Been a Little While

Why haven't I written anything in almost two weeks? Am I done with this whole thing? Is nothing interesting here anymore?

I was REAL sick for a little while and then still felt like crap or was too tired even after I wasn't sick anymore, so for about 10 days I just didn't feel up to it. Oh well. Not that I felt like crap for 10 days straight, but intermittently, and so I got lazy. But here I am.

Soo what am I up to?

Well I'm mostly spending up to 7 or 8 hours a day walking around looking at things, taking pictures, and eating. This does not get old at all. I'm serious. This city is filled with amazing things to marvel at for hours, which I do. However last Tuesday I went to a protest that was pretty exciting. Many people probably heard about the massive transportation strike that day which will apparently be a more common occurrence this fall, and just makes taking the metro a less pleasant and less efficient experience.

I got off the very very crowded metro at La République to find myself surrounded by many thousands of people, tons of vendors, great big balloons, news crews, and vans with amplifiers projecting anti-Sarkozy slogans and pro-worker messages. Many people came to watch the whole thing happen too and just stood on the sidewalk, but I wanted a closer view, so I stood in front of the head of one of the parades and took photographs right as the walking and chanting began. People here will passionately, passionately defend their right to retire at 60, let me tell you. There were groups from all sorts of different organizations, including the socialist and essentially communist parties as well as the nouveau parti anticapitaliste (new anti-capitalist party) which I'm told join forces for these big protests. The diversity in terms of age was pretty impressive; not surprisingly, there were many middle-aged people ardently defending their right to retire at 60, but there were many young people too and really, people from all over the whole spectrum carrying big banners in front of cars and vans with big speakers on their roofs and huge balloons naming their organization trailing behind.

I found it interesting how forcefully people were defending their legal retirement age considering that in America our retirement age is 65, but of course this is my perspective and not theirs and they don't give a shit when America wants to retire. Apparently one justification the government puts forth for its proposed new retirement age of 62 is that people are living longer today and can thus be expected to work longer and still enjoy more healthy years after a later retirement. The thing is, the people who would be most directly affected by this change are the factory workers, the farmers, the dock workers, the people who do hard manual labor, and their life expectancy has not gone up nearly as much as the government-cited study predicts for the average citizen, so for these people a raised retirement age would just mean less post-retirement life, plain and simple.

I walked along with one of the groups for a while and then found a man dressed not totally noncommittally as a clown, sporting a red nose and suspenders with slightly goofy pants. I noticed a sign he was holding which read "[symbol that means 'fuck'] La Peau Lisse!" which translated as written to "Fuck Smooth Skin" however, if read aloud, one would more likely hear it this way, "[Fuck] La Police!" or "Fuck The Police!" This clown was quite the instigator, and had no problem standing across the street from armed police with a sign essentially telling them what they should do with their afternoons instead of monitoring this protest. Of course, I took photos.

Unfortunately I started to feel very tired and not so healthy shortly after this and thus stopped following the protest, which ended at the Place de la Bastille. For me it ended at a piano shop where I sat and played for a half hour until I felt well enough to find something to eat.

I'll write more posts soon about some great times I had the last few days. They won't all be about food, although great food and great times often follow one another.