some bumps in the RATP's politeness campaign

So, recently the RATP (the company that runs the subway system in Paris) started a new publicity campaign, called Aimer La Ville (“Loving the City”). Part of their campaign involves making subway-riding more pleasant by encouraging the riders themselves to be more pleasant. Thus, I’ve been seeing the following stickers around various subway trains:

Roughly translated, they mean “1 second lost in the station = delays on the whole line” and “when the doors open, I let people get off first.” There’s more, which you can find on these various blogs.

What you’ll also see if you read those blogs (and if you can read French) is that lots of people are not at all pleased with the implication of this publicity push: the problem isn’t with the métro, it’s with YOU. Also: rather than improve the system’s service, we’ll just cajole you into being more docile.

So it should come as no surprise that some people were inspired to respond with parody. Nonetheless, I was impressed with the quality of some of it. Today, on the way to work, I saw a sticker that perfectly duplicated the rainbow-gradient design and lettering, spoofing the sticker that usually says “when the buzzer goes off, I don’t try to jump on.” Instead, the sticker said, “quand j’entend le signale sonore, je pousse des vieux!” (when I hear the buzzer, I push old folks!) The duplication was so well done, I had to read it twice before I realized that it was a joke.

Well played, well played.

baby steps, baby

Not much to report for today, aside from being very, very tired from the night before and spending ages working on various tasks. I managed to get somewhere with my chapter revisions, but hit a wall with the transition from my review of intimacy literature to the discussion of touch as a mode of intimacy. I have pretty much cut out the intimacy review (to be moved to the intro) and replaced it with about 2 pages of summarizing. So now my discussion of touch needs to bear the weight of the whole chapter, which I think will require a more substantial reorganization than my mind could handle today. Nonetheless, it was nice to be able to check off the item on the list that said “work on chapter.”

Taxes and other demons

Well, I managed to sleep in thunderously late and feel all groggy. I didn’t fare much better when I started preparing to file my taxes.

You see, normally UofC’s office of international affairs (i.e., int’l students like me) offers an online tax application that helps you prepare your federal tax returns. However, this is only if you qualify as a non-resident alien. Somehow, I’ve managed to maintain that status for years before, but as of this year I count as a resident alien, which means I’m beholden to the same tax regulations as regular U.S. citizens. This is great in some instances (i.e., no taxation on scholarships), but it has its downsides. To wit, this online application won’t help me prepare my tax return as a resident alien, and most of the free tax-filing programs in the U.S. (for low-income folks) don’t know how to handle filing for resident aliens.

So I spent about 8 hours today scouring the web for the appropriate documents, reading pages upon pages of instructions, and hobbling my way through my own return. It was a colossal pain in the ass, I tell you, and I had a headache to show for it.

After all of it, though, I was able to get out of the apartment for a bit for some drinks. I headed to a friend’s bar, called “Ave Maria,” which was only a few blocks away from my place. The theme was Brazilian / pan-Latino apparently, with the appropriately kitschy and brightly-coloured décor. The place was packed waaaay more than I would’ve expected. I also didn’t realize that it was a restaurant as well as a bar, which became clear when I walked in and the whole place was rammed with tables that had every seat taken by diners and drinkers. Fun!

My friend was working at the bar, which made chatting with him pretty difficult, but we managed to say hello and he threw me a free mojito, so all was well. A little while later, a Franco-American friend of mine appeared in my neighborhood, so I went to pick her up from the métro station and then we headed over to On Cherche Encore to see Fantômette spin with another friend of ours. Unfortunately, everybody was apparently burnt out from the previous night (there were three big events going on), so the turnout was pretty disappointing. On the upside, though, I was able to chat with Fantô and introduce her to my Franco-American friend as well. Hooray for sociability! To my surprise, I managed to stay until the end of the night, but once they started locking up, I headed off home.

Live Impact #3 @ La Scène Bastille

I slept in this morning and then forced myself out of bed to hit the neighborhood market for some roast chicken, which served as both my lunch and dinner. I had a pile of fellowship applications to finish and submit, so I dedicated myself to that for a large part of the day, although I did allow myself a bit of distraction to break the monotony. I also managed to do a little bit of work on revising my first chapter, but it was very little more than inserting a paragraph here and correcting some grammar there.

Then, by 1h00 or so, it was time to head out. A couple of friends had organized an event at La Scène Bastille called “Live Impact,” which features only live sets all night. Two other friends had been booked to perform that night, 2 Buddies, alongside big-name Berlin DJ Guido Schneider, so I could hardly miss the event. I had been feeling sore all week from my spectacular bike accident last weekend, but I sucked it up and told myself that a few drinks would make dancing a lot easier.

Live Impact #3 @ La Scène Bastille

The streets around rue de la roquette were no longer closed for construction, so I was able to bike my way through to La Scène without having to go all the way around place de la Bastille itself (which is never much fun at night). I wasn’t on the list or anything, but I managed to nonetheless get a warm greeting from the doorwoman, who recognized me from all the previous events I’ve been to (the majority of which I’ve been on the guestlist). As usual, I was braced to argue with the bouncer about keeping my bag, but I didn’t have any trouble this time.

0h00-2h00: NewBorn

The opening set was delivered by the duo of NathanH and GuiGui, both of whom were also the organizers for the soirée itself. Their sound tends to be a harder style of techno than I usually follow, with rather heavy influences from the “electro” sound that tend to make it a bit too noisy for my tastes. Tonight’s set, however, was much closer to the kind of techno I like; while not quite “minimal” per se, the sound was less busy and more focused, giving the whole thing a lighter, more spacious feel. Also, their pacing of build-ups and breakdowns was much slower than usual, which made the set feel less frenetic.

Although it was still relatively early in the night (1h30), the room was barely ¼ full, which was certain to make the promoters nervous. Throughout most of the night, they wouldn’t get over 50% capacity (by my estimation), and a large percentage of the crowd were friends of the promoters, showing up in support. This was pretty disappointing, considering that Guido Schneider should be able to fill a room pretty much in any large city, but this was mostly explained by the fact that there were two other big nights going on tonight, including the OpenHouse party at Bataclan, and the Panik party at l’Elysée Montmartre. Both events are long-standing events that have dedicated followings, so most likely a lot of potential attendees had been drawn away by the competition. Win some, lose some. On the upside, I was able to dance comfortably all night without being trampled on.

2h00-3h30: 2 Buddies

(note: I don’t remember the playlist-times precisely, so these sets may have been a bit longer or shorter)

I was impressed with their ability to give a large-scale contour to a live set, which often tends toward deconstructed amorphousness, but the imposition of that shape made the beginning of their set difficult to get into. Following off of New Born’s rather energetic/hard set, the began with a very low-intensity sound, in which even the bass kicks felt muted. The texture was certainly very sparse and minimal (as was most of their set), but it lacked the sort of energy and focus that excellent minimal techno/house can have. By about 30 minutes into the set, the sound become more intense and driving, with a greater emphasis on punchy bass kicks and judicious use of dubby vocal fragments to provide some linearity among all of the circular loops. The level of intensity continued to mount until the end of the set, when it finally felt like they were using the complete range of the sound system. Their beats had a tactile force to them, the mid- and hi-frequency elements were intricately woven without being too busy, and the whole ensemble had a forward-driving feel, a velocity that had the crowd really excited.

3h30-5h00: Guido Schneider

Although 2 Buddies’ set ended with a lot of energy and intensity, there was still a dramatic contrast with the beginning of Schneider’s set, which immediately began with the typical Berlin minimal sound. The bass kicks were punchy and resonant at the same time, being pitched very low to give them a room-filing quality. They also tended to be rather mobile, tracing patterns that were more complex than 4/4 and often having slight melodic contours. On top of this were very sparse mid- and hi-freq elements, which were generally simple in their arrangement, but sonically complex (i.e., the samples themselves were very richly-textured). There was a lot less structure and shape to the set than the one that came before, but Schneider managed to fill the room with that Berlin sound: both massive and tightly focused. I was actually surprised; when I had seen him last summer at Tresor, the set was far too hard and heavy-handed, and when I saw him at Bar25 at the end of the summer, it was lovely but very light (appropriate for a Sunday afternoon).

5h00-close: Bruno B

Well, I’ll admit that I wasn’t hugely thrilled with Bruno’s set, but I think there’s just a simple difference of aesthetics. He was clearly punching out a good electro-tinged set that dipped into harder techno and even trance, but that’s rarely what I like, so I found myself disconnecting from the set and losing interest. I eventually said goodbye to everyone and headed back home, feeling more than a bit sore from a night of dancing.

Ironically, I have very few amusing and/or scandalous stories from tonight. I had a great time and really enjoyed everyone’s sets, but nothing extraordinary happened; I usually have at least one intense conversation with somebody or I witness some interesting scene of human drama, but nothing of the sort tonight. Considering my misfortunes last weekend, though, perhaps I should be thankful.

Oops!

Huh. Apparently I’ve been lax on my blogging lately. I totally thought I had posted something for today, but, alas, no. Well, nothing particularly exciting happened today, aside from roasting a big sea bass in the oven and feasting on fish, so I’ve got little to report. Oh, right: I spent the majority of the evening plugging away at some dissertation fellowship applications. Fun!

Of Teaching and Scrambling for Academic Funding

I’m back! Monday and Tuesday were really busy with the beginning of the spring quarter and the arrival of new students, but that was actually a good thing; it kept my mind off of my less-than-excellent weekend.

Today, I got a good bit of news from U of C: I got a teaching fellowship! At first I was under the impression that it was the Tave fellowship that I won, since that was what I had applied for (this pays you to teach a course of your own design). But then the email I got said that I could list this as a “Whiting Teaching Fellowship” in my CV, which was confusing, seeing as the Whiting fellowship is something substantially different (tuition + a large stipend for 1 year). After an exchange of a couple of emails, I figured out that it was a teaching fellowship in the same format as a Tave fellowship, but with funding coming from the Whiting family endowment.

Either way, I’ll be teaching a course called “Nightlives: Music and Nighttime” next year. Yay!

However, it’s not quite that simple. Next year will be my first year out of the funding package that brought me to UofC in the first place. I’ll still have a tuition waiver for the next year, but I need to find money to pay for rent, food, and other living expenses, and the teaching fellowship only pays $5,000. I’ve got two other applications in the works (well, I have many more, but these are the two where I have some chance). One is a dissertation-writing fellowship where I get a reasonable amount of money BUT I can’t take any jobs, including teaching gigs (i.e., I’d have to give up the teaching fellowship). The other is a job as a preceptor (editor / mentor / tutor) for the MAPH program (a general humanities MA program), which pays very well ($22K!), but also involves a lot of work-hours, so I’m less likely to finish my dissertation by Spring 2010 in that case.

So I’ve got that coming down the pipe, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there (how’s that for mixed metaphors?).

In other news, I made daurade rose (red sea bream) today, which has to be one of the most expensive fishes by weight that I’ve ever bought, but it was certainly tasty. The daurade rose is described as having a very delicate flavor and buttery texture. I agree with the first part; “delicate flavor” is often used as an euphemism for “tasteless” or “not stinky,” but in this case the fish did have a delicate flavor that was slightly buttery and salty. For the texture, however, I found that the flesh was far too soft. It wasn’t as bad as that vieille I had the week before, but nonetheless it was seriously lacking in firmness.

Nor do I like this very much, thank you

So I woke up this morning hoping that I would have a better day than yesterday, and here’s where that got me:

• On the way over to the pub where I was when I lost track of my phone, my bike slips on a recently-washed curb and I manage an action-film-style fall, where I’m sent flying over the handlebars and rolling to a stop on a cobble-stone street (yes, cobblestones).
• I do this in my nice leather jacket, which I still haven’t worked up the courage to inspect closely for damage.
• I only discover at the end of the day that I had rolled in dog shit, and it had dried onto the cuff of my jeans in the course of the day.
• The pub didn’t even have my phone, and the girl there made a half-hearted attempt at pretending to care enough to contact me if she did find it.

On the upside, I made a lovely sort of refried beans with urad dal, hot peppers, lardons, onions, garlic, coriander, fennel, mustard seeds, and unfiltered olive oil.

I do not like this, sam I am

So this was an all-around shitty day, although I had the pleasure of seeing Janine, a friend from Berlin, for her birthday—the one ray of fun in the whole evening.

I started out the day by waking up later than I had wanted and feeling sluggish. I tried to get some work done, but my brain just didn’t want to kick in. I had very little to eat at my place, and so I ended up walking to the Alimentation Générale across the street and buying junk food, which had the unsurprising effect of making me more sluggish. All in all, I didn’t get much done.

Then I went out to see Janine for her birthday at an “English”-style pub near Etienne-Marcel, stopping by Le Pin Up to say hi to Fantômette as she kicked this latest edition of her monthly residency. Drinks with Janine were great, although I spent less time talking to the birthday girl herself (who was obviously in demand) and more time talking with a friend of hers from Lille, who was really sweet.

Near closing time at the pub (2h00), we settled up the bill only to find that there were three unclaimed pints. We did the math and figured out that it was probably a couple that had left much earlier, which didn’t leave Janine very happy, as she ended up covering the remaining pints.

From there, we headed over to Le Pin Up, where things started going downhill. While Janine was upstairs getting shots, I ordered a round of “Bubble Le Pin Up” drinks, which were a mixture of vodka, champagne, tons of ice (too much, in my opinon) and flavoured syrup. I ordered them with violet syrup, which is sort of the trademark drink of Le Pin Up, but when the drinks were poured, the drinks had a pink hue rather than a lavender one.

I asked the server if he had put the right syrup in the drinks, and he got very defensive and snippy. I tasted one and said that it tasted like raspberry, and got more aggressive and snarky, insisting that he hadn’t made an error, taking out the bottle of violet syrup and waving it in front of my face, and implying that I was too drunk to tell the difference.

Janine was here trying to celebrate her birthday and Fantômette was concentrating on her DJ so I decided to do the very French shoulder-shrug “whatever” gesture and not complain about it to either of the girls. Nonetheless, I’ll have to tell Fantô about it sooner or later, because I’m not paying 12€ per glass for shitty service in a painted-over root cellar. There are plenty of places in Paris for me to pay 100% too much for watered-down drinks, and many of them employ servers that are at least civil. Thus begins the LuisInParis boycott of Le Pin Up.

I had to make it over to On Cherche Encore… before the end of the night to say hellp to PanPan and Aclank, since the former was celebrating his birthday, but that I was held up by the fact that I discovered my cell phone to be missing. I searched everywhere around where I had put my belongings, and I didn’t see it anywhere. I distinctly remembered pulling out the phone to check the time at the pub around midnight, so the only other place it could be was the pub. Janine (bless her soul) walked over with me to the pub and helped me knock on the window, where we were able to get the attention of the staff as they were closing up shop. They insisted that they couldn’t find the phone anywhere, so I had to continue with my night with possibility of me having lost my phone (and all of my contact information with it).

I biked over to On Cherche Encore at top speed, but when I got there it was already the end of the night and both DJs had stopped spinning. I tried to ask if they were still serving drinks at the bar—I could really use one at this point—but the guy at the bar was apparently the second asshole bartender of the night, brushing me off dismissively before I could even say anything.

Again, I chose to pretend that I was in a good mood while I made small talk with my friends and bade them goodbye (and I was certainly happy to see them, so I didn’t want to give them any other impression), but I soon found the performance tiring and headed home, hoping tomorrow would be a fresh start.

Fantômette's B-day (part 2) at L'Hotel des Sens

After sleeping in a bit in preparation for a big night out, I headed to the market to buy a roast chicken (which has now become my fortnightly treat to myself) and then proceeded to feel very, very full. I barely ate anything else for the rest of the day.

I took care of some administrative stuff and also did some work on the revision of chapter two, but I also wasted a large part of my day trying to get my internet connection working again. It seemed to be a server-side issue, so all of my attempts were really for naught. The thing just came back online spontaneously.

Later in the evening, I headed over to a friend’s place near Châtelet, where they were hosting a little apéro in preparation for our night out. I met a few new people, got to talk to a few other friends, and had a surprisingly in-depth conversation with one friend about the music of Steve Reich.

I also had an interesting conversation with one friend about “party friends.” Arguing against the notion that “you don’t make real friends in nightclubs,” he told me about how he met his current close friends, all of whom he got to know at nightclubs and many of which were perfect strangers that he spontaneously engaged in conversation. I’m going to have to corner him for an interview one of these days…

So…… Hoooooo @ L’Hôtel des Sens

OK, I’ll admit that the name of the event doesn’t translate well into English, but you’ll have to trust me when I say that it was a big hit. This was apparently the last “regular” night at this location, which is returning to its usual function as a swinger’s club.

The evening itself was pretty much a non-stop series of intense conversations with friends and strangers (plus a fair bit of drinking), so I’m not going to recount everything. Nonetheless, here are the highlights.

I had a long conversation with a girl that I used to see in the techno scene back in 2006-07, but who was pretty absent from this scene this past year. I remembered her as being adorable, effusive, tactile, and talkative—all of which was still true. She was still really interested in my dissertation project, we talked about that a length, as well as more mundane topics like how much she hated her current job, the difficulties of relationships between people of different ages, and so on.

Right as we were finishing a conversation on tactility and touching norms in nightclubs, Julie Dragon appears in front of us. She was apparently going to do a burlesque / striptease / fire-eating act in a few minutes, so she was walking around the floor, throwing fake rose petals while wearing 3-inch stilettos and a bright read leather corset. My friend gave her a playful pinch on the butt, and Ms. Dragon did not like that one bit. She turned around, still smiling, and proceeded to rip my friend a new one for touching her. My friend apologized, saying, “Look, I thought you were a guy [i.e., drag queen], and they generally react differently to that sort of thing.”

That explanation didn’t go over well, either, but she (my friend) had a point. She had a set of assumptions about what sorts of touch were welcome, permitted, or at least tolerated, based on the nightclub context, the composition of the crowd, and the gender-expression of the person in front of her, while Julie Dragon had her own set of assumptions and expectations that were influenced by the fact that she saw this setting as her workplace. Both of them saw their expectations put into question in this interaction, although Julie Dragon had the institutional weight of the club (as an employee for the evening) on her side.

What was also interesting (and unfortunate) was how this totally deflated my friend. She was angry, hurt, embarrassed, confused, exasperated, several other things, but mostly there was a feeling of disappointment that the tenuous and vaguely-defined interpersonal links that hold a crowd together had evaporated so quickly.

A couple of hours later, I was dancing downstairs and this guy approaches me and says, “Hey, I know you! We’ve met before somewhere…” It took me a few minutes, and then I recognized him as the boy from Toulouse that I met at Batofar nearly six months ago (not the one I made out with, but the one that constantly appeared to be getting it on with his friend). I managed to remember his name, his occupation, and even where he was from, which seemed to impress him. I told him about how the night that we had met at Batofar had become an important ethnographic anecdote for my research, which he found pretty amusing.

As some random girl started rubbing up against him and he got nervous (he has a girlfriend at the moment), we talked about male-male tactility again. He pointed out that he and his male friends would get frisky with each other precisely because there wasn’t the (perceived) danger of cheating on your girlfriend, having an unwelcome advance turn into accusations of sexual aggression, or even have casual flirtation be mistaken for a promise of sex. “On se chauffe, et c’est tout” he said (“We get each other hot, and that’s it.”), claiming that these homosocial/erotic/sexual/whatever interactions allowed him to have fun and experience certain kinds of sensual pleasure while avoiding the risks associated with heterosexual courtship. Of course, there’s the risk of being mistaken for homosexual, having his tactility be read as desire (probably why this happens mostly between friends), or even letting the playful eroticism spill over into a more sincere homosexual encounter (Boys Gone Wild!™), but those were risks that somehow seemed affordable to him and other Parisian boys like him—which marks a pretty big difference with most American/Canadian guys I see at clubs.

By 5h30, I was tired and ready to head home, but every time I did, one of my friends physically dragged me onto the dancefloor and stuck a drink in my hand. I did eventually manage to escape their attentions and get mysef on a bike back home, but boy was I wrecked.

Recipe: Arroz Chaufa

Well, I’ve been promising a number of people a certain recipe, and it’s time to finally put it up here. I still intend on photoblogging this the same way I did my aji de gallina a couple of years ago, but that’s not happening right now, that’s for sure. Anyway, before starting the recipe a quick aside: in contrast to yesterday and the day before, I actually had good luck with fish, resulting in delicious roasted pink trout.

Arroz Chaufa (Peruvian-Cantonese Fried Rice)

Note: I’ve translated a few terms into French for my Francophone friends.

Also, you should start marinating the pork the night before if you can, as the pork takes on more flavor and becomes more tender if it has many hours to soak.

And also, chaufa (like other kinds of fried rice) reheats very well and is often believed to be even better the day afterwards, so this is a convenient recipe for potluck dinners and other events when you want to prepare the dish in advance.

Ingredients

• 1kg or so of pork shoulder roast (or some other lean boneless roast); you can also replace this with chicken, tofu, or seitan (gluten).
• Brown sugar (cassonade) to taste (at least a 250g/ 1 cup)
• Soy sauce to taste (I use 2 parts light soy to 1 part dark soy)
• 1 tablespoon of ginger, freshly grated
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 3 cups of rice, white and long-grain
• 2 bunches of green onions (also called spring onions)
• 6 eggs

Preparation

1. Trim off any excess fat or skin (which you can later fry in a pan to extract the lard and use in frijoles refritos) and cut the meat into strips about the length and width of two fingers. Try to cut across the grain of the meat for more tender pieces.
2. Place the in a large freezer bag (sac congélation) and add the ginger, garlic and sugar. Add the soy sauce(s) until the sugar has just barely dissolved. The marinade should be very sweet. If you’re wary of tasting a marinade with raw pork in it, you can prepare the marinade in another bowl and then add it to the pork afterwards.
3. Push out as much air as possible and seal the bag and place in the fridge. This must sit for at least two hours, but ideally you should start the marinade the night before preparing the dish.
4. On the day that you’re going to make the chaufa, begin by preparing the rice. Put 3 cups of dry rice into a large saucepan with 4.5 cups of water and a bit of salt, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer partially-covered until all the water has disappeared.
5. When the rice is ready, transfer it to a wide casserole or tray, separate the kernels with a fork, and leave it to cool and dry out a bit (this makes for better texture; if you like, you can make the rice the day before as well).
6. In a hot frying pan with a thin layer of oil, lay down the pieces of marinated pork in one layer until the pan is full, leaving some space between the pieces. After 3 or 4 minutes, turn over and continue cooking. After 4 minutes, pick the largest piece out of the pan and cut in the middle. The center should be white or light pink and firm.
7. Remove pieces from the pan and place any remaining uncooked pieces into the pan and fry in a similar manner.
8. Once all of the pieces have been cooked, pour the marinade into the pan and boil over high heat until it thickens into a light syrup (when the bubbles begin to pile up into a mousse). Remove from heat.
9. With a fork and a sharp knife, cut the pieces into small cubes and place into a large bowl. Pour the thickened marinade over the pork cubes and mix to coat.
10. Clean and trim the green onions, remove any wilted layers, and then slice thinly.
11. Finally, it is time to assemble the fried rice. Have a clean non-stick pan (a well-seasoned wok also works) and a heat-resistant spatula or wooden spoon. Around the stove, arrange the rice, meat, and green onions near you, with the necessary serving utensils. Place the eggs nearby, with a clean bowl and a fork for whipping the eggs as you work. Also, have the bottle of light soy sauce and frying oil open and within easy reach. And finally, have a large clean bowl ready for the finished rice.
12. The rice is prepared in batches, so you will repeat the next steps 6 times.
13. Heat the pan until it is very hot. Spray or pour just enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan lightly, and then add 1/6 of the meat to the pan.
14. Reheat the meat, stirring constantly, for about 30 seconds and then add 1/6 of rice into the pan. Break up any clumps of rice and mix well.
15. As the rice cooks, crack one egg into the bowl and beat lightly with a fork.
16. Add 1/6 of green onions to the pan, 2 dashes of soy sauce, and mix quickly.
17. Create an empty space in the center of the pan, add a bit more oil, and pour the egg into the middle. Tilt the pan until the egg covers the center of the pan and runs into the rice at the edges.
18. When the egg begins to turn opaque and coagulate on top, push the rice back on top of the eggs and wait for 30 seconds. Then, break up the egg with the edge of your utensil and mix it into the rice.
19. Transfer to your serving bowl and repeat the previous 6 steps.
20. Serve and enjoy!