I'm a little embarrassed for not working on my blog. I'll transpose some of what was written in a notebook and post here. I don't have time to do much else with it. Although I live in a country where everyone, including myself, gets 6 weeks of paid vacation per year, between now and vacation time, I have to pay for it in the form of 60 - 70 hour work weeks. Actually, that's typical for research science at top places anywhere in the world, including here at the Institut. On top of that, I spend much of my spare time studying French.
Before coming here, I was told that everyone speaks English in Western Europe (except for rural areas and countries like Spain which some people say is backward ). And at the Institut where everyone is highly educated and has a PhD, everyone was supposed to be fluent in English. English is the common language of science, and most of our research is published in English, after all. Therefore, learning French would be optional. Not true. It turns out that fluency in French is a requirement; to my surprise, not many people speak English, and I have about a year to do it or people will be mad at me.
I was only slightly prepared for this. In July, I began listening to some Frnech lesson tapes on my mp3 player. Over the summer, I also memorized a few travelers/learners french word lists.
My method since coming here has been to memorize a Petit Larousse dictionary that I found on the roadside in Paris the first day I arrived. I've memorized about 2000 words. A problem with that method is that while I can read french very well now and write it (except my grammar is bad) I don't know how anything is pronounced. To my ear for example, the words for fingernail (ongle) and angle (angle) sound exactly alike.
I've never worn a cowboy hat until recently because they seem to be appropriate only for certain people like ranchers and farm hands. Otherwise, they look silly. But a few years ago, I bought one at a gourmet hat boutique in North Beach, San Francisco. This place was a real haberdashery full of expensive and fancy headgear for men made there.
I was about to move to the cabin at an abandoned ranch in the high desert in eastern Oregon, and I wanted something to try to fit in with the community. It had to have better sun protection than my Branson Tractors trucker cap which was by then stained and very greasy. It didn't work - I never felt like I fit in even though most people were very nice, and half the peolpe I met were misfits in their own way, just as I am.
A typical reaction was that whenever I rode into town for supplies ( I took a bicycle or motorcycle when I finally had that working or jogged or rode with someone in a car. I never rode any of the horses that far and wouldn't want to with traffic. Besides, riding a horse on a road isn't fun. On a hot summer day, it's like sitting on a furnace, and there's no wind to cool you. ), even wearing that hat or no hat or any hat for that matter, if i struck up a conversation with someone, almost always a local and a complete stranger to me, they would often ask me what country i was from. They usually asked if i was from Scotland or Ireland. Even my gf and her friends, when i first met them in san fran were convinced i was a Canadian.
When I go on a trip for a weekend or even few weeks, I travel light because it is easier and less stressful. I take only one small backpack like a Jansport or something day pack that I used in college and a coat. The pack is small enough to fit easily in the plane/train/bus overhead compartment or even under the seat, and it holds enough for travelling. It has a waist strap to keep it from bouncing, and I can wear it and walk away or ride a bike.
So I just moved out of the USA. I'll be spending the indefinite future living here in Paris and part of the year in Lausanne, Switzerland and some in Montreal, Quebec. With that though in mind, I packed like an overpacked family going on a weeklong family vacation. Basically I brought with me nearly everything I still own minus the storage unit full of books and other things in the desert. And I brought the cowboy hat.
My gf dropped me and my luggage off at the airport. It was around 5 am and there were already a lot of people there. I was kind of ashamed of having so much stuff. It was too cumbersome and awkward to carry by hand in one trip between the drop off point to airport check in and ticketing so I needed a buggy to move it.
Hey people, no i'm not taking a weekend trip to Lake Tahoe. I'm making a permanent trans-atlantic move and what you see piled on this cart in these 4 bags and 1 carry-on are now my only worldly posessions.
The ticket agent weighed it all, and with the jansport bag and the rest of my stuff, including a bicycle and mountaineering gear, my luggage weighed 221 pounds (around 100 kilos). That was my exact body weight when I was doing body building. 4 bags of stuff and 1 carry-on is now all I own. It almost completely filled the backseat of a small parisian taxi.
Going through security was nerve wracking since I was carrying a gram of heroin dissolved in a Visine bottle. The weight of my Visine was under 3 ounces, so it was unlikely that it would be checked. As you might guess, I never fully quit heroin before leaving San Francisco. I worked it down to once every few days with kratom in between. Not that I was going to get horrible WDs, but with the stress and sleep deprivation, the thought of not having access to something that was almost guaranteed to cheer me up for a while -- i wanted something to look forward too. (I would never try this going back to the US.)
By the end of the first leg of the flight ( to Iceland), I couldn't bear to sit still any longer. It had been a 12? hour transcontinental/transatlantic flght where neither food nor water were served. My legs were twitching as though I were about have a fit. My nose and eyes were running and I felt horribly depressed and exhausted. My teeth hurt. My back hurt. I ached all over. I was getting a bad cold. I was feeling bad. I didn't think this was withdrawals - I was genuinely exhausted and sick with a cold.
I was too scared to try it in the lavotory of the plane. I imagined the Air Marshall, an undercover armed guard, getting suspicious and breaking down the door of the airplane toilet to see what i was doing with my fingers pinching my nose and an empty Visine bottle with brown residue inside it. So I waited until the plane landed in Iceland.
That dropper of heroin was in my backpack in the clear quartsized ziplock bag reserved for liquids. So, but I went into the bathroom at the Iceland airport, before Customs, and squirted it all up my nose, emptying the bottle in 2 massive squirts, one for each nostril. I hold my head back for a few minutes, then pinch my nostrils, let go, and suck up anything that dripped. Within minutes, my teetth stop hurting. my guts stop hurting. Everywhere, the pain is gone. I went through customs and everything was OK. This would hold me over until France.
Mild opiates can be bought without a prescription at most pharmacies here. Take enough of them, say 2 or 3 boxes of sthing like codeine or ethylmorphine (around 600 mg), and you can get a nice buzz.
to be continued.....
Before coming here, I was told that everyone speaks English in Western Europe (except for rural areas and countries like Spain which some people say is backward ). And at the Institut where everyone is highly educated and has a PhD, everyone was supposed to be fluent in English. English is the common language of science, and most of our research is published in English, after all. Therefore, learning French would be optional. Not true. It turns out that fluency in French is a requirement; to my surprise, not many people speak English, and I have about a year to do it or people will be mad at me.
I was only slightly prepared for this. In July, I began listening to some Frnech lesson tapes on my mp3 player. Over the summer, I also memorized a few travelers/learners french word lists.
My method since coming here has been to memorize a Petit Larousse dictionary that I found on the roadside in Paris the first day I arrived. I've memorized about 2000 words. A problem with that method is that while I can read french very well now and write it (except my grammar is bad) I don't know how anything is pronounced. To my ear for example, the words for fingernail (ongle) and angle (angle) sound exactly alike.
I've never worn a cowboy hat until recently because they seem to be appropriate only for certain people like ranchers and farm hands. Otherwise, they look silly. But a few years ago, I bought one at a gourmet hat boutique in North Beach, San Francisco. This place was a real haberdashery full of expensive and fancy headgear for men made there.
I was about to move to the cabin at an abandoned ranch in the high desert in eastern Oregon, and I wanted something to try to fit in with the community. It had to have better sun protection than my Branson Tractors trucker cap which was by then stained and very greasy. It didn't work - I never felt like I fit in even though most people were very nice, and half the peolpe I met were misfits in their own way, just as I am.
A typical reaction was that whenever I rode into town for supplies ( I took a bicycle or motorcycle when I finally had that working or jogged or rode with someone in a car. I never rode any of the horses that far and wouldn't want to with traffic. Besides, riding a horse on a road isn't fun. On a hot summer day, it's like sitting on a furnace, and there's no wind to cool you. ), even wearing that hat or no hat or any hat for that matter, if i struck up a conversation with someone, almost always a local and a complete stranger to me, they would often ask me what country i was from. They usually asked if i was from Scotland or Ireland. Even my gf and her friends, when i first met them in san fran were convinced i was a Canadian.
When I go on a trip for a weekend or even few weeks, I travel light because it is easier and less stressful. I take only one small backpack like a Jansport or something day pack that I used in college and a coat. The pack is small enough to fit easily in the plane/train/bus overhead compartment or even under the seat, and it holds enough for travelling. It has a waist strap to keep it from bouncing, and I can wear it and walk away or ride a bike.
So I just moved out of the USA. I'll be spending the indefinite future living here in Paris and part of the year in Lausanne, Switzerland and some in Montreal, Quebec. With that though in mind, I packed like an overpacked family going on a weeklong family vacation. Basically I brought with me nearly everything I still own minus the storage unit full of books and other things in the desert. And I brought the cowboy hat.
My gf dropped me and my luggage off at the airport. It was around 5 am and there were already a lot of people there. I was kind of ashamed of having so much stuff. It was too cumbersome and awkward to carry by hand in one trip between the drop off point to airport check in and ticketing so I needed a buggy to move it.
Hey people, no i'm not taking a weekend trip to Lake Tahoe. I'm making a permanent trans-atlantic move and what you see piled on this cart in these 4 bags and 1 carry-on are now my only worldly posessions.
The ticket agent weighed it all, and with the jansport bag and the rest of my stuff, including a bicycle and mountaineering gear, my luggage weighed 221 pounds (around 100 kilos). That was my exact body weight when I was doing body building. 4 bags of stuff and 1 carry-on is now all I own. It almost completely filled the backseat of a small parisian taxi.
Going through security was nerve wracking since I was carrying a gram of heroin dissolved in a Visine bottle. The weight of my Visine was under 3 ounces, so it was unlikely that it would be checked. As you might guess, I never fully quit heroin before leaving San Francisco. I worked it down to once every few days with kratom in between. Not that I was going to get horrible WDs, but with the stress and sleep deprivation, the thought of not having access to something that was almost guaranteed to cheer me up for a while -- i wanted something to look forward too. (I would never try this going back to the US.)
By the end of the first leg of the flight ( to Iceland), I couldn't bear to sit still any longer. It had been a 12? hour transcontinental/transatlantic flght where neither food nor water were served. My legs were twitching as though I were about have a fit. My nose and eyes were running and I felt horribly depressed and exhausted. My teeth hurt. My back hurt. I ached all over. I was getting a bad cold. I was feeling bad. I didn't think this was withdrawals - I was genuinely exhausted and sick with a cold.
I was too scared to try it in the lavotory of the plane. I imagined the Air Marshall, an undercover armed guard, getting suspicious and breaking down the door of the airplane toilet to see what i was doing with my fingers pinching my nose and an empty Visine bottle with brown residue inside it. So I waited until the plane landed in Iceland.
That dropper of heroin was in my backpack in the clear quartsized ziplock bag reserved for liquids. So, but I went into the bathroom at the Iceland airport, before Customs, and squirted it all up my nose, emptying the bottle in 2 massive squirts, one for each nostril. I hold my head back for a few minutes, then pinch my nostrils, let go, and suck up anything that dripped. Within minutes, my teetth stop hurting. my guts stop hurting. Everywhere, the pain is gone. I went through customs and everything was OK. This would hold me over until France.
Mild opiates can be bought without a prescription at most pharmacies here. Take enough of them, say 2 or 3 boxes of sthing like codeine or ethylmorphine (around 600 mg), and you can get a nice buzz.
to be continued.....