French intrigue

No, not the name of a new line of lingerie.

Now, I have taken the piss out of the French all the time, but there is a scientific explanation for it all: the French are crazy!

That's right. An illuminative article in the Economist talks about Toxoplasmosis gondii, a plamodium that literally attacks the brain. The plasmodium has evolved to make mice go nuts so they act conspicuous, attract and are eaten by cats, get digested, are passed out, only to re-enter rodents to complete the loop.

So what the fuck has this got to do with the French? Apparently Toxoplasmosis affects humans too. We are obviously not food for large cats, so maybe there is no evolutionary purpose, but apparently populations with higher rates of infection - such as the French - score higher on the neurosis scale than say, the British, who have much lower infection rates.

You may be neurotic my French darlings, but it just makes me want you more.

The article is here: http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16271339. And it is worth a look just for the picture of the fuzzy cat in mid-spring.

Coming of age

Apparently, it is very important to have "hobbies". I was made aware of this the painful, and embarassing way, when a Frenchwoman asked me over dinner what mine were.

I was not embarassed that I have practically none. It was the number of times I had to go "Beg your pardon?", because for the life of me I could not figure out what "o-bees" were. It also took a VERY long time to figure out that I had been agreeing that the food was good at "Glutton Square", not "glue-tone Square", the "o-ker center".

(There were other non-native English speakers, who carried on thusly, and I felt terribly confused throughout dinner. But it is small peanuts when you have someone ordering "r'violeee". Thankfully, no skinny men in tight Eurotrash clothes.)

Anyway, after a troubled silence - the expat crowd here follows a regimen of Yoga, pilates, diving, wakeboarding, partying, dragonboating, behaving badly, and god knows what else, to the last man and woman - I said "tennis".

Then, after a very long time, I triumphantly told the audience my "o-bee" was: writing. Bring on the publishing contracts, I say.

Scenes from the concert

Recently, I sharpened my cultural talons by attending a splendid concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at the Esplanade. Led by conductor Lan Shui, it featured several pieces centered on Spain. Predictably, Bolero was performed; so was a piece called Espan~a, which I knew, but never by name.

The female companions had a spirited discussion afterward about star pianist Noriko Ogawa's outfit, which had they bothered asking me, I would have given short shrift with just one word: sexy. Just as well they didn't.

Around intermission, when the lights were brightened, we spied on the seat in front what seemed to be an escaped badger, large squirrel or perhaps a soft toy. No - it was a lady, with very bad hair, and a very bouffant fur jacket parked next to her. Yes! Fur! I know it gets cold indoor often in Singapore, but FUR? In the second half of the concert she wore it. It was sleevless, and given her bad hair, I kept thinking: "Badger Woman". She just needed a spear, bad teeth (which she may have had anyway) and a set from the Pleistocene. It's a miracle I did not wake up shrieking in fear that night.

Then there were the rather cute and leggy French women - ah! the French!! - next to me. Post interval we switched seats, and the unfortunate guy that took mine fumed that the two women ("French bimbos", he called them), getting bored at the lengthy piece called Iberia or something, started chatting, and discussing - of all things - "Rihanna", who I take it is some popular skank singing "R&B".

This was followed by a nice rooftop dinner. By nice, I mean horrible food, horrible service - our group decided not to pay service charge - but a nice view of the Singapore skyline. I don't care what hungrygowhere says, but "Al Dente Trattoria" at the Esplanade is best avoided. Esecially if it has women in low-slung jeans showing off thongs. Not cool.

On the bright side, the red wine interacted pleasantly with my cough medication, and I slept like a baby. No badger-woman nightmares.

The French fetish continues...

It is not often that I purify and present news from the WSJ. After all, the news it carries swings between irrational exuberance and incomprehensible tragedy.  Parodying would be an exercise in redundancy.

But once in a while a nugget presents itself, and when life does that to me, I use it to hit people about their head. Seen in the Asian WSJ today:  "Accepting confinement for 'greater good'"

The article details the travails of the guests of the Metropark Hotel in Hong Kong, who were "involuntarily confined" after one was suspected of having the swine flu. Many interesting snippets abound, but the ones that caught my eye were about a French guest, M. M. (that is "Mr. Mister." for you).  First, M. M. tried to escape confinement, as he was out of the hotel when it started. But after "discussions with the consulate", he decided to check himself back in. Such sticklers for rules, then French.

Not. Clearly the consulate gave him a sneak peek into the special French dishes that are being sent to the hotel for French guests, by the French embassy: e.g., poulet a la moutarde (translation: "a piece of Moroccan"). Between such regular haute cuisine breaks, M. M. "smokes cigarettes, watches TV, surfs the Internet and waits". No mention of unclaimed knickers in the room, but we all know about that.

Finally, of the guests who agitate for freedom all the time, M. M. said: "If you have a brain, you understand the situation". Man, I too love socialism.

In love with In-grid

One of the better memories I have - one that still bravely resists the G&T onslaught - is of a sleepy, wet morning in the front seat of a rickety old van, watching 2 girls fish in Mongolia. Yes, I did type that right.

On the tail end of the Mongolian adventure a couple of years ago, we left early in the morning with our host (a burly Mongolian man who usually roamed around shirtless in the fairly chilly Mongol fall) to, literally, catch some fish.

"We" means the great moi, the two cute Finnish girls and not the misanthropic British guy. Thank god. Anyway the girls were vegetarian (putting me to shame), and managed through the entire couple of weeks. Not today, though. They conveniently classified fish with vegetables - not too unreasonable given the number of smelly and/or slimy vegetables out there, which is to say a great too many.

After spending the night sipping airag at the tribesman's tent and trying to sleep amidst the warm fragrances and sounds of a hundred farting sheep (first lesson in camping: stay upwind), we set out. We drove around till we found stream, and the girls got out in their ponchos and tackles - I am still not sure how they conjured those up. They managed to catch a few fish, and gut them with gusto, which made me very queasy as I had been sharing tents with these and had on several occasions entertained thoughts that were certainly not honorable.

Anyway, through this whole adventure, I was sitting in the van playing the same 2 songs from a "Best of 200X" type cassette tape that our lovely guide Boloroo had gotten for us from a nondescript shopping plaza where a sweet little girl-urchin followed us around the whole time.

And thus was born my love for IN-Grid. I had the song Tu es foutu (which of course means I Love You, add that to French 101), on repeat, as well as one other by her, because those were the only palatable ones, for maybe an hour. I of course had no clue of any of these details, and once I returned to New York, set out with a vengeance to find the song and singer. Thanks to Google and my superior, lateral-thinking intelligence, I of course did, and it later came in handy for a pick-up conversation at a bar. All in all, a thoroughly long post which I suspect I enjoyed writing more than you will enjoy reading. Ha.

Box to grind

I think I need to replace my ears. I hope the stem cell guys are listening. We are halfway there!

I am in this predicament because I just got off the phone. To say I was on a call would be to stretch it, because we all know what we do on a conference call. No, that is not a Facebook quiz, and let's keep it all to ourselves. Let's just acknowledge that we neither talk nor listen.

Anyway there were these two women discussing, primarily, what fonts to use, which as conference calls go by was exciting since it had words like "Garamond", which sounds like it came out of a Queen song ("Garamond! Garamond! Do the Fandango!!").

Let's not digress: I was in a "voice off". Every sentence in response was lower by an octave or two. The voices grew lower and lower. I was afraid they would starting going so low, they'd appear on the other side of the world and cause an earthquake (which is China, no matter where you are).

Presently, it sounded like they had replaced their voice-boxes with a combination percussive instrument and speech-aid device, the sort that throat-cancer victims use. The voices became graveli-er until the ends of the sentences sounded like they emanated from dragging an ice pick made of the world's toughest element (osmium?) on a very rough concrete floor. I think my phone wore down a micro-meter from all the weathering.

This is why I like, in no particular order:

1. All Frenchwomen. They know how to keep their feminine voices and how not to keep their knickers. Add to that the iambic nature of their language: "would you like to go to delHIIII?" Heaven.

2. The sole person in the universe who called me to wish me a birthday at midnight. In a non-gravely voice, she offered me the best wishes a man could possibly hear: "I hope you get laid".

3. The housing agent with funky green eyes who has been showing me around. A cute voice with a Singapore accent, bordering on a lisp (seems to be an Indian thing). Very nice. Unfortunately, she looks like she may like her kind more.

4. A professional acquaintance, who has a wonderful lack of propriety that I completely love, and requested in a screechy European lilt to call the police if she did not return from her date. "He asked me to come home at a weird time, so I think he is trying to avoid another woman. If I don't return, something might have happened to me".

5. The secretary of the contact I was supposed to call, but did so half-hour late because I am a klutz. "Could you please spell that", she cooed. "S for Sweden". Twitter. So we carry on. Then we got to "F". No, reader, I did not do the predictble. I thought long, and said "F for...... Fukuoka". The heartiest, girliest giggle I have ever heard from a German girl.

This of course makes me wonder about the girl that I had a couple of dates with, whose voice hinted at a previous life involving brass ones.

Bring back the melodious female voice! Sign the Facebook petition.

PS: I am of course kidding. Please let me know who manufactures the fucking quizzes and all the other applications on FB and I will gladly strangle them.

Confluence of time and space

When you travel alone, as I do most of the time, you end up in some hotel room watching a late night movie after a long day out traipsing about whatever city it is.

It is thus that I ended up watching a movie, which had already commenced. Only after some google-research did I realize that I had watched "Arch of Triumph". An old-school movie dominated by character, script and story. The Great Gatsby meets Catch-22. A gorgeous Bergman - is she a naif or a manipulator? Boyer, the consummate hero. And the exceptionally wonderful performance by Louis Calhern playing the Colonel.

Sometimes, you stumble and fall on a bed of roses.

France vs USA

Once again, the French film industry beats Hollywood. After two really bad movies (see previous post), I watched a fairly good show called "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis". Obviously it would have been funnier had I known French, as there was a lot of wordplay going on. And it ended in a predictable soppy, romantic, sort of way.

But it definitely beat watching a senior-citizen adventurer (Harrison Ford) in a bad plot, and a hapless hero and fuck-me-I'm-a-dumb-blonde heroine (Mark Wahlberg and Zoe Deschanel, although she was not blonde in this movie) in what might as well be an adaptation of "Birds", except trees do the attacking and Screwvala ain't no Hitchcock.

Learning French - 101(a)

Ok, due to all the irate emails, I have to clarify some things:

Si vous plait does not mean "C". It means "See you in hell". Such as "Waiter, can you get me a cup of coffee? I know you won't, si vous plait, lazy bastard".

And of course "Voulez vous" ="W".

Now can we move on to wine? Thank you, si vous plait.

Pop quiz: How should you respond when you see the label "Jim Jim" on a wine list?

a) Make a crude ethnic joke (I am not saying more)
b) Roll your eyes and move to the next on the list
c) Cluck your tongue, say "Well, we have Jham Jham" here and proceed to order it. Even though it is from Australia. And was probably transported in a box.

Before you answer, do check out this link.

You are correct. The answer is never to socialize under those circumstances again.

More French: A is for...

I once worked with a "job manager" who I shall call P__. I thought this was a great guy, until I he started turning up to work in shabby clothes, yet managed to retain gravitas and even impress people, particularly by pondering a lot on the wine list before ordering something. He was beady eyed and I am convinced he had no clue what he was doing. FYI, I don't like him.

Anyway, part of his pretentiousness was his mastery of French, by virtue of an exchange program when the locals were no doubt sneering at him behind his back. But thanks to him I learnt some important French lessons.

"A"

You may be shocked by this, but anything that ends in "er" in French is pronounced "ay". For example, take the simple word in English "her". This of course will be pronounced "hay". But note that the "h" is silent - to frustrate the English, the French decided that "g" would be pronounced "h". Anyway, therefore, "her" is pronounced "ay". Since the "y" is silent (unless used in the context of Yves St. Laurent, which sounds like a porno magazine to me):

Her = "A"

There you have it. You are now off to an excellent start in French. I know this is a lot to digest, but let me just also add that if you have the right teacher (such as the humble me), it is all easy, so here are some added pointers for you to sleep over and have nightmares on:

Bonjour = "B"
Si vou plait = "C"

Please let me know if this is too much, say for the next week, and I will go easy on the pace.

Meantime, please bone up on your wines, because I may just address that next. "B".

Movie recommendations

Yes! You know my idea of the Mile High Club is to watch movies solely while at 30,000 feet. So yet again, I created my own movie marathon on a fairly large-sized personal LCD screen aboard a very lovely business class seat (Motto: every seat is an aisle seat. Really). My picks:

Vantage Point: this is actually not a bad movie. Shot fast, and with enough unexpected twists. Definitely worth watching. Even though it has ludicrous twists like the American president's "double" getting shot. Yes, I know - you can plumb the depths of the IQ charts and yet not find a double for W. Suspend reality, that's what movies are for anyway.

Cleaner: a fairly interesting drama with good acting. Many scenes look like Mr. Ebola directed them, so if you are queasy watching CSI, skip this entirely. Samuel L. Jackson is everywhere these days - he may just turn up in my Weetbix tomorrow morning. I strongly recommend this movie solely to drool over Eva Mendes. Now THAT is a beauty spot.

With Your Permission: a rip-roaring, if slightly disappointing-at-the-end Danish movie. Absolutely great cast, story and direction. Highlights the perils of skinny guys marrying plump women.

Re-investigation (I think that's the translation): a well built-up French drama. Loved the ending. Revenge, thy name is a six foot hole in the ground. Nice!

Roland Garros: When not to fuck with the French

After many hours of standing around in a sub-optimal queuing system at Roland Garros, I managed to get into a couple of matches. One of them featured the awesome Nadal, but that was definitely less exciting than...

... the unseeded Frenchman playing a seeded Swede. I have never seen such a lopsided and parochial crowd, cheering everything the patriot won and every single mistake the outsider made. The poor Swede, I swear, was a victim of great psychological ops and seemed to fold and quit, despite winning the first set. The French guy won.

More on French GDP

I have recently theorized that the French plan to producing wealth involves sitting on little chairs on the sidewalk, drinking and smoking a lot, a shrug a minute and getting the tourists to do the same.

After a couple of forays into this activity , I have discovered more. For example, there is the “croissant” (pronounced “bread’). This clever piece of baked dough is skillfully constructed in such a way that roughly 90% of it will crumble away – on the plate, on the table, huge daubs around your lips, your finger, carefully pressed clothes etc. Clearly this is why even dogs the size of mosquitoes are heavily muzzled in Paris. Therefore you are of course forced to consume more of it, roughly requiring croissants the size of a cow, or perhaps a calf (if you are a child or anorexic), to fill you up.

Speaking of which, another stream of income for the French is selling dead, but completely sane, cows as meat. Rather cunningly, by keeping their borders sealed they have kept the so-called mad-cow disease out of the country. Also, banning all kinds of Frankenfoods. I find this highly admirable, as a closet Luddite myself, but highly ironic given everyone lights up at every opportunity.

And just in deference to the noble mission of this blog, and relevant to the topic, don't you think this is timely: "Monkeys Think, Moving Artificial Arm as Own ". And if that is not enough: More Monkey Madness. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Why I want a French woman

As I sat sipping my Belgian beers, I noticed a bleached blonde smoking at the rate of 1 cigarette every nanosecond for roughly 3 hours. And she was just drinking Coca Cola!! Turns out she was awaiting her spiky-haired man. Oh, what I would do for such a patient mate. Vive la France!

N'k'teeeen

As soon as I reached France, I was inexplicably driven to find a tobacco store to buy some foul cigarettes, and purchase some garlic and onions just to fit in and counter smoker's breath. No, I kid you – I only bought some cigarettes, to fit in with the French, who apparently believe it is anyone’s birthright to smoke at all occasions.

Sadly, I must report not sighting berets, onion/garlic garlands or even moustaches, nor hearing any accordions, which is really a pity (about the accordions, that is). I did hear a saxophonist on the Metro tunnel, and he was playing a French version of “I just called to say I love you” (get it? Clue: it’s instrumental…)

Moto cross

As I sat in a vantage position in what seemed to be the intersection of at least 300 roads, I marveled at the French ingenuity and engineering skills. Well, okay, that bar sat at the intersection of perhaps 6 streets, but still I think watching traffic was amazing. Very much like the Subcontinent, except instead of cattle you have lackadaisical pedestrians sauntering in the middle of every street, raising their hands with an upturned palm to put traffic in its place. As if motorists have rights on the road, especially when the light is green.

Women and elephants

A-ha, you thought I was going to make a rude fat joke. No sirree! For no reason at all, I was inclined to observe the height of the heels women wear these days sitting in Rue Odessa (Actually I was keenly observing rears and legs). The sub-five-foot Asian girl with a 4” heel was a case in point. Patience, dear reader: what is the connection between these Mademoiselles and elephants, you say? The elephant cannot jump because it basically stands on its toes, depriving it of the spring effect from a foot that is perpendicular to the leg, via the ankle. This is unfortunate, because I would really rather women all over – the French ones in particular – jump, and jump all over me.

French secret

Very soon after reaching France (pronounced “Foie gras”) I realized the secret to the French GDP. Apparently the French have developed immense productivity in the occupation of sitting around cafés till way past midnight, drinking and smoking. This is a clear winning strategy. Moreover, since they are the center of the universe, everyone wants to come to France and pay to sit around, drink and smoke as well, and there is a direct debit mechanism transferring money out of your wallet into French farmers’ bank accounts. Oh, wait a minute – France is NOT the center of the universe. Apart from that, and unfortunately, the kink in this strategy is multi-faceted: roast-beef attacks from across the channel, expedited via Eurostar; the Germans who have traditionally been more interested in other things than sitting around sipping coffee; and the fact that the world does not have enough phlegm to verbally interact with the French waiters. Damn, they almost did it!

Belgian waffle

With my unerring compass, I navigated myself quickly after checking in to my Parisian hotel, toward the Belgian beer bar that I spied from my taxi on the way to the hotel. I am proud of myself. After a round of all the abbey beers they had, what I did was waddle home. Waddle, waffle, what the heck.

"I should be your Euro star"

Remember Madonna? As you may know, the Eurostar crosses the English channel undersea. For the entire journey, I was scared shitless. You know, tunnels, breakdowns, flooding – and, no, not the fact that I am hydrophobic, claustrophobic etc., but the possibility that Sylvester Stallone might take it upon himself to rescue me. Brrr. Anyway, I refrained from asking my well-endowed neighbor (sorry, but most of it was on exhibition, gratis) on the train if we had crossed over. It was self evident – on the French side there were fields of onion and garlic, whose fragrance wafted through the train. No, seriously, I am kidding of course, it was all about people driving on the other side of the road.