Humble Aloe

me:  man im such a genius

 Matt:  lol

pat yourself on the back some more why don't you?

 me:  im patting it so hard im starting to get a bruise

  Matt:  I have some humble aloe you can use on it

Paris on Saturdays

Saturdays in Paris are the worst.

As one of the biggest cities in the world, within its 20 districts of this geographically small city, there are 2.5 million residents (accounted for, not including the high number of homeless people all over the place). On top of that, as the French love to tell you, it is the most visited city in the entire WORLDAccording to the city of Paris, there are 27 million visitors a year who don't live here.That means there are, on a very crude average, around 75 thousand visitors per day wandering around the city and not at work.

So write this down, 

Point #1: Paris has a lot of residents

Point #2: Paris has a lot of tourists

Now, a lot of the visitors are European, and are here for short weekend getaways as you can travel almost anywhere in Europe within 2 hours (flight/train/care what have you). So on weekends, Paris has more tourists than the average number. Let's say roughly 25% more so than weekdays. So we are talking approximately 100 thousand tourists on weekends.

Point #3: There are even more tourists on weekends than weekdays.

So let's so, if you were a resident, what would you do? Run your shopping and our errands on weekdays and avoid the crowd on a weekend? Easier said than done! Here is what the average store opening hours are like in Paris: 

Weekdays: 10am to 8pm 

Saturdays: 9am to 6pm

Sundays: CLOSED 

If you are an average working person that's in the office from 9am to 6pm, or even 10am to 7pm, the chances of you doing anything after work is next to impossible. If you are lucky, there might be a express grocery store near you that you buy something quick after work. Generally, you are probably pretty damn tired from the one hour commute squashed between the rat race and 75 thousand tourists who are wandering the narrow metro stations trying to figure out where they are going, or simply taking their time to smell the stench flowers. 

Point #4: It is difficult to run errands and grocery shop on weekdays if you work

Point #5: You cannot run errands and tourists cannot shop on Sundays

And there you have it. Saturdays in Paris are a NIGHTMARE. 100 thousand tourists are wandering the city, many who are trying to get their shopping on on Saturdays while all residents are racing to the grocery stores and malls, hoping to get everything they need to do done by the time the store close.

Saturdays are not for sleeping in or resting your brain from a long week of work! It is even more work....having to navigate between the tourists who don't seem to understand what living in a big city is like. They get on the metro, and instead of gunning as inside as possible so that all the people behind them can get in before the doors close, they step in the door, STOP, then check to see, if there are seats available, which seats they want, and if not, where they would like to stand....in the meanwhile, all you want to do is completely your chores so you can continue to live like human beings (have food, warm clothing, and clean shelter). 

Saturdays in Paris are the worst.

Objectification

Some people have asked me why I get so worked up when people are "fascinated" by my culture or background. What they clearly don't understand and are ignorant to is the difference between understanding and learning about another culture vs. objectifying another culture.

Hey world, I am not a "Chinese" "Girl" who cooks "exotic" "Chinese" food and speaks an "exotic" language.
Ethnicity and culture are not "cool" things you get to learn about but a strong part of of what makes up a person. I am no more defined by my skin colour as the hat I am wearing today as what my background culture is. Learning about a culture is more than saying shouting a couple of words of its language to a person walking by, liking some ethnic dish, or wearing a cultural clothing as a hallowe'en costume.

Learning about various cultures HELPS you understand A PART of what that person is made up of, it doesn't make the person who he or she is.

I am NOT an object that happens to be walking on the street or working next to you that you are "fascinated" with. I am a person just like you. Do you like Daft Punk BECAUSE YOU ARE FRENCH? Do you listen to the Beatles BECAUSE YOU ARE BRITISH? Do you dance to Elvis BECAUSE YOU ARE AMERICAN?

I like shopping as much as it's because I am Chinese as I am Canadian. No, I like shopping because my name is Lynn and I like to analyse things and i'm frugal and a minimalist, and my brain can't work in clutter mode and shopping allows me to look around, and analyse things and learn about culture and ensure i buy what works out for me price and practicality. Now if you had gotten to know me as a person, you might know that, but instead, you can just attribute it to the fact that I am "Chinese", whatever that means for you. In a similar vein, just because I grew up in Canada doesnt mean I love the cold.  Can you imagine a Canadian tell another Canadian "stop complaining, you're canadian, you should like the cold! You should be used to it!" Yeah clearly because i am from somewhere it makes me a super human who LOVES cold weather.

Next time when you make a comment based on someone's culture - think about what you are saying. No one is walking cultural artefact.

The Meaning of Gifting from Paris

Christmas shopping this year has been really difficult for many reasons, and mainly because I'm shopping for people I no longer see on a regular basis, so I have no idea what they want or what they need. A lot of people might just say, oh come on, you live in Paris, just bring back something Parisian...well here's what I found out over the last year and half i've been here - almost everything you can buy in Paris, you can buy in the US - and for a lot cheaper as well. Yes, even the stuff made in France.

Exhibit A: Nuxe Paris
Nuxe is a very popular skincare brand here and I have to admit, they have some really good stuff - and the smell is just wonderful. As this is a relatively unknown brand in North American (unlike Vichy, L'Occitane, Lancome, Yves Rocher, Sephora, I can go on...), generally this would be a great item to get for the women - "hey guys, this is the most popular moisturiser they use in the land of the glam!!"

Except, apparently you can simply get this stuff online on their US branded site, for CHEAPER.

Here is the body lotion on the US Nuxe website for $23 USD for approximate 400 mL

Here is the same one from the French website for 18.6 EUR for 200 ML - which is about $25 at current exchange rate. WTF would be the correct way to describe this....

Well, what about Macaroons, you ask, everyone LOVES macaroons. Well they don't really eat macaroons here...so i'm not sure what you mean....oh, unless you are talking about MacarOns...yes, people always think France = Eiffel Tower, perfume (I'll get to that later), and the land of the "Macaroons", so bringing back macarons must be easy! Well except there's a slight problem - actual good macarons, like baguettes have a life-expectancy of 3-4 days. So even if I were to run to L'aduree or Lenotre the day I leave the country (which is actually possible as there are l'adurees in the airport if i happen to be in the right terminal), there's still the issue of having to see everyone who wants them as soon as I get off the long-haul flight, which, even if I wanted to (and I might not), is almost impossible. Plus, let me show you:

Exhibit B: L'aduree Macarons around the world:

Yes, they even have stores in China. If you really wanted fresh, good macarons, do you really want them flown here in economy from an 8 hour flight from Paris or do you want fresh made ones that you can get from the various US locations? So as much as I'd love to bring everyone good macarons, it's really not possible. I could bring those ones they sell at the tourist stores that lasts up to a year, but I'd be a horrible friend and person if you are not my friend and I'm somehow obligated to bring you back something.

So what else...what else...?
Chocolate? Yea, I brought everyone chocolate last year...so I can't give chocolate every year. Perfume? I can bring perfume right? Sure, if you can't buy them in departments stores in North America already, then the fancy custom ones cost 50-200 EUR a bottle. I'm not made of money....Handbags and fashion accessories? Same story. Oh La Creuset! Same story, except also they are CAST IRON pots and pans so I'm afraid they might not meet flight restrictions. Fois Gras? Illegal, not to mention not very many people i know want to eat those things.

Look, besides the type of tourist garbage that no one wants to import from France (and even those you can get on ebay), thanks to our wonderful global village, nothing in France is special anymore.

I will bring back any of the above under special requests from people (I have had a friend that asked for cough syrup that had codeine in them), but I can't bring it back for everyone I need to buy something for.
Did I mention also that everything here is so goddamn expensive in comparison to Canada and the US? If I wanted to buy something not French, I am better off doing my christmas shopping onsite and not here, but also brings back the entire dilemma of not knowing what to buy for people you haven't seen for a long time...or have never met at all, in this case, Caleb's family in Nevada.

I went Christmas shopping yesterday and that was my divination based on my sore back and exhausted state of being. Perhaps I just need to realize that Christmas gifts are not about getting people what they WANT or NEED, but just buying something to show them that I bought something for you cuz I care?

I like the gifts I give to be meaningful and meaningful is harder and harder these days, with the world becoming one village. It's both a good and a bad thing. The bad thing is that buying something from afar or from somewhere "exotic" no longer counts as being meaningful, but the good thing from that I guess, is that for something to be meaningful, you would have to really know and care for the person, which is what it should be in the first place, no? I need to start calling people regularly on the phone to know their lives - that's what meaningful is - caring about them regularly and not just once a year.

Survival

I've seen in movies people who have been ravaged by war and hardship seek refuge in cities with food and humane conditions. I've read in books about people coming from poor areas going into big cities hoping to find a job and a better life. I've heard stories of people with nothing, migrate to places with something, only to find, still, nothing. But they were always stories from another time or another place, sometimes both, far far away from my reality. The very very limited number of beggars, homeless indivduals, and dumpster excavators I have seen, I've been told to stay away. There's no empathy - there's hardly sympathy.  It's not because I'm superior or haughty; it's because I've never understood and was never asked to understand. These people, by my education and by my instinct, are from a different universe, one impossible for me to relate to.

Moving to Paris has started to make me realized how privileged I am. No, not because I get to live in Paris. The grandma on the street looking through the garbage bin got to move to Paris too, but as a refugee from a war-torn country and living in a squalor home provided by the French government. She hasn't had the education to allow her to find a job. The only thing she knows how to do is to scavenge through the junk and debris in order to find something she understands to be useful and could help her family, even though her family no longer needs to do that. The near middle-aged woman who lives in the metro station with a baby in her hand begging for change or ticket restaurant was privileged enough to stumble across Europe to Paris too, but she doesn't know how to look for a job and she doesn't understand why anyone would need a job if there are people on the street who can give her money. You can't even tell if that baby is hers or even real. The young man whose ancestors have been colonized and exploited by the French Colonial Empire speaks French in a thick accent has managed to illegally but luckily sneak his way into the city of lights and glamour. But he has been shunned to the suburbs of Paris looking for odd-end jobs to tie him over until he falls into the economy of crime. Yet, they are still privileged in relations to what might have been otherwise if they didn't come here. This is not the privilege I talk about.

Where I grew up, the couple of beggars at the train station seems physically disabled and you wonder who's taking care of them; that one homeless teen who lives next to the beer store in the neighbourhood plaza is considered lazy; and few trash digger you sometimes see downtown are probably crazy. I understood that if you work hard, you will succeed. And anything outside, beyond what is comprehensible, is therefore flawed. Except none of this is true - or maybe some of it might be. But it doesn't matter, does it? As long as you stay away from the crazies, far enough that they can't steal, rob, or hurt you and you study hard and you work hard, you will be someone and even something; everyone else is simply not putting in enough effort.

The privilege I am talking about, is the privilege to have ever thought this way and that I can, if I choose to, continue to think this way.  Everyone is born with tabula rasa and despite that we all somehow ended up in Paris, there are those who grew up with less than nothing and their goal in Paris is to survive, while mine is to live magnificently. This city is full of people who are here to survive. And it makes those of us who has never had to fight for survival unbearably hard to breathe. And that, in and of itself, is a privilege. I get it now.