Posted by mofembot
Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:46:00 GMT
Actually, I don’t mind eating alone at home, so long as that doesn’t occur too often. But I don’t like being away from home and having to eat out all by myself. In fact, I dislike it enough that when I considered my options last night in Heidelberg, I opted for not-wonderful Chinese take-out that I ate in my rented room. I was alone there (the family I rent from were off making Jolly Purchases at Ikea), but I was in my room, not subject to curious or imaginary pitying gazes, and could read my email and usual websites.
I’m posting this from my office at SAP in Walldorf, where I ate my dinner – the various items I took away from lunch earlier today (per my frugal habits when in Germany). Lunch was free because I got into the 3-day training session for which I’d been wait-listed: I went to the training room about 15 minutes before the session to see if I could take the place of somanyone who wasn’t going to show up. Sure enough, the instructor said he’d gotten an email from a would-be participant who was sick. And since no one else on the wait list had shown up (I’m only guessing there were others on the wait list)…
Even though parts of this training are excruciatingly boring because I’ve used some parts of these applications before, I’m learning something. More important, since lowly external contractors such as myself don’t get paid for attending training sessions, it’s a good thing I’m doing this now, when (because of a budgetary snafu) I’m not working anyway. End of April, when the next session is scheduled – well. That would be three days when I would be able to work for pay, and I honestly don’t think I’d do the training under those conditions.
But back to eating alone in a strange land. I dislike it enough that 4.5 years ago, while attending a education conference in Hamburg, I popped up the instant the pre-lunch session was over and proclaimed to the room that I was tired of eating alone, and would somebody please like to eat lunch with me? I ended up with a very interesting lunch companion with whom I ate a couple of other meals as well; she and I corresponded for a short while after the conference was over.
But there is no one to do that sort of thing with here, really: my mentor and my colleagues all go home after work and have to deal with the Making of Dinner and all the family hoo-hah. Usually Urte (my mentor) is here quite late and so I eat my “dinner” while she finishes off a salad or dessert that she took away from the cafeteria. But there was a general, off-campus “all-hands” meeting of regular SAP employees today… so…sniff… I was alone when I ate, with only the world wide web for company.
Could be worse.
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:42:00 GMT
Crossposted from DailyKos
There are two basic kinds of war monuments here in France. The most ubiquitous and easy to find are those commemorating the fallen of World War I – “the war to end all wars.” There is at least one in every town and every hamlet, no matter how small, and all bear impossibly long lists of names of those who died “for the glory of France.”
There are other monuments, often just plaques, affixed to what seem to be random walls and fences and buildings, scattered here and there in cities and suburbs: these are from World War II, and they commemorate a specific act at a specific moment in time that occurred on that very spot: members of the Resistance executed by the Nazis, for example.
What kind of monument will be built in Iraq?
In France, it does not matter how remote the place: even the tiniest hamlet on the most hard-to-get-to mountaintop has in its central square a monument to those who fell during World War I, “the war to end all wars.” As I have traveled from place to place and looked around at the small number of houses still standing, still inhabited, the lists of names seem implausibly long: this village could not possibly have supplied so many soldiers!
Most heartbreaking to see are the same family names over and over again: Entire generations were wiped out, entire families obliterated. France lost one-quarter of its men between the ages of 18 and 45 in the First World War. It would be a much harder statistic to wrap one’s brain around, but for the monuments: each name represented crops unharvested and animals untended, a schoolhouse without a teacher, a factory without skilled workers, a town without a leader. There are derelict buildings dotting the landscape that date from that conflict some 90+ years ago.
The outbreak of monument-building following the Great War was a way to honor the dead, to provide some small measure of consolation to those many widows and children left behind and bereft, and to remind generations to come of ultimate sacrifice. Some of the monument-builders and sculptors presciently left space to commemorate the fallen of subsequent wars, and many of these same monuments list the dead from World War II (with far fewer names). Every so often the same monument includes a handful of names belonging to the wars in “Indochine” (Vietnam) and Algeria, listed without commentary about the relative morality of these two latter conflicts.
But there is a second kind of monument, dating from World War II, that is also found all over France, but most particularly in the strongholds of the French Resistance. These are not so easy to find: they are rarely large, and they are almost always tied to a spot where something happened. Unlike the more formal monuments, these plaques, usually affixed to buildings and walls and fences, tell a brief story as well as list the names of the fallen. One senses that these plaques are there to keep the outrage alive as much as to honor the dead: whereas the monuments of World War I rarely make reference to the enemy, those who notice these plaques as they walk or drive by are directly reminded of the perpetrators’ identity and guilt.
The impetus for writing this diary was my finally taking the time last week to pull over and read what was written on a monument on the side of a road that I take fairly often. Built pretty much in the middle of nowhere, this was a free-standing World War II monument, a tiny obelisk, and its plaque read something like this:
On this site, on [date in 1944], these brave resistance fighters were shot to death, victims of Nazi barbarianism [la barbarie Nazie],” followed by roughly 20 names, and then an admonition: “You who pass by, remember their sacrifice.”
It did not matter to the French families of the victims that most German soldiers did not round up and summarily execute suspected Resistance fighters. Likewise, it will not matter to generations of Iraqis to come that most American soldiers were not guilty of “shooting first, and asking questions later,” nor that many were kind and tried to be helpful to the Iraqis among whom they lived.
What kinds of monuments will be built in Iraq? There is only one possible answer: Iraqis will erect the kinds of monuments that will fuel outrage at the deeds leading to deaths of those listed. And if marked at all, our soldiers’ deaths in that torn land will be remembered only as a “victory” for the insurgents.
What kinds of monuments will we build in America to honor our soldiers, who are almost without exception brave and decent human beings? Our soldiers are loving husbands and wives and sons and daughters and fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. They have left their homes and loved ones far behind at the behest of unscrupulous leaders and corporate profiteers who know little and care even less about the horrors of war. Our soldiers have died viewed as enemy occupiers, unmourned in Iraq. Nationally, politically, Bush and his minions keep them as invisible and as generally unlamented as possible: in a failed war, even heroes are an embarrassment and a liability. But they are mourned by their loved ones and by those in the towns and cities whence they came.
Still, the sad truth is that America will build no monuments to their courage and sacrifice for many years to come, if ever.
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Posted by mofembot
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 11:24:00 GMT
It’s bad enough when I end up spending some “forever” number of minutes semi-consciously trying to remember the name of my oldest daughter’s first boyfriend, for whatever reason, but then Rudy Giuliani played a bit part in another dream.
This would be disturbing even were I Republican.
However, perhaps in recompense, I officially woke up with this intercultural gem in my mind:
(::ahem::)
Haiku-doodle-du!
It’s a Japanese rooster:
Let’s make coq au vin.
(Mr. Mofembot laughed and laughed at this, but then again, he had just woken up.)
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Posted by mofembot
Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:51:00 GMT
Yesterday my husband and I trotted down to our tiny town hall to pick up our respective “récépissés” – the official document that acknowledges having received our applications for 10-year resident cards. We had both been without valid one-year cards for a while: mine expired on December 16th, and Brent’s on January 1st. (This would have possibly posed problems had we needed to return to the States: we might have been obliged to buy a ticket taking us out of France after 90 days.)
So having a récépissé is a good thing, but it tells us nothing: we don’t know if the Préfecture will grant us the 10-year cards we would so dearly love to have, or if we will simply have our one-year temporary cards renewed. (It’s highly unlikely that they’d kick us out.) We will theoretically receive one or the other sometime before the end of April, when the récépissé expires.
I am inhabiting not just the “10-year v. one-year limbo,” but also the What Do I Do About Work limbo. I am going back to Germany for several days next week to try to figure out if continuing to work as a contractor makes sense. For the moment, all contractors for this German firm are in limbo: the 2008 budget has yet to be approved – a fact that completely astonishes me, given the size and general success of the company and all – so some contractors, including me, are not working this first quarter because it’s possible that we won’t get paid for any work we do. Meanwhile, I am still paying for my currently-uninhabited room in Heidelberg. I am reluctant to give it up because (a) the thought of finding something else is daunting; (b) it’s in a great location – a 7-minute walk to the train station, close to tram lines and grocery stores; (c) a month’s rent is equal to or cheaper than a week’s stay at a hotel; and (d) the landlady/lord are nice.
But larger questions are still totally unresolved: will it be possible to work more from France? In principle, it should be. When will I know? Who knows. My current project manager is on vacation until mid-week next week – which is why I “ate” the return ticket I had for this past Sunday: no point in showing up when questions of working and being paid cannot be resolved. Another issue is that the work in Germany is overall pretty boring. But the pay is pretty good. How much of my life do I have to trade? How much time must I spend grubbing after euros – time that could be spent working on my book (the one that is supposed to make me Rich and Famous)?
And there’s the even larger question of how my working long-distance works/does not work with our family situation. Now that Brent will be in France two weeks out of three (granting that at least one of those weeks is complicated and will for the moment require a 45-minute commute each way), will we be present enough to effectively deal with our youngest daughter? (Let’s not get into whether we “effectively deal with her” when we’re here. That question, unfortunately, seems wide open for the moment.)
Given how much I loathe uncertainty, I can’t say that I see much difference between Limbo and Purgatory… okay, well, fine. My understanding (boosted in some measure by the ever-handy Wikipedia) is that Purgatory is a place of “purification” through (active) suffering. Souls in Limbo don’t go through (physical?) torturous purification. But waiting and not knowing sure seem psychologically painful to me.
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Posted by mofembot
Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:10:00 GMT
Here it is, Super Tuesday and all, and I am… waiting. Since a medical emergency called me out of the country when my absentee ballot arrived, and since I didn’t get back in time to ensure its arrival at the town clerk’s office in Massachusetts today, I will be voting in the Democratic Global Primary instead. (I can vote in the Global Primary anytime between today and February 12th.)
Decisions are not very easy for me, and never have been, really. It took me a long time to become reasonably decisive. People would ask, “One egg or two?” and/or “Scrambled or fried?” – and my response would be “Whatever is easiest for you.” While it is true that that response may well have reflected genuine indifference toward the outcome, there is an element of people-pleasing within it that goes hand-in-glove with the rife abdication of responsibility … well. Let’s just say that regardless of psychological underpinnings and personality traits that such wishy-washiness indicates, I finally got better about asserting some kind of preference, feigned or no, so as not to drive other people quite so crazy.
But here I am today, unsure about which candidate will get my vote. I was going to vote for Edwards, and I may still “on principle,” hoping that my tiny voice will join with those of other Edwards supporters, thereby creating enough volume to ensure that the poor and disempowered will be included at Barack’s or Hillary’s table.
But part of me is thinking ahead to the November general election, however, and so I am trying to figure out if I think Hillary or Barack is the better candidate–in the sense that I would want to vote for someone who will beat McCain in November. Quite honestly, I think/thought Edwards could, but I’m not sure about either Obama or Clinton: The attractiveness of their diversity, if you will, may prove a liability when viewed through the prism of the GOP slime machine. I am enchanted at the thought of a woman president. (In fact, when I was a kid I rather expected that I would be the first woman president.) I am encouraged at the thought of a black president: encouraged that maybe, just maybe America has come far enough for such an idea to become reality.
But the GOP-driven Clinton-hating knuckle-draggers and the anti-Obama lying bigots and the Big Money and the Swiftboaters … all of these antithetical-to-everything-that-is-truly-American thugs scare me. As hopeless as it should be for any Republican presidential candidate to get elected, we’re talking about a machine here that successfully stole the two previous elections, and which, even if it loses, will spend huge sums to bloody and belittle and damage as much as possible the Democratic president-elect. The GOP is very experienced at playing to the worst that can be found in the shadows and cesspools of the American psyche, and this will indeed be an ugly campaign season.
Such are my fears, and so I ponder my choices on this day. I will support the Democratic nominee in any event. How I wish that the upcoming general election would magically turn into a genuine contest of ideas and aspirations! – And while I’m at it, I’d like a billion dollars and a pony.
Tags choices, Clinton, Edwards, GOP, Obama, Super, Tuesday, voting | 1 comment
Posted by mofembot
Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:34:00 GMT
Note: An earlier version of this post can be found at DailyKos.
As an American citizen, an ex-pat who is currently a legal resident of France, I have at least one very specific concern which I hope will be addressed – no, that must be fixed – by the new Democratic president, whoever she or he may be: rolling back the extra-Constitutional powers granted to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Would that this problem were fixed long before Inauguration Day 2009!
In my guise as “mofembot,” I have been a fairly active participant in a couple of venues besides DailyKos; most notably, I often write comments in response to (comments in response to) editorials and letters to the editor in the Salt Lake Tribune. In one such recent exchange, I was accused of cowardice for using a pseudonym. I replied:
I do not use my real name here nor in most other electronic venues because I genuinely fear that I will be put on the “no-fly” list, and family circumstances are such that I cannot afford to take that risk. Perhaps I will feel safe to do so when habeus corpus and other civil liberties are restored, and when something is done to re-balance the need for security with the need to respect people’s privacy and freedom.
Call me selfish, but one of the very first things I want changed is TSA’s power to detain travelers on a whim. I have read enough stories of babies and young children, famous individuals, and even “common folk” being placed on the no-fly list for completely scurrilous reasons – including publicly criticizing Bush and his minions – to worry about the possibility of one day finding myself on the list. (And I would not be flying to the States, by the way, unless circumstances urgently required my presence there, so being stopped would be intolerable. Whatever my political or social opinions, I am most certainly not a security risk.)
At the very least, I want the “no-fly” list abolished or made public such that any person can challenge the appearance of his or her name on it. I want utter transparency about the procedure by which someone’s name can be placed on it. Who is able to put people’s names on it? What constitutes a valid reason? How can the no-fly list be challenged? Further, I want the back-log of cases being currently appealed to be handled immediately and expeditiously and fairly. I want the presumption of innocence to be the rule again: TSA (et al.) should have to show cause for putting anyone’s name on the list, rather than requiring people to prove their innocence.
I want due process in place for any and all travelers who are pulled aside for whatever reason and denied boarding. I want sane and humane practices in place when dealing with people who are accused of technical or administrative (i.e., visa) infractions.
I want a means of immediate appeal. I want to be able to speak with people who are empowered to overrule the no-fly list. I want to deal with reasonable people who will listen instead of glory in their ability to impose their will upon me. I want to be able to reason with TSA personnel without being thrown in detention for so doing. I want guarantees that any detained person will have the ability to contact a lawyer and family and friends… especially those waiting in vain at the other (arrival) airport. Whims and willfulness should not be the basis for life-changing decisions on the part of TSA nor of any other entity or person granted authority.
While I can live with taking off my coat and even my shoes for security’s sake, I want all useless “safety” rules abolished, high among which would be the ridiculous “no liquids” restriction.
I want the new Democratic president to help us, the battered and cowed traveling sheep, to turn back into people again. I want the new Democratic president to stand up with us against bureaucratic arbitrariness and bullying, particularly in the face of nonsensical rules that add nothing to our travel safety while contributing to frustration and delays.
I wish I didn’t have to wait for January 2009 to hope for any and all such changes, but I frankly don’t have any faith that the current Congress will make things right without true leadership emanating from the White House. And I wish that current circumstances didn’t make me feel so darned paranoid.
Tags freedom, security, TSA | no comments
Posted by mofembot
Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:47:00 GMT
The more I heard Edwards speak, the more I read his speeches and got to know his platform, the more I liked him. It had been my intention to vote for him by absentee ballot in this upcoming “Super Tuesday” election.
So in some ways I am not as disappointed as I might have been that circumstances conspired against my getting my absentee ballot on time. (A family emergency called me away to Madrid at the beginning of the week before my ballot arrived, and I did not get back with enough time to spare to ensure that it would get back to Massachusetts on time.)
Obviously I will vote for the Democratic nominee, whether Barack or Hillary (or at the last minute, Al? Al?)… And I suppose I am hopeful that what Paul Krugman wrote was true: that Edwards’ progressive platform has positively influenced the platforms of both Clinton and Obama. So perhaps the poor and the powerless (or, hey, the vast majority of us) will not be entirely forgotten after all.
But still, dang it all.
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Posted by mofembot
Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:14:00 GMT
I read a fair number of on-line newspapers and blogs these days, and every so often I joke about how I should stop, because I get so upset and disgusted and angry with what is going on in America. And then part of me feels guilty: after all, if I really hate what is going on, if I really want things to change, then why don’t I move back to the U.S. and try to do something about the mess?
The practical reality for the moment is, we couldn’t afford to move back to the U.S. even if we wanted to. I’m going on 52, my husband will be 50 this year (yes, I robbed the cradle)… granted, he’s a lot more employable than I am, technogeek that he is, but still–who’s going to hire us in this economy? And more germane, I think, is what the hell kind of health care could we expect?
We had had a pretty good health care provider when we lived in the States – Harvard-Pilgrim Health Care was pretty good for all the routine maintenance stuff. Yes, it was a six-month wait for a mammogram and eye appointments and that sort of thing, but our kids’ pediatrician was wonderful and I had a fine OB-GYN. I can’t complain about the care or the cost of my hospitalization for what seemed to be a heart attack (I can complain about the futility and boredom of having to spend a weekend in the hospital because there was no one around to run any of the needed tests–note to self: don’t get admitted to a hospital on a Friday evening), nor for my husband’s emergency appendectomy and follow-up surgery.
That was all okay, really. But when it came to approving treatment of our oldest daughter’s genetic condition, one that left her missing 18 adult teeth (yes, you got that, eighteen)… well. Even though their own doctors said that her condition was medical, and that implants were a structural and medical necessity, not a cosmetic enhancement, we were turned down. And ultimately paid ~$30K for our daughter to have a decent smile and a way to bite and chew and talk normally.
Everything I’ve read indicates that things in HMO-world have gotten much worse in terms of denial of coverage. And again, at our ages, wouldn’t just about anything wrong with us (if anything there be) constitute a “pre-existing condition”?
Add to this the magical disappearing pension plans, the complete lack of job security, the wholly inadequate unemployment insurance… we just can’t afford to leave France, even if we thought going back would make a material difference. And that isn’t remotely clear, either.
Tags guilt, health care, living abroad, political activism | no comments
Posted by mofembot
Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:57:00 GMT
Howdy-do. This is the official first post of my brand-new blog. How often I will post here at the moment is a wide-open question, but I hope to do so a few times a week. I will be filling some space with previously-published diaries and comments.
More to follow; this is simply a placeholder of sorts.
Tags first, Hello, post | no comments