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Totally weird

Today I selected "European" when asked for my brand of white on the Princeton application.

The small things in life give the greatest pleasure

Disclaimer: This is a post of an office supply fetishist. If you don't salivate whenever you enter an Office Max, this post will have no meaning for you.

Have you've ever tried to buy a regular lined notebook (the school kind, not the diary kind) in France? It's next to impossible. The French GOVERNMENT DETERMINED ruled paper called Seyès ruling (tell me, what don't they control?) is UBIQUITOUS. Seriously, there's practically nothing else you can buy. This is a problem for me, a good note-taking student, since this type of ruling designed to -- get this -- "foster handwriting discipline" has way too many lines that make my head hurt. (A 1999 National Education Bulletin also has a call for a "Concours public pour la création de modèles d’écriture cursive", a Public contest for the creation of a cursive lettering model.)

zillions of lines, which one do you write on?

Plus, the paper is so luxuriously thick that I feel like I should always be writing Constitution worthy things.

So, imagine my delight when I stumbled across college-ruled paper at the French Office Max (yeah! it exists! although it's a kind of weird Office Max where you get a discount if you have some kind of membership card.)
Plus, it's yellow! The paper has a nice thickness, not the woodchip type yellow legal pad paper you can get in the states. (I think you can only write on that paper in pencil. You know the kind of pencil you sharpen with a knife. How uncivilized.)
The Rhodia brand, with it's distinctive orange cardboard cover and tree logo, has long been a favorite of mine but I've only ever seen the graph paper blocks and graph paper does NOT work with my handwriting. It's too big to squeeze into each line and if I skip lines then I just feel like a cheating and wasteful slob. (Writing, as you may have noticed, can be uncannily like psychological torture.)

I should have bought up the whole stock but at 4,08 Euro the block that's a bit pricey.

Next installment: Discussion of A4 versus Letter format.

Now you know what it looks like!

This is what happens when I bring my camera to work. It's a walk from the RER station to the "House of Learning."

Square 1

Beautiful Barbecue at the Cité Universitaire

My roommate Jeanne and her friend Géraldine's project, Le Troisième Paradis (in co-organisation with Glassbox who are apparently contemporary art hot shots in Paris now: one guy introduced himself to me with his name and then adding, "From Glassbox." I guess I look important enough to have people try to impress me?)

They constructed barbecue stations, had some of their friends make color-coordinated kabobs and invited people to grill their own food. After the food ran out and it was dark, we all sat down to watch some of Lilli Hartmann's films (you can see her in the red Hosenrock on the left.) It was lovely. My favorite part was grilling marshmallows (the French brand name being Chamallow) and those little Haribo Strawberry candy things. (There is a Marshmallow plant. This just made my day.)

There was also artisanal beer:
Film projection:
I have yet to start on my detailed outline due Monday.

Back to Bike

I never took a picture of my bike, one of the best ebay deals ever after my 5 euro closet.
Here she is.The frame is a silvery white and the tires are blue. The fork is silver since I had it replaced after my accident. Otherwise, everything is original. It's about ten years old and had only been carefully used by the previous owner.

Anybody want to help me convert it to a fixed gear?

Mulberry blood

20080614(009)
Originally uploaded by qcom

She's a greedy one.

Participants and visitors are advised to respect the following rules*

- It is necessary to listen to others if one wants to have their attention

- Above all things and upon all occasions, avoid speaking of yourself

- Being over confident and peremptory does very much unfit men for conversation

- Avoid too excessive pedantic or technical speech (like direct interrogation, the use of imperatives and short answers such as ‘Yes’ and above all ‘No’)

- Adapt your conversation to the people you are conversing with

- Honourable people must never use a low word in their speech

- Subjects to avoid for men: ‘hunting, hawking and the War of the Netherlands; for women: fashionable clothes and housewifery. In general avoid talking about one’s children, telling one’s dreams or boasting of one’s nobility or riches.

- It is a great fault to be too fond of keeping silent

- don’t talk when you eat, it makes people think you are not enjoying the food

- It is better to be a men of few words than a ciarlatore

- No one speaks to the king during his public meals unless he addresses him first

Peter Burke, The Art of Conversation in Early Modern Europe, 1993

Back in (photo) action

After a concerted team effort, I got a new camera I had ordered in the States. Here a rare picture of me and my grandma's cousin, Liselotte at her house in the suburbs of Paris.

And some oranges.
Thanks to all participants.

The school year is over, that is to say, classes are over. I've got 12 hours of interviews to transcribe and 80 pages of a master's thesis to write by September 1. Wednesday, I am leaving for Santorini for two weeks. I am broke and will be even broker when I get back but starting a job at Kaplan. Stay tuned for picture postcard photographs on my flickr account.

Je vous embrasse.