it's the little things

I am so happy, I now have heat in my room! Yes, in these last few weeks of freezing weather and occaisional snow, I have been without a working radiator. But in a moment of incredible efficiency, my complaint this morning got the thing working by the time I got home from school tonight. I shall now spend the rest of the winter sitting in front of it, except for when I'm in SR sitting in front of my parents' fireplace.

In other news, they now have sandwiches in the vending machines! This is not as lame as it sounds: they're made with smoked ham, which I love. It's like prosciutto, that Italian stuff you pay way too much for at Safeway. Sadly, this was my breakfast the other day, and it probably will be tomorrow too. I need to start buying fruit or else I won't have teeth by the time I get back to the US.

Other than that, I'm finally realizing that I have way more work than I thought. With all the reading I should be doing and looking over lecture notes and whatnot, I really shouldn't do anything social at all. Yet I've got an extremely full weekend, including an invitation to Disneyland Paris. I'd love to check it out but I'm on deadline for Monday and at some point I need to understand all this statistics crap.

Off to read in front of the old radiator. YESSSS!

Snow! and other sundry items

Yes, it's snowing! I'm very excited. It actually sleeted for a few minutes yesterday but this has been going on for an hour now and it's actually staying on the ground. It's going to be miserable going out these days.



Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

BUT, I'm going to be back in Santa Rosa for a non-white xmas! I bought my ticket last night and I'll be arriving Thursday, Dec. 22 around 8:30pm. Offers to pick me up at the airport are welcome :)

I'll be around through Dec. 31 and hopefully will be able to sneak some champagne onto the plane. I'm not going to pay $5 for their crap! Sigh ...

What else since last time ... made it a relatively early evening last night -- caught the last metro! My Irish friend James came over for dinner at the cafeteria because we're both lazy and where else can you get a steak and fries for 3.20? And no dishes! After a beer or two we went off to a club Claire had told me about and checked out a funk band. The club was nice, kinda lounge-ish, but it felt empty. The tables just weren't as packed together as I'm accustomed to. We didn't stay long though. Just two guys having a beer, enjoying the funk covers, but too exhausted to go wild or whatever we should have done if we were real party animals.

Friday during the day I actually went to my 'Political Issues' (Enjeux politiques) class for once but fell asleep halfway through. But I did take some decent notes! I missed that last two lectures because the first one was just so bad that I couldn't be bothered to go back. Can't remember if I've mentioned it here before but the guy is some famous, important philosopher and knows what he's talking about, but he's a horrible professor. He sits behind a desk and speaks with hardly any emotion or variation in tone. His sentences are really long and he goes off on all these tangents and it's hard to figure out when he gets back to the main point. It was less bad yesterday but I was so happy when it was done.

Today, I really should be doing all sorts of stuff instead of taking pictures of snow and updating my blog. So I guess I'll go do that instead. Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

See you soon!

Thank god for credit cards

I'm now definitely coming home for xmas. Mastercard will make my day.

Thanksgiving was kind of a fiasco compared to the event back home, except for the excellent (and really cute) company. The first meal was at the Centre American at school, which coordinates stuff with the states and does some other stuff I think. Not sure why they need a whole center, but sometimes they do cool stuff. Nevertheless, making two turkeys and adding some weird brownies and French salads does not a Thanksgiving dinner make!

We then went to my building at the Cité Universitaire, where they had traditional Thanksgiving food. Cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and stuffing!!! The downside was the 100-150 young college kids that took up all the space. It was weird and funny, and I did enjoy myself, but it's just not the same.

Anyway, I'll make up for it with xmas back home. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I'll be home for Christmas

Imagine that one xmas carol guy singing the subject line of this blog.

Just thought I'd mention that I'm probably going to be back in the States for xmas. I only get a week off from school, but it'll be worth it. Among other things, as Thanksgiving got closer and closer and Mom and Dad talked about their plans I was thinking how lame xmas alone in Paris would be. I was in France last year for xmas with Magali's family (and eating so much delicious fois gras!), and missing xmas two years in a row is a lot. Pretty much everyone at Sciences Po will be at home with the family.

So I'll be in Santa Rosa for xmas, and will try to crash at someone's place in SF for 2-3 days. If all goes as planned I'll arrive the night of Dec. 22 and leave the morning of Dec. 31. Sorry, no New Year's Eve parties with the new party-animal (and dancing!) Robin. I'll have to buy some overpriced champagne on the plane.

There's always next time

So the other day I had to give what they call here an exposé. No, it's nothing dirty, it's a presentation of some topic related to the class. It seems to me like a way for professors to get away with not doing as much work, since the student talks for 10-20 minutes and answers questions and criticisms after. There are sometimes two per class.

In any case, I had to give an exposé about a really cool book about the relationship between economics and political systems. I was totally into it and knew the book backwards and forwards. Unfortunately, circumstances were working against me:

1. It was in French. A conversation in French is nothing like giving an analytical speech about some esoteric topic.

2. I was the first person to go in my class. Not even any French kids went first. I chose this book because it sounded interesting, but I can guarantee will never again be the first to do an exposé.

3. No one in the class had any idea what this was supposed to be like. The exposé format in this class isn't like in every other classes in that I was supposed to lead a discussion, and with two other presenters the same day we were supposed to fill up two hours.

4. The professor decided to interrupt me a number of times. His remarks were extremely relevant and very incisive, but after he provoked a 15 minute-long discussion of a theoretical "market" for tyrannical leaders in anarchic early-20th century China and Italian history, I was slightly off my notes.

It was pretty frustrating. This things will get better, but this counts for like 40-50% my grade. I had no idea I would freeze up as much as I did. In English at least I can find something to ramble on about until I find my place again, but this was torture.

Anyway, it's done, and I learned a lot about how not to do these things. The French girl who went after me was just awesome, but she was essentially reading her presentation. Whatevah.

Off to Thanksgiving dinner now. Hope they know how to do it right.

big ol' update

Sorry gang, I've been super-busy these days so I haven't been able to write. But I decided not to stay out late tonight so I'll see if I can catch up.

So back to the rooftops. I forgot to mention that Gare de l'est is a train station. That's not crucial knowledge, but whatever. Well, now that I look back I'm not sure what I should add about climbing around the roof except to say that we had a great view of Sacre Coeur and some of the Tour Eiffel. Jeez, if that's all I can come up with on the subject I'm going to have some trouble actually writing the article I have to finish in two weeks. Then again, I'm pretty tired.

Why, you may ask? Well, Thursday night the French-American girl (Claire) I mentioned earlier told me about a free concert by this DJ crew called Troublemakers (maybe it was only one guy? No idea), with the French singer Camille as their guest. It was pretty good, but Camille was doing all this weird stuff that reminded me of Bjork's last album. Sabrina I believe once described it as sounding like someone in labor, or whale songs, I don't remember. In any case, it wasn't as dancy as the dj set at Favela Chic (see post on Monday, Nov. 7) but still fun. I ended up walking the girl home and standing chatting with her outside her building until 4am. It was really cold out and standing outside was a really stupid idea.

Oh yeah, random story: When I went to Triptyque with Claire, at one point we were standing in front of a mirror on the back wall of the club. Looking at the wall even from only a few feet away it seemed like there was a whole other room full of people. So people would walk past us and almost walk into the mirror, then walk away nonchalantly and pretend they hadn't almost just walked into a mirror.

Back to this week. Friday night was a two-birthday-party night, and there was even a third one but it would have been a nightmare to do everything. I should highlight again the fact that I am amazed to have so many social options. I guess foreigners really are desperate to hang out together. Anyway, I went to a costume party thrown by a French girl from my economics program. Her name is Mathilde, and the them was anything starting with the letter 'm'. Food, costumes, drinks, music, if possible. I brought madelines, M&Ms, mackerel in a can, wine from Médoc, and an mp3 mix of 'm' artists and song titles.

The obvious disguise was mafia, but there were other costumes like:

mexican
minister in the Indian government
minister of the economy
maitre'd
mouton (sheep)
militant (activist) of the UMP -- Chirac's center-right party
Marxist (all red clothes)
menu (with all foods starting with 'm')
marelle (hopscotch)
marin (navy guy)
Margueritte (a nice Chinese girl named Margueritte who didn't have a real costume)
matador (full authentic costume!)
macro- and micro-economics (husband and wife team)
etc.

All in all there were some really great costumes. And how, you may ask, did your favorite San Franciscan in Paris go the party?

I had my jeans turned inside out and tucked into my socks, mismatched shoes, my shirt inside out and backwards, and a sweater inside out and backwards with a hole in the elbow where I put my hand through.

Any guesses? No one else could figure it out either: mal habillé -- badly dressed. It was a great success, if a bit of a pain to get anything out of my pockets.

There was another birthday party later at the Cite Universitaire, where I live, but it was more tame. Oh, but there was this one girl that was just pissing me off so much: The music was not great, so of course everyone was trying to change the tunes and rework the playlist, etc. But the Musicmatch jukebox software totally sucks so it was a huge pain to change the order or make a decent playlist.

Each time I was sitting at the computer and trying to find something I actually liked incredibly bitchy girl kept coming over and yelling at me for putting on a song she didn't like. I had been sitting there for barely 10 seconds before she hassled me the first time. And there were a bunch of other people trying to put on their favorite songs too, so it was a total mess. In any case, eventually I yelled at the girl to do it her fucking self and she went and put on a bunch of crappy music. At least then she was happy and shut the hell up for two minutes. Oh my god, she still bugs me!

Anyway, today I was supposed to get a ton of reading and whatnot done for next week but I ended up meeting Claire for a cafe. We had planned to study and not go out (I backed out of getting into a posh, expensive club for free), but we ended up talking the whole time. On a whim we went to see A Brief History of Violence, which was pretty horrifying (I've never seen someone's face shot half off and still moving) but satisfying and exciting. Then off to a crepery for a touch of dinner. Me being responsible and all I decided to go home early and she went off to a housewarming party she didn't really want to go to. Here I am though, writing for my blog at 1am. Will I ever go to sleep at a decent hour this whole year?

So now you're all caught up, all two of you. Glad I've got you regulars.

Tomorrow though, hardcore work day, except for getting a drink and maybe seeing a movie with some people. But I really should work. And clean my room. And do laundry. Sigh ... so much for a day of rest.

Feeling naughty

Too bad only like two people read this thing, cause I just did something really fun. Like I mentioned in another post I think, there are these people in Paris who go up on the roofs of buildings and walk around and hang out. I'm writing an article about them, and as part of the deal I got to go up this evening.

We decided to do Gare de l'Est, which has been under construction for some time now. The two guys I was meeting didn't get there at the same time, so the punctual one took me inside the station and just walked in some random door marked 'danger: construction' or something like that. He had another way of getting on the roof, so this was just a whim. Plus, he couldn't go with us because he was still wearing his suit from the work day.

On the other side of this door without so much as a handle (and no one to stop us) they're renovating the station. The workers left a bunch of equipment and whatnot sitting there, with holes in the floor and puddles of water used to cool the concrete cutter (which was also just sitting there!). Typical work site.

We walked through another open door and had direct access to the scaffolding covering the façade of the building. Too easy! To make a long story short, I spent the next few hours wandering around the roof of this building, hanging out and taking a few photos (which I will post, Matt). It was so fun.

But that'll have to do for now to whet your appetite. I've gotta save my creativity for the article I'm actually getting paid for. Actually, I just have to go read a bunch of stuff for tomorrow morning, since I obviously didn't study at all tonight.

Bear with me and I'll hopefully have a chance to fill you in a little more tomorrow.

xoxo

Jackasses!

I don't know if I should hang out with English speakers anymore. Tonight after class we went to James' place for dinner and among other things proceeded to rant about all the things in France that pissed us off. And there are so many things these days. Among other things, the half-English half-Moroccan girl is appalled by French racism problems. That said, she gets a real kick out of telling people that she went to Cambridge, now studies at Sciences Po (the French pseudo-equivalent), and is, yes, Moroccan (though she was raised in Brighton). The Irishman is sick of explaining to people that Ireland is actually not England. Since I'm a petty American and of course don't really give a shit about what anyone else thinks, I'm just annoyed by how lame the library is.

They crow about having 1 million documents (not just books) in what they say is one of the best research libraries in Europe (in 2002, Berkeley's library had 9 million BOOKS), but you can only take out 4 items at a time. Unfortunately, they don't give you a receipt or any way of checking due dates online, and you can't renew books. And if you return it late your loan privileges are suspended for a period equal to the lateness of the return (would have been nice if they explained this important detail). I'm returning three books tomorrow about a week late. Good thing they don't suspend me for a week per book!

The point is, despite how great the classes are and the opportunities I'll have during my studies (and those are really strong points), the administrative support is such shit. I'm disgusted.

Oh, and in two of my classes there are these jackasses that piss me off every time they even think of opening their mouths. One is an American who makes me look so bad by association -- idiotic questions, annoying enthusiasm, and a terrible accent -- while the other is from one of the former Soviet -stans: today as a guest from Turkey in the class struggled to explain his research in French, his third or fourth language (after Turkish and excellent English), under his breath this asshole was correcting the guy's grammar. And he kept interrupting the professor with pointless comments and ranting about the difference between saying Turko-Iranian and Turko-Persian in the class title. We got the point, mostly irrelevant as it was (the French generally say Turko-Iranian, even if it's technically incorrect), the first three times the guy repeated himself.

Sheesh.

p.s. Yes, I know I abuse parentheses.

math

Ah, I'm so happy to be home tonight. After a really long talk with Magali last night, which was not extremely fun (can someone take over with this whip? I've been self-flagellating since last night and my arms are cramping up), I didn't sleep so well and had class from 8am to 4:45pm with only 15 minutes in between to walk to another building. By the end of the day I was so ready to go home and sleep, but then I ran into that cute French girl I mentioned earlier. Among other things, she's a math wiz, and as I tried to explain why this one transformation was so difficult, hoping she could help me, I realized that I'd made an extremely simple algebraic error and felt pretty stupid. See if you can do it:

b'=sum(x'(y'-ybar))/sum(x'(x'-xbar)) where xbar is the average of x over the entire sum. This somehow becomes

b'=sum((x'-xbar)(y'-ybar))/sum((x'-xbar)^2)

Hint: subtract xbar*sum(x'-xbar), which equals zero, I promise, from the first equation.

Can you believe I'm even thinking about this shit? Turns out the second equation (the result of the subtraction) has important implications for calculating something, but don't ask me what.

And this is for my class from 8-12:15 on Mondays. Needless to say I wasn't particularly perky.

After that I had a class about democracy in Turkey and Iran, but it was the first meeting so we didn't really do much. Fortunately it will normally take place Tuesday evening, so I won't have totally horrible Mondays.

What else ... I've only been reading Economist for two weeks and I'm already behind! My subscription hasn't started yet. Damn you myspace, I could be enjoying British humor!

je m'éclate!

It's 2:45 am and I've recently arrived à la maison. Yet another party tonight after staying out way late last night, this time at this crazy Spaniard's nice place. The crowd was nice, it was a bit of my own crew plus a bunch of random people and hot spanish speakers. Those women can dance! I got my groove on when we got into the hiphop section of the playlist.

Oh, and this is a first: I am now considered by certain people to be a 'party guy.' I think I've gone out more since I got here than I ever have in my life. This is good fun!

By the way, no one (like anyone is reading this but Matt) mention to Magali that I'm having such a blast in her city! It's funny how chill and ready to talk and dance or whatever I am, making up for lost time in a three year relationship. I don't mean to be nasty about that period of my life, but sometimes you turn over a new leaf and it's just super-cool underneath.

Earlier today I went over to the apartment of the family of my former english student for tea and pumpkin pie. A few weeks ago his family had a bunch of extra pumpkin from when they went to their house in the countryside and needed to do something with it. I suggested pumpkin pie and they've been doing it ever since. It was a little different but it worked, and it's always funny to see Edouard (my student) with long hair. He's like 14 now and last night his mom got pissed because he came home late from a party where he had been drinking beer. He sked me not to tell his mom, so let's not spread this around too much.

Ok then, off to bed. Gnite all.

econ and cute French girls

Ok, things have calmed down slightly. My cousin and her husband have left Paris so while I don't get to hang out with them and be silly and offend Parisians or get invited to dinner anymore, I do have some time to read and go out and not be as stressed out trying to juggle everything.

I'm now reading a book called Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships. I have to choose a chapter to have everyone in my class read and then somehow present the entire book and lead a 30 minutes discussion two Tuesdays from now. It's not nearly as dry as it probably sounds despite being about both politics and econ. It gives a great model of why autocracy has been so common throughout history, and points out that good luck had a big role in the emergence of stable democracies in England and the States. Big sections on Soviet history too, good stuff.

Also on the reading list: ... eh, no one cares. It's a long list for this week though.

Last night went to a club called Triptyque to check out a battle between four djs and a live drummer named Andrew something. The four djs were ok but they really could have done a lot of what they were doing with some clever computer programming and one dj. The frustrating thing though was that they were so chill last night, when everyone really just wanted some fat beats to dance to. They'd be all mellow and downtemp, then pick it up in the last 30 seconds of the song. Fortunately, NYC MC Mike Ladd was there with some friends and a live band. Damn, that guy knows how to perform!

For the evening as a whole, it really helped that I was there with this very cool (and cute!) French/American girl from Sciences Po. No dirty details though, sorry Matt. Speaking of which, you were right about my French teacher. She spilled the beans yesterday afternoon.

Off to start another evening of debauchery and madness. Hopefully I'll get a little homework done too this weekend.

Bisous.

p.s. does anyone else think that the list of current moods for blog posts is a tad long?

another Wednesday

Today was just ridiculous. They cancelled an entire day of school so we could go to a job fair and become lawyers and investment bankers. That's right, there were only banks, financial consulting firms, and law firms at this stupid thing. I got dressed up in my suit, updated my resume, fixed it up in French, and went to talk to someone at Goldman Sachs. I realized as soon as she started talking to me that I had no idea what I was doing there and no desire to be there. Plus, I didn't have any questions, so although I had a huge advantage on everyone else (they were speaking English) I sounded like a jackass. Good thing I'm not looking for work right now.

After that I went and hung out with my cousin and her husband, who are here for the week. We wandered around a bit after getting sucked into Made on MTV Europe (in German). Who thought of that show? It's so embarassing watching these people try to make their ridiculous dreams come true. I mean, a skinny little white kid from Minneapolis wants to be a rapper, and he gets freestyling lessons from Wu Tang I think and advice from Snoop and The Game. His MC battle moment was pretty bad, but I was so relieved when he actually came up with some good stuff and shut the other guy down. He only won though cause he was so less bad than he should have been. We'll see if he goes multi-platinum in a few years. Oh yeah, I was supposed to be hanging out with my cousins. We went to Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle, lots of stained glass and tourists. I could have sworn that on one statue there was a plastic garbage bag at the base of the cross. But it was apparently supposed to be his clothes or something. That makes more sense, since they only started making plastic in the 20th century.

In other news, I'm writing an article about these guys that climb up on buildings in Paris and explore the catacombs (former quarries). I spent about two hours talking to these guys, or rather, listening to them talk about whatever they felt like. Have I ever mentioned that I hate interviewing in French? I just can't get into a conversational mood or interrupt and make sure my questions get answered. It'll be ok, and they agreed to take me up on Gare de l'Est next week, but the rest of it was kinda frustrating. The guys were really talkative though, so I got good material. I'd just like more control. I'm clearly a dictator at heart.

Otherwise, I should really be doing the ton of reading for tomorrow that I've been putting off for the last week. I should also be getting ready to go to bed. Good thing we have Friday off too. Can you believe this? Two weeks of class and three days off. I'd rather have more time at xmas though, or exams in June.

welcome to Myspace

Dammit Matt, you got me to join. Now you'll be inundated with my stupid observations about life in France and studying with the French elite of tomorrow. Whatevah.

Speaking of which, I didn't know there were riots near Paris until a few days ago. Apparently it's a huge political crisis, but it's not a muslim insurgency, nor is it noticable inside Paris.

In other news, I am now an economics nerd. For anyone that is reading this and hasn't talked to me in a while, I'm working on a masters in economics of international development (of poor countries, or 'underdeveloped' countries in the PC parlance) at the Institute of Political Studies of Paris (Sciences Po). I now have some vague idea of what a standard deviation is, and could maybe do a linear regression of a growth function if I had my notes in front of me.

In other other news, I went to a Brazilian restaurant/club called Favela Chic on Friday night. I was starting to get sick and was only planning to stay for an hour, but we got there at like 12am and I would have had to leave right away to catch the last metro. Oh, and the dj was sweet! It was a crazy mix of hiphop, latin beats, jungle, pop, and whatnot and I danced my ass off for hours. The talking and cigarette smoke and lots of people didn't help with the cold, but then again neither did walking outside all the next day or staying at a birthday party all night the next night. I really need to chill out a bit.

Anyway, I have to go to sleep or read something for class. Damn you Matt, the myspace obsession has begun.