jdenparis

 Welcome to jdenparis.com.  I'm jd, and I just graduated from college.  For one year before med school, I'll be working and living in Paris, and traveling the world with my job.  Below are my stories, photos, and videos.  Enjoy!

Friday, August 22, 2008

fou france

Naturally, I expected some things to be different here in France than what I am accustomed to in America. An obvious example, French, not English. Or metric, not English (notice the trend?). However, there are some things that I did not anticipate.

The first isn't such a big deal, and actually turned out to be quite tasty. At restaurants, the common condiments are brought to the table in a nice little carousel, and include salt, pepper, and spicy mustard (like the kind at yim's wok). No ketchup. Last night though, I ordered the steak-frites, which upon delivery, I realized what was meant by a 'faux fillet,' and also why 'hamburger' was not on le menu. Rather than a fillet or steak of any kind, I got (partially) grilled chopmeat - quite undercooked. Anyway, le garcon was kind enough to bring me ketchup there, so I mixed it up with the Chinese mustard sauce and dipped away... delish!

Another weird thing is that in my apartment, I sleep not under a comforter, but what seems like window drapes. Bizarre.

Another one, and I'm not sure if this is all of Europe, France, Paris, my apt, or what, but my shower is not mounted on the wall. Rather, it is a hose with a nozzle for spraying (this part is not weird), but NO wall mount! This means that between rinsings, I must hang the sprayer over the drain - basically put it on the floor. The hose is quite short too, so to get my hair wet, I must bend down and extend the hose to maximum capacity. Weird.

Anyway, let me tell you about my lunch today. Everyone in the office has been really kind to me (no, this isn't one of the weird differences about France!!). On the first day, two of the girls here invited me to lunch with them. Yesterday, three of the guys did. Today, the director of my department and my boss, Jose, asked! What an honor. Jose is a REALLY nice guy. Very soft spoken, intelligent, all the good qualities of a boss - must have taken a page out of the Big Blue book :) Anyway, yesterday some of the guys told me that Jose was originally an MD, then obtained an MBA, an MPH, and a PhD - this is the stuff legends are made of. I had already read about his honorary degree from Pace (you can google this), which he received for his work with The Union (I guess I'm in the right place).

Through all of our email correspondence though, neither Jose nor his secretary ever mentioned to me that 'Mr. Castro,' as I addressed him, was incorrect. Accordingly, I decided to ask about his degrees at lunch, since we were already talking about higher education. As I recall, he has an MBA, a Master or PhD, and maybe one other degree - no MD though. In any case, we had a great lunch and conversation.

Getting back to fou France, however, Jose and I did speak about some of the differences between France and America, and he also asked about how the apartment was! I told him about the lack of wifi (pronounced "weefee" en francais), and then about the shower. The weirdest thing of all though, is the toilet. It is kept in a completely separate compartment from the bath/shower hose and sink, and this compartment (I guess this is were "WC" comes from) shares a wall with the kitchen. yuck. To wash hands, one must leave the toilet closet and walk across the apt to the shower hose room.

So on my lunch with a man literally respected throughout the **entire world**, holding somewhere between 2-4 professional degrees including an honorary one for saving (literally.) **millions** of lives, I spoke about the oddity of toilet locale in Parisian apartments.

A bientot

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I feel your pain with the shower situation. It was the same in Spain. I must say though, you learn with experience where NOT to hold the shower hose contraption while tending to the shampoo/conditioner (optional for you)/body wash processes. Also, why are you wasting your time with "fancy shmancy" french food? A Whopper Jr. is an international delicacy. :)

Camp Unger said...

"i'll take a coke."

"do u want that in the can?"


"no. i'll have it right here."