Sunday, May 31, 2009

Fickle weather and long walks



























Monday, May 25, 2009

Spring heat

Well, it's time for me to rant again, as a blast of heat invades Paris. Today the temperature is in the eighties (Fahrenheit). That means that our high in Paris is 16° hotter than the expected high for Los Angeles today. It means that the maximum today is 22° hotter than normal for this time of year, and in fact is 12° higher than the normal yearly maximum temperture for Paris (typically attained in August, not May).

My wreck of an air conditioner isn't working very well and it's difficult to do anything in the heat; even sleeping is a problem. Since air conditioners are considered a decadent luxury by Europeans no matter how hot it gets, they are priced like gold or diamonds: a portable unit costs seven times more here than it would in the U.S., and that's way more than I can afford.

It's supposed to be cooler tomorrow, but only if my luck changes. My luck for June may reach a new nadir, with the company doctor wanting to declare me unfit to work because of health problems, the government calling me into court to formally declare me bankrupt, my landlord—or rather the building management company—dunning me for back rent that actually isn't rent (apparently they “forgot” to break out the charges correctly), TNT (a courier company, like FedEx) dunning me for a fraudulent invoice to a company I've never heard of, and much more.

Anyway, before the current heat wave, the weather was pretty nice. Sunny with fluffy clouds, the kind of weather that Paris is famous for (and the kind that's disappearing, thanks to global warming). Supposedly, tourism is down in Paris as compared to last year, but the city still seems to be awash in tourists. The tourists now are wealthier, since in hard times the poor people can't scrape up enough for overseas vacations. I still see many Americans, even though the U.S. has entered a depression.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Spring demonstrations

Public demonstrations seem to abound in springtime, especially those organized by labor unions. I've come across more than usual in the past few days.

I saw one demonstration at the FNAC on the Champs recently. The FNAC is a very cool store that sells all the things I like: computers, cameras, audio and video equipment, books, CDs, DVDs … all the good stuff. Apparently it wants to close its store or cut employees at its Bastille location (I didn't really investigate exactly what the complaint was), so employees demonstrated at the highly visible Champs-Élysées store. I'm sure it won't make any difference, but they demonstrated, anyway. I think most people couldn't care less about the grievances of the demonstrators, and are simply annoyed by having to work around them or go to a different store location. This was actually a bad choice for the demonstration, since many of the customers at this store are tourists, who don't care about local labor issues, and don't understand French, anyway, so they can't understand what the demonstrators are complaining about.

FNAC stands for Fédération nationale d'achats des cadres, which means, roughly, “Workers' Buying Federation.” And that justifies a slight digression.

Cadre today usually means “manager.” France is more class-conscious than the U.S., and still makes a sharp distinction between ordinary employees and cadres. Many French people long for the day when they will “passer cadre,” and join the managing class of society; it's a very big deal for them. I used to be cadre when I first came to France, but currently I'm not—I suppose that makes me less worthy as a human being than someone who is still cadre. It definitely makes a difference in how you are treated and what you are paid.

But in the case of the FNAC, cadre retains its older political meaning of “skilled workers,” as the store chain was started by a pair of strong socialists, to help ordinary workers gain access to good merchandise at reasonable prices. The political trappings are gone today, but the name remains. Nobody actually spells it out, though; they just pronounce it as “fnak,” rhyming roughly with “snack.” Never say F-N-A-C … that will definitely mark you as an out-of-towner.

It's a very popular store these days. It's not the cheapest store around, but it has a good selection of good products. In the days when I had money, it was a dangerous store for me, as I could not walk in without buying something before I left. Today I can't even afford batteries, so the danger is gone.

Enough with the digression. So these demonstrators were blocking the escalators at the entrance to the store, chanting into bullhorns, the usual song and dance. The usual waste of time. As the world increasingly becomes globalized, the unique practices of individual countries make less and less difference to large corporations. And old-school demonstrations like this seem increasingly anachronistic.

But this wasn't the only demonstration. While walking along the Avenue Montaigne, where all (well, most) top fashion designers live, I came across a closed street filled with colored bits of paper. It turns out the CGT (I've mentioned them before) was demonstrating about something. I'm not sure which company they targeted. There was a union member peppering a company representative with all sorts of questions, but since only the union member had a microphone, only the questions could be heard, not the answers. The demonstrators seemed very perturbed. I'm sure they probably wanted more money, more vacation, earlier retirement, lifetime employment, or one of those other standard things that demonstrators always want. They sure had made a mess in the street, though. The mess (along with the demonstrators) was gone when I passed later in the day—the city's cleaning army had been standing by, waiting for the demonstration to end so that they could clean things up.

In Paris, you get used to stuff like this. People on the street just trudged through all the paper and ignored the loud rants of the demonstrators. Just another day. I didn't even see anyone from the media.

But that's not all. I saw yet another demonstration on the other side of the river. Usually demonstrations are overwhelmingly male, but this particular one was 100% male—I saw no women at all. I'm not sure what they were demonstrating for, as they had no banners or anything, although they did have a catering truck for lunch. I never figured out what they were demonstrating about.

And perhaps the most unusual demonstrations I've seen lately have been “rogue” demonstrations by the Tamil Tigers around the Eiffel Tower. From what I've read, these demonstrations have not been officially authorized (that is, they don't have a permit). Which is not surprising, since the Tamil Tigers are one of the most notorious terrorist organizations around; both the European Union and the U.S. (and many other countries) formally classify them as a terrorist organization. But their demonstrations painted them as victims, and they had signs encouraging people to ask that they be removed from terrorist lists. The careful observer would see that their logo has a tiger ringed by golden bullets on it, but I could see that many people didn't quite realize what they were seeing, including some American tourists, who probably thought this group was some downtrodden helpless minority being crushed by a big bad government. These demonstrations appeared and disappeared quickly, so I suppose they were encouraged to disperse once the authorities found them. A few of the demonstrations led to violence, but fortunately I didn't see those. I think even some of the participants in the demonstrations didn't realize what type of organization they were demonstrating for.

My new mouse, and other things

I spent a huge amount of money (in relation to my income) on a mouse a few days ago. It cost €40 (more than I'll make before taxes this week). I use a mouse a lot, so it wasn't unjustified, but it was pricey.

I can't use an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, PS/2 mouse with a rubber-covered ball inside, like the old days. The computer loaned to me these days only accepts a USB mouse. I couldn't find a traditional mouse with a USB cable, so I had to get an optical mouse. That was more expensive than a traditional mouse, even though I have a traditional mouse that works perfectly (but it's PS/2, so I can't use it). Anyway, it turns out that an optical mouse doesn't track very well at the extremely high mouse sensitivity that I set on the computer (I like to be able to sweep the entire screen with only about one inch of mouse travel, so that I don't have to move anything more than fingertips when mousing). It wobbles at slow speeds, probably because the optical resolution is too low to match the sensitivity setting.

So I got a laser mouse. It's super-sensitive, so now it works very well. I have to get used to it more, though, because it's so sensitive that just staring at it will cause it to move. It's also a right-hand model, which in theory would be fine since I'm right-handed, but since I have a graphics tablet under my right hand, I mouse with the left hand, and this mouse doesn't come in left-handed versions. Oh well. In computerland, you are always spending money, not just to “upgrade,” but often just to keep things running.

Anyway, I walked all the way up to the computer store to get this mouse, and then I walked to school, and then I walked all the way home, including a stop for a few groceries. The weather was excellent, and much cooler and nicer outside than in the blast furnace of the apartment. Sunny with fluffy clouds, typical weather for this time of year. Tourists out in force.

I happened by the gigantic Printemps department store (right next to its gigantic competitor, the Galeries Lafayette department store), and noticed that the façade of the building is being restored. Part of it is done, the corner tower, and it looks very nice, so I took a picture. Heck, everything looked nice today, including the Opéra Garnier, which was nicely lit by the sun, and even the Assemblée Nationale (the French equivalent of a House of Representatives in the U.S.) looked nice.

It looks like the makeover of the old American Express office near the Opéra Garnier is complete. The American Express name has been retained, but the location is actually a store for Nestlé's Nespresso coffee, which here in France is promoted by George Clooney in huge posters captioned “What else?” (in English). The Amex office was/is a landmark, which is probably why the name was preserved (Amex still maintains operations in a tiny office off to one side). It has been a landmark in Paris for decades. But times change. Now it sells expensive coffee machines and even more expensive coffee cartridges.

On the way back from school, I noticed that the Bateaux-Mouches have changed their sign. They've been remodeling the whole site for a while. The new version (of the site) looks a bit odd, but at least it's new. And they finally changed the sign, too, adding a logo and a few photos and graphics. The old sign just said BATEAUX-MOUCHES.

Oh, and don't look for my reflection in the sign; believe it or not, I check all my photos and remove my reflection if present (but usually I take care when shooting to not have a reflection in the first place).

Friday, May 1, 2009

Life in the blast furnace on Labor Day

Well, the eternal problem has returned: My building management insists on keeping the building heat on full blast even when it's 70° F outside. As a result, it's 12°-20° hotter inside the apartment. There is no way to reduce the heat within the apartment, so I must exhaust it, by opening windows and by running my broken air conditioner, which barely produces any cold air at all these days.

So on these nice spring days, when the weather outside is wonderful, I'm spending money I don't have on electricity to pay for air conditioning to remove the excess heat that I'm also paying for, while the building furnace burns fuel oil and pollutes the air to create this excess heat. I guess City Hall's suggestion to keep building thermostats at 66° has gone unheeded, since it's at least ten degrees warmer than that inside this building. I imagine the building management doesn't care, since it just bills all costs back to us (both tenants and owners).

The weirdest part of this is that, in the wee hours of the morning, the heat mysteriously goes off, even though this is the coldest part of each 24-hour period. Then, in the heat of the day and afternoon, it comes back on, blasting away. I have one window directly over a radiator, so I open that, effectively wasting 100% of the energy spent on heat. But that's better than wasting 200% of the energy using A/C to remove the heat from the apartment.

It's like something Kafka would come up with. How can people be so … lacking in comprehension?

In other news … today is May Day, or Labor Day, the first of May. It's one of the rare days in the year when essentially everything is closed. Labor unions stage massive demonstrations on May Day to rehash their decades-old standard grievances: salaries that are too low, vacations that are too short, retirements that are too late, and so on. The CGT in particular, the most militant of the larger unions (and one that used to be closely associated with the now-ailing Communist Party in France, from what I understand), tries hard to maintain a permanently adversarial relationship with employers. No matter what an employer does, it's never enough, there's always something else that “must change,” some other “abuse” that must be rectified. Yes, there are a few true abuses from time to time, but often what the unions target are not really in that category; and, ironically, some of the true abuses are ignored by unions.

For example, I work under a type of employment contract that expertly works around just about every employee protection written into French law. It manages to cut away the “safety net” that former socialist governments of France tried so hard to create. But I don't see any union actions attempting to change this. During this coming week I'll earn a total of €36, before taxes. It's hard to pay rent and buy food on €36 a week. What are unions doing to fix that? Nothing, as far as I can see. But they do work hard to make sure that some people working in the public sector can retire at 50.