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Showing posts from June, 2011

FRANCE BEHAVING BADLY

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Just when I had said things were getting better..... A friend in NZ was telling me about cases of Japanese tourists going into shock over their treatment when in France...bad manners, rude taxi drivers, waiters who yell, shop assistants who make you feel uncomfortable as soon as you enter "their" shop, etc. To be honest, I kind of " pooh poohed" her  (sorry MJ!) because I was rather convinced things were on the mend vis a vis attitudes to clients. I really did believe that it was finally understood that " the client is king." WRONG!! Today this thick-skinned desperateanglohousewife was reduced to tears. I joke not!! Firstly let me tell you a bit about the Japanese tourist dilemma. Did some research and what I found quite frankly horrified me. Of the one million or so Japanese who visit Paris every year, a dozen or so  tourists a year have to be repatriated from the French capital, suffering from what's become known as "Paris s

PORN for HOUSEWIVES?

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Battle of the sexes...continued. Growing up in New Zealand in the 70s we had two TV stations -  TVNZ 1 and TVNZ 2. We were more than happy that we had some choice. Pioneer spirit! When we flicked on the telly at 6 30 sharp after dinner to watch the news, we had the choice of a gracious 50's prototype blond with tight perm on one station and her brunette twin on the other. Today I am frankly overwhelmed and amazed by the choice. Over 700 stations on our cable box.  Nobody can convince me we "need" 700 tv stations. But here we are in our high tech bubbles with WIFI invading our homes bringing with it telephone, web connection and all those tv channels for the price of 29.99 a month. A bargain! A couple of weeks ago my french husband ( herein FH) opened our cable bill, ran upstairs to the office to make an urgent phone call. Stacking all the linen back in place ( as you do when you are a desperateanglohousewife goddess!) I heard him conversing in a rather, well

Mmmmwah, Mmmmwah, DAHLING !

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Kissing in France I was a terrible french student as a school girl.  In fact, I would say that I was one of the worst in my entire school year. In later life I wish I had been one of the "girly swots" in the front row. I ended up in Switzerland as a student in the 1980s.  Walking into a rather chic-chic dinner party feigning comfort about the oncoming motions of kissing everyone in the room...I walked up to my hosts, opened my arms, saying " On baise!?"  which basically means, " Let's fuck! " Those of you who are grammatically inclined will know my error was based on confusion between a noun and verb -same word, different meanings. The noun baiser means " a kiss" and nothing untoward where as the verb baiser can be implied as the "f" word or even to shaft somebody in the swindling sense. Fortunately for me my grammatical error was made in the presence of polite, rather safe, Swiss friends. I will add that they remain

YES WE CAN!

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On dogs, etc. One of my anglo neighbours had me laughing out loud this week. He had been really shocked at how rude and disrespectful someone in the french administration had been to him...surprise, surprise. He said,  "Do you know why the french are so outrightly rude and why dogs lick their balls?    Simply, because they can." After nearly 20 years living in France I have become somewhat immune to the french " attitude rude ." In fact I would go as far as to say it's not as bad as it once was.  I remember being so shocked myself that I often couldn't reply. I then moved on to " bite back" mode, which got me nowhere fast.  My way of dealing with this cultural difference now is to simply wrinkle my innocent forehead and say, " Excusez moi?"..feigning miscomprehension, needing repetition. This achieves 99% positive results - usually a smile and an explanation, even the odd apology. Rudeness repeated always weakens the offe