Paris Manga and Sci-fi Show

In spite of the inclement weather I had promised the younger Frenchling that I would take her to the 13th Paris Manga and Sci-fi Show at the Porte de Versailles convention center.  After a warm bath and a cup of coffee we marched out of the apartment this morning and took the 171 bus to Sèvres and then the T2 tramway to Porte de Versailles.  I'd forgotten how much I like the tram.  It's bright, airy, clean and has a smooth, quiet ride - a barely perceptible hum as it skims along the tracks.   The view was particularly good today with all the snow covering the houses streets and sidewalks.

We arrived a little after 11 AM, bought our tickets, and promptly dived into the center of the crowd where it was warmest.  Now I know nothing about manga or anime so I decided to let the younger Frenchling be my guide.  I really had no idea what to expect but it turned out to be a strange but enjoyable experience - a cross between a Star Trek Convention and the Rocky Horror Picture Show.





The first event that we watched was karaoke.  The organizers took videos and songs from various animes and invited volunteers up on stage to sing along.  Most of the crowd already knew all the words and to my utter amazement so did the younger Frenchling.  Nothing could have prepared me for the sight of over 50 young French adolescents enthusiastically belting out the theme song from Naruto Shippuden, Bluebird, in Japanese.

The costumes were amazing.  My daughter taught me a new word, "cosplay" which comes from two English words:  "costume" and "playing".   The kids dress as their favorite characters and some of the costumes were wild.  After awhile I was able to recognize certain styles and characters like "Black Butler" which seems to be wildly popular.  Because it was also a Sci-fi convention there were the usual Star Wars characters and a few from Resident Evil.  There were costumed people in the crowd carrying signs that said, "Free Hugs" and I was told that, yes indeed, one could stop them, take a picture and get a hug and a kiss.  How extraordinary.

And of course no convention would be complete without  the vendors and there were some great things to be had amongst the fake swords, costumes and stuffed animals.

I found this shop,  AOI Clothing, which had a great selection of really beautiful hand-made kimonos and yukatas.  Be warned, this shop is very dangerous.  Because there were so many beautiful things, in a few short minutes I was perilously close to heating my Blue Card (debit card) to its melting point.  I was only able to restrain myself by strictly limiting my purchases and making sure they had my name and address for their mailing list.

Nor could we resist when we stumbled on one stand selling some of our favorite Japanese candies and pastries.

Home now, sated, exhausted and happily munching on Red Bean and Mango Mochis in front of a roaring fire.

Snowing in Versailles

And my wish was granted.

I woke up this morning and saw that my patio was covered with a light dusting of the white stuff.  Here is what it looked like at 6 AM this morning:

And a few hours later (around 8 AM):

Bois pour cheminée

France is experiencing "un pic de froid" (a cold snap) this week.  It was -9 degrees Celsius (about 15 degrees Fahrenheit) here in Versailles last Thursday and the temperatures will stay low until well into next week.  I can see the results in my garden - my plants usually overwinter quite well but, as you can see, they were not in great shape this morning.  Too late to bring them in, I think.

France is not the only country shivering right now. Les Chroniques Berliniquaises is reporting that Berliners are also complaining about the cold.  At least they have snow as compensation.  I hope we will be as lucky.

We have a perfectly nice apartment here in Versailles but there are two reasons it's a lot less comfortable in winter than in summer.  The first is that there is no insulation in the walls and the windows and doors are original to the building which was constructed in the 1970's (before conserving energy was a priority). We have placed bolsters around the windows in the kitchen and the living room and we are closing the shutters every night.  The second is the heating system which is central and controlled by the building management.  We have some control over it in the apartment - we can adjust the radiators, for example - but we have no control over the fact that the heat is cut off every night at about 11:00 PM and re-started in the morning around 5 AM.  The boiler has been unreliable the past few weeks so some mornings we have no heat at all until around 9 or 10 AM.

Happily we have a little fireplace.  This morning we went off to the lumberyard to pick up enough wood for the weekend and next week.  We've been buying wood from the owner for several years now so he knows us and always gives us a hearty handshake when we step out of the car and walk over to the woodlot.  Because our car is old we are limited in the amount of wood we can buy at any one time - the undercarriage drags on the entrance to the parking if we have too heavy a load.

A quarter stere is about all we can manage at one time.  The owner helps us load up the car before turning his attention to a really beautiful 60ish year-old Frenchwoman who is "buying some wood for friends in Paris."

Back at the apartment, we unload the wood and I make us all a cup of hot coffee while we warm our hands over the warm (hurrah!) radiators. I will make a fire after lunch and we'll probably watch movies and read books all afternoon.  If we are lucky the younger Frenchling will be inspired to make us a cake for the "goûter" (snack).

Now we are not so deluded as to think that we can stave off the chill and heat our apartment with our little fire in our little fireplace.  I'll be the first to admit that it's purely psychological:  the hot coffee, the fire crackling away, a good book, the family gathered in the living room and something nice to eat, just feels warm and cosy.

I hope it snows.

Tidying Up the Flophouse

A few months ago my mother suggested that my housekeeping was not all that it could be.  My blog was messy and she suggested that I start grouping topics by theme so that things were easier to find.  Now I may be a lady of a certain age but I always always listen to my mother.  So I started adding links to the right-hand sidebar which worked fine for awhile.

Today there are over 300 posts at the Flophouse and that sidebar was starting to fill up.  So last week I started sorting and organizing in between reading and answering ads.

Five Pages for the most popular Flophouse themes:  Instead of having the links on the sidebar, I created separate pages for each theme so, if you are interested, for example, in reading about How to Raise Frenchlings, you can just go to the page and read them in the order they were written.  Here are the other four themes with links to posts I think are particularly pertinent:

European Blue Card - All the posts going back to last year when I first took up this topic.  There is specific country information posted as it came in but also links to resources that might be useful like the EU Directive creating the Blue Card,  Recognition of Academic Credentials, the excellent CEDEFOP site and their Studies of the EU Job Market, and, of course, the very new (and very well done) EU Immigration Portal.

The Diaspora Tax War of 2012 - Posts about the war that the U.S. government has decided to wage against its citizens and Green Card holders abroad.  The American Diaspora is fighting back and I think 2012 may be THE year that the diaspora unites and roars.  To understand what all the fuss is about I suggest the following posts:  Hard Times for the American Diaspora,  The 2012 Diaspora Tax Wars,  The Consequences of Being a U.S. Person, and Why You Should Care about FATCA.

Citizenship - Posts about dual (plural) nationality, methods for acquiring and losing citizenship and the evolution of my thinking about becoming a citizen of my host country, France.  From Always a Resident.  Never a Citizen to The Narcissism of Difference.

Reflections on Crossing Cultures - My thoughts about being an French immigrant/American emigrant who has lived nearly half her life outside of her home country:  Immigrant Rage, Alien, Love Where You're From but Bloom Where You're Planted, The People Paradox of Globalization, Fairy Tales. 

I will stop there and leave the book reviews, reading lists and Flophouse favorite people and places for another day (spring cleaning, perhaps?)

And while I have my Mac in hand (actually lap) this morning I would like to thank each and every one of you for taking the time out of your busy days to come and read the Flophouse.  I consider it an enormous honor to have readers and I deeply appreciate your visits, your emails and your comments.

If you have suggestions for how to make the Flophouse better, or you have topics to propose, just send me an email (v_ferauge@yahoo.com).

Bon weekend!

Atmosphère, atmosphère....

A few days ago I wrote about discovering the Canal Saint Martin near La Republique.  A blogger I greatly admire, a French citizen from Martinique living in Berlin who writes the fabulous blog Les Chroniques Berliniquaises, left this comment:

Here's something for you; I'm quite sure that you missed out on it because you're a foreigner...
Why do you think what you call "the Mayor's website" (I didn't follow the link, just read the text you copied) used quotes around the word atmosphère? You wouldn't need them normally for such a word in this context, there's nothing special about the way it is employed, except... that most French people with some knowledge of their classics of the French Cinéma know that next to the Canal St-Martin, there is this small hotel called Hôtel du Nord, which gave its name to a 1938 film featuring French cinema legend Arletty, and thus associated with one of the best-known French cinema lines ever (for French people that is), which goes simply as such: 

« Atmosphère, atmosphère, est-ce que j’ai une gueule d’atmosphère ? ».

He is absolutely right - I completely missed the allusion when I read the description here and did not include the quotes around the word "atmosphere" in my translation.  Just for fun, here is a clip from the film which contains the famous line that he refers to:

Just wonderful.  Thank you again, Le Chroniqueur Berliniquais, for pointing it out. :-)

A Day in the Life of an American Emigrant bis

I woke up this morning, looked at my stats over my morning coffee and just about hit the floor.  Apparently a post I wrote a few days ago A Day in the Life of an American Emigrant was shared on a forum called Reddit.  Generated quite a lively discussion and I read the comments with a great deal of interest.  I've simply never had that much feedback on anything I've ever written and I did and do appreciate all those who came and read whether their impression was positive or negative.

Some folks thought it was "arrogant" and, if it did come off that way, than I apologize.  I assure you that it wasn't intentional and I will endeavor to do better in the future.   What I tried to do was to be as factual as I could be about what a typical day is like here for me.  I know people who have it better and I know quite a few people right now who have it much worse wherever they are.  This is it, folks, and it's not better than life elsewhere, it's just different with its own joys and challenges.

There was one comment however that I'd like to address because it is factually incorrect and it was about taxes.  I was pretty much OK for many years since I never really earned much money and I was always under the income exclusion.  In 2010/2011, exceptionally, I came very close to that cap because I had finally "arrived," you might say, in my profession and because of the exchange rates.  That year we had also decided to sell two small one-bedroom apartments we had in a small city in the south that we had purchased as an investment.  We sold them because, quite frankly, one of the gentleman who was renting had a very nasty habit of stopping his rent in winter. :-)  And that made it very tough to pay the loan every month.  So we sold and to my horror my tax situation got very complicated very fast and I had to seek professional help.  I ended up paying American taxes that year and will pay again this year.  It seemed odd to be paying US taxes on a property that was purchased via a loan from a French bank and with money that was earned entirely in France but that is how it goes. (Just for info I have no assets or money in the US - everything I have or earn is in France).   I'll be honest and say that it hurt to pay but pay I did.  And now I have to go through the whole business again this year.  Hence, my desire to keep things simple from now on - the aggravation and cost of hiring professional help and having to write a (for me) substantial check kinda dimmed my ambitions. ;-)

Ted Talk: Your Different is My Normal

This is wonderful.  In a few short minutes Derek Silvers shows that what you think is "normal" depends very much on your cultural perspective.  He uses the difference between the address system used in Japan and that used in the U.S.  or France to show that we can all be looking at the same thing but we interpret it very very differently depending on our cultural programming.  Many thanks to Jaime LeBlanc for sharing this on Twitter: