Lesson 1

Labeling to your name, a mailbox for which you turn out not to have the key: not a bright idea.

Lesson 2

With a piece of tape and a coat hanger, stealing mail from a mailbox is frighteningly easy.

Am I the one with a sick mind, or would you also do a double take if, opening one of France’s leading newspaper, you glanced upon a headline reading something along the line of “Diddle: Little Girl’s Favorite”?

And just in case you thought it might be yet another unfortunate semantic collision between unrelated words in separate dialects, the article promptly informs you that it is to be pronounced in the English fashion (“dideul”, does it read in French).

And you thought Engrish would end with Japan…

My two resolutions for 2006:

  1. Buy 200-page refill for Little Black Notebook of Hate.
  2. Append to said notebook, names of all those who have started the year wittily announcing: “My resolution for this year is not to take any resolution”.

I think I may have, ahem, hinted at it in past entries, but let me spell it out for the benefit of the slower ones:

I am now living in Paris: P. A. R. E. E. S!

Yep, that means no more upskirt keitai shots of underage japanese schoolgirls. Not that there were any in the first place, but how could I resist the pleasure of one last Google keywords showdown. Actually, there might still be a few views of Nippon, gently contributed by our in-house Samurai and the ever cat-obsessed Tracey dearest, but still a massive slow-down from the old rate.

In exchange, all I can promise you is a bunch of tired rants on the French, their capital city, their greasy foods and promiscuous ways.

More of the former than the latter at the moment.

Understandably, some of you might feel shafted with the deal and turn your back on this page… To those people, I have this to say:

First of all, know that I won’t be missing your fickle, treacherous, back-stabbing excuse for a readership one least bit. Second, you may want to consider the fact that my current residency will only last six months, to be replaced by a potentially much more exciting destination: unsubscribe now and you may be missing out on all the fun then. Third and last for now: pleeeaase don’t go! Oh reader! soul of my life, salt of my existence! I need you so… I promise I’ll do my best to keep posting about cat-ear-wearing people and crazy language hijinx, even if I have to make them up. Just don’t leave me now.

A few random things of note so far:

  • In France, the letter ‘C’ on heaters and taps, stands for Hot (whereas Cold is ‘F’). Will you guess how many shivering morning wake-ups and boiling hot showers yours truly has had so far?
  • Whoever elected France as the country of all things gastronomical, never had to find the ingredients to a proper breakfast in a local supermarket: I had forgotten how unduly hard it was to find something as simple as bacon here. And no, I don’t want “smoked ham”, nor “diced bacon” with my eggs, I want plain crispy bacon goodness and it’s so far dearly missing from my morning table.
  • The biggest matchmaking service in France is called CUM. I am not making that up. In subways, in magazines, everywhere: you got huge ads inviting you to log onto CUM.fr or touting CUM as your gateway to a perfect relationship…

More to come soon, be sure of that…