Someone Else is Living Your Parisian Dream

She was in the process of summarizing her latest American read, East of Eden.

“…and after Kate killed the Madame (I gave her the word), she turned the wore-haws into a place that …..”

“…makes men do…shameful things….”

After explaining that the correct pronunciation of “wore-haws” actually sounds like ‘hoor-house’, I repeated simply,

“Ah. Ok. So she turned the WHORE-HOUSE into a place for men with ‘sexual fetishes. ‘ Have you ever heard the term, ‘Kinky?’

And I was satisfied that she’d learned some new vocabulary, even if it had nothing to do with technology consulting.

After perusing the the huge Hanneford’s in Gardiner, Maine some months ago, The Husband and I got in line to pay for our cart full of groceries. An American grocery store was a refreshing treat, what with the aisles and aisles of junk food, junk pastries, donuts, chips and Big Bottles of Soda. Even more welcoming, though, was service with a smile.

As the cashier rang up our purchases, a young man - perhaps early college or high school age - began to bag the first of our groceries. This is his job -  bagging groceries -  and he was courteous, experienced, and relaxed as he joked with his cashier-friend at the same time. The jokes ended my French husband rushed to the end of the counter and jumped into action alongside him, hurriedly grabbing the checked items and stuffing them into the bags himself as the next ones kept coming.

Dumbfounded and possibly insulted, our ‘Bagger’ turned to him and asked, “Is there a particular way that you like to have your groceries bagged?”

And it was clear that he had no particular preference, as My Husband was just bagging things as quickly as he could, anticipating that the next customer’s groceries would come sliding down to mingle with ours, and lord forbid that she would steal our root beer. He had no idea that stuff like this just doesn’t happen in America.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, back in Paris, I stand in line at my local Franprix with my baby kangaroo, Max, strapped to my body. I’m sure that the employees at the stores in my locale, are ones who are unhirable by the larger and higher scale, Monoprix.

The clerk looks dazed, as if she hasn’t slept in 5 months. I begin to bag my own basket full of groceries hurriedly, so as not to hold up the line. I am careful not to crush Max’s legs against the counter and am slow, as I avoid hitting him in the head. I have so many items, though, that line of 6 people behind me must wait until I’ve made some room.  A little flustered, in a hurry, and hot because my son’s temperature generally runs hot, I bag my items haphazardly and shoot the clerk a dirty you-lazy-bastard look.  With a line of people behind me, she is unable to check any more items in until I’ve cleared some space. So sat idly, staring at her nails with dull eyes, waiting for me to finish.

(To be fair, though, the clerks at my local Daily Monop as enthusiastic and happy to bag the items for their customers. To my knowledge, this is the only grocery store that does this.)

One day in the near future, hopefully, when we have a space big enough for small parties, my guests will eat with potato sticks. Spudware is “cutlery made from 80% potato starch and 20% soy oil that’s just as heat resistant and every bit as strong as plastic cutlery. The kicker? It biodegrades in just 180 days!* SpudWare can even be washed and reused, so you can eat your potatoes with potatoes for months to come.

In the US, a party pack of 50 spoons, 50 forks and 50 knives costs just $20 at Treecyle, readers in the UK can purchase potato starch cutlery from online retailer Vegware.

Interested in buying in bulk? Spudware is available at wholesale from Califonia-based wholesale distributor Excellent Packaging & Supply. Each SpudWare purchase from EPS comes with a Certification of Compostability from the American Society of Testing and Materials.”

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/10/13/spudware-cutlery-made-from-potatoes/

I’d most likely wash and reuse a couple of times.

• In the US buy a set of 50 spoons, 50 forks, and 50 knives for @ $20, from Treecycle.
• In the UK, the same product if called Vegware and can be ordered from it’s namesake.  Doubters can order ‘free’ samples, but shipping charges apply. I’ll be ordering samples.

I’m especially charmed by the Vegware’s corporate practice of a operating a paper-free office (save for legal documents.  Downside? The wares are a little industrial looking, but the creative can turn that into a rustic look with the right accents, I’m sure.  Personally, I’d try to work with it.*I imagine that it needs some level of acidity to decompose…it won’t happen in your party supplies drawer.

Over the weekend as I spoke with some fellow bloggers, one of whose blog I am acquainted with, as well as her family photos, I casually joked about a blogger sighting from several months ago.   In reality though, the scenario startled me a bit, even though I wasn’t the subject in that story.

Months ago, while sitting on the terrace of a neighborhood cafe that we  frequent regularly I watched, with little real interest, a couple pushing a stroller across the street. Being a mom, not a stroller passes me by without my giving it a once over and this was no different than any of the other 60 strollers I see on any given day in my neighborhood.  It was kind of like mine.

Except that I recognized the baby.  It was a little unsettling for me to know as much as I knew as I almost immediately recalled the blog, the area in which the family lived and their general situation. And the scary thing…as I don’t read too many blogs, I had only read this one a handful of times since I don’t know the authors personally.  Yet I knew a bit about them.

I came across the blog again not long after, having forgotten the sighting or, not having thought much of it.   In the most recent post that I read, the author mentioned some care situations for their young child and I emailed, thinking that 1. we live in close proximity of them, 2. they might have a nanny that they like, and perhaps we could use them as well.  And I thought it was completely harmless as I came right out and said something along the lines of, “I saw you recently, but it was your baby that I recognized.”

And how scary that sounds, in retrospect.   Understandably, I didn’t receive any additional responses after the initial first one, before I mentioned having seen her family.

So, I’m redoing the site again with a good scrubbing of information of photos and rethinking whether/how/when to display Max photos/updates.  Maybe Max Mondays, just for the day?  Aside from sheer laziness and exhaustion from wrestling with him, chasing him around as he whizzes by on his belly-elbows-knees, pulling  flip flops out of his mouth and keeping his hands from using electrical cords and carpet fringe for a doudou as he sucks his thumb (this is the most adorable thing in the world, but I’m serious) this is why I’ve almost mentioned nothing Max.

As Internet has been a permanent fixture in my personal life and career,  for over a decade, I’ve somehow glossed over the crazies that I used to joke about.  I haven’t met any, thankfully, but it’s not something that I want to plan for, either.

I’m not crazy, lucky for the blogger (I swear). But my knowledge of them scared me.

By Jonathan Head
BBC News, Bangkok

On 22nd February, a small group of around 25 people attracted little attention at first in the crowded Rangoon market. Then they brought out home-made posters, and began shouting.

Their complaints seemed innocuous enough. “Down with consumer prices,” read one poster. “We want 24-hour electricity,” read another. They pointedly avoided saying anything critical about Burma’s military government.

That did not spare them. Nine were rounded up and jailed, accused of acting “totally against the law”. They were later released, but they had touched a very raw nerve.

Though small, these were the first street protests seen in Rangoon for at least a decade.

And they highlighted the growing economic distress that was beginning to push huge numbers of Burmese families to the brink of destitution - distress caused by the government’s incompetence.

Chronic mismanagement

When the military took power in 1962, then-military strongman Ne Win decided to take the country down an isolationist path, the “Burmese Way to Socialism” as it was called, which stressed self-sufficiency, and called for the nationalisation of almost all private companies.

Military officers took over these companies, as well as many civil service positions. It was their mismanagement that led to chronic inflation and near economic collapse by 1988, and the mass protests that came close to overthrowing the government at that time.

After that, the military tried opening up the economy to market forces and foreign investment, but it has never been willing to release its grip on crucial areas of the economy:

* Imports and exports all require licenses, confronting entrepreneurs with mountains of red tape, and opening opportunities for corruption.

* The trade in rice is entirely controlled by military-connected companies.

* Internal transport is hobbled by poor infrastructure and frequent military bans on access to troubled areas.

* Many commodities are subsidised, but available in very limited quantities.

There is an official exchange rate for the local currency, the kyat, which is 200 times lower than the black market rate.

Add to that the fact that more than half the annual budget goes to the armed forces, and that Burma is subject to strict sanctions by the United States and the European Union, and it has proved impossible for Burma to lift itself out of poverty.

The construction of a secretive new capital city since 2005, hacked out of the bush 400km (249 miles) north of Rangoon, must have added considerably to the government’s financial difficulties, although it has given no figures for how much this mega-project is costing.

A decision to raise admittedly paltry civil service salaries by up to 1,200% last year did not help either, although civil servants could scarcely survive on salaries that sometimes fell below $3 a month.

Grinding poverty

The result is what the United Nations describes as a largely unreported humanitarian crisis.

UN figures show that one in three children is chronically malnourished, government spending on health and education is among the lowest anywhere in the world, and average income is below $300 a year.

LIFE IN BURMA
Population - 50m
Children in primary education - 85%
Life expectancy at birth - 61 years
Infant mortality - 76 per 1,000 births
Health spend - 2.8% (World avge - 10.2%)
Under 5s undernourished - 31.8%
Source: World Bank 2004

Diseases like tuberculosis and HIV/Aids are increasing at frightening rates.

“The World Food Programme [WFP] provides food aid to 500,000 people across Myanmar [Burma] but that really only represents the poorest of the poor,” said Paul Risley at the WFP in Bangkok.

“What we’ve found is that over the last decade, opposite to virtually every other country in Asia where slowly poverty is being gnawed away at and food security is becoming more commonplace, in Myanmar there are more people living below the poverty line and more people facing food insecurity,” he said.

Towards the end of last year, prices of basic commodities began rising sharply in Burma. Rice, eggs, and cooking oil all went up by around 30-40%.

For a population that on average spends 70% of its income on food, this was very difficult to absorb. It is not clear why this happened, but the inherent distortions and rigidities in the military’s economic management can easily lead to sudden bottlenecks in the supply and prices of basic necessities.

Dramatic decision

Then came the rise in fuel prices on 15 August. There was no warning. Gas prices rose by 500%, and diesel - which more or less powers everything in Burma, from transport to the essential generators - doubled in price.

The impact was immediate. People could not afford to go to work, and the increased cost of transport started pushing food prices even higher.

Within days activists were out on the streets in protest. When they were arrested, the monks - who can accurately measure economic distress by the food put into their begging bowls every morning - took their place.

Like so many decisions made by the reclusive generals, the sudden hike in fuel prices is hard to fathom.

The IMF had advised weaning the population off subsidised fuel, because with rising world oil prices it was becoming an unsustainable burden for Burma, which although rich in natural gas, relies on imports for almost all of its refined petrol and diesel.

But it is unlikely the IMF would have supported such a dramatic, and unannounced price rise.

‘Parallel world’

At the time some speculated that perhaps the generals were trying to provoke an uprising, to see who their enemies were.

But their ubiquitous intelligence networks would surely already have that information. More likely it implies they did not understand the shocking economic impact the move would have.

Living in a privileged, parallel world, Burma’s armed forces are virtually a state within a state, subject to none of the chronic economic insecurity that afflicts the rest of the country.

Many of the generals have become immensely rich - the video of the wedding of senior general Than Shwe’s daughter, dripping in diamonds worth many millions of dollars, is testimony to that.

Secluded in their luxury villas in Naypyidaw, cut off from the squalor of Rangoon and other towns, Burma’s military rulers probably had no idea that their clumsy decision would cause such immediate economic pain - that thousands would override their fear of the soldiers, and come out to join the monks on the streets.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7023548.stm