Snapshots of Lutetia - Celebrating 1 Year of Lutetian Snapshots

A year ago I started the Snapshots of Lutetia series. On an almost weekly basis, I posted snapshots of Paris, reporting on my getting acquainted wiht my new home town. To celebrate this year of Snapshots, in this special edition all snahpshots are shown, even some that didn't make the cut into a posting. Enjoy!

Snapshots of Lutetia - Des Fers Brisés

Something I did not know, is that there were three generations of Alexandre Dumas. The youngest was the author of La Dame aux camélias, his father wrote the even better known Three musketeers, in honour of his father Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. The latter was a special guy. He was born in Santo Domingo, a French colony now known as Haiti, as slave basically. Later in life, he became the first black general in the French army. After a successful career in the army, where in the end he stood up against his superiors over a hopeless battle in Egypt and was discharged without honour, he died a disappointed man. In April 2009 a statue was placed on the Place du Général Catroux in honour of Général Alexandre Dumas, and his unusual life from slave to general.

Snapshots of Lutetia - Passage des Jacobins

One of the things I like about Paris is that wherever you walk, it seems the city hasn't changed for about 2 centuries. Sure, the shops, the buses, the cars, they remind you of living in the 21st century, but the buildings all seem to be built ages ago. And then, you turn a corner and run into the Passage des Jacobins, for example, to realize that the city does change, but only with babysteps.

Jazz and Paris

This might not be a novel idea, but Paris and Jazz go together very well. On a recent taxi-drive to Roissy, the taxi driver was playing his self assembled jazz cd, and the tones and voice of chet Baker and Miles Davis were the perfect soundtrack for an early mornign drive through, and then out of the city. The tranquil pace with which the city starts to come to life, the slow rolling of the car (due to speed limitations, not traffic jams this time) and the trumpet of Miles and the almost feminine voice of Chet. Wonderful!

Snapshots of Lutetia - Pont Alexandre III

According to wikipedia, the Pont Alexandre III is the most ornate and extravagant bridge in Paris. You only have to walk the bridge between Grand Palais and Les Invalides to know that's about right. And then to imagine that the architects were ordered to design the bridge so that it didn't obscure the view ot the Champs-Elysées or Les Invalides. Pictured is one of the ornaments on the Grand Palais side.

Fête des Voisins

Earlier this week, we had a brand new Parisian experience. It was la Fête des Voisins, also known as European Neighbours Day. This day was initiated in the 17th arrondissement of Paris in 1999, aimed at "fostering community cohesion". Our building is one of those little communities, apparently, that take the opportunity of La Fête des Voisins to get to know each other and catch up. Since our troubles witth the gardien, we thought it a good idea to participate. And it worked. First of all, we finally got round to introduce ourselves to these anonymous neighbours we greet in the court. And we even got some nice chit-chat with the gardien and her husband.
Surprisingly, I think we were one of the few immeubles en fête, because none of my Parisian colleagues had ever heard of this. which is a shame, because to me, every excuse to have a little fun, is a good one. So, note in your calenders for next year: the last Tuesday in May is la Fête des Voisins.

Snapshots of The Big Apple - May Holiday

In this special version of the Snapshots series, we move focus to another city: The Big Apple, where I recently spent a short holiday.

Song Story 8 - Fat Boys Wiping Out

Looking back some years, I can see myself walking a springtime sunlit street somewhere in The Hague. On my way to the video rental place. A well known one locally, mainly for their commercials on the biggest local pirate radio station. Not only did they have an extensive collection of video tapes, but they were also quite big in cd's. One of the cd's I rented, to get a copy on tape, of course, was one of the Fat Boys. I think the title must have been Crushin'. On it were famous songs as Jailhouse Rap, The Twist - with Chubby Checker, and of course this one with the Beach Boys. Hurray for nostalgia!

Continuing Gardien Issues

The continuing story of our 'conflits the voisinage' with our gardien and her family reached new heights last night. It's really amazing how anti-social people can be and how much that can influence your sense of feeling at home in your, well, home. This time, they did not try to wake us up early in the morning by stomping around on the floor of the empty office above our appartment, but they really made an effort in banging and making ridiculous noise at 2 am. Just as we were getting ready to go to sleep, after sitting on the sofa, watching a movie and just being relaxed. Apparently, that makes too much of a disturbance to our gardien. Okay, I'll admit that at one point during the evening, there was a lot of noise of people laughing, chatting and noisily going down the stairs of the service stairwell behind our appartment, but the gardien must know by now that we never use these stairs. Our access to it is efficiently blocked off, and it's just too much effort to use them, while we have another stairwell by our appartment's front door. Fortunately, this time I was fast enough to grab my camera and record the noise making. I even caught one of her family members on cam, entering their appartment right after the noise stopped. He saw me recording, and afterwards even rang our doorbell. Very sorry, but I ignored that. I am not going into a 'conversation' with crazy people in the middle of the night. Especially not since previous attempts of conversations all ended in our words being fenced off by false accusations, screaming and lies, every time we tried to start to speak.

I just hope the housing agency will take proper care of it this time. The building owner doesn't care enough, and, maybe rightfully so, until now choses to believe the lies of their employee. But guess what, they're on candid camera now.

Excersises In Concise Writing

What I like about my attempts on writing poetry, is that it is a training in organizing my thoughts and finding a nice and concise way to get a certain thought or message across. These are also traits you can use in the consulting business. There will be only a few linguists that will have a negative view on the effect of trying to write poetry on language skills. If you compare that to the upheaval we saw when text messaging, and the limited character space that came with it at first, brought folk to condense their messages by shortening words to character combinations, you'll see that there is an important difference between concise writing and condensed writing. Although I am not fully convinced that condensed writing is necessarily bad for language skills, I prefer the excercise in concise writing. And that is what I also like about micro blogging, of which Twitter of course is now the most popular instance. The limit of 140 characters has not, at least in most of the tweets in my timeline, led to overly condensed writing. Most tweets I see are examples of a concise way to convey a thought. It is mostly urls that are condensed by the url-shorteners. Maybe writing with a 140 character limit should be part of language training anyway. I can see a course in basic education where assignments are to write poetry in regulated forms (haikus, sonnets) and interesting tweets. Of course without resorting to well known aforisms.