the world, the french and the u.s. presidential election – or, why i don’t talk about politics

First off, I’m sorry I’ve been gone half the summer. I’ve had Burning Man, O’ahu and East Coast posts on the back burner; I’ll retroactively post them in the next week or two and will turn to my regularly scheduled itinerary from then on.

This post, however, is mostly a rant. It’s about why I don’t like talking about politics– or following it too closely, for that matter.

For one, I’m a flaming liberal– pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-alternative energy, pro-universal health care, pro-globalism, anti-war, anti-oil, anti-tax raises for everyone but the rich. That’s all well and good at Stanford, but my family would likely have been a bunch of super-Catholic conservatives if my parents weren’t going to hell for producing bastard children. As I pointed out when I was in Southeast Asia, I apparently cannot and should not talk about religion or politics with anyone Filipino. It just stresses me out way too much.

I guess it could have been worse, though. My father is still a Philippine citizen, but otherwise he’d vote for Obama, and he still engages me in debate from time to time like he did when I was younger. My grandparents are voting for Obama thanks to his fantastic elocution. My mother is going to vote for McCain, partly because his illegal immigration policies are more lax than Obama’s, but partly because, in her words, “The American president shouldn’t have the last name ‘Obama’”. I’m probably not going to be talking to her during the month of December.

Anyway, I digress. The second reason I don’t like following politics is because I don’t see the point in getting so angry about shit all the time. I watched the Palin-Biden debate yesterday and ended up throwing a shoe at the screen when I couldn’t take Palin’s ass-kissing and issue-skirting any longer. That was fun because my house was watching the debate like a bunch of frat boys would watch a football game– drunkenly and belligerently, yelling things at the giant projector screen.

But after the debate, a couple of people in my house were ranting to anyone within earshot about how Palin is an idiot. Of course she is, and the majority of the developed world agrees with you. There’s no point in running your mouth off about it in the safety of a liberal hotbed with people who aren’t experts on the issues, so if you really give a shit, do something tangible elsewhere. Join the Stanford Democrats. Lobby your goddamn representatives. Team up with people who feel angry too. I’m just not one of them.

I’ve taken to politics like the French take to life. With a French accent: “Yes, maybe parts of it suck, but ‘o ze fuck cares? Ze people who care can complain. I ‘ave my sirty-five hour workweek and five weeks of ‘olidays. I do not geeve a sheet.”

That said, I completely understand the French view of the U.S. presidential and vice-presidential candidates this year. The economy is shot to shit and there’s a nonzero chance that Palin could end up in the presidency. Ah, les americains, those stupid fucking idiots.

the world according to the frankreich: don’t take it personally

If you are going to live in Paris for more than a few weeks and are wondering why Parisians sometimes seem like assholes, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Polly Platt’s “French or Foe?“. It explains, for instance:

- why French guys always sound like they’re arguing (they love to exercise their wits),

- or why you get lots of unsmiling eye contact on the street if you’re a well-dressed girl or guy (just appreciating the time you took to look good),

- or why you can get anything you want if you pour on the charm and the theatrics to everyone from the supermarket check-out clerk to the lady working at the French consulate (apparently French people just love to be entertained).

I brought the book with me to Paris but hadn’t read it in its entirety until last week. Wish I’d read it earlier. :P Granted it’s written by a woman of a “certain age” so it’s got some of the scoop on French manners that people who weren’t born before 1970 don’t really use anymore (unless they’re old money or politicians). But at least now I know what to do if I’m ever invited to a formal dinner party at the American Embassy…

french holidays and craigslisting in paris

I realized that my posts have been kind of boring and food-y as of late. Sorry about that! Here’s a small life update from my side as I try to scrounge up more material for an actually useful post.

Holidays
France has a ton of holidays in the spring, most of which are Easter-related (Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost and Whit Monday). But unlike Japan, which avoids having a work day sandwiched between two holidays (and sometimes creates an in-between holiday just for that purpose), France has a few awkward spring Mondays when the following Tuesdays are fériés. For my friends, this has discouraged travel plans to other parts of Europe on more than one occasion. (For my Barcelona trip, I just used one of my allowed absences and played hooky.)

But Mondays aside, there’s a nice four-day weekend starting this Thursday. However, Stanford’s quarter system completely messes up our schedule, so my midterms fall on this Friday and next Monday. Gah! I’m glad I don’t have the money to take another trip, or I’d definitely miss more classes.

Summer in France should be really interesting. I hear that In the month of August, absolutely no one works. I hope I can find a summer job regardless.

Apartment
In other news, I’ve found an apartment! It’s this tiny thing just on the outskirts of Zone 1 and close to the Parc Monceau, owned by a twentysomething Russian girl who’s lived here for three years and seems chill. It’s insanely, INSANELY cheap for a Parisian apartment. (It’s also tiny, and at the top of a seventh-floor walk-up, and the shower is in the kitchen, but shit, it’s 250 a month!)

How did I find it? I have no idea, because the housing section in paris craigslist is usually full of apartment broker ads and temporary room shares, both very pricey. But I used the craigslisting strategy and waited until I pounced on something that was in my price range (defined as "cheap as humanly possible") and didn’t seem too sketch. I stuck with craigslist, but there are tons of other places to look, I just wanted to make sure that the seller knew a fair amount of English.

That’s about it. In my next post, I will talk about ice cream. No, seriously.

b in a castle = fish out of water

I am currently battling some sort of cold right now (I hear that there’s a French version of Airborne but I haven’t been able to find it), and I have been away all weekend and will be in Barcelona next weekend, so I apologize in advance if you don’t hear from me for a bit.

That said, I’m gonna use this short post to write about and my weekend jaunt to the Loire Valley courtesy of Stanford-in-Paris’s most generous donors, the Bings.

The Bing family has donated tons and tons of money to Stanford and to the Stanford Overseas Programs in particular. They want to help “the world leaders of the future” learn about “the meaning of culture” by paying for “cultural events” such as ballets and operas at the Opera Garnier and Opera Bastille, and our trip to the Loire, where we were housed in a castle, toured other castles, and fed expensive gourmet dinners.

I appreciate the Bings’ kindness, but this version of culture is a bit too much for my taste. For one, I’m probably not going to be a world leader, so this crap is pretty much wasted on me. For another, I’d rather they do more productive things (like pay my loans or help feed starving children) with the tons of money that they’ve spent spoiling me rotten.

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed being spoiled rotten. I loved living in a castle, eating the world’s best cheeses and drinking fine wines, being introduced into the world of the high-class elite. In the back of my mind, though, there was always a nagging feeling that went something like, You aren’t rich. You aren’t high-class. You hate being a tourist. You’ll be paying off your college loans for the next forty years. There are starving kids in Africa. What the fuck are you doing here?

It didn’t help that the lavishness of the castles made me want to both cry and puke my guts out. Besides, if I imagined living in them when they were at their prime, I probably would’ve been a slave. No fairy tale dreams for me.

Maybe I should just visit the Loire castles sometime when I have more time to myself to explore them. I get the feeling that I would be able to see more of their beauty and less of their obnoxious wealth without cameras snapping, tour guides talking and forty privileged Stanford students chattering in the background.

N.B.: I really wasn’t trying to disparage being wealthy in this post. I was reflecting on my lack thereof. Yes, I’m insecure about being less affluent than most of my classmates. No, I don’t resent them because of it. (And I’m quite grateful to the Bings, though I really believe that they shouldn’t be wasting .00005% of their fortune on me.)

parisians as characterized by their metro system

I’ve been in Paris for approximately one week. Maybe less. My host mother lived in New York for five years and I’m surrounded by Stanford students in class, so I haven’t really been able to absorb a lot of French so far, but this is about my first impressions anyway.

Not that I want to stereotype. But there’s some sort of hidden rulebook for manners and conduct that a majority of Parisians seem to have read. To begin, you need to understand one thing. The director of the Stanford in Paris program worded it best:

“The Americans, they like to take care of you. They want to know your needs. The French, not so much.”

Parisians, in particular, have two salient characteristics. One, they keep things running smoothly. Two, they know what they want.

This is not a culture where every waiter is capable of waiting for you as you make a decision. They simply do not have the time. (Btw, one or two waiters often run a whole restaurant or café at lunch. Keep this in mind if you want to have a sit-down lunch: it can take about two hours. Also, vegetarians beware: most restaurants can’t cater to your needs. Don’t be a bitch about it. Just pick the meat off your plate.)

People may seem rude, but they’re sure as hell efficient. Have you ever used the Paris Métro at rush hour? It’s a beautiful thing. Trains come every two or so minutes (the wait time for the next two trains is prominently displayed at each platform), and you usually have to pull a handle to open the door you want to get into (I assume it preserves the air conditioning).

There are no announcements for each stop (except for line 1, which is fairly new and tourist-prone because it’s the line for the Louvre, the Concorde and the Champs-Elysées), so the wait time at each stop is usually about thirty seconds. People don’t try to keep the doors open because the doors are quite vicious– as the warning labels on the windows say in multiple languages, they can “pinch your hands very strong”.

There are fold-down seats near each set of doors. When a large group of people comes in, the people occupying these seats stand up to make more room for everyone. This never fails. Very old people and people who have a pile of paperwork on their lap are exempted, but otherwise it never fails. (Or else you get a dirty look.)

There are no elevators on the métro, so old ladies with groceries or people with heavy bags (like me on my first day) are assisted by a small army of young and/or strong French people up and down the long staircases. In addition to being a random act of kindness, this facilitates traffic.

The only thing to be careful of in the metro (besides pickpockets) is the long line at the station counter, where a single attendant (maybe two, if you’re lucky) sells tickets and passes. These lines tend to be long at all the wrong times because there’s just no room for ticket machines in the station before entering. Fortunately for most Parisians, you only need to get in these lines every so often– a ticket can be issued for months at a time, and the touch-and-go NaviGo pass can be refilled online, or so my host mother says.

If you’re from Manhattan, you’ll feel a bit more at home than most. If you’re from a suburban or rural area in the United States, don’t cry at the lack of friendliness from strangers. Smiling is considered an overt come-on. If someone does smile at you, they’re probably about to follow you home and rape you.

I don’t want to end on a bad note. Hmm, what can cheer you up? I’ve been getting fat off of desserts lately. If you think Parisian waiters are extremely rude, don’t worry: the food they bring usually more than makes up for it. If you’re vegetarian, get a few entrées instead of an actual dish. And dessert. God, I love the Hôtel du Nord’s tiramisu.

Two Weeks of Suck, Part 4: how i finally went catatonic

Part of the Two Weeks of Suck series, in which b recounts her spring break.

8. Friday. I find out through an e-mail that my Parisian host mother won’t be home when I get to her place. (Actually, I should’ve known this a long time ago, but it took me a while to decipher her French.) I finally call my mom to see if there’s any way I could reschedule my flight to Sunday.

And she freaks out on me! I don’t fucking know what to do. Since my flight is non-refundable, the fee to reschedule is like $600 altogether. A hotel near the airport is $125, so my mom doesn’t really give a shit whether I want to spend an extra day with my boyfriend, she’s booking the hotel.

9. Saturday. I’m at Heathrow Airport in line for my Air France flight. The first time around, I have to repack because the guy tells me that one of my suitcases is over 20 kilos.

The second time around, I’m told that the maximum limit altogether is 20 kilos.

I didn’t know this at the time, but that’s sort of a European standard. About 44 pounds or a medium-sized suitcase’s worth. We Americans are apparently spoiled rotten. I’m 18 kilos over, so the woman at the counter tells me (in heavily accented English) that it’s 8.40 GBP per kilo over the limit, or there’s a post nearby so I can mail the thing. When boyfriend asks if there’s any way to get it on the plane, she tells us that she is not a post office. She even rewrites the number “8.40″ on my ticket, very slowly. She’s kind of a bitch.

No, make that a HUGE bitch. I wouldn’t have slammed my passport down on the counter so hard that it flung into her face if she hadn’t been a huge bitch. I wouldn’t have hopped on the conveyor belt and yanked my suitcase right off it if she hadn’t been a huge bitch.

Boyfriend tried creatively repacking so I could get everything on board in time (by this time I had about five minutes before the plane left), which involved me wearing about six layers of clothing, running through the airport with them on, and trying to convince airport security to let me have my second suitcase as a carry-on. It didn’t work because you can only have two pieces of luggage in Europe: your check-in and your carry-on. Keep this in mind.

All hope lost, we ran back to the check-in counter. I don’t know what my boyfriend was trying to pull at that point, but I’d just sprinted through the airport and back in six layers of clothing and hadn’t eaten all day. I was seeing stars, and not in a good way. Someone handed me a cup of water and I half coughed, half vomited it back up.

After that, I don’t remember much of what happened. Boyfriend was pretty much my proxy for everything, because I could barely think about anything but, “Holy fucking shit, my mom is gonna kill me”.

In the end, I missed my flight, and the hotel reservation my mom had made couldn’t be canceled, so mom ended up having to pay for both, plus the Eurostar that I ended up taking the next day. In a stressful and sort of roundabout way, I got what I wanted: another day with boyfriend and NOT a flight with Air France.

By the way, if you ever take the Eurostar, at least try to go for Leisure Select (especially if you’re under 26, so you qualify for a Youth fare). For just ten or so more bucks you get more comfy seating and a small meal, complete with dessert and a selection of apéritifs (which BTW should not be eaten with your meal outside the home).

The Two Weeks of Suck have been over for some time (about one week exactly), so I’ve been able to reflect a lot on everything that went wrong– and a few more things went wrong than the nine presented here, but they were more dorm-related and not very useful for me to recount here.

Anyway, at the time, each brick wall I ran into was enough to hurtle me into another whirlwind of stress. I really owe it to my boyfriend for calming me down and being a source of comfort through it all. I have absolutely no idea what I’m gonna do without him.

re: okay, freak-out time

Miracles do happen.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: You can get an appointment at a passport agency on the next day if you call their life-or-death operator number and hold for about half an hour. Granted, I had two temporal reasons: 1) I have a French visa appointment on Monday, and 2) there are two days between Friday and Monday, and neither of them is a regular work day.

I now have to get to the San Francisco Passport Agency at 7 a.m. today. Still don’t know if I’ll get my passport in time, but my chances just jumped from 10% to at least 40%, especially since my visa appointment is at 3 p.m. on Monday, which means I could pick my passport up that morning before the appointment.

Also, about the French Consulate:

In the words of one of the coordinators from the Stanford Overseas Program,

“Immigration is about keeping people out, not letting people in”.

Stanford students have already gotten rejected for extended-stay visas because the consulate didn’t deem them worthy of getting one. “Don’t be wishy-washy about your reasons for getting an extended-stay visa,” the coordinator warned me. I have to come into the consulate like a lion-tamer: confident, respectful, but above all, clear about what I want.

Well, I’ve wanted Paris so bad I could taste it. I’m sure I’ll hate it very often once I get there, but hey, even Stanford students gripe about how much Stanford sucks sometimes. People will never stop complaining. Just let me enjoy my romantic notions for a moment.

bitching about passports and visas

Before I begin to recount this long tale of frustration and woe, I have to note three things that are directly attributable to me that definitely didn’t help my situation.

1. I don’t have a driver’s license.

2. I procrastinated on applying for my visa and passport until pretty much the last possible moment.

3. I put off logging my work hours for months at a time, so that prevented me from being paid, which prevented me from getting my money into my debit card.

Anyway.

Once upon a time I got accepted into a program called Stanford-in-Paris (colloquially), and they gave me step-by-step instructions on how to apply for a six-month visa if I wanted a temporary residence permit (carte de séjour). Unfortunately, I didn’t look at these instructions until about five weeks before my departure date, so my visa appointment at the French consulate is slated for maybe three days before I leave for New York, then London, then Paris. (Yep, I’m doing the touristy thing for Spring Break, but that’s mostly not my fault. More on my itinerary later.)

On top of that, my passport was set to expire next January while I wanted to stay in France until next March, so my mother told me to get an expedited passport renewal. It’s about $200 and was supposed to take about two weeks. But when I got to the post office to do it exactly two weeks before my appointment with the French Consulate, I discovered I was lacking a few key things:

- A driver’s license or state ID. (I’d just applied for a state ID the week before, but it still hadn’t come in the mail.) If you don’t have this, you need to bring someone you’ve known for 2+ years and who does have valid ID. I had to bring my mother to sign an affidavit that claimed I was legit.

- Cash. You need either a debit card or cold, hard cash to pay for the damn thing. (Credit cards not accepted.) I also had to get my mother to front the money, but that’s how she rolls anyway.

Once I gathered the materials (and person), I returned an hour later to the post office to finally get my passport renewed. (It’s sort of like an RPG!) But get this: they’d JUST gotten a fax from the San Francisco Passport Agency that said expedited passports no longer take 2 weeks, but 3-4. They got this fax literally ten minutes before I got my mom to come to campus to sign the affidavit.

I don’t know whether that was a godsend or someone up there’s idea of a joke, but the deal was called off and I’m renewing my passport from France… once I get my temporary residence permit and can mail my passport (with the 6-month visa still in it) back to the US for renewal without fear of deportation.

And besides, I signed up for a visa appointment online with the SF French Consulate under my old passport number, and if they discovered that I got a new one in the meantime things might get complicated.

Funny how things work out sometimes.

how the hell do i get the money to do this, anyway?

As the title says.

For Japan, I got an AFS scholarship that happened to only be for New Jersey high school students, so it wasn’t particularly well-publicized or competitive. That was almost completely sheer luck. I also happened to like Japanese pop and animé so much that I went to Manhattan once a week for Japanese classes. Also luck. My parents are also the kind of people that wouldn’t let me pass up an opportunity like that, even if it meant their teenage daughter’d be on the other side of the globe for a year. That was a TON of luck. At the time, a lot of my friends’ parents were comparatively pretty strict.

France is another problem. I’ll be going to Paris through the Stanford-in-Paris program next quarter (Spring quarter), so that will be covered by my regular tuition fees. But for the fall and winter quarters, I would really like to enroll independently in the Sorbonne. I can take classes at the Sorbonne through the Stanford-in-Paris program, but that means I’d have to pay Stanford tuition (pretty hefty, especially since I’m taking out tons of loans already).

Taking two quarters off and enrolling independently directly in the Sorbonne would

1. Save me tons of money (their tuition is $500!!!)
2. Make me eligible for French national health insurance (Stanford’s Cardinal Care is like $700 a quarter!!!) because I’d be a full-time French student with a temporary residence permit.
3. Keep me away from Stanford students and anglophones, which leads me to
4. Immerse me pretty much completely in French.

But, the drawbacks!

1. Even if I take the same classes at the Sorbonne that I could take through Stanford-in-Paris, I won’t get credit for them if I’m not an enrolled Stanford student.
2. I’d have to find and pay for my own apartment.
3. Stanford can’t help me at all. That means I need to find my own internship if I plan to do one in France, and I can’t take Stanford classes or get assistance or guidance from them.
4. I’d have to deal with the French bureaucratic system on my own. This is actually my biggest worry.

Anyway, as for financing myself just to live there, I have to figure out a way to work from France. My parents probably wouldn’t leave me stranded in Europe until I beg for change, but I need to show them that I’m capable of not having to rely on them for money all the time. I have a job here, but that ends when I leave in three weeks. With a temporary residence permit I can’t work in France, but I think I can have some kind of income if I work online. You know, like PayPal.

So, I’m thinking e-commerce. My dad should get a kick out of it; he’s been in the VoIP and WiFi business for years. Plus I’m a Stanford student, and having your own business or startup seems like a rite of passage. Now to think of a niche and a good business model.

But before that, I’d like to bitch about passports and visas.

once upon a time (or, why all the traveling?)

I love traveling. The thing is, I hate being a tourist. I’d much rather move somewhere and live there for a while than visit a whole bunch of tourist traps for only a few days each. Actually getting to know a new place well is more important for me than racking up frequent flier miles or the bragging rights to visiting a hundred world clock cities.

That’s why I went to Japan for a year as a junior in high school. That’s also why I’ve found myself now, at the cusp of my college career, with a one-way ticket to Paris.

Okay, so there are other reasons I keep bailing on school for a foreign country for months at a time. It probably stems from my childhood: between kindergarten and eighth grade I switched schools five times, and before then I’d spent my early years between Manila and New York City. By the time I entered high school I was used to being the new kid and making good first impressions on people. (The second to tenth impressions, though, I still kinda had to work on.)

But there are also a few good reasons to do it even without that background. I went to Japan to get more independent from my family and get a life outside of academics. I’m going to France for similar and different reasons:

- I’d still like to learn how to live on my own, but also
- I need a change of pace (I’d hate to break my tradition of never staying in one school for more than three years straight),
- I want more time to figure out what I want to do with my life, and
- I want to become more focused on my academic work without getting burned out.

I’ve discovered that I do very badly in huge lecture classes with professors and TAs who don’t know I exist, and dorm life really distracts me from papers and problem sets. That results in all-nighters and other things that have been screwing with my already maxed-out health. I need to slow down, and having to do classes in a different language gives me some leeway if I have to explain my ailing academic record to grad schools. However, my main reason is simple:

I love taking the plunge.

Yeah, there are costs to being perpetually in transit:

For one, I don’t have many childhood friends, or very close friends to hang out with in general. The good friends I *do* have are hard to hang out with because they’re scattered around the country (and the globe).

For another, I’ve missed a lot of important things in school– somehow I managed to avoid learning how to diagram a sentence in grade school, and Japan came at the expense of some classes I really should’ve taken with the rest of my friends, like AP Calculus and AP Chem.

And when I leave for France in three weeks, I will be leaving behind my friends and my boyfriend of a bit under two years, and I’ll have to start from scratch again. I’ll be dealing with the French bureaucratic system. When I come back next spring, almost all of my closest friends will be graduating. They might not even be my closest friends anymore. Everything will be different.

It’s gonna suck.

But hey, you know what? It’s one hell of a ride.