Paris in the early days

Two weeks, two wins, not bad…this will be brief as I have to work, but YAY we won Eight Nations, it was awesome; about 2/3 Yaka, some fantastic pickups that I wish were playing with us in London, 11 players total; my calf was pulled, from the track workout I think, and started to really affect my play the first game on Sunday, as the pain spread to my shin and then my ankle and then, when I put a brace on, the other ankle, so I had to stop; iced, had a nice 4 hour break between games, got taped, was able to play the final; we were up 15-12 when the cap went on, scored, and the second-to-last point went on for something like 15 minutes; I´m guarding Kate Wilson who plays for Holland, speedy cutter, great thrower, and my ankles were definitely protesting, figured that after that point I would take my cleats off; luckily they eventually scored (after we gave fans about 20 turnovers worth of reasons to hate watching women´s ulti), we received the pull and scored in four passes, for the win and the tournament. We went undefeated on the weekend, and the Dutch were the hardest match by far. Looking forward to London.

And now, to totally switch topics so I can include some gorgeous photos (courtesy Roger, from this link), on Monday after the Venice tournament, we went to the Venice Biennale, an enormous art exhibition at the Arsenale, where they used to make ships. Huge, gorgeous space, with an insane amount of modern art. I´ve never seen anything like it; the space is so big, the artists can do things that would be impossible otherwise. One of the best parts of living here is how easy it is to get to other parts of Europe. I´m going to take some extra time in London in September, and hopefully visit with Dan in Barcelona in August.

I have just returned from a fantastic weekend in Venice, playing the first ever Redemption beach ultimate tournament with a great international team. We had 3 French players, 2 Americans, a Venezuelan, a Colombian, a Brazilian, a Brit, a German, and an Algerian. The tournament took place on the beach in Lido and was very well-run, with lined fields, plenty of water, score boards, clear schedules and announcements, great parties (including fireworks!), and a nice warm Adriatic sea to swim in. It was much better organized than Wildwood, for example, which has existed for over 10 years.

To get there, I took the night train from Paris, which was an incredibly civilized way to travel. Unlike, say, the night Amtrak from Boston to DC, the seats convert into beds, and everyone with a seat can sleep. It’s very restful too; the motion of the train is like a lullaby, and I woke up to bright sun, blue skies, and charming, colorful Mediterranean houses. We took the vaporetto (the public transport boat) through the main canal of Venice to Lido, which is an island about 5 minutes away. From there, we could have rented bikes for the camping, and this is my suggestion to anyone visiting Venice: stay in Lido at the camping and rent bikes to travel around the island. Instead, we took the bus everywhere. It’s okay but not nearly as convenient or nice as biking. I also have to mention that we didn’t pay for anything, because (according to Thomas) the Italians are paid by the government and it doesn’t matter how well they do their job, so they don’t bother you for not swiping a card.

The camping was great, the parties were great, my team was so so nice, and we WON! Which is always the best way to finish a tournament. I’ve played 4 tournaments this year and been in the finals for all of them, but this is the first victory. Hopefully I will repeat next weekend in Girona with Yaka. Which brings me to a post I started ages ago…

I played my first tournament with my new team, Yaka, in Cologne, Germany last weekend [that is, the first weekend of June].  It was a lot of fun and made me feel like I was finally a part of France.  The girls are incredibly nice and friendly, very very welcoming to me, in spite of the language barrier.  I’ll be practicing and playing with them the entirety of my time here, including upcoming tournaments in Venice, Barcelona, the European Club Championship in London, and Worlds 2010 in Prague.

Some notes:

1. The girls are really open and really care about each other – a tight-knit group of best friends – and have completely welcomed me into the group.  This is different than elite ultimate in the States, and may be unique to Yaka, though I think it does have something to do with the way the French view friendships.  To Americans, the French feel cold, but to the French, we seem that way – superficial, without any real deep feeling, able to smile and ask “how are you?” without really caring about the answer.  There are boundaries in American friendships that can be very difficult for a non-American to understand and overcome.  The downside of this deeply felt friendship in the French is that it can be impossible to make friends in the first place – best friends have known each other since grade school.  But ultimate is a whole other story; the team dynamic makes it a bit easier to jump right in. Teammates need to trust and respect each other, and that’s a lot easier if you like each other too.

2. European spirit is way way better. I really wish we would adopt some of it in the States. Get rid of cheers after games unless someone is really inspired, and instead circle up immediately after the game and talk about it. It takes less than five minutes. It doesn’t have to be fake, either – differences are definitely acknowledged, especially when there have been a lot of calls or general bad feelings. But it can be stated once and then it’s over; you’ve said your piece about the game and can let it go. And it maintains a higher level of sportsmanship in general, because you know after the game you’re going to be in that circle, and the knowledge of that can prevent you from losing your temper in the first place. Europeans are certainly just as competitive, want to win just as badly, but they really maintain the original idea of spirit, which I think we’re losing in the US.

3. The level of play is much higher in the States. This can be a little frustrating for me. Here, there’s not much of a college ultimate scene, let alone juniors, so players don’t have the experience of being coached. Having less intense experience in general (that is, playing games-to-go at Regionals, quarters at Nationals, etc) means that things are harder mentally. I find the girls take losses very hard, and sometimes aren’t all that happy after wins, if we don’t play well. Some things that are very common in the States – certain drills, throwing patterns, offenses, positioning on defense – aren’t known here. The fitness level isn’t the same. Shockingly, over 90% of my team smokes. There aren’t these ridiculous track workouts, a blessing and a curse, as I hate track workouts just a little less than I hate not being in shape. (And yes, I’m going to start leading some this week.)

On the other hand, my team is really very good, and has a lot of natural talent. Very impressive considering the lack of coaching. The starting seven would make most teams in the US. They are fast and have good throws, particularly break marks and long shots. In general we are less disciplined than I would like (we take a lot of chances deep, e.g.) but usually make up for it with very intense defense.

I’m really looking forward to 8 Nations next weekend in Barcelona, and London in September. I need to get in shape. I don’t think I’ve been this bad since before I started playing ultimate (12 years ago). My speed is okay right now but my endurance is shot. But Kevin gave me some good ideas for short-and-intense workouts, a la the rats in the NY Times, and I’m going to try and make it happen each morning between 6 and 6:30 am. Good times.

It’s amazing, albeit exhausting. I am now done with Swann’s Way but I have six more volumes to go. Eric and Lea will remember the massive paperback I bought at Shakespeare and Co; well, that’s only the first 3 volumes. It also happens to be the oldest translation and (apparently) not the best. This can be seen in the translation of the title, À la recherche du temps perdu, which my book renders as Remembrance of Things Past (a quote from a Shakespeare sonnet), but is more accurately In Search of Lost Time. For the final volumes, I’ll get the newer translation, which is available in Britain (but not in the US until 2018 – thank goodness for amazon.co.uk). That’s your caveat for the below. It is in fact not even a complete paragraph in the original; I’ve cut text from both before and after the excerpt, it would be around twice as long otherwise.

————–
Swann could not without anxiety ask himself what Odette would mean to him in the years that were to come. Sometimes, as he looked up from his victoria on those fine and frosty nights of early spring, and saw the dazzling moonbeams fall between his eyes and the deserted streets, he would think of that other face, gleaming and faintly roseate like the moon’s, which had, one day, risen on the horizon of his mind and since then had shed upon the world that mysterious light in which he saw it bathed. If he arrived after the hour at which Odette sent her servants to bed, before ringing the bell at the gate of her little garden, he would go round first into the other street, over which, at the ground-level, among the windows (all exactly alike, but darkened) of the adjoining houses, shone the solitary lighted window of her room. He would rap upon the pane, and she would hear the signal, and answer, before running to meet him at the gate. He would find, lying open on the piano, some of her favorite music, the Valse des Roses, the Pauvre Fou of Tagliafico (which, according to the instructions embodied in her will, was to be played at her funeral); but he would ask her, instead, to give him the little phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata. It was true that Odette played vilely, but often the fairest impression that remains in our minds of a favorite air is one which has arisen out of a jumble of wrong notes struck by unskillful fingers upon a tuneless piano. The little phrase was associated still, in Swann’s mind, with his love for Odette. He felt clearly that this love was something to which there were no corresponding external signs, whose meaning could not be proved by any but himself; he realized, too, that Odette’s qualities were not such as to justify his setting so high a value on the hours he spent in her company. And often, when the cold government of reason stood unchallenged, he would readily have ceased to sacrifice so many of his intellectual and social interests to this imaginary pleasure. But the little phrase, as soon as it struck his ear, had the power to liberate in him the room that was needed to contain it; the proportions of Swann’s soul were altered; a margin was left for a form of enjoyment which corresponded no more than his love for Odette to any external object, and yet was not, like his enjoyment of that love, purely individual, but assumed for him an objective reality superior to that of other concrete things. This thirst for an untasted charm, the little phrase would stimulate anew in him, but without bringing him any definite gratification to assuage it. With the result that those parts of Swann’s soul in which the little phrase had obliterated all care for material interests, those human considerations which affect all men alike, were left bare by it, blank pages on which he was at liberty to inscribe the name of Odette. Moreover, where Odette’s affection might seem ever so little abrupt and disappointing, the little phrase would come to supplement it, to amalgamate with it its own mysterious essence. Watching Swann’s face while he listened to the phrase, one would have said that he was inhaling an anesthetic which allowed him to breathe more deeply. And the pleasure which the music gave him, which was shortly to create in him a real longing, was in fact closely akin, at such moments, to the pleasure which he would have derived from experimenting with perfumes, from entering into a contract with a world for which we men were not created, which appears to lack form because out eyes cannot perceive it, to lack significance because it escapes our intelligence, to which we many attain by way of one sense only. Deep repose, mysterious refreshment for Swann – for him whose eyes, although delicate interpreters of painting, whose mind, although an acute observer of manners, must bear for ever the indelible imprint of the barrenness of his life – to feel himself transformed into a creature foreign to humanity, blinded, deprived of his logical faculty, almost a fantastic unicorn, a chimera-like creature conscious of the world through his two ears alone. And as, notwithstanding, he sought in the little phrase for a meaning to which his intelligence could not descend, with what a strange frenzy of intoxication must he strip bare his innermost soul of the whole armor of reason, and make it pass, unattended, through the staining vessel, down into the dark filter of sound. He began to reckon up how much that was painful, perhaps even how much secret and unappeased sorrow underlay the sweetness of the phrase; and yet to him it brought no suffering. What matter though the phrase repeated that love is frail and fleeting, when his love was so strong! He played with melancholy which the phrase diffused, he felt it stealing over him, but like a caress which only deepened and sweetened his own sense of happiness.

This week I began my intensive French classes at the Sorbonne. I’ve been pretty nervous about this whole plan, since 25 hours a week of class is quite a lot. I also wasn’t clear on the class times, and the woman who gave me my oral exam told me “ce n’est pas possible” to work and take the class; moreover, she told me I would be in class from 8 am to 4:30 pm. When I pointed out that this was way more than 25 hours a week, she said there was an hour for breakfast, an hour for lunch, and 1.5 hours of lab, then said “bonne courage!” in this particular French way, where instead of meaning “good luck” it means “you can try but I don’t think you’ll succeed.” As far as I could figure, this meant I would actually be in class from 9 to 3 and would have to skip the afternoon lab.

Luckily, this is not the case. It turns out that there are several different classes, starting at various different times; mine starts at 8 am, the earliest possible, goes till 10, then there’s an hour of phonetics, then an hour for lunch, then another 2 hours of class. This is perfect for me. The class is at a satellite location of Boulevard Raspail (not far from Alliance Française) and it’s 10 minutes by metro to work. Thus I’m able to take class all morning and be at work in the afternoon and evening, and I don’t need to stay until midnight to get something accomplished. I also suspect “bonne courage” woman helped arrange this for me, for which I’m grateful. Then again, 8 am is probably not the preferred start time.

Immediately the class has made a big difference. I can understand everything the professor is saying, and just listening and understanding French for 4 hours a day truly helps me to start thinking in the language. I have a lot more confidence in striking up conversations with people, including at frisbee and with random men telling me about their socks in the laundromat. I’ve been reading too, both my John Grisham (L’heritage, or The Summons) and Le Petit Prince. I haven’t started listening to only French music but I don’t think that’s going to happen; I just don’t know enough French bands.

Although the timing is perfect for me, working and taking the class is still quite difficult. I’m not super tired, intellectually – the French is in a completely different part of my brain than computer science – but I haven’t been sleeping at all. Previously, my routine had been to wake up when the sun wouldn’t let me sleep anymore, typically at 7 am, run (sometimes), shower, clean the apartment (necessary every day because of the cats), make coffee, eat breakfast and read, and roll into work between 9 and 10 depending on how into my book I was. I would usually go to sleep between 12 and 1, at 11 if I was really tired. It’s hard to sleep much earlier than that because the sun is still up.

But nowadays, that schedule is impossible. I would very much like to keep running in the mornings but so far I haven’t been able to. Nor can I actually clean the apartment; these days I don’t even bother making the bed into a couch. I think the cats prefer it anyway, and I’m only in the apartment to sleep. I wake up at 6, make some coffee, do my French homework, then shower and get ready; I try to leave the apartment by 7:30. I get to work around 2:30 pm, but if I need to do any shopping I have to do it then. Moreover, if I have any activity (frisbee, friends of friends in town, special events) I have to adjust my schedule, usually by working later another day. Wednesday nights are summer league and it’s seriously necessary for my mental health (no practice since I came back, everyone’s on vacation). I’m working weekends, which I find pleasant, because it’s so much more relaxing than getting up at 8. This week I had several nights that I slept less than 4 hours. Surprisingly I feel great, but sometimes when the alarm goes off at 6 am, I hate my life – my loud apartment, my cats that don’t want to sleep at night because they’re starved for my attention, my 8 am class that I have to get up for and my challenging post-doc that makes me stay up too late.

That said, I really think I’m living a dream. It took me a very long time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve always been good in school and I’m interested in a fair number of things; I love math, find it to be incredibly beautiful, but I also love literature, and politics, and economics, and interacting with people. I think I could have been content in a number of different professions, but I am delighted to find myself happy in the one I’ve chosen. I get to spend all day long working on interesting problems, surrounded by incredibly intelligent people, talking about cutting edge research and learning from the best. And I’m paid to do this! I don’t have to teach, I don’t have to sit in boring meetings, all I have to do is think; think, and implement. And I love to think. I am doing exactly what I want to do. So don’t feel too sorry for me when I complain about my lack of sleep; I’ll sleep once I’ve learned French, and published a paper in computer vision, and won a European ultimate tournament.

I have a backlog of ideas for blog posts…I have a half-written post about Yaka, plus one about interesting CS research. But today I will talk about my carte de séjour. The pic is me with all my fancy IDs – an ID for ENS, one for the Sorbonne, and, of course, my carte. (The first two are among the most famous universities in France.) For those who don’t know, to be legally in France you need a carte de séjour that you renew annually. It’s pretty expensive too, 300 euros the first time and 70 to renew, though my employer reimburses me. My wonderful secretary handled all the administrative details, though I did need to get my birth certificate translated into French and get my mom to scan my college diploma.

This speaks to my first beef with French bureaucracy, which is this: they require an enormous amount of documents, but each of these is very easily faked. How are they going to verify my college diploma? My birth certificate? The translation wasn’t very official looking at all, though it did have stamps on it. It’s as though stamps make everything completely kosher. They also make you sign things in blue ink, as though that somehow prevents forgery (color printers, anyone?) I spent a ridiculous amount of time and money on the documents required to bring the cats, including overnight shipping of veterinarian’s certificates to the USDA in Olympia, and they didn’t even look at them. They told me at customs that it was enough that I had them.

In any case, documents in order, I awaited the call from the prefecture. The day finally arrived. I went to ANAEM to get my medical exam and carte. The medical exam went off without a hitch, though I found the process quite strange. They require an X-ray of your lungs, so I was ushered into a closet with two doors. I locked the first and was instructed to strip to my waist. The second door opened and I entered a large room with two women and an X-ray machine. It was really strange to be hanging out with them with no top on. X-ray taken, I got dressed and exited from the door I came in. Then there was an interview with another woman, who took my blood pressure, asked about my medical history, and reviewed my X-ray. And then they gave me the X-ray. “Yours to keep!”

Thus far, things were going swimmingly. This all changed when I came to the main desk. I was lacking in a document, and I was lacking in payment. You have to pay in stamps that you buy from a tobacco store. Why not pay there? Why pay in stamps? Why a tobacco store? What is the logic??? I have no answers. French people don’t think it’s weird, though.

So I went to work (Bastille – Place d’Italie, direct metro ride). At lunch, I got a sandwich and went home, picked up my document, and bought 300 euros worth of stamps from the tobacco store next door. I chose to bike to Bastille this time – hot day, and I was in a dress, but the metro is hot too and costs more than Velib. I show up in the office, dripping sweat, and they inform me I’ve bought the wrong stamps. And “everyone knows this”. Apparently, it’s not enough to buy 300 euros worth of stamps in 30s, 20s, and 10s – NO, you must buy 3 stamps of 55 euros and 9 stamps of 15 euros. Why? Why? I almost cried, but they were unmoved. Wrong stamps. Come back tomorrow.

I tried to exchange the stamps at a nearby tobacco store, but no dice. Somehow, although they are equivalent to a kind of tax cash, they are not exchangeable. I rode my bike back to my original tobacco store next to my apartment. He luckily was willing to exchange them – otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done. Not only would I be out 300 euros, but I’m pretty sure my bank doesn’t allow me to take out more than 500 euros a week (security for the carte bleue). Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough 15 euro stamps.

Back to work. The next morning, I get up early to go to the tobacco store and Bastille, but at the store, they still don’t have the stamps. Come back in an hour, they say. Instead I go to work and come back in the afternoon. The stamps are ready for me so I go to Bastille, arriving Friday afternoon at 4:30. I’m told that it was way too late to do anything administrative, so I smile and say “je ne comprends pas”. She mutters something unpleasant about me not understanding, and it then takes her all of two seconds to take my documents and give me my carte. Which I have now, and it’s good until January 31, and I really hope I don’t have to deal with the French government till then.