rinnywee

The view from outside my window today...

After the Bastille Day celebrations, in which the might of the French military is paraded down the Champs Elysees, said military might returns home - some to a base near Versailles, where I live.

At around 10pm, 18 tanks rolled through Versailles causing shaking buildings, rattling windows, and many people to wear "WTF" expressions on their faces.

A colleague gets a knock at the door late Sunday night. Before him stand two members of the fire brigade. They speak to him in French, and he stammers through a "parlez-vous Anglais?". "A little" was the response, followed by "tank", "earthquake", "building unsafe", "evacuate" and "now".

The tanks caused damage to his apartment building's foundations, which resulted in the living room of a first floor apartment landing in the living room of a ground floor apartment.

At least he now knows how the Palestinians feel.

Sur le site de Coliposte: "08/07/06 Destinataire absent lors de la première livraison, seconde présentation prévue."

N'importe quoi.

Mon email pour la Poste:

"Puisque j'etais chez moi toute la matinee, j'aimerais bien savoir exactement QUAND le facteur est passe chez moi et pourquoi il a, apparament, pas les forces d'appuyer sur la sonnette, ni de frappe un peu plus fort a la porte puisque je n'ai rien entendu.

J'en ai completement marre de commander des choses, de demander la livraison en 48h, et d'aller au bureau de Poste 4 jours apres car le facteur n'est pas passe par ma porte.

Merci, La Poste. J'espere que vous etes content d'avoir un peu plus d'argent pour une livraison 48h quand vous ne faites rien pour me livrer mon colis EN 48h."

Money grabbing assholes.

This just happened now outside my apartment. (Opens with Quicktime)

Perhaps the government should sit down and watch Mathieu Kassovitz's film "La Haine" - these feelings have been brewing for over 10 years and nothing has been done to alleviate them. Putting a man like Sarkozy back into the position of Interior Minister was only going to exacerbate the already dark feelings of disgust and frustration with the police and political system.

Being a foreigner in this country is hard - regardless of your colour. When you are denied employment based on the fact that you are not French (even if you are fluent in the language and have adapted to life here) then it's not surprising that anger grows. I am white, educated and bilingual. It took me 4 years to find work after many knockbacks. Many of these were because they had found a French national to take the position or, in one case, because they did not want someone who spoke French with an accent. I ended up finding work in an American company.

From speaking with colleagues, it is far worse if you are of African decent, basically you don't stand a chance in hell.

This discrimination not only exists in the job arena, but across the board. But, being from Australia, I am used to seeing this kind of treatment of ethnic minorities - aboriginals, Asians and so on. It's not isolated to France, this is a global issue.

You know a public transport system sucks balls when it takes the same amount of time to go from one side of Paris to the other by train as it does to go from Iceland to France by plane.

You know, there's a reason bureaucracy is a French word. Only the French could have invented it. Only the French could continuously piss people off by doing NOTHING AT ALL.

I live in Versailles, which is a beautiful town. Tourist town, yet beautiful. With the number of tourists and so on, most of the parking is meter paid. There's one or two streets in every quartier which are free (such as my street), but finding a car park in them is like finding Britney Spears without two Venti Starbucks cream-topped drinks. It just ain't possible, dahling. But, the lovely Mairie of Versailles has thought of its citizens, and has a resident parking scheme - whereby people who live in Versailles pay a monthly fee, and get a wee little tag to put in their car, so that when the parking inspectors come by, they don't get a fine.

Fantastic plan guys! I'm going to get one!

Oh wait, no, I'm not. Not because I don't want to have to pay for parking when I already pay taxes. Not because I think it's outrageously expensive. No. Because the centre where I have to get this parking pass is never bloody open when I'm home from work. Its opening hours are 8.30 - 12.00 and 14.00 - 18.00 (except Fridays where it closes at 17.00). It's not open Saturday, Sunday or Public Holidays, but by God you will see parking inspectors filing out of there on a Saturday morning to go fine people in the area.

I work from 8am - god knows. Sometimes until 8 or 9pm. Now, unless I either leave work early (and I mean really early in order to sit in traffic for an hour and get here on time), get to work late (thereby causing myself to stay at work later in order to finish everything) or take a half day vacation in order to get this sorted, I guess I'll just have to content myself with the odd parking fine.

Vive la France!