Correction: Money Manager

Fear not, dear reader: I have survived the last 24 hours and I am not chained  in a dungeon somewhere beneath the fortuneteller’s secret castle in Evian, nor am I locked the Geneva Fire Department’s cell in the crypt of Catedral Saint Pierre, a place reserved for people who ne parle pas Français. In reality these places do not exist, I hope. It turns out that my landlady is remarkably understanding regarding la machine lavage, we haven’t heard a peep from the fortuneteller, and the firemen (regrettably?) have not returned.

Everything seems to be under control, though it has been brought to my attention that I have committed yet another unfortunate misunderstanding* involving French. Gerant de Fortunes, does not mean fortuneteller. It means money manager. In hindsight, this makes infinite sense here, in the City of Banks (and Rainbows). Allow me to explain how I arrived at ‘fortuneteller,’ and maybe you’ll forgive me. I saw ‘gerant,’ and thought gerund, as in the term for the verb form, you know, the -ing in English. I believe the term has a root in Latin** which has something to do with undertaking an action. In my mind these things combined to reach the conclusion ‘fortuneteller,’ and it stuck. I passed by his door everyday for two months, absolutely certain that behind that door lived a diviner, when in fact, the man is more interested in dividends. Although, being fair, for a good deal of the world, money and fate are inextricably intertwined–on an emotional level, at any rate.

the daily saga regrets the error.

However, this realization does make it all the more hilarious that the decor in the man’s apartment was so, so fortuneteller-appropriate. Sometimes, Real Life is just too good to be true. Le sigh.

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*One must misunderstand in order to understand. Words I live by.

**Full disclosure: I don’t read Latin. I just used to study English. Corwinna, Latinist extraordinaire, are you out there?

Pompier-Feu, Pamplemousse

I could write here about Saturday, about the Grand Colombier, about the Most Difficult Ride I’ve Ever Done (based on pure statistics. Emotionally there have been rides far more difficult). And I will. But for now, instead, I will write again about Swiss firemen. More on cycling later.

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A blurry figure appears in the peephole of my front door. I’m in the flat alone, this being Pentecost weekend my landlady and flatmate are away. I’m a little startled to hear the doorbell ring. Nonetheless, I answer the door to find a thin, elderly man in a pistachio-green bathrobe. His eyes are a clouded blue, either from age or from having having just awoken; His white is hair tousled, probably for similar reasons. He looks disconcerted.

Bonjour, he begins speaking to me in French. Of course, I can’t really understand, but I know what he’s talking about.* He is saying that he’s the downstairs neighbor, and there’s water leaking through his ceiling. My stomach drops four stories and hits the ground.

Puis-je regarde…ton salle de bain? He asks. Can I have a look in your bathroom?

Oui, entreé. Yes, come in.

He follows me to the bathroom. I open the door and am greeted by a pool of ankle-deep water. How did I not hear the leak? I touch the water and a mild shock runs up my arm; For some reason, the pool is carrying a charge. He sees me draw my hand away. Est-il chaud? he asks. Is it hot?

Non non non…erm…electrique? I reply. Ne touchez pas…

His worry seems to increase and in a whirl of French which I cannot parse but can somehow miraculously understand, he bids me to come see the mess in his apartment. As follow him down to the third floor, it dawns one me that he is the resident of the apartment bearing the Gerant de Fortunes, Expert (Expert Fortuneteller) plaque that I have passed by in wonder every day for nearly two months. I am about to enter the fortunteller’s apartment, at last.

Once inside, I’m struck by the fact that every horizontal surface is covered by an oriental tapestry and every vertical surface is covered in indigo hued wallpaper; the place is absolutely saturated in detail. I haven’t the energy to take it all in, though I wish I did. And yes, there is water dripping from his ceiling, though it is not as bad as I feared. His wife, with a face kind like a turtle’s, seems less like a fortuneteller’s wife than I would have imagined. She is standing staring up at the drops, hands on her hips. She smiles at me and seems to be a good sport about the whole ordeal whilst I apologize profusely. Il pleut, I say, in a somewhat vain attempt at levity. She smiles encore.

Mr. Fortuneteller, however is only slightly amused and is trying to tell me that he wants to call someone. Given that I’m at the point in my French book where one learns things like the names of fruits and vegetables, all I hear is: Je vais appeller le pamplemousse. Meaning, “I am going to call the grapefruit.” My neighbor, the fortuneteller, wants to call the grapefuit. I am fully aware that this is not possibly correct, and whatever he’s saying doesn’t sound exactly like pamplemousse anyway. I am at a loss for ideas.

Oui? I answer, half-heartedly. Pas compri… I utter, but it’s too late.

I return to my apartment, don rubber gloves and rubber soled shoes, begin to bail the water into my bathtub with a pot, and manage to stop up the leaky joint in the floor that is causing the fortuneteller so much grief.

A scare ten minutes later, there are three rather massive humans standing at my open door. I stop bailing water, rush to the entry and on the shirts of these humans I read the words: Pompier-Feu. Upon seeing it written I understand immediately. Pompier-Feu, pamplemousse. Ah, oui, there was my grapefruit. Except he isn’t a grapefruit, he’s a Fire fighter. Pompier-Feu. Bonjour, says the grapefruit. Bon. Jour. My neighbor called the fire department on my washing machine.

In what could be a textbook example of Massive Overkill, my bathroom is soon flooded not only with water, but with three Geneva City firemen. Apparently, they have nothing better to do than to go around answering calls about washing machines from Fortunetellers and hapless anglophones. All of them are at least twice my size and are wearing monstrous rubber boots. At once I am painfully aware of the fact that I am still in my pajamas, a which involve a (very comfortable but embarrasing) pair of purple leggings.*

I’m helpless as Les Pompiers Feu swarm the washing machine. One of them pulls out and hands me a busted rubber washer, the kind I’ve repaired numerous times on kitchen sinks, bathtubs, and pressurized 500 liter dewars of liquid Helium. About this point I realize I probably know more about how to fix this washing machine than these firemen do, seeing as appliance repair is not typically in their job description and, let’s be honest, experimental physics involves a good deal of glorified plumbing. Despite the Physics@Berkeley t-shirt I’m wearing, this fact is not entirely obvious to the firemen. I attempt to explain what happened and what I think went wrong. Le eau est sorti le port, peu-être la port n’est pas fermeé! When he begins correcting the gender of the nouns I’m attempting to use,** it becomes clear that this language barrier is insurmountable and he phones a supposedly English speaking colleague. We have a brief chat on the phone which is not very helpful to me, but the grapefruit seems satisfied when I hand him back his phone. He hangs up and says something presumably funny.

“Rigole!” he says smiling. Now, this word I understand: Laugh! “It iz a jjoke!”

“Ha ha ha,” I reply, with only thinly veiled irony. My tone is translingual, and for once during this bizarre interaction all four of us reach a point of perfect understanding. A Joke, indeed. Now, the real laughter. He recommends I contact a technician and warns, finger waving included, Ne touchez pas la machine! Don’t touch ze Machine! D’accord. I promise them I won’t. We all wish one another Bon week-end and part ways. I sop up the rest of the water, change out of my purple leggings and bike to CERN, where the tale of my morning brings at least some mirth to our grim progress on far more complicated feats of plumbing

As soon as I get home the first thing I do, obviously, is touch the machine. I see that they’ve turned off the water and the power, and after a brief inspection I  ascertain that nothing is actually wrong and something must have been caught in the door during the wash, causing it to leak. I flip on the power, open the water valve and run a test cycle. Mercifully, the washing machine works properly. As of yet, there is no water on the floor and the fortuneteller has yet to return with further greivances.

However, seeing as I have no idea how much the Geneva fire department charges for house calls involving washing machines, nor how much damage fortuntellers claim for dripping ceilings…when my landlady gets home, I may be as good as dead. Pray for me, dear reader.

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*Don’t judge.

**Dear Francophones: it is not our fault your language is so complex and aphonetic. Cut us some slack.

Sigue lloviendo…

My Spanish is like a large, dormant animal couched comfortably in the darkened recesses of my brain; it hasn’t been touched for roughly three years. A sad state of affairs, considering that over the course of a good third of my life, Spanish was taught to me by a lazy litany of incompetent high school teachers, my neighbors from Honduras and Guatemala, my friends from Mexico, a certain Mexican telenovla called “Más Sabe el Diablo,” and a certain band de la música rock de Guadalajara called Maná. Nowadays, with other languages taking priority, Spanish has to be drug out of me kicking and screaming, like child out of bed on the first day of school. Even once I finally find the right shapes in my mouth, all I can utter at first is a whispered, “tengo verguenza.” I have shame. Considering how severely my Spanish has regressed, truer words may have never been spoken.

Despite my verguenza, my Spanish has now officially been extracted from its dormancy, believe it or not, in the context of this sport called football.* Basically, in a strange turn of events involving the internet, mountain biking, and a healthy dose of  “why the heck not,” I ended up watching the FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid match with two Spaniards. Mind you, sitting between two Spaniards, each rooting for a different team. Yes. As you can imagine, within a few minutes I was well-acquainted with a new swear word or two.

Even barring the “American” label I often bear,** I really can manage to watch a game of football and enjoy it. And I do, once every four years. It’s called the World Cup Final, and in all honesty my participation in it is mostly an excercise in social and cultural literacy. Football is a pandora’s box I don’t particularly dare to open: the complicated rankings, the leagues, the fear- and awe-inspiring kind of devotion, the nationalism, the songs. It’s an intensity I have a hard time justifying or understanding, so mostly I let it be.

All of this aside, it’s a good time watching the game, even if the air is a bit tense. Soon enough however, I make the inevitable mistake: I chime into a Spanish conversation, in English awkwardly, and the word is out. I can follow them. From here on, the evening is bilingual. For me this development is half mortifying (am I really this bad at Spanish now? Really?) and half enthralling (speaking another language, no matter how poorly, is always a rush). For the Spaniards, it’s pure amusement. Real Madrid wins, Barcelona commiserates and looks forward to the next game. Oh, no, it’s not over yet.

Nor is the battle over for me, and as the tests of Spanish competency and random trivia questions (hint: if the question is something like “Who is the best at such-and-such,” the answer is always “España.”) continue, I discover I have something I didn’t know I had. Namely: An accent. I offer transcriptive proof:

Spanish Guy: ¿(blah blah blah)…está fferrado?

Me: Um, ¿que dijiste?

SG: Fferrado.

Me: No conozco esa palabra…

SG: Oh my god! Fferr. Raad. O. Fferrado!

Me: ¿Ferrado? (my mind sends me to Latin, to the Periodic table, to Iron, ferromagnetism…What is he talking about?)

SG: Si, como abierto y más tarde fferrado.

Me: Oh my god. You mean cerrado! Cerr. Aad. O. Cerrado. Closed…a frances se dice ferme. ¿No?

SG: Oui. Oh my god. Cerrado. (He speaks as if he’s spitting out a spoiled piece of food). No. Ffferrado. Jesus, do want to espeak eSpanish or do you want to espeak Mexican?

Me: …ferrado…. (and silence. But I’m thinking: Dios mio, I think I’d rather speak Mexican.)

Oh, and yet another Pandora’s box I don’t particularly dare to open!

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* I’m not calling it “football” because I want to sound holier-than-thou. Allow me to explain. In the US there are two types of people who actually call “soccer” football: 1. People who actually like football (ie. 90% foreigners/immigrants) and 2. Hipsters who want to seem more enlightened than the rest. God forbid I should slip into the second category. I am calling it football because that is the convention here, and I must live with it.

**I can often avoid this by pulling the Swedish card, but that gets tiring.

*** Note: Given theme of Espain Espanish, this was written with AV in mind, who among other things likes blog shoutouts. Woohoo!

Cyrogenic, and Salève

My blood has thinned, and I’m sure of it.

Coming to California from Sweden, I thought I had conquered being cold. In California yes, it rains, but you can be assured of sun within in a matter of days (or hours). Not just patchwork sun, either, no. In California, you expect it to come on full power, explosive, rapturous, unyielding. It’s the kind of sun that makes budded trees pop before March and makes them wilt by June. In California, I shunned jackets, I slept with the windows open, I rode my bike while wearing short sleeves and short fingered gloves.

In Switzerland, a pause in the rain finds our team enjoying the daily espresso out of doors.  Sitting at that table in the middle of sodden Europe, I begin to sense that either my blood or my jacket is too thin. It’s not even the kind of cold you feel in your bones, I think, it’s just normal cold. Someone remarks that I look like I am freezing. I most certainly am, but of course I grit my teeth and reply:

“I am not cold.” I don’t know what it is that’s in me that has always made me feel I need to prove that I can endure low temperatures. Possibly it’s the uncomfortable truth that really, I can’t. But I won’t swallow that, no: I will freeze until my blood rethickens.

In my defense, it really isn’t warm: On these last few mornings as I ride to CERN, I’ve taken a look back at our local massif. Le Salève is a marvelous color-changing upheaval of glacially carved sediment, but these few mornings, it has been graced by a delicate layer of snow. Something I’ve never before seen on Le Salève. By my evening commute, if enough light is left to see the Salève, the snow is gone, to be regenerated, by this  sorcery called ‘weather’ come dawn.

Le Salève. I rode up it, at last. On Easter sunday, after attending an unadorned, French-Language Calvinist mass in St Pierre Cathedral, I got on my bike and rode towards the massif. Eventually found my way up. I climbed forever and then some, but when I reached Col de Les Coisettes I turned around and there were the Alps: a symphonic panorama in ascending indigo shades accented in broad and beaming shields of white yellow snow. Once in the small village of Les Croisettes, I found myself in a familiar setting: the tail end of an amateur road race. A man loading a Cervelo onto a roof rack sized me and my old mountain bike up before uttering a ‘Bonjour.’ I smiled back but was more fascinated by the emaciated young racers, their faces clean-shaven, lean, and strangely apelike; their fiercely luminous eyes peering out of the back windows of small cars. I tailed them down the mountain. On the switchbacks my hands froze to the bars and my mirth froze in my chest to be released in a burst of laughter at the sight of early blooming raps blossoms and a train of thought: Raspar, skåne, vår. Vår! Spring!

I did, in fact, speak Swedish with a physically present, living person today. Well, he spoke Finlandsvenska and I probably spoke a little Skånska, but that hardly matters. It’s wonderful feeling in the mouth, to speak a language that one can still hear the sounds of, a language that is not so disenchanting as the international and purely functional brand of English* that is, for the most part, my default operating mode.

Here’s to hoping that speaking a Nordic language will act as a blood thickener, and we can all get on with our lives.

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*My matter-of-fact German flatmate has expressed to me that “English is so simple,” I believe he meant sparse, incomplete, exiguous, limited.  He went on: “You can’t really say everything.” Ahh, yes (such it is with any language) but that is only because you don’t know all of the words!

the jetlag diaries

Jetlag from Europe to California is a beautiful thing: you wake up at four in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-taled, and sit at the kitchen table eating cereal. Yes! Indeed, there is cereal, you realize, because you’re in America. God Bless.

Jetlag from California to Europe, however, leaves you dead-tired during all your waking hours, forgetting to eat at CERN and not having time to go to the silly French supermarket before it closes at 7 PM, living exclusively off of smuggled cliff bars for two days straight (true story), and blogging about it from your depressing and smelly hostel room at 3 in the morning before you collapse again in exhaustion just as it’s time to wake up.

All that being said: Have you ever built a bike out of a box at Geneva airport while some of the wealthiest people in the world mosey on by on their way to glitzy Alpine slopes, skis and designer luggage in tow? I have. It’s quite the experience. It takes about half an hour, will earn you a good deal of interested but aloof glances, and it makes you feel like somewhat of a badass. Badass, that is, until you don’t know what to do with the cardboard bike box and decide to carry it awkwardly in one arm (bike in the other) down the airport stairway to the left luggage desk in the train station. Barring all those confused stares from Swiss businessmen ascending on the adjacent escalator, this was my plan of action.

Soon enough, however, I realize that I don’t know how to say “Can you throw this away please?” in French, and so when I reach the desk  I simply push the box toward the left luggage man and say “trash?” Poor guy is taken aback, clearly not understanding.* As luck would have it, I am saved by a blond youngster, maybe the left luggage man’s apprentice, who approaches from behind the counter, looks me in the eyes and nods. “Oui, trash,” he says. He is of the generation that has been raised on the internet and therefore, understands English, at least to some degree. We stand there for a second in mutual understanding before he takes the bike box from me and starts walking toward the back door. “trash,” he says again. “Merci Beaucoup!” say I.

Exiting the airport and riding toward CERN and the snowcapped Jura, I have no regrets. I have my own bike, in Geneva. It’s rolling so smoothly beneath me that I just have to smile. I’ve waited a while for this moment. And besides, no longer am I subject to the whims of the bus, maybe now I can fit in some grocery shopping before Carrefour closes.

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For the record, “trash” in French is les déchets.

tales from the Road: LA to Geneve

Reporting live from St Genis Pouilly, France. Indeed, it is 3 AM here, and this blogpost is brought to you courtesy of JetLag. Don’t expect anything coherent.

Also, compare to last time.

LAX >> Philedelphia

Interesting t shirts I saw on this flight:

“I ain’t afraid a no ghost”

“i (heart) hot moms”

“US Armed forces: Sinking our teeth into the Middle East” (accompanied by a graphic of an angry, cartoon commando duck…?!?!)

Number of people reading “Hunger Games”: Only 2, surprisingly.

A middle-aged woman sitting behind me decides to impose her life philosophy on the college-aged girl sitting next to her. Souls to be molded. It’s interesting for a while, but I tune out at: “You see there, are many levels of consciousness…”

Philadelphia >> Brussels

I cannot sleep on airplanes. Even when I’m lucky enough not to have anyone sitting next to me.

Brussels airport is large, efficient, hypermodern, and for some reason inundated with advertisements from energy/oil companies (“Europe: Fueled on Norwegian Gas. Statoil”). Also, there are chocolates and many women wearing expensive-looking pairs of boots.

Brussels >> Geneva Airport

In which I discover that my French is better but still sucks. Goodbye, social competency. I’ll miss you.

Also: Mont Blanc from the air, always a crowd-pleaser.

Geneva Airport >> CERN

Fortunately for me, the Geneva airport is well-practiced in transporting sports equipment: It is, after all, one of the premier ski destinations in the world. As I stand by the sport equipment baggage carousel waiting for my cardboard bike box to appear,  I find myself in a circle of Swedes who are talking jovially and with the kind of assurance that only comes with having a ‘secret language’ to speak in pubic. I just stand there, silent smiling. My bike shows up, unharmed, and it’s a piece of cake to cart it over to left luggage, and get on the bus.

Once at CERN, however, the real fun begins. I manage to convince the woman at the front desk to give me a visitor pass and I decide to leave my luggage at our office before going about procuring my access card. As I’m walking up the hill, the wheels on my rolling luggage begin to collapse. It must be clear that I’m having a rough time, because one of the many CERN vans whizzing by honks at me. You think I don’t know that I look like an idiot? It doesn’t help that my luggage is pink. God, why do I have pink luggage? Oh right, it was cheap. Cheap. Pretty soon the wheels have almost totally collapsed and I’m loudly dragging my pink luggage through the world’s premier Particle Physics research facility. I’m soon rescued however: Someone takes pity on me and I’m offered a ride to my building in a CERN van.

Only a few people are in the office, they’re working quietly. I’m greeted by a few short “hellos” and friendly smiles. It’s like I never left. It seems longer ago that I was in Berkeley than when I was last at CERN. It’s unsettling. I make it to the users office in time to get my access card, but am missing a form. C’est la vie.  I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

CERN >> St. Genis Hostel

I wait ten minutes for the bus, only for it to discover that it is full and there’s really, really no room for me and my giant, decrepit suitcase. I wait 30 minutes for the next bus, and almost fall asleep sitting on the bench, having not slept for something like 30 hours. I’m nearing my personal record (36) and it’s not a good thing.

When it arrives I get on, and am subsequently blockaded from the door by a mom, her stroller, and her three other children. I miss the stop at the hostel because I am falling asleep, even while standing up. At the next stop I attempt to get off bus, but when I pull on the plastic expandable roller handle (you know what I mean, right?) to my luggage, it snaps unceremoniously off. I spend a few moments staring dumbfounded at it, during which time I miss also the next bus stop. the bus lurches to a start, and a guy who obviously works at CERN (oh yeah, there’s a type) catches my lugguage as it’s about to topple. His shirt says “—– High School, Class of 2005.” He’s American. God bless you, sir. I utter an exasperated “thank you,” he smiles and hands it over as the bus begins to slow down again. I gather my embarrassingly uncontrollable belongings and get off the bus. I leave the suitcase on the curb and dramatically stuff the detached handle into the nearby, tiny French trashcan. I roll drag the suitcase across the street and down a block to the next bus stop and wait, again.

I make it, at last, to the St. Genis Hostel only to discover that my room is on the sixth floor et n’y il a pas de ascensuer. No elevator. I lug the bag up each flight, just as the wiring is beginning to bust from the seems. I still have no idea what I’m going to do about this problem. I’m already having nightmares about how much it is going to cost me to buy a new luggage in Geneva.

My (temporary) room in St. Genis is very basic and smells like some sort of cleaning solvent. It takes me a good five minutes to figure out how to open the window, but when I do I can see the Jura and I have to smile despite it all. I want to wash my hands in the washbasin, but when I turn on the faucet the water sprays out at remarkably high pressure and at remarkably high temperature. My pants are doused. Hot showers, indeed. I’m so tired the world is starting to swim before my eyes.

I usually don’t cry during real life (usually only during movies, books, and emotional pieces of music) but here, I get pretty close. I change my pants, sit down on the simple, yellow-sheeted bed and think: What in the hell am I doing here, really?

I don’t know. But here I am. Here we go, guys.

Corrections and Updates

Updates and Corrections to my last post:

1. the man with a gun who was shot by police at the Haas school of business died in the hospital.

2. SF Chron reports 10,000 people at on Sproul Plaza tuesday night, and order of magnitude more than my original claim of 1,000. My people estimation skills must be inept. (Or are they?) the daily saga…regrets the error?

3. Physics 105 had a discussion about the protest. It was like a dream come true, to have the opportunity to hear my classmates opinions. Scientists, they are smart folks, and they care, they really do. More on this later.

4. I quote (formatting intact) from an email sent out the entire campus from the UC Chancellor:

“To the Campus Community:

We all share the distress and anger at the State of California’s disinvestment in public higher education.

IN THE SPIRIT OF TODAY’S DAY OF ACTION, I AM URGENTLY CALLING ON THE POLITICAL LEADERSHIP FROM SACRAMENTO TO COME TO CAMPUS TO ENGAGE WITH ME AND STUDENT REPRESENTATIVES IN A PUBLIC FORUM TO DEBATE THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION.

The issues require bold action and time is short. I will inform you of the time and place as soon as possible.

Robert J. Birgeneau,
Chancellor”

4. the Occupy camp was bulldozed last night. Architecture students devised a scheme of suspending tents with balloons over the plaza.

5. I don’t know what.

Occupational Hazard

“Oh my God!”

I’m trying to study for the Physics GRE, but my housemates are watching something on Youtube.

“Oh my God! Jesus, she was just standing there!”

As the tenor of their gasps grows more disgusted than amazed, I am compelled to turn around and see what they’re watching. It’s a video from the Occupy Cal march earlier in the day, featuring a brutal and clearly unnecessary beating of a apparently nonviolent crowd of people by police in riot gear. My eyes start to itch in disbelief. Is this the United States? Something is not right.

In the words of Stephen Colbert: If the Occupy Cal Movement had nothing concrete to protest before…well, now, they sure as hell do.

…………………………………………….

I’m sitting in the reading room in the Physics building, half doing my homework and half watching two fools bemusedly trying to solve a nonlinear equation analytically on the blackboard. All of a sudden I notice a noise in the background, one that wasn’t quite there before. It’s a helicopter, or maybe two or more, outside of the window. the sound gets louder, fades away, and then gets louder again, with Keplerian periodicity. It’s circling.

At once the cellphones of both of the fools at the blackboard buzz simultaneously. A text from the Berkeley Police Department. Someone has been shot in the Haas School of Business. My stomach drops to the floor.

“Whoa,” says one of the fools. “that’s crazy. Wasn’t someone shot in Oakland last week? was it to do with the protest?” As it turns out, it was an isolated incident. A man was spotted with a gun in the computer lab, and when the police arrived and surrounded him, he pulled it out and threatened, before a room full of students. He was nonfatally shot by the police, and is somewhere in urgent care in Oakland.

“Occupy your mind, occupy your class, occupy Math,” the other fool says, “that’s what I think.” And with that, they turn back to the equation.

I’m left sitting, staring blankly down at my own system of differential equations, staving off a vague and incomprensible sort of fear, and saddened by so much randomness.

Something is not right.

……………………………………………………..

I’ve never found it in me to participate in protests. Mob mentality, to me, is at a level of valence I simply cannot handle. But somehow, after the surge of violence that has occurred in Berekely over the past few days, I feel the need to attend the Occupy Cal general Assembly, if only in some vague hope of understanding what the hell is going on. At first I can’t believe I’m sitting on my butt on the cold cement in Sproul Plaza, surrounded by what I precieve to be kooks and Sociology Majors, as per usual. But, on closer inspection: there’s something different here. First of all, it’s enormous: there are quite easily a thousand people. But really, what is most remarkable is that this time, all around me I see people I admire, people whose opinions I, well, would make the time to listen to. My housemates. My Physics classmates. Graduate students who taught me how to program in MatLab or determine earth structure from seismic wave speed. One of my professors.

As expected there’s a lot of talk, specifically, a lot of emotionally charged words meant to tickle the revolutionary within. the assembly utilizes a ‘human microphone,’ a technique in which the crowd repeats everything the speaker says so as to carry the message as far into the crowd as possible. I cannot bring myself to repeat things I do not completely agree with, and am thus, silent.

We break off into small groups to introduce ourselves. A woman asserts herself as the discussion leader, citing the fact that she has been to several General Assembly meetings, was there when the cops brought out the batons, and on top of that has not slept in the last several days. She talks loudly and uses some profanity. We discuss a good-natured though ill-defined and improbable proposal (to invite the Chancellor, the Regents and Jerry Brown to a public debate on Sproul Plaza). I abstain from voting as per the nebulous nature of the proposal. But its heart is in the right place. Dialogue, civil dialogue is what we need.

I leave as tents go up in the plaza, and Mario Savio’s name is practically deified. I assume they’ll be out there all night. I can hear the helicopters from my room.

People are discontented. Something is not right.

……………………………………..

end a sentance with

“Shouldn’t it be ‘by’? I mean, ‘by 1/e’ instead of ‘to 1/e of it’s original value’?” asks one of the inquisitive backs of the heads in the front of 3 Leconte Hall.

It’s a fine point, really, and not unimportant. Grammar lessons from the peanut gallery are always appreciated in lecture, I’m sure. And of course there’s nothing wrong with expecting linguistic competency from lecturers. It’s just years after having abandoned subjects in which the matter at hand is the grammar itself, I usually find it hard to care about grammatical fluctuations on small scales. Even as a former English Major, I tend to pick my battles. But this lecturer’s a young whippersnapper. Accordingly, he promptly spits out a apologetic but witty reply:

“I’ve been working with Europeans a lot lately, and what I’ve learned is that prepositions, really, have no meaning.”

Most things that are funny are funny becuase they are sort of true; I snicker a little, especially considering that the Eurostrange affect to my own English apparently takes about two days to decay upon any return to the States. Still, there’s the tiny critic in the back of my head, the peanut gallery to the peanut gallery, thinking:

Aaaand…how many languages do you speak, O, Mr. American Professor of Physics?

Yeah, I thought so.

Really, the last people we (we=America, in this case) should be blaming for our own linguistic incompetency are the Europeans. Non? Donctha think?

Le lingua franca

WARNING:  Internal monolouge, cycling jokes, misspelled French words, and attempts at philosophy.*

“Bonjour! Je voudrais acheter l’abonnment mensulle pour les junoires, si vous plaits,” I confidently ask the smiling man behind the counter at the Geneva transport office. Hi! I would like to buy the monthly youth bus pass, please.

“Ah, Ok!” the clerk answers, oddly enthused. I’m delighted beyond all reason that he understood me. My joy, however ends here, as he then launches into an emphatic string of French words that all blend together.

Due to a childhood (as well as, an, umm, young adulthood) spent mimicking accents for my own comic enjoyment, I have developed a knack for pronunciation. Unfortunately this can lead to severe miscalculation on the part of the poor people whom I attempt to speak to. Basically, for about five seconds, I can convincingly sound like I speak French. Beyond that, I’m absolutely hopeless.

Queue the reply of shame: “Ahh, je suis desolé. Je ne parles pas tré bien frances. Je comprends pas. Je suis desolé…”

I’m sorry, I don’t really speak French well. I don’t understand. Languages with actual grammatical structure allude me. the clerk, however, is unphased. He smiles again and, like the good European transit office man that he is, flows seemlessly into English. Strangely enough, I’m not embarrassed or angry. I am perturbed by the fact that I feel, quite actually, relieved. I’ve only been self learning French for two weeks after all. So it begins, again.

Self learning this time involves mostly doing what I can with the time and energy that I have. For the first few days, my largely cycling based knowledge of French got me by:

“Hors Service?” Well, ‘Hors,’ which I know is not pronounced ‘whores,’ is what the ‘H’ in an ‘H catégorie’ climb stands for, and that means the mountain is so hard it’s without a category. So, ‘hors’=without. Ah! Out of service! that’s why it won’t print me a bus ticket!

“tête?” Well, tête du course is the overall race leader. Aha! It means ‘head!’

“Allez?” Just like my old Specialized! I know that one, it means “go!” Still it’s a little creepy that that guy yelled it at me as I jogged by…

“Etage?” Well etape means stage, like a stage of le tour. Since I’m staring at the elevator right now, I’m gonna gues that etage is floor. A floor is sorta like a stage. this language is easy!

Mon éducation en frances has continued rather passively: I read all the signs I see pass by as I’m riding the tram to CERN (reading French is a thousand times easier than speaking it), I watch “Les Simpson” on tv as I’m trying to fall asleep the morning after a night shift. Of course, I only watch “Les Simpson” if I don’t get distracted by “Malcom Mittendrin” (auf Duetsch, die ich verstehe besser als Französisch) or any litany of ridiculous British programs first. Really though, French. I’m working on it. I’ve even been out to Google translate a few times.
However, there is a certain allure to the idea of really being able to communicate with people here, of course. It’s inspiring to see a Physicist whom I know is Danish, or Colombian, or Italian, or Brasilian, and who just spent the last 20 minutes speaking to me in near perfect English, pick up the phone to order Hélium or to ask for the beam in French. I’d, personally, just like to be able to buy my bus pass.

At the same time, I’m aware that fluency in another language requires selling part of your soul. Learning a language is essentially the conscious or unconcious devotion of a corner of the mind to a different mode of expression, a different sensibility, and a different form of the self. We all know that no word in any language has a direct path to identidy or meaning, after all, mankind invented language in order to be able to lie, right? Words instead refract meaning, and each language sends the same incident thought off at a slightly different angle. Multilingualism fractionates perception, but enriches the whole experience allstå. See what I mean.

I’m just not so sure I’m ready to sell part of my soul to French. In all honesty, French wasn’t next on my hit list. Or really even on it. Now that it’s a necessity, I’ve decided to do what I can while I’m here. But I’ve resigned to doing just that. I am not going to let myself mind speaking English.

Before I leave the transit office, the friendly clerk asks me if I want a map of the bus lines. Feeling like at this point, I’ve already figured out what I need to know, I say no thanks. Non, Merci beaucoup!

“Ahhh, Genevé. She is but a small village, yes? ” he replies.

Oui. She is, she is. Un petit village.

……………

* Yes, I am absolutely stealing the “Content Warning” (as well as the footnoting) from Alia Salim, also known as the most poetic person on the internet.