Tour de Force

Wheels of good fortune.

Every July a bunch of (sport) addicts jump on their bicycle and tour one of the largest countries in mainland Europe, France. Crazy. They do that in the hottest month of the year., under a harsh sunshine. Crazier. And, to boot, they dress up in multicolour lycras and get cheered up by Satanists, Bull-heads, Lunatics, Chickens... Craziest.

The Tour de France is clearly a frenzy, embraced by the masses. It is truly a popular phenomenon in my home country and beyond. In fact there is a French idiom that describes a crazy person as someone who has "a little bike in her head" (avoir un petit velo dans la tete). But no matter how mad you think it is to embark in such a physical performance, you may want to reassess your referential schemes with the following video.

A bike in the head.

Martyn Ashton takes the £10k carbon road bike used by Team Sky's Bradley Wiggins & Mark Cavendish for a ride with a difference. With a plan to push the limits of road biking as far as his lycra legs would dare, Martyn looked to get his ultimate ride out of the awesome Pinarello Dogma 2. This bike won the 2012 Tour de France - surely it deserves a Road Bike Party!

Shot in various locations around the UK and featuring music from 'Sound of Guns'. Road Bike Party captures some of the toughest stunts ever pulled on a carbon road bike:



To read further:

• Ride on the edge of difference, more bike stunts from Scotland
• Downhill or down ill, an article about the possibilities to ski in the London Tube!
• Now this is a downturn, a new way to consider defenestration for failing tycoons from the City
• Thinking out of the box, and the beach, or how beach sports can also find a new expression in Urban environments.

But why?

Credit photo: Caro Willis via Flickr

Precision questioning: the joy of parenthood.

As you may know, I am the lucky dad of a 3-year old boy. At that age, after the so-called Terrible 2's, it is supposed to be a delight to raise a child: as he is old enough to interact and understand, but still sufficiently young to avoid demonstrating rebellious attitudes. On paper, the ideal. but what this paper's small prints hide from you is that there is still some maintenance to that presumably well-oiled machine. And the keyword is "why?".

Kids want to make sense of their surroundings, of the words, of the people, of philosophical topics and astronomical phenomenons, of the weather, of the behaviour and social conventions... Each of these items is like an endless Russian doll: you start by answering a first seemingly easy question, and it triggers another one, that will raise another one, and another one... After the twentieth interrogations your rational adult brain is no longer able to get the thread of thoughts that led you to answer "why clouds are white?" whilst the conversation started on "what was a can opener?"!

Along the process, you try your best to provide answers that make sense, and keep you on the glorious altar your child puts you on. You are the source of truth. You are a well of wisdom. You are the equal to Aesop, Plato, Homer, Nietzsche, Kant... At least in their eyes, and you certainly don't want to contradict them (it feels so good). But frankly, sometimes their questioning skills are such that you reach the end of your knowledge, and most likely the end of your patience. And suddenly the answer gets less elaborate: "why is the..." he says, "because it's like that!" you interrupt.

Educational non-sense.

If children ask a ton of questions, my personal burden tallies to two tons... That is the curse of raising a bi-cultural kid. Two cultures, two languages, twice the fun. You not only need to handle the Why's but also the Pourquoi's. He clearly dissociates both cultures, so he naturally wants to make sense of twice more things but, to paraphrase Dr. Zeus' Oh, The Places You'll Go!, "sometimes they won't, because they don't".

Let's take the example of this famous nursery rhyme:

Hey diddle diddle,
The Cat and the fiddle,
The Cow jumped over the moon,
The little Dog laughed to see such fun,
And the Dish ran away with the Spoon

You have to reckon that such a infantine text, beyond the rhetorical rhymes is a gold mine for questioning children. How can a cow jump over the moon? Why is the dish running? Why our do plates do not run? Why a fiddle? Why? Why? WHYYYYY?

As a French, I have been educated with La Fontaine's fables and have learned that there is often a moral to what seems to be a light hearted text. So I looked hard at the text trying to find some sense myself from these lines. And since I could not, I started to check between the lines.

A long time ago, Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales opened my eyes to the hidden Freudian messages interwoven in Grimm's stories. So as my son was half asleep in his bed, I sat behind his bed, put a pipe in my mouth, and started to say "hmm, hmm...". Diddle? An alteration to Dildo, a phallic symbol? Maybe. The cat? Ok, that is the female symbol, that is straight forward. The cow over the moon? A sexist reference to the providing mother, and the happiness of breast-feeding? Well... I was clearly on the wrong path, and was glad that this thought process had only occurred in my brain and not verbalised to the now fast-asleep child. That would have pushed me down the altar for good.

To regain my pride, I looked at other cultural references and even cryptology. To no avail. Were these lines an acrostic, like The Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamond song? No luck. In the end, I resolved myself to conclude that it may just be one of the famous British non-sense. That was not totally fulfilling an outcome, but quite handy. I could indeed blame my host culture for teaching non-sense to generations of future Eton graduates. Because of course on the other side of the Channel, obviously, we are way better. Aren't we?

Absurdity united

My mind is filled with French songs gathered during my own childhood, but frankly my Why-years are so far behind that I have not questioned or even listed to their lyrics for a very long time. But doing so, it revealed that absurdity was a shared value in nursery times:

Maman, les petits bateaux
French lyrics	English translation
Maman, les petits bateaux	Mum, do small boats
Ont-ils des jambes?	Have legs?
Mais oui mon gros beta	Of course, you silly,
S'ils n'en avaient pas,	If they hadn't,
Ils ne marcheraient pas!	They couldn't walk!

Not only is the child almost bullied by his mother, but seriously what does that song mean? Why would a mother assert that boats are legged? Why? Why? I was suddenly regressing to my 3rd year on Earth. And my convictions collapsed.

If our childhood is nothing but nonsense, how are we supposed to build our psyche? Maybe our children are right in questioning us... After all, the French idiom says that the "truth comes out of children's mouth". So from now on, I give my little one an even greater attention when he turns back to me with his interrogations. I am more patient with the real Plato of the household.

Assimilation?

It is now blatantly obvious that the regularity of my posts have reduced. There are many reasons to that situation, amongst which the delightful arrival of a little one, three years ago, who has since been playing a growing part in my daily workload. But that is not all.

Walking in the valley.

In fact, I started that blog with the conviction that as a foreigner in an alien country I would find tons of topics to talk about. That I would be able to endlessly dissert on the cultural disparities between my referential scheme and the civilisation I was now living in. And it has indeed been for years a great source of inspiration.

But I reckon that nowadays I am less and less surprised by the Brits. It is maybe what people call assimilation: I have blended in, with my British-born son playing the mixologist role by naturally seeding insights on an on-going basis. It feels that I am no longer looking at this society from the outside, or from up there as I say in the above description... I am now in the valley, amongst the passer-by's down here. For god sake, I had to roast some beef on Sunday last week, that sums it all!

But don't get me wrong though, I am still not citizen of her royal majesty and have no intention to become one at this point of time. There are still many of these French/British paradoxes that remain true to who I am. I am still puzzled by some idioms and in turn my French sometimes catch my friends off-guard.

And yet something has changed.

Euro pudding.

In fact, I watched this week one of my favourite movies, Cedric Klapisch's L'auberge Espagnole (i.e. Pot Luck or Euro Pudding). For anyone who has lived an Erasmus-like experience, the one-year adventures of a French economy graduate student in a Barcelonan multicultural flat-share will resonate.

But Cedric Klappish and I share more than a first name. Many of his lines in his filmography find a positive echo in my own life. I quoted him in my wedding ceremony for instance. And there was a sentence in L'Auberge Espagnole which really encapsulate how I probably feel today. Loosely translated that would sound like:

When you arrive in a city, you see streets in perspective. Lines of meaningless buildings. Everything is unknown, virgin territory. Here we are. And later we will have walked these streets. We will have reached the vanishing point. We will have gotten to know the buildings. We will have lived stories with people. When we will have lived in that city, walked this street ten, twenty, a thousand times... At that point of time the city will be yours, because we will have lived it.

L’auberge espagnole, Xavier.

The Saturday Shot #27: let it fall.

It is this time of the year yet again! If autumn is usually synonymous of doom, gloom, spleen... For me it is an Ideal. Autumn first of all is a brilliant subject for photography. I loved walking the Japanese back-country a few years ago to capture its reddening. I like clicking around the parks in Paris or elsewhere to snap as the ground blends with the remainder of the canopy. More recently I have started enjoying sharing with my little one the exhilarating feeling to kick dead leaves around (a shared pleasure I can testify).

But one more reason for enjoying fall as our friends from the other side of the Atlantic refer to it... is that it precedes Winter! This year, more than ever, I have been looking forward to the first snow flake. Dreams of deep snow-covered slopes have been haunting me. Ski magazines have materialised on my bed-side table. Internet session history have logged more and more time on sites like this one or this one... I have always been impatient. This year will not be an exception.

And to conclude with another appropriate quote from my home country:

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower".  Albert Camus (1913-1960)

A mountain dweller in the Washington valleys

A couple years back I had the opportunity to discover Seattle on business, and have since returned quite few times in that city. But I knew there was more to the North-Western region than the SeaTac airport and taxis commuting between my hotel and the company's offices. So this summer, I decided to dwell a little longer than usual in the Washington state, and to discover the Ocean surrounding the liberal harbour of Seattle. If I had been amused by some traits of the Space Needle's home (the passion for salmon, the doubtful kindness, the SUV contradictions, etc.), the Evergreen State brought its lot of interesting cultural encounters...

Size definitely matters.

Yes, let's start with the blatantly obvious. It is so overused a cliche to describe the US as the country of superlatives. Everything is the "world best...", "world #1...", etc. That is at times laughable but one thing you cannot deny is of course that everything is big. Feet, portions, roads, people, drinks, cars... The caravans are so huge that it is not uncommon to see one of these trailers actually pulling a 4x4. You read me right, Dutch reader of these lines, on the other side of the pond, mobile homes are towing the car, and not the smallest! That is probably the so-call American Dream for you, our European summer migrators who every summer cross the French territory, looking for a sunburn...

As said, everything is oversized. Even roadkills are! No flatten hedgehog or mouse on the tarmac of Washington roads. The smallest animal I have seen on the side of the road was a deer... A deer! I mean how can you even run over such a beast? Probably not with a Renault Twingo. But that is probably more understandable when you put yourself in the shoes, or behind the wheels I shall say, of one of the locals... Were you driving one of these giant pick-ups that dwarfs the most ostentatious SUV in Chelsea, it would be hard for you too to see what happens below 2 meters from the ground. They cannot do things small, I tell you... So beware when you cross the road!

Into the "wild".

During our trip, we spend some time touring the stunning Olympic Peninsula. After the great British summer we had in London, we had to extend the pleasure... However the name of this region is not connected to athletic performances, but to the presence of an eponymous Mount Olympus in the middle of its national park. That Park is the host of a rainforest, several Indian reserves, magnificent lakes and equally surprisingly deserted beaches. No wonder this region is inspiring authors of all styles.

Hurricane Ridge for instance is coming straight out of a Disney movie. After a good hour drive uphill amongst enormous trees on a beautiful road, you finally arrive at a pass from which start walks and other alpine wanderings... But rapidly you are welcome by the local "wildlife", with elks crossing your way, giant black grouse singing whilst chipmunks drum the beat... You think I overdo it? Not at all. It was so surreal that we were expecting any minute to see a props man jumping out of a bush and shouting "You've been pranked!".

On the other hand, when you walk along the wild beaches of the western side of the peninsula, you feel you have landed in another type of literature. An eery one. Snow White has bitten the apple and the evil witch is enjoying her supremacy by the sea. The rugged landscapes, bathed in creepy fog and cluttered by rotting log trees were not without reminding me Tolkien's Mordor. I was once pretty sure I saw the shaddow of a troll in the woods, unless that was a pupil walking back from school... That is also possible since, as I eluded to it earlier, the locals are not the smallest beings either. Anyway the eery views of that area inspired  Stephenie Meyer for her bloody trilogy.

Stretching to greatness?

This leads me to my third literature reference... The town where vampires and werewolves supposedly fall in love with girls a lot younger than them (a few centuries younger... Is that legal or should we report this idyll?), Forks proved that the principles outlined by Philip Kotler in his marketing bible have been well assimilated. "Brand stretching" is about using an established brand name in order to introduce unrelated products. Well, the following pictures speak for themselves (click for full screen view):

Arguably that is a bit too much, but had you lived in that same tiny little village before the books' release and seen an influx of +600% in tourists, you too would have probably jumped on the bandwagon and taken these novels as a blessing. Because frankly outside the blockbuster reference, Forks really epitomises the concept of "uninterestingness". The problem, however, is that once you embrace that gorry kitsch, you cannot avoid but seeing vampires everywhere, let alone in medical notifications or native artefact's (is that me or that totem has got pretty sharp teeth???):

Depressive back country?

I seem to be a bit harsh with Forks, but do not let that anomaly derail my overall take on that beautiful region well-managed by the Quileult tribe. We loved hanging around at La Push and watch the sun set on the sacred rocks. That was even a poetic conclusion to that part of our trip, because we then headed South to Oregon and had to drove through less enthusiastic neighbourhoods. If the wild beaches were eluding to a literary devastation, further down it is a lot more literal. Aberdeen in front of all. Besides a river and the "Highland Golf Club" at its outskirt, that town has little to compare with its charming Scottish cousin. The rest is indeed pretty much despair, ruins, closed-down shops... This was home for Kurt Cobain, and frankly you may assume that it was in itself a source of inspiration for the grunge movement!

The logging industry which pulled the regional economy for decades is slowing down nowadays. Smaller towns are drained out in favour of Seattle or Portland, the two urban poles in that part of the country. Although often compared as eternal enemies, the two cities have got a lot in common. As I was saying in introduction, they are liberal harbours in the middle of what is often depicted as the western redneck America. If Canadian proudly sew their flag on their backpack, Seattleites and Portlanders state their beliefs directly on their skin. I am impressed by the amount of ink people carry on their skin around there. Could that be to ensure that people do not see the original colour of their neck?


Anyway... I really enjoyed discovering that region which surprised me in many ways. I was promised rainfall and greeneries. If we indeed saw as much emeralds as last year, not a single drop of rain came to refresh the scenery, which clearly contrasts with our drenched Irish holidays. I liked the possibility to sneak away from the urban jungle and to dive into the rainforest. In light of my origins, I also loved hikking in Mount Rainier, its reflective lakes and its blossoming meadows. I am pretty sure at this stage that with such a description of these alpine surroundings you are expecting blonde Maria coming out of the evergreen woods and complement my list of highlights with a "...Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens; Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens; Brown paper packages tied up with strings; These are a few of my favorite things...", but I don't care. No matter how unlikely Seattle may sound as a summer holiday destination, it is now in my list of recommendations... As long as you can walk around on 2-meter stilt, of course!


To read further:

• A mountain dweller on the Copacabana Beach
• A mountain dweller in the Great Lake valley
• A mountain dweller in the Washington Lake valley
• A mountain dweller in the Þingvellir valley
• A mountain dweller in the valley of Kerry

And some more pictures of that trip:

A mountain dweller on the Copacabana Beach

Let me see the (sun)light.

Despite what I can write every so often, my life is not a pure dichotomy between mountains and valleys. Every now and then I like to explore shores too... Having been drenched in Ireland during what was supposedly a summer break, I was really longing for a proper holiday somewhere exotic enough to finally have a second day of sun this summer. We are fortunate enough to have friends around the world, including a couple who currently live in Brazil and invited us a few times to visit. Sun-starved, this was not to be refused any longer, so there we went.

However before I start, Brazil is such a big country that I will never claim to have visited it. At most I can pretend to have seen Rio and some of its surroundings... That is probably more fair to such a massive geography. And yet that will not prevent me from jotting down some of the fun and puzzling facts that I have experienced during my stay in the auriverde country.

Ordem e progressport

Frankly speaking that should be more appropriate a motto for this nation whose carioca's culture gravitates around the cult of the body. The beaches count more volley ball and beach football courts than towels. The walks alongside them are paved with work-out machines between which joggers and skateboarders slalom half-naked (or half-dressed, depending on how you like to look at your glass).

The number of tattoos is astonishing, but yet again it is understandable when the body is the centre of attention. In a sense, the locals own their bodies. They carve them, develop them, insert a little bit of silicon here, a touch of ink there in order to fully really personalise it. No wonder that in 2011, Brazil was ranked second nation behind the US in terms of number of aesthetic surgery intervention.

Having said that, we are not all equals in this culture of culturism. And I must say that sometimes the flesh on display was not of the greatest appeal. It seems that most of the Rio inhabitants have come to terms with their body, irrespective of how it is And as a result they do not hesitate to put it on display, for the better or the worse:

All good, man.

Well, I say for the better or the worse, but in reality, according to the local idiom only the earlier half of that statement applies to Brazil. "Todo Bom" (e.g. Everything is good) is hammered by everyone all the time. You may even get a double thumb up to accompany that sentence, as if a physical punctuation was required to really land the message.

How are you? Todo Bom! How is the food? Todo bom! Fancy an helicopter flight over the city? Todo bom! Errr, do you have a pilot license? Todo bom! Do you have swimming suits that cover, hmm, a bit more? Todo bom! There is no more milk in the fridge? Todo bom! I crashed your car!? Todo bom! What time is it? Half past two-do bom!

It seems that the Cariocas have simply a very positive stance towards life. Nothing seem to really worry them - to the point that other Brazilians pretend they don't really care about anything. And to a certain extend I can understand that it can put some people off, especially in a business environment. This positive attitude translates into a laid-back stance which easily evolves towards a lack of involvement, an absence of dedication, very loose time commitments, etc.

But on the other hand the absence of stress cannot be blamed, when we all complain that we want to have a better work/life balance. The NGO, suicide.org, was for instance reporting Brazil as only the 73rd nation in terms of suicide rate, with under 4.3 per 100,000 population/per year. That is about a third of the worldwide average.
Why such a positive attitude? Some would argue that it is endemic to folks leaving by the sea, as you find similar traits amongst other insular nations... On the other hand Great Britain is definitely an island and the same positivity does not apply, I can testify. So what next? The influence of sun, sand, s...?  Any of these factors, found in abundance in Rio, may be to blame or hail, again depending on which half of your caipirinha glass you look at (and I must acknowledge that these glasses tend to be too often half empty... Waiter!).

Bottoms up.

Talking about the beverage of choice for any tourist, it is sad to see Brazil being the victim of its own success...
Besides cachaca, a white alcohol derived from sugar cane that is forming the base of the caipirinha cocktail, Brazil is renown for two other sources of beverage: coffee and cocoa. Brazil is in fact the world number one producer and exporter of coffee beans, with over a third of the international trade originated from what is the fifth largest country in the world. Accordingly with the University of Sao Paulo, this has resulted into record breaking revenues for the country in 2011,with 2.8 billions dollars (+43% year on year) being cashed within the first four months of harvest. Similarly it was the 6th cocoa exporter, with over 4.5% of the worldwide trade volumes in 2006.

Good news, you would think, for a country which is willing to accelerate its economic development and diversify its revenue sources... But the problem is that to shine on the international scene, the country exports its best production, leaving its domestic ground with the bitter taste of second tier beans. As such, the coffees served in Brazil are either of mediocre quality or sold at extortionary prices... since they are reimported! Such is the irony of the situation, and the globalisation of the economy.

National pride.

Ironic, but nevertheless accepted by the locals who have to swallow poor chocolate and coffee... But I could not refrain to think that maybe, yes maybe, it may not taste as bad for them as for us tourists? not that their taste buds may be different, or that they are less demanding. The sweetener for them is probably that even if it is a second rated product, it is still a home-grown product, ergo something to be proud of: national pride can make you blind sometimes, look at how East Berliner were proud of the Trabbant for instance! Brazilian are tremendously proud of their country. As a French, I was amazed by the national pride that this country demonstrates. It is a pride that does remind to a certain extend the US or Canada, with flags being displayed everywhere: on masts, on t-shirts, on the beach, on shoes, on the skin, etc.

It is a national pride that does not however translate into obscurantism and chauvinism however. This country knows where it is coming from and what it still needs to accomplish. Yes, corruption is rampant. Yes, protectionism is in place to place the domestic growth behind a wall-garden (random taxes are set up out of the blue on imports, adding 20% to the retail price of a car from one day to the other for instance). Yes, immigration is limited... But on the other hand you cannot help but feel welcome. This may explain why Brazil boasts the largest Japanese community outside Japan for instance. I certainly felt almost at home, maybe too much since I was seeking some exotic if not cultural clashes.

Feeling home in Rio's undergound

Once again judging Brazil through the prism of Rio is probably a pitfall that I do not want to encourage. This country is so vast that the limited exposure that a visit to Rio provides you with is necessarily partial - in all sense of the term. I could not stress more the need to broaden your Brazilian experience beyond the seaside lifestyle and carnival. These are already source of great enthusiasm, but my main take-away is that there is so much more to Brazil than these clichés... Clichés that are true nonetheless.

If you don't believe me, prepare your trip by doing nothing but watching Rio, Disney's latest animation feature, you will be amazed by the accuracy of the carioca details. I already wrote about how these computer animated movie can help boost local tourism, but this film once again proves me right. And if you are not into such movies, well maybe the following pictures I captured during my two weeks will do the trick.

Enjoy the slideshow, enjoy Brazil, enjoy life. After all... TODO BEM!

To read further:

• A mountain dweller in the Great Lake valley
• A mountain dweller in the Washington Lake valley
• A mountain dweller in the Þingvellir valley
• A mountain dweller in the valley of Kerry

The Saturday Shot #20: dead leaves

For this week contribution, it was hard to avoid the fact that London is nowadays covered in leaves... Orange, red, brown tones which are reminding me this brilliant trip we made in Japan a few years back. This same scenery is also a nostalgic glance back at my home country. France's contemporary culture has two important contributors in my eyes, the french surrealist poet Jacques Prévert and singer-actor Yves Montand.

Both contributed to one of my favourite old song of the French repertoire: "Les Feuilles Mortes" or "Autumn Leaves" in English. It is a 1945 French song with music by Joseph Kosma that Yves Montand introduced in 1946 in the film "Les Portes de la Nuit". And I just love it... Hope you'll enjoy it too!

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Les Feuilles Mortes Jacques Prévert - 1945

In French

...and in English (personal translation)

Oh ! je voudrais tant que tu te souviennes Des jours heureux où nous étions amis. En ce temps-là la vie était plus belle, Et le soleil plus brûlant qu'aujourd'hui. Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle. Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié... Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle, Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi Et le vent du nord les emporte Dans la nuit froide de l'oubli. Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié La chanson que tu me chantais. [Refrain:] C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble. Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble, Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais. Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment, Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit Et la mer efface sur le sable Les pas des amants désunis. Les feuilles mortes se ramassent à la pelle, Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi Mais mon amour silencieux et fidèle Sourit toujours et remercie la vie. Je t'aimais tant, tu étais si jolie. Comment veux-tu que je t'oublie ? En ce temps-là, la vie était plus belle Et le soleil plus brûlant qu'aujourd'hui. Tu étais ma plus douce amie Mais je n'ai que faire des regrets Et la chanson que tu chantais, Toujours, toujours je l'entendrai ! [Refrain]

Oh! I wish you could remember The happy days when we were friends. In these days life was more beautiful, And the sun burning more than today. Autumn leaves are collected by shovels. You see, I have not forgotten... Autumn leaves are collected by shovels, Memories and regrets too. And the Northern wind blows them away In the cold night of oblivion. You see, I have not forgotten That song you sang me. [Refrain:] This is a song which sounds like us. You loved me, and I loved you And both of us lived together, You who loved me, me who loved you. But life separates those who love, Softly, without a noise And the sea erases on the sand The steps of divided lovers. Autumn leaves are collected by shovels, Memories and regrets too But my quiet and faithful love Keeps on smiling and thanks life I loved you so much, you were so pretty. How could I ever forget you? In these days, life was more beautiful And the sun burning more than today. You were my tenderest friend And I could not care less about regrets That song you sang, Always, always I will hear it! [ Refrain: ]

Family moment of truth

In French we say that the “truth pours out of children’s mouth”… Well, this morning, it was indeed pouring over London and when my 2-year old son saw the water dripping down the window, he proudly said, pointing outside:

“Rainin’…” with a perfect Londoner accent.
“It is raining indeed. In French we say: ‘Il pleut’.” I replied to encourage him to strengthen his bilingual skills.
“No daddy… It’s raining!”

Apparently my son is well more advanced than I thought… He is already capable of associating a word to a culture. It obviously does not rain in French, or in France.

Learn to hear English

You hear me, but do you listen?

School teachers focus on making us learn to speak English... But it is only with a bit more experience and immersion in the local culture that you actually manage to hear English.

Bear with me here, as I am not talking about what is verbally articulated, I in fact mean of what is actually said. There is a significant nuance for a nation that masters the art of understatement and self-deprecation.

The following table for instance has been recently circulated around in my company, probably to help our dearest colleagues in the US translate what really happens in meetings. After all, America and England are two nations divided by a common language...

Enjoy your next meetings with the Brits... Cup of tea anyone?


To read further:

• Language on a life line, David Mitchell's rant about endangered local languages
• The Italian job, a classical on accents and misunderstandings
• A, B, C, Ki , Wi or how to understand the folks from New Zealand

Excuse my F...

Fries, letters, beans, toasts, doors, doctors, kiss but also manucures, knickers, horn, dressing, Riviera, chalk, polish, mustard, connection or paradox... Get over it, the French seem to be good at quite a few things!

Watch your moves (bis)

What's up doc?

It had been a while since I faced such a humorous situation due to a linguistic misunderstanding. The previous iteration was when someone used "tongue in cheek" as an expression and I thought it had to do with oral sex...

This time however no kinky analogy, but a medical misunderstanding when I poorly translated a French idiom in English. After having updated my Faceboook profile with this misleading sentence, in the course of the next thirty minutes, friends from all over the world were pinging me emails of sympathy, inquiring about my health... Thanks everyone for your concerns, but I am fine. Really.

So what did I say? Having had a poor day with a succession of bad news, I declared: "Gutted, I have inflated balls right up my throat". Writing this statement again now, with its aftermaths in mind, I realise that it calls an image of damaged limbs for the non-initiated... But that was certainly not the intention, so let me unfold the true meaning of this idiom.

Balls of steel.

In colloquial French two expressions describe a state of growing irritation. The first one is "Ca me gonfle", which could translate into "it inflates me", whilst the other one is "Avoir les boules", i.e. "to have the balls". Both expressions are closely correlated and express a similar feeling: being gutted or upset.

Visually they can interchangeably be accompanied by an appropriate gesture: two hands grabbing imaginary balls on each side of the throat (NB: with a more discreet alternative, where one hand claws the throat in a short back and forth movement).

It seems that this image would illustrate the fact that you are annoyed to the point that the "balls" - which are usually located a good meter lower - tend to make their way upwards like two inflated balloons, up to your throat.

So now you are warned. The next time you see a French guy massaging his throat suggestively, he may not be looking for a Strepsil... He probably just want you to leave him alone with your boring stuff.


To read further:

• Watch your moves, an article on how certain gesture and idioms can really be misleading;
• Season misunderstanding, or how some deers end up flying in the French sky;

A mountain dweller in the Þingvellir valley

Visit Iceland.

No, this article does not have a typo in its title: it is the actual spelling. Last week I was kindly invited to present at an internet marketing conference in Reykjavik, and had the subsequent pleasure to discover a tiny, little part of that obscure country over the week-end. I say "obscure" because if many people have heard about Iceland through its impact on global air traffic or the worldwide economy, too few have had the opportunity to actually visit this country. And it is a shame.

As a local idiom says, "there are many wonders in a cow's head" and since I am not that mad myself, I want to share some of the wonderful facts which seduced me in the three days I spent there. Just an early taste to completely convince you that this should absolutely be your next travel destination. Question/Answer style.

Was JRR Tolkien an undercover Icelandic?

I must admit I got inspired from the very first moment I headed to Iceland. The national air carrier, Icelandair, had the interesting idea to share some random facts and figures about about our destination. Well, not that random as they are intended to fight against the cliches associated to Iceland being just bunch of glaciers with seasonal northern lights...

One of these statements struck me: "50% of the population believes in elves..." My immediate conclusion was that the other half of the population must be the elves themselves! My only previous encounter with this country was indeed through Bjork, and you must acknowledge that she is nothing but an average human. Her musical and graphical universes are eerie, and her innocent baby face capable of moment of fury is very close to these agile archers from these fantasy novels.

Interesting enough I was able to prove that Icelandair statement right on our second night. We met then local artist, who envisioned a multi-acre theme park plugging its visitors into the legends of Atlantis, Vikings, Elves, Middle-Earth, etc. Here a roller coaster goes through a cryptonic cave; there a White Tower faces its dark alter ego... His vision, enriched every day for decades to most insignificant details, only awaits a patron and a location to be turned into a reality. And for those who may think this is a crazy idea, let me remember you that his visionary castles are not visited by over-sized mice and ducks wearing gloves and dressed up like pupils, so who is mad?


Can Icelandic make an impact?

The problem with having your very own niche language and alphabet is that you are a challenge for the rest of the world. I was afraid that beyond Reykjavik and Eyjafjallajökull my Icelandic was pretty rudimentary. My 17-month old son keeps on saying "bjork, bjork" but I am not totally convinced that he is fluent either... It might just be that he does not like what we cook him for dinner.

Anyway, all this was before we were explained that Geyser, which means "eruption" in the local language and was referring to a specific place where hot, sulfuric water was sprayed at over 17 m in the air, has now become a generic term for all these eruptive water sources. In the process Iceland managed to add its contribution to the global thesaurus... A performance that Moldavian people still work on.

Joke aside, I could not avoid but finding the following situation really ironic:

This active Geyser, located a few meters away from the eponymous original, is called Strokkur. It erupts roughly every ten minutes. Roughly... So tourists gather around, all cameras out, waiting impatiently for the early signs of the next round. A ripple here... click, click, click... Missed. Someone shouts: "I saw a bubble, here it comes". Click, click, click... Missed again, fortunately we are now in the digital world. And when you are about to give up, without a warning, a jet of steam and water droplets pop out of the ground, catching short the most inpatients. By the time the latter have their SLR out, it is too late: the water is back to its pseudo still appearance. I could not avoid thinking that the locals must have named that geological wonder after the grumble of frustrated French tourists. As a matter of fact, Strokkur really sounds like "c'trop court", the French for "It's too brief!"...

Who else could invite The Grim Reaper at his table?

Iceland is geologically hyperactive: geysers, volcanoes, rifts... It is not too much of a stretch of the imagination to understand why some see an analogy to hell in this lanscape. But that morbid thought find an echo on the table of locals too. If you visit Iceland you are bound to have to face the Grim Reaper either in liquid or solid form.

Unmistakeably called "Black Death", the national spirit is made from fermented potato mash, flavoured with caraway seeds... And it seems to be the best remedy to the strange aftertaste that the other local culinary pride leaves in your mouth at first bite: rotten shark. Yummy, and cheers... So here is another amusing picture I could not avoid but taking:

Is that me of the local lifeline really looks like... a bottle? Drinking to forget that you have a piece of degenerating sea predator melting in your mouth? I can buy that.

Is everyone on steroid on that island?

When I said that I knew nothing about Iceland beyond Bjork before this trip is not totally true. As a regular reader of this blog you probably know that I have a heavy TV consumption, especially when it comes to sports. Well, sometimes at night you land on these awkward programmes called "Strongest Men in the World" whereby long-haired giants in lycra outfits try to pull tractors or lorries with the strength of their only right ear... It seems that Icelandic excelled at that exercise as they were trusting the podiums. And if half of the population were elves, the other half may be giants.

This assertion was supported by the birth of a baby amongst our friends. The mother happens to be Icelandic, and the little one, born three weeks after ours, was almost twice heavier at three months, without extra fat. It was just a big, solid, massive (promising Icelandic) baby.

Well, when we toured the southwestern side of the country, I realised that not only babies were super-sized. Cars were too:

In my previous trips I have seen many all-road vehicles, but that is the first time that I could see monster trucks used as everyday cars, and not stunt vehicles. This picture probably does not pay tribute to the scale of the wheels, which turns these 4x4 cars into glacier-ready touring vehicles. In fact, they are so big that I could stand by the car and check the chassis without having to bend my knees. Iceland may just be the paradise for arthritis-struck mechanics.

Habla espanol?

And finally I could not finish this humoristic review of my visit to Iceland without sharing this brilliant point of view from Oscar Carreras, a fellow presenter at the above-mentioned conference. As you can tell, Oscar is a Spaniard and when we, the Spanish and the French visitors, talked about our Icelandic hosts, it totally made sense: constantly late, tactile, apparently disorganised or even messy... but genuinely friendly and welcoming. They were hardly representative of the typical North European behavioural stereotypes, i.e. distant, to the point, straight, rigourous... The Icelandic are simply latin Vikings. They are the Spaniards of the North!

And I will leave you with this provocative thought, because that is my greatest take-away from these three days. Iceland is a beautiful country with many natural wonders to enjoy, but its greatest asset is its people. In France, we have this idiom about the inhabitants of the northern regions which I think is even more relevant for Icelandic (after all they live even more North): "these people have in their heart the warmth they don't have outdoor".

More photos about that short stay in that stunning country can be seen here.


To read further:

• A mountain dweller in the Great Lake valley
• A mountain dweller in the Washington Lake valley

The Saturday Shot #4: locked door

To accompany my saturday picture this week, I have decided to associate it to an inspiring quote from a French poet and philosopher:

"A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key." Paul Valery (1871-1945)

Palindrome

A palindrome is a sequence of units like words or figures that can be read the same way in either direction... I found this advert for Windows 7 on a friend's blog and could not do anything but to relay it.

As the header at the top of this blog says, I love to take a different perspective on things... And without spoiling the ad, I can only say that the brand does too.

Enjoy:


To read further:

• Cliffhanger, search to the top: a post on Microsoft new search experience, Bing
• Life without wall and cliches, the rebirth of Microsoft on the consumer scene

French lesson...

Two stand up comedian on French stereotypes... No doubt my country of origin is a great source of inspiration:

I want to marry you, Bitch

Walking around Notting Hill and Maida Vale, we bumped into this shop... Bemused by the sign, I was wondering who one earth would buy some bride cakes from such a bakery. Then I realised that the owners must have identified a brilliant market niche: the ultimate, and delicious way to tell the groom that his future wife is a bitch!

(NB: Les Couilles du Chien translates into The Dog's balls/testicles)


To read further:

• Good signs, an article on how signs in a street reveal your very own culture
• Forbidding is forbidden, or how a sign brings us back to May 68 and its street philosophers.

A classic... And I don't mean the burger.

A little extract from my best film ever... Pulp Fiction.

I have just rediscovered its brilliant soundtrack tonight after years gathering dust on my CD rack. And I could not avoid sharing the following cult quote from Vincent (aka John Travolta) and Jules (aka Samuel L. Jackson) on cultural differences:

Vincent Vega: You know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules Winnfield: What?
Vincent Vega: It's the little differences. I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just, just there it's a little different.
Jules Winnfield: Example.
Vincent Vega: Alright, well you can walk into a movie theater in Amsterdam and buy a beer. And, I don't mean just like a paper cup, I'm talking about a glass of beer. And, in Paris, you can buy a beer in McDonald's. You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules Winnfield: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Vincent Vega: No, man, they got the metric system, they don't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules Winnfield: What do they call it?
Vincent Vega: They call it a Royal with Cheese.
Jules Winnfield: Royal with Cheese.
Vincent Vega: That's right.
Jules Winnfield: What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent Vega: Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.
Jules Winnfield: Le Big Mac. What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent Vega: I don't know. I didn't go into Burger King. But you know what they put on french fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
Jules Winnfield: What?
Vincent Vega: Mayonnaise.
Jules Winnfield: Goddamn!
Vincent Vega: I seen 'em do it. And I don't mean a little bit on the side of the plate, they fuckin' drown 'em under that shit.

For more of these brilliant dialogue and a great non-linear story telling, simply put your hands on the DVD...

To read more:

• And the burger started to rule the world, an article on the perception of Western tastes in remote civilizations
• Russian Dolls, and another source of inspiration from a film quote