On getting lost and other Sunday outings

It seems to me that most French people, among them my wife, consider that street names are there for decorative purposes, not to serve as indications of where you are in a city.

I have come to this conclusion because of last Sunday's outing, if one can call driving around the twisted streets of Bayonne for more than an hour, an "outing". The occasion was the celebrated "Mexican" shared feast put on by the association to which we belong--AFLACOBA, a jolly group of Latin Americans living in the Pays Basque.

The invitation said we were to bring something to eat and drink and to be shared with others. There was to be sundry activities: singing Mexican songs, a theater group, etc. We were asked to get ourselves up in Mexican items of clothing, so I put on my hat and my wife took a long a blouse that looked like a baby-doll nightgown but to her was very "Mexican". And, she cooked up a tomato tart (don't ask). I took along a jar of my wickedly hot Mexican sauce.

So, off we went.

Me: Oh, we should have looked at the email to see where this place is and...

My wife: I know where it is: the maison for the associations in Bayonne.

Me: Are you sure? It seems to me that there was something about a Belichone or Balichon, or something like that.

My wife: Its the same thing, the same thing. On you go, come on!

And off we went, driving merrily into disaster. We arrived at the place in Bayonne that, reputedly, is meant to house the activities of various associations. There was an eery silence in the place which gave me a bad feeling but not my chirpy wife who sauntered up to the only open room where there was a bored young man sitting behind a reception desk.

My wife (in French): Ah, can you tell us where the AFLACOBA people are meeting?

Young man: The what?

Me: Oh, oh...

My wife: The AFLACOBA, the AFLACOBA...you know that Latin American...

Young man: Not here. There are no meetings of any kind being held here today.

Me: (Panicking) Oh, oh...

My wife: But, surely you are wrong. We got an email saying that this Balichon thing...

Young man: Ah, the Balichon! Well, that is not here.

Me: Oh, oh...

My wife: Well, where is that Balichon thing...

The young man went into a lengthy and complicated description of the trek we would have to make to reach that golden fleece otherwise known as the MVC Balichon. Now you might be asking yourself, what the MVC stands for. Well, that, as you will see later, is the crux of the mystery.

Off we went, to follow directions we did not fully understand, to look for a place we did not really know where or what it was.

Me: (Starting to loose my temper because of hunger) But, you said that you were sure it was at this Association place...

My wife: And, I am. That's what it said in the email.

Me: I don't remember any mention of any association...

My wife: Never mind. The young man said to look for the Galleries Lafayette and to continue up from there.

Me: That's pretty vague. Are you sure he said...

And on we went driving around, getting into wrong way streets, circling for an hour, asking "locals" about a place called Balichon. We saw a man putting things into the boot of his car so we assumed he was a "local". My wife jumped out of the car, while I, motor idling, stayed ready to drive off in whatever misdirection the man would send us. I started to think the man was NOT a local when he produced a huge map, unfolded it and started to trace circles on it with his finger. Much like when one says, "I think its around here."

After a fifteen minute consultation, that seemed as complicated as the planning of the Normandy invasion from the way the man moved his hand over the map and gestured, my wife ran back, got into the car, and said the man had no clue to where the fabled Balichon place was but that he thought it might be...

Off we went, following these new, obscure, and vague instructions of the map guy.

Me: Didn't he mention the name of the street? I mean, did he say where...

My wife: Augh! What for? Anyone knows where this Balichon place is...

Of course, we not only did not find it, we got lost in a very complicated tangle of streets with no names. We asked a half dozen people, all of which gave different directions or gestured wildly, but made no mention of the street where this Balichon place might be. After a half hour of muddling about in that maze of narrow and crooked streets, we gave up and decided to go home.

At home, I took off my hat and Paseo shirt (which had, appropriately, three bullfighters stitched on the back)and sat down to eat our now cold tomato tart. I grumbled and my wife kept insisting that the people who had sent the email should not have mentioned the Association place where we had first gone. "That," she said, "has misled us."

I didn't recall any mention of that Association place so I went to have a look at the email.

Me: Look! There is no mention of any Masion des Associations! It says "MVC Balichon" and it gives the name of the street it is on! We should have looked for that street!

My wife: And, what do I care what street it is on? Do you think I know the name of the street where I do my nails? Of course not! I don't need to know it; I know where the place is!

Me: But what does that have to do with anything? They have established streets names and houses numbers so people can find their way around, so you don't have to say: Oh, my house is near the butcher with the large window and next to the tree with lots of leaves, or something like that.

My wife: But, I have no use for the names of streets. I know where places are.

Me: Not this place! We spent an hour driving around like lost tourists. We could have just asked for directions to the street, not the Maison des whatever!

My wife: Well, it was that MVC thing that misled us. They should not have put that in because it leads one to think that it is the Maison des Associations.

How in the world one goes from an acronym MVC to Maison des Associations is something only the strange and bizarre workings of a Gallic female mind can achieve. Of course, I should have known better, but I didn't, so I asked the question:

Me: How in the world can you say that MVC led you to think that it was the Maison des...

My wife: Ah, but don't you know what it means? Here it is right here, on my screen (she said looking at the Google page). It means "Maison de la Vie Citoyenne", no wonder one confuses it with the "Maison des Associations".

I was speechless.

Française en Colère

If you have ever lived in France for any length of time, or even visited the country, you have probably heard the phrase, or read the headline, or saw the picket sign that said, "(Filll in the blank) en Colère", which loosely translated means "Angry (fill in the blank)".

Teachers, railroad workers, bureaucrats, dog owners, visitors to Disneyland, or citizens with nothing better to do, will rise up in anger at most anything, will then bus up to Paris, grab a sign (usually provided as a courtesy by the CGT, the all powerful confederation of unions that just loves to fill Parisian streets with protesters) and hit the streets.

The script usually goes like this: the government will announce a (change in the amount of hours worked, new taxes, a law banning X, Y, or Z, cuts in the amount of bureaucrats at the A, B, or C level, ordinances regarding fines for dog owners who leave their dog's poop on the street...whatever) and the buses start heading for Paris. People will march, threaten strikes, public monuments will be draped in mantels with slogans, traffic will be snarled for hours, and two days later the government will back down and not follow through on their proposal.

When I applied for my residency in France, I was obliged to go to Pau, the site of the regional Prefecture, and attend a "Civic Day" (a day in which I was to be instructed on how to be a correct resident of France). As I waited for the instructor, who was fashionably late as most bureaucrats are, I happened to look out the window and into the floor-to-ceiling window of the office next to our classroom. There were hundreds of CGT flags and posters stored there and more being made by half a dozen busy, little workers. The flags, and posters, and placards, and mantels did not carry a message. They were just being readied for the next protest and for someone to "fill in the blanks", as it were. Protest in anger is not only a right in this country, it is a national sport and a source of infinite pride. People will tell you, with eyes misting with emotion, of the day they protested, angrily of course, against (you name it).

French anger--many times disguised as indignation, righteousness, national unity, love of animals, fresh produce, or stinky cheese, or defense of culture, customs, or traditions--is really anchored and truly the product of French Pride. This has been the boon and the bane of this country for centuries. It has led it on the path of glory and down the blind alleys of disaster.

The story of supersonic transport is a great example of how this combustible mixture of anger and pride can lead to economic disaster and personal tragedy. When the race to produce an SST, supersonic transport, began in the 1950s, the Americans, the French,the British, and even the Russians (with their" Concordski" copy) set off on a race to capture the transatlantic shuttle business. By the 70s, the Americans had figured out that transporting 100 people at supersonic speeds was not as profitable as transporting 500 at subsonic lethargy. Environmental as well as economic concerns doomed all of the SST projects but not the French one. For France, the project had nothing to do with making a feasible business out of the Concorde. It was all about French pride: The French wanted to prove they were technologically superior to those hamburger-eating Americans.

The Concorde was a technological triumph but an economic disaster. The dream of technological superiority came to an end on the 25th of July, 2000, when a Concorde carrying 113 passengers crashed in Gonesse, France. All one hundred and thirteen passengers and nine crew members on board the flight died. On the ground, four people were killed with one left injured. For years aviation specialist had been pointing out that the huge amount of resources that were needed to keep the Concorde flying were a waste, and that age and the intrinsic complexity of supersonic flight made it very dangerous. But, pride kept that bird in the air until it finally flopped to the ground.

But, this combination of pride and anger (sounds almost like the title for a novel) not only shows up in important, obvious ways, such as the crash of the Concorde or a protest by thousands of people, it permeates everyday life as well. Last night I was watching a classic French film of 1943, "Le Corbeau" (The Raven) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It depicts how a series of poisoned pen letters sent by an anonymous citizen of a small town in rural France, create a lynch-mob atmosphere fueled by pride and anger disguised as righteous indignation and moral outrage.

Pride and anger again reared their head after WW II when the film was banned because it was said to misrepresent the French character and life in small French towns; it was also accused of having been German propaganda.

But French Pride and Anger are not always that tragic. Sometime they can combine to produce hilarious consequences. A few years ago, we were in Paris and went to see the marvelous exhibition "Picasso and the Great Masters". It was so popular people (us among them) waited for hours in freezing temperatures to go into the Grand Palais where the exhibition was held. My wife was busy during the day and we decided to go the the "nocturne" time slot, the last during the day, at 8:30 PM. The show was so crowded that we were not allowed into the building until 9:15 PM. Nevertheless, the museum staff "respected" the closing time of 10:00 PM, hardly time to see an exhibition that one would need at least two hours to see, and even in that amount of time, it would have been a bit rushed.

We were half way through the show when the museum staff started urging us to head for the exit because they were going to close up shop. Claudette, the spunky French citizen that she is, started to protest and when the head museum guard was rude to her, I started to protest in English. Well, that set off the crowd, which was composed mostly of French people, this being a winter show when few tourist were around. Among the angry French persons who defended us was a tall man, about as tall and as prideful as General Charles de Gaulle. "Il est honteux!," (It is shameful) he yelled. "Une honte!" (A shame!) he screamed at the guards. He went on to say that we (the poor beleaguered tourist) would take with us a "disgraceful impression of La France!" This was, in his view, a stain on the national honor.

It was a scene straight out of that wonderful book by Pierre Daninos, "Les Carnets du Major W. Marmaduke Thompson", which pretends to be a diary kept by an Englishman who comes to live in France. That book is not only very funny it is dead-on in depicting the French character, especially the "pride and anger" combination to which I am referring.

I thought it especially funny confirmation of my hypothesis that in the last World Track and Field Championships, while world records were being set by athletes from other countries, all the French television channels could talk about were there second and third place finishes by French men and women. I found it hilarious that in one instance, while the entire stadium was celebrating a new world record set by a Jamaican relay team, the French commentators and interview guy were overjoyed that the French team, which included one white, blue-eyed sprinter who is the current darling of the photo press, had come in an "honorable" third place. Not a word was said of the new, and amazing, world record set by Usain Bolt and company.

But to me, the most interesting show of "pride and anger" is the beloved parade of the 14th of July, Bastille Day. The country comes to a standstill and people remain transfixed by the televised transmission of hundreds of soldiers, police officers, firemen, and sundry uniformed folk marching down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées while French Air Force jets fly overhead streaming the red, white, and blue. That is the "Pride" part of the day. The "Anger" is displayed by a group of people, kept far away from the proceedings by the police so they don't mar the beauty of the parade, who protest the unnecessary waste of money and time that the parade entails.

I sympathize with those folks because I really don't see what, for example, armed men, dressed in yellow leather aprons and carrying hatchets (that make them look like butchers on the way to work or spiffy woodsmen), and who represent the worst of French history because they are members of the Foreign Legion, the armed force entrusted with enforcing French colonialism in Africa and other places, have to do with a nation's sense of being. The laundry bill alone of all those hundreds of men in starched, well pressed uniforms, could finance a school building or the salary of a couple of teachers in grade school (now that a lot of them are being fired in cost-savings measures). But then, I might not see the logic in it because, I am not prideful, rarely angry, and certainly not French.

On Selective Memory and Other Femenine Attributes

I have mentioned several times that the bag that my wife carries around is like a "black hole": things go in and never come out again. But that is not entirely true. Occasionally, my wife will go on a "sorting out" binge (she learned her English in the UK, hence the funny terms), and out will come the most varied, not to mention old and useless, objects and articles you can imagine. Yesterday, such a singularity (a term used by cosmologist) took place.

Among other things, out of the depths of the BH (a term I will coin for that bag, black hole = BH) came two tickets to a "bateau mouche". Unless you have recently arrived from Neptune or have never seen a movie shot in Paris, you will be aware that the River Seine is plagued with these crafts which load up dozens of tourists, swirl them around the river for about an hour so they can "see the sights" of central Paris (most of which the tourist have already seen from the ground), and then try to sell them pictures of their "romantic trip".

We took such a trip about two years ago on a frosty winter night. We were in Paris that December (for reasons that will be the subject matter of another blog entry) and noticing that the expiration date on the tickets was about due (Why we had bateau mouche tickets a year old is yet more subject matter for a blog entry), we decided to ride the romantic waves and listen to Yves Montand sing "Sous le ciel de Paris s'envole une chanson hum hum). Hum, indeed!

Anyway, there we were, skimming along the Seine, shivering but happy at sight of the lights glittering on the dark water, looking up at Notre Dame lit up and beautiful, the Eiffel Tower bright as a Christmas tree, etc. and old Yves humming away in the background.

Fast forward two years later to the present:

My wife: "Oh, here are the tickets to that boat ride we took. I'm going to throw them away."

Me reading a newspaper: "Oh, yeah, that was a nice boat ride."

My wife: "Well, I am surprised you say so. You didn't show much enthusiasm when we took it."

If this were a film, I would "stop action" the scene at that moment and have a voice over say: "My wife always accuses me of a lack of "enthusiasm" for anything. Be it a bowl of soup, or the sight of leaves on a tree in the spring, if I do not do cartwheels and shout for joy at the first spoon full of soup or the sight of the new green leaves, that proves I have no "enthusiasm" for the matter at hand and are thus indifferent to them. The fact of the matter is, I am past the cartwheel age and I have never been much of a cheer leader for anything. Hence, my appreciation for a soup consists of asking for a second bowl, and I would only shout for joy at the sight of new leaves if I were a herbivorous monkey."

But, my life is far from being a film so reason prevailed and I just quietly said:

Me: "That's not true. I did like that boat ride. I even sang along with Yves Montand."

My wife: "And it was so cold! You didn't even put your arm around me."

Me carefully choosing my words: "Again, you misremember: The fact that you are alive now proves I did put my arm around you, otherwise you would have frozen to death."

It is pointless to narrate the rest of the conversation because it went downhill from there, as they say. The gist of the conclusion was that I am an uncaring galumph who has as much enthusiasm for the romantic things in life as a dog has for the fleas that bite his, well, rear end.

My point in all of this is that women have not only a selective memory, they have a rewrite little woman inside their brains whose function seems to be to rewrite every scene from life to make us men seem uncaring, overbearing galumphs who are only enthusiastic about three things: eating, unbridled, unromantic sex, and football (or the sport of your choice).

Here is another scene from life as rewritten by the little woman inside my wife's brain:

Me, coming into the house sweaty from having washed the car in 36 degree heat: "Well, the car is looking clean again. Nice and..."

My wife: "Gray! Nice and gray. I hate that color. I don't know why we bought it that color."

Me: "Oh, its not that bad. I like it. It is.."

My wife: "Well, you weren't very enthusiastic about it when we were choosing colors."

Me: "What did you want me to do? Jump up and down and clap my hands like Boy George and say, 'Oh, goody it's is a lovely gray!'"

My wife: "No, but you could have shown some enthusiasm."

Me, cracking open a cold beer: "How the hell do you show enthusiasm for GRAY! It is GRAY, for God's sake! Haven't you ever heard the expression, 'Oh, what a gray day!' or 'That man is soooo gray!', People don't say those things with enthusiasm."

Again, needles to say, that conversation did not end in an enthusiastic agreement from my wife that my examples were called for.

I have often wondered why Nature programmed this into women's brains. There must be some sort of biological advantage to it. Maybe the cave women who exhibited this behavior bred better and stronger children, and got better food and care, because imagine this scene:

A cave man coming into the cave carrying the leg of a wooly mammoth: "Whew, that was a long haul. And this damned mammoth was a bitch to kill. It took three spears and..."

Cave woman: "I see that your fur coat is stained with blood."

Cave man: "Well, yes, I was sticking the spear into the damned things when I..."

Cave woman: "You can just throw it away. You don't seem to much care for it anyway."

Cave man: "Where did you get that idea. I love this fur coat and it matches my grass sandals perfectly. I said to Ugh, the other day that..."

Cave woman: "Well, you didn't show much enthusiasm when I made if for you."

Cave man: "What are you talking about. I said I love the thing. Look, I'll go down to the stream and wash the blood off. It'll come off, I swear it."

The cave man drops the leg of mammoth and goes down to the stream where a huge heard of bison is watering.

Cave man: "Holy sh***! Look at the size of those babies." Taking his trusty speak he lunges at the biggest one.

Back at the cave, the cave woman in sewing yet another fur coat for Ooogh, the cave man. He walks in with a huge side of bison.

Cave man: "Man, you should have seen the amount of food on the hoof there was by the stream."

Cave woman: "Oh, really? I saw them there this morning. I would have thought they would have gone by now. But, thank goodness because now we will have meat for the coming winter and for little Ooogh who eats like a horse, or rather, like his father. Just put the meat outside; the cold will keep it from spoiling."

Little Ooogh comes in running and tears a rib from the side of bison that dad is carrying outside. As cave boy starts to gnaw on it, there is a smile of smug satisfaction on the cave woman's face..

Love to play petanque, marbles, or Bingo? Join our association!

There are more than 32,000 associations in France. Every city, town, or villages has if not hundreds, maybe dozens, or at least a few. Every liked, disliked, objectionable, or unobjectionable activity involving beings, animals, or objects has one in favor of or against said activity, animal, or object. Hardly any reported item on the evening news goes without comment from the "President of the Association for/against (fill in the blank).

Say a kid gets bitten by a dog that was running around loose in the street. After the video of the kid being taken away by an ambulance, of the sound bite by the distressed mother, cue the "Président de l'Association contre les chiens sans laisse" (President of the Association against dogs without a leash), who gives us a 15 minute speech on the menace that unleashed pooches represent for the health and well-being of the French.

(I say 15 minutes because here you ask a "yes or no" question and you get at least a 5 minute answer. "Yes or No" answers are beyond the cultural and psychological possibilities of the French.)

My wife is no stranger to this association scheme: when I arrived here, she was president of the association put together to get the city to pave the street we live on. Of course, the neighbors had to pay for the paving, but the association was tax free (Thank you, Monsieur Le Maire (Mayor). The people do the work for you and you are gracious enough not to tax them for it.)

Anyway, I bring the "association" issue up because, unbeknown to me, my wife signed up to help out in the booth that the "Amis de Malandain Ballet Biarritz", an association to which WE belong, is going to put up in the forthcoming "Forum des Associations". This is an annual event in which all (or most all) of the associations in Biarritz gather in one place, set up a booth, and try to convince visitors to join their association. Or, if you have a hankering to meet people who love square dancing, this is the place to go find a group that loves to dress up like yokels and hoe-dee-hoe.

You may be asking yourself why I belong to an association having to do with ballet; and you have probably figured out that being a member of such a group, I am not the most "active" member of the Friends of the Malandain Ballet Biarritz. Well, the answer is that my wife loves the ballet and she is a very generous person so (sigh) there you are. For this Forum thing, she not only signed up to help, she signed up to help at the end of the Forum when things have to be packed up and stowed away. My participation in said activity will consist of sitting at a near-by cafe to watch a football match and have a beer, after which I will do my bit by driving my wife home.

In preparation for that upcoming jewel of a day, my wife had me print for her a PDF with the distribution of the booths and layout of the hall where the Forum will be held.

"What do you want that for?" I asked.

"Well," she replied, "I want to know where OUR booth will be."

She also had me print out the list of associations that will be participating in the shindig.

"And what is this for?" I asked giving her the long list of associations.

"Well, I want to see if there are any associations that might be of interest to us."

"That'll be the day," I retorted. "If anything, I will join an association that is for people who don't want to join associations. We will have no meetings, events, or activities, and we will convene individually in each of our separate homes."

A quick perusal of the association list told me that there are 144 associations in this city of just 25,000 people. If an average of 100 people belong to each association (not an unreasonable average if you look at the membership column), that means that more than half the population of the city belongs to at least one association and many people belong to two or more! No wonder nothing ever gets done around here: people are too busy going to association meetings and events.

The list is divided into sections: Culture, Sport, Social, and so on. The most numerous is "Culture" but I wonder how some of these associations sneaked in there. There is the "Expression Santé", whatever that is, and also something called "Harmonia" and another named "Kalage". The first sounds like a strange musical instrument and the later like one of those fish found in the dark depths of the ocean. (Imaginary conversation: Me: "My God! What is that ugly thing?" Oceanographer: "Oh, that's a Kalage.").

My wife took one look at the "Social" section and declared it the "Miseries of the World Section". It groups associations such as the "Association de Défense de Familles et Individus Victimes de sectes et dérives sectaires-Pays Basque (ADFI)" (no need to translate that!), as well as those dedicated to cancer, autism, and human rights. But then, this section swings wildly and encompasses "Les Amis de Milady Plage", the friends of the Milady beach, and "Femme Avenir Pays Basque" (I wonder what kind of future females they envision? I might pop by and see what they are up to.)

Of course there is a host of associations for sport and for the young. In sport you find the usual stuff: Tennis, Hockey, Swimming. But the "Jeunesse" or young, is an eclectic bunch with things like circus school and something called "Les Petits Débrouillards". My French-Engish dictionary says that "débrouillard" means "resourceful", "smart", "nifty"; but, it also translates as "survivor". I guess this last describes the parents of the "small, resourceful, smart, and nifty" kids.

"Here is an interesting one," said my wife, "Biarritz Olympique- Cyclotourisme", they tour the countryside in bicycles.

"I like to do my "tourism" from the comfort of an air-conditioned car, thank you."

"What in the world is "Capoeira Raizes de Rua," she wondered.

"Well, "capoeira" is a form of dance-martial arts. Only the Brazilians are capable of combining those two things."

-She highlighted a few more associations she was going to go inquire about. Of course, her challenge was not going to be finding one that is interesting. Her challenge is getting me to join one.

"You know what this list tells me?" I asked.

"What?"

"That there are a lot of people with a lot of time to waste. Maybe we should start an association: "The Association for People With A Lot Of Time To Waste." I am sure most of the people in the other associations would join.

A Little Gift for a Big Birthday

I celebrated my birthday on the 15th of this month.

"I am now entitled to sing a certain Beatles' song," I wrote to my son on the chat.

"Which one? When I´m Sixty-Four?," asked my son.

l laughed, "No, actually I mean 'Yesterday'," I retorted.

I have always celebrated my birthday, happy with the knowledge that I have lived another year, rather than, as a friend of mine insists, that each birthday brings us one year closer to the end of our lives. I used to celebrate my birthdays by inviting 25 or 30 of my closest friends and having a bash of eating and drinking until five or six o'clock in the morning. Now I am more sensible; so, in view of that astonishing fact, I said to my wife:

"For my birthday meal, I would like to go to that place we passed by, the other day when we went for a walk, and have a hamburger and a pint of beer."

"That's a great idea," agreed my wife (for once).

The place I was referring to, we found out, is called "Le Surfing" appropriately enough because it is on the part of the Biarritz coast that we call "La Côte Basque", and where lots of surfers come to ride the waves that are a bit longer and larger than on any other of the many beaches of this area.

The restaurant is a long, rectangular room with one side open to the beach. It is especially nice in the late afternoon when you get sunsets like this:

When the waiter came, we ordered some Serrano ham and goat cheese to nibble on with our aperitif; and as we ate and chatted, my mind went back to the birthday presents my wife had given me. One was a black T-shirt of very good quality. She likes me to wear black things; she says they make me look more elegant and handsome. When I wear black, I feel as if I were going to a marriage or a funeral, which to some people amounts to the same thing.

The second gift she gave me was a little book. I don't mean "little" in the sense of an endearing adjective, I mean the book is VERY little: 7 by 8.5 centimeters. The title is "The Quotable Oscar Wilde" and it contains, of course, quotes by that well-known, bon-vivant, author, homosexual rogue, and satirist. As I read through the many notable quotes in the petite volume, I was struck by the fact that for someone who reportedly only had a relationship with women in order to keep up appearances (and miserably failing to do so), he was pretty perceptive of their strengths and foibles. Among some of his most memorable sayings about women are:

"All women become like their mothers, that is their tragedy; no man does, that is his."

"Women are meant to be loved, not understood."

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past."

As I read through these and other of his quotes, I marveled not only at how sharp most of them were, but at how well they still applied to "the human condition", especially the female variety of humanity. Wilde says, for example, "Women can discover everything except the obvious." I have always said that if I wanted to hide anything from my wife, I would place it in plain sight. Whenever I see her running around the house looking for her mobile phone, her glasses, a pen, or any other article, I am sure to find it in front of where she had been sitting--or in that bag of her's that I call "the black hole".

Another of my favorite quotes is, "Women give to men the very gold of their lives; but, they always want it back in small change." I laughed when I read this, not only because of its obvious hilarity but also because I have always recognized that trait in the women I have know--and I mean that to be not only friends and girlfriends I had in my youth but also women closer to me such as my mother, my sister, and surely my present wife. For example, she is generous to a fault and will not hesitate to get me an expensive gift or to make the grand gesture that makes me happy; but, little by little, she gets payback: "A gentleman never pours wine for himself first if there is a lady present," she will say if I partake of wine at lunch without first filling her glass. Or she will point out that she would like to be asked if she wants a spot of something when I am serving myself my afternoon aperitif. She has also said that "A little tenderness is never amiss at the end of the day or when one wakes in the morning." Little by little, the small change tinkled into their cash box!

More importantly, Wilde's adage that "The world was made for men,not for women" seems to be proven everyday by my wife and women friends of ours: they seem baffled by simple mechanical things, stumped by the works of most electronic apparatus, absolutely mystified by the instruction booklets that explain how to assemble any kind of article from a bicycle to a skateboard. Therefore, in our case, I have to come to my wife's rescue and take over when tears of frustration start to well in her eyes as she tries to put together the charming little bookshelf she bought at the do-it-yourself store. She then goes off to have a cup of tea and I interrupt whatever I am doing in order to finish the job. I sometimes wonder if this is not the way women have of getting us to feel (falsely) superior and thus trick us into doing all of these menial jobs.

My musings were interrupted by the waiter who brought our order: I had a hamburger that was very good but a challenge to finish and my wife had a "parmentier de confit de canard" which is a marvelous French dish consisting of strands of duck meat covered in mashed potatoes. As we ate and conversed, again my mind wandered back to my little book: in the section where Oscar Wilde talks about women, he also has this to say about men:

"I sometimes think that God, in creating man, rather overestimated his ability." But, he should have added, and underestimated the wiles he had given women.

But, Wilde, like all men, was not infallible. I think he got it wrong when he said, "In married life, three is company, two is none." Because that night, on my birthday, with the sea air coming through the open windows of the restaurant, and the rush of the waves softly murmuring in the background, we two were definitely very good company.

Communication and Miscommunication

The phone rings.

Me: Oh, hi dear. How are you? No, you're mother is not here. She went to Bayonne to get her nails done. Don't ask me, I have no idea why she has to go 10 kilometers to get her nails trimmed and painted. I do mine here at home, after a bath and it costs me nothing (laughing) but of course, I don't paint mine. OK, yes, call her on her mobile phone. Bye.

My wife's mobile phone rings. I search for it and find it on the kitchen table. I answer it.

Me: Oh, hi again, dear. No, I am afraid that your mother left the phone here at home. Yes, I'll tell her you called and tell her to call you back. Bye.

An hour later my wife comes in.

My wife: I am telling you; I will never go back to that place again. That woman is mad. I kept telling her that she was hurting me with her tool, which looks like a surgical knife...

Me: A scalpel...

My wife: Yes, that's it. And, she kept insisting that it was impossible for it to hurt, that that infernal instrument was proven to be safe. Well, I told her you can take your safe instrument and...

Me: Your daughter called. She says to call her back.

My wife: When did she call? I didn't hear my mobile phone ring.

Me: And I can tell you why: your mobile phone was here and you were ten kilometers away.

My wife: No, its not. Its in my bag.

She dives into that bag thing I call "the black hole" because whatever you put in it never comes out again. It is impossible to find anything there. There's more debris floating around in that thing than there is circling the Earth. I have seen tickets from shows we saw years ago, half-chewed candy from when the grandchildren were babies, and keys that belong to no door in the house, and sundry pairs of glasses, broken pencils, and coins from several countries---all floating around as if in a vacuum.

My wife: I am sure it was in my bag.

I hold up the mobile phone.

Me: Then this must be a duplicate.

My wife: Augh, you had it all the time!

Me: No, I didn't have it all the time. I just had it when it rang and you were not here.

My wife; Well, you should have given it to me when I was about to leave. You have no business keeping it here.

Me: What! No business...it is your phone you should...

My wife: Let me see how many calls I missed. Who is the Eloise?

I look at the message. It is obviously a scam. It says that it cost nearly two euros to call "Eloise" back.

Me: It is a scam. You will have to pay "Eloise" a couple of euros to call her back. Just erase it.

My wife: No, what if it is because she is in another country? Maybe that is why it costs so much to call her.

Me: Yep, she's in another country all right, perhaps Nigeria. Those fellows over there are experts at setting up these scams.

My wife: And look at his one: "Hi, we are in Oslo..."

Me: In Oslo? Like in Norway?

My wife: Who do we know in Oslo?

Me: Maybe it is their Winter Olympics committee and they want your opinion on who should represent them in the Giant Slalom.

My Wife: Oh, really, what if its for a translating job?

Me: No one in Oslo will call us for that. They email. ! Jeeze, your phone is full of scams and spam. You should change your phone number.

My wife: I have all of these numbers registered in my phone book and I don't know who these people are. I will call them to find out who they are.

Me: You're going to do what? Listen, don't; just erase them.

She ignores me and calls the first one.

My wife: No answer. Just an answering machine.

Me: Why don't you leave a message.

My wife: And, what would I say? I don't know who I am calling.

Me: You could just say: "I have no idea who you are but I have your phone number registered in my contacts, so please call back and identify yourself, anonymous.

My wife: Don't be silly.

I find that most people are strangely at odds with the technology they THINK they need. When I was in business, I used to carry two mobile phone and a beeper. And, I used them, constantly. One was for communications with the engineers that worked in my department. It also had direct walkie-talkie communications and alerts from the computer servers that were our responsibility. The other was for customers and people in the company other than those in my department. The beeper was for emergencies at night and for when I turned off the phones, like at the movies.

Yes, those phones and beeper were not half as sophisticated as the stuff even kids carry around now. But, most young people use their phones for SMS and other rather simple stuff. Their sophisticated GPS and Web and myriad of tools and apps are rarely used. And, if you don't believe me, just hunt around the Internet for statistics on what is chewing up the bandwidth of mobile phone companies.

Most adults, on the other hand, use phones for that: phoning. My wife's phone has all the gadgets you can find on any of the sophisticated, feature laden phones of today. Yet, she, like most people of her age and social demographic profile, hardly every use anything else but the phoning feature. The Web, even the camera on the thing, are rarely used features. And, it was months, if not years, before she sent a "texto" as the French call messages, from her phone. And it read: "OK".

But, it is not just phones that are like that: cars, televisions, computers--they all suffer from feature creep. How many people that you know and who own an HD TV full of HDMI and computer input ports actually hook up a computer to their TV? And from what I have seen, I am the only nerd out there who uses his "cruise control" in the car when we are on a motorway. In their mad rush to get from A to B as quickly as possible, most French drivers zoom by at 160 kilometers per hour only to have to break for a truck that is passing another truck at 90 KPH. With their stop and go driving, cruise control is useless. Yet, all of their cars have it.

It seems to me that this technological onslaught to give us features that would help us communicate better has really led to miscommunication or non-communication.

Once, when we were in Paris, my wife was laboring to call her aunt, who at the time was in a little town in southern France. She could not remember the number and she could not find it among her contacts either.

"I give up," she said closing the phone.

"Maybe if you call her daughter she will give you the phone."

"I can't", she replied.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I am out of battery," she replied, and then added, "and I forgot my charger."

Life's little routine pleasures...

(The square in front of the entrance to the Delacroix museum.) "Ah," my wife sighed, "I am so far behind in reading newspapers. This is last Sunday's" She said that on Thursday. "Why do you bother?" I replied. "You are just as well watching the noon time news cast you like. They are experts on old news. That's all they broadcast." That little exchange is a ritual my wife and I follow. We go to bed, she looks mournfully at the stack of unread material piled by her bedside, she complains about being so far behind in reading the stuff, I berate her about it, she picks something from the pile, and after reading a few lines, she falls fast asleep. The next day the pile will grow and we will perform that ritual again. Life is made up or little rituals, habits, and personal schedules. That's what keeps us sane in this age of uncertainty, chaos, and change. Our day follows a well-worn schedule: -We get up, fix tea and watch the news; -After the news, my wife goes to her study and I go to my studio; we read email, work on translations, or, if we have time, I write my blogs and books, and she finds ways of getting into trouble (she orders some incongruous article from an online store (a ham slicer more appropriate for a butcher shop than a home, or jars of mayonnaise and mustard the size of a barrel come to mind)); -At noon I stop whatever I am doing and come into the house to find something to munch on and pour myself a cup of wine, my wife hears me moving about and stops her mischief long enough to prepare lunch; -After lunch, I take a nap and she goes to work on the ton of translations she has gotten by then; -After my nap, I go back to work on my translations, or book, or blog. -At 5 PM we stop for tea. -At 7 PM its time for an aperitif -At 8 PM its the news (snooze) and dinner. -At 8:30 PM its a movie or TV show -By 10:30-11:00 PM its time for bed. This schedule, though, is not rigid or unbreakable—far from it. We break it to go to a movie, or for a walk by the sea after dinner if the night is nice and the wather is tolerable. We have dinner parties or get invited to dinner. During the holiday periods and birthdays there are family gatherings or friends come for an aperitif. Sunday mornings, we often go to the market and every two weeks or so we go to Spain to buy groceries and booze, have some tapas, and fill up the gas tank (gas is 15-20% cheaper there). But the thing about having a routine is that you know what's going to happen. If your head is muddled, as mine sometimes is, and my wife's often is, there is no need to think about what's next: all you have to do is look at the clock and you can figure it out. Also, when you come back from a trip or after a night out, slipping into your routine is like putting on an old coat or your favorite pajamas: you relax immediately with the feeling that you are home. We even try to keep our routine when we are away from home. A few weeks ago we were in Paris and even though many things, from the pots and pans to the stove (an electronic wonder) were strange to us, we tried our best to keep to our schedule. My wife: It is time for the one o'clock news. Me: Good God, we are in Paris! We've already lost half a day mucking around, let's have lunch somewhere in town. My wife: OK, but first the news. We did break out of our schedule once in a while: we had lunch is a nice restaurant on the Avenue de la Grand Armée, and at one of those fancy places in the food court of La Defense when we went shopping there. I tried to get away to the Louvre and other museums, or to wander around the city as much as I could, given that we get translation jobs to do even when we are on the road. But, all things considered, we did keep to our regular schedule pretty much as we do at home. When we were in Mexico, we had quite a time doing so. In Dolores, Hidalgo, we stayed in a separate apartment, part of the home of a very nice family. They were very accommodating with us and tried to make our two month stay as comfortable as possible.

(Street scene in Dolores Hidalgo) But, Murphy's Law was obeyed and things sometimes got out of hand: it rained more than it usually does in Dolores and the room were we kept our computers was flooded a couple of times. There was no WiFi in the house so a cable had to be extended from our landlord's home all the way to our apartment. As an added bonus attraction, the man who provided the Internet service would promptly turn off his computer at 10 PM, leaving us dead in the water when things were about to start in Europe, where we get most of our work from.

(A rainy day in Dolores) Getting our water from a huge, plastic bottle was new to us and we often ran out because it was not part of our routine to buy bottled water. The same thing for gas: out stove and the water heater for out bath used bottled gas. One thing that was certainly not part of our routine was going shopping late in the afternoon or night, and even on Sundays. In Dolores, like most places in Mexico, shops stay open until late and open even on Sundays, quite a change for us but we were delighted that we could go buy bread at eight o'clock or go to a large department store, such as Soriana, on a Sunday afternoon. We foolishly left our tin of tea back home and trying to find Finest Earl Gray in Dolores was like looking for an honest man in the Chamber of Deputies, but all in all we had a wonderful time there. The market was a wonder to us with its bountiful fruits and avocados, the food was marvelous and cheap, and we had a beautiful little garden where we could eat outside as is the French custom in summer. When we came back home, it was a relief to get back to our routine, but we did miss the excellent avocados from Michoacán—not to mention the most friendly and wonderful people of Dolores.