Victim of your origins

French lover.

Sorry about that, but yes, I am French. Nothing I can do about it: it is my nationality and I don't intend to reject my history. The problem is that with a nationality comes some stereotypes. Got the demonstration of that a few months back.

As a matter of fact my wife and I are expecting an happy event for September. As a wired urban I had to share the news with my network, using the social media and other technologies. However, when it comes to such statement, everyone recommends you to be cautious. Especially in the early months when shit can happen (well actually, shit can happen at that time, but no matter what, it will come any time soon anyway, literally).

You are then torn apart between your desire to share the news and the rational part of your soul encouraging you to play it safe. So ultimately you opt for the intermediary solution: you reveal the information in some cryptic way so that only the people in the know will get it. That is why I updated my status on Windows Live Messenger by stating "3.1496063 inches of happiness". I was indeed just back from our first scan and had seen the face of the baby to be for the first time ever. And the Choosen One was no bigger than 8cm back then... The problem arose when three of my colleagues, who are connected to me through this instant messenger service, picked up on that status and made some questionnable inquiries. "You perv'...", "Stop boasting...", etc. So I wondered: is that me or is that just because I am French and that we have a reputation to focus most our interests around baguette and sex? And since everyone knows a baguette is longer than 8cm, the shortcut was easy.

Face your future.

Anyway, this was making me laugh because I like creating discussion. And as a matter of fact, people started talking about that. They were sharing assumptions. Some clever managed to decyphere the riddle, and did not stop at the obvious dodgy cliché. Other had to wait for the reveal that came after the third full month.

But the initial reactions remain engraved in my mind. Because with the realisation that I will soon be a dad came the first thoughts around the legacy. With two French parents, our toddler will most certainly inherit from our cultural influence. He will be expected to be a great cook, a charismatic doctor, a talented lover... But he will be born in the UK, so fellow pupils might not bully his predictable red hair as much as if he was born on the other side of the Channel. He might end up being a diplomat, or an over-paid football player. No pressure Junior...

And yet, the later might simply turn back and blame us for all that. That is double dose of expectations. So he might just look at us and say: "les parents, allez vous faire fuck yourself". Bloody youth, no respect for their ancestors. But after all, as David Mitchell says it in the following video, that might simply be well-deserved!


To read further:

• Becoming an advertising reference or how advertising can pass from generation to generation even after the product was discontinued
• Tattling ta-ta!, an article about the different generations and their own referential scheme
• French letters from my windmill, how two best enemies are blaming each other for sinful plastic toys

Big fishes, in shallow waters.

Worrying commute.

As you know I am French, and therefore travel quite often between the UK and my home country. If I fly sometimes when heading to the French Alps, my preferred transport method is the Eurostar. Convenient and carbon-neutral, it has the great advantage to drive you from central London to central Paris in a couple hours. The only thing is the consciousness of going through the Channel under the water. Probably influenced by this scene from the Jaws movie where the shark attacks the aquarium tube full of visitors, I cannot refrain myself from associating the moment we enter the chunnel with the idea that there are stuff going on over my head.

It's a bit like the monster in the closet story from your childhood. Now that you are a grown-up you may be aware there is nothing to worry about in your wardrobe, but you cannot avoid double-checking... Well, that is also what I thought before a friend brought to my attention that my apprehensions might be somehow legitimate.

Nessie on a trip down?

The ‘Association of Maritime Research’ was created in 1901 in order to promote a better understanding of deep-sea life and the curious and unknown phenomena that occur in the depth of the oceans and on the sea- bed. Their approach to research is to gather testimonials and question scientists specialising in marine research in an attempt to find a scientific explanation for the various sightings.

The AMR’s intention is to communicate their findings to the general public and enable them to participate interactively in the continuing research.

On 20th April 2009, it seems that a French couple who was enjoying a walk at the Boulogne Harbour, captured a large shape on camera . Intrigued, the guy has zoomed in to focus more clearly and saw a huge, dark, rapidly moving object, which disappeared within a matter of seconds. Something of an amateur expert about the sea and marine life, he knew this was not simply the outline of a whale or any similar creature and was convinced that he had sighted some phenomenon as yet unseen by man. He decided to contact the AMR who are pursuing further investigations.

Subsequently the AMR has collected a substantial number of further testimonials from different areas. The strong similarities between the descriptions seem to confirm the existence of a ‘gigantic’ and extremely ‘fast-moving’ creature off our shores.

Of course we have all heard about those urban legends, and in this case marine legends. The Scots have been chasing Nessie for years. The Tibetans have their Yeti. The French Alps the Dahu... So why could not the people from Boulogne have their own beast. This could maybe explain the scars on Frank Ribery's face, since he was born there.

In any case, the AMR is calling for all witnesses of sightings of any strange phenomena in the English Channel to contact the AMR via their website www.thechannelcreature.com. A reward is even being offered for evidence leading directly to proof of this creature’s existence. I don't know you, but I will certainly keep my hears open when I will cross the Channel. That might help me get rid of my fears. Maybe not.


To read further:

• Vini, Vedi, the Ch'ti..., an article about people from the North.
• Ghost train, an article about an awkward Eurostar trip.

Still moving!

Moving lies.

Those who follow me across the various social media platform know that I am a photo-enthusiast. Back in my student years though I chaired the video association. I used to produce short films with a bunch of friends to capture the student life through its events, sport performances, parties, seminars, binging... Lot of fun and also a realization: when editing videos you can easily manipulate the truth. You can make people believe. Two characters can appear to be in the same room whilst they were not for instance... This was an eye-opener, because if I were able to achieve that effect with our very restricted means, what could the bigger media corporations do?!? I since went back to my first love, still images and photography. I am not saying that I went back to photography because they are more trust-worthy, in fact they can lie as well as films (read this interview of multi-talented artist David Hockney from the Guardian)... It's just that I personaly prefer a single lie to 24 lies a second!

With the rise of digital a new array of possibilities have become accessible to the masses. And with them people are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, even more easily. David Hockney for instance enjoyed doing photo-collages back in the analog era. He was thus showing the bigger picture through smaller ones. He used to achive that manually with loads of print outs of a bespoke subject, glue, and patience. The results in his portfolio are exceptional, to my mind. And they are great because you can see the process through the result. A bit like Impressionism which is showing you the landscape through brush strokes.

Nowadays, softwares enable you to automatically stitch batches of pictures by recognising common denominators in the landscape. I personnaly feel that the result look a bit clinical, and consequently fake. So I prefer to adopt a more manual, though digital way, and accept the imperfections. It is maybe a way to demystify the lie some could say... Here is a link to a panography tutorial if you are interested to experience it by yourself (beware, this is both time-consuming and addictive!), and some of my own collages:

But I am not saying that the softwares that enable you to turn still images into more than a 10x15 piece of paper are bad. Let's take a look at Microsoft Photosynth for instance. This is a brilliant piece of software by the Redmond giant which does exactly what I mentioned above: it looks at 2D images, identify common visual denominators, and stich them to create a 3D image that you can explore. The best thing? These pictures do not have to have been taken by a single individual, on the contrary the diversity of the point of views enable a greater experience. I find this really bluffing. For instance, here you can explore Venice, the Piazza San Marco, the Doge palace... All that by photosynthing something like 500 snapshots by tourists. You are not into pizzas, and preferbig historical event? Well, Microsoft and CNN partnered to capture the Obama Inauguration speech through PhotoSynth. Zoom in from the back row to the speech balcony thanks to the thousands of people who were in Washington that day and snapped... Finally here is another example for the couch potatoes on how Photosynth can help the CSI experts to solve a crime using the camera phones!

Moving though still.

There is another techniques based on still image that has been around for a while and which I keep on being baffled about: Stop Motion. I already wrote about it in a previous blog post as this original technique is becoming popular again in short movies, advertising, etc. And when I say 'original', I really mean it: it is the origins of cinema. You can indeed manualy create a movement by collating still images at the right pace. Your eyes and brain do the rest, i.e. extrapolate the missing pieces to provide a smooth movement.

Here is another great example of genuine creativity through stop motion:

To read further:

• London in Stop Motion, a visit of the UK capital on a Daft Punk beat.
• Bunn-invasion, an article featuring a stop-motion advert for Sony Bravia which hides a bit more than just a unique selling proposition...

Ride on the edge of difference

I like to ride my bicycle...

I appreciate people who dare to do things differently, and you can only admit that Danny MacAskill does things differently with his bike. Neither gravity, nor edges or handrails seem to prevent him from riding the street of Edinburg, Scotland. The best thing is still to let the artist speak for himself, or at least demonstrate his expertise...



Filmed over the period of a few months in and around Edinburgh by Dave Sowerby, this video of Inspired Bicycles team rider Danny MacAskill features probably the best collection of street/street trials riding ever seen. There's some huge riding, but also some of the most technically difficult and imaginative lines you will ever see. Without a doubt, this video pushes the envelope of what is perceived as possible on a trials bike. Credit to Band of Horses for their epic song 'The Funeral.' You can find out more about the band and their music at www.bandofhorses.com.

Just one thing, Danny, you are so busy jumping around that you have not realised that some one stole your saddle a couple weeks back. Beware, it could really hurt.


To read further:

• 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.

Be Welsh!

Great Britain is... great. It is a patchwork of nations. I have often shared my enthusiasm for Scotland but I recently bumped into this webcast by David Mitchell in which he bitches about lot of things. The British comedian who also stars in the UK-version of the PC vs. Mac advertising campaign, looks at the British society, its flaws, etc. In the below-stated clip, Mitchell pays a tribute to the Welsh nation, with great humour. I simply love it:



To read further:

• Love Scotland, an hilarious portrait of the people from the North by actor Robin Williams
• Subtle differences among English speaking nations, self explanatory...
• British heights. a list of British geographical non-senses

In-form uniforms

6-a-side and 6-pack.

For those who are actively following my activities (I love you mum) through the various social media platforms you must now be aware that I am back on track with my sporting life. Before moving to the UK I used to play really regularly volley ball. I am not talking about working on my tanning in a cute little bathing suit whilst flexing my abs every time a lady walked by... No, I am talking about regular indoor volley ball, 6 on 6, no sand, just hard (really hard) ground.

"Regularly" means, sorry "meant", two two-hour practices per week plus matches on the week-end. Usually that was just enough to remain sharp and to leave my professional stress in a locker. But let's face it, after 18 years jumping and digging around, winning a few medals on the way like a University National Champion title in 1998, the skin of my knees and my meniscii were asking for some relief. I thus decided to grant them and stopped playing when I crossed the Channel in 2005. Since then, the harsh combination of Cornish Pasties and sudden lack of exercise have had a dramatic effect on my athletic silhouette. Bye bye 6-Pack, hello "one-pack with handles"!

Merry Christmas... she said.

Of course I could not decently let my beautiful body down, and as decided in my 2008 resolutions, I joined a gym and got on a diet. Not enough apparently for my beloved better-half who had the brilliant idea to offer me for Christmas a forced registration for the Annecy Half Marathon. Got the message, I love you too...

Obviously the great thing about volleyball is that it is played indoor, on a 9m by 18m field. So it suited perfectly my taste for explosive short sprints in a warm environment, rather than endurance runs in the freezing countryside. But as I said above, I have now quited my career of volleyball player, so I have to discover the joys of the other sports. As a result, since January I am regularly running on the Thames banks and around Hyde Park. Every two days, 10km as a minimum. And when I really want more, I go to the gym...

Uniforms... Doh.

My gym being part of the Fulham and Hammersmith borrough infrastructure, it is also visited by the local schools. It is therefore not too rare to share the apparels with a bunch of girls in their school uniforms.

Now this is something quite odd to me. Obviously after a few years in the UK I am now used to seeing all these pupils in their uniforms in the tube. The boys with their stripped ties half done over a stained white shirt, the girls in skirts and dark tights. But to see the later in the gym with skirts over jogging pants is really puzzling me. I don't get it. It seems to me like a desperate attempt to respect outdated traditions, no matter the practicity of it.

I understand why the school uniforms. It is statutory for the private schools and set their pupils aside from the crowd... A social statement that will one day be replaced by an expensive car or silk suits. In public schools, the interest is different. It is a way to normalise the different social classes. All students are equals: no one can boast an expensive pair of sneakers or a fancy designer sweatshirt... This should enable to avoid tensions linked to different buying power, or even racket.

Tradition versus practicity and pragmatism.

As a child of the Republique, this social value is critical to me. "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" (Freedom, Equality, Fraternity) is indeed the motto of the French Republic. It is thus critical that everyone has equal chances, especially in terms of education. Back in the 60s, all French pupils attending state schools (by opposition of private catholic schools) were wearing grey blouses as a uniform. One model, no fancy accessories. Everyone dressed in the same dresscode. The only eventual difference were maybe the buttons of the trousers (which inspired a book to Louis Pergaud, "the Button War" where two bands of village boys are fighting over a treasure of buttons). It was a social choice, combined with some pragmatism, i.e. avoiding the children to get dirty.

But soon enough these codes relaxed to enable individual expression, non-conformism... And practicity. For instance, the technical evolution of sport gear and the intensity of exercises rapidly required the sport gear to evolve. You could no longer run with basic shoes, or you would risk to damage some ankles and knees in the process. The State is of course responsible for the physical integrity of the pupils. It is also supposed to remain commercially unbiaised: as a result it could not encourage parents to buy a given brand of sport shoes. The decision to buy or not shifted to the parents...

So you can wonder whether school uniforms are good or not. In Italy the politicians are considering bringing them back after dropping them in the 60s. France is more reluctant, maybe because uniforms relates to an iconography of private education.

I personaly understand the social dynamic behind the debate, but for god sake let's remain pragmatic. There is no need for a girl to wear skirts in all circumstances, and certainly not over a trouser... Why would they? To make it clear that they are girls? Let's level social differences, but at the same time let's stay away from sexual discrimination. Girls don't need to be ridiculous in a sport uniform. Otherwise, how do you want to cheer desperate sportsmen like me to finish their gruelling endurance programmes, seriously?

To read further:

• Thinking out of the box, and the beach: an article on traditional beach sports repurposed for urban conditions... Impressive.
• International F.C., an article on advertising, football and cultural differences
• Shoot the stereotypes, on how sport stars can also lead the charge of social equity

Edit: for the curious, I ran the above-mentionned half marathon in 1 hour 56 minutes... And celebrated that with a delicious cheese fondue. Well worth it!

Yodeling is not a crime

At the crossroad of my interests, it crashes

I am a geek, a couch potatoe, a technology enthusiast, a gamer... and a mountain dweller. As a result, I could not let pass the opportunity to blog about this new game that will soon be available on the XBox:


I must say that I am not fully convinced by this game. Being a Guitar Hero, a Rockstar is somehow something valuable, but endorsing the traditional Lederhosen is slightly less appealing. And yet, why not. Some are doing their gym in front of their TV Set, some boxe, some ski... So let's open our mind, and close our hears.

To read further:

• Life is a game, a post on Assassin's Creed video game and its politically correct disclaimers

A breeze of fresh air

The best run ever

I will not crack a series of bad jokes on running to the loo, sliding marks, etc. No, I am not scatological enough to clutter this page with such vocabulary. However, I am from the French Alps, and I have also visited Japan recently, as a result, I could only be seduced by these Japanese toilets...
"Regular" Japanese bogs are already over-equipped with interesting features, including well-positioned water and air jets, heated seating, onboarded music to cover up your own soundtrack and preserve your integrity... So I was just wondering if this limited edition had a few more tricks in its bag. I don't know: evergreen scents, chilled breeze to give the feeling of speed, clapping and crowd roaring to encourage your skiing performance, etc.

In fact, I am not sure to let my brain wander any further, because I am certain that it will never even come close to the reality. Japanese toilets rules, that is all.


To read further:

• Toilet centric vocabulary, on shity days and toilets of all sorts.
• Love dispenser, an article on a weird dispenser found in the toilets of a major global media company.
• Japanese pictures, a slide show of my recent trip around the Japanese islands.

And the burger started to rule the world

Kingdom or neo-imperialism.

I have already mentioned several times the efforts led by creative agency Crispin, Porter+Bogusky to shift paradigms though clever usage of creativity. One of their customers is Burger King and in the US the fast food brand is facing the tough competition of archrival McDonald's but argue that their hero product, the Whopper, is simply the best burger to be sold on US soil. So how to substantiate such a claim?

When it comes to food and beverages, organoleptic tests have been used for ages. Would Mrs Smith prefer the coffee A versus coffee B? Mustard X versus Mustard Y? Coke or Pepsi? Now there is an obvious skew in the test results depending on your own history. If you have been bred on mother's apple marmalade, it is very unlikely that any other apple jam will ever compete. There are some elements engraved in our subconsciousness, be it individual or collective, that bias our perception of things. We tend to associate some emotional variables to what are sensations. I wrote an article a few months back on that topic when walking around the street of London and smelling the peculiar smell of evergreens...

That is the challenge that CP+B decided to address by setting a comparison test that would not be biased. They thus decided to move to remote places around the globe to meet people who had been lucky to escape the double-quarter-pounder-with-cheese tsunami. The principle is simple: if we present two unknown products to a consumer that has never been exposed to that category, then their ratings would really be valuable as totally objective.

Cultural checks... For your sanity.

When I looked at that video I have been torn between two feelings: on the one hand I was interested in this experiment from a ethnological standpoint, on the other hand I felt kind of upset about it. A few things bothered me.

First the way that these people are pictured, most of the time they are dressed up in their celebration outfits, just to over-stress the fact they were different people. That was a little bit too much for me. The other elements that bothered me was the necessity to go in such places and "corrupt" their perception by forcing them to evaluate the lowest quality of Western food. Would you like to participate in a test where you are asked to evaluate which goat turd tastes better because in some country it is considered a delicacy? I really like for that reason the very last sentence of the film: "seal meat taste better". After all, the US norm and especially Burgers are not, and should never be considered as a standard in terms of culinary excellence.

To read further:

• Londoniaz 1850, on how smells can bring you back in time.
• This is not a Method, an article on the Pepsi provocation in front of Coke UK Headquarters.
• Life without wall and cliches, an article on Crispin, Porter+ Bogusky campaign on PC and Apple
• Live to eat or eat to live, an article on British fast food habits

Happiness in a bottle

Some said that the message was in the bottle... Coke decided that the message would be happiness. A new bucolic advert by the Atlanta fizzy brand. Something to make you lighter in the current gloomy days. Cheers.

Edit
And yet I have just come across the latest Pepsi ad aired during the last week SuperBowl. Their own message is not bottled. They argue that even if things are changing, evolving, across generations... there are things that continue to be cornerstones of each generation, as long as they evolved too.

To read further:

• This is not a Method, an article on the Pepsi provocation in front of Coke UK Headquarters

Before changing the world... Think about it.

Preach, but do too.

Being thirty something, thinking of building a familly, etc. makes you necessarily think about the future and the legacy that your children will inherit from your acts. Well, I am certainly not the best example of an eco-friendly consumer, but I do try to bring my little contribution. Sustainable development is something that everyone have more and more at core. And obviously some brands try to surf on that trend. Some in all legitimacy, others with more opportunism...

Fiat falls into the first category. I have re-discovered tonight their engagement to develop more eco-friendly cars and to pave the way for more sustainable behaviors. The website, Eco-drive, designed by London-based webagency AKQA and so awarded during tonight Creative Showcase Awards that IAB and Microsoft Advertising organised, drives you through a series of initiatives and tips around carbon footprint and eco-friendly car usage. Simplistic, realistic, to the point and... Believable as these intentions are turned into proper actions.

The green rant.

Now, I would like to share a personal experience. Being a migrating worker, who has been active in Germany, Singapore, Canada, Paris and now London, I had to open a few bank accounts in different banks around the globe. Today, since we spend some time on both sides of the Channel, we have kept our Parisian accounts open alongside our UK accounts. I have one, my wife too and we also have a joint account. The three of them in the same branch of the same bank, the BNP Paribas in Paris. We have nothing to complain about when it comes to account servicing. We have been migrated to an international account supervisor who kindly liaises with us to help us keep an eye on our finances (and tries to sell us some investments every now and then).

The BNP slogan is "the bank of a changing world". They even created a blog to crystalise this vision and exchange with their customers and partners. As you can see on that blog, they prominently feature a section on the Environment. They have also a dedicated section of their corporate website dedicated to sustainable development. The later features a series of reports, going back to 2004, to certify that they are committed to deliver and have been for quite some time now.

With that in mind, I decided to do my eco-friendly act of the day. I had just come back from a long and hectic day and found on my doorstep three envelopes with the BNP logo on it. As mentioned my wife and I have overall three current accounts with this bank and every month they send us three separate mails, to let us know what transactions occured in the past few weeks. Our statements come along with some commercial leaflets that we don't care about. 3 times the same brochure that gets teared apart and thrown away in the recycling bin. I thus decided to click on the 'contact us' link on their website and explained the following:

1. We live a digital era where online banking should enable us to get visibility on our accounts in a digital format, but...
2. BNP does not enable you to opt out from receiving your statement by post
3. BNP website grants you visibility only on your last month of activity, without the possibility to consult your older archives.
4. They are thus far off the UK best practices that you have with institutions like Barclays, HSBC and the like.
5. Worse, BNP online banking is a chargeable option. I am not kidding, pure insane truth. You are paying for dematerialisation, reduction of paperwork, efficiency gains, etc. Everything that everywhere else is considered as cost-saving items.
6. We have three accounts and yet we don't need to receive three different mails with irrelevant brochures.
7. These are even sent at a premium cost since they require international stamping

My logic was quite solid, I thought: improve your website to enable full visibility on my transaction history and let me opt out of your eco-unfriendly statements which will save you money alongside as few trees. I was quite proud of myself. I was about to change the world, the BNP world... However that was without expecting the answer from this so-called bank of a changing world.

It came a month later. When I came home that day, I did not find three BNP letters on my door mat, but four. The three ususal bank statements with their recurring brochures, and a letter: a useless A4 note stating that they acknowledged my query, valued my opinion which perfectly aligns with their coporate preoccupations as I could read on their website and wished me all the best in my ongoing relationship with the bank... So basically they ignored the content of my email, or they would not have pointed me to the site I contacted them from, and they would certainl have not sent a letter, in a separate internationally stamped enveloppe!

When you have such a brand claim and a logo featuring four green stars... Well you stop proclaiming, you act.

To read further:

• Fishy Future, an ironic campaign on sustainable development
• A spoonfull of meat, another interesting campaign spoofing The Matrix to bring you into the Meatrix and the deviant food processing industry
• Agrarian Rant, some thoughts around French agriculture after Sarkozy hiccup during a recent tradeshow

Tutti-Frutti à la English sauce

Hot potato.

When they try to teach their pupils how to speak Shakespeare's language, French teachers have a trick. There are indeed many sounds and pronunciations in English that are alien to my fellow-citizens. That is natural, just like it is natural for a Brit to be enable to roll the Spanish R for instance. No matter whether you are young and motivated, it is still not that easy to pick up new sounds unless someone guides you, gives a known reference. As a result, to get an approximate Englishesque accent when talking about "Bob being my Uncle", we are said by our teachers to imagine that we speak with a mouthful of hot potatoes.

This has nothing to do with the passion of the Brits for Jacket Potatoes. It is just that the burning pain that you can easily imagine (or replicate at home if tempted) forces you to articulate words differently. And it kind of work. Kind of. It just gets very unhealthy to do your homework, that's all (too much carbs).

With that context in mind, you can certainly imagine the smile on my face when I saw this billboard. The Times is currently running a massive advertising campaign to raise awareness on its different domains of expertise: politics, sports, finance... Usually it is simply a visual and their logo, but this specific advert really stood out for me. It is simply very well written.

5-a-day and pronunciation

The reason why I really liked this ad is because it speaks to me. English is not that easy a language to master. And it is full of weird pronunciation and spelling tricks that continue to amaze me even today. Why don't you pronounce the W in Greenwich? Why does Gloucester sound like Glouster? And, like the little chap points out in the advert, why not spell Potato GHOUGHPHTEIGHTTEEAU instead? Seriously there are many reasons for foreigners to go bananas...

Bananas? Yes, I too was surprised the first time I heard this idiom. I rapidly realised what my interlocutor meant, i.e. getting crazy, but I did not understand why. In French we have also an expression referring to that fruit: we say of someone smiling that "he has the banana". This is a visual analogy in which the shape of the grin refers to the shape of the fruit. Easy to understand. But the English expression still puzzles me. Has this anything to do with Cockney rhyming slang? If you read these lines and have the clue to the riddle, feel free to share.

Having said that, I also realise that my native language is packed with idioms which refer to other fruits and vegetables. Not all are straight forward. For instance, your five-a-day French diet could follow this menu: to faint is "falling in the apples" (tomber dans les pommes) ; to mock someone is "paying one's pear" (se payer sa poire); to get fined is "getting a plum" (se prendre une prune); to wait for somebody for a long time is "doing the leek" (faire le poireau); to punch somebody is "giving a chestnut" (mettre un marron); to stick one's nose is "bringing my strawberry back" (ramener sa fraise); to speed is "pushing the mushroom" (appuyer sur le champignon); to stress someone out is "squeezing the lemon" (presser le citron)...

Reading these lines, I could suddenly understand that such a fruit salad could make an English pupils go bananas when learning French. Especially without a jacket potato in his lunch box!


To read further:

• On food and cultural differences, a nice dialectic
• On English-to-French literal translations and other mishaps: Season's misunderstandings
• On English food and other mishaps: live to eat or eat to live

Embushed...

Seen in the press... Sometimes advertising can really be time-sensitive.

Now this is a downturn.

Edge funds, or edge of the cliff.

OK, everyone is banging the drum on the so-called economical downturn, and I have already expressed my view on the role of the media in the amplification of the situation. So this time, I wanted to share with you a real visualisation of what is a downturn.

As a mountain dweller, I am always keen on discovering how to go upwards, but also how to get down. I have tried pretty much everything on snow, from snowboarding to monosking, from blades to snowscoot or telemark. I also tried rafting, rock climbing, canyoning, via-ferrata... But that I have not tried yet and to be fair, I am not sure that I will:


Exhilirating. For sure. Inspiring? Maybe...

Just cannot wait to see some bozzos trying it out from the top of their skyscrapper in the City after they discovered that their junk bonds were really a piece of junk. Can you imagine them gliding over their fellow traders who would have prefered a more traditional defenestration?

You are the one-day queen...

Monarchistic fate.

A couple years ago, when I came to the the UK, I looked back at my personal interests in sport, cultural differences and other funny oddities, and I realised one little thing that could be turned into a mantra. If you happen to be French, you can one day conquer Great Britain, but to do so you have to be a King, not an Emperor. Think of King William or King Eric. Think also of the Napoleon's mishaps... These three examples conquer the hypothesis, if I may say.

So the UK can be a blossoming country for French monarchs with great ambitions. Except that you are probably aware that King and Queen stories in France tend to be cut short. Let's say a head shorter than on this side of the Channel. Would that mean that our good fortune in England is now over? That our chances to succeed in this country have been beheaded? You wish...

We have a plan. We always have.

It is not a novelty to say the French are an arrogant lot. Yes, we are indeed. We are the best arrogant people in the entire world, I dare say, not to mention the Universe!!! We stand by our beliefs whatever it takes, and don't really bother about our own contradictions. Our national team emblem is a rooster, and that is for a good reason. The legend says that it has been selected as our mascot because it is "the only animal that continues singing even with both feet in the shit". I know, I know, I know... France, the country of the Enlightment, of the Human Rights, of the great Philosophers... Always up for a good old metaphor.

Anyway, you can imagine that if our fellow citizens have managed to invade the UK, pulling London to the top of the charts as the 6th French city in the world, they would not surrender their chances to conquer the whole country. But how to ensure that the French monarchistic lineage is maintained? Fortunately, we have in France an old tradition that can reveal quite useful for that matter.

As a matter of fact, every year, France celebrates Epiphany with a "Galette des Rois", or a King Cake. This is a cake in which a trinket, usually a porcelain figurine of a king or more traditionally a bean, is hidden when prepared. When desert comes, the youngest member of the assembly, and I assume the purest, will allocate randomly each slice of the cake to the attendees. If you happen to be the lucky person to break a tooth on the figurine, you will officially become king for the day.

Drawing the Queens & Kings


This is an ancient custom and it would find its roots in the early days of our civilisation. Not sure how popular it had been across the ages though. Imagine for instance a medieval king accepting to capitulate (for one day) in favour of his buffoon because the later found a bean in his cake. Not sure that the monarch's ego necessarily fully appreciated the situation and a few of the "lucky" winners must have lost their life for claiming the throne. I can even picture a few of them swallowing the bean to keep their head on, running the risk to choke in the process.

Nowadays, the tradition perpetuates with less risks, except for your newly whitened teeth maybe. The old-fashion bean has been replaced by marketing figurines of the latest Disney feature, pagan golden coins or some porcelain figurines from the crib... But the coronations persists. Cohorts of French children (and older gluttons) wear proudly their crown for the day.

So beware British citizens, on January 6th, French Kings and Queens might populate your streets on a quest for glory and conquest.