Saturday with Friends...

Ex-pats living here often comment about the number of "instant yet old friends" they seem to acquire after they've landed in Paris.

Jude and I haven't experienced that.  Not yet, at least.  What we have experienced is close company renewed when good friends come to visit (or when we go visit them in, say, London or Girona, for example).

Yesterday was one of those days when great people happened to be in town looking to share in a bit of fun.

Kitty of Miz Kitty's Parlor came to visit with a friend of her's.  They'd been all over town and were probably a little tired.  But, when in Paris, a person sometimes needs to keep going.  She enjoys flea markets and we'd promised her that Paris has some of the biggest and best flea markets in the world.  We hoped she wouldn't be disappointed.

Off to Porte de Vanves we went on a cold, blustery, and supposedly Spring, day.

Old postcards were pawed, oggled, wondered over, and purchased.  A period bowler was discovered, tried on, approved of by Jude and Kitty's friend, and then paid for as the vendor continued to work to get a very old mantel clock running again (no doubt to be able to charge much more than a non-functioning clock would've been worth).  1800's shoes were tried on and found to not fit.  Vintage clothing was viewed from a distance and judged to be too small.  An ashtray wielding fox's price was inquired after and, in the final analysis, deemed to be too heavy and too large to carry back in anything smaller than a steamer trunk.  A very Parisian vendor gave Jude and I a full well thought out explanation of why the creative arts scene here is not what it used to be (which involved a lot of greedy top 1%'ers not being held in check, socialism's failing to do what was needed, leaving the rest of us to worry inordinately over money and whether we too would someday, somehow become rich enough to not care about, well, anything, actually).

After two plus hours of a nice slow crawl down the vendor row, Jude and I inspected Kitty to see how she we doing.  Overwhelmed was the word that came to mind.  It was duly noted that it was lunch time and we knew we needed nourishment, quick.  So I dialed up our favorite cafe in the 15th and secured a reservation for four at 13h30.

Happy with our many purchases, the four of us climbed back onto the tram for a quick ride down the line and a fast transfer to the Metro.  We popped up out of the Metro near our eatery and beat feet to the Captain's Table.  "We're here! and we're hungry!!"  Flea marketing can do that to a person.  Make them hungry, that is.

As we sat down at our table, I leaned over to Kitty's friend and mentioned that there would likely be a fair amount of singing going on today.  We weren't at a supper club where this kind of thing is expected.  Rather, we'd joined a fair sized group of, well, it was rather confusing what kind of group they actually where.  They dressed like Scots in hat department.  They wore jerseys that could've been rugby or le football (soccer to you Yanks).  They were definitely not Parisian as they were having far too much fun.  Maybe they were Spanish?  We wondered.

Kitty caught one of the revelers attention and I asked where they were from and what they were up to.  Ah. Clarity, at least.

They were fans of le foot from Lyon and their team, dressed in green, bien sur!, was in town to compete against the Parisian club.  They were up for the day and needed to fuel up before heading of to the Big Event.  In addition to food, they drank a bit of wine and sang to limber up the vocal cords.  They sang when new bottles of vino arrived.  They sang when the wedding party upstairs started singing (to, no doubt, drown out that serious and maudlin sense of song the Parisians seem to have acquired).  They sang for the sake of singing.

At one point someone from the wedding party asked "s'il vous plait, cinq minutes."  The Lyon Foot Fan Club complied.  Grudgingly.

About that time I needed to get up and head to the loo.  On my way I joked with one of the club members who was standing with his arms crossed, intently watching the wedding proceedings, and said to him with my biggest grin "s'il vous plait, cinq minutes."  We both laughed and he replied "on se debrouille, on se debrouille" ("we will manage, we will manage).

The moment the wedding party had had their five minutes of relative peace, the Lyonaise broke out in full bellow with le marseillaise.

You can't make this stuff up.  So, to provide a wee-bit-o-evidence, I caught some of the fun on video.

After the fans left and after we drank our cafe-calva's (the worm must be killed!  Killed!! I tell you [inside joke]), we headed out into what had become a bright, warm, clear day.  After a bit of shopping in the street fair being held just outside the cafe's entry, Jude and I bid our friends "safe journeys."

It wasn't an hour later and we were already missing their company.

A Year!

It's difficult to believe but Jude and I have lived in Paris, France for a year.  We just celebrated our anniversary, in fact.


We rushed to get out of the US.  It was as if someone loaded us into a Circus cannon and pointed us in the direction of the Most Beautiful City on Planet Earth.

The president of the company I worked for did his best to publicly humiliate me in front of thirty or forty colleagues over the course of a week.  I was surprised that he failed to find any value in the things we were doing _for him_ so that _he_ could see an increase in the value of _his_ stock options.

My layoff meeting lasted thirty minutes.  It felt like it lasted a week.


Our shock at writing a $1200 check to the COBRA insurance company for the privilege of holding a piece of plastic we could show our physicians was enough to last a lifetime.

Our surprise in realizing the Unemployment Insurance barely covered the COBRA costs was only a little less than the writing of the aforementioned check.

Our house shockingly sold in a week.  This in a severely "down" market (ie: during the time the US experienced the biggest transfer of wealth upward to supposedly deserving Bank Officers since, well, the .Com Collapse and the Junk Bond Collapse and the Savings and Loan Collapse).


Our visitors visas for France arrived in a week.

Our small storage unit (to cover Plan B should living in Yerp not work out) was filled with the residue of our lives in the US in a week.

Our Farewell to Family trip took a week.

Things in America seemed to have a cycle time of one week.  It all happened so quickly.


Integration into Paris culture and life would likely happen on a longer time scale than one simple week.

What we moved to included many obvious things and some of the rather not so obvious.

It's obvious why people love Paris, France.  There is so much here to see and do.  It's a great place to retire, in fact.

The food in the markets is, on the whole, incredible.  Things taste better here than they did in the US.  The food system in France is not run by Giant Food Corporations.  Instead, it's a sustainable system of food production that ensures excellent quality from production through to consumption.  In the US, if it doesn't taste like Pulpy Cardboard, it can't be "real" food.


The museums are worth visiting many times.  A yearly membership to the Louvre is nearly obligatory.  A person can go back as many times as they like and they'd never have seen all there is to see and appreciate.  In the US, culture is reborn every morning and nothing of value is seen in Old Stuff (unless you watch the Antiques Roadshow, and then it's the little trinkets and gee-gaws that seem to hold value, monetary value, but how much appreciation beyond the money is unknowable).

The public transit system moves people throughout France efficiently and cost effectively.  We currently live car-less in the 15th Arrondissement, which is near the edge of the city.  Yet we can be anywhere in Paris in around 25 minutes.  Many of the best places are closer than that.  By Metro.  By l'autobus.  By RER regional train.  It doesn't matter.  You can get there from here.  In the US we required une voiture to travel even a few hundred yards.

What wasn't obvious to us was that Great Baguette could be difficult to find.  After several months of searching for Great Baguette, we stumbled on a wonderful little place, only to have it change owners over the course of Les Vacances last August.  It took me a few more months to find a suitable replacement Boulangerie.  In the US, Wonder Bread is the answer to all your Bread Problems.


What wasn't obvious is that the French actually have a wonderful sense of humor.  For instance, when a Mini, boxed in by a delivery van, sounds it's horn for minutes at a time, residents know that eggs can be used, when accurately hurled, to turn the horn off.  Simple and effective.  In the US the horn would have been silenced by people using guns and lots and lots of bullets and several similarly well-equipped SWAT Teams.

What wasn't obvious is that peace, real peace, can be felt when advertisers and news-persons on the Tele aren't telling you how sick you are, how much you need the latest new widget, and how much you need to be afraid.  It's bizarre to look back and realize how much we were preyed upon by corporate advertisers and corporate controlled news outlets.  It wasn't obvious until we looked at the facts, but living in Amerika, a person is 5 times more likely to die of homicidal violence than we are living in Yerp.  We laugh when people in the States complain about violence in Mexico. It's all about perception, isn't it?

What is obvious includes two fundamental things that we've come to realize and experience for ourselves.  The first is (as our friend Don pointed out several years ago) wherever you retire, you will, slowly but surely, put down deep deep roots.  The second is something we knew before moving here; it would take a lifetime to experience and enjoy everything Paris has to offer.

Who Profits...? [part two]

Things have just gotten rather interesting here in Europe.  To "save" banks from supposed failure, the EU is taxing The People.  This, without debate, without discussion, and without consent.  People here see quite clearly that the rich will be protected at all costs.


Zerohedge says it correctly when they said...

"...Let's be quite clear; the European Union has confiscated the private property of the citizens in Cyprus without debate, legislation or Parliamentary agreement...Please note that until yesterday all depositors in Cypriot banks were insured up to the value of €100,000 with any one bank. Today that solemn governmental promise has been shown for what it is; a lie... Nothing now; Nothing is safe!"

On Friday, Jude and I went to share a light meal with our landlords.  Part of our discussion included thoughts on what might happen should The People be pushed too far.

We agreed that here in France, people will not sit by and let things "take their course".  That, we understand, is what happens in the USA.  No one rises up to shout "no!"  No one takes power from the greedy 1%.  Rather, ever more power is given to those at the top of the economic heap.


In France?  Well, let's just say things will be different.  Time and again, history has shown that the French are quite good at reminding the rich overlords who actually can become quickly in charge here.

The anglo-saxon press has started talking about similar taxes being placed on private bank deposits in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.  Afterall, if the Germans and Dutch can pull this little coup on Cyprus, then there's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing to other countries that are in steep debt with the EU.

Though little is being said openly, I imagine people are thinking they might withdrawl their monies to avoid the German/Dutch "bank tax."  If a run on the banks in Europe begins, watch out!  Anything can and will happen.

Who profits...?

File this under the heading, "Things that make you go Hmmmm...."

How you Americans can put up with the Greedy Bastards who own the place is beyond me.  What benefit do you actually see from allowing and enabling the top 1% to do what they do?

Here are a few facts to warm up a conversation.

• US corporations stash 40 percent of their profits outside the US
• $166BILLION in US corporate profit is parked offshore in 2012
• 2/3rd's of US corporations pay no tax at all
• Jobs are shipped to China where labor is cheaper and the supposedly brains sharper
• The Middle Class in America is now only a memory of it's former self

Here are a few facts about how the top 1% is getting wealthier.

• In just salary alone (ignoring annual stock option sales), SP500 CEOs make more than 300times the average amount of their employees.
•  When adding stock option sales in 2011...
• Apple CEO Tim Cook gained $377MILLION+
• Nike CEO Mark Parker gained $35MILLION+
• Danaher CEO Larry Culp gained $21MILLION+
• In November 2012 on just one day's worth of trading...
• Danaher CEO Larry Culp gained $59,686,600 on November 22, 2012 when he sold just 1MILLION shares of his stock options (you should see what he sold on subsequent days too!)
• Danaher board members the Riles brothers gained $755,550,000 on November 24, 2012 by selling 15MILLION shares!
• This is the at the same time (2012) when Danaher Corporate officers permanently "reinvested" $9.3BILLION in revenue overseas to dodge paying any taxes on that money

This stuff goes on every single day in America and no one blinks an eye.  In fact, a large part of the population are rabid supports of this level of greed.  The top 1% are even called "job creators", when the opposite is actually the truth.  Nice "feel good" dodge from reality, don't you think?

Given the facts: What are you people thinking, that you would allow some people to amass this kind of money while jobs you could perform are sent to China?  Do you really feel that powerless that you do nothing to help yourselves get to a different and better place?

 

Black Smoke?

Damn!  No Pappa.  Not yet, at least.  The smoke was black last night.


From watching Telematin this morning it looks like the Men in Dresses have closed the doors and are arm wrestling, or whatever they really do in there, over who will be the next Prince of the Church.

I'm stunned.  But not from what you might think.

You see, my wife and I were in the kitchen cleaning the dishes.  I'd just finished washing a frying pan and Jude was drying it when she put her nose to the pan and said "here, smell this, it still smells like onions."

Being the dutiful and curious husband, I bent forward to put my nose where her's had just been.

THONK!

Right between my eyes.

I'm stunned and backing up to lean against the frigo.  No time to say "ouch."  No brain capacity to process what just happened.  Yes.  I'm still stunned.  Jude's wet hands felt the pan's sudden shift and could do nothing to prevent the rather minor attack on her husband.


Which brings me to the costs of healthcare here.  Had I needed a doctor, which I don't since the THONK to the head left only a Small Red Spot and there's nothing to be concerned about, it might not have cost me anything.

Here in France, unless something is urgent, you head to the pharmacy first to see if they can diagnose you and provide the right medicine or ointment or treatment.  If it's beyond their ability to help, they will send you on to a regular doctor.  Right then and there you can have an appointment made for the very same day.  Once your doctor's visit is done, you hand the Good Doctor between 21 and 24Euros and go home.

My wife and I carry major medical insurance.  It costs us around 2000USD a year total for the two of us.  And this is the expensive insurance.  Next year we will likely buy into a European plan and the price could drop as much as 40 percent over what we're currently paying.

Back in the United Corporate States of America, we paid 40USD to see a doctor _and_ had the privilege of paying an insurance company to manage, oh, I don't know, maybe how the money was best deposited to the CEO's bank account?  Each month we handed over 1200USD to the greedy unhelpful bastards.  Yes, that is 14,400USD _each and every year_ to claim the right to hold a piece of plastic that said we had something called "insurance."


 See the difference?  Not yet?

OK, how about this: The United Corporate States of Greedy Business Bastards has you ranked number 37 in the world for healthcare.  Yes.  Number thirty seven.

Any guesses on who's Number One (and Everyone Loves a Winner, don't they?) in the world?  Oh dear.  You will have to scroll a Long Way down the Business Insider web page to see it.  So I will not hold you in suspense any longer.  It is France (and Everyone Loves a Winner, unless you are a medical industry CEO who doesn't want you to know you're paying Way Too Much for Every Thing in the UCSofGBB! and no! it is _not_ Mr Obama's fault as his approach is based on the German system of medical care which cuts out the Greedy Bastards and you've been held over a barrel by your Republican "business friendly" hoards for decades).

How can it be that the county that pays the most for health care in the world is ranked so low?

How is it that France provides the best care for it's citizenry at 2/3rd's the cost of the UCSofGBB?

When you take into account denied benefits (thank you UCSofGBB "insurance" companies), the cost of pharmaceuticals (have I yet mentioned that the cost of one of my wife's medicines here is less than 2Euro out of pocket for something we paid 20USD back in the UCSofGBB for the very same thing?), the fact that the medical industry lobbies the UCSofGBB more heavily than any business, and, finally, add the fact that "healthcare" in the UCSofGBB is a For Profit Business (as opposed to being a basic human right that everyone has access to) and you can see what drives cost.


Pure and simple: It is greed.

Meanwhile, here in France, a social system has been in place for many decades that ensures quick, easy, efficient, cost effective access to healthcare.  Heaven forefend I refer to such a social systems as, oh, how shall I put it?, Socialism.

This leads me back to the beginning and il Pappa and the odds on favorite being the Archbishop of Milan.  It's time to turn on the TV to see if the smoke has turned white.  The costs of US medical care are no longer a concern for us, just so long as we stay away from that costly country.

News Update:  Il fume noir!   Nous n'avons pas un Pappa.  Bientot, peut-etre.  

It's a horse race!

In a month where an enormous enabler of international terrorism was reported to be "too big to jail", and in a week where North Korea showed the world it loves nukes, comes news of a different sort worthy of our close attention.

But first, let's check in with the World Gangsters, shall we?


When I was young and oh so naive I used to believe that governments were created to protect the citizens of their country while enabling the doing of Good Things.  Waking up to reality is one of the reasons we left the US.  The dream had been burst and reality was just too much to take.

Where else in the world would HSBC, a rather large international bank, be allowed to avoid jail, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it broke nearly every banking and terrorists money laundering law on the books?  This "walk" has been granted by that guardian of US law, the Department of Justice, thank you very much.

What about money laundering for an enemy of the US (do you remember al Qaeda and M.bin Laden)?  What about channeling money for the Russian Mob?  What about being the bankers to the Drug Lords of Mexico (the guys who contribute to Mexico's homicide rate being twice the US rate, and, oh, about ten times higher than Europe)?  Apparently these are not infractions of supposedly well written law worth jailing anyone for.  The only thing HSBC received was a slap on the wrist fine of about 5 weeks of profit.  That's it.  So, where's the justice?


News of the North Korean nuke test came and went with the speed of a speeding dove of peace.  In free-fall.  After being shot out of the sky by a rouge nation.  What?  ICBMs capable of hitting places around the world isn't news enough to push the latest gossip scandal off the headlines page?  Tipped with nukes a rouge nation is actively testing?  Nah.  That's so 1950's, isn't it?

What has become of the US?

Meanwhile, in Europe, things are a bit different.

Watching Telematin on France2 TV revealed something very interesting.  The smiling laughing reporters and TV program hosts had me at the first giggle and snort.  There's something very infectious about a good laugh.  Add to this that the story involves men in dresses, lots of smelly incense, colorful robes, and tall pointy hats and I just had to sit up and take notice.


It turns out that enterprising Canadians, standing in the middle of Saint Pete's Square in the Vatican, are making book on who will be the next Pappa.  People there were excited about having a true Race for Glory and a declaration of Possible Sainthood.  I didn't see any money change hands.  That had to be taking place off-camera somewhere.  Conveniently, an authority on Vatican politics wandered by and offered his opinion of the Canadian odds.  It seems the Kanucks have it just about right.  Sweet.  This is serious business.

Now this is simple cause and effect news I can appreciate and understand.

It was certainly better than listening to how Gangster International Bankers, Gangster Russian Mobs, Gangster Mexican Drug Lords, and the top 1 percent Gangsters of the US get a pass on facing any even a menial form of justice for their continued arrogant and highly profitable misdeeds.

Cost of Living...

Something caught my eye this morning while browsing CNN Money today.  It a banner article about the most expensive cities in the world.  CNN believes Paris, France is the 8th most expensive city to live in.


I looked at their prices and wondered where they shopped.  For instance, CNN says bread here costs $8.95.  Even assuming a healthy conversion from the Euro into USD, there's no way I would ever pay nearly $9 for a loaf of bread.  I doubt I could find such a thing, unless, that is, we shopped at le Bon Marche, on a particularly costly day.  Come to think of it, I don't know of one place in Paris where you can spend that much money.  I wonder where CNN came up with such a thing?  Perhaps they ordered bread at a bar in a very pricey hotel?

The next item on CNN's list is something I don't know anything about.  Milk.  It's listed at $2.55 a litre.  To my way of thinking, would you rather have a litre of milk or wine?  Full organic biodymanically grown vin can be found for less than 6Euro for 75cl.  We're grown ups, ferkripesake!  So let's just get down to talking about the real stuff.  The good stuff.


Which is where CNN trots out an expensive three course meal for four priced at over $2100.  Gee, isn't that a lot more than the typical one months rent here?  If you're that much of a sucker for pricey food, I'm sure you can find a chef in any city in the world who would be happy to take your money.

Before we moved here, we checked to see that on many lists Paris was ranked number 19 in the world for expenses and was expected to drop further.  That was back in 2011.  In the summer of 2012 (just last year), Mercer published a survey of the most expensive cities around the world.  I was not particularly surprised to read that Paris has indeed dropped it's placing to being number 37 on the list.  This is well behind Tel Aviv at number 31 and just ahead of Milan which is taking up the number 38 position.

Make no mistake, it's expensive living here.  The officially reported (and by official, I mean French state published studies) price per square meter for living space remains over 8,000Euros.  The next five largest cities in France cost just above 2,000Euros per square meter.



So what gives?

Well, I suppose CNN needed a splashy headline.  Or it could be that different criteria were used to judge the relative expenses between cities. Or the CNN "news" could be the product of wishful thinking.  Whichever excuse CNN might give, I find it interesting to read how US media reports on the world outside it's borders.  I wonder if the American mindset is, yet again, being controlled through propaganda and lies.

What if the real "message" is that you have it good there and that the rest of the world is too too expensive to live in, so don't you dare think about moving away, because we, the Corporate States of America, know we deserve the money you are so privileged to give us.

Yes, this is a rather dim, narrow, anti-capitalist view, but what other way is there to understand such statements like CNN publishes?