Stick shift

The news of the day is that I managed to remind myself about how to drive a stick shift car. It only took 10 minutes and a little bit of courage, especially when I was slipping down our steep driveway while burning the engine. My son and I egged each other on until both of us were pretty decent. What's a couple of engine stalls after all? We made it to the local village of Biot, and even managed to park the car in the parking lot without hurting anyone.

The day is spent cutting dead twigs off our jasmine, scraping algae off the pool, shopping for a microphone for my Skype conference tomorrow, buying paint for the walls, buying teak oil for the table outside, and generally rejecting pleas to go to the beach.

Lunch and dinner are prepared by my daughters - lunch is burnt and dinner is good.

Nice

This region is famous for burglars. One year, we had tenants for the summer. Burglars came through the window, and took away the men's trousers first, and then went to work. Little did they know that our tenants valued their cameras more than their appearances. One of the men chased the burglars away in his briefs.

So, today, as we load into our Citroen to venture out to town, we shut down our shutters and wait for our daughter to return from her walk with Charlie. As she puts the dog in the house, I hear a shout from my husband, but it is too late. The key is in the house, and all the humans are outside - we have done a very good job of locking down the house.

15 minutes later, we have found one loop hole in our otherwise watertight security. Having recovered our key, we drive off to Nice in our little banged up car fitted for 5. As we cross police, we shove down the head of the smallest human in the car, and pretend that all is fine.

Old Nice is very much the same as a couple of years ago. We stroll around and take in the sights, the kids throw stones into the Mediterranean, and our youngest who is sage enough to have donned his swim trunks, bounces about in the sea.

Citroen

8 days have passed since I arrived in France. Days of scrubbing and cleaning have made my paws rather sore. This afternoon, we load into our Citroen and head to old Antibes (pronounced Aunt-eeb). We tell our children to go oggle others on the beach and stroll through the town. There is a wedding at the city hall, where all I can do is wish them much luck (because for sure, they will need it). As we come back to the beach and plunck ourselves down, we find our neighbors to be British. One raspy voiced female smoking pot (I wouldn't know, but my better half remembers the smell from his days in Buffalo) is talking non-stop and telling a child that wet arm pits are the source of all bad health, imploring the kid to change into dry clothes. Why not stop smoking pot instead, I ask myself, but have better sense than to ask the Brit directly. After many credit cards and bills (the beggar kindly tells me the machine does not take 10 euro bills), I manage to pay the parking lot, and head home. The sideview mirror on the right which was repaired only yesterday starts peeling off, necessitating my right index finger to hold it up the whole way home. Vive la france!

Charlie comes home

We drive to the Nice airport in our little Citroen bought several years ago for 1500 euro. The side view mirror on the right is broken, so it makes getting off the highway very exciting. Spend 2 hours at cargo pick-up, and find that DELTA IS THE MOST INCOMPETENT AND PROCESS ORIENTED AIRLINE when it comes to animals. The cargo folks at Nice airport can attest to this. The man who has a brand new sting ray tatoo which my husband asks to see, says so, so it must be so. So, Charlie comes home and immediately performs a head count of his sheep and takes up the guarding position (back to us, and looking out for wolves). All is well now. How a 76 lbs lump of fur can capture one's heart is beyond me, but he does. The sun comes out, so we take our first dip in the pool and jacuzzi, both which have been rescued from wilderness and restored to its desired state over the course of the past 4 days. The frog who reigned the pool is sulking somewhere else while we venture in.

Today, we clean a few rugs and shampoo Charlie for good measure. My husband, who spent the afternoon at a hedge fund conference in Monte Carlo, reports that all the money is flowing to Asia now.

Dinner is Bouchee a la Reine (roughly translated as a mouthful for a queen) - it's a pastry stuffed with seafood and white cream, and zucchini pasta with garlic and leftover sauce from the pintade. National crisis has hit us as we realize THERE IS NO BREAD for the cheese.

Namaste!

A study on Inter-cultural Comparison

Recently, my life has become a continuation of cleaning. In fact, I have become a bi-coastal house cleaner. For most modern day workers, the computer is probably the favored machine. For me, it has been the vacuum cleaner.

We arrived at our house on the Cote d'Azur, as they say. The coast may be azur, but the house was more grey than anything else. It rained a lot this winter and spring. A big sprawling Provencal mas can produce a lot of dust and grime. So, we have spent most of our waking hours cleaning the grey out. For those aspiring globe trotters, may I inform you that Clorox in the US is Javel in France?
The balance of our hours have been split between cooking all the food one cannot easily find in the US, and communicating with an unfortunate friend who has had the "honor" of getting our dog Charlie onto a plane to France.

In the spirit of getting the bad news over quickly, an errant airline that will remain anonymous - that means you, Delta Airlines!!!, misled us to believe that Charlie could travel as check-in pet, only to deceive us at the last moment at the airport. As the old adage goes, goodwill always gets punished, and our dear friend was summoned from the land of nod at an ungodly 4 AM to receive a stressed out collie from a stressed out family, and had the misfortune of spending the next 5 days of his life dealing with beaurocracy, incompetence and vets until finally loading our grateful Charles in cargo air freight. Needless to say, we are thankful beyond words for having such an optimistic "friend in need".

On the culinary side, the French DNA in our kids keenly honed into the local bakery, which has found business spiking 300%. The Antibes Carrefour supermarket has been graced with our patronage daily as well. We have consumed gallons and tons of "not readily available in the USA" food in the few days we have been here. Just to name a few, merguez(spicy sausage made from lamb) with grated carrot salad, tabouleh, pintade (probably guinea fowl, and definitely a bird judging from the shape) with mustard and creme fraiche sauce, 200 varieties of cheese, petit suisse (similar to yoghurt but "much better" according to the French DNAs), blinis and accompanying spreads.... Our recipe book lists no less than a dozen pintade recipes, aside from several dozen chicken, turkey and pigeon recipes.

As I gaze at the garden conquered by Mother Nature, I am reminded of the gardener popping in at the kitchen window unannounced, and nearly pitching me into hysteria last evening. We had econimized and had him on leave for 7 months, in which timeframe, the garden has turned into a wild environment, aided by the gardener having turned off the water supply. As I watch the gardener and my husband throw arms into the air, and generally gesticulate in exaggerated fashion while the pintade grows overcooked and dry, I anticipate the worst. I pull myself up to full height (which isn't much) and venture out to save the day. A hesitant "Is everything OK?" is met with a passing "Yeah, yeah..." as i beat my retreat hastily. At dinner, I ask whether it was very acrimonious. To my surprise, I learn that the gardener was actually "very nice". The cultural difference kicks in again. Seemingly nice storekeepers can be horribly sullen and entitled, while seemingly agitated and agressive gardeners can be very nice.

I see Melanie, Mike, Marie and ....

In Japanese, there is a saying "ichigo ichie" which means "you have one chance to meet someone (so you'd better make the best of it)". In American colloquialism, this may be something like an "elevator pitch", "silver bullet", or serendipity. Every job I have held, I have been fortunate to have met people that I truly like and admire. If you remember Romper Room, you are middle aged and know what I am talking about. Look through that magic mirror, and think about all those friends you see. That is whom you will remember on your deathbed, not your "big deal" that closed 3 bps tighter than your competitor.

Before you know it..

It's June! As I sit in the local middle school auditorium, listening to my daughter and her classmates perform for the band, I realize how time has passed. The world is getting ready for summer. Vacations, moves, changes...

I too, have a project or two, some in limbo and some more in limbo.
Do I fake it till I make it? Am I making progress?