previous | next

April 7, 2002, 1410 hrs Sitting in a large cafe at the corner of Rue Oberkampf and Rue St.Maur in the 11th. I'm off shortly to visit Damien Birambeau who lives a couple of metro stops away. The day has gotten warmer (it's now about 65F) but its still quite windy (as it was yesterday). The cafe is pretty busy and my pre-occupied waitress brought me an expresso rather than my usual cafe creme - "j'ai oublier" she explained (she had forgotten in the press of things). Not a problem. It appears Sunday is market day for the French. The vast majority of stores are closed (how civilized) and the Parisians spend their time going by markets, cafes and socializing with friends (and presumably watching sports on TV as well). I was lucky enough to find a very nice bakery open on Rue Oberkampf (you have no idea how hard it is to find an open one on Sunday) and bought a couple of nice petite chocolote ganaches as a gift for Damien. The 11th seems a much more civilized neighborhood than the 10th, in which I just visited the offices of Agency.com. Not that there was anything really wrong with it (heavy Middle-Eastern influence to all the shops and businesses) but it didn't seem that pleasant a residential district. However, I might end up living there since there seems to be a good choice in flats nearby (it would be good to work walking distance from my home I think). Let's hope Agency sees fit to employ me at a decent salary (though I do expect much less than the USA). My waitress is really ditzy.. she thought I had already paid for my drink. Probably because she never put down a receipt (which is how the waiters remember that you've ordered - a torn receipt is a sign that you have paid them already). Time to visit Damien. 1715 I had a nice time visiting Damien and made two more friends, Jeff (Geoffrey), who is Kenyan, and Mirreseilles (sp?), who is Spanish. Damien has a great place, well set up and very comfortable. A good connection to the Internet as well, which I was able to use with no difficulty to upload this site. I visited for about three hours because I didn't want to impose for longer. I was able to give him the letter Laura wrote to him, her photographs of the twins, and to show him my photographs of Laura as well. I promised to visit him again later this week and bring my floppy so that he might have copies of some of my photos. Next time, I'm going to try speaking with everyone mostly in French. Got to dive right in and I can't think of a more friendly environment in which to make my language mistakes. I'm making the mistake, it seems, of using correct lexical constructions but ones that are completely foreign to the French. They aren't used to anyone not using colloquial French it seems. Where one wouldn't get too many strange looks if one was gramatically correct in English, this is apparently not the case in French. Oh well, no way to learn but to try and then ask "what is the right way?" Why is it that no one thinks that there second language is as good as their first one? Damien thinks he is "not bi-lingual" because he isn't up on all aspects of our phrasing and word use. Gee, many Americans don't speak it as well as he do. M. (I'm not going to mis-spell her name twice in one page) is tri-lingual, speaking French, Spanish and English. Jeff apparently speaks French like a Frenchman (better than many according to Damien). I look forward to the day when I can at least follow what everyone is saying. Right now, if they are on a topic I understand and the tenses are simple, I can mostly follow what people say, providing it's slow enough. Radio ads seem to be mostly understandable because they appear to concentrate on pronunciation and keep the speed down (at least in some of them). But day to day conversations are still very difficult for me. I'm continually trying to enhance my phrasing, using compound phrases where it makes sense and even words I've just learned. Occasionally, this gets me into trouble, like when I bought the chocolat gateau for Damien (turns out they were filled with framboise - a bit too sweet for me); the young woman behind the counter puzzled out what I wanted but I think I was a chore for her. Probably because I used the wrong words. It would help to have a fluent friend along with me to explain where I went wrong. Ah well, perhaps in time. Only took one photo today - another one for Billy. It's a brand-new (new design) Austin Mini: I've already been invited to my first party, on the 20th of this month at Damien's. It is a welcome to spring party and I'm supposed to wear bright colors. I promised to bring my digital camera as well so that he'll have lots of photos to put up. I've got my Anne Klein vests so I'll wear one of those - pretty colorful. I'm coming to have a French attitude towards bread. I stopped into a little corner store and bought some bread and it was unfortunately not fresh. I won't say that it was stale, it was probably a good ten or twelve hours old though. Almost stale. So it went to the pigeons and I found a boulangerie on the way home with _fresh_ bread and bought a demi-pain. At least the wine I bought seems decent (a 1999 Cote du Rhone for 3.20E). Not at all bad. I think Friday's Bordeaux Superior was quite a bit better, but it had better be at nearly twice the price.

previous | next