical Muslims have something in common after all--we're unintegratable.

A post on why eating a mound of refried beans the night before flying from Calgary to Paris, via Montreal may not be the smartest meal choice around

2006-09-05T14:54:00.000+02:00

I guess that's obvious. Doh.

And now for something completely silly

2006-09-03T04:44:00.000+02:00

In the world of Annual Reports, the annual report published in spiral coil form by Sask Power is particularly impressive and beautiful.

Hi Ray!

French bureaucracy resistant to blog abuse

2006-08-31T20:22:00.000+02:00

The thing with blogging and being in a blogging mindset, in my humble opinion, is that all the shit you have to endure in life becomes fodder for a sarcastic, funny, goofy blog post.

The shit doesn't take over your life and eat away at your spirit because once you've posted, poof, you realize that the shit is a tiny piece of stupidity worth no more time than it takes to fill a Blogger create post box and click on the publish post button.

Sadly, French bureaucracy is as resistant to blogging fodderdom as a superbacteria is to anti-biotics. This is a very sad state of affairs because the shit that is French bureaucracy has taken over my life and eaten away at my spirit. I want to roll up in the fetal position and moan loudly for half a day.

I cannot find a single humorous angle about my particular situation in which to post nor can I find a humorous angle to any of the horror stories I hear from fellow non-Frenchies who also have to deal with French bureaucracy. What we all go through is just not funny. Worse, it is downright boring. A big no-no for blogging. And an even bigger no-no for the spirit. And an even bigger no-no for those who wonder if putting up with all this bureaucratic shit is worth staying married to a Frenchy for.

But now that I think about it, what if I were to roll up in the fetal position and moan loudly for half a day in front of, say, the prefectural office for foreign services or whatever it's called. That would be kind of funny.

At least it would be fodder for someone else to blog about.

Packratism is genetic

2006-08-27T03:46:00.000+02:00

"Ok, dad," I blurt in a faux Scottish accent, "It's crap. Just throw it out."

Mom, dad and I are clearing out their garage. They moved into their cosy, gingerbread house in Regina this January after several years living in a giant pizza hut house in nearby Tiny Town.

During the move, they discovered that all their stuff couldn't fit into their new place. They rented a pricey self-storage unit in which to keep it, a rent that they no longer wanted to pay. It was time to make some room in the garage and get rid of the crap.

Dad holds up a coiled, army green, probably leaky hose and insists that maybe someday one of us kids will want it, so he shall just put it over here. In the corner.

"It's crap, dad, you already have two hoses. Throw it out."

Reluctantly he does.

Just as mom reluctantly throws out the 1950s cross country skiing boots. No winter sports store is going to carry a line of skis that will match these boots, I say, but you never know, she argues.

"Crap, mom."

I shake my head. It's a darn good thing I'm here. I'm ruthless, unsentimental, strong.

How about this?

"Dad, that belonged to the previous owner and she probably had it in this garage for 40 years. Crap."

I'm definitely keeping this. Dad holds up a basket of ratty hockey pucks and a dog-chewed lacrosse ball.

"It's crap. It's gotta go."

"No way."

I let him have his way.

Finally, the garage is as clean as a garage can get. Mom even flicks away at cobwebs with a broom and sweeps up bird feathers and severed heads. (They have cats. Plural.)

Their car will finally have shelter during the frigid winter months.

They'll be able to cancel the rental on the storage unit. All those dusty boxes of photo albums, slides, and framed pictures that hold so many memories will fit nicely in the right hand corner.

So will the 10 large containers of books, old letters, photo albums, knick knacks, clothes, linens and other important stuff that belongs to ME!

"Do you really need to keep all those old cards, Dongurigal."

"Of course, dad, jeez."

The evil canicule of 2006 and other musings

2006-08-01T14:28:00.000+02:00

Dongurigal shifts uncomfortably in the wobbly leather chair at the local internet / taxi phone cafe, half-listening to a woman screaming partly in French, partly in Arabic from one of the call booths in the other room. Dongurigal feels very sheepish and guilty for not blogging much, not reading favorite blogs much, not commenting on other blogs much, not updating the sidebar of new readers much, not doing very much of anything really.

It is so hard to concentrate in places like this, although they are much appreciated since France Telecom hasn't been arsed to fix Dongurigal's (and Hub's, but really, it's Dongurigal's) internet since Bastille Day (July 14). The fuckers.

Ok, enough with the 3rd person.

It was a breezy cool day today somewhere in the mid 20s and I went powerwalking, or rather powershuffling; it's the first decent exercise I've had since before the evil canicule of July 2006.

Isn't that a great word. Canicule. It means heatwave in French, but it sounds like the name of a foot fungus. "Gotta go to the pharmacy and get some cream for this canicule."

Dear readers who still read (I saw my site metre report, how depressing), I apologize. I haven't felt very bloggy lately. Hubs went to Vietnam on Sunday, I am sad, the lead up to his departure was sad, but at least I will join him in September and that's not sad. That's happy. I am going to Canada next week for 4 weeks. I'm doing a little happy dance in this squeaky leather chair right now.

It sounds like I'm farting.

Piercing thoughts

2006-07-20T12:48:00.000+02:00

Last night, escaping the dripping heat of our apartment, Hubs and I sat half-naked on the terrace, hoping to catch a hint of breeze. Hubs, wearing only loose fitting cropped pants, raised his arms behind his head, clasped his hands together, and leaned back contentedly in his chair. I said:

"Jeez, if I shot a few arrows into you, you'd look like Saint Sebastian."

God, I'm romantic.

I first learned of Saint Sebastian years and years ago when my brother would read aloud curses by a wacky character in a book called Shibumi. The character would grumble something like, "By the such and such balls of Saint such and such..." So, the epithet for Saint Sebastian was, "by the perforated balls of Saint Sebastian." We laughed and laughed but then, because we were young, we had to look the word perforated up in the dictionary. We weren't about to ask our mom what it meant. She would have wanted to know the context.

As a result, I never forgot the word perforated (what an improvement in my vocabulary) nor did I forget the name Saint Sebastian.

My second encounter with this holey saint was in an autobiographical novel by Yukio Mishima called Confessions of a Mask. At a young, impressionable age, Yukio sees a picture in an artbook of Saint Sebastian tied to a tree and pierced with arrows which causes him to develop homosexual longings coupled with sadistic fantasies. Well, let me tell you, if I wasn't that curious to find out exactly what the apparently sexy Saint Sebastian looked like during the "perforated balls" phase, I certainly had to find out then.

I finally asked my mom who this Saint Sebastian dude was.

In short, he was a Roman soldier and a secret Christian who was martyred for his beliefs, although he apparently survived the arrows only to be clubbed to death instead.

Some people have no luck.

In any case, my mom claims that she is tired of seeing images of Saint Sebastian everywhere. He's been painted, mosaicked, and stained glass to death. When she was here just last month, I got a perverse pleasure out of pointing out his image in the various churches we visited.

"Oh stop," she'd whisper, seeking out a less violent painting, say, of Saint Denis holding his own decapitated head.

We Catholics sure know how to have a laugh.

(Note: I have more thoughts on saints but will save it for later as I am at an internet cafe, sitting next to the single toilet and am overwhelmed by the fumes. Stay tuned for thoughts on Saint Anne.)

Move your ass, svp

2006-07-18T15:52:00.000+02:00

A word of warning to French metro passengers:

Never ever tell a woman who spent her childhood riding packed rush-hour subways in Tokyo that there is no room and then stand there refusing to budge because that woman, who is normally very wimpy and easily intimidated, will push you aggressively while stepping on your painted toes, proving you wrong.

And we all know how difficult it is for French people to be proven wrong, especially when that woman smugly stands there in her desired location, breathing freely, no stinky armpit in her face because she dared to stand where no one has stood before.

The French have no idea how to pack a train properly. Those that have to stand, stand sentinel by the door leaving huge pockets of free space between each set of sliding doors.

And all I say to that is "DUH" and "get the fuck out of my way."

Dongurigal is feeling very anti-French this month.

Nope, could help you but don't wanna

2006-07-13T15:29:00.000+02:00

Some days I think it's probably good to have the personality of my dad's friend. When he wants an object, some information, a bit of advice, or cheese and crackers, cheese and crackers, I said, not bread, I'm in France why can't I get crackers and cheese, before the meal, not after, thank you very much, he just keeps pestering the person until he gets his way, even though the person he's addressing can't understand a word he says. I guess it's his obsessive determination coupled with his little gesture dance.

He also doesn't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks of him. "No" and "impossible" are not in his vocabulary.

Unfortunately, they are in mine. I understand those words perfectly and am often stymied by them.

I could have used my dad's friend, or at least his attitude, today.

I take a 45 minute, two subway rides trip to a centre that, in addition to assisting with visa applications, provides tourist information and gives advice about a certain country. That this centre provides tourist information and gives advice is mentioned in the Lonely Planet, French version. That this centre provides tourist information and gives advice is advertised on its, the centre's, website. That this centre provides tourist information and gives advice is posted on large signs in the front windows of its office.

In the office, there is a small line up. I look around. There are books for sale. A couple of paintings of the country hang on the wall. None of the staff are ethnically or actually from the country I am researching, that I can see anyway.

It's my turn.

"Bonjour madam," I say, smiling and pulling out my notebook in which I've written several key questions. "I have several questions about traveling to this country." I am speaking in French.

"We only process visas."

"Ok, but can I get any information or advice here about this country?"

"No." Her face is set, obstinate, unhelpful. "We only process visas," she repeats.

"Uh, do you know of another organization or cultural centre where I can get information about travelling to this country?"

"No. There's nothing."

"Uh, what about the embassy? Can I..."

She interrupts. "No, the embassy does not have information."

"How about tourist agencies?"

"Yes," sighs deeply. "You can get information from them."

"Ok, can you suggest some agencies here in Paris?"

"No."

"Ok, um, do you assist non-French people with visa processing?"

"Where are you from?"

"Canada."

"Here," she hands me two badly photocopied pieces of paper. No explanation. She stares.

"Uh. Thank you."

And so I left. I should have stayed there repeating my questions in English and bad French, doing the gesture dance, and refusing to take no for an answer until she gave me what I wanted-- just some basic information, thank you very much.

By the way, Hubs and I are moving to Vietnam.

One more day of this

2006-07-11T14:16:00.000+02:00

I am in hiding. In my bedroom.

We have had non-stop guests -- I take the blame for the bulk of visitors -- since June 13. My parents left yesterday which I am very sad about. It is July 11 today and I am in charge of my dad's friend who couldn't get a flight until tomorrow.

I say in charge because this gentleman could not find his way out of a straight tunnel which means I can't give him a map and a couple of metro tickets and send him off on a tour on his own.

Damn it. I need a break.

He never stops talking. Ever. EVER.

He doesn't read, watch TV, or listen to the radio.

He talks.

Non-stop. In a loud voice.

So I am hiding in the bedroom pretending to have a siesta.

He also talks to anybody. Sometimes it is funny.

For example, at an autoroute rest stop ordering a cup of coffee, in English to the non-English speaking server:

Hi there bonjour bonjour hi there. Would you be so kind as to prepare me a cup of coffee with a little cream in it. In Canada--I'm from Canada, Saskatchewan Canada, Do you know Saskatchewan. It's the prairies. In the middle of Canada. Yes, the prairies. Middle. Middle of Canada. Anyway, we don't use hot milk. Hot milk. See hot milk. Hot milk. It's hot. We don't use it. Do you understand? Hot milk. We use cream or cold milk. Do you understand? In Canada. Do you know Canada? Coffee please with cream.

Uuuuuuh, you want cafe creme?

Si si d'accord yes yes cafe creme cafe creme. It's different in Canada. Different. Different. Different. You know. Hot milk. Different. Do you have a lid? A lid? A lid? It's round. Goes on top? WHAT???? No lids? What? Why? Why?

Oh yes, very funny the first time. After a variation of the above routine at the fifth rest stop, I'm ready to lose it. So I walk very far away and buy a coffee out of the automatic vending machine.

Some of the incidences have not been so funny, especially the one involving derelict, stoned teens, a couple of rabid dogs, and a dirty sock. Another incident not half an hour later involved an ADHD gypsy kid, a basket of bread, a slab of butter and a livid waiter.

I swore at this man, this friend of my dad's. It was very Jerry Springer. I used the F word and the Good Lord's name all in one sentence then I stormed away from the table. I had threatened to leave if he called the gypsy kid over, a kid he had "met" earlier that morning who had been breaking bottles in the street. Sure enough, he called the kid over and I left the restaurant. It was not funny. At all.

So you can see why I'm hiding right now and why, when we are out, as soon as he starts talking with people, I just keep walking until he catches up with me.

His plane is at 11:55 am tomorrow. It's a charter. It had better not be overbooked.

Posting soon

2006-06-25T22:49:00.000+02:00

I once said that I can't do more than one thing at a time. I am currently trying to do about 10 things at a time. Decorate our new apartment, entertain my folks who are visiting, de-stress, cook decent food since we're all broke, I mean, on a budget. ETCETERA.

I will post soon. Just distracted at the moment.

Right honey?

2006-06-10T23:51:00.000+02:00

She hesitated at the entrance of the Frog & Rosbif pub, scanning over the heads of fixated football (soccer) fans for the person she was to meet. The pub was full but not packed. Everyone had a seat, including Hubs and me, right by the door, where she stood. At least four flat screen TVs and one film screen, the kind you'd find in a high school classroom, were broadcasting THE GAME: The World Cup opening match between Germany and Costa Rica.

She shook her head, frustrated and perturbed.

As she searched for her cellphone, all the while balancing a rolling suitcase and matching shoulder bag against her hip, she happened to glance to her left and spotted the man. She mouthed something to herself, too hard to hear, but it was English. She was definitely English, in town for the weekend, perhaps?

She struggled to roll her suitcase through the crowds and bumped her way over to the man.

A friend? Not a nice one, I thought. If not the airport, he could have at least met her at the RER station just down the street from the pub. Surely.

No, wait, wait, hang on. I was wrong. He wasn't a friend afterall. He was THE boyfriend.

He gave her a half-hearted kiss, whispered something in her ear and turned his back on her to continue to watch the game. She rubbed his back, squinted at one of the TV screens, inspected her purse, looked around the pub, stretched, rolled her head, checked for messages on her cell phone, sighed, tapped the boyfriend on the shoulder, after which he graced her with a three quarter turn, said something in under 10 seconds, then returned his attention to the game. They repeated this drill at least two more times.

The game ended.

They got up from their bench seat and made their way to the door, she dragging her suitcase, he clearly commenting on the game. They left the pub and walked down one of Paris's many romantic cobblestoney streets, she struggling with her suitcase, he still commenting on the game. Finally, he put his arm around her waist and then they were gone.

"I'm so glad you'll at least talk to me during the game," I said, "Look at those two. She's just come in from out of town and he barely gave her the time of day. That's just so rude, so unloving, right?"

"Right honey?"

"Hello?"

Skis-for-feet Barbie

2006-06-08T14:31:00.000+02:00

This first sunny Monday in June, I met up with Eau, a commenter here, and her young daughter for the afternoon. I had met Eau at a blogger party organized by Petite Anglaise on April 1; she introduced herself as a "reader," and a lively conversation followed.

Since then, we have tried to get together, but with mismatched schedules, we finally we settled on June 5, one day before Hubs came back and the whole apartment key exchange, moving, painting, furniture shopping, oh my god a shitload of guests are coming tornado swept through my life. (The only reason I'm blogging is there was a wee paperwork screw up, so we are behind schedule. Plus, Hubs has to go to his head office.)

At the end of a fabulously, gossipy afternoon in the park, Eau invited me back to her apartment. While there, Eau's daughter showed me all her Barbies. Among the Barbies, she had Retro-give-girls-a-complex-about-their-bodies Barbie, Child-bearing-hips-so-won't-give-girls-a-complex-about-their-bodies Barbie, and Shockingly-small-boobs-but-nice-tan Barbie.

Of course, I had immediately noticed that a couple of the Barbies had really small boobs.

"Hey, these Barbies have really small boobs," I yelled to Eau, who was in the other room. Eau responded that a lot of Barbies these days have more regular bodies and body parts. "Look at the hips on this one," Eau said as walked into the living room and handed me one in a long, burgundy ball gown, "child-bearing." Not cognizant that I had an impressionable young girl sitting next to me, I lifted up this Barbie's dress to check out her nether regions. Sure enough, big child-bearing hips.

I had a ton of Barbies when I was a kid, so you'd think I'd have a few neuroses about my body. That ole retro Barbie was a beauty even if she was anatomically incorrect, and I don't mean she had a willy. Heck, she didn't even have a wowie (and still doesn't, but she does have a nice butt crack). Weren't her boobs too big? Didn't she have such tiny hips, she was a prime candidate for c-section? Weren't her feet so small that if the Prince had found her first he would have forgotten all about Cinderella?

But I've never really been too fixated on the shape of my body because I also had Licca-chan as my early role model. She was a sparkly, wide-eyed Japanese Barbie who looked a lot like, well, a lot like me. She had a reddish hair. So did I. She had pale skin. So did I. She had non-existent boobs. So did I, back then. No wonder I didn't have a body complex by the time I outgrew dolls. I looked like one, so I must have been ok.

But the one body part I didn't share with any of my Barbies or Licca was my feet. And my feet have been a source of shame since. You see, in my day, there was no such thing as Skis-for-feet Barbie. I used to curl-up my toes and point my feet to achieve tiny-footedness just like my Barbies. Talk about a psychological binding of the feet.

Eau's daughter has two pretty Barbies with small boobs, subtle tans, and big, flat feet, just like mine. Sure, they are pedicured feet, but they are big, flat and dare I add, kind of ugly. They are the step-sisters' feet. If I had had Skis-for-feet Barbie, I wouldn't have curled my toes. Painted them, maybe, but not curled them under.

Back in university, I went through a rabid feminist stage where I proclaimed to whoever would listen that none of my daughters would ever...Ever...EVER have Barbies, even if they begged, pleaded, or cried (like sissy girls.) Now, I'm just a plain old feminist, non-working, non-cleaning wife with no children and I think if I ever have a daughter, I will buy her a Skis-for-feet Barbie as soon as she turns four.

Who knows, maybe by then, Mattel will have also come out with Jiggly-assed Barbie or even better, Plumber's-butt-Barbie.

The colour orange

2006-06-04T12:37:00.000+02:00

In two days, Hubs comes back to Paris from Algiers for good. (Secretly, I am thrilled, even though I might act all cool on this blog).

We will move into our new apartment the next day, or the day after, or the day after that, or when we get a bed, so I'm not really sure when it will be, but it will be soon.

Yesterday I went to my favourite little bourgeois village, the ritzy Sainte-Germaine-en-Laye, to go furniture window shopping. Window shopping only because the prices are such that a sofa would cost me one-months tax free salary at a certain school in Kuwait, if I were still working there, which I am not.

Actually what I ended up doing after licking the windows** of three furniture stores, is go back to the RER station's Relay magazine shop to buy several home decorating magazines. I then sat in a cafe, which better suits my temperament.

**Leche-fenetre (or Leche-vitrine, I can't remember) in French.

Thing is, home decorating scares the shit out of me. I either don't do it or I don't do it well. Hubs worries--he says he's joking, but I don't blame him if he's secretly worrying--that I will paint the walls of our new apartment orange like I did in Kuwait two years ago.

Look, I am not kidding you.

Before I'm accused of buying that floral monstrousity, the school provided a furnished apartment, and, luck of the draw, that was my sofa. After my initial reaction of GAH, I ended up loving that sofa. It matched the orange walls and once even more plants filled the room, I felt like I was sitting in a jungle at the hour of sunset. This became an essential psychological notion when all around me was the dusty beige desert.

I used to like the colour beige.

Hubs need not fret. Even I know that that was too much orange in one room.

But back to decorating. I have never bought any decent, grown-up furniture, except for a Chinese chest that a friend sold me when she left Kuwait the year before me and that currently sits in a storage unit somewhere in Saskatchewan. Until now, I have always had hand-me-downs, or a furnished apartment, or, in Japan, an apartment so small that my fold-up futon served as bed, couch and dining room chair. Lucky me, life was easy then.

All of a sudden I am supposed to think about what my personal style is. Heck if I know. Modern? Contemporary? Zen? Definitely not floral, although I love visiting my friend's farm which is decorated in country chic. Is that a style? She pulls it off. I wouldn't be able to. Our place would end up looking like a dollhouse for the Cabbage Patch kids.

What I do know is that I like Hubs' taste in furniture and electrical appliances. It's masculine without being slimey, welcome-to-my-techno-sex-pad style.

I'm relieved I like his taste because we still manage to argue about how we'll decorate even though we are agreeing with each other.

Me (hesitant): So, um, I really prefer blinds to curtains.
Hubs (determined): I hate curtains. I don't want curtains.
Me (whiney): But we have to cover the windows somehow. I actually really like bamboo blinds.
Hubs (bossy): I won't have curtains.
Me (huffy voice): I don't like curtains.
Hubs (even huffier voice): I don't like curtains.
Me (appeasing): Really, I don't want curtains. We should have blinds.
Hubs (agreeable): No curtains.

Frankly, I'm tempted to let him go off shopping by himself while I paint the walls not orange.

I promise.

What to write when you've deleted a posting on purpose

2006-06-03T18:42:00.000+02:00

I just deleted what I considered a very boring blog post. It was long and angsty too. Instead, I shall share a quote my mom just emailed me as she is up on the angst, which trust me, is petty and dull.

This Japanese proverb is a good one:  "That the birds of worry
and care fly about your head, this you cannot control.  That they make
a nest in your hair, this you can control."

I shall also share this story. My IRL friend who reads this blog (IRLFWRTB) was reading my swimsuit issue blog posting recently. Here's what happened to her (I am almost 100% sure that she won't mind me directly quoting her, but if you do mind--IRLFWRTB--please let me know and I will paraphrase instead. One thousand apologies too, but it is important to share this horror story so that readers learn a lesson from it. Or at least have a laugh at your expense.)

So, I'm at work, taking a little break, surfing to your blog, decide to click on the link about the men's "swim trunks" or so I thought, only to be confronted with the most gawdawful image***with the worst name. That is the moment my "back" button decides to stop working, as co-workers are walking behind my desk to retrieve files and things and glancing at the screen of my computer.
Embarrassment ensues.

Now how the heck do you explain that?

***Don't click link if at work, school,
internet cafe, or if you've eaten a large lunch.

A cold day in HELL

2006-05-30T22:55:00.000+02:00

No, really, it was a cold day in HELL today. What is with the weather here? Fifteen fricken degrees (celcius, folks. I am Canadian afterall.) I've put away all my wintery and early springy clothing and don't see why, at the end of May, I should have to pull them out of the trunk again. For crying out loud, this isn't Saskatchewan.

I have some more thoughts on HELL because it was revealed to me the other night, epiphany-like, how ridiculous it is that HELL, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is assumed to be a place blooping forth pyroclastic flows and smelling of rotten eggs. If I were an evil vulcanologist, I sure wouldn't be worrying about my cardinal sins.

No, here's what I have to say: HELL is not firey orange. It is not necessarily hot. It definitely does not smell like eggy farts.

HELL is grey. It is concrete. It is bland. It has featureless shopping malls. It is peopled with zombies. It has no smell, not even as you pass McDonalds.

It also has long line ups at Starbucks.

That's HELL for you.

New adoption blog

2006-05-29T00:37:00.000+02:00

If you're at all interested in international adoption, I've started a new blog called No Morning Sickness .

Yeah, ok, so it's kind of a stupid name, but I was tired and blogger was demanding a moniker and well, that's the first thing that came to my mind.

It's there that I will log the steps we take on the road to adoption. (Wow, that's not even a mixed metaphor, even though it's horribly cliche. Terribly sorry). I plagiarized one post with some hefty editing, particularly the stoned bit. Since that's my serious blog, I can't be going on about how I was possibly stoned when a social worker visited our home to determine if our family should adopt my sister back in the mid-80s.

One thing you may notice is that my adoption blog doesn't link back here although Dongurigal links over there.

Explanation: Dongurigal has not been outed yet, but I may tell friends and family about the No Morning Sickness blog in case they want to see how we're coming along and cheer us on. So, ssssshhh all 20 of my readers, including you, J, my IRL friend. Let's just keep Dongurigal a secret amongst us for now, shall we?

A serious double standard

2006-05-27T17:50:00.000+02:00

Scurrying back up to this bland, eighth floor hidey-hole overlooking a cemetery, I escaped the concrete HELL that is La Defense and breathed easier, despite the mildew.

I had walked over to HELL in search of a wine store because I am going out to a dinner party tonight and didn't want to hand over a bottle of plonk from the nearby grocery store. Indeed, I ended up buying the most expensive plonk on the shelves in the nearby grocery store because HELL wasn't going to let me find a wine store nor a decent flower shop, despite HELL promising these things and more.

Here's the even scarier thing: Hubs and I considered buying an apartment in this HELLerhood.

That's right. When I first arrived in Paris back in January, I looked for apartments in this area. I guess since I knew Paris proper was out of the question, I was open-minded about living here. And I didn't think of it as HELL. In fact, La Defense reminded me of Umeda in Osaka, an area in which I used to work a long time ago, used to play (not so long ago) and when the urge hit, used to work out. I never thought of Umeda as HELL. I quite liked it.

Now, this place no longer reminds me of Umeda. Only on the surface it does, but dig deeper and there is a big difference.

What's the difference? I think Umeda knows it's an ugly, concrete, block of grey and so it makes up for it by being loud, boistrous, fun, and quirky. You can walk its heinous streets and stumble upon a hidden shrine. Or you can wander through outdoor arcades passing smokey, eardrum bursting pachinko parlours, sexy soaplands, elegant incense shops, and any restaurant to suit your cravings, including McDonalds. Yes, it's overwhelming and exhausting, but at least Umeda finds little ways to surprise you. Usually pleasantly.

La Defense, aka HELL, thinks it's a happening place. It thinks very highly of itself, so it is not noisy and fun. During the week, it is crowded with cranky business people. On Saturdays, it is just crowded with shoppers suffering from mall apathy.

When you think highly of yourself, you can't help it, you are boring, even if you do have McDonalds.

HELL is boring.

I can't wait to get the fuck out of here.

Enough with the chicken gobble

2006-05-26T10:03:00.000+02:00

You know you are out of shape when your thighs and shoulders and muscles you never knew you had hurt after having splashed around lazily during an aqua aerobics class the day before.

Aqua aerobics.

I used to be a regular aqua aerobics splasher back in Japan, especially in the summer when it was just too damn hot and humid even to think about real aerobics. It was me, token gaijin, and the obasans and the cheerful, high-pitched-voiced instructor who would jump into the pool to correct our posture and make sure we were moving the right way. Like all aqua aerobics instructors, she made the choreography look so easy on terra firma, while we participants nearly drowned in our attempts to copy her.

Yesterday's instructor was no different, except that he was a French man with a high-pitched voice, but I think that comes with the territory.

He had very nice muscles and sexy moves.

And he was wearing a pair of forbidden swim trunks.

Yes, forbidden.

For plastered on the walls around the pool were signs reminding male swimmers that they were not permitted to use the pool if they wore swim trunks. They were required, REQUIRED, to wear this. Or this. (Thank God for small mercies.)

When you're around men in speedos--especially men who really shouldn't be wearing speedos--it's like passing a car accident. You know you shouldn't look. You say to yourself. Don't look, you're going to see something you wish you hadn't. But you can't help yourself. It's slow motion, your is mind telling you don't look and your eyes are disobeying until:

GAAAAAAH.

Oh God, did I have to see that chicken gobble?

Uuuugghhhh. God. Ugghuugh.

Oooh. Why did I look?

----

My parents are coming to Paris next month and my dad is dragging along his best friend. While mom stays with me, dad and best friend are embarking on a self-directed Joan of Arc tour, a tour my mom refuses to go on.

As she puts it--I really can't see myself travelling around with a couple of old geezers fixated on a young woman in metal. I'm staying in Paris with you.

Aaah. My mom. She's wise.

Thing is, it will be summer time (at least by Saskatchewan standards) and my parents and dad's friend will want to swim. There's a pool in my new neighbourhood and we are going south to visit the in-laws who live on the Mediterranean.

Should I tell my dad and his friend to get this? Surely it will help them fit in.

To think I taught IT last year

2006-05-23T11:58:00.000+02:00

Yes, I did. I taught IT in Kuwait at a certain international school last year.

And as you can see, I have screwed up my template, have lost all my fellow blogger links, etc etc etc and can't quite figure out what the heck I did. What the diddly poop is all this HTML crap I have to deal with.

So, I will get you all back on, eventually. But I have to go to French class. No skipping today.

ETA

Ok. I spent the afternoon sending out query emails to prospective adoption agencies, so I don't feel like a huge slug.

And I updated my blog list. It's in alphabetical order too. That's after two glasses of red wine. Impressive, eh.

If you were on the list before but not on now, don't be offended. It's not you, IT'S ME! Trust me. Send me a comment and I'll put you back on.

Zen and Cracks

2006-05-22T10:22:00.000+02:00

My mind is a blank today. No, that sounds far too zen.

More like it's full of silly thoughts not worth mentioning in emails or blogs or to the patisserie owner down the street who is just trying to move the line faster.

But you know what, I think I'll write down some of my silly (anxious?) thoughts here. Then maybe my mind will go blank and I can be zen. For once.

1. My favorite forum has been down since last night. At least it's been down for me. Dear readers who also access the same forum, has it been down for you? I'm hyperventilating. Not very zen.

2. Once again, we international married types encounter situations that make us fall through the bureaucratic cracks. Actually, anyone who lives overseas falls through bureaucratic cracks. (This should be the topic of a blog post someday--the falling through the cracks business.)

Because we are not both Canadian nor are we both French, Hubs and I have no clue where to begin with adoption. Neither country's laws apply to us, especially as we will live in a third country pretty soon. A kind-hearted, successful, adoptive mother, also living overseas and in an international marriage, suggested we start with the laws of the third country first, then apply for citizenship for our (future) adopted child afterwards from our own countries. That kind of scares me. What if my government, in all its wisdom and righteousness, refuses to acknowledge the adoption. Will I never be able to bring the child back to my home country?

Seriously, in all the reading I've done on the official Canadian government website, I have found NOTHING that relates to our situation. As usual. That's what happens when you don't live in your own country. You fall through the cracks.

I suppose the good in all this crack business (oh great, just imagine the hits from that wording), is that if the third country allows us to adopt, we will be able to adopt from countries that are on Canada's banned list, even though, according to my still very limited research those banned countries have updated their adoption procedures, have rid themselves of much corruption, and are accepted by countries such as the USA. This also means we will probably need to use a US adoption agency AND pay US rates. Hmmmm. I'll have to return to my blissful dollar for dollar exchange rate system.

3. I'm bored with my French lessons. I'm tired of sitting in a stuffy room on hard, wooden chairs with 17 other students. I like my teacher. I'm just bored. It's time to just watch French TV all day, every day. I watched three hours of Porte Disparu last night and actually enjoyed it. Porte Disparu, for those who are like I was back in January, means "Without a Trace." Ok, I have no clue what it really means--disappeared door or something--but it's Without a Trace and God, I love that show. So much so that I'll even watch it in French.

4. I ignored 2 text messages and one phone call yesterday, so now I have to phone/text people back. I really should get a grip.

5. Hubs is camping and drinking mint tea in the Sahara desert right now. He's probably wearing one of those very cool turbanny things you see in pictures of the Tuaregs who live down there. And for those people who think he should have come home to visit me instead, ok, I guess I see the point, even though I don't need to hear it every time we talk. Maybe our marriage is on the rocks because we don't travel together all the time. Maybe Hubs doesn't love me afterall, but I prefer to think that he's an adventurer who really wanted to ride a camel, drink mint tea, and wrap a blue turban around his head. And no, I wouldn't have been able to go. Not that easy for me to get a visa. (That's my previous blog).

6. I'm really in a bad head space right now, but as long as I remind myself that I'm not a refugee in Darfur, I can usually make myself feel better. It's that self-imposed Catholic guilt thing. Works every time.

7. I just watched the Carrie in Paris Sex and the City episodes for the first time. I think anyone who thinks my life in Paris is romantic and fullfilling should watch it.

All done now.

"....and she lived happily ever after with a blank mind, feeling all zen."

Ooooohmmmmmmmmm.

A simple package of Kleenex is all I need, thanks

2006-05-17T12:39:00.000+02:00

In Japan, they hand out packages of Kleenex.

In France, maxipads.

Uh huh. Maxipads.

Right by the gates of a lycee (French high school) at smoke break time, cool boys lingering and puffing on ciggies, eyes on my two, indiscreet packages that I have yet to shove in my backpack.

All those pre-tampon memories of pretending I didn't have my period and walking around with a wad of plastic-coated spagnum moss rustling like a miniature diaper between my legs come flooding back as those eyes, those cool boy eyes, stare at my maxipads and then smirk at me.

I mean, GOSH!

Feeling sorry for myself in France

2006-05-16T11:20:00.000+02:00

After spending part of the weekend with my cousin and her girlfriends, the kind she's had for a long time, the kind who make her belly laugh, the kind who fight with her, snub her, and then make up with her, the kind who remember all her ex-lovers, the kind who listen to her woes, the kind who leave kids and hubbies at home to go on a once-yearly trip together, in short, real girlfriends, I felt very sorry for myself.

And what better place to feel sorry for myself than in France.

These same girlfriends gushed over how lucky I was to be here in France. I am lucky, aren't I? I mean, how many people can brag about feeling sorry for themselves here?

I skipped French class yesterday to feel sorry for myself in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a town on top of a rise that lies a half hour west of Paris. It's much better than lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. If I lie in bed then I also feel like a loser and that's a bad combination.

As soon as you exit the RER station, there's a Chateau to your left and to the left of that Chateau is a terraced garden complete with pointy-trimmed shrubs and rows of two-dimensional trees. If you walk to the edge of the terrace (and it's not a puny terrace, it's a good 3 minute walk) you can see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. You can also see La Defence, the area where I'm living right now, a cluster of irregularly shaped highrise office buildings, a blotch of gray in an otherwise green vista. It doesn't look so ugly from far away. Just bizarre.

To the left of the terrace are the old hunting grounds of the pre-revolutionary royal who owned the Chateau way back when. It's now a public park with walking trails and tall bushy trees that give you much needed shade.

Yesterday, I found, on the terrace, a stone bench without too much bird poo and lay on it, feeling sorry for myself. I closed my eyes, listening to the clucking and chirping birds as they hopped from branch to branch in the two-dimensional trees. I heard the wheels of a stroller crushing tiny stones and gravel as it passed by my bench and imagined the wheels of a carriage of years past. A poodle barked, some kids yelled, in English, "let's play the body slam game," and joggers rushed by.

I opened my eyes, got up, and ambled down the straight pathway that lies parallel to the terrace balcony. Like an elevator at the top of a country road in Saskatchewan, the wall at the end of the path seemed close but, as I walked toward it, it never got closer, so I turned around at the half-way point and wandered slowly back up the path, through the garden, looking up at its silly trees and straight at its pointy bushes, over to the RER station and then took a short ride back to my temporary home.

You probably think I'll end this little post with a: "And I lived happily ever after never feeling sorry for myself again."

Not so. I am still feeling sorry for myself, but I am also glad that France has its little distractions.

Nukak like me

2006-05-13T10:44:00.000+02:00

Until yesterday, I had never heard of the Nukaks, the Colombian nomads who forage and hunt each day in the Amazon jungle. I did know that indigenous people, untouched by modernity, lived there, but didn't know any specifics. The International Herald Tribune article that introduced me to this group of people, made me alternately sad and hopeful.

Sad because 80 Nukaks have decided to leave their jungle life forever in favour of a settled life near a town. I envision innocence lost, booze, exposure to disease, abuse, a life of dependency and lack of direction. Hopeful because if this new life really is their choice, and not because some rough Colombian guerrillas have warned them to get lost, that they will work out how to co-exist with their modern neighbours in a way that doesn't destroy who they essentially are. Also hopeful that they don't give up the jungle completely.

It takes one to be very self-absorbed to compare oneself to a stone-aged Nukak. But being self-absorbed, I am about to do just that: compare myself to one. To be honest, I think probably all of us have a bit of the Nukak in us.

Being a single teacher overseas was my stone-aged way of life. It's one I was used to. One I loved. Sometimes hard, always exhausting, I gained sustenance from this life: a comfortable salary, companionship, knowledge of other cultures, regular soul-enhancing challenges.

Then I traded it all in for a plot of land next to a town. Life with Hubs is my plot of land (and if you're reading this Hubs, that's actually a romantic thought), but I need to learn how to cultivate this plot of land without wholly giving up my jungle life. I have to figure out how to get on in this new one so that I don't become dependent, sluggish, and bitter.

Problem is, it's all too easy for me to mistake Hubs for a government handout or a bossy guerrilla, which he is not.

I'll be watching out for this particular group of Nukaks to see how they grapple with a brand new life. I reckon if they can do it, so can I.

God, I hope they can do it. What a culture shock.

Adopting an attitude

2006-05-10T22:22:00.002+02:00

I've been neglecting my little blog lately for a few reasons, but mainly because I am internettedly overwhelmed and bug-eyed, as a result. Hubs and I have begun our research into international adoption.

The amount of information one finds on the web is so varied and contradictory and serious that if it were in paper form, it would probably fill an entire bathtub. The circular jacuzzi kind in which you would find Austin Powers soaking. So, yes, I'm overwhelmed and it's taking me away from my little blog and the blogs I like to read, as well as my favorite forum. Gosh. Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Let me add that on top of pillophobia and flyinginaanairplanaphobia, I suffer from legaldocumentaphobia, also known as fear of reading legal and extremely boring but important texts. Hubs has done some research on French law--ack--discovering, for one thing, that his government will only consider couples who have been married for two or more years before they will even accept your application. Me, I got through one line of Canadian legalese before hyperventilating and returning to my favorite forum to ask for advice.

Here's what I hope: That someone has been and is in exactly the same situation as us and can hold my hand through the process.

Requirements:

Seeking to hire Canadian female married to a French man for less than 1 year, not living in either of their home countries** and who have just completed a successful independent international adoption to hold hand of fellow Canadian about to embark on similar journey. Salary commensurate with experience, travel and other expenses covered. Must know how to cope with hyperventilation and be able to endure whining. If adoption successful, may be allowed to hold baby.

Paperwork and scary regulations aside, the actual concept of raising an adopted child isn't overwhelming to me because my brother and sister are adopted and I know how easy it is to bond with a baby that didn't grow in your momma's belly. So, my guess is I'll be able to bond with one that didn't grow in mine. And since babies don't grow in men's bellies, it shouldn't be a problem for Hubs either. What I do fear is the home visit, however. That's when a social worker type person visits you and determines if you'd be good parents. I'll have to clean. And stop picking my nose. And wash my hair. That goes for you, too, Hubs. I know you're reading this!

Indeed, it's really a wonder that the social worker ok'd my family for two adoptions. I was nearly 13 when we were approved to adopt my brother. I didn't wash my hair then. Ever. I used to wear a toque because it stopped me from scratching my itchy head. Then at17, for the approval process to adopt my sister, I honestly don't remember a home visit because maybe I was stoned. Or drunk. But at least my hair was clean. Oh yeah, I had started washing. Boys.

(I'm more like my 13 year old self now. I personally think my hair looks much better greasy even if I do smell like a wet dog. But I'll wash for a home visit.)

There are about five million other steps to go through which I'll avoid writing about mainly because I know piss all still, and you'd die of boredom anyway. But one thing that might interest you is reading of the restrictions individual countries have for adopting out their children. You know, you got your age restrictions, your salary restrictions, your years of marriage restrictions. Now, here's one that might interest you:

Korea's weight restriction.

That's right. You read right. Did you know that weight is a factor for couples wanting to adopt from Korea? Now at this point, I don't know if this restriction is for a combined weight or individual weight, but what I'm curious about is if the weight is determined by Asian standards, because while I am no skinny minny, I am not exactly large either. I'm somewhere in the middle. Your average Jane. And Hubs is your average Jacques. Yet, when I lived in Japan, I was Queen of the Amazons. Miss Double L size. A monstrousity of hugeness and godzillaism. The kind of person people would flee from in terror. The brave ones would point at me and say, "Gaijin. Sei ga takai naaaaaa." (Trans from Japanese to Canadian: Foreigner. She's tall, eh.)

Sigh.

I guess one thing I am going to have to adopt to get through this process is an attitude. A positive one.

**Hubs and I will be posted somewhere, secret for now, but not in France (sniff) and most definitely not in Ft. McMurray, Canada.

A nation of grumblers with manners

2006-05-08T10:18:00.000+02:00

That the French are a nation of grumblers who think nothing of arguing with women who feed morsels of bread to peckish pigeons right in front of your wobbly café table, ass in your face, encouraging pigeons to poke away at your feet (and no it wasn’t Hubs, it was the gentleman sitting next to us) is an obvious fact.

And yet.

And yet, amidst all the grumbling and arguing and huffing, the French have manners. The old fashioned kind. I have seen people passing through swing doors hold the door for the person behind them who is still 10 steps away. They patiently wait until the person has sauntered to the door and can hold it open for the next person, also miles away. Then, there’s the flurry of mercis and you are too kind. Me? Wait for someone to reach the door? Never. I like to swing the door as wide as it will go and hope that they catch it in time before it slams in their face. But use that technique here? How gauche.

Then there’s the shaking of hands. With everyone. The above man, who thankfully got rid of the Lady of the Pigeons, had earlier shaken hands with the restaurant owner, his server, all his acquaintances who passed by the brasserie. Clearly, he was well-known in those parts.

I know very little of the French educational system—actually I know nothing about it—but I imagine those kindergarten maitresses drill into their charges such basic manners. The other day, I passed by several teenaged lads who could have passed for doowop back up singers for 50 Cent. A friend of theirs was hip hoppedly loping across the street, his hand shoved into his puffy jacket as if he were about to pull a gun—or perhaps here a more apt visual is he looked like Napoleon in a hoody. When he reached his friends, he jerked his hand out of the jacket and shook the hands of each of his hoodlum buddies while “yo-ing” in a French kind of way.

I would have gaped longer—actually stopped walking to gape at these polite young gansta types—but I didn’t think that would be a good idea. With the French, manners only last so long and then the grumbling starts.

Not quite a Hitchcockian Rear Window

2006-05-05T22:37:00.000+02:00

So, I guess that if I'm standing by the living room window, my finger jammed far up my nose as it attempts to pluck out a stubborn booger, Mr. Work-Shirt-Ironing, Speedo-Tight-Gotch-Wearing, Ball-Scratching Neighbour guy can see me too.

No, I'm not complaining

2006-05-04T20:40:00.000+02:00

Not complaining at all.

For one month we (I) will rent the 8th floor apartment of Hubs' friend, a half-assed metrosexual who has an espresso machine as well as artsy air fresheners placed at artful angles around his pad which do nothing to mask the mildew smell.

Oops, I said I'm not complaining.

Being on the 8th floor, I have views through the kitchen window of small hills in the distance and a cemetery below and, through the living room window, of the mirror image apartments across the quad. Wasn't I lucky last night to watch a man in a speedo-tight gotch ironing his work shirts and scratching his balls?

Like I said, not complaining.

Mr. Metrosexual has crammed into his kitchen a washing machine and separate dryer which means that Hatchet Man can't stalk me while I do my laundry. This is good news. However, if he wants to, he can ensconse himself in the garbage disposal room that is in the dimly lit parking garage way down down down there. It wouldn't surprise me if he does, the bugger.

But hey, who's complaining?

This whole area reminds me of a new town type place in Japan or downtown Toronto without Lake Ontario. It is modern, concrete, new and ugly but I can still walk to the local patisserie for a morning chocolate croissant and the metro is mere minutes away.

And once again, I will pass by the Thumb every single day this month.

So, yeah, I really can't complain, can I.

Go Karting and other news

2006-04-27T10:20:00.000+02:00

It's Happy Birthday soon to the man who has discovered the lone Go-Karting track in Algiers. This is a man who thinks racing his friends in a tiny vehicle with his knees up around his ears the best way to release stress. So for this man, I got him his own set of wheels. In red. That's right. You guessed it.

A GO (shopping) KART.

He's going to be thrilled.

Now onto other news in the life of Dongurigal. Hubs arrives for a week-long vacation tonight. Tomorrow we move my/our few possessions over to his friend's empty flat for the month of May. Including the Go (shopping) Kart, which Hubs is sure to love. Then it's down to the south of France for the weekend with friends, followed by a quick quick quick visit with the in-laws. So no internet (read blog posting, blog reading, and blog commenting) for at least 6 days.

Then, I'm not 100% sure if I'll have internet at this new place, so if I don't, I'll be checking in from net cafes from time to time , but not posting/reading/commenting as much as I'd like. But don't take me off your blogrolls just yet. When I'm back, I'll be back. I've been ruminating and have a few silly things I want to say here.

Of course, if I have internet where I'm staying next month, I'll be blathering away as per usual.

Tootle doo for a bit.

Pillophobic most of the time

2006-04-25T10:06:00.000+02:00

Last night I staggered home from the bus stop, suffering from a headache, the kind in which you feel like there are twigs poking out of your temples and you think the best way to deal with the twigs is to poke them back in, but they just keep popping out. And you push them in and out they pop. So basically you spend the whole time with your fingers stuck half way into your cranium through the two soft spots on each side of your head.

At home, I drank several glasses of water because I had read somewhere that some headaches are caused by lack of water droplets to the brain. Didn't work, of course, so rummaged around my medicine cabinet which, Hubs and a close friend will tell you is a misnomer because there almost never is a single over the counter or prescription drug in there. Hubs visited in late March and took my only box of aspirin equivalent because, as he rightly noted, I never take the stuff anyway, whereas he is an addict. He had whined about his pounding head and didn't appreciate it when I offered him a glass of water in one hand and no pill in the other, you know, because I had read somewhere about parched brains and water droplets. Uh huh. Whatever.

I had the box of aspirin because the above friend, when she was visiting me here in February, was tired of hearing me complain about my once in a blue moon headache, so she lead me into one of Paris's ubiquitous pharmacies to buy some medicine and then practically had to force feed me, not one, but two of the pasty white pills. I think it is a sign of her strength of character that she didn't mock me for the rest of her stay when I exclaimed half an hour later, "wow, my headache's gone, I wonder why?" A subtle eye roll perhaps. And maybe a quiet, "well, duh."

Somewhere in the back of my aching head I remembered the magic of those two little pills, so that's why I searched with such determination last night. Thankfully, I found two, bursting out of their tinfoiled sacks, deep in the pocket of my school bag.

No question, my pillophobia is a result of growing up with a pillophobic mother. When we had colds or flus, at most, she would spread Vicks Vapour Rub on our chests and backs and then wrap a ragged towel around our necks. In fact, Vicks Vapour Rub was our all-purpose cure for any ailment. That, and bandaids. But, no pills. Her only concession was when I was diagnosed with a mild form of epilepsy at age seven and had to take anti-seizure medication for eight years.

Thing is, and I'm not knocking all drugs because, frankly, my headache is now gone and I feel much better, thank you, but I've seen mom cure or manage her pain by changing her diet and her lifestyle. Her way of dealing with serious, degenerative illness is something I aspire to as I get older. Several years ago mom was diagnosed with osteoarthritis, a disease that was causing her such pain in her left leg that she could no longer even limp the mile and a half around town, her daily exercise even in -40 degree weather. She left the doctor's office with a Dead Sea scroll length of prescription drugs for pain and inflammation and various side effects, but, as she told it, nothing to cure the problem in the first place. Instead of the pharmacy, she went to the health food store, bought recipe books, a natural health bible, and a few supplements, then threw out the doctor's orders.

No more bread for her, regrettably, but she's walking today.

I have more stories like that, not just of my mom, but of one of her closest friends, a cancer survivor who turned her nose up at chemo and chose coffee enemas and organic juices instead. She didn't die 1.5 years later as her doctor predicted, indeed, nearly 12 years later she's free of cancer. Damn healthy actually. My mom and her friend are a couple of nutters when it comes to health, there's no question of that, but then again, they spend very little time at hospitals and clinics, even if they do have to give up red meat and Tim Horton's Donuts. Still, if I were diagnosed with a malevolent illness, I'd check in with them first before filling my prescription.

Although I may have to draw the line at coffee enemas.

And the odd aspirin isn't going to kill me either.

Easing into marriage 101

2006-04-24T00:50:00.000+02:00

A recent telephone conversation. Slightly modified for comic effect. Only slightly.

------------------
Hubs: So then at the end of May, I should be finished the project in Algiers. I can't wait to blah blah blah buuuurp blah blah.

Me: Uh huh.

Hubs: Blah blah blah blah blah

Me: Uh huh.

Hubs: Blah blah So, yeah, I'm thinking of taking my 5 week vacation starting in June.

Me: Uh huh. ... Aack. 5 weeks! What are you going to do?

Hubs: Well, we'll be fixing up the apartment. Go furniture shopping. Guess I can relax, too.

Me: Uh, so after only seeing each other once a month for just a few days at a time for the last four months, we're going to suddenly be together 24/7?

Hubs: Yep.

Me: Gee, I'm not sure I like the sound of that.

Hubs: What!?!

Me: Oh, did I say that out loud?

----------

Gentle readers, pray for us.

Donguri koro koro Part 2

2006-04-23T16:40:00.000+02:00

The image of the rolling acorn (aka donguri koro koro) in the profile picture is supposed to represent my life.

Whatever.

As you can see, it hasn't quite turned out the way I had wanted it to and it needs to be fixed.

I mean the picture. Not my life.

ETA: There, I fixed it.

Thank you China and India

2006-04-22T17:05:00.000+02:00

You can beat me over the head with an oil pump or give me a lecture on economic realities and environmental devastation of crisis proportions, but let me tell you why I'm happy that China and India are beginning to suck dry the oil wells of the world.

Because we might actually do something about inventing, funding, and choosing alternative sources of renewable energy and fuel.

Happy Earth Day, I think.

Paris then and now

2006-04-21T20:17:00.000+02:00

Paris circa 1700

Parisians had always thrown waste indiscriminately into the street (more than one passer-by had been drenched by the contents of chamber-pots launched from first floor windows), and that continued.... A Traveller's History of Paris 3rd Edition, by Robert Cole

Paris 2006

Despite daily garbage pick up, the odd Parisian sends showers of bread crumbs over the window sill and into the street. At times, these bread crumbs fall onto the heads of innocent passers-by, making it appear that these passers-by have dandruff the size of, well, bread crumbs. A Leisure Lady's History of Paris 1st Edition, by Dongurigal

How to make your French teacher spit tacks

2006-04-19T20:39:00.000+02:00

It's roleplay time in French class, time to reinforce the woulda, coulda, shoulda phrases, (grammatically known as the conditionnel passe) . Madame has asked us to prepare a scene of domestic disharmony in which one partner (the wife) yells at the other partner (the husband) for being such a stupid lazy idiot. They must argue and finally reconcile.

While furiously taking notes to practice these essential phrases later with my real husband, my recently high school-matriculated partner C and I prepare our skit.

Scene: The husband has just come home from grocery shopping and has forgotten to buy the wine for dinner. It's not an ordinary dinner, husband's boss and his wife are coming over. As the wife removes the grape juice, dessert, and other goodies out of the shopping bag, she berates husband.

Wife: You SHOULDA written a list. Your boss and his wife are coming over. This is no ordinary dinner.
Hub: I forgot.
Wife: I have had it (note: handy French expression) with your forgetfulness.
Hub: You COULDA gone shopping instead.
Wife: Oh, I SHOULDNNA trusted you. And now the store is closed. (Puts back of hand to forehead and weeps loudly.)
Hub: Oh, I won't do it again.

(At this point, I see out of the corner of my eye that French teacher is looking on proudly, just as a mother watches her child walk his first steps. Oh, she's thinking, listen to those perfectly formed conditionnel passe sentences.)

Wife: Well, at least we have champagne in the fridge.
Hub: Hey (grabs bottle of grape juice), we could mix the champagne with the grape juice to make a rose.
Wife: What a good idea, honey. Kissy kissy. (Fake of course.)

Suddenly the smoochy reconciliation is interrupted by an agitated French teacher.

"NOOOOOOOOO."

"ONE NEVER MIXES CHAMPAGNE WITH GRAPE JUICE!"

A suburban Canadian

2006-04-18T21:48:00.000+02:00

Being Canadian, when I think of living in a suburb, I develop a cold sweat. Then I shudder. Then I begin ranting about cookie cutter housing and lack of sidewalks. Now, I'm not going to judge you if you live in a suburb but I'd rather you come and meet me in the city centre for a beer, if you don't mind. See, I think the worst thing about living in a Canadian suburb is that you need a car and I hate being in cars. I'd rather be felt up by a drunken Japanese salaryman in a packed subway than to have to rely on a car to go pick up my morning croissant.

So when Hubs said we couldn't afford to buy an apartment in Paris, that we'd have to buy in one of the Banlieus, I choked. That is, until I visited several suburbs. By bus. And it didn't take all fricken day.

The ones closest to the city are efficiently served by the metro, the RER, the trains and the buses. You don't need a car. Heck, you probably shouldn't even have a car if you live in the 'burbs here.

So we bought our apartment in the suburbs and I'm thrilled. Even though I had that little incident outside the metro when I explored my new 'hood yesterday, I was in good spirits by the end of my walkabout. First off, we will be five minutes to the metro and ten minutes to a train station. On foot. Second, both the train ride and the metro ride get me into Paris in under eight minutes. Third, there is a baker's just a hop, skip, and a jump from our place. Fourth, the Seine is a mere nine minute powerwalk away where one stumbles upon a dog cemetery right on the river bank.

Last but not least, there were signs advertising a hockey "sur glace" match between Poland and France at the local ice rink. Poland and France! International Ice Hockey! In my suburb. This future suburban Canadian is one happy beaver.

(Oh yeah, Happy Beaver--how much do you wanna bet I get some pretty funky site meter hits.)

An intolerant bigot speaks out

2006-04-17T20:34:00.000+02:00

When I would push away the hand that was reaching up my skirt on an overcrowded train in Osaka, I would think:

“Oh God, not again.”

and

“this will make for a funny story in a few days time.”

But I never thought that every single Japanese man was a fondling sicko.

When I would stare straight ahead, walking purposefully while a shiny Mercedes slowed to a crawl, and a man wearing the traditional Kuwaiti white robes and headdress would stick his head out the window to ask me “how much?” I would think:

"Oh God, not again.”

and

“this will make for a funny story in a few days time.”

But I never thought that every single Kuwaiti man was on the prowl for a cheap western ho.

Today when I got off the last stop of the line on the metro to explore the little corner of suburban Paris where Hubs and I have just purchased an apartment that we’ll be moving to in June, three young men speaking the Arab-French patois of North Africa—they could have been Moroccan, Algerian or Tunisian—surrounded me, making loud, lewd comments. As I did when I lived in Algeria, I ignored them until they gave up, several minutes later. I thought:

“Oh God, not again” but I sure didn’t think, “this will make for a funny story in a few days time.”

Even worse, I thought why is every single young North African man an irritating jackass.

I really need to get my sense of humour back because without it, I am becoming a person I dread: an intolerant bigot.

Now having admitted to becoming an intolerant bigot, I’m telling you, if these fuckwits (by this I am trying desperately not to mean ALL young North African men) who behave this way don’t get some manners and learn how treat women, I’m going to start dragging their sorry asses to the nearest police station.

Right.

Uh, after I’ve taken several year’s worth of Kung Fu. In the meantime, I shall continue my silent, intolerant, bigoted growling because while I was able to escape Algeria, I can't escape my new neighbourhood. And I shouldn't have to put up with this in France. No woman should.

Damn you, Euro!

2006-04-17T13:20:00.000+02:00

Why, oh why, can't my Canadian Visa bill be calculated according to my system of currency exchange. Is it too much to ask?

I just found out that my French course is not costing me $620 a month as I so blissfully thought, instead it's nearly $1000 a month. If I'm not 100% bilingual by the end of May, I want my money back.

And no more skipping class to go to Ikea.

A friend by any other name would be an internet friend

2006-04-14T20:56:00.000+02:00

She slipped it into the middle of a long paragraph all about her new job, the fact that I never email anymore, the fact that I used to be so good about replying almost the same day, the fact that she could always rely on me to keep her inbox from remaining empty.

I guess it is true. Ever since I discovered the fun of reading, writing and commenting on blogs and ever since I joined a forum of women who, like me, are attached to foreign men (metaphorically of course), my in-real-life friends have not heard much from me this year.

The other day, the above forum was down for an entire day. After hyperventilating for a minute, I decided it would be a good opportunity to write to a swack of friends and non-immediate family I hadn’t been in touch with for a while. I sent out about eleven different emails. I heard back from four people, and of the four, two wrote moderately lengthy and informative responses and two wrote one-liners. But hey, no biggie, I’m in Paris, the forum was up and running the next day, and, in any case, that ratio of outgoing to incoming emails is actually normal to me. My inbox is often empty; I’m used to it. Friends eventually write back. Sometimes they even phone. That’s why they’re still my friends.

But as far as knowing how people are on a daily basis, my internet buddies are, in a way, more relevant to me now. I have been trying to figure out and perhaps justify why that is because obviously I’d love to know how IRL friends are doing every single day. It’s just not going to happen. Unless they start blogging (hint hint to the only IRL friend who reads my blog) and actually tell me they’re blogging (unlike Dongurigal who has only told that one IRL friend).

Here’s a possible justification: when I was desperate and lonely in Algiers, it was through the women on the forum that I received advice, empathy, and understanding of my situation. But it was more than that. Reading comments on everything from members’ kids’ antics to a heated, but polite political discussion, I felt part of a group that I could easily imagine sipping lattes in Starbucks. I would get up each day, yawn, prepare a cup of coffee and turn on my laptop to see who was or had been chatting in the “café” that morning. I’d respond, start a new topic, lurk a bit, learn something unusual or useful, laugh, get another cup of coffee, and continue reading and writing until it was that time of day when no one seemed to be in the café, except me, which is when I’d finally shut down the laptop and take a nap.

A teacher friend who visited me here at the end of February (and who doesn’t know about my blog but who does know about my regular visits to the forum) scoffed at the fact that I still sign on to the forum each day and read several blogs. Now that I’m in Paris and “have a life,” as she put it, it seems kind of weird. In a defensive mood, I responded that whereas my new online friends had provided me with support and cyber-companionship, my own friends, that is, the ones who know me personally and have smelled my farts, weren’t there for me when I was distressed, lonely, and in need of their friendship via email. And a one-line email saying “It sucks to be you” did not count.

I realize now that that was an unfair remark. She and other IRL friends were behaving, email-wise, no differently than before. That is, they wrote me as often as they always did. It was I who had changed. The same time last year, if my inbox were empty, I’d shrug, oh well, before flapping about making last minute edits to the student newspaper, printing out a progress report for a student whose parent I was to meet that morning, and planning my classes. All this before 7am when I was expected to monitor the halls for goofball behaviour. In Algiers, an empty inbox was enough to reduce me to tears. So, I stopped emailing as much--it was just too painful not receiving a reply.

I’m a loyal internet friend and just because my IRL-life is actually pretty good now and I’m not on the computer the whole day, like I was before, doesn’t mean that I don’t want to pop into the “café” or my regular blogs to say howdy or something equally profound. That’s what I should have pointed out to my visiting friend. I wasn’t being very nice.

And speaking of nice, maybe I’d better stop this blathering to email my other friend whose inbox is also often empty and who was honest enough to remind me that it hurts.

Apologies to the perverts

2006-04-13T21:27:00.000+02:00

To all you pervs out there who search chikan train stories in google and get Dongurigal as your first hit, I'm ever so sorry.

(But boy, do I feel popular.)

Since I break promises...

2006-04-13T10:22:00.000+02:00

The cartoon picture of a group of chattering sophisticates at a cocktail party in my French language textbook was in need of some embellishment, so I drew a fart bubble, shaped like a horizontal chef's hat, coming out of an orange-haired beauty's butt.

Half an hour later, my classmate, who was sharing my textbook, grabbed the book out of my hands, held it close to his astigmatic eyes and whispered, "I thought that was for real. Did you draw that?" In his voice, I heard a reprimand. In his face, I saw a melange of shock, disgust and horror. If he were capable of lifting his eyebrow, I'm sure he would have.

He's 18 years old and just graduated from high school.

I'm 38. And a certified junior high school teacher.

What?

Show me the money

2006-04-11T10:28:00.000+02:00

In French class the other day we were talking about viral marketing, publicity, and company logos blazened across chests and asses. (It's a miracle of brainpower that I actually understood and participated in that conversation, by the way).

My new, friendlier and very fashionable French teacher scoffed at the idea of covering oneself with logos and brand names. She said that if she were to wear a T-shirt with the Nike swish on it, she should be paid for it rather than paying for the shirt herself.

Good point, I thought.

Bon pointe, I said, my brain going into simultaneous translation mode.

Oh yeah, I'd like to try that. I go here and say to the sales clerk in my impeccable French.

Me: "Going to Japan next week and being a foreigner, I am bound to be noticed, so I'll take that there Speedy Monogram Denim Purse in green. Give you a deal and only charge you 400 euros plus the cost of my flight, first class."

Sales Clerk: "---------"

Clearly I need a few more French lessons.

Tired ramblings

2006-04-09T12:26:00.000+02:00

Just when I thought I was back in moderate shape after three-ish months of sitting on my duff in Algiers, I go a-rambling with a walking club here in the Ile de France.

I had invited a bubbly 20-something classmate of mine along and we met up with a group on the train platform 10 minutes before the scheduled departure, ready and eager to explore the forest paths outside the city. We were among the youngest there. She certainly was, I wasn't far behind. A veteran rambler, kitted out with walking sticks and serious hiking shoes, turned to us and said--ooh la la, do you think you can handle this walk. We smiled. He was joking and winking and his wife was tutting and rolling her eyes.

Oh, I don't know if we can, I joked back. Afterall, I had picked the easiest hike on the list for that day, just in case, but as I reassured my classmate, it'll be easy. It's only 12km of light walking.

We arrived at our destination and off we went. B and I straggled behind the group, deliberately. I love hiking and walking. But hiking in a group of about 30 is a bit overwhelming. However, since I'm more afraid of serial killers in the forest (or grizzlies in Canada--same diff), I'm happy to suffer a large group if only to breathe in some fresh air and see a tree.

Ten minutes into the walk, our septuagenarian friend asked us if we were surviving thus far. He then added--I'm only joking--ha ha. Again we laughed. He was flirting. We didn't mind. His wife didn't seem to either. More tutting and eye rolling.

"What do you think?" I said to B as we sauntered up a low incline. "Not that hard, eh. Should I pick a 'tougher' hike for next week."

"Yeah, this is kind of easy."

I had picked a type of hike called Allure Moyenne in which the ramblers walk at a pace of 4 to 4.5 km per hour. Next week, I told her, I'd choose an Allure Soutenue one instead, bringing our speed up to 5 km per hour.

We wandered through suburbs, then into wide-pathed forests, then through another leafy suburb. We shared space with mountain bikers and dogs. The group stopped a lot for rests and sometimes the old joker would come over and ask us if we were coping. More giggles. I am easily amused.

It was nearing the end of this flat walk. Rumour had it we were near the train station. Our elderly friend turned to us one last time and said, "So you're still here. Wow. It was hard, huh." Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more. We managed weak smiles, but didn't laugh this time. He may have been joking but we weren't. He was right. It was hard. The muscles in my legs were popping like exploding rock candy. B had tortured breathing and was wishing she had brought another bottle of water. At the sight of the train station, we nearly jumped for joy, only we couldn't. Our legs would have buckled.

I guess I should have remembered the hikes I took with the Kansai Ramblers around Osaka and Kobe. Back then, I was in brilliant shape. I had 3-pack abs (brag brag) from doing aerobics two or three times a week. I biked everywhere and had strong, muscular legs. I never ate chocolate croissants. But, despite all that, I could never keep up with the spritely grannies on any of the steep hikes. They'd press me to answer their "How about your life in Japan?" questions while maintaining an Allure Rapide pace of 5 plus km per hour. "My--huff--life--huff--in--huff--Japan--huff huff huff--is--huff--fine, thanks. Huff huff huff." But by then they had moved on, only to be replaced by a couple of agile, non puffing granddaddies.

"So how about your life in Japan?"

****
Sitting on the train, legs stretched out, I turned to B and said, "So uh, skip the Allure Soutenue and do another Allure Moyenne next week?"

"Yeeeeeeeeeah ok. But wasn't there one even slower?"

Ah, yes, the Allure Lente. Less than 4km per hour. Now that's my speed.

In which Dongurigal alienates all her readers...

2006-04-06T19:53:00.000+02:00

...Except for those with the brain of a 6 year old.

I nearly farted in French class today. The obvious benefit of learning how to say "he who smelt it, dealt it" in French aside (and yes, I really am 38 years old and not some middle school cyber geek playing a monstrous prank on his least favorite teacher), I knew that since this particular fart planned to express itself loudly, I had better not give in to the urge. Instead, I squeezed my bum cheeks together, bit my facial cheeks in agony, and forced the bubble of gas to return to the middle of my intestines. I couldn't wait to get home, to, well, you know, use the toilet.

My cycle is all off-kilter. I blame my bunginess on all the cheese and bread and chocolate croissants (although it is true, you can eat like the French and lose weight) in my diet. In any case, I'm a morning poo person and if my sister's word is anything to go by, without my morning poo, I am a person to avoid. She has been overheard whispering, "don't mind her, she just hasn't had her morning poo yet." And she has greeted me at the breakfast table several times with a chipper, "Oh, look who's had her morning poo already." Lucky for her when she says that that I have, otherwise...

Since moving to Paris, my poos have been arriving at any old time of day, except the morning. It's not quite constipation but it may as well be. And it's very inconvenient. I mean, who in their right mind would want to poop in a public washroom with tentative plumbing? So, I lose my opportunity to, well, you know, and the rest of the day is shot.

What I need are psyllium husks, the rotor router of the bowels, and a natural laxative. Back in '95, I had chronic constipation and a mood to match it. A loyal friend recommended this life altering, life enhancing, meaning-of-life-giving cure all. At first I took it everyday, then my body got back on track and now I can safely say that I, maybe, take a spoonful once every couple of months or after I fly. Actually, always after I fly.

But I forgot my stash in the fridge back in Algiers. The problem is--and this really is the crux of my post--how do I explain psyllium husks to the woman at the health food store down the street? I scoured the shelves for them. I checked the supplements section, the cereal section, even the fresh fruit and vegetable section. But, I didn't ask the woman stocking the shelves. It would have ended up a game of charades in which I would have to demonstrate a pseudo squat, clutch my belly, squeeze my eyes shut, clench my teeth and make my face go red while grunting out the words--"la probleme, la probleme de toilet" and her going, "Je ne vous comprends pas. Desolay," then walking away contemptuously. As only the French can do. Nope, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

So, if I seem a bit irritable lately, don't mind me. I just haven't had my morning poo yet.

L, this bud's for you

2006-04-04T19:15:00.000+02:00

L, I know you're homesick, so I'm posting a photo I took at a nearby park here in Paris, just for you.

Sadly, no drunken salarymen underneath this tree. Only a couple of randy pigeons.

Say hello to Daisy

2006-04-03T11:35:00.000+02:00

Sorry I haven’t updated recently. I’ve been a bit preoccupied. Hubs was in town briefly, and then there’s the latest addition to our little family—Daisy.

I bought Daisy just a few days ago and she is moderately needy. Those of you who have followed this blog for a while know that it is much too hard for me to multi-task. Blog, hang out with Hubs, take care of Daisy. Can’t do it all. Something’s gotta give.

This weekend, Daisy had to come first.

Like the April Fool’s Day joke that it was, the once blue sky turned menancingly dark and dumped an oil tanker load of rain onto the streets of Paris. Fortunately, I was inside, but I immediately thought of Daisy. She would love this. So I grabbed her, and stuffed her fragile body out through the wrought iron safety bars and into an empty flower pot; Daisy quenched her thirst and took in the moist air. Although the rain stopped, I left her there for the better part of the afternoon so that she could sip up the drips coming from the window ledge above her. Then I brought her inside, told her she was beautiful, and groomed away the wilted bits.

Daisy’s just that. A daisy plant. Not quite a “He loves me, he loves me not” type daisy but from the daisy family nonetheless. The eye of each of the seven flowers is yellow but the tiny petals encircle each yellow eye like a frayed cotton fringe.

A friend of my mom’s once told me that before anyone has a baby, they should take care of a single plant for a few months. Not quite as crazy as you or I might think, perhaps? Having a plant teaches you empathy, concern, unconditional love, and nurturing. It makes you plan ahead. It forces you to be patient (c’mon bud, spread those petals!). It gets you to think about something beyond yourself.

I love Daisy.

But the first temper tantrum she has—she’s out the window.

Having a sentimental moment

2006-03-30T00:55:00.000+02:00

That's my friends' truck. They loaned it to me all last summer so I could tootle around southern Saskatchewan swallowing dust and grasshoppers as I yelled "yee haw" out the open window.

That's my husband and me, by the way. Thanks to my sisters and niece, that there summer truck done metamorphed into a stretch limo.

Yee haw!

Vive la striking France

2006-03-28T22:45:00.000+02:00

Ok--so, today was the big strike and protest here in Paris, France and I go up to school expecting to run into a wall of chanting humanity, tear gas, water bombs, police in Roman legionnaire formation banging their truncheons onto plexiglass shields.

But, oh no. Oh no. Few people walked the streets. It was dull, dull, dull. No, the strike wasn't going to come to me, I would have to find the strike on my own. And I found it.

Live.

On BBC.

Look, it makes sense to me

2006-03-27T20:35:00.000+02:00

Near my French language school, there is a bagel shop where I sometimes get myself a toasted sesame bagel with chive cream cheese.

(Excuse me for a moment: Mmmmmmm, not quite Montreal-style, but it'll do.)

Not once do I blink at the price. See, it’s 3.80 euros which converts nicely into $3.80 Canadian. A little more than I would spend back at home, but still affordable.

“Now hold on, Dongurigal,” you might be thinking, “have you not checked the latest exchange rates on the universal currency converter website. Uh, duh, 1 euro equals about $1.40 Canadian, so …” you take a moment to clickity clack on a calculator, “…that toasted sesame bagel and chive cream cheese actually cost you $5.80. And don’t blame that price on the chives. They’re in season right now.”

Well, thank YOU very much for ruining my day.

The way I see it, a simple Canadian dollar for US dollar for euro for yen exchange rate makes my life a whole lot (mathematically) easier and (lifestyle) rosier. Indeed, it wasn’t all that unusual for me to convert Kuwaiti dinars in exactly the same way. As far as I was concerned, one KD equaled one dollar Canadian.

Everything was so damn cheap as a result.

Upon arriving in Kuwait, I started slathering on the fancy skin creams, for the first time ever, because my skin shriveled up in that dry desert climate, mimicking the parched earth all around me. Clinique and Estee Lauder became and still are my favorites; I happily and regularly dropped 20 KD on a small jar of Clinique Night Repair Wear because, well, by my calculations that was, clickity clack, $20 CDN.

So, imagine what a horror it was to discover this summer that in Canada that same jar cost me nearly 80 bloody dollars.

"Good God! Can you show me where the Ponds cold cream is, miss?"

All I can say is thank God I am now in Paris where my cream costs a more reasonable 55 euros, and that’s, clicky clack, $55 CDN.”

Much better, don’t you think?

Drinking vinegar

2006-03-25T16:00:00.000+01:00

Reminder to self:

Are no longer in Kuwait. No need to finish drinking that open-for-the-last-10-days bottle of vinagery red wine. There's a grocery store down the street. Go get a new bottle. NOW.

R U A SAHWNK too?

2006-03-23T17:00:00.000+01:00

Slightly edited post

I just found out I am a SAHWNK (and no, Google, I don't mean SHAWN.) Technically I'm a WWW but for now, I'll stick to being a SAHWNK, thank you very much.

I can just see the conversation. You know, when you first meet someone at an art gallery opening and they ask the inevitable question.

So what do you do?
I'm a SAHWNK.
What? Huh? What's that?
A Stay-at-Home-Wife-No-Kids.
Oh? Ok...(smiles facetiously) I just noticed Hugo over there needs a drink, I'll uh, talk to you later.

Actually, I first read the term Stay at Home Wife on this blog but, in my research of this important new label, I discovered that some articles and other blogs confuse it with SAHM. Not fair to the SAHMs of the world, I should think. Eventually I found a dead forum thread that made the distinction. A SAHW with kids is a SAHM and without kids is a SAHWNK.

Got it?

Good.

Anyway, when I read that wee posting about a certain SAHW who annoyed her blogging mom friend by suggesting she was just as busy as said mom, I too thought to myself, "how insensitive and annoying?" However, I wasn't prepared for all the vitriolic comments against the general idea of being a SAHW(NK) that filled up her comments box.

Doing nothing all day
No life
Doormat
I'd kill myself
etc etc.

I continued my research on SAHWNKs. There don't seem to be many SAHWNKs out there in internetland. Google search offers up only 1 page. If you type the acronym out in full with quotations, you get about five pages worth of hits. Either there aren't that many SAHWNKS in the English-speaking world or most women are too embarrassed to admit it.

The sites and blogs I did find offered up the following justifications for the SAHWNK lifestyle.

Christian reason. Being a wife is a vocation. God calls on you to fullfill your role as wife and later as mother. You cook, clean, decorate, make your home a relaxing place for your hardworking husband, you smile. That is your role. Alleluia. Life is good.

Wealth reason. Why work if you don't have to and you've never really liked your career/job all that much anyway? Your husband makes enough money to support you and a tiny island nation, so you can fill your time however you like. Volunteer. Decorate. Travel. Take art classes. Go to the gym. Shop at Louis Vuitton. Walk your poodle. Eat bon bons. Do lunch.

No choice reason. For example: You trail your spouse to another country. What can I say--seven months ago, I would have been just as quick with a mouse click to mock any woman without kids who stayed at home and did...What? Cooked a bit? Cleaned a bit?Hung up some curtains? Got her nails done? Her hair? Went to the gym? Did lunch? Yeah whatever.

Then I followed my husband to Algeria. Since I wasn't allowed to work and had to leave the country every two months--all the way back to mid-western Canada, I might add--to renew my tourist visa, I tried to be perky positive and take on the role of housewife (ahem, except for the tasks done by our cleaning lady twice a week). I did the dishes, I made the bed, I cooked supper, I went for walks in the neighbourhood in search of Tarte Citron for hubs and the International Herald Tribune for me, and I drew up a self-improvement plan. Hubs had some house decorating and painting ideas he thought I might want to try. I said, ok.

Perky positive lasted all of five days. I made a horrible housewife. I hated it. I think I even said to hubs more than once--ok, maybe like 50 times, "I didn't sign on for this." Neither of us knew what to do. Because it's true. I didn't sign on for it. I gave up a year (possibly two) of teaching in my field--hell--I gave up a damn good job offer at a damn good international school to be with my husband and while I tried desperately not to regret giving up that damn good job offer, it didn't help that my replacement "work" was so fucking unfullfilling for me. And I can't stand decorating. Hubs understood why I was so unhappy (and there were a lot of other reasons too). In fact, he understood the situation so well he rented me an apartment in Paris and I escaped SAHWNKdom in Algiers.

Before I left Algiers, I met another SAHWNK. She was a 30-something, Canadian with a marketing degree, a fabulous body, shiny hair, and manicured nails who had also followed her husband to Algeria. I learned she had already been in the country for nearly a year and I saw her as my possible mentor, my glimmer of hope. Maybe she would have some survival tips and I wouldn't have to leave hubs afterall. Gosh, if I weren't so restrained I would have gripped her arm till the blood had stopped flowing and her hand had turned white when I asked her, genuinely, desperately and not at all sarcastically, "What do you do with yourself all day?" I think she sensed I was being sincere because she answered sincerely:

"In the morning, I stay home to make sure my maid cleans properly. (Note: Insert your own short diatribe about maid here). Afterwards, I go to the gym and spend several hours there. I get my hair done regularly and I get lots of manicures and pedicures and waxes. And you know the traffic is so bad here, everything takes so much longer than normal--so that eats up my day. Also, I like cooking, so I cook. I travel a lot too, just to get away from here."

Ok, I asked. Do you volunteer anywhere? Freelance? "Nope. Really, I don't have time. I keep busy enough as it is."

I sighed. And I was so tempted to judge her. But you know what? She survived Algeria. I didn't. She was able to stay with her husband. I couldn't. Her lifestyle, the one that is so quickly dismissed by so many people as parasitic and useless, worked for her and, evidently, her husband. She was happy--at least it seemed that way. So who was I to judge? What an eye-opener.

And no. I don't have a job here in Paris even though I have my working papers. Not only that, I refuse to get a job right now. I'm a Wife Without Work. But that's a whole other blog post.

Just wanna sit for a bit

2006-03-22T21:11:00.000+01:00

The back of the bus is a good place to snag a seat, especially when you are bloody tired. Since it is the domain of surly, gum chewing, Oh my GAWD-interjecting teens, it would make sense that the normal folk stay well forward. At the front, if you are youngish and unpregnantish and have a healthy dose of guilt, you're guaranteed to have to give up your seat to a white-haired octogenerian before even the next stop. So, if you really want to sit down and stay seated, you need to brave the back of the bus.

Sadly, braving the back is pointless in France.

See, you settle into your seat, adopting a look of extreme boredom mixed with angst in order to fit in with the crowd back there. You look out the window. You day dream. You're sitting. Ah, life is good.

It's the tell-tale shuffle, clop, huff huff, shuffle, clop, huff huff that rouses you from your relaxed revery. You look down the aisle and sure enough, an old lady, hair in a bun, wearing a fur (no less), and a cane in hand hobbles towards you.

On either side of the aisle, the insouciant youths act studiously unaware of the limping spectre moving toward the back.

Sigh.

You see, although you may be able to look like a grumpy teen, you'll never really be able to act like one.

Damn you, grandma! And for making me give up my seat, I'm going to feel you up!

In the eye of the camera

2006-03-21T10:44:00.000+01:00

Except for an inordinate number of sirens blaring each day, you’d never know that Paris was burning yet again. Or is it? Here in my quiet little corner of the city, nary an anti-government leaflet can be found and the local baker adamantly insists she could care less about the whole issue of youth employment.

I watched footage on CNN and a French news channel this week and was, frankly, shocked at the violence and destruction. I forgot for a minute that I, too, was in Paris and unless I chose to saunter up to the Sorbonne some day, (which I might, in order to shout an inarticulate French sentence in support for youths), this was not my immediate reality. My mom, however, is sure to worry.

What the media is showing is real on a certain level, but I always have to remind myself that the image is only as true as what the camera lets you see.

Take a certain incident in Kuwait last year.

With my then boyfriend (now hubs), I planned to ring in the new 2005 year at a ball at the Hilton Hotel in Kuwait. But word quickly got sms’ed around that all new years hotel parties had been cancelled because there had been direct terrorist threats against “foreign interests” (Translation: all-night, illegal, drink-a-thons.) To be honest, I was relieved, but my relief had nothing to do with fearing terrorism and everything to do with fearing spending the evening with sloshed foreigners—like my hubs (Kidding, sort of. And yes, Kuwait is a “dry” country.) In any case, we didn’t take it all that seriously, but it was still disconcerting to see posted on major street corners tanks topped with machine guns that pointed at traffic for the rest of the week.

School was to start soon after, and along with emails confirming the safety of colleagues and students who had been in tsunami-hit areas, bulletins from the US embassy warned not only of further generic terrorist threats but added that the latest menace was of possible kidnappings and drive by shootings. Meaning my walk to school each morning was fraught with fear. When cars slowed down and a man rolled down his window, I wondered, “What? Ya gonna kidnap me or are you hoping for a little nooky at 5:30 in the morning?”

Fortunately (ahem), in all cases it was nooky.

Mid-month, the Kuwaiti police launched a series of raids against suspected terrorists. Shots were fired, a curious bystander was killed, and a number of suspects were rounded up. CNN International covered the news, showing the same footage of dusty streets, crumbling buildings, and pockmarked walls over and over again. It looked like a war zone.

I watched the news appalled but then remembered that I was living in the same country that was on TV and not experiencing any of the really bad stuff. Still, my mom would worry.

What we see on TV and what the reality is for the majority of a population can be so incongruent. The horrific images broadcast daily out of Iraq paralyse me. But there are more than 26 million (less about 30,000) Iraqis living in a country on the brink of civil war. Night turns into day and most people just get on with their lives. Where are the kids going to school? How do they get their mail? Does Ahmed have a crush on Nora? What fresh fruits are still available at the local markets? This, I’d like to see more of on TV too.

Life does go on. It has to.

My surrogate quack

2006-03-19T11:58:00.000+01:00

After a breakfast of freshly brewed (Starbucks espresso roast, she whispers) coffee and two chocolate croissants chez moi yesterday, I saw the day stretch long and lonely ahead of me. No intense French classes. No volunteer shifts at the cultural centre. No friends to play with. And surrogate husband doesn’t talk. There are days when you’re just so tired of being alone. I pitied myself and wept.

I washed my face, and, as I have lost my sunglasses, checked how blotchy and red my eyes were. Convinced I looked like I was merely having allergies, I went out for a walk to the nearby park, instead of up to the Left Bank to join tens of thousands of protesters. Nothing exacerbates loneliness like a wild, chanting crowd.

Like so many parks in Paris, this one has some ponies, a playground, a pond, and most importantly, ducks. Bird flu be damned; when I am sad, and alone, nothing lifts my spirits more than watching ducks go about their daily business. All that fussing with their feathers, scratching with their webbed feet, exposing of their bottoms as they dunk their heads into the water to catch a bug.

I sat on a bench by the pond and allowed myself to wonder what life would be like as a duck. Two ducks floated at the other end, rhythmically bobbing and dunking side by side—paired for life those two—floating, bobbing, dunking, feather fussing, web-feet scratching, bottom exposing, together, on that pond, for life. If only it were that simple in the human world, I thought.

As if he knew I was in a certain mood, a lone male with a blue green head, paddled in my direction, belting out a plaintive quack every couple of seconds. When he reached me, he slowed down, quacked, and after a second or two, moved on.

Ok, so he was probably seeking a morsel of bread, but for a brief moment of denial, I let myself think he was telling me to cheer up.

And I did.

Promises promises

2006-03-18T14:27:00.000+01:00

Well now, reading back over the last couple of posts, I notice a certain trend developing. Vow to self: avoid writing about farts, pee and poo for the next while.

I mean, I don't even have children, for crying out loud.

Or a dog.

A French language textbook

2006-03-17T21:58:00.000+01:00

Being a teacher, in my real life, I've used a lot of textbooks. I know what bores the heck out of students and I know what doesn't. I also know that a good textbook saves a teacher having to do hours of prep. Oh, I know teachers aren't supposed to rely solely on the textbook, but let's be real here. There are not enough hours in the day to prep all your classes and don't expect me to waste my summer vacation actually organizing a year's worth of activities, worksheets, and notes. We teachers have got some serious ~~sitting around~~ recuperating to do.

But back to textbooks. I feel confident, once my French improves, that I could write the next best-selling French language textbook. It would take place in Paris. The main characters would be M. and Mme. Lacrotte, an elderly couple, plus all the shopkeepers in their neighbourhood. All the action would take place on a veritable Rue Sesame.

A sample dialogue in a lesson on non-countable nouns:

M. Lacrotte: Watch out!
Mme Lacrotte: Aaah. Shit!
M. Lacrotte: That's right, it's shit.
Mme Lacrotte: My (masculine) God! I almost stepped in dog poo.
The butcher: Ooh la la. That's a huge pile of crap.
The baker: Ah, but Mme Lacrotte, it's good luck to step in poop, you know.
The candlestick maker: Aaah, but only with your left foot. Madam almost stepped in this mound of excrement with her right foot.

If there were ever a dialogue that practices non-countable nouns, this is it. With this textbook, no busy French language teacher will ever have to frantically photocopy extra worksheets for her students.

And just imagine the role plays.

The definition of relief

2006-03-16T19:54:00.000+01:00

Relief occurs when you finally go pee after sitting through an hour-long lecture on the correct use of French articles--le, la, les, du, de la, de l', des, ble, bla, blas, blas, blas--and even though you sort of want to pee right this instant, you decide to go home first and after visualizing the act, during class, of getting on the bus, riding it for 13 minutes, and arriving home to a clean bathroom rather than using the school's bathroom, you are finally dismissed and head outdoors only to find the streets packed with thousands and thousands of protesting students waving banners and shouting incomprehensible slogans with proper articles, so that there is no way your bus will be able to pass through the throng to pick up its passengers, and even though you are wearing heels because you had volunteered at a cultural organization in the morning, you decide to walk the half hour home because taking the subway would involve one transfer at the cavernous Gare Montparnasse and your subway stop is a good distance away from your apartment anyway, when a phone call from your mother-in-law distracts you from paying attention to the street you are walking down so that you find yourself on the wrong street and even though the wrong street is originally parallel to the one you need to be on, you end up walking in a 45 degree angle away from it and have to consult your map and veer back thus tacking on another 20 minutes to your journey, not to mention being hobbled by your heels, you finally arrive home and after checking every pocket of your bag to find your keys, enter the apartment building with the intention of taking the elevator because lifting your leg to climb even one step pushes on your bladder, but you notice that the elevator is on the top floor and even though your building is only a few stories tall, the elevator is ancient and slow, so you take the stairs praying that you don't pee your pants, arrive at your front door, enter, hurriedly unbutton your coat, drop it to the floor, fling open the bathroom door and flop your butt down onto the toilet.

Now THAT is relief.

Let's get political, political...

2006-03-14T22:31:00.000+01:00

Most of the time, Dongurigal is pretty self-absorbed, but once in a while an issue bugs her enough that she even signs a petition.

Ok--I barely passed grade 12 Algebra, but let's see: $1200 divided by 12. Oh wait, the Conservative Party of Canada has done the math for me:

Choice in child care. We will give all parents $100 per month per child under age 6 to spend on child care needs as they choose – whether that means formal day care, a babysitter, neighbourhood child care, or helping one parent stay at home.

Hmmm. $100 per month to spend on childcare or a publicly-funded, quality national child care program. Now which option REALLY gives families a choice in how to raise their children? You don't even need to have a l'il rugrat to know that $100 is going to buy you about 4 days of babysitting at the home of surly, chain-smoking crone while you slave away at the fish processing plant.

I think it's great that so many women choose to be stay at home moms because they want to and they can. But I think it's sad that probably the same number of women who want to be stay at home moms can't. And $100 a month isn't going to change that.

Dirty, but safe

2006-03-13T22:01:00.000+01:00

I’ll never escape Hatchet Man.

Hatchet Man started stalking me when I was about 13 years old, the year I decided I didn't want my pristine underwear to mix with the icky underwear of my younger siblings. Our family had also just adopted my youngest brother and, well, he pooed a lot. And it leaked. Oh, I loved him, but c’mon, love has its limits.

And I was 13.

Problem was, the laundry room was in the far corner of the basement—a dimly lit room smelling of cat litter and dust—and it’s there I first sensed that axe-wielding maniac lurking in the corner. I would quickly jam my dirty clothes into the top-loading machine, pour in the wash powder, shut the lid, turn the dial and rush out of the room, all within 10 seconds--and one split second before Hatchet Man started swinging.

Hatchet Man followed me to university, into the dorm with its cavernous, lonely laundry room and later, off campus, to the dingy back alley shed where about 30 tenants were expected to share one coin washer and one coin dryer. My timing was always off and it would be dark by the time the machines were available. Before I would go into the laundry shed, I would stick my arm into the room figuring that I’d rather Hatchet Man chop off my arm than my head.

It made sense at the time.

It wasn’t long before I began stomping on my panties, like a grape crusher, while taking a shower to avoid a rendezvous with him.

For a long impoverished while, I dragged bags of clothes to sunny laundromats or lived in such tiny apartments that the washing machine shared space with my bathroom. Aaah, those were blissful laundry-doing years. And as far as chores go, it was one I actually enjoyed.

But now Hatchet Man is back and making sure that I never get my clothes washed.

After staying in an apartment hotel for two weeks this January and lugging my dirty laundry to a laundromat ten minutes away to avoid Hatchet Man’s lair on a negative numbered floor, I was relieved to be moving to the furnished rental I am currently in. I’d been in several French apartments and knew that everyone in France, most definitely, did their laundry in the kitchen.

So it was with dismay that I followed the landlady to the negative second floor as she eagerly explained how I could do laundry “down here in this spacious room” rather than in the tiny kitchen.

I looked around, and sure enough, I saw a blade glint and knew, just knew, that Hatchet Man had already settled in.

Donguri koro koro Part 1

2006-03-12T20:04:00.000+01:00

After my dad moved the family from Tokyo to Tinytown, Saskatchewan a long time ago, I sometimes had dreams in Japanese. My last dream that I remember, not the plot, but the fact that I was speaking in Japanese, was in grade 12. I woke up fully aware that my entire dream had been in the forgotten second language of my childhood—that I and the folks haunting me in my sleep were all chatting, shouting, and laughing in Japanese. That was the last time. I woke up and tried carefully to capture the words, the phrases, the paragraphs as they floated away, leaving me unilingual and perturbed. I recall thinking that here was a language locked away deep inside the labyrinth of my brain, begging to be released. But I had to find it, it would not reveal itself.

I’ve since “found” the language and stopped dreaming.

Today, on the phone, a friend asked me when I was coming back to Japan for a visit. When indeed? I was just there in November for a mere 10 days. Long enough to catch up with remaining friends and to stock up on favourite foods, but not long enough to experience the things that always bring me a private joy. The rattle of the bells at the local temple, the crunch of footsteps on white gravel, the yakiimo truck blaring its nightly message of fresh, hot, sweet potatoes, the autumn leaves, a hike through bamboo groves and outdoor bathing. How can that all fit in one short visit?

I snag Japan moments when I can. I took a picture of a plum blossom trees while visiting a botanical garden in Shiraz, Iran on my spring vacation last year, I savor mikans every Christmas, I like going for walks in parks because “Pee” Park and Yoyogi Park were my backyards when I was still learning to add and subtract. (Climbing urine-stained cherry trees at Pee Park is probably why I almost never get sick these days and why I have to get a TB X-Ray rather than just a skin test whenever I am offered a teaching job.)

In Paris, it’s possible to have a Japan-y weekend. I wandered through the Opera district with its many small Japanese food shops, restaurants, and at least one book store set on the ground floors of opulent apartment buildings. I bought some nira and enoki mushrooms, udon noodles, gyoza, and osembei and then wandered over to Book-off to look at magazines that were, unfortunately, wrapped in plastic. Despite my nostalgic mood, I balked at spending 13 euros on a magazine with a front cover that promised photos of onsens and cherry blossoms.

When people ask me if I’m homesick, I want to ask—for where? If you count it up, nearly half of my life has been lived abroad and three-fourths of that half has been in Japan. Homesick for my family in Canada (and now Algiers), sure. But homesick for a place? Even though I answer yes for the country that’s implied—it takes too long to explain otherwise—what pops into my head is not Canada, it’s Japan.

Just like the first word that pops into my head when I see an iridescent dragonfly is not dragonfly.

It’s tombo.

A plea for a re-comment...

2006-03-12T14:08:00.000+01:00

...because my commenters write me more than my In Real Life (IRL?) friends. A couple of my dear readers posted comments on the "My role in this world" post yesterday/today depending on the timezone, but they are not showing up on Dongurigal, so I have no clue what you wrote. I would love to have a clue, so if you feel up to it, please re-comment.

Let me explain why I know a couple of you commented, but I don't know what you wrote.

In order for me to see any new posts I write here or any new comments, I almost always have to clear my cache and history folders, for some technical reason I can't explain. Do I blame Blogger? Do I blame Firefox? Do I blame myself? Do I just suck it up?

Continuing the explanation: Before I cleared my cache/history folders today, I had already checked my email account and noted that there were a couple of comments. Unthinkingly, I deleted them from my email (and since they were in the junk folder, bye bye forever) without reading them because I assumed that once I cleared the above folders, I would be able to reenter Dongurigal in the address bar and see all new comments. I assumed wrong.

It's up to you if you want to rewrite and resend--I won't mind if you don't, she mumbles ever so passive aggressively.

Who needs cubism when you have PhotoShop?

2006-03-12T13:55:00.000+01:00

Indeed, how did Picasso survive without PhotoShop?

Rose Period, Self-portrait by Dongurigal, March 2006

For a look at less creepy, more mesmerizing "amazing circles," click here.

My role in this world

2006-03-11T22:26:00.000+01:00

Since hubs has lost interest in reading my blog and since I am in a monstrously foul mood--and can't even blame it on PMS--and despite my initial, unannounced decision to avoid blogging about stereotypical situations, I am going to post the following conversation with an Un-named Person (UP) who has a vested interested in Hub's and my reproductive life.

When I told UP that I was disappointed that Hubs couldn't come back to Paris at the end of March (I thought UP already knew, but I was wrong), UP's first words were:

a) Oh, that's too bad for you two--you must miss each other.
b) Oh, Hubs must be very busy on his project.
c) Was his training course cancelled?
d) What? But what about grandchildren? That's not going to be good for having grandchildren.

If you chose d) you are correct.

And you heard right. Grandchildren.

Not children. Grandchildren.

My role in this world, my purpose in life, my raison d'etre: Grandchild producer.

Shhhhhh....no guessing outloud....

Someone out there can make the French smile

2006-03-10T21:52:00.000+01:00

The other day, when my Aussie friend, a free spirit with an emphatic voice, asked me if I sometimes practice my new French expressions out in public, I knew I was in for an embarrassing day.

You see, I had taught her how and when it's appropriate to say "Catastrophe!" (with the stress on STROPHE and a silent E, of course.)

Sure enough, we had just queued up at the post office when an older woman approached my friend--I'll call her X--and asked if she could borrow a pen. Not able to understand, X stared at her blankly while I dug into my bag to look for one and explained to X what the woman wanted. After thanking me for the pen, the woman added that she had neglected to write the address on the envelope, which I simultaneously translated for X, at which point X threw up her hands and boomed,

"CAT--CAT--AAAH CATASTROPHE!"

Everyone, and I mean everyone, from the postal clerks behind the protective glass to the tall man at the front of the line jerked their heads in our direction.

X put her hand on the woman's shoulder and nodded her head empathetically while I, face as red as the beet soup we ate later in the day, tried to avoid all eye contact. Oh my God, I thought, these French are going to kill us with their razor sharp glares and their pursed sneers.

And then the woman smiled.

Really smiled.

And said, "Not such a catastrophe afterall, thanks to you."

Astonishing yet evil

2006-03-09T21:45:00.000+01:00

In all my years of learning, I have only had three astonishingly evil teachers.

My first astonishingly evil teacher was my grade 4 and 5 religious studies teacher, a miniscule nun who told me that my father was on his way to hell because he "worked" on Sundays. That is, he played hockey (and got paid for it, therefore, worked) on the so-called day of rest. This upset me because like all deluded nine year olds who think lying isn't really a sin, I was convinced I was on my way to heaven. This meant that I would never see my dad again. Indeed, the idea of heaven became hell to me. Now, I see his going to hell as positive, as there is no way I will make it into heaven either.

My second astonishingly evil teacher was my grade 8 and 9 teacher, a stressed-out man who couldn't cope with a three-grade-in-one classroom and who smelled like 5-day-old BO and stale cigarettes. My friend would bring a square air freshener to class and wave it every time he walked by and we never asked him to explain a math concept in case he came over to our desk to give us a mini-tutorial. To be fair, we were all astonishingly evil students and probably (make that, definitely) smelled like 5-day-old BO and stale cigarettes ourselves. We all deserved each other.

My third astonishingly evil teacher was my Japanese language teacher at a certain Canadian university. Though still mainly motivated by the elusive A, I was at a stage in my learning life that made me think that teachers should not berate me for quietly getting up to go to the bathroom or if I chose to skip class. Clearly, I was wrong. Berate she did. Loudly, with flying spittle, in Japanese.

And now, I've met my fourth astonishingly evil teacher. My French language school teacher.

A minor pronunciation error can start her on a ten minute rant during which time she has mimicked your attempts to correct yourself, rolled her eyes, gnashed her teeth, clenched her fists, and launched a diatribe on the horrors of having to teach students from English speaking countries who don't bother to say a word in the French way. After which, she asks you to repeat what you were saying and then wonders why you're blanching and incapable of remembering what you wanted to say.

"Aaaa, aaaaa, aaaaa, j'ai oublie."

But I will stay in her class because as a not quite astonishingly evil teacher myself, I know I will learn something from her: How NOT to teach.

Or better yet: How to scare the living shit out of middle school brats so that I never ever have a discipline problem again.

The surrogate

2006-03-09T11:19:00.000+01:00

Meet my surrogate husband. He's warm. He's fuzzy. And he doesn't fart.

Loopy bus videos

2006-03-06T14:11:00.000+01:00

These days, I spend a lot of time on the Air France bus riding from Gare Montparnasse to Charles de Gaulle airport to pick up visiting friends. As much as I try not to watch the looped video on offer--Parisian buildings and people are such eye candy afterall--I can't help but look. It's like passing a car accident, my eyes keep straying back to the screen.

Most of the video is an all-out France promo. It is the Air France bus afterall.

"Here in this town of P, you can buy glazed tiles. Look how this grizzled man makes them just as they did in the 15th century. No, he himself is not from the 15th century. " Actually, there is no voiceover; instead, there is an upbeat classical soundtrack and quick, un-15th century cut aways.

Toward the end of the video is a disturbing warning that is out of place because it is not geared to tourism in France. No, it is geared toward "tourists" going to, say, Thailand. Written in bold type across the moving picture of a caucasian man taking off his clothes in a dank, grey room is the following statement:

"Every year many children are victims of $exu@l tourism."**

The statement disappears, and the naked man starts walking toward a door. It is a very creepy, unsettling visual. As the camera zooms out, we see that the door is, in fact, barred and there is a jail guard standing by it. The next statement appears.

"More and more perpetrators are caught at the scene or in their country of origin."

Then, like a cast list at the end of a movie, the first names of perpetrators float up along with their jail sentence and the countries where they were arrested.

If it sends shivers of disgust down my spine, I hope it sends shivers of fear down the spines of certain weirdos.

But here's a question. It's the Air France bus, right? So why are the statements written in English?

It's a thing to ponder to keep my mind off the fact that I just said goodbye to my husband as he returns to Algiers for another 1, no 2, well, maybe 3 more months...

He's taking the Air France bus as I write. I wonder if he's pondering the same thing?

**Deliberately typed with symbols to keep the freaks away.

Dongurigal is not a blog stalker

2006-03-03T10:03:00.000+01:00

At the risk of losing my morning poop time opportunity, I'm blogging to explain what must seem to others as anti-social, stalking behaviour.

See, like a lemming who follows the crowd over the cliff of privacy loss (look, it's the morning--if I want to use cliched similes, I will), I too have installed Site Meter. While checking to see how the hit stats work and how to view visitor info, I realize that every single time I view the Dongurigal site and then return to Site Meter to check out the stats, it records this. I think I vaguely knew that this is how Site Meter works when I read the postings of other bloggers, but it didn't click that other bloggers would also be able to see, not just that I popped in for a quick read and maybe a comment, but rather, how often I visit their sites.

How embarrassing.

Honestly, I'm not a stalker. Look. I enjoy reading other people's blogs and so I'm hoping that other bloggers are more regular at posting than I am. Like every hour. What's so crazy about that? Huh?

Here's my other main reason for constantly going back to certain blogs. I use the blogrolls of my more html savvy bloggers to read even more blogs. I suppose I could bookmark them, but then maybe I'd miss out on the latest (hourly...c'mon) posting of the original blogger.

Right. Maybe I need to get a life and leave you all alone.

And in other, non-blog stalking related news, hubby has a job interview today. He looked all spiffy in his new suit. Since he's an engineer and spends most of his time on dirty construction sites, normally I see him in his ripped up jeans and a wrinkly T-shirt. So what a pleasant view, for once, this morning. I even made him hot chocolate.

Hide the evidence

2006-03-02T11:10:00.000+01:00

Hide the evidence of extreme bachelorettedom.

My husband is coming to town, just like Santa, so I'd better be--no, make that--look good.

To do:

Pluck, shave, trim
Keep on plucking, shaving, trimming
Vacuum
Wash out bathroom sink basin. Spittle galore.
Scrub toilet. Won't describe it here.
Wash stinky sheets and pillow cases
Brush my hair
Put on make up
Put on apron
Prepare 5 course meal

I think I've gone too far. Maybe I'll stop at wash stinky sheets.

I was a grade school chikan

2006-02-26T11:40:00.000+01:00

If you speak any Japanese or have read articles on Japanese rush hour train horror stories whereby men position themselves next to young women and stick their hands up their skirts, you'll know that chikan means pervert.

Yep. That was me. Child-pervert in Tokyo.

Here's the back story.

Yesterday, I was at the Vanves Flea Market with a visiting friend, who looked on in disgust, as I wrapped my arms around an aged mink coat and rubbed my cheek on the fur.

"Oooh, I love the feel of fur," I cooed.

She, perhaps because she is from New Zealand, or perhaps because this is the 21st century and we really shouldn't be mean to animals, could not believe that I would be rubbing my cheek on a fur coat and extolling its furry virtues.

(The stall vendor also looked on in disgust but she was probably more concerned about drool.)

They gasped in unison.

{{{{Flashback}}}}

As a kid growing up in Tokyo in the 70s, I used to ride the trains everywhere. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my younger sibilings, sometimes with a friend. All I had to do was call mom when I got to my destination. Those were the days when a kid could roam the streets and get around unsupervised.

My family happened to live in a ritzy part of Tokyo. This meant that a lot of the ladies in the 'hood wore fur. This also meant that when they rode the train, especially during rush hour, my friend and I made sure to position ourselves next to them so that we could feel them up, so to speak. It was a crushing bliss. Our little hands and our little cheeks so close to all that fur. The jerking motion of the train always pushed us up against these fur-clad women which only encouraged us to stroke and pat them ever more feverishly.

I don't know if these ladies ever suspected us of doing this. If anything, they looked down and saw a pair of giggly red-heads and thought, oooh how cute, despite the fact that we had followed them all the way down the platform and stood right behind them in the queue in order to be able to stand next to them on the crowded train.

{{{{{Present day}}}}}

I don't own a fur coat, for PC reasons. Plus I don't want to be spit on.

However, I see a lot of older ladies in fur riding the bus or the metro here in Paris. And I just wish that rush hour here was as horrendous as it was in Tokyo circa 1977.

Ignorance is bums

2006-02-22T11:15:00.000+01:00

When it comes to modern art, I can be classified as either blissfully ignorant or deliberately ignorant. I just don't get it. What I do get is a good laugh, so when my friend was here last week and wanted to go to the Centre Pompidou to see the Big Bang exhibit, I went with her. I'm always up for a good laugh.

The Big Bang exhibit is mainly the centre's collection of modern art, grouped for the first time into grand themes such as melancholy, war, subversion, destruction and construction. It is not grouped in chronological order, by genre or by media. This way, art lovers such as my friend and ignoramuses such as myself, can view a whole variety of art genres from video to painting and sculpture to architecture and artists from Picasso to Louis Vivin (who da heck is dat?) based on what their artwork represents rather than when they created it or what media they used.

What I remember most from the exhibition, aside from my friend's patient giggles at my silly commentary, was watching a young girl copy a painting of 3 or 4 primary-colored square boxes. While her artsy-looking mom and friend chatted in the corner of the room, she sat in front of the painting with her markers and piece of white paper and drew it exactly as she saw it, albeit with wobbly lines. It was then that I realized that much of modern art is something that kids would "get" and respond to. Much of it seems so simple and obvious and yet profound in some way.

And then there's the shock factor.

At the age of three, my sister understood modern art and shock factor. She also understood that a good modern artist must be contemptuous of the uninformed and artistically stunted.

One day, I saw her drawing below (redrawn here as original is missing) and ask her what they were.

Despite the fact that she is 17 years younger than I am or perhaps because of, she looked up at me with disgust and scoffed. After a minute of ignoring me, she answered:

"They're bums."

"Oh," I replied, trying to sound cool, "and whose bums are they?"

Dad's bum, mom's bum, her bum, my bum, our siblings' bums.

"And who's bum is this?" I asked pointing to the sausage shaped one.

"Oh, that's Mimi's bum." Mimi was our Lab/St. Bernard cross. I can't think of Mimi anymore without thinking of her bum.

See, that's what modern art does to you. You remember the interpretation of an event, a thing or an animal long after the original itself expires, disappears, or is all but forgotten.

Maybe I do get it afterall.

The Risks of Acting French

2006-02-22T10:19:00.000+01:00

...or why clutching a baguette under your arm is a dangerous thing.

As I walked home from the patisserie this morning clutching a baguette under my arm and two wrapped chocolate croissants in my hands, my walk brisk, my thoughts on the fact that I was about to have the perfect breakfast, a pigeon swooped down at me and tried to peck at my baguette. I ducked and squawked, which was very embarrassing.

He--for this kind of bullying behaviour can only come from the male species--flew back up into a tree and prepared for another nose dive.

Unfortunately for him, I was mere steps from my apartment, so I escaped. My baguette (and me) safe.

For now.

The LIST

2006-02-21T13:29:00.000+01:00

It works. So does the Catholic Guilt.

Last night I wrote a new list, left it on top of my laptop, and when I woke up, I OBEYED it. This time, not only did I include mundane chores, I added a 10-page reading task. I call it a reading task because I am attempting to read The Little Prince in Japanese.

Yes, Japanese.

There's a long history of my relationship with Japan that I haven't blogged about yet. So here I am, renting a cozy apartment, apart from my husband who is working in Algiers, watching French news on TV and attempting to read The Little Prince in Japanese.

But let's get back to the LIST. As I said, I obeyed it and was rewarded with internet time. But now I have been aimlessly surfing the net for the past 1.5 hours. I do my approved-by-me internet activities and then get distracted. So on top of the LIST, I need another deterrent to excessive internet time.

Any ideas out there?

Here's one. I could give myself internet recess whereby after I have done OK internet activities, I allow myself 5 - 10 minutes of internet distraction time. Then I either sign off or go back to OK internet activities. How's that for a teacher mindset.

Here's another. I write another LIST, set my alarm for 1 hour later and when it goes off, so does the computer. No matter what. Including posting mid-blog.

Right now, my stomach is growling, French news beckons (ha!), my husband is sure to feel neglected because I haven't text messaged him back yet. I should probably go for a walk. It really is time to shut down, so a bientot and ja ne for now.

We Heart Paris

2006-02-21T12:57:00.000+01:00

Here's a Glamour "don't."
Taking photos of yourself and companion lead to unsightly double chins.

Nothing like Catholic Guilt

2006-02-20T11:45:00.000+01:00

There really is nothing like the Catholic guilt trip. I used my expert guilt-tripping technique today and it worked.

And no, for once, my poor husband was not the target. Nor was the target of my guilt trip a dolled-up French granny letting her mini-pooch poop on the sidewalk.

The target was me.

See, the internet is taking up too much of my time. Checking email, reading a couple of news items, adding a blog posting, commenting on a treasured forum of gals married to men of an alien culture, reading several lively blogs are ok internet activites. Aimlessly surfing, clicking on links that lead to extreme right-wing propaganda, reading outrageous threads on teacher forums ** that make me despair for my profession are not ok internet activities. It is a monumental, grandiose, humungous, gigantic waste of my time.

So I wrote the list. It sat on top of my laptop all night long so that when I woke up, and as is my habit, went to turn on the laptop, I saw THE LIST.

"Do not go on the computer until you've...

a) done dishes
b) folded laundry
c) written b-day card to sister
d) cleaned up desk area
e) ironed clothes

Then you can be an interent junkie."

There it is: The list told me I couldn't go on the computer until I had completed my tasks. And I actually obeyed it. I didn't touch my laptop for a good 2 hours. I didn't even look at it.

Where does the Catholic guilt come in? It's inside me. It's the little voice that said, if you don't follow this list you will feel like a huge loser. Not only will you feel like a huge loser, you will BE a huge loser. You don't really want to be a loser, do you? It was ok to be a loser in Algeria. It's not ok to be a loser in Paris.

I think I've found a solution to my internet addiction.

And if THE LIST works for the internet, surely it will work for chocolate wafers.

"Do not eat this entire package of chocolate wafers until you've....

a) made a salad
b) steamed a cupful of broccoli
c) grilled a piece of fish
d) eaten the above for supper.

And then you can eat the entire package of chocolate wafers."

But by then, if all goes well and I don't burn the fish, I should be too full.

**(Don't click on that link unless you want to end up like me)

Single gal mode

2006-02-19T19:41:00.000+01:00

In the apartment above me, my neighbour is playing Chopin. At least I think it's Chopin. She plays passionately and with few mistakes, so I am impressed. And thrilled that I have my own personal classical concert going on.

Meanwhile, now that my friend has flown back to Canada, I have been lying in bed nearly all day resting my walk-weary bones. I have to clean, do laundry, write ANYTHING on this blog. Unlike all those multi-tasking parents who blog nearly everyday, I am incapable of doing more than one thing at a time. Such as visit and blog. God help my internet audience of 3 if I get a job, have kids, live in the same country as my husband, or start a one-woman dog poo-removal campaign in Paris. There will be an un-updated blog floating around in cyberspace like tin garbage orbiting the earth. So much for self-discipline.

While I am on the subject of self-discipline, I am shocked at how easy it is for me to slip into single gal mode. We're not talking Sex-and-the-City single gal mode. We're talking, sitting around all morning drinking coffee, farting, aimless surfing on the internet, lying in bed nearly all day single gal mode. I need my husband here.

Or at least my friend. Please come back.

The Bust

2006-02-17T19:18:00.000+01:00

And what a bust it is.

If it's yellow...you know the rhyme

2006-02-09T22:30:00.000+01:00

Every self-respecting, environmentally-conscious Canadian child sharing a septic toilet with 7 other Catholic guitar camp campers knows that:

If it's yellow, let it mellow
If it's brown, flush it down.

Add to years of camping and cottaging and being reminded by camp leaders and parents not to waste water, a bad habit of peeing 1 or 2 times a night and not wanting to wake everyone up, and this 38-year-old Canadian gal still lives by that pithy ditty, only to find out last night, during a conversation with her dear husband about feminism, that he finds the whole concept dirty, disgusting and proof that I am not a feminist (or for that matter an environmentalist) but rather a lazy slob.

All this time he has quietly, uncomplainingly flushed the toilet each morning appalled at what he perceived, he admitted yesterday, as my inability to reach behind me to jiggle the little silver handle. And here I was, for the sake of our planet, for the sake of someone else's uninterrupted sleep ...

...So for the sake of our marriage, I will flush (but not till he's back from Algiers. Mother Earth can rest easy for now.)

Offensive, but deal with it

2006-02-03T11:21:00.001+01:00

It's in all the online news here, hereand here.

Here's my take on the issue. If the caricatures are as offensive as so many Muslims believe, then take the papers and cartoonist to court and prove that they incite others to acts of hate and violence. So far, the only people who are acting hateful and violent are the extremists themselves. Indeed, those jihadists are the ones who tarnish the "image" of Islam in the first place, not some lowly, ignorant cartoonist.

Come out of hiding moderate Muslims--use humour, mockery, logic, examples, and tempered anger--to explain what's wrong with these pictures and why they shouldn't have been published. Having seen a couple of drawings myself, I, for one, don't disagree that they are obnoxious and stereotypical.

But they are not dangerous. For entire governments to apologize for the drawings of a cartoonist, or the printing of them by various newspapers in solidarity is just plain wrong and sets a bad precedent against freedom of speech. I don't have a problem with a government saying that they in no way support or agree with the views of the cartoonist, but these democratic governments had better not give in to fear and intimidation and apologize. No way.

And the other thing that bugs me is that just because it is an Islamic belief that Mohammed cannot be painted, let alone caricaturized, doesn't mean that non-Muslims have to subscribe to that belief too. Sorry (there I go apologizing). If we want to draw the Prophet Mohammed, we can.

As an admittedly lapsed Catholic, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I just do. It's an irrational belief that I grew up with. However, I don't take offense when newspapers in the Middle East or Muslims I converse with insist on calling Jesus, "the prophet Jesus," instead of writing something like "Jesus, who is believed to be the Son of God by Christians, blah blah blah...." It does bug me a bit, but it's not a Muslim belief, so if they choose to call Jesus a prophet (which is something they believe), so be it. Who I am to insist otherwise.

It's time for our mainly secular democracies that espouse tolerance and respect not to give into the righteous intimidation of extremists, whatever the religion. If someone has a strong belief, fine. Believe it. Live it. Value it. Explain it. Talk about it. But don't expect everyone else to feel or do the same. Idealistic, I know. You can't convince someone who believes he is RIGHT, to be tolerant of the "wrongness" of others.

And that, to me, is the real issue.

Paris blues

2006-01-29T15:35:00.000+01:00

In the last few days, I have been trying to figure out why life seems so bleak. I mean, I am in Paris, it is sunny and brisk, there are parks, chocolate croissants and pretty buildings. And there is a gigantic thumb on my way to the metro that should remind me that everything is A-OK.

So why these glum feelings?

It always takes me such a long time to figure out what’s wrong; in the interim I have managed to hurt my husband’s feelings and worry my mom. But I think I’ve finally got it. The blues started around the time I began looking for an apartment by myself. After much discussion, my husband and I were able to compromise on what appealed to each of us. I’m willing to live outside the real Paris so that we can get a decent underground parking space and he’s willing to live in a box so that we can be in a vibrant neighbourhood where shops, parks and a train stop are within walking distance. Husband made our needs clear to our various agents and the search began.

But the more I search, the more I feel detached from the whole process. I get glimpses of people’s lives and I am filled with an odd envy. Even though I know these families are about to bring upheaval upon themselves, when I look at the pictures on their walls and the knick knacks on their shelves, their children’s messy bedrooms and the dishes in the sink, I sense a permanence and a security that I have yet to feel in my own life.

Suddenly, all the stuff that I thought was important to me in choosing an apartment seems silly, because what I really want is the security of having my family and friends close by—wistful, wishful thinking since my friends and family are scattered around Canada and the world. This includes my husband.

What I really want to do is to put my big, red suitcase in a storage closet and not look at it for another year.

What I really want is to settle down and breathe.

A Poem about Monuments

2006-01-27T21:36:00.000+01:00

C'est vrai!

Paris has it all.

THE Tower

THE Arch

THE Cathedral

THE Museum

and now

THE Thumb

Dad's little lesbian

2006-01-24T18:52:00.000+01:00

When my sister's husband met me for the first time, he thought I was a lesbian. He told me this at my wedding (to a man, no less) this past summer.

"What? Do I look like one?"

In an average day, I try to be sensitive by not stereotyping lesbians as spikey-haired butches, but it's really hard to be politically correct when someone says, "I thought you were a lesbian."

I mean, jeez, my hair was long and silky back then.

My brother-in-law reminded me that when we first met, my dad and I were having our annual gay rights argument in the middle of which, my dad put his around me and chirped, "Ah, my little lesbian," and so ended the heated debate. For him, anyway. I was still fuming.

Well, this little lesbian learned that a minority Conservative goverment was elected in Canada yesterday. Among the many views held by the conservatives that often sends Dongurigal into a 10-page/10-hour rant is the belief that heterosexuals have a monopoly on being in loving, committed relationships recognized by society and the state. Apparently, loving, committed relationships are not possible for gays and lesbians who live an unnatural lifestyle that is not worthy of state sanction.

Too late, guys (and it is mostly guys, by the way, who ran on the Conservative slate. Something like 89% men and 11% woman. That sure is representative of the general population. Mmmhmmm). Canada has approved gay marriage; I'd like to see you take that right away.

At this point, this post needs to stop because I'm about to get emotional and irrational. And surely there's nothing worse than an emotional, irrational lesbian wannabe.

Put out the welcome mat

2006-01-22T09:48:00.000+01:00

When I first started dating my now husband (gosh, he needs a cute nickname like Frubs {frog + husband} or Grubs {grump + husband}). Right, whatever, where was I?

When I first started dating my now husband in a little desert country called Kuwait, I noticed that whenever we went back to his apartment, he would wipe his shoes on a bristly welcome mat before entering. I thought, "Wow. He was really well brought up." It's probably why I married him.

I realize now that he was merely being French.

Having now visited 6 different apartments with our real estate agent, I have had to wipe my shoes on 6 different welcome mats. Some are just plain brown, some have the word Welcome, in English, which would not go over well in Quebec, and some have a cute little animal design.

All are full of shit.

See, that's what they're for. To wipe the shit off your shoes, but I will refrain from writing a tired diatribe here on the size, shape, and color--heck--the endless variety of squished poop one finds in the streets of this city.

Instead, I will say that the welcome mat does not (really) exist in Canada. If I ever tried to come into the house with my wet from melting snow, muddy from melting snow boots on, I would hear an owly screech from mom in the kitchen, "Take off your booooooooooooots. Jeez I just mopped the floor."

I can see now that the situation of to wear your shoes or not to wear your shoes in our future French apartment might become an issue for my grubs/frubs/husband and me. Yes, if I look into my little crystal ball, I see a clash of culture.

See, there was very little dog poop in the streets of Kuwait or Algeria so shuffling your feet on a mat was cute, almost romatic, certainly touching, but unnecessary, but I know that here in Paris stepping in doggy do is as much a fact of life as sitting next to an inveterate smoker at a local cafe.

And there is no way, NO WAY, a welcome mat can ever remove all traces of crap.

And so, I will become my mother with an owly screech, "Take off your shooooooooooooooes."

Bad Student Bad

2006-01-19T20:19:00.000+01:00

When I am Ms Crankypants teacher lady, my biggest pet peeve is students who don't come prepared to class. Oh, I even give detentions for that level of personal disorganization. Without detentions and admonitions, it's a road to ruin, otherwise. One minute they forget to bring a pencil to class and the next minute they've forgotten to release the landing gear and crash the plane with 250 passengers aboard.

These naughty students leave their notebooks at home and their pencils in their lockers. They bug their classmates to borrow a piece of paper. And if there's one thing I know about students, it's that they hoard their paper like squirrels with nuts just before hibernation season, so it really does annoy them to have to share their treasured sheets. Not to mention the fact that the whole borrowing and refusing to lend routine takes up a good 5 minutes of essential instruction time.

So tell me, why is it that when I started my brand new French class today at a renowned school near Metro ND des Champs, I forgot to bring a notebook? My first thought was, will I ever be able to give a detention again without feeling the twinge of hypocracy? My second thought was, is there anyone in this class willing to give me a piece of paper? I glanced around at all the pristine notebooks, then scavenged through my purse and luckily found a ratty old notepad the size of my palm upon which to write all the new vocab and grammatical structures. All the new vocab and grammatical structures filled up a mere 12 pages.

But at least I had a pen.

All the pretty buildings

2006-01-18T19:57:00.000+01:00

Except for the rain, yesterday I went for a walk unmolested and looked at all the pretty buildings.

Today, I looked at ugly buildings. That's because my husband and I are going to buy an apartment just outside the Paris circle. He wants space and then some. I want the metro and a patisserie on my doorstep.

We're on a budget.

With those specs, you get to see a lot of ugly buildings.

Terminal Terminals

2006-01-17T21:53:00.000+01:00

Whoever thought of using the word terminal to describe a place where one stands in line for hours waiting and waiting and waiting to check in, to pass through security, to pay for a duty free jar of Estee Lauder Day Wear Cream, to board the plane, to pass through customs at the other end and to look out for crushed luggage on the conveyor belt was one heck of an intelligent man (or woman).

Of the many reasons I wanted to leave Algiers and stay put in Paris for a while, a big one was that I did not want to spend another minute in an airport terminal, at least for the next 3 months. It's a long, complicated story involving the fact that I can only get a visitor visa to Algeria for 60 days at a time and I can only apply for that visa from Canada. That's 3 flights and 4 airport terminals every 45 days on average (math skills required). And I don't even have enough flight points to upgrade to some snooty pooty points card that would let me bypass the check in line ups and wait out the lengthy transfers in a top floor boozy lounge.

I've lived half my life in airport terminals and all, without exception, have induced in me what can only be described as zoned-out stress.

Add to that, an irrational fear of flying and the resultant gas and you have yourself one unhappy chickadee.

So that's why I'm staying put.

A tribute to my German friend

2006-01-15T15:00:00.000+01:00

I read her lonely posting in an expat forum that she had written 4 months previously. Like me, she was following her husband to a country that until quite recently wasn't safe for foreigners. Like me, she kept reading what the internet search engines vomited up--site after site about the French-Algerian war, the recent civil war, and several-year-old newspaper articles about travellers and locals having their throats slit. Like me, she was looking for someone to have coffee with. Like me, she found her embassy lacked information and assistance for their non-diplomatic citizens.

Unlike me, she had a kid and needed to find a school fast.

So, I emailed her. Four months late. A week later, she wrote back saying she was still in Germany but that she would be arriving soon. We met in person a week after that.

Without her, I would have suffered severe isolation. The Algerians I met in shops or through my husband's work or the proprietors of our apartment were generous and helpful, but understandably did not understand what an expat needs to start a new life somewhere. With my German friend, we explored the shops, the restaurants, the fitness clubs. We exchanged tips on where to find European cookies, IKEA knockoff furniture, and pirated DVDs. She made mom friends, introduced them to me and even invited me to play dates.

We joked that I should pretend I am a mom and lurk outside her son's pre-school so as to meet other women.

Right, nothing like a freaky lady to impress them mamas.

And so I say goodbye to her with some regret and guilt. I feel like I am abandoning her. Still, she has her new mom friends and she is a positive, energetic person who will share her friendship with other desperate expat wives out there. She'll keep discovering the highlights of the city.

You see, she's also not addicted to the internet.

Thank you my German friend.

Go on then

2006-01-14T18:23:00.000+01:00

Just do it. Just blog.

So I am.

And the funny thing is, in two days I am going to Paris where I may not have as much access to the internet as I do now, so when I sit down in those smokey net cafes, the last thing I'm going to want to do is blog.

This is a good thing. Not the not being able to blog regularly part, but the not having much access to the internet part. Since January 2nd, I have probably surfed online for up to seven hours a day. Actually, it's probably longer, but I'm too embarrassed to admit it out there in internetland, let alone to myself.

You see, my French hubby is on an engineering contract in a country where I am not allowed to work. The government says so and it has a lot of men in uniforms with big guns who stand at off/on ramps and roundabouts forcing cars to stop for arbitrary inspection, so who am I to argue.

Not working does suck, to borrow a phrase from a seventh grade student, but it shouldn't be the end of the world. It has been for me. I like working. I'm a teacher. That means I like people. I like talking to people. I like inspiring people. I like hanging out with people. I like sharing ideas with people. I think I've made myself clear. Now, I hardly ever see people.

And here's why...

The problem is I am alone a lot and going out for a cuppa with a good book means suffering endless harassment. From the lads that lurk in doorways and on street corners. And the security guards and ticket takers at museums. And the gourmands at the cafes. It gets tiring.

See, the public domain belongs to men and you'll find them in the parks, at the restaurants, on street corners. The private domain belongs to women who socialize behind high bouganvillea-covered walls . Women aren't completely hidden away and indeed, near the universities you'll see them in pairs and groups at local cafes, but on an average day, in your average neighbourhood, the men outnumber the women roughly 10 to 1. I've counted, just to prove to myself that I'm not imagining it.

Oh, I guess it's not all that bad. Except for the constant come ons, and the fact that I'm not working, I'm sure I would like it here. But, I don't have the patience to get to like it. So, I'm off to Paris.

Bye hubs. No worries, folks. We're not breaking up. We're just doing the long distance thing.

And finally, if I keep blogging, perhaps this means (ho hum) yet another expat-in-Paris blog. Well, I could stay here and write all about what it's like to sit on my ass all day reading other people's blogs because going out alone is so annoying. But see, that's the thing. I want to be somewhere where I can go for a walk unmolested and look at all the pretty buildings.

Boring blog, here I come.