Techno Parade (Part 3) : Katapult Afterparty

Well, I tried to take some pictures of this event, but you can see from the few pictures I'm posting here that it was really hard to get any decent images. All of the dry ice smoke and oblique lighting made the flash turn everything hazy, and setting my shutter speed really low made for a wobbly picture. Meh.

Similar to last week, I'm blogging the events of the night in relation to the times of DJ sets. The actual DJ sets at the Katapult event were a bit different from the ones posted ion the flyer above. Baby Ford had cancelled, I didn't see DJ Kodh or DJ Instant, but Cabanne made a late-night appearance.

23h00-2h00: Alex & Laetitia

At 23h00, I was still at home. Having learned my lesson from last week (or so I thought), I stayed home and made a spicy Peruvian version of pasta aglio e oglio (Garlic & Oil) by adding some ajì mirasol. I checked my mail, did a bit of research on the whole Space Invaders / Joachim Garraud thing, and then hit the road around 0h00 (midnight). Even at night, the métro was surprisingly fast, and I ended up approaching the location, Point Ephermère, at 0h30. For the record, this corner of Paris (métro Jaures) is really delightful. It has a small canal with old brick quays that remind me of Amsterdam in a funny way. Here's a picture I took of the exterior with a long shutter (2s, ISO 80) and no flash. I took it after I left the club, but it seemed appropriate anyway. The club is actuall down at water level, underneath the street.

Yes, it's blurry. Shaddup.

The location was "intimate" (read: small), which worked well for this party, since they were competing against many, many other parties that night, including the official afterparty. Alex & Laetitia got the party rolling, spinning low-key but very danceable microhouse. Again, I was here too early; this time, at least, I didn't literally open the place. There were maybe 20 people already there, not including the staff, and thankfully that included about 5 people making various attempts to get the dancefloor started. I ordered a drink and once again asked for one and got two. I think this is because the word for "one" (un) and the word for "two" (deux) have really similar vowel shapes, so it's easy for the bartender to presume that my "d" was just inaudible. While I sheepishly paid for my two drinks and started double-fisting (best word ever) my vodka tonics, I took note of how others made their orders. In violation of all French grammar that I had been taught, everyone leaned over the bar and just yelled their drink, without an indefinite article. That is, rather than saying "a vodka tonic, please," they would just say "VODKA TONIC!!" Of course, we say that all the time in English, but I had been under the impression that definite/indefinite articles cannot be dropped in French without sounding like a tool. Well, lessons learned. At 6€ per drink, I might add. No wonder nobody leaves tips.

Once I had taken care of my drinks, I took out my camera and started playing with the settings, trying to get a decent shot. I was hoping to document as much of the party as possible, but my camera was being recalcitrant:

Taken with a 1/8s shutter, ISO 200, no flash
Taken with 1s shutter, ISO 80, no flash

These were my no-flash attempts. As you'll see from the photos of Skat, the flash photos didn't go much better. I later (i.e. Wednesday) discovered that my camera has a "high sensitivity" setting that takes pictures at a really high ISO exposure, so maybe that'll work better next time. Nonetheless, hazy look of the first pic above and the blurry but luminescent look of the second catch the affect of the night, if not the details. I like how, in the second pic, a spotlight is shining across that guy's shoulder and face; it's a bit beatific.

Returning to narrative: I gave up taking pictures for the moment and got to dancing. The floor slanted suddenly in one spot, in a way that was not easily visible, but potentially dangerous. Later that night, the bartender would slide across it as she came out of the bathroom, bumping a guy with a drink and getting beer right down her shirt. Aside from the floors (which are admittedly crucial), the place was good to go, and it eventually filled up. As is my usual practice, I eventually made my way to the front, put my bag down on the stage, and got to workin it.

2h00-3h00: Skat

As Alex of Alex&Laetitia wrapped up the set, Skat began setting up his equipment to a rather excited crowd. Here's a few picks of him setting up. I used flash this time, which reflected off of the dry ice smoke and created a foggy effect that I am none too fond of.

1/8s; ISO320; flash
1/30s; ISO 400; flash

I don't know if the crowd was excited because Skat was coming on, or if the mere fact of a DJ-change promised an elevation in intensity (which, I'll admit, is often the case). Either way, I was certainly excited to hear Skat live after falling in love with his single on the Katapult: Various Artists 2 release on Karat records, "Ur Not The Same." It starts with beautifully shattered, inarticulate vocals, that eventually meet up with a penetrating but soft microhouse kick & hi-hat pattern. Anyway, the set didn't quite go as expected. Skat had set up his laptop, but then tried to cue up tracks on the turntables and line them up with whatever was coming out of his laptop. There were more than a few misalignments that sounded a lot like trainwrecks, and the time it took to cue up the two sound sources seemed to keep him constantly off guard. Whatever program he was using on his laptop (I couldn't get a look) seemed to de-sync every once in a while, and create odd changes of tempo that I don't think was intentional (see this short video I took of such a moment—see how he lunges at his laptop). Also, he seemed to be interested in continuing the Techno Parade's salute to 20 years of house (what date were they using?), because frequently broke the flow of music to introduce black-gospel-diva vocals that eventually returned to a house beat. This created a stop-and-start rhythm to the whole set that works well with classic Chicago house, but didn't sit well with the minimal/microhouse expectations of the crowd. A few people in the crowd made their opinions known, and Skat yelled out a few choice words to his hecklers. Despite his combatative stance, however, he gave up the turntables and got to a more consistent microhouse laptop set by the 30-minute mark.

3h00-4h00: Mikael Weill

Mikael Weill, on the other hand, was as exciting live as he was on the same Katapult/karat records release, entitled "Ça caille" (trans. "It's fucking cold). In fact, if you're a fan of minimal house, I strongly recommend going over to Beatport and doing an artist search for Mikael Weill; great output overall. Strangely enough, although Weill's set was the best of the night for me, I have little to say about it. It was great from beginning to end, lots of crackling, offbeat, glitchy high-pitched patterns matched to thick bass kicks, and he was using Ableton Live. I this lack of comment is also partially due to the fact that I was distracted by the unfolding drama of a guy trying and failing to pick up a girl standing next to me. Also, there was this amusing moment when a woman standing near me saw a friend she obviously hadn't seen for a long time. She made thrilled noises, leaned in to kiss him, and then saw the cigarette in his hand. She pulled back abruptly, and then proceeded to lui casser les couilles ("break his balls") about how he had started smoking again. After all the stereotypes I've come to know about French smokers, it was amusing to see a young Frenchwoman give her friend a very public and very loud tongue-lashing over his smoking habit.

4h00-6h00: Cabanne

Although not as thrilling as Weill's set, Cabanne was great; he's also on that Katapult/karat release (see above) and available on Beatport. I found his sound to be more house than techno, a bit more soft and emotional while still very much intense dance music. It also felt more fleshy; I don't mean to say that the other set's weren't very much embodied, but rather than something about the music made reminded me of the soft firmness of flesh. Perhaps I shouldn't write these while I'm eating. Unlike Skat or Weill, Cabanne didn't do a live laptop set, but instead chose vinyl. But at around 5:30am, Mikael Weill joined Cabanne with his laptop and they had a brief but lovely jam session: crackling glitch over smooth minimal house.

At one point, a friendly, smiling guy came up to me, made eye contact and then fanned me with a flyer that he had in his hand. I thanked him profusely (it was really hot) and we had a brief conversation. At first, I thought he was being flirty but eventually noticed that he was grinding his jaw. Aaah, Exstasy. One day, I'm going to make a t-shirt that says "Pills make French people friendly." It plays on a not-entirely-true stereotype, but I bet it would get laughs here.

Epilogue

As I came out of the club, took another look at the canal, beautiful from a distance, but encrusted with filth up close. Mercifully, a night spent in a smoke-filled bar killed my olfactory senses for the time being. I made my way across the bridge to the métro station and stopped for a picture (see above). As I put my camera away, a male-female couple caught up to me and asked me for a smoke. When I said no, the guy said, "Hey I saw you up front tonight, dancing like a madman."
"Yup, that was me."
"You saw me as well, I hope."
"Of course, you were right there to the left of me."
"Right. Well, g'night!"

It wasn't until I was in the station that it occured to me that he might've been expecting some sort of compliment on his dancing. Or maybe recognition was enough.

After an uneventful métro ride (it was 6am, so the métro was running again) I stumbled back through my local boulangerie, bought a pain au chocolat and a baguette, made my way home, and closed those light-sealing blinds on my window.

Filles de Calvaire and Symbology

Alright, here's a bit of random-sighting ephemera from the Techno Parade:Here's rue des Filles de Calvaire, where Carla and I rented an apartment for a lovely week last summer. Remember this view, Carla? This is looking down "our" street from the métro station during the Techno Parade. Nostalgiarrific!

Also, I found this neat bas-relief over a portal on a building called Les Arquebusiers. Anybody have an idea of what this might mean? Erika: aside from general trinitarian connotations, do you recognize this symbol? Just curious. The old Templar site is in this area, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if there's something going on here.

Luis does IKEA (and suburbs)

OK, so the preceding part of the day was mostly unexciting, so let's get it out of the way:

Although I don't usually work on Fridays, I went in to the office to arrange for a parcel to be sent out with the busted battery of my UofC laptop (as opposed to my personal laptop). Apple replaced it, but sent it to Chicago, so now the IT dept in Chicago has to do a complex swap-by-mail to get the defective battery back to Apple within their delivery window. I got up and headed towards work, stopping at my boulangerie to get a pain au chocolat and a sandwich jambon-fromage (ham & cheese sandwich--prounounced sahndwEEsh). I was again amazed at how fantastic croissants and their many derivatives (pain au chocolat, chausson, oranais, etc.) can be when they're fresh out of the oven. Mmm! The chocolate inside was still warm and gooey. For lunch (yes, I actually ate lunch today!) I ate the sandwich, which was fantastic. Keep in mind that the French version of a sandwich is all about the bread. It's half a baguette, cut into a sandwich, and given a thin layer of filling. The texture is completely different from a New York Deli-style sandwich. It's almost like a grilled cheese sandwich, where the filling is not melted.

But the big event of the day was going to IKEA! I had a bunch of little things that I knew I could get well and cheaply at IKEA (storage boxes, tabletop shelves, etc). However, as most of you probably know, IKEA must operate in a large, large building. The result for Paris is that all of its locations (and there are about 6) are really far away. Most of them are in the distant burbs—at least 45 minutes by transit for the closest one. So I headed out to the Roissy-Parc des Expositions location on the RER B and then took the bus connection over to the "centre commercial." It was, effectively, a cluster of industrial parks, with a large strip mall in the middle. My first view of the place was this:Do you see the name of the store? Castorama. Now, I don't know if there's another explanation, but castor is the french word for "beaver." So this store is "beaver-rama." But here's the best part: it's a HARDware store.

Behind me in this mall was this odd restaurant, which seemed to serve everything under the sun. Look at the signs on the building:You may have to click on the picture for the zoom-in. It lists: Pizzeria, Take-Out, Crêpes, Grill, Vietnamese, Couscous (a synecdoche for N. African food), and there are partially-obstructed signs for Chinese food and a café. is this the French equivalent of a food court?

Finally, here's the IKEA, shot from over a scenic hedge:Ah, familiarity! IKEA in France was both similar and different from North American locations in a creepy way. It wasn't creepy in a twilight-zone sort of way, but rather in a this-is-just-like-home-but-WAIT! sort of way. Everything that I expected was there and laid out in a similar sort of way, but there were slight differences in product lines (often more/brighter colours available here). Also, they didn't give out plastic bags at checkout. Instead, you either bought/brought one of those blue IKEA shopping bags, or you buy some of their recyclable brown paper bags at 0.20€ apiece (the bags are HUGE, tho). I wandered around, trying to suppress the urge to buy everything. Thankfully, the prospect of getting everything home on public transit kept my shopping impulse in check (mostly) and I left with two large paper bags and a wooden shoe rack under my arm.

Since I head eaten rather well for breakfast and lunch, I decided to finally try McDonalds in France. It was the only resto nearby, and I had always been very good about avoiding MacDo in France. When I got my Big Mac meal, it was rather expensive (6.20€=$7.84US=$8.77CDN), so i presumed that maybe French food-quality laws (or consumer disdain) forced McDonalds over here to be of a higher quality. But no. It was the same paper-thin leather patties, with wilted vegetable filling, soggy bread and it was stacked in a haphazard way that was all too familiar. Thankfully, my disappointment was mitigated by a scene that I was witness to in the McDonalds dining area. There was a couple in their 50s with what must've been their grandchild (looking to be about 2 years old). The three of them put on a wonderful demonstration of mirroring dynamics. The boy was transfixed by his grandparents, especially their faces, and would mirror their facial expressions and gestures. In turn, the grandparents would mirror his affect. They would smile, he would smile. he would burst out laughing, they would laugh with him. Whenever he succeeded in putting food into his mouth (and not on himself), the grandparents would clap vigorously and cheer for him. He would then, with his mouth full, cheer back and clap his grubby hands and smile. I don't know if he was aware that the applause was to congratulate him, but the "eat food" = "happy time" connection seemed to be well in place. So cute!

With that over with, I put the Paris suburbs behind me and got back on the RER...which SUCKED. Keep in mind that, although the RER is a commuter train system that intertwines with the métro, Parisians treat it and use it like the métro. This means that the same understanding of "full" applies here, as well as traffic volumes. The train wasn't very full when I got on, but as we approached Paris, more and more people got on, until it was just like being on the métro during rush hour. Through all of this, I had two HUGE bags of IKEA crap, plus a wooden shoe rack that was unwieldly to say the least. The good thing was nobody shot me dirty looks for riding the train with packages. The bad thing was they also blithely kicked and stepped on my stuff. I got home with my stuff intact, but my mood was not. Nothing a bit of IKEA bricolage can't fix! My apartment is now a bit more comfortable and a bit more organized; yay!

Epilogue

So, I'm on the platform for the RER B heading to IKEA, and I see this T-Shirt:Do you see what it says? Nietzsche. That's right. Someone, somewhere, has made a Nietzsche t-shirt. What would he say? I actually have no idea whether he would've liked or hated it. I wish, I wish, I wish I could've offered you a better shot, but I had to take this hastily and incognito—pretending to "fix" my camera—since the platform was busy I had no good reason to be taking pictures of an RER platform.

Chocolate, Ají Mirasol, and BHV

So, first, the pictures:

I saw this lovely façade as I was heading down avenue Sébastopol from the Pompidou Centre towards BHV. Apparently, it's now running as a theatre, although the engravings on the lintels say épicerie, which is a sort of grocery store, but they also say "all for one and one for all." I'll have to find a way to get in there for a show and get a closer look. Here's a detail of the lovely art nouveau doors:

So, after a day of convalescing from a cold, I got up and went to work. My head was still a bit full, sinus-wise, but nonetheless I was ready for work. I had a couple of slices of bread with mustard and rillettes (I don't think I'm allowed to buy rillettes for at least a week, lest this become a habit), and then I took off. Although the weather outside was rather brisk and threatening rain, the tunnels and trains of the métro were disgustingly hot. Actually, I think it's just my métro line (ligne 11), because other subway lines are only steamy on hot days. Anyway, I arrived at work already steamed like a dim-sum dumpling.

Work itself was mostly unexceptional, although I stayed late to help my boss install a new hanging LCD projector. The old one broke, but we couldn't remove the hanging fixture, which was securely installed right through the false ceiling tiles. So we had to do a fair bit of bricolage to make the new projector's supports work with the old projector's fixture. I got out about 3 hours late, but that was OK, since I had taken Wed off.

Afterwards, I had a few "errands" to run: buy some chocolate at Maison du Chocolat, check out that traiteur péruvien to see if they sold the peruvian foodstuffs that I wanted, and a swing by BHV to get a set of fine pliers (to put my earrings back in) and some removable adhesive hooks.

Stop #1 was at the Place Madeleine location for La Maison du Chocolat, where a young french guy did his best to perform French Snooty Formal Service. It came out as a bit of a caricature: excessively polite forms of address, without a hint of a smile and more than a hint of disdain. Thankfully, I was there for chocolate, so I didn't care much what he thought of my presence. I ordered a handful of bonbons, and then a 100% cacao chocolate bar and a 34% cacao milk chocolate bar. Later that night, again ruining my appetite for dinner, I ate all the bonbons.

I then took the métro to the Étienne-Marcel métro station to look for this Peruvian restaurant/store, Casa Picaflor. As I came out of the métro, I was completely confused as to which way to go. This is unusual for me; usually I can walk out of a subway station, lok around, and quickly "feel out" the cardinal directions. I don't know what it was about the landscape there, but even with a map it took me almost 10 minutes to figure out which direction I needed to take to get to this place. The place itself was a narrow, 10-seat hole-in-the-wall kitchen that nonetheless seemed to serve good food. I'll have to return for a night of ghetto Peruvian sometime. In the meanwhile, I checked out their selection of Peruvian foodstuffs. I got 2 bottles of ají amarillo molido (mustard yellow, smoky and spicy), one bottle of ají rocoto (bright red, very spicy), and one of ají panca (dark red, tastes like hot peppers without the bite). Mission accomplished! I'm one step closer to making real peruvian food. These hot pepper pastes, along with fresh and dried peppers from the region, provide the base flavoring for almost all Peruvian food. It's a bit like garlic for Italian food. So, I bought those bottles of ají, took note of the other Peruvian things they had for sale, and then got a can of Inka Cola for the road. (By the way, is it just me, or has every indie boy in Chicago started wearing Inka Cola shirts? What's up with that?)

My final stop was at BHV. An acronym for Bazar Hotel de Ville, the store's name is a pretty accurate description. It was one of the first grands magasins (the 19th-c. version of a department store) in Europe, opening in 1856 across from the Hotel de Ville (city hall). Unlike other grands magasins in Paris, BHV actually models itself as a sort of large, multi-floor bazaar. As a result this store is a dizzying, cluttered, but very useful collection of everything you might hope to find. If you need 1000€ bedsheets, you'll find them here. If you need a specific size of gasket for your plumbing, you'll also find it here. So I got there with about 30 minutes to spare before the store closes (again, most stores close here around 7:30pm!), and zipped around looking for a pair of fine pliers to put my earrings back in (I had taken them out for a passport photo). I found them just as the store was closing, but had no luck with my other project: removable adhesive wall hooks. You know those 3M "Command Adhesive" things that you can use to hang a hook and then remove it later without ruining your paint? Yes, well, that's nowhere to be found in France. I don't know why, since that sort of thing would seem really useful for a populace that still largely rents their home. If anyone reading this has successfully bought one of these things in Paris, please email me ASAP. I don't get why this is so !@#$ difficult. Meh.

When I got home, I settled in, ruined my appetite with chocolate, did a bit of blogging, and then ate some leftover risotto and hit the hay.

Another portrait attempt

Ok, so this is Take 2 in trying to post a photo of myself that I can then use for my blogger profile. It's not the cutest photo I could've taken of myself, but this is what I look like at 9am, when I took this photo. In time, I'll take a decent photo of myself. So, let's see if this starts off a long string of comments like the last portrait post....

Bleah

Ugh. So I woke up this morning with the makings of a fine cold. It was unpleasant, but not intolerable, so I started to get ready to go to work anyway. It takes quite a bit to fell me. However, I noticed that my throat was sore and my lymph nodes were doing the balloon thing, so I decided that I was probably still contagious. Stoicism is one thing, but nobody at work will forgive me if I bring this to work.

And thus, the entry for today is very short. I hung around in my pj's, napped, took a shower, ate nearly an entire baguette's worth of rillettes, mustard, cheese and butter (not at the same time, of course) and generally wasted time. Since I considered today to be a day of convalescence, I did nothing productive. I didn't do any special reading or research, I didn't search the web for useful things, and I didn't go out to buy necessities or anything. Speaking of which, I took this photo of my fridge, because anybody who knows me can be certain that this isn't how I keep my fridge stocked:Pretty tragic, huh? What you see there is a couple of bottles of San Pellegrino (they're relatively cheap here), a bottle of milk, a bottle of spaghetti sauce, a tub of rillettes, and that wine-glass thing is actually Maille™ mustard. The fridge looks so bare because I've held off on buying fresh produce until I can go to an actual green-grocer or better yet a market. There's a market that I recall from my last stay here in the Marais (Marché aux Enfants Rouges) that I am really fond of. Until then, the fridge is a bit bare.

But the image is misleading, because what you don't see are all my dry goods. On the shelf above the stove, I have a new box of green lentils, a big bag of arborio rice, some butter, spaghettoni, 1/2 of a chorizo, and some hot chocolate mix (as well as spices, garlic, oils, vinegars, etc). So, although my fridge looks so bare in that last picture, I was still able to make this:Risotto! I used a similar preparation to the one I made last week, but I used lardons instead of chorizo and I didn't have any shallots available. Oh, and I used two beef bouillon cubes and 1L of water.

Peruvian Food and French Books

Finally! More on both elements of the above title in a moment...

There were several lessons learned today, and the first was: if your first "meeting" for the day involves setting up a NetGear ADSL modem to work with a NetGear wireless router, cancel everything else. The Paris-boss (rather than my Chicago-boss, Val) came to the residences today with a replacement ADSL modem to fix one of the two wireless networks in the building. It was, of course, nowhere near as simple as it should've been, and we spent ages changing one setting and then testing, then changing another setting and testing, and then... Thankfully, once everything was finally up and running, he gave me a ride to the Centre in his car. Good god, is he a Parisian driver! He drives with that mixture of insanity and sang-froid that I both fear and admire.

Work was a relatively short day of rather straightforward IT support. I also took advantage of the lunch break (everyone else was gone anyway) to skip out and get some sushi at a restaurant around the corner. I got the Chirachi (Chirashi) combo, which was nice but the fish was sliced rather thin. Although the fish was mostly of good quality, you don't get the meaty portions of fish you get in N. America. I suppose I shouldn't expect fantastic sushi in Paris. That's sort of missing the point.

At some point while at work, I realized that today was September the 12th, which means yesterday was 9/11, the 5th anniversary of the attacks on the WTC. I found it somewhat surreal that the date had passed me by; in France, there was very little to be seen or heard about it in my everyday walking around the city. On my way home tonight, I finally saw a magazine cover with a photo of the collapsed twin towers, but little else. If I had been in the US, I would've been reminded every hour on the hour by all media outlets of the significance of the day. There would've been memorial ceremonies in public places. Ribbons tied to things to profess various feelings about the consequences of that day. Instead of moments of silence in Paris, there was the silence of everyday traffic.

And now, to the upbeat part of this post! One of the lessons I learned today comes in two parts: 1) it's really hard to find Peruvian foodstuffs in Paris; and 2) but it pays to ask around. Yesterday, I had asked a friendly columbian guy working at the front desk in the residences whether he knew where to buy decent ají (hot peppers/chiles). In particular, I didn't just want a selection of jalapeño or banana peppers. I was looking for a place where I could get poblanos, chilakiles, habañeros, and most of all peruvian varieties: mirasol (amarillo), panca, limo, rocoto. Nothing cures homesickness like food from a country you weren't born in! Well, I'm not actually homesick (this is Paris, after all), but it's kind of funny that "home" in Canada for me also includes food from Peru. Anyway, today this same person told me that he had checked with some mexican students, and they said they just used sweet green peppers, and then added a couple of little thai chiles to make is taste like mexican chiles. Hmm, workable but unsatisfactory.

Thankfully, I had also been doing some research of my own, which culminated in my afternoon at work. The day before, I had done a google search and found an old news article reporting that Hédiard, one of the most chi-chi specialty grocery stores in Paris, was carrying Peruvian specialties in recognition of Peru's distinguished culinary traditions. I immediately went to the Hédiard page and emailed their customer service adress with a plea for information. This morning, I got an email back, saying that, alas, they no longer carried Peruvian foodstuffs, but they had worked in tandem with a Peruvian traiteur(like a restaurant with an emphasis on to-go food) in Paris. The email included a link to the traiteur's website, Casa Picaflor, and the site listed all of the usual Peruvian suspects: all the hot peppers, soup and sauce mixes, even lúcuma powder! I gasped with such delight at the news that the doctoral student in the office across from me looked over to see what was wrong. I haven't made it to the store yet, but that's on my schedule for tomorrow...

My other big event for the day was that I finally went to Gibert Jeune to buy some French-language books My plan had been this: since I'm in France, why not read "French theory" in the original? I know it sounds masochistic, but I'm a doctoral student, it's how we work. I was also excited to take advantage of the livre de poche (pocket-book) culture here in France. Most books, from recent fiction to scholarly essays, are also published in small, hand-sized formats that fit into a jacket pocket or a small bag/purse. Moreover, they're priced at much lower levels, and Gibert Jeune stocks used books alongside new ones. So I spent about 250€ in total on 21 books of "theory" classics, including a ton of Foucault, Lyotard, Deleuze & Guattari's two-volume work, Lefebvre, Durkheim, de Certeau, Attali, and Bergson (and a few others). It was a bit of an ordeal getting the books, however. Gibert Jeune is so big, it actually sprawls across several locations around the Place St.-Michel in the Latin Quarter. There's one main 5-story store that includes some basic history, poli-sci, fine arts, literature, stationary, and pocket-books, but then there's also a humanities and social sciences store, a technology and medicine store, a foreign language store, etc. I made two stops and left with both arms heavily laden with books...

...And then I got on the subway. It was the same experience I had on the bus yesterday. This time, I planted myself in a corner of the subway car with my bags between my legs and the wall. I was safe and secure. And then some guy with a large guitar piles in (along with 1521392342084 more people) stands right in front of me and presses his ass right into my crotch. From what I could gather, this was not flirting, this was "It's crowded in here, so I'm going to momentarily suspend my French Personal Space Bubble and sqash you." I also think part of it was "It's really hot in here and my deodorant failed; perhaps you'd like to share this moment with me."

On the way home, I went by the boulangerie, books still in hand, and got a baguette (mmm! the afternoon batch!) along with a round "rustic" loaf. At home, I put my newly bought books onto my shelves with a certain satisfaction. I'll admit it, I'm a nerd. There's a reason I'm at U of C, after all. Dinner was the entire baguette (it was too good to stop) spread with hot mustard, rillettes, and cracked peppercorns. And then I took this picture of dusk from my window:

Shopping Malls in Paris are Creepy

So, Monday was rather uneventful, so I totally forgot to even take any pictures. Trust me, there wasn't much to see. I should've taken pictures of the shopping mall I went to, but I'm pretty sure me snapping photos of the place would've been a bit, um, out of place.

On mondays, I come in late (based on my new office hours), so I slept in (mmmm!) and rolled into work around noon. Of course, there was plenty waiting for me when I got there, but it was all fine. After work, I had planned on heading home, doing a grocery run for a few things, and then heading off to the famous bookstore in the latin quarter, Gibert Jeune, to buy some French-language books (more on this tomorrow).

However, my after-work errands turned into the entire evening, really. I was interested in hitting a Carrefour grocery store, which is sort of like a watered-down Target married to a high-octane grocery store. Imagine if Target invested less $$ in securing designer contracts for their clothes and furniture, and directed that towards a full-service grocery store. During the day, I also overheard one of the French teachers telling a student to check out Darty for cheap electronics and other éléctroménagier (i.e., appliances). A quick internet search revealed that both were in a shopping centre nearby, so I decided to head out on foot and check it out.

Now, I've included a screen capture of the GoogleMap for this trip(click image to enlarge), just to give you an idea of how close this place was. That should've been a 30-40 minute walk, tops. But note that the path recommended by GoogleMaps is for a car. What I didn't realize was that this shopping centre had been designed specifically for car access, there was still token pedestrian access (as I would soon find out), but this whole thing was obviously designed with the notion that American car culture was going to turn the Paris suburbs into a car-only area real soon. So take a look at that crazy interchange of cars right near my destination, and imagine that most if not all of those are highways and their variuos on/off-ramps. The only way to get into this place on foot was by one very narrow sidewalk that ran across one on-ramp, across another off-ramp, and eventually through the service entrance of the underground parking lot and into the building. Yes, that's how pedestrians get in.

What should've been a 30 minute walk turned into 90 minutes, as I kept on trying one on-ramp, coming to a dead end, turning around, trying to cut through a park full of homeless people, turning around, etc... By the time I finally got there I was ready to shop. I walk through the underground parking lot to the entrance to the mall and ride up several escalators to the third floor before I realize that the shopping carts are all located on the parking level (so you can take your groceries directly to your car). I drag my ass back down there and realize these are the shopping carts that require a 1€ deposit to use, and all I had were 2€ coins. F*ck. Thankfully, a somewhat bemused valet attendant (yes, there was valet service available) helped me out and I finally got my cart and joined the French consumer masses.

For what it's worth, the food section at Carrefour was fantastic. Certainly, it was not the finest France had to offer, but I found a lot of special items that would be impossible to find in a budget grocery store in North America—and I even found Rillettes du Mans! (here also is the French Wikipedia article, which is more accurate) This is a specialty local to the place where I stayed for my exchange program almost 10 years ago (Le Mans). Essentially, it's well-cooked pork, shredded, and then chilled in a suspension of its own fat. Yes, I know what that sounds like; this is one of those dishes that you must try once, and you will either love it or despise it. It's spread like a pâté over bread and/or toast, but I find it a bit greasy on its own (duh), so I make a little sandwich with rillettes on one side and a layer of super-hot dijon mustard (of the sort you can't get in N. America) on the other. Mmmmmm...

Anyway, I managed to find pretty much everything I needed, made my purchase, and then walked another 1923409853419238 meters to get to the bus stop on boulevard Paniatowski (check map). Of course, the bus I (and everybody else) needed was running late, which meant that by the time the bus actually got there, it was already overcrowded before we got on. We crammed in, we me stacking my grocery bags in a corner, and I presumed that the bus had hit capacity. As the next 5 stops made clear, however, I was wrong. Each time, I thought we had maxed out the spatial proportions of the bus, and each time everybody just pressed in. It was a hot day, the bus wasn't air-conditioned, and deodorant is still optional in France (although it's improved a lot from my first vists in the early 90s). I was amazed at how French folks, who normally make the air-kiss the only form of everyday bodily contact, will at the same time pile into a vehicle with each other and engage in the kind of body contact that usually results in reproduction—were it not for the layers of clothing. And a note to any frottage fetishists out there: it's not sexy. Whatever fantasies you might have about rubbing up against random strangers in public will evaporate in the stench, heat, humidity and pent-up frustration of the actual experience.

I got home too late to go to the bookstore (which closes at 19h30 (translation: 7:30pm! How's that for European hours?), so I unpacked my groceries and opened a chocolate bar that I had bought at Carrefour. Without thinking I sat at my computer and at the WHOLE THING. There is a lesson in this, which should not be a surprise to most of you: Luis can't be trusted with chocolate. So, I didn't even have the urge to eat a real dinner until midnight, at which point my meal was hastily made spaghetti with some store-bought (but delicious) sauce. Ah well, it's Monday!

What's up with my EYES?

So I took this picture of myself (rather clumsily), with the intent of posting it here and then using it as my profile picture for my blogger account. But look at my eyes! Are they always that hazel? They actually look rather yellow, in a very alarming sort of way. Obviously, this won't be my profile pic, since I look like a madman, but I thought I'd share.

The day of rest, indeed!

Oy. So, after that eternal post from yesterday/this morning, you'll be happy to know that Sunday's report will be relatively brief. Those light-blocking blinds were very, very effective. I rolled out of bed at noon and it was still midnight in my room. I slowly dragged my ass to the shower, washed off the nastiness from the night before, and then took care of one final load of laundry. I spent hours writing up my notes / blog for last night, and didn't realize that I had veritably nothing in the way of food until it was too late to find it anywhere.

But then, I noticed that I had a cup of dry green lentils that I had inherited from DJ. Also, I had about half a portion of dry chorizo that was so fatty, that it wasn't really all that dry. I also had a small package of shallots that I wasn't crazy about; they needed to be taken care of. Also, as always, I had a ton of garlic. Hmm.

As you might expect from me, this resulted in my latest Scrounge Around Recipe: Lentils with Random Stuff:

Ingrédients:

• dry Lentils, soaked in water
• Chorizo, sliced and quartered
• Onions or Shallots, lots, sliced
• Garlic, at least 4 or 5 cloves, crushed or chopped
• 3 or 4 cups of water
• Rosemary and/or Thyme, dash
• fresh ground Black Pepper (although white would've been better)
• ground Mace, dash
• dab of Butter

Préparation:

1. Soak lentils for a few hours, until they swell a bit, then drain and put aside.
2. Put chorizo into the bottom of a hot saucepan, allow the fat to render out and create a frying base.
3. Meanwhile, prepare onions/shallots and toss them in as you go. Fry on medium-high until they are translucent.
4. Add garlic, stirring occasionally to prevent burning (if the chorizo wasn't very fatty, you may need to add olive oil here).
5. When the garlic has mellowed and cooked, add lentils and stir until the lentis are well coated.
6. Add water and stir, bring to boil.
7. Add spices to taste.
8. Simmer water while chastising yourself for not buying groceries earlier
9. Continue at a simmer until the water has almost completely evaporated, the lentils are thoroughly cooked, and a sauce has developed from the lentils.
10. Remove from heat, add butter, stir and let stand for a few minutes.
11. Serve.