Paris catching up, and a technology whinge

We've had a good week overall, despite the suffocating heat the first couple of days--those of us on the west side of the building really suffer from the lack of A/C, because even with the blinds drawn the solar heat is super-effective--I was running with sweat in skivvies and the fan on, wishing for any source of better air, to no avail: there are smokers all around, on the 4th and 6th floors, and luckily the pattern has changed to clouds, even rain, torrential at times, as I discovered when I left my window open....

As I said the dinner at Natacha's local café went fine, and I was heartened by the quality and quantity of conversation; I wish I could say it had translated into more diligence as far as timeliness is concerned, but you can't have everything. One thing we don't have as much of on this trip as we did last year is the snippiness or cattiness--we had a couple of queen bees last year who were of the "I complain, therefore I am" disposition, and we also had several guys who were over here mostly to get blasted, it seems. I still cannot figure out why their parents indulged them this multi-thousand dollar trip--they weren't typical frat boys, but man were they a pain. This year I have just begun to hear of some conflict amongst too-clingy roommates, and am cautiously considering some adjustments to the room assignments once we start the Alps leg on Monday.

As last year, I'm always semi stunned at how quickly time gets dissipated in administrivia. It's bad enough when everything is working smoothly, and all you are doing is trying to figure out how all the different activities are going to line up, knowing that these tasks are not sufficiently parse-able or explainable to an assistant that you would actually save any time by explaining them enough to offload onto the assistant. But I have come to expect that stuff. It's the other stuff that is the killer:

Tuesday after a pretty decent class in the afternoon, I spent an hour screwing around with my phone, which suddenly quit working. I couldn't tell if I was putting a wrong prefix or something, but kept getting a "contact your provider" message. Then I had Tiffany try to call me, and she got a "this number is invalid" message. All sorts of apocalypso music started running through my head--was the bill already due and they were witholding service? Had I pushed some electro-fragmentizer button as I pulled the phone out of my pocket for the umpteenth time to check the time? What the?

Anyway, I was phoneless and I headed back to the hotel to Skype the provider. At first I got the hemming and hawing, eventually was told that it would be back up and running tomorrow morning my time. Uh, no, that was not acceptable. To my credit I stayed calm and firm, assuring the beleagured fellow in Bangalore or wherever that this was simply not acceptable, that this was an emergency contact number for more than sixty parents of my students, and that they had to do better than this. I surprised even myself. The guy transferred me to his supervisor, and she said I would be back in business in half an hour. I asked for a number to Skype her back but she made me settle for giving her my landline and room number, promising to call me if there was any problem. Grrr. At 25 and 28 minutes there was still no joy, but at 31 minutes after her assurance, ring-a-ding there she was on my cell telling me (superfluously) that my cell was receiving calls again. Evidently one of her associates had "made a mistake and reassigned my number," but she had now blocked any reassignment without her express say-so. What a saga. A good hour and a half that I could have been catching up this blog, or marking journals, or--what a concept--enjoying Paris!--and instead I am Zenning around with this kind of crap.

More technology fun
Of course while I am on the topic of phone nightmares: this very afternoon I got a text message from Pascal, the fellow Amelie and Alex and I met in the Dolomites last summer and whom we had a pleasant evening with in Paris on our return. I'd e-mailed him about possibly getting together, and though he had family visiting he was interested. So what happens next is probably funny but it wasn't at the time: I open his message, and respond in my half-assed way, since my phone is set to the weird "let me guess what you want to say" mode where you don't key in each letter, you give hints and become Borg-ed with this machine that is intuiting what you really want, you're playing this infernal game of Pictionary with a context-independent guesser who says "P-must mean Please. Oh, Pr, must be Prehensile, Pre, must be Prestidigitation, etc etc., oh, Preference why didn't you just say so?" All so I could tell Pascal "No preference, you choose" dinner tonight over lunch tomorrow) (I must be the only person on the planet who hates this mode), eventually getting some help from a friendly student who happens to be close by. He's doing great, but I can sense the "Whoa, grandpa, step into the 21st Century" undercurrents as he tries ever so hard not to patronize his professor too blatantly, especially the professor who has been exhorting them to write better and be more articulate and use their little pea brains and maybe take the training wheels off their cognitive faculties. His lips are moving one way saying "I can't believe this guy is such a klutz!" while the voice-over says "Yeah I had a Razr once, and I think you have to hit that button. No, that one. No, the button with the minus sign on it." So that was fun.

But then the real fun starts. I get up to my room. The phone starts beeping in a way that I don't recognize. A message is coming in. From Pascal. I read it. Blank. Another one. From Pascal. I read it. Blank. I have no way to stop this. I don't know how to delete the message. Another one. From Pascal. I read it. Blank. A message says my memory is getting low. Yeah right. It's the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Another one. From Pascal. I read it. Blank. I turn the phone off, hoping this will stop the bleating (sorry). I find my instruction book, and decipher how to delete messages. I turn the phone back on. Start deleting some of the 18 messages. But I'm ten into the process, when another one comes in. From Pascal. I read it. Blank. You get the picture. I turn the phone off. I Skype Pascal. I hear…. weirdness. Repeated sounds. I go downstairs. More tech help from sympathetic students. They have no real idea. Take out the SIM card. Take out the battery. OK. Mr. Thumbs does so, after some Remedial Phone For Nimrods 1A at Montparnasse Community College ("well, maybe you should actually show me instead of just doing it, jut in case it happens when you're not around")(I think of the mock Saturday Night Live ad for "Tryopenin," the arthritis medicine in the un-openable bottle). Cool, no new messages. For a couple of minutes. Then… Oh damn. Another one. From Pascal. I read it. Blank. Another one. From Pascal. I read it. Blank. I've left three voicemails for Pascal now.

Finally I call Pascal's cell and get through. He's abject. He was on the metro. His phone was in his pocket. These are butt-calls. I don't even want to know how many .13 eurocents per minute charges I've just incurred, but I laugh and assure him All Is OK. But I still have 18 more messages to delete, and we will have dinner tonight, somewhere, at 8. He will call me--I said, "Don't text me"--at 7 to say where.


So next up:
Tuesday: the boat trip. Thinking I'm getting sick
Wednesday: Bastille day: freaking in the morning knowing I am in trouble
Thursday: Versailles, feeling better after the best sleep in weeks
Friday: Last Paris class, the big essay; but news of roommate crises, a cut foot that better not get infected, etc.

A Paris microblog

I wrote a very quick e-mail update to my a colleague just now, and thought it would be a start on a blog entry.

I don't want to jinx anything but unless I am completely clueless I think today was one of the better days I've had on Summer Abroas: despite morning t-storm after breathtaking stuffiness in west-facing-baking room w/ not so good sleep after paper marking, I sorted out the breakfast thing (some students were behaving as if it was included, which it is not, so I reassured the dude that I would cover the few who had helped themselves to the croissants and coffee billed at 6 euro), posted a notice about the tour and class etc, had most of the class down at the lobby for 9 (except two whom I called at 5 til and woke them up, grr). Bus tour was very good--Christine the tour guide was better than last year's, likewise Jose the driver. Pitched it well, paced it pretty well, dropped at Luxembourg / Foyer; mini lecture on Lux, needed to kill an hour before Raquel's Americans in Paris class was done, turned 'em loose and they were all back in time for 1 o'clock, then meet & greet & settle on the details for AIP showing GT lunch spots with their week's worth of Paris wisdom. Then off to get Navigo passes, somewhat tedious and we had to have cash.

Then over to cafe to confirm dinner arrangements, back to FI and a really interesting and satisfying class 2:45-4:30 with many teaching moments that I will someday detail (re grading, SA experiential ed, sexism, cultural sensitivity, etc., as well as good stuff following up on London), then back to Citadines via metro and Monoprix, then a flurry of work until 7 for pre-dinner rendezvous, ticked at 3 students for being late, fast walk to Odeon (cafe)for dinner, which was fine--nothing refined, but serviceable (in my opinion, though the foodies will poo-poo it). Again unless I misread, this hot and crowded atmosphere in a part of their upstairs room was very conducive to lots of conversation, and at a higher level, more so than I heard the entirety of last year. For the money no comparison to last year's pretentious place near St Lazare, twice as expensive for maybe slightly more refined food but no beverages no coffee and an atmosphere that did not lead to conversation.

There's my 10 minute spew. Will have to read the riot act to a couple of folks about lateness and "citizenship." Definitely feel some buy-in happening in some good ways, so we'll see. Now hoping for better / longer sleep... No class til 1:30, and

The start of an Oxford blog, completed a week later

[was too tired and hot and anxious last night post Cup post paper-marking to do anything with this, and it's already midnight after a lonnnnnnnnng day]

Catching this up will be an ongoing struggle. I'm typing this on the Eurostar train, booming through the French countryside on the way to Lille and thence to Paris-Gare du Nord. I spent much of yesterday marking the papers they'd written on Thursday, and trying to reconcile a number of minor conflicts in the schedule (for example, the bus tour of Paris was originally going to be Monday afternoon, but instead came in as Monday morning--so could the classroom be switched and we could be delivered by bus to the classroom (on the Boulevard St Michel) instead of the hotel-apartment complex (near the Gare Montparnasse). I went through another period of self-doubt and woulda-coulda-shoulda vis a vis the whole arrangement of days: when to have class, when to do the Versailles tour, when to start museum passes, you name it--and of course the Bastille Day holiday sitting right in the middle of the week renders things even more complicated. I guess I write this stuff in the blog just to give an idea of the kinds of odd little decisions one has to make, and to live with, doing this job.

Taking the bus to Oxford on Friday was a nice familiar process, although I rode the "Oxford Tube" service, instead of the county bus--they both have nearly identical frequency and price, and it would astound a Californian to see how these two cities can support such a number of public transit options (name a destination 90 minutes bus from San Francisco that is served by buses 50 times a day at least!). Of course, with the congestion charge to get into the city by private car, public transit makes a lot more sense, and probably saves a lot of lives. But this photo shows how the day continued--more on this later.

[finished in Paris on Friday the 16th][there are some advantages to being a Writing Professional, I guess, as I realize in the last couple of hours I blasted out about 2500 blogwords out here on the occasionally smoke-infested but often quite peaceful courtyard of the Citadines-Montparnasse, the quiet side of the building, away from the infernal 23-hour-per-day racket of motos, trucks, buses and fire engines that afflicts my side of the building]

The day in Oxford began and ended alone, which was nice: I rode in quite a bit earlier than the others (some of whom despite my urgings cut things too fine), so that I could walk around a bit; I missed the chance to get off in St Clements on the east edge of town and head over to the Iffley Road track, where years ago I worked out and saw the plaque commemorating Roger Bannister's breaking of the 4-minute mile on that spot. I did, however, head into Christ Church Meadow, absorbing the peaceful and improbably bucolic ambiance a few hundred yards from the hubbub of the High Street (I should note also that the traffic on the High, in fact all through the center of town, seems much less frantic than when I was first there--and I am including my other height-of-summer visit back in 1978 before my semester abroad. Perhaps this is a result of more congestion pricing and rerouting and delivery scheduling).

Funny to feel the same arrogance of Christ Church as I passed through the gate and headed up to the post office to buy stamps, and then into the Covered Market to have a quiet cup of coffee and croissant before the day began in earnest. Heading down to the Radcliffe Camera (where I spent so much of my time--the reading room for literature was on the ground floor) I was girding myself for screwups, and I got them: only my assistant showed up on time, followed by a couple of students. Evidently the photocopying was a little faded, and no one seemed to want to ask for directions, and people thought that they could make it across London in ten minutes and that a bus would miraculously be there and that a 100 minute journey obviously would be done in 80. Not a good start, but I realized it would do nobbody any good if I wigged out at the stragglers.

Eventually, as we came up on 11:40 for an 11:00 meeting time, Mark Curtis my Oriel contact called, checking in to be sure he had the day right (and also, I'm sure, because he knew that the dining hall would be less accessible to us once it was full of people from some of their summer programs). I decided to mosey on over, and just as I did so the last people showed up, including some who had actually been in town but who had decided to go to Starbucks and had probably wasted half an hour! Unbelievable.

It was slightly less congenial to visit the college without seeing my old tutor Glenn, who was spending holiday time in Cornwall, and slightly less informative to be getting the tour of the Senior Library from someone other than the librarian, who was on vacation as well, but Mark acquitted himself well. The Chapel was a highlight for me, singing a lick from the Bach cantata we had sung in March, as well as whistling a bit of the 2nd Brandenburg to demonstrate the flattering acoustics. After the usual bio-breaks we agreed to meet back up at the Radcliffe Square at 2 PM for our walk to North Oxford and the Cherwell Boathouse.

It was just hot enough to cause some people to think about complaining, but the shade of the University Parks helped to nip that in the bud; we dispersed into six punts of five people each, and headed jerkily up the river. As last year, this turned out to be a bonding experience as people shared the frustrations of going in circles and the satisfaction of getting things moving in the right direction, and I didn’t notice any of the pissy dynamic that had marred last year's outing for a couple of boats. The weather was perfect too, unlike the overcast we had last year, and when we finally tied up at the Victoria Arms a fair number of the kids took my suggestion to have pints of shandy rather than beer, the perfect refreshment on a warm day. Soooo nice to sit and just chat out on the lawn, having moved one of the picnic tables into the shade.

The people who had struggled poling up the river had an easier time of it going downstream, and from what I could tell, everyone had a blast. After I had walked them to the University Parks I figured they could find their own way home, so I hung out and watched people play tennis for awhile, as the mental hamster spun in its cage: I had brought running gear, but I had no place to stash my pack. I could go back to the punthouse and ask them to store it for an hour, and then spit-shower in their WC, but that didn't appeal. Neither did asking the porter in the Oriel lodge. So I changed in the Parks restroom, and simply strapped on the pack and started the wilderness-jog, heading out the paths toward Marston, winding my way a few miles around and back to town, everntually running into Tiffany and another group at the bus stop (some had gotten a rumor that the last bus was at 7 PM, which was fiction that I disabused them of) before heading back into Ch-Ch meadow again and toward the rowing boathouses.


What a nice decision that was: ended up watching some people doing capsize practice (intentional and otherwise), and talked to a coach on the dock, before a rower descended from the ergs upstairs and dived into the river! It looked sooo inviting, I couldn't resist, as he pointed out "People are afraid of duck poop, but come on, we've been dealing with worse for thousands of years!" What a kick. Shallow dive, then talked for 20 minutes while floating and standing, then another half hour with several others, all from Lincoln College, about rowing, about why Oriel had been so good for so long, about the effect of budget cuts on educational systems in the States and in Britain, you name it. The cool water made me think of Tahoe and Yosemite, of summers past, of family, and how strange it sometimes feels to be over here doing all these strange things for this weird bunch of people. Most peculiar.

Then it was quick behind the boathouse door to change back into street clothes, then back to town (talking to Amelie and Alex along the way, surreal though that was), then back onto the bus, enjoying the warm eveing light on the stones of the city as I waited by Queens Lane, sipping a Sprite that tasted ridiculously good after my jog and swim and walk. Once on the bus, instead of reading essays I listened to my iPod and just watched the day slowly turn to the long northern dusk. After a quick and somewhat dopey meal, it was another night on the not particularly posturepedic Vincent House bed, followed a by a day full of work, mostly in the VH garden--preparing for the next day's trip, as well as getting ready for the transfer to Paris via Eurostar, as well as laundry, etc. Sometimes I had to share with a guy and his stogie (mercifully far enough away); other times a slightly wacko woman made mysterious annotations in what looked like a scholarly journal while sitting propped in a chair on the lawn; another time I returned from a break to find a prodigious bird-turd inches from my papers, a pile the color and consistency of tar! Then it was off to the students' residence in South Ken for their pre-journey briefing, complete with admonitions about the Paris metro and certain Frenchmen's reactions to short shorts and decolletage (did they listen? no) as well as my dramatic reading of David Sedaris's "Picka Pocketoni" from Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I used as a "Can anyone name all six Ugly American traits that Mr Sedaris describes, that we won't exhibit when we are visiting Paris?" cautionary tale. Gales of awkward laughter.