Tag Archives: aix

Life Before GPS

Posted: August 18, 2015 at 5:07 pm

 

We were four new residents of Aix-en-Provence, with mobility issues.

We walked down the twisting path from la Pistache to catch the bus to an industrial park in the suburbs of Aix. Big box stores, factory outlets and 10 car dealerships side by side by side. We needed a car while in Aix, and I planned to drive away with one that day. I didn’t think it would be a difficult decision to make as 99% of all French cars were the same: compact, diesel, and ready to get scraped.

“You can’t buy this car,” said Sophie, pointing at a saucy blue number which looked like every other car we saw that day. We stood in the heat of the Peugeot dealership parking lot, trying to decipher the French acronyms posted in the window of the car we had decided to buy. “I don’t like the color.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “It’s blue. What’s wrong with that?”

“It doesn’t even have a GPS,” said Devon, squinting through the driver’s side window. “Let’s buy a different car.”

“It doesn’t have a GPS. So what?” I asked. “Do you know what life was like before there was GPS? We managed.”

“I know you’re joking,” said Devon. “There was always GPS.”

“Nice try, dad,” said Sophie. “Mom?”

“This is one of those rare occurrences when your father isn’t exaggerating.”

“Thank you, Carol, I guess. Anyway, your mom has heard this one, but there was no GPS when I went to Czechoslovakia with Nickipedia about 20 years ago. It was when I was a tour guide.”

“You were a tour guide in Czecho-whatever-you-said?” asked Devon.

“Not exactly. I was hired to check out the country for bike routes. Get it? Check out?”

“Brutal, dad,” said Sophie.

“They wanted me to bike around, taste the food, find all the good routes, and map it out for a future bike tour.  I didn’t want to go alone, and the Internet hadn’t been invented yet, so I took Nickipedia. But when we got there, we found out that communist Czechoslovakia, you know what communism is, don’t you? Anyway, the communists had no maps for sale. The lady at the tourist bureau told us, “maps are in deficit.” It may have been less of a printing problem and more that the Russians, who were ruling the country, decided that, “hey, if you don’t know how to get to a place, you have no business going there anyway.”

“Why were the Russians in charge of Czechoslovakia?” asked Sophie.

“Well, that’s a big question,” I said. “Let’s just say they were in charge of most of Eastern Europe when I was a kid. But when I was about 10, the Czechs were free and ran things for a while, but then the Russians decided to come back. The Czechs were so upset when the Russians invaded, they removed all the road signs in the country so the Russians would get lost. When Nickipedia and I got there 18 years later, they still hadn’t replaced the signs.”

“That doesn’t make sense, dad,” said Sophie. “If there weren’t any maps and no road signs, how could you plan the trip?”

“Nickipedia and I figured that out. Every train station, and these were tiny stations in the countryside, mostly falling apart, every train station had a framed map of the area around the station. So we’d bike from station to station, and at each stop I’d draw the map into my journal. That would give us enough information to bike to the next station.”

“That can’t be true, daddy,” said Devon. “You had a GPS, and you just don’t want to admit it.”

“No joke. And it was much more fun without a GPS.”

“If you stop this made-up story right now, we’ll let you buy the car,” said Devon.

New Age Reflections On My Sabbatical

Posted: May 21, 2015 at 9:52 am

A year living in France. That’s bound to affect a person, right? All it did was lead me to the blindingly obvious conclusion that I couldn’t continue with my profession of 25 years. So I quit law to write a book. I should have figured all this out a LONG time ago. Or dared to do it…..it wasn’t a money thing, although money is important (if you don’t have any). What held me back was fear, insecurity, depression. And now to make this a happy ending, I just have to finish my book! At the risk of sounding all Deepak Chopra, here’s a list, in no particular order, of all the positives that came from my “year in provence”:

I avoided talking to any lawyers for a year.

I lived happily without a smartphone interrupting me while I was doing something more fun than speaking on the phone (which is everything).

I travelled across Europe with kids old enough to appreciate it.

I learned how to break into a public phone in Amsterdam (faithful blog readers will know about this one).

I walked everywhere, slowed down, reflected.

I gave my kids a real education, and gave them huge confidence.

I became more relaxed, not so anal, a bit more patient.

I cleared our North Van home of clutter, pared down our possessions, learned to let go.

I learned a lot about Canada by living in France (I already knew about the substandard bread).

I think about and appreciate food much more.

I happily lived with less, lived more simply.

I realized that I don’t care about possessions.

I spent a whole year driving my Peugeot in a huge video game without getting killed.

I perfected the art of doing nothing.

I learned to give FULL attention to every task.

I solidified an already solid marriage.

I avoided working until 75 (the average retirement age of British Columbia lawyers).

I decided what my perfect life would be, and then made it (to learn how to monetize it is a different story…but then I don’t want to travel in circles where people use the word “monetize”).

I realized WHY the law wasn’t right for me (part of it was being a big-picture guy in a world of weasel words and exclusionary clauses).

I learned not to care what others thought (but I want you to like my website and read it every day!).

I learned what was important in my life, what I valued.

I sat for a year on my terrasse, looking at a Provençal valley, listening to birds and cigales, and thinking.

I found the courage to completely change my life.

I learned to not be afraid to think big.

I learned to just let go.

I became comfortable with embracing change.

I learned to look forward, with no regrets.

I became brave enough to choose the non-paying or low-paying career path (that bravery has a direct relationship to the level of my wife’s patience).

I think I’ve found my passion….but maybe I haven’t, and that is still OK.

I don’t have to pretend anymore.

I have an “examined life” (in fact, I’ve examined the hell out of it).

I better appreciate my friends who support me (emotionally, not financially, although contributions are welcome).

I better appreciate what I have.

I went to France a lawyer…..and came back a person. At least something more closely resembling the person I want to be. The jury is still out on how that’s going to work out.

Ladder of Big Dirty Words

Posted: March 2, 2015 at 5:45 pm

 

“What makes a word a bad word, dad?” asked eight-year-old Devon. Carol had left La Pistache to take our daughter Sophie to her dance rehearsal, and Devon and I were kicking a soccer ball on the terrasse.

“Words themselves aren’t really bad,” I said. “It’s the context that makes them bad.” I pinned the ball to the ground with my foot.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You have to look at the situation and what the person saying the word means when they say it. Like if you’re in England and you say, ‘give me a fag,’ it means you want a cigarette.”

“I would never ask for a cigarette.” Devon kicked the ball from underneath my foot, and flipped it into the air in one motion of his left foot. He started juggling the ball on the top of his right foot, not letting it hit the ground.

“That’s not the point,” I said. “But if you’re in Canada and use the word ‘fag,’ which I know you would never do, it’s not very nice. Same word, different meaning. You understand what it means?”

“I heard it on the bus. But I wouldn’t say it.”

“That’s good,” I said. Devon kicked the ball through my legs, ran around me and tapped it into the net. When Devon was younger, I would let him do that. Now, I can’t stop him from doing that.

I chickened out explaining to Devon what he wanted to know, why “f*ck” was a bad word. I was less shy explaining this to my French conversation partner Céline that afternoon in Aix-en-Provence. We were speaking English at the ‘Book In Bar’ bookstore and café. We had our regular table in the front section of the store. I told her that Devon was asking about bad words. She put her sirop on the table and turned to face me.

“Okay. So what is this ‘f*ck’ thing I see everywhere?” asked Céline. “I read it everywhere. Why is everyone saying it so much?”

“Ah, well, uh, you know what the verb ‘f*ck’ means, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Okay, so since ‘f*ck’ is related to the act of sex, then using it is a swear word, a bad word.” I saw two or three heads at adjoining tables turn our way.

“That doesn’t make sense. It’s just sex. Why is that bad?”

“You are so French,” I said, slowly shaking my head. “I agree, it’s not bad. But it’s not polite to say in English Canada. When I lived in Québec, you heard ‘f*ck’ on public television at 7:00 p.m. But all swear words in French Canada have nothing to do with sex, but the Catholic Church. If you want to cause a scandal in Québec, say ‘chalice’ to your boss or your grandmother.”

“That’s funny,” said Céline, smiling. “How could a word like ‘chalice’ be bad in Québec?”

“It all has to do with the rejection of organized religion in Québec; it’s a long story,” I said. “But I can tell you that I had my teachers laughing quite hard at my ‘Échelle des Gros Mots Sales.’ ”

“Your Ladder of Big Dirty Words?”

“I was doing a French immersion thing for six weeks in Chicoutimi Québec, and my class made a film for the school’s big concert at the end. My part of the film was teaching the English students how to swear in Québec. I made a cardboard ladder about as tall as me, with ten rungs, and on each rung I printed a swear word, starting with the mildest at the top, and the big one at the bottom – as you used the words while climbing down, increasingly sacrilegious, you descended closer to Hell. The joke was that on the other side of the ladder, the words were printed in reverse order, with the worst at the top. I explained that as you went up the ladder, using increasingly bad words, you improved your swearing. Like a true Québécois.” I pounded my chest with my fist the way I learned in Aix.

“What were the words?”

“Write these down,” I said. “This is the order I came up with, worst first, after talking to the lady I boarded with: câlisse, tabarnak, hestie, criss, viarge, sacrament, calvaire, tabarnouche, tabarslaque and tabarouette.”

Céline furrowed her brow. “I know what some of them mean, but some don’t mean anything in French.”

“Well, they don’t have to make sense. It’s all how they’re used. Strictly speaking, câlisse is the chalice on the alter. Tabarnak is a form of tabernacle, the little house on the alter that holds the chalice. Hestie is a form of hostie, the piece of bread which is Jesus. Criss is Christ. That one works in English. Viarge is the Virgin Mary. Sacrament is also the piece of bread. Calvaire is Calvary, the hill where Jesus died. The last three are milder forms of tabarnak, when tabarnak is a bit too much.”

“That seems crazy to me,” she said.

“Let me ask you this. What’s the worst thing you can say in France, something you would never say to your mother?”

Putain,” said Céline, quietly, looking over her shoulder.

“That means prostitute. Why is that bad?”

“It just is,” she said. “The confusing part is that it’s okay to say ‘pute,’ which also means prostitute.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” I rolled my eyes. “I can see why you French think you’re so superior in the swearing department.”

Ahmed is Punished

Posted: February 23, 2015 at 9:00 am

 

A story of punishment from Aix-en-Provence:

At 4:30 p.m. I was parked on the sidewalk, as usual. I watched the parents milling around the school gate, kissing cheeks and dragging on cigarettes. I would have left my car and joined them, but I knew from experience that crowd didn’t want to chitchat with anyone they hadn’t known since kindergarden. The bell rang and a few minutes later the wire gate swung open. Madame Aubin stood at the gate, saying goodbye to each child as they passed her, touching most of them affectionately on the arm or shoulder. She looked like she had already dressed for that night’s hot date. With a father’s laser focus, I zeroed in on Sophie’s face among the crowd, as if everyone else was in black and white and she was in Technicolor. She caught my eye and broke into a radiant smile.

Sophie got into the backseat with Devon. Without saying hello Sophie said, “I’ve got a new story for you today, dad. Obviously, it’s about Ahmed.”

Each day after school, Sophie had a story about her classmate Ahmed. He was a troubled, 11-year-old bully, thirsting for attention. The son of Algerian immigrants, he had several strikes against him: he bordered on obesity, caused classroom havoc to divert attention from his dimwittedness, and came from a culture not embraced by mainstream France. With hooded eyes, a thick shock of hair in a demi-Mohawk, shirttails untuckable, Ahmed shuffled around the schoolyard looking for younger children to abuse. He looked like a kid who would intentionally step on a crack to break his mother’s back.

“So we were in class and Titi was bored and looking for some entertainment,” said Sophie. Titi (Timothée) was Ahmed’s undersized toady. I eased the car down Chemin du Four, and by coincidence I could see Ahmed’s mohawk bobbing above the heads of his flunkies walking to the bus stop.

“So Titi whispered, ‘Hey Ahmed, I’m dying. Do something, OK?’ Ahmed got ready by taking big gulps of air, and waited for Madame to pause her lesson.”

I knew what was coming next, as this was not the first time I heard of Ahmed’s prodigious skills. Calculating the time of maximum disruption, he sometimes unleashed a deep and malodorous, Olympian burp to bring the class to hysterics.

“So he let out this enormous burp, but it was really weird because normally Madame would scream at him. But she didn’t this time.”

I knew that the established procedure, from the French teachers’ handbook, was: (1) scream at the child, (2) belittle the child to the maximum extent possible, and (3) banish the child to another classroom. This was a quotidian punishment for Ahmed, upon whom such embarrassment had a diminishing effect.

“Dad, can we stop at Banette?” I made a right turn from the left lane onto Fontenaille and parked the front half of the car on the sidewalk, the back half remaining in the street. I gave Sophie two euros, and the children were soon back in the car with a pain au chocolate and a ficelle.

“Where was I?” Sophie asked. “Oh, yeah, Madame was acting weird. She just looked at Ahmed in a really cold way and everyone was quiet. She didn’t move a muscle on her face and walked slowly to Ahmed’s desk. She got close to him, really close, so her nose was about an inch away from his nose. That was gross because he kind of smells. Then in a quiet voice, kind of whispering, she said, ‘Hey, look, the door’s open.’ Then she paused a bit, and then shouted, ‘GET OUT!!!’ Then Madame chose me to take Ahmed from the room.”

It was Sophie’s job to find another class, explain to the teacher that Ahmed was being punished, and request he be allowed to sit at the back of the classroom, staring at the wall for the day.

“It sounds like you should have taken Ahmed straight to the psychologist,” I said. I wheeled the Peugeot into traffic and headed home. “You know what a psychologist is, don’t you?”

“I think so. But tell me.”

“It’s someone who helps people with their emotional and mental health,” I said.

“Do I need a psychologist?” asked Devon.

“I don’t know. Why do you ask, Dev?”

“Well, you just said Ahmed should go see a psychologist and some of the kids have to see a psychologist during school.”

“That’s okay, maybe they’re having some trouble in class.”

“Yeah, the teachers keep screaming at them,” said Devon.

“Do you know how to say ‘psychologist’ in French?” I asked.

“I forget.”

“It’s pronounced ‘puh-seek-o-log.’ That makes me laugh every time.”

“You’re a ‘puh-seeko,’ ” said Devon.

“Oh, nice one.” I turned onto Repentence to make the long climb on the narrow, curved road, knowing I would lose the inevitable game of chicken with a city bus.

“Anyway,” said Sophie, “can we get back to my story? So I first tried Madame Lamont’s class, which I knew was a mistake when I saw Madame Lamont’s crazy look.

‘Not you again!’ she screamed at Ahmed. ‘You’ve destroyed your own class, and now you expect to join my class again and annoy us too? Don’t you dare come in here!’ All the kids in Madame Lamont’s class jumped from their seats to get a better look at what was happening.”

“We did too,” said Devon. “In our class we could hear her screaming from way down the hall, so everyone got up and tried to look out the door.”

Previous Ahmed stories had taught me that while leaving your seat was usually forbidden, an unwritten school rule allowed every student the equal opportunity to see someone else get in trouble. No one should be deprived a ring side seat. The ‘equality’ portion of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’

“I had to walk Ahmed back to our class,” said Sophie.

“Were you holding hands?” I asked, passing the “you are now leaving Aix” sign.

“Ewwwww, dad. Stop it. So Madame asked me to try Madame Tremblay. Madame Tremblay knows Ahmed really well. It was like she already had her speech ready. Before I could say anything, Madame Tremblay poked her finger in Ahmed’s chest and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘I see you in the schoolyard walking, so cool with your friends. Right now you have the time to smarten up but when you’re a grownup, you don’t. So if you don’t smarten up now, you’re not going to get married, you’re not going to have kids, and you’re going to end up living on the street. I won’t waste my time on you.’

I told this to Madame and Madame made me go see the substitute teacher, Madame Leclaire, who asked me who this boy was and why did he want to sit in her class.

I said, ‘This is Ahmed, and he is always being punished. He has already been rejected by three other teachers today.’ So of course Madame Leclaire said no and we had to come back to our class and see Madame. Madame did this really big sigh and told me to go see Madame Barizeau. Madame Barizeau had to accept Ahmed because she was the last available teacher. I went back to our classroom really happy.”

“Happy and Ahmed-less,” I said. While Sophie roamed the halls for 30 minutes trying to secure refugee status for Ahmed, her class sat patiently, doing nothing. It was widely accepted that all educational activities would stop while a misbehaving student was re-assigned to another teacher, regardless of the time elapsed; it wouldn’t be fair to the student chaperone, the good kid, to miss out on any instruction. I slowed the car, took a deep breath, and raced up the four switchbacks leading to La Pistache. I wanted to see how fast I could do it this time.