In the original Lost season, the producers had gone the cheap way and cast a rather poor Frenchwoman knock-off who could barely read her lines phonetically.
In the last season, the bunch of French castaways is actually played by real French-speaking actors. Except this time one of them has a very thick Quebecois accent (for a vague English equivalent, try to imagine something like a Californian character played with a strong accent from Ontario).
Presented above: female head of state confronting her nefarious neighbour’s imperialist views. Also presented above: Darth Vader and Princess Leia.
It must be my medications, but when I saw this illustration of a French article on the current gas crisis between Russia and Ukraine, I immediately thought of another political squabble, in a galaxy far, far away (photo credits on the right: AP/Alexei Nikolsky).
It’s official: the end of times is upon us.
I always knew Bill Gates was the antichrist.
Why you should never use Chronopost if you fancy your packages getting delivered on time. or at all.
Thinking of mailing a package or urgent document from France? You might naturally be inclined to pick French transporter Chronopost: after all, they are the official offshoot of the French Postal Services and you can use their service through any French post office. OK, if you have any experience with the latter, and their dysmal record in both regular and special mail delivery, knowing that they officially “recommend” Chronopost wouldn’t be a big boost in their favour, but still, the point is: they are the default, ubiquitous, choice for parcels in France… marginally cheaper than DHL or Fedex and much more conveniently located.
Over the course of those past three years in Paris, I have done my best to avoid Chronopost and the French Post: never ever relied on them for anything critical, whenever I could help it.
And when I couldn’t help it… well they never once fulfilled their promise. I’ve had “Express 48h” delivery brought over to my doorstep, 3 weeks late and half torn-out, relatives to whom I’d send birthday presents abroad would get them a month after their birthday (that’s despite paying $100 for a pocketbook-sized parcel), I’ve had to go pick-up packages at the local delivery point countless times because “Recipient not at home at time of delivery” (never mind the fact I’d have been sitting by the door all morning and had my cellphone number printed on the delivery slip)…
To sum it up, out of about a dozen interactions with Chronopost during my time here, I don’t think they’ve held up their end of the contract more than once, twice at best.
As you may have noticed, I have painstakingly avoided writing about the upcoming election.
Not just because I am busy enjoying a month-long semi-vacation under the Californian sun, but also because last time didn’t work out as expected (we could say that) and left me caring (and wanting to care) considerably less about the political future of America. Recent economic events have only made this indifference stronger, in that I am pretty sure we have just witnessed the collapse of the US empire and the beginning of its steadily decreasing imprint on the world.
However, now that an Obama victory seems nearly too tempting not to call (though I won’t, because I’ve learnt my lessons), it is within reach.
This could mean an end to 8 years of the most viciously incompetent, borderline criminal, administration this country has ever had (and competition is fierce on that one). An Obama win is definitely the only thing at this point that might help bring the US back up, steer it to a somewhat peaceful retirement amongst the club of Former-ruler-of-the-earth-turned-important-but-not-so-much countries. Considering the other option (broke-ass third-world piece of land with a large military and not much else), this would definitely be for the best.
It would also be the first time I am actually supporting wholeheartedly a candidate, instead of simply rooting against his opponent. Obama might not be perfect, but he certainly strikes me as one of the most promising US candidate of the past 3 decades…
Tomorrow, make sure you vote if you are entitled to. Also if you live in California, make sure to help keeping bigots out of your constitution.
Either way, I think I’ll be drinking heavily tomorrow night.
So this morning, I am sitting in Parc Monceau, perusing Paris’ public-park-wide open wifi, trying to pull the schedule for my afternoon train.
Trying, because despite being on my twentieth online ticket booking for the month, trying to get anything out of French National Railway’s website feels like trying to get freshly squeezed OJ from a stone. I am not sure how exactly the whole “prevent users from getting a ticket online at all cost” fits into their business plan, but I guess if you take in account their laughably bad track record in all areas of service, it is merely brand identity on their part.
Twenty minutes and still no luck trying to get a single schedule for a local train departing 10 times a day from Paris (website timing out or randomly crashing at varying levels of the 50-step process), I had an epiphany and remembered a friend telling me about how it was probably easier booking a French train through Deutsche Bahn, German’s national railway company. At the time, I thought it was a joke.
Well, it’s not.
In approximately 1/100th of the time I spent attempting unsuccessfully to get a schedule for a French local train (from a French city, to a French city) on the official French website, I got the exact same info (available in 4 languages) on a German website.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so lame.
At its current rate of lazy, never-ending cheap self-one-upmanship it calls a plot, Heroes probably won’t make it past mid-season before its characters have all been made into equally indestructible super-human beings with god-like abilities. What then? Do they settle it with a tickle fight.
Is this show written by teenage nerds on ritalin, or did they just post a poll on the back covers of sci-fi mags?
In today’s Guardian (emphasis mine):
In a rare interview, Rob Wainwright, international director of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca), told the Guardian […]
Meanwhile, somewhere, there’s an international director of the Funny and Organised Crime Agency (Foca) who feels like nobody takes his job seriously…
