The Ryndex

There are so many reasons why Canada is better than France.

For example, I went to go get my driver’s license renewed. I walked into the license centre, and there was a woman at a desk who looked straight at me and said “Hello, can I help you?”

I didn’t have any supporting documentation but my BC driver’s license and my passport. I explained that I had moved to France, but my permanent address is in Alberta. She said, “OK!” and typed for a second, confirmed my last Alberta address, took my photo and $67 dollars and gave me my temporary license. My new license will be arriving in the mail in two weeks.

She didn’t ask for any passport photos or medical certificates, and she didn’t tell my that I couldn’t have what I needed because I didn’t have the right supporting documentation. I didn’t need to go through a security airlock, or face a dark oak door with the sign “DO NOT KNOCK.”

Then I went to the mall. We have stuff in Canada — good stuff. Of course, material goods aren’t the most important thing in life, unless one day you decide that you want a pepper mill or spatula. It’s insanely inexpensive in Europe, and then you don’t have anywhere to put it (present company excluded, and I’m alone right now).

I started crossing the street by the co-op, and a pickup truck stopped for me three lanes away.

The co-op has such nice, wide aisles. It’s so clean. In Europe, I typically do my grocery shopping in a basement. Except for bread, of course. But even the bread in Canada is kind of nifty — rows and rows of plastic wrapped spongy white bread.

I went to a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Medicine Hat. It was easy to park.

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

Aperatif: Champagne with a raspberry.

Entree: Foie gras with some sort of fruit chutney.

Plat: Five-spiced venison steak with autumn vegetables and mashed potatoes, with red wine.

Cheese: Brie, and Bleu d’Auvergne

Dessert: A yule log, with a little silver plastic saw in it.

Coffee, with a madeleine. Always makes me remember Proust.

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

Is anyone else as insanely curious to see this as I am? I loved that book. And Danny, the Champion of the World.

Although it has to be said that Roald Dahl is frankly disturbed, and should be kept away from children at all costs. Unless you secretly resent how easily children sleep, or hate them.

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

I was just thinking (in between complaining), and it occurred to me:

PlD’s car broke down earlier this year and now acts as a planter in his yard.

AV’s car was in an accident, which bent the axle, and was then torched by vandals before he could get it to the wrecker.

SC’s car was written off when a bus took off the passenger side.

JD’s car had a manufacturing defect and had to go back to the shop.

I’m just saying, knowing me is a curse. Have a nice day and drive carefully!

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

2004-11-08 I sign up for Freebox, a three-in-one killer ADSL package that includes Voice-over-IP, a hundred television channels and 8 megabits-per-second internet access. Since I’ll have the VoIP line, I subscribe for dégroupage totale, which means that I don’t need to pay for a France Telecom line, saving 15€ a month!

2004-11-15 My France Telecom line goes dead. This is the night that I’m waiting for a call to let me know why I was evicted. I end up figuring this out and heading to the phone booth.

2004-11-19 Free.fr (the business that supplies Freebox) claims to have hooked up the DSLAM on the other end of the phone line. I don’t know this, because they inform me by email.

2004-11-20(ish) I receive my Freebox ADSL modem by signed courier. Hooray. It doesn’t work, however. According to the documentation, there isn’t a DSLAM on the other end.

2004-11-25 I receive a letter saying that I can hook up the modem and everything is set to go. Hooray. It doesn’t work, however. According to the documentation, there isn’t a DSLAM on the other end.

2004-11-27 I go over to Frédéric’s house to test my Freebox on his line (he uses the same service). It recognizes the DSLAM on the other end of his line.

2004-11-29 At work, I write a carefully composed email explaining the problem and send it off to the email address from the documentation.

2004-11-30 I receive a reply, saying that “to better serve their customers”, they aren’t answering email at that address any more, and you need to submit the problem online through the FAQ. I spend a half hour finding the hidden form for technical support, and submit my question.

It fails to go through, because I don’t have a Free.fr email address. I sign up for a Free.fr email address and submit my question, after rewriting it to fit in the 700 character limit.

2004-12-02 I receive the reply. They’ve copy-and-pasted the FAQ through which I had to navigate to submit my problem.

2004-12-05 I call their toll-full technical support number (at 0.34 € a minute). The first five times, they regret to inform me that they cannot take my call because of call volume (fortunately not charged). The sixth time, they inform me that I will be charged to be placed on hold indefinitely — I give up fairly quickly.

2004-12-07 I send an email to the billing department asking that they not charge me for the current month of lack of service. It bounces. I resubmit the tech support email through the same form, asking them to please read it and not respond with the FAQ.

2004-12-09 I get a response to my email, saying that they can’t process my request without the MAC address for the Freebox.

As a bit of technical information, a DSLAM is a multiplexer that sits attached to the other end of the twisted pair copper wire that leads into your house. It aggregates many customers DSL signals into a single high-speed line that goes to the public Internet. I have no doubt that, were a DSLAM present, it might do something interesting such as filter my traffic based on the MAC address of the Freebox.

However, the fact is that neither of my DSL modems can detect the presence of the DSLAM on the other end at all. My MAC address is irrelevant. Irrelevant, I say.

2004-12-10 I send off the MAC address of the Freebox ADSL modem. Normally, a MAC address is written as “00:7C:89:4D:7D:1E”. If you’d like to hide it, you would write “007C894D7D1E” and label it as “Serial Number”.

2004-12-11 It’s my dad’s birthday!

2004-12-13 TODAY. No phone line. No Internet. Expecting to be billed for November, December, January, and then a 96€ cancellation fee. I have little or no hope of getting any broadband to my house before I have to move.

The fun part is that the cancellation fee is refundable if you re-subscribe to Freebox after moving. It involves shipping the modem back with the cancellation fee, re-subscribing to Freebox and then submitting a reimbursement form with 1) the last month of your France Telecom and Freebox bills at your old place and 2) the first month of your France Telecom and Freebox bills at your new place.

So if I never get billed for a service that I never received, I can’t be reimbursed for the cancellation fee.

UPDATE: 2004-12-14 I get a response asking me for the exact state of the LED on my modem, but no way to respond. This information was in the previous email. I relaunch the technical support request.

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

Anyone can tell you that flash mobs have jumped the shark. Just as a flash mob is an ephemeral event, the time for flash mobs was ephemeral…

The problem, of course, is that flash mobs have become non-ephemeral. You go with a large gang of your nearest and hip-thinkest friends, you get your instructions and you go gape at the place where the mob will be held. Occasionally, you press a digital camera to your snotty nose and flash one off for the records. Afterwards, you hang around and mutually did-you-see for fifteen minutes.

For me (and of course, this is all one person’s opinion), I found the original charm in the sudden appearance of organized behaviour out of everyday disorder, and then the nonchalant dissolution. It was a community that didn’t know any of it’s members, but you knew you belonged, with a wink.

Last night, I was in the gang, but I felt isolated and depressed. I didn’t belong. I didn’t know why I was there. I didn’t know why I was in Paris or on this world. What does it all mean?

It was well organized, but the moment has passed. The instructions were:

“Chat-pot (literally ‘party of cats’, but phonetically the same as chapeau or ‘hat’)

See you later! ParisMobs.”

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

The only thing worse than being at the beck and call of the strident telephone line, my dear sirs, is not having one at all.

I contacted the local telegraphery agent to reprovision my residence with one of these new-fangled inter-net devices. I was all too content to swallow their absurd promises of free vocal communication within The Hexagon, and sent packing the scalliwags who had heretofore been managing my voice-box.

Unexpected, however, I found that I had replaced scalliwag with scurrilous routabout! Those montebanks disactivated my telephone gadget and replaced it with… Nothing.

Swindled, I tell you!

I did not take this lying down, I assure you. I investigated my cause with their “effayque” and clearly stated my problem in an email from my office. Rest assure, that would solve the problem.

Yet, a nagging doubt penetrated my faith in the system. Sure enough, I soon received a reply that “to better serve their customers”, technical support was only available online, through the “effayque”.

So I went back, found my section, went to their online form, signed up for an email account with them so they could accept my request, and sent it. They replied three days later, quoting an irrelevant section of the FAQ.

The only way to contact them is by telephone. The tech support number costs 34 centimes a minute. They put you on hold. I gave up after ten minutes. This is acceptable practice in France.

I still don’t have Internet or telephone service to my home.

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

We went to a spectacle last night at the Palais de Congrès in the north of Paris. The play was On achève bien les chevaux (literally They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?). It was the story of a dance marathon in the Great Depression — hungry and empty-pocketed people with nowhere else to go enter a grand contest put together by a rapacious and opportunistic showman. Somewhat depressing. It was also a film starring Jane Fonda in the late sixties.

At the intermission, Robert Hossein comes out. He was an actor in old movies (almost a hundred of them), then an important director and screenwriter, and now he’s a producer for the stage. All the French know who he is. He talks a bit about why he did this play and how much work and effort the actors put into it. He explains that none of them were particularly trained dancers at the start, and invites the audience up onto the stage to give it a go.

So Nadia and I rush up (we weren’t alone — there were probably about sixty audience members that took the chance). The band plays five or six one-minute snippets of dance music and we follow along as best we can.

Afterwards, we stand in line to shake Robert Hossein’s hand. He was very nice — not at all self-important.

I’d love to wreck the end of the play for you, because it was surprisingly depressing. What’s the opposite of uplifting?

I’ve read English commentary on French theatre that claimed that the French are superior because they don’t demand a happy ending, or even a clear ending. The play just ends, and it’s good.

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah

In the English version of Finding Nemo, Gill says “all drains go to the ocean.”

In the French version of Le Monde de Nemo, he claims “tous les égouts vont à la nature” which means “all drains go to the wild.”

The clever part is that this is very similar to a proverb: “tous les gouts éxistent dans la nature” or “all tastes exist in nature” (or “different strokes for different folks”).

I just thought that was neat.

As for the apartment, I’m quite torn. To tell you the truth, it’s the neglected and grotty entrance that’s bugging me, as if that reveals major structural and emotional problems with the building. Ridiculous? How much more would I pay for the same apartment with a lovely limestone foyer?

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah