| God, Man
& French Chefs |
| Motivation
For Living In France |
| By Bill Bonner |
| "Excrement!"
The conversation
in the rather up-market "Les Bouchons de Francois Clerc" came to
an immediate halt. Everyone had heard the booming voice in the kitchen.
Someone was `losing it'...
I will do my
best to translate, without offending your refined sensibilities, dear reader:
"C'est une
catastrophe! This place is a bordello filled with the excrement of fat
porcine animals of low intelligence who prostitute themselves." It
was a remarkable stream of cussing which went on for several minutes. |
|
|
|
|
|
| I had heard
nothing like it, even when Pierre skinned his knuckles while trying to
fix the tractor.
Maria laughed.
Other diners looked at each other awkwardly...or down at their food nervously.
Had the man lost his mind? What had he done to the food? We could imagine
tomorrow's headline in the leftist newspaper, Liberation:
| Search
4Escape - The International Lifestyles Search Engine |
| -
4Escape is a search engine that searches our network of websites each of
which shares a common theme: International relocation, living ? investing
overseas, overseas jobs, embassies, maps, international real estate, asset
protection, articles about how to live ? invest overseas, Caribbean properties
and lifestyles, overseas retirement, offshore investments, our yacht broker
portal, our house swap portal, articles on overseas employment, international
vacation rentals, international vacation packages, travel resources,
every embassy in the world, maps of the world, our three very popular eZines
. . . and, as they are fond to say, a great deal more. |
|
|
"Diners Poisoned
as Chef Goes Mad!"
I could even
imagine the article's slant: |
|
|
| sympathy for
the poor chef who had probably been asked to work more than his usual 35
hours and was justifiably indignant over the working conditions, or perhaps
over the condition of the carrots he was given to work with...along with
a certain unstated contempt for the dead bourgeois customers - who had
driven the poor man mad.
This is my
first experience with a chef gone berserk. But they must go crazy all the
time. French diners are very demanding. And very critical. They take food
seriously.
At least a
couple DR readers have wondered why I make my home in France. To some,
living in France in the time of Chirac has no more appeal than serious
dental work in the time of Colbert. But in reply to the question, I respond
that life, like theatre, is lived as either tragedy or comedy. An American
in France sees the comedy in things. |
|
|
Offshore
Resources Gallery
|
|
|
| We are like
Chevy Chase in his movie, "European Vacation," too ignorant to worry
about what the chef puts in the soup... and too romantic to care.
And there is
another reason - which helps explain, or perhaps illustrate, many of the
ideas you find in the Daily Reckoning...which I will explain.
The French
take many things seriously. Maria and Sophia recounted their experiences
at school, Maria doing wickedly accurate impersonations of some of the
characters at the Institute de la Tour...and Sophia reporting, in depth,
on the strange goings-on at the Ecole Actif Bilingue.
Poor Diane!
Maria reported that her friend broke down in tears as her teacher evaluated
her work in front of the entire class. Apparently, each of the students
is asked to stand as the teacher tells her how she is doing. The pressure
is intense. Teachers in France do not worry about a child's self-esteem.
Students are criticized sharply, almost mercilessly. It is hard to feel
sympathetic towards a 14-year-old boy. But Maria's account of how teachers
picked on the only two boys in her class brought me close. |
|
|
| I have also
heard parents criticize their children in a manner that would seem harsh
in America. But parents are expected to spend a lot of time pushing their
children to do well in school. So much depends on getting good grades in
France...the whole country seems to be run by people who did well in secondary
school, took competitive exams and got into the elite `grand ecoles' such
as E.N.A., the school of administration that prepares most of France's
high-ranking business and political leaders.
"The enarques
[as graduates from E.N.A. are called] are untouchable," says a friend
of mine, asking not to be quoted. "There are always scandals in France
- and people going to jail. But the enarques never go to jail. Because
the judges are enarques too."
[I am secretly
hoping that maybe Henry will make it into E.N.A...and will make me untouchable
too.] |
|
|
Offshore
Resources Gallery
|
| Escape
From America Magazine - The Magazine To Read To If You Want To Move Overseas |
| - Began Summer
1998 - Now with almost a half million subscribers, out eZine is the resource
that expats, and wantabe expats turn to for information. Our archives
now have thousands of articles and each month we publish another issue
to a growing audience of international readers. Over 100 people a
day subscribe to our eZine. We've been interviewed and referenced
by the Wall Street Journal, CNN, The Washington Post, London Talk Show
Radio, C-Span, BBC Click Online, Yahoo Magazine, the New York Times, and
countless other media sources. Featuring International Lifestyles
~ Overseas Jobs ~ Expat Resources ~ Offshore Investments ~ Overseas
Retirement - Second Passports ~ Disappearing Acts ~ Offshore eCommerce
~ Unique Travel ~ Iconoclastic Views ~ Personal Accounts ~ Views From Afar
~ Two things have ushered us into a world without borders... the end of
the cold war and the advent of the world wide web of global communications
? commerce. Ten years and over one hundred issues! We're just
getting started - Gilly Rich - Editor |
|
|
| Sophia's school
is completely different from Maria's. It is a school for foreigners, and
perhaps redundantly, for misfits. Sophia is there because her French is
not good enough for the regular schools. Unlike the younger children, she
has had to learn French the hard way - by studying it.
There are four
major groups in Sophia's school. There are the French - who are usually
hard cases - the "Arabs," the "Koreans," and the Anglo-Saxons.
Thus do school children divide the races of mankind.
"Instruction
is supposed to be in English," Sophia told us. "But nobody speaks
English except us, the Anglo-Saxons. The rest speak various things that
sound a little like they might be English...but I usually can't understand
a word."
Curiously...
"But the
Koreans," as Sophia's schoolmates refer to all the East Asians in their
school, "who barely speak English, seem to be the only ones who get
good grades."
This little
inssight by Sophia triggered a recollection in her sister:
"Dad,"
she asked, "How come you and Mom argue about such silly things? I mean,
I heard Martine's parents arguing about money...or maybe it was over what
kind of car they were going to buy."
"But you
and mom," she continued, "last weekend...I mean who ever heard of
parents arguing over who was that... Darwin?"
Ah yes, Darwin.
Well, that.
"Maria,
we weren't arguing," I protested, trying to close ranks with Elizabeth,
"we were just discussing it."
And Koreans?
Yes - we had
mentioned Koreans, too. I had actually. East Asians seem to work harder;
and intelligence tests suggest that they are smarter than Anglo-Saxons.
Or the French. In Darwinian terms, they seem to have a competitive advantage.
How come the whole world is not full of Koreans? Because, I had pointed
out to Elizabeth, Darwin's theory is flawed. It was a silly point...but
a silly argument needs silly points.
Who could take
an argument over Darwinism seriously? Even worse, who could take Darwinism
seriously? Still, it is fun to argue about it...
Bill Bonner
is the founder and president of Agora Publishing, one of the world's most
successful consumer newsletter publishing companies, and the author of
the free daily e-mail: The Daily Reckoning (www.dailyreckoning.com
). He is also the author of “Financial
Reckoning Day: Surviving The Soft Depression of The 21st Century” (John
Wiley & Sons) due out in September. |
|
 |
|
Articles
On Various Subjects Index ~ France
Index ~ |
Copyright 1996 -
EscapeArtist.com
Inc. All Rights Reserved