The Script Ended

Worn out past

As I shook out my sheets this morning to change the bed, I noticed that the bottom sheet was almost threadbare. How had I not seen that before? I love these sheets. They are special - purchased from an exclusive linen store in Toronto- back when I was still married.

That me, from back then, investing too many dollars in expensive sheets, somehow believed that sleeping between such indulgence insured the continuation of my existence. After all, we were buying these for the bed that we shared, that must mean some kind of longevity commitment.

But the reality of that afternoon in the linen store those years ago, was something that I had been determined to ignore. We were not the happy and complicit couple that had once existed as we debated cream vs white and which duvet cover to match, but we were both silently determined to go through the motions. We were pretending to be happy as if our hearts depended on it. And actually, they did.

I wonder what would have happened if we had just given in and called each others' bluffs. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

But we didn't. Instead we chose the cream ones and covered our pain with their silken touch, hoping that they somehow would help make a difference.

And now they are all worn out.

Well, at least they ended their days in a sunny apartment in Paris - where my new life now lives.

Foreign Language # 2

I struggle everyday to speak and understand French - some days it flows and some days it limps. But when one moves to a different country, this really is to be expected.

I didn't expect to bump into ANOTHER foreign language - the one that is spoken at work.

When I left my Big 8 accounting job over 25 years ago, I left behind a corporate world where everyone was speaking plain English - at least I didn't hear much else in the halls and boardrooms.

Who knew how that simple language would morph over the ensuing quarter century?

Besides catching up on Power Point and Excel, my vocabulary was woefully out of date as well. I'm like a kid learning secret swear words.

I have to quantify the take-aways of our latest initiative.

In our department we hope to on board our new plans quickly. Those plans include up-streaming ideas from our end users....and down-streaming our programs to match their ultimate needs (huh?).

I have learned to leverage (I used to think this had to do with borrowing money) previous experience to achieve glorious corporate goals and contain anxiety of stakeholders (and these guys are not pitching tents with those stakes).

I now know the difference between a flat organization and a hierarchical one and where on this bandwidth mine falls.

I am now a member of a transversal team to develop an alumni strategy  - I know strategy has been around for a long time but never have I bumped into SO many of them. Everything has a strategy, looked at from a strategic viewpoint, or is part of thinking strategically. 

Oh yeah - I almost forgot. One must learn to drive strategy or at least drive something.

Remember when strategy had to do with who won at RISK? And driving was what you did in a car?

All of a sudden after hiding my ignorance for months and pretending that I knew what someone was talking about (at least I hoped I was convincing), the corporate buzz words are starting to flow without me even translating in my head like I do in French.

Ha! I have begun to on-board this new paradigm as a result of my experiential learning experience..............I know, I know, its sickening isn't it?

And I thought speaking French was going to be hard.

Foreign Language # 2

I struggle everyday to speak and understand French - some days it flows and some days it limps. But when one moves to a different country, this really is to be expected.

I didn't expect to bump into ANOTHER foreign language - the one that is spoken at work.

When I left my Big 8 accounting job over 25 years ago, I left behind a corporate world where everyone was speaking plain English - at least I didn't hear much else in the halls and boardrooms.

Who knew how that simple language would morph over the ensuing quarter century?

Besides catching up on Power Point and Excel, my vocabulary was woefully out of date as well. I'm like a kid learning secret swear words.

I have to quantify the take-aways of our latest initiative.

In our department we hope to on board our new plans quickly. Those plans include up-streaming ideas from our end users....and down-streaming our programs to match their ultimate needs (huh?).

I have learned to leverage (I used to think this had to do with borrowing money) previous experience to achieve glorious corporate goals and contain anxiety of stakeholders (and these guys are not pitching tents with those stakes).

I now know the difference between a flat organization and a hierarchical one and where on this bandwidth mine falls.

I am now a member of a transversal team to develop an alumni strategy  - I know strategy has been around for a long time but never have I bumped into SO many of them. Everything has a strategy, looked at from a strategic viewpoint, or is part of thinking strategically. 

Oh yeah - I almost forgot. One must learn to drive strategy or at least drive something.

Remember when strategy had to do with who won at RISK? And driving was what you did in a car?

All of a sudden after hiding my ignorance for months and pretending that I knew what someone was talking about (at least I hoped I was convincing), the corporate buzz words are starting to flow without me even translating in my head like I do in French.

Ha! I have begun to on-board this new paradigm as a result of my experiential learning experience..............I know, I know, its sickening isn't it?

And I thought speaking French was going to be hard.

plans

You know how we all make plans - plans for dinner, plans for vacation, plans for going on a diet. Without making some kind of plan, most of us wouldn't get much done. It is hard to take a Hawaiian vacation for example without making plans - plane tickets, hotel reservations, stopping the mail............

But what about plans for your life?

In the beginning it is easy, at least for lots of us.

Do well in school, apply to college, get a degree, get a job, get married, have babies, buy a house, work......

I guess I planned for all that stuff just by following the crowd and it got done.

But did I plan? Sort of, not really.

But at some point there arrives a gap in the plan - or the plan is all executed and you find yourself drifting along at the tail end. This is often when other stuff happens.

You begin a transition from one plan to the next one. But lots of times it is not obvious that you need to even make another plan.

My life took a left turn near then end of my first "sort of" plan.

I did the college, work, husband, kids, house thing. In fact that plans loops back on itself when the kids start their own plan - you know - college, work..........  It streams along in a blur.

And then - screech...............husband goes against plan. 

Now what?

Boy it takes a long time to get back on solid ground and really make a new plan. I have done lots of steps but if you looked at the pattern of my footprints they are all over the place. No straight lines in sight at the moment.

Got to get a new plan. It's beginning to percolate but the coffee is not quite ready.

There's lots of books on this subject - many of them titled some variation or another of "Create the Life you Want to Live - Now"...

Easier said then done.

Rugby vs everything else

I love sports. I love getting crazy over the battle, screaming, sweating, praying. I've been there over the Padres, the Chargers, especially the Trojans, and even the Lakers and Dodgers back in my LA days........Pete Sampras (on occasion), Andre Agassi (almost always after he grew up), Boris Becker, Roger Federer. They are all teams and individual players who just do it for me. I didn't just root for them, I had fits over them.

When I get that way, its just the best! Totally involving. You don't care about anything else in that moment except that your team/player wins. Whatever else had been on your mind is erased by the emotion of the moment. If you could bottle this, you would never need another visit to your therapist or happy pills.

At this moment I am sitting next to MFM watching Team France battle it out on the rugby field against Wales.

He is TOTALLY into it. He is texting his best buddy every time we (WE being the French) do something good to gloat or stupid to share the pain.

I just do not get it.

IT being Rugby.

I want to get it. I want to scream and yell at the TV and really care.

But I don't. It's boring and confusing. They push each other a lot and run in short spurts back and forth without getting very far.

They spend a lot of time scrubbing around on the ground together and occasionally somebody kicks the ball.

At least we are winning at the moment but it's not in the bag yet.

I think maybe it is time for the band to strike up "Fight On for ol' SC"....or something........

MFM doesn't need the Trojan fight song - He doesn't know what he's missing.

Apparently the announcers don't need anymore excitement either from the sounds of hyperventilating French they are spewing.

Wales just scored again.......our lead is cut........this may just get interesting.

or not. It's over. We won. Yippee.

Frankly give me Andre or USC anyday.

Pour like a French Person

Living in someone else's country is to be forever a student of "understanding others". You know from previous posts that I have learned cross cultural values such as the grave importance of the iron or the joys of ubiquitous strikes in la vie française. Buying your daily baguette while sporting a shirt straight from the bottom of the laundry basket is simply not done.

But let me tell you of an infraction even more grave than a wrinkled chemise -----

pouring your own wine at the table - especially if you happen to be a girl. It's rarely acceptable to do so if you are a guest but it is NEVER allowed if you are female.

I will never forget the look of abject horror on the face of a new french friend when I, in my liberal California way, reached across and replenished my own glass one night at his house.

Oh, the shame! He immediately fell all over himself apologizing for not noticing that my glass was empty. I remember thinking, so?? My glass is my responsibility, not yours. I thought it was an isolated case of an overly polite new friend.

Wrong.

Chivalry is alive and well in France and no where is it more evident than at the table. The number one faux pas for a woman is to - god forbid - pour her own wine - even touching the wine bottle will elicit an immediate intake of breath by everyone present. You better even be verrryyy careful about refilling your own water glass.

Apparently female fingers and liquids to not mix in this country.

This rule has several effects.

1. One must carefully regulate liquid intake and eating so as not to run out of fluid before the host makes his first refill pass around the table.

2. If you want to see what it feels like to be some kind of alcoholic, try being a girl at a French dinner party who desperately would like to have a second glass of wine before her host gets around to re-pouring - you find yourself gazing longingly at that bottle just in front of you and must physically restrain yourself - so close yet so very far away.............

3.The worst is that after all that waiting you can easily be skipped even if your glass sits empty since it is universally assumed that females don't drink much wine. A proper french woman when offered a refill will grimace and make one of those totally french shushing noises while slightly shaking her head and waving her fingers over her glass as if to say she couldn't possibly force down another ounce -

damn girls all make me look bad.

I don't know if anyone in the US has noticed but not only are our cars and houses bigger over there but so are our glasses. Our drinking habits tend to match the volume and we drink these greater volumes really quickly too.

This does not only go for alcoholic beverages - cokes, water, orange juice - they're all the same.

But in France, a drink of any kind begins with a ridiculously undersized glass that's never and I mean NEVER filled to anywhere near the brim. One is expected to only take occasional sips as if you've forgotten you even have a drink.

I can't tell you how maddening it is to be dying of thirst and ask for a drink of water only to be poured a miniscule glass one-third full. When someone starts to pour for me I feel like saying - fill 'er up - as if I was talking to a gas station attendant. If I don't make such a crass request, I know what's coming - interminable minutes waiting for enough time to pass before I can ask again without seeming like a whiny child.

3 1/2 years of fluid deprivation later I am getting the hang of it.

Now when I am poured a glass of wine at the dinner table, I see just how long I can go before even taking a sip so that I can enjoy the first part of my dinner psychologically reassured every time I glance at my still full (by French standards) glass.

When I do finally put rim to lips I sip how I imagine all those dainty French women do it - with my lips pursed almost shut. This way just a dribble can escape into my mouth; a quantity small enough that I can barely taste what I would soon be missing if I actually took a proper swig.

I gauge how I am doing by glancing regularly at everyone else's glasses - I'm ahead if my glass is behind.

Last night at a dinner party, I smugly noticed that the other three women's glasses were empty while mine had barely been touched. Hah!

I'm feeling more French every day, and trips to the toilet have been reduced too.

Real Cross Cultural Learning

I had the bright idea of gathering some of the MBA students I work with together for a drink. I suggested that the group be composed of those from North America. They could share experiences from their common base, ask questions, support each other and hopefully have a laugh.

Make that a whine mixed in with some crying.

When you hear those grand words - Cross Cultural Experience and International Exposure - visions of creative discoveries made while exercising magnanimous patience come immediately to mind. At least they did for me. Most of these students too seemed to have had something like that in mind when they decided to do their MBA in France rather than in the Great Halls of Learning, USA.

The ugly truth is that Cross Cultural Experience is code for repeated "brick wall hitting" mixed with continued "you cannot be serious" revelations.

We poor Americans. We really do live in a bubble. Things are so easy where we come from.

Until you have to live with it everyday, quaint sounds charming. 

But those quaint other ways quickly become maddening roadblocks that seem totally unnecessary when in possession of an American (or Canadian) mentality.

Why won't anybody answer my questions? Has anyone around here heard the word "organization"? How come searching for answers entails a long trip on a merry-go-round?

Is everything a secret around here?

After allowing for the therapeutic experience of a nice long bitch session, I posed the obvious question.

Just what did you all think is really meant when someone states that they have had international experience?

It's not only knowing the delights of a fine Bordeaux served with a run-of-the-mill lunch, or possessing the savoir-faire to navigate the cheese board.

Or even that the toilet paper is pink and scratchy and milk sits on unrefrigerated shelves.

No, international experience is exposure to ways of doing things and thinking things that is completely opaque - and may very well always just stay that way.

It means that there are certain things that one will never get.

And after it all or through it all, you add a layer to your being that you never would have sprouted without having gone down this particular road.

Unfortunately (or maybe luckily) I didn't sound quite so poignantly philosophical with the students. After-all - I do my fair share of kicking and screaming too so I am one of them in lots of ways.

They all sort of quieted down. I know that we didn't "solve" anything but they shrugged their collective shoulders and said that they felt a bit better.

Then they ordered more carafes of red wine...........they're learning.

The post I didn't delete

I tried to write a post and nothing came.

I started several times and deleted them. I guess I have nothing to say. At least nothing that I think anyone would want to read.

I have problems with one of my kids, but who wants to hear about that?

I have problems with one of the people I work with but she is not worth the ink to tell the story (besides, its boring)

My Frenchman is almost all moved in - now there ARE some stories here but I have to wait until I am in the mood. One comment on this subject -

I am not used to a man who has ironing piles all over the place and considers them of the highest priority - reminds me of my mother. That'll take some getting used to.

But as has been previously established - Real Frenchmen Iron.

Fini!

It's finished. I finally finished my thesis. In all the "hanging over my head" situations I have been in during my life, this one was one of the heaviest.

It looks so official to me, all printed out and bound. I know lots of people have written big long papers like this, but this is a first for me - I was an Accounting major back in my college days - If we had had to write 50 page theses on Accounting issues, someone probably would have died.

When I was planning my topic last year, I had great aspirations of writing a gripping account of my research discoveries.

That didn't happen. In fact, I can't tell anymore if what I wrote is even any good. I am so sick of it.

But who cares if it stinks - it's DONE!

Fun with French Sports

When I lived in San Diego I read countless "moving to a foreign country" ex-pat adventures. I couldn't get enough of them. No matter how exasperating the ex-pat writer thought her experiences at the hands of the foreigners were, I thought they all sounded incredibly romantic or exciting.

Now I know better.

Last Wednesday I set off in my taxi for Roissy (Charles De Gaulle Airport for all you non-natives) for the short hop over to Frankfurt. I was attending a Finance conference in Vallendar which is near Koblenz----------I know, I had never heard of either of those places either.

I had checked my flight status before going to bed the night before and found out that it had been cancelled. Normally, I NEVER check my flight status. I am one of those blind faith in the system types- who is lazy too - and I hate to be bothered with my reservations once they have been made.

But - NOW I live with Monsieur Organization (opposites attract) and so am nagged into checking and rechecking such things.

Okay - I guess it was sort of a good idea -I got to find out my flight was cancelled, expend frustrated energy trying to connect to Air France "Help-Lines" - an oxymoron. No self respecting French company can be reached by phone after 10 pm - are you kidding? And go to bed fretting about it.

No real worries, the next morning I got rebooked.

I climbed into my taxi and there was already 15 euros on the meter. I am getting bolder with my French these days so I questioned the driver and argued with him all the way to the peripherique.

To no avail -  but I felt better. Besides - this kind of dispute is practically a national sport in France.

At the terminal my new flight was also cancelled.

Shit.

I traippsed over to the counter. The Air France people helpfully explained that the air control guys were staging  une gréve -a strike - and all the flights to Frankfurt were cancelled for the whole day. I don't know why they were picking on Frankfurt.

Strikes are ANOTHER French national sport. Thanks to this one I got to fly from Paris to Amsterdam, hang around there for a couple hours while the snow swirled out the windows and then get flown to Cologne where I got a train to Koblenz.

It is frickin COLD in Germany - and dark. Paris in winter may be famous for its grey skies but in comparison to the Rhine Valley - you need sunglasses.

No wonder Germans always seem sort of grim.

And no wonder everyone thinks I am deranged when they hear I am from San Diego - What are you doing HERE? When you could be THERE?

Sometimes I wonder.......