Not that smart

A lot has been said about the connected “smart” car. A LOT.

Oh, it sure sounds cool: your vehicle as an addition to your devices, an extension of your modern connected lifestyle. 

But then my husband’s job went and gave him a company car equipped with a bunch of connected technology. And let me just come out and say: we’ve all been duped. Cars don’t need to be giant versions of anybody’s smartphone. Why? I’ll tell you why.

Let’s start with music. Before all this connectivity madness, if you wanted to listen to the car radio, you pressed a button or turned a dial. If you wanted to listen to a CD, you simply slipped a disc into the dedicated slot.

But not in our new connected car, no sir. The whole central dashboard is just one big screen. No radio knobs. No CD slot. Only a lonely “home” button. Where do you put your CD? “NOWHERE” is the answer. You put it nowhere, because judging from our car, CD’s are clearly old-school and therefore obsolete.

Same thing goes for the radio. Where is the tuner? It’s hidden inside a menu inside another menu that you can only access by fiddling around with the big dashboard screen. Don’t like the volume level? More fiddling around in menus and submenus.

I’m a consumer. I don’t recall voicing any desire at all for my in-car listening experience to become so pointlessly complicated.

But let’s move on.

How about Bluetooth? Heretofore, I kind of liked Bluetooth; it let me listen to music from my Deezer account through our wireless home speaker, which was neat.

But in the car, I would call Bluetooth a liability at best and life-threatening at worst. Know what happens the instant we climb into ours? Bluetooth detects our phones, and starts automatically playing music from phantom playlists we didn’t even know we had. Simply trying to make the sound system stop doing that is enough to send one off the road and into a ravine. Who came up with this and where should I send my hate mail?

Another “perk” of Bluetooth: notifications. Good God, why why why? For instance, let’s take WhatsApp. WhatsApp bombards us with notifications, which, because of the connectedness of our car, all appear at the top of the dashboard screen accompanied by a notification sound. Now, it just so happens that the volume of this particular app’s notifications came pre-set on “ear-splitting,” meaning every notification blasted through the speakers as BEEEEP!!! thus causing my heart to systematically leap straight out of my chest. But for the life of me I could not find the car volume settings for WhatsApp, despite digging through every last menu and submenu in the whole damn system. I ultimately had to consult some online chat group to find the solution. Again, WHY?

The one place where Bluetooth could actually contribue something helpful in the car is hands-free phone calls. Someone calls you, and the call is sent straight to the sound system, thus liberating your hands for other tasks, namely messing with your GPS holding the steering wheel. Except that the “benefit” of Bluetooth calls is limited to folks who drive ALONE. In a car full of people, in which NO ONE wants to hear your private conversation, much less in surround sound, this feature is truly terrible. Also, what happens if one’s mistress calls while one’s wife is sitting right there in the passenger seat? I mean this is France. I bet that totally happens.

And while we’re on the topic of voice, let’s discuss Google Assistant. I have long learned to avoid using it with, say, our remote control; it clearly finds my American accent to be incomprehensible. But my husband, who is French, does not have much more luck with it than I do. Why? Because the technology is crap, that’s why. When he receives a text in the car, for example, Google Assistant offers to read it to him out loud. If he agrees, the assistant reads the messages INCLUDING THE PUNCTUATION AND THE EMOJIS. This leads to such utterly surreal results as, “Can you bring a bottle of wine to the party question mark smiley face confetti fireworks cake smiley face.” And when the “assistant” is done reading, it asks whether my husband wants to respond. Regardless of what he answers, the robotic voice pauses for a moment, then says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. Do you want to respond?” This can go on for several minutes, usually resulting in palpable irritation inside the car, without mentioning the increased likelihood of a potentially fatal accident outside the car. Thanks, Google.

So in conclusion, the term “smart” is highly relative when applied to the car. And as a recent visit to an automobile museum reminded me, people have been rolling along in perfect comfort for quite some time now, blissfully unaware of connected technology. I say it’s time to bring back the dumb cars.

Won't you be my neighbor? Part II

As some of you may recall, I have already discussed my beloved neighbors and their eccentricities, but such is the magnitude reached by said eccentricities over the past several years—nay, over the past several weeks—that I feel the subject warrants revisiting.

Like I mentioned in January, I am now officially self-employed, working from home, a free agent, etc., and am (mostly) loving it. The new boss in particular is one cool chick. The office, on the other hand, could use some work. Let me explain:

Prior to being self-employed, I worked long days far from home, meaning I missed out on exactly what goes on in my apartment building between the hours of 8:30 am–8:00 pm. In my blissful naïveté, I always assumed that nothing much went on at all, aside from the occasional delivery (mainly for me). But since merging home and office, I have realized that no such peace reigns in my apartment building. Quite the contrary, actually.

First off, nobody works. I don’t know what my neighbors are all up to, but they are definitely up to it at home. Victims of France’s 11% unemployment rate? Fellow freelancers? Rentiers? Whatever the case, they’re all here, all the time. I am thus treated to a smörgåsbord of weirdness all day long.

Undoubtedly lives in my building.

Let’s begin with my certifiably insane next-door neighbors and the 1-inch partition separating them from me. Crazy Neighbor #1 is an elderly Japanese gentleman, who judging by the noises coming through the wall is a true connoisseur of gay pornography. He is also the victim of some form of extortion by an old lady to whom he refers as “ma pauvre dame,” and who regularly calls him demanding money. Their conversations go something like this: “WHAT? No, ma pauvre dame, I will NOT send you any more! Pardon? Forty euros? OK, but this is the LAST TIME!”

As if that weren’t entertaining enough, last week Crazy Neighbor #2, a.k.a. Crazy Neighbor #1’s 20-something Brazilian alcoholic boy toy, returned from wherever he had been for the last few months (not rehab in any case), and the pornography fest ceased..., only to be replaced by drunken shouting matches, slamming doors and gangsta rap. The novelty wore off within the first 24 hours since, let us not forget, the aim of my being home all day is actually to work. And I don’t know about you, but I need some modicum of calm in order to succeed.

At one point, I actually resorted to an online white noise generator in a vain attempt to block out the insane loudness of all that vodka-soaked screaming. Sad, I know. And ineffectual. So I took it up a notch. As I was working on a project involving the Middle Ages, the idea came to me to crank up some nice loud medieval music. And as it turns out, nothing combats the sound of two drunken, shouting men like a bunch of chanting monks. So that is my new secret weapon. When things get out of hand next door, I release the holy brethren.

You want a piece of me?

So that was last week. THIS week has been a whole new adventure. Monday I came home from having tea with a friend only to find a baby carriage, baby included, sitting in the apartment entryway unattended. I wouldn’t dare leave a piece of luggage unattended in the entryway, let alone a baby, but then I’m not insane. My conscience told me to stick around, so I kept the forsaken child company until, some 15 minutes later, his (clearly incompetent) mother, a.k.a. Crazy Neighbor #3, came strolling nonchalantly down from the 6th floor singing to herself.

Me: It seems you have forgotten someone here.
Crazy Neighbor #3: Oh! I was just upstairs getting some diapers!
Me (seeing no such diapers): Mmm hmm.

On Tuesday, a plumber showed up at 10 am to break apart our shower tiles. I’ve oft mentioned the disastrous state of our ceiling, so one would naturally assume that any work done on our place would involve first and foremost the ceiling. Not so (our landlord is evidently also crazy). Monsieur le plombier was nice enough, although I can definitely confirm that “plumber’s crack” is an international phenomenon. Is there a specialty clothing store for plumbers, where all the pants have ridiculously large waistlines and no belt loops? Anyway, so we now have some new, entirely unasked-for tiling (in the wrong shade of white, but who’s keeping track?). Meanwhile, our ceiling is getting to the point where the sound of pieces of it breaking off and exploding on the floor no longer makes me jump. It’s become a sort of familiar background noise, not unlike the cheerful humming of the refrigerator.

Wednesday was pretty uneventful, aside from our upstairs Crazy Neighbors #4 and #5 spending a good part of the night dragging heavy objects across their 19th century wooden floors. Judging from the sound, and the guests, I can only assume they were having a nocturnal furniture-rearrangement free-for-all. They do that sometimes.

We’re not crazy, we just enjoy doing this at midnight.

And then on Thursday came the crescendo. I arrived home with my husband, laden with sacs of groceries, only to find that our entire block had been sealed off with yellow crime scene tape, flashing lights, stationed police agents, the whole thing. They let us pass, but upon reaching our building, we saw the reason for all the hubbub: a body. As in, a dead body. There it was, just lying on the sidewalk, hidden under the gold foil that the French use to cover dead bodies, shock victims, and the homeless during winter. No explanation, nothing on the news, zip. I called my mom:

Me: So there’s a dead body outside our front door covered in gold foil.
Mom: Gold foil? The French gift wrap their dead?
Me: I told you it’s an elegant culture.
Mom: Did they put a bow on it?

I figure that the day one’s own mother no longer seems surprised by the theater of the absurd that has become one’s life, one needs to perhaps consider making a change. So as fun as this all has been, I think it’s about time we looked to greener, saner pastures. I was reluctant to leave our “nice” neighborhood, but you know what? I think I can handle it after all.

Les Misérables

Last weekend, I skipped the country and discovered Luxembourg City: close enough to Paris for a weekend, yet far enough away to feel exotic. Most of my entourage raised an eyebrow when I announced my weekend plans, as apparently the going rap on Luxembourg is that it’s a) small b) boring and c) unsexy. Whatever. For those of you contemplating a visit to Luxembourg, it is none of those things. In addition to being gorgeous, G. and I found it to be plenty big (it’s the damn capital, people! 50 square kilometers—get with it!), plenty interesting, and ... well, it may not be sexy per se, but what do you want? It’s wedged between Germany, eastern France and Belgium; it can’t have everything. What it DOES have is money. Lots of money. And an entire army of invisible street sweepers who keep the place impeccably groomed. That, my friends, is one clean city. Even the fallen leaves look somehow artfully fallen. There is no “5-second rule” in Luxembourg; if you should let any food fall to the ground, you could probably pick it up whenever you felt like it and keep eating. No worries.

They also have really big cheese.

Oh sure, there is poverty in Luxembourg. We learned all about it at the city museum, currently featuring a temporary exhibit cleverly entitled “Poor Luxembourg.” Over the course of a really quite elaborate series of displays and installations, including full-scale models of a homeless camp and a “social” grocery store, we learned that “poverty” in the Grand Duchy is not so much a question of true financial insecurity, but rather of coping with limited access to social pleasures (fewer extracurricular activities for one’s children, for example). We also learned that the gross minimum wage is roughly €1,800 per month—by far the most generous of the EU. In other words, indigence is such an oddity in Luxembourg that it’s worthy of an entire museum exhibit.

France is not Luxembourg. France has plenty of poverty—as well as a fairly conspicuous homeless population. I would know; I was sat upon this week by one particularly conspicuous specimen. Sat. Upon. I was taking the métro home from work with a friend, when an extremely alcoolisé gentleman sporting rags and a half-consumed bottle of whiskey staggered onto our train, screaming what can only be translated as, “You bunch of #@*$!! I #$$& this &$*@ piece of #$$& world of @$#!! Go @#$% yourselves!” Everyone in the wagon stopped talking and stared at him, at which point the doors closed and the train took off. The sudden movement was obviously too much; in slow motion, he toppled backward ... right onto my friend and me, strategically seated as though we had intended to serve as a human safety net. It was nice.

Enter at your own risk.

Like the subway of your average metropolis, the Paris métro has quite a population of “residents.” Some drink themselves into oblivion; some peddle illicit merchandise; still others beg. Of the beggars, I count three categories: the passive, the proactive and the performing. The passive find a spot somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels and stations and just camp there, with or without a puppy/child by their side, silently admonishing you to spare a dime. There is one such woman who hangs out at the station Opéra, at the foot of the stairway leading to the line 3 platform, just glaring at each and every person who walks by, her eyes boring right into you as you attempt to breeze past nonchalantly. I once fearfully offered her a few lunch vouchers—the fabulous tickets restaurant—and she actually turned out to be way nicer than I had imagined. I almost wanted to give her some marketing advice about the whole catching more flies with honey than with vinegar thing, but thought better of it. If I were homeless, would I take advice off some random commuter? Probably not.

The proactive métro dwellers go ahead and climb aboard the trains themselves, passing from wagon to wagon, shouting over the din about who they are and why they need your contribution. Some are polite; others are frighteningly belligerent. Consider this: back at home, my parents are harassed day and night by phone calls from perfect strangers soliciting money, but here in Paris, you can get the same treatment face à face! Who says urban living is impersonal?

Finally, there are the performers. Some dance; some sing; some play musical instruments. Some are quite good; others are so ear-splittingly bad I would pay them to just STOP ALREADY. And while I’m at it, I would also happily, happily pay them to cease and desist massacring such cherished oldies as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Hotel California,” anything by the Beatles, and the perennial favorite, “El Cóndor Pasa” (yes, I realize the tune predates Paul Simon. That’s no excuse to screw it up). There are also plenty of métro gypsies, but they enter more into the “nasty pickpocket” category than the “unfortunate homeless” one.

For the record, I do not have a heart of stone (plus I’m a Democrat; I’m like obligated to at least feign sympathy). Although, with the price of Paris’s monthly métro pass likely to increase to a whopping €78 over the next year, there comes a point when those of us who do use the public transportation system for ... transportation ... are perfectly justified in demanding, I don’t know, the right to not be sat upon by drunken homeless guys for example. I’m just saying.

Boo (hoo)!

The time is once more upon us for Halloween in France, that pinnacle of the anticlimactic, sandwiched in between Saint Patrick’s Day and Groundhog’s Day on the roll call of holidays that no one gives a damn about. I mean sure, there are a few (Anglo or pseudo Anglo) bars in Paris that will be having Halloween parties tonight, and I have just read that costume sales are up, but between us, Halloween still has a long way to go before it officially catches on around here. Which is a shame, really, because how can you not love candy pumpkins? Seriously? 

Hurts (my teeth) so good!

A few years ago, sensing the onset of yet another bout of expatriate Halloween blues, I came up with a Parisian alternative: champagne, macarons and a bubble bath. But this year, no can do; my place has far too many people in it. So instead, last night we decided to go for a spin though Père Lachaise cemetery in eastern Paris. In preparation for All Saints’ Day, the 110-acre cemetery was bedecked with police officers and flowers—mainly chrysanthemums, which I now realize are official tomb flowers and thus explains why they’re so, um, inexpensive. During my less abundant years I was a big, big fan of chrysanthemums: for my apartment, for my friends, as hostess gifts, housewarming gifts, birthday gifts.... I’m beginning to understand some of the reactions I got. Huh.

So, Père Lachaise. It seemed appropriate to go, even more so at day’s end. Between the uneven (creepy) cobblestone paths, fluttering autumn leaves, cackling crows and crumbling tombstones, we got a nice dose of the hibbie jibbies. I mean sort of. I’m not sure that the Headless Horseman could exactly hang out in Père Lachaise; not with all those gendarmes everywhere. Not that I’m complaining.

Sorry, Sir. Do you have a permit for that head?

I must admit to busting a few Thriller moves at one point, hoping I wouldn’t be sentenced to eternal damnation for daring to make fun in a cemetery. But despite the decidedly macabre atmosphere, frankly, visiting Jim Morrison’s final resting place for the 5th time in my life wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as, say, munching on a couple of those miniature Butterfingers would have been. My kingdom for a Hershey bar! Maybe I’m becoming jaded.

Won't you be my neighbor? Part I

Parisian apartments have thin walls. In the case of older dwellings, this often stems from the division at some point over the last century of what were once large bourgeois family apartments into multiple smaller, separate ones, which Parisian landlords today rent out for a small fortune each. Sound insulation between the now separate residences was—and has remained—virtually nonexistent. Thus, what goes on in the apartments on either side of one’s own is generally perfectly audible, and more or less easy to live with depending on who the neighbors are, what kinds of noises they tend to make and what time they tend to make them.

But the walls aren’t all; Parisian apartments also have thin ceilings. Coupled with the frequent presence of hardwood floors, what goes on above one’s apartment is almost as difficult to ignore as what goes on on either side of it. This all adds up to the average apartment dweller being exceedingly well aware of the most intimate details of the personal lives and habits of those who live all around him, while not actually knowing any of them. A kind of box, if you will, of uninvited intimacy with people who are just this side of strangers.

In Paris, apartment neighbors tend to not know each other from Adam, which is perfectly fine by them. I mean, why bother? You will NEVER see a Parisian knocking on a neighbor’s door to request a spare egg or a cup of sugar, or to pop in for a spontaneous chat. Instead, it’s the opposite: they pretty much avoid each other like the plague. Stairwell encounters are particularly undesirable. Thus, if you are getting ready to go out, and you hear a neighbor’s door opening, you wait. Once the coast is clear, and the risk of having to make pesky, time-consuming small talk is gone, then you can venture out. Not before. 

G. and I live in just such an apartment. We don’t know many of the other people in the building, despite its relatively small size, but this is obviously normal. Besides, the lack of intimacy between ourselves and 85% of our neighbors is more than accounted for by the extreme intimacy we cannot help but share with the remaining 15%. Take the couple living above us, for example: their lives are an open book of sound that never fails to draw our attention because really, what choice is there?

At 7:00 am, they(?) are in the bathtub splashing water about and brushing their teeth. We can actually hear the brushing. At around 9:00 am, clomp clomp clomp! The perpetually high-heel-shod girlfriend comes tramping down the wooden stairwell. At 7:00 pm, she comes tramping home, jangles her keys into the door, opens and slams it shut behind her, tromps over to what I assume is the bed, removes her heels, which she lets drop—BAM! BAM!—to the floor, and then, all is relatively silent. Until after dinner, that is, when either she puts the latest Mika single on perpetual repeat, or she and her boyfriend get into a shouting match. They tend to intersperse their shouting with what sounds like rearranging their living room furniture.

Then there’s our next-door neighbor, whose noises are almost as bizarre. He is an elegant Japanese man in his late 40s, very well-dressed and polite. But once inside his apartment, things get very weird. He has this answering machine whose volume must be set on “hearing impaired” because when the thing picks up, we hear the entire message as though it were being screamed through our wall. Then, the machine starts beeping at 5-second intervals to notify our neighbor that he has a message. In the beginning, when we had just moved in and hadn’t grasped that beep = answering machine, he left on vacation for an entire week. Lots of people called him during that time: BEEP BEEP BEEP, all week long. I thought he had installed some kind of heavy-duty medical equipment or an industrial security alarm. This neighbor is also in a “complicated” relationship ... with a 20-something Brazilian male fashion model, who spends his days drinking and slamming the front door. Sometimes I run into him in the stairwell as he staggers down, hiccuping. I really need to work on my neighbor avoidance skills.

Anyway, not to JUDGE or anything, but this is the reality of Parisian apartment life. And yeah, we certainly contribute our share of noise as well. I’d even be willing to bet that we’ve irritated the hell out of our neighbors on countless occasions with our tromping around, vacuuming, vibrating laundry machine, long phone calls in English and noisy dinner parties. Plus I’m a bit clumsy and have been known to drop heavy objects on the floor, sometimes in the middle of the night. This is why there is never any open conflict in the building: we all accept that being auditory witnesses to each other’s daily goings-on is normal. And in the face of the cold anonymity of city life, maybe it does us all some good to be somewhat in touch with other people, however bizarrely.