La Vie Niçoise

You know the saying "out of sight, out of mind"?

Yesterday I was shown this photo of Vancouver.

Sure, it's a little overglorified and idealized in that picture, but Vancouver still remains one of the most beautiful places in the world to live. And when I saw that photo of home-sweet-home...

*wail* I MISS YOU GUYS! *wail*

In that moment, it all rushed back to me. I miss the mountains, I miss Ichibankan $2.75 sushi, I miss not being able to get work done in the ASB, I miss counter-burning Timbo, I miss random Fridays... I miss EVERYTHING.

Of course, I'm enjoying the excitement and change of living in France. It's wonderful, don't get me wrong. I suppose this is just my first bout of homesickness. It took 6 weeks. Is that normal?

On another note, I'm thinking of taking a spontaneous trip out of town this weekend. The question is, where? I've got from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon. Maybe Biot? Grasse? Or farther inland, perhaps...? Or Italy? Spain? Hmm. I like Andy's idea of spinning a bottle.

Okay kiddies, time for a french lesson. Today we'll learn the expression "sécher un cours".

Example:
Yesterday I had class from 8:00AM to 7:30PM with only one 45 min break for lunch. Gosh, was I tired. Today, I started again at 8:00AM, and by the time 5:00PM rolled around, I couldn't bear another 2 hours in tutorial hell. Donc j'ai séché le cours, and went grocery shopping instead.

Who can guess what it means? Babelfishing est strictement interdit.

I chose to come to Nice for various reasons, and high on the list was the existence of a beach. Sun, beach, palm trees, oh my! But had I actually taken advantage of the fact that the beach is just a leisurely 20 min walk away? Of course not, that would be the smart thing to do.

Well, luckily I have a friend who *is* smart and urged me to make proper use of my dimanche.

I went alone, armed with a book and coursenotes, but I actually just ended up sprawled out on the blanket taking a nap in the sunshine. The lack of sand and abundance of small stones didn't bother me too much. Just imagine, looking out onto the glimmering ocean, with Café del Mar's ambient spanish strums setting the Ibiza mood, doing nothing, thinking about nothing.

I'd never quite succeeded at clearing my mind like that. Flashback to 6 months ago when I'd wake up at 6:00 in the morning, unable to get back to sleep, because I was worrying about some upcoming CSSS event. Not today, my friend, not today.

Last night Sabrina and Kati invited over their friends from school. English was spoken in abundance, and I finished off a whole bottle of banana juice.

Ma chambre was the chosen room. I had just recently rearranged the furniture to make room for fabulous floor picnics like this one!

Et voila quoi.

Sitting here listening to good ol' Matthew Good. If Blogspot had a mood indicator thingie, I'd be set on "complacent."

It rained today. For the first time it wasn't just a quick ourage lasting an hour, it was the real fat-droplet I-feel-like-at-home cats and dogs kind of rain, filtering in and out the entire day. I'd forgotten rain's grey and dreary depressing effect. But I suppose it's good for the soul (and the plants).

It also cleans the streets of Nice. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's that I have to walk along the sidewalk with my head down, examining the ground, as if I couldn't bear looking people in the eye.

Why must I subject myself to this anti-social, nerdalicious behaviour? Why, because every 100m, a kindly french dog walker had decided that yes, the pavement of the public streets makes the perfect recepticle for Frou-Frou's canine dejections. I won't elaborate as to why I'm particularly bitter, but you can guess. (gah)

On a less angsty note, I’m getting my bank card tomorrow. Finally! One more step in becoming a real person. I can’t believe how much I had to go through just to put money in there though. At one point, I was walking around downtown Nice with 7600 euros ($11,400 CAD) in cash on me. Kind of a cool feeling, a little dangerous and exciting, while empowering. Yeah, okay, stupid too, but what could I do?

My mom was *supposed* to wire the money directly into my bank account, but being very much like me, she took the path of highest-exchange, in this case being Western Union. Alright, sounds good, all I have to do is go to La Poste, the post office here which provides all sorts of other services. “It’ll arrive within 15 minutes of me sending it,” she tells me, “Go as soon as you can!”

Perfect, I have an hour lunch break, I told myself on Friday. I’ll go between classes. So I take the 15 minute walk to the nearest post office to my university. But no, cassé*! Post office closes during lunch, muahaha sucker!

Okay, I’ll take my chances Saturday morning then. La Poste is open, miraculously, so I line up for 10 minutes at the branch closest to my bank. Western Union only dispenses their money transfers in cash, so I’m understandably a little paranoid.

Are they going to just count out my life savings at the counter, in front of everyone?

I get up to the caisse and greet the woman with a friendly “Bonjour” and smile. She’s behind a swath of thick plexiglass, so I slide the transaction slip through the metal slot and wait. Her eyes bulge a bit as she reads 7600 euros, the maximum amount Western Union can send overseas. I guess she wasn’t expecting that from the placid-looking girl in flip-flops and a zip hoodie. Heh.

“Attendez,” she says, as she gets up to talk to her manager. At this point, I start to get this weird feeling in my stomach. It ain’t going to be this easy, is it…

“On ne l’a pas.” They don’t have that much. Et alors?

“Il faut que vous alliez à La Poste à la rue Thiers." (You’ll have to go to the post office on Thiers street.)

On Rue Thiers? Okay, this is not good... I’ve been to that post office before, the one across the street from the train station. The post office sandwiched between creepy buildings with pink neon SEX signs, surrounded by gaggles of gross guys whose eyes auto-lock onto any warm-blooded female passing by.

I suddenly feel really tiny and helpless. I needed my money, but I’d have to walk my cash through the red-light district of downtown Nice. As I walked towards Rue Thiers, I thought of calling up a friend from school to act as pseudo-bodyguard, but there wasn’t time. Besides, me? Getting all damsel-in-distress? As if.

I hate walking through that area though. Instead of looking at the ground to watch out for dog-doo, I keep my head down to avoid the glances of the creeps hassling me with

“Bonjour Mademoiselle, c’est quoi ton prénom?” (Hey babe, what’s your name?) or

“Vous savez, je suis vietnamien aussi.” (You know, I’m from Vietnam too.) Bastards.

Well, at least the post office wasn’t as bad as I thought. After getting the same blinkety-blink, tugging-at-hair reaction, the lady called over a colleague, conferred some more, and said “Vous allez au fond, à la porte là-bas.” (Head down there to the door at the end).

Cool. I felt so James Bond as I passed through not one, not two, but three electronically controlled doors, and arrived in a dimly-lit room with a small bullet-proof glass window. And within 30 seconds, the transaction was made, and a wad of 500’s was tucked safely in my body belt. Shut up, it’s not granny, it’s *functional*.

And there you have it. As the bank was closed that day, I bee-lined it straight home to stow away my treasure…well, with small detours:

“Omg, jeans for 10 euros!”

“Wow, Haribo candy store!”

I wonder how many gummy Schtroumpfs I could buy with this...

---

*cassé! - slang term which loosely means “shut down!” or “what a burn!” accompanied usually by an inwards, palm-up karate chop gesture.

just spent an hour on an update.

clicked publish

it did not publish

went back

message lost

*cries*

You know what sucks?

Using a cell phone as an alarm clock,
Setting it for 10am on a weekend,
Getting startled out of a dream by that annoying ringtone,
Jamming the button to stop the ringing,
Muttering curses,
Seeing the phone display an "End Call" option,
Sleepily hitting the button again...

... and realising that I just accidentally mumbled "f*ck" to my auntie and hung up on her.

Oops.

Another awesome day. *continues smiling broadly*

Today I:

• Re-acquired my mad badminton skillz
  
• Learned how to properly chop shallots
• Laughed more than a hyena watching Robin Williams Live on Broadway
  

Here's how it went down.

Noon: Kenzo and I meet up to sneak into the open badminton session "jeu libre" at the gym. I say sneak in because neither of us have our carte de SUAPS (athletics card), another one of the things that requires a carte d'etudiante, woo!

It also requires a medical certificate from the doctor attesting that you're in good health. Holy bureaucracy batman, I have to pay another 20 euros just to get that checkup done!

Anyway, le type there was cool with us playing sans carte SUAPS for now, so we smacked the bird around till we were red in the face. Left me with a wave of sky-high endorphins which I would I ride for the rest of the day.

It was then off to Kenzo's for a late lunch. He lives with his brother in a studio that reminded me of Martin and Hans' place in Port Moody. Talk about geek heaven! A 24" (TWENTY FOUR INCHES!!!) LCD flatpanel, server closet, TV-enabled Dell box, and the requisite wall-mounted whiteboard. I was drooling all over the place, and we hadn't even cooked the risotto* yet.

Brian showed up a bit later. The guy is hilarious. And now that I can understand what he's saying in French, tant mieux! He was, in Kenzo's words, en plein forme, cracking jokes non-stop till we had to leave for our evening class with Prof Kounalis. Then two hours with the greek professor himself, who couldn't stop fawning over his jolis multi-coloured overhead projector slides... j'adore!!

Laughing is wonderful. I never want this to end.

*Incidentally, the risotto was made with white wine, but don't worry kids, the alcohol does evaporate. But I couldn't help smirking when he poured the wine out of a 255 mL tetra pack. Not a bottle, a tetra pack. All that was missing was a hole for the straw! Is it like that in Canada too, and I'm just ignorant of all things alcohol-related?

Alors, en fait, je crois que j'arrive à commencer à penser en francais. Sinon, j'ai remarqué que je peux parler plus vite! Whaou! Aujourd'hui, je sais pas pourquoi, mais je suis tellement, tellement contente.

Je viens d'arriver du cinema, ou mes collocs et moi ont regardé un film qui s'appelle... je ne sais plus, mais c'était beau! Je te jure! Il me rappelle d'Amelie ou bien Garden State. Je souriais pendant tout les deux heures.

Hahaha sorry, I just feel so pumped. This weekend has been fan-duper-tastic. Seriously, I've forgotten all about whatever-those-worries-were from last week.

Friday, I stayed in and watched 2 hours of Star Ac', where Celine Dion was guest starring. My favourite, Ely, la quebecoise avec un super voix, won the top spot (woo!) I had these great intentions to practice some Scheme, but ... *rougis*

Saturday was just a day in heaven. There's just something about cruising down the voie rapide with the windows down and the music cranked up. I sat with my arm propped on the sill watching the palm trees go by, sunning my face as the wind kissed my cheeks, not knowing it also was turning my hair into a veritable birdsnest of auburn and noir. But I didn't care.

"This is the life", I thought, as we passed mini villages of whitewashed stucco and deep red clay rooftops. And for the first time, I actually toyed with the idea... What if I stayed here? What if I stayed in Nice indefinitely? And then I went back to rocking out with the poprock blaring out of Bro. Alphie's rearseat stereo speakers. Maybe I'll come back to that idea later.

We arrived for lunch at a villa out near St. Paul de Vence. Now, St. Paul de Vence is actually a walled city perched atop a hill. One of those artsy towns I need to visit at some point. Anyway, we weren't at St. Paul de Vence.

Man, it was like we'd followed the yellow-brick-road, emerged from the forest and behold! A clearing with the most beautiful sight ever. A quaint yet luxurious villa carefully constructed of rounded stones, covered in emerald leaves and vines. A bridge arching over a gurgling brook out back. Ponds with white and orange carp. Tall birch trees providing cool shade from the sun...

Oh, and lots and lots of Filipino food.

So yeah, I swam, I bathed in the sun, I ate like a pig. It's ok, I'd been eating like a student for the last week anyway. I'll leave it at that, as the pics speak for themselves.

When I got back that evening, Kati and Sabrina, two of my German roommates, invited me to watch the Emperor's New Groove. So we lounged with blankets on my leather canapé and I popped Kati's movie into my laptop. I felt so deficient... they have all these cool movies on their computers. And I, the supposed technofreak, has... rien. N'importe quoi. Went to see another movie tonight at the cinéma, and honestly, I don't even know what the movie was called. But it was really good!! (If you know what the follow-up movie to L'Auberge Espagnole is, please let me know.)

So yeah! Once again, it's La Vie Nicoise. The Nice life. Parfait.

Let's just leave it at this:

Pas vrai.

I'd been looking forward to today for a while. It was my day of maturity, kind of like my 21st birthday or the day I passed my road test.

Today I was to receive my U of Nice student ID. You think I'm joking, but the student ID card is quite literally the key to life, the universe and everything.

With ma carte d'etudiante, I would be able to open a student bank account, get a discounted bus pass, apply for financial assistance, register for that university TaeKwonDo class, take out (comic) books from the university library, buy cheap food from the school cafeteria... go swimming, horseback riding... ;)

So, I got to the university super early to line up, the eager beaver I am, and whip through the first two booths where they checked my documents and took my money. Finally, I get to the booth labeled "Carte d'étudiante".

I proudly present my dossier, stamped all over with random approvals, and grin at the lady. "Voilà." She's like the rest of the staff, barely acknowledging my existence but with a curt nod as she takes the papers. I don't care, I keep smiling because I'm about 2 seconds away from getting my prize.

She looks up at me over the top of her glasses.

"Ta carte de séjour?"

I give her that confused look that's been perma-frozen on my face for the last 3 weeks. Gears spin in my head as I realize she's asking for my French residency/study permit, the thing I was gonna get the next day.

"Je croyais qu'il faut avoir une carte d'etudiante avant d'avoir une carte de séjour."(I thought you needed a student ID card in order to get the residency permit.)

"Non." And she rambled on a for a few seconds before I realized... You need to get the residency permit BEFORE getting the student card. And yet, the government doesn't grant you the carte de sejour w/o proof of enrollment. Um, chicken and the egg problem, no?

"Tiens." She passed me a sheet of paper attesting that I was temporarily enrolled at the university.

My face darkened as I realized I was NOT going to get my carte d'etudiante that day. Sonuva!

As I stormed out of the office (well, knowing me, it was more like shuffle out sorta dejected-like) I vowed to go straight to the préfecture to get that damned carte de sejour. After asking 4 different people, taking the bus in the wrong direction and checking the internet, I was finally on a bus heading out to the prefecture in Nice Ouest, past the airport, in the boonies, about 45 minutes away.

I was worried, because by that time it was already 3:30, and knowing French administration, the prefecture was probably closed already. Had to take my chance, though. I couldn't spare another moment without my student id card, 'cause I urgently needed to open my bank account so my mom could wire me the rest of my savings.

The buildings grew taller and newer as we left the downtown part of Nice (opposite, eh?) and I stood up to ask the bus driver the requisite "Are we there yet?".

"Non, pas encore, blablablablabombe" (No, not yet, ???????bombe)

I had him repeat himself, but I still couldn't make out the last part of his sentence. Darn, it seemed important too. I should brush up on my french expressions, I thought to myself.

When the stop finally came up about 20 mins later, he repeated that incomprehensible sentence and gestured in the direction of the prefecture. "Merci." I hopped off the bus and started heading in that direction, but got lost again within 9 steps.

"Pardon," I stopped a french skater kid walking down the sidewalk within his friends, "Tu sais ou est la préfecture?" (Do you know where the prefecture is?)

"Oui, c'est la." He pointed to a cluster of buildings about 200 metres away. "Mais il y a une alerte de bombe, tu vois la police?" And that's when I looked around at the police motorcycles speeding past, the sirens, the flashing emergency lights.

Une alerte de bombe. A bomb scare, at the prefecture! THAT's what the bus driver was trying to tell me!

I looked at the kid again, and asked one of more stupid questions that make me rival Phoebe from Friends.

"Alors, c'est fermée?" (Um, so it's closed then?)

Yes, Angelica. Another brilliant deduction.

Also, as promised, the mystery of the two towers. This is what I saw every time I walked to my lecture theatre (the building hidden in the very centre of the photo). For the longest time I thought there was a castle behind my school.

Check out what I ate today. It's a sandwich american-style, complete with fries! I'd advise against looking if you get queasy when you see roadkill...

Lunch

Finalement... la vie nicoise est la vie calme. Je suis démenagé hier soir à mon appartement au Nice centre. Et comme il est bien situé! 15 min à pied de mon fac, 2 min de toutes autres choses. OK that's enough french.

Today was a very up and down kind of day.

Up: Found out we're doing a hella cool project in our "Interpretation" class, where we output postscript to draw turing machines. Plus I've already got super partners to do the project with.
Down: It rained today.
Up: The rain stopped within 10 minutes.
Down: I started to get a little décue (sad) as the day drew to a close. I guess it was a combination of homesickness, the weather, and frustration. Frustration because I felt like I was going to burst from all the constant french.
<siderant>
Sometimes I feel like I've a waterfall of things to say, trying to squeeze through a tiny funnel. Blargh, I've turned into a quiet little thing in front of my french friends 'cause it takes several seconds to form a sentence. By the time I arrive at the translation, the moment has passed, ya know?
It goes like this:
Idea in my head -> english, english -> french output
It's the intermediary english stage that drives me nuts. Grr... why can't I just get TRANSITIVE already.
</siderant>
Up: Met an english-speaking German roomate, and indulged my need to gab. Seriously, I don't think I've had such a serious case of verbal diarrhea (joli, non?) but it was definitely a relief ;)
Down: Got blisters at my first capoeira class.
Up: The class is 70% guys, and they're all HOT.
Down: Won't be going again next week 'cause the movements are too violent for my ACL-lacking left knee.

Alright, time to crack down and either sleep or do work. Hm, let's see, l'optimisation combina - zzzzzzzzz.....