The Bad Lift

Every morning, I take Bus 92 from Place de Marechal Juin to Charles de Gaulle Etoile. From there I take the RER A to La Defense. Every morning, I buy a couple of freshly baked pain au chocolat for breakfast.Every morning, I rely on probability to give me a sign of what the day holds for me.

I am not superstitious, merely bored. You see, we have three lifts in our building. Two perfectly fine ones and one that looks like it has been gutted and was a scene in some Terminator movie. With its wires hanging out, and its the flourescent lights (that were supposed to illuminate softly, hidden behind a steel panel),  open to the world and starkly visible on one side of the elevator thereby making everyone look older and even more tired than usual. The walls were covered hastily in a sickly green carpet, as if that would make it look any better. I wonder what they were hiding. A printed out sign, in Times New Roman, tells the story of the elevator, ‘Attention…’ it says. Since the rest is in French, the story is lost to me.

Every morning, if the first thing I get is The Bad Lift, it’s a sign that the day will be interesting.

This morning, I took the Bus 92 from Place de Marechal Juin to Charles de Gaulle Etoile. From there I took the RER A to La Defense. This morning, I bought a couple of Pain au chocolat for breakfast. Freshly baked.  This morning, I relied on probability, and the odds were against me. I got the bad lift.

I said I wasn’t superstitious, so I ignored that little signal of doom. I don’t believe in bad luck anyway. It was a busy day workwise, but that was normal. There were guests so I had my usual awkward social situations with them. Normal. I had a web conference, and that went fine, except that it was generally a waste of time. But that’s normal too.

It was almost the end of the day, so I decided to go to the toilet first to pay homage to the throne. I had to get out of the office, since the toilets were just outside, in front of the Lifts of Fate.

I do my thing (number 1 ok =P), and flush. As I turned to get out the door, my security ID flew off it’s loose case and landed straight into the flushing toilet. It circled a bit and disappeared. That was the longest flush I’ve seen in my life. My horrified eyes could do nothing but watch it go down. Drowned, gone forever, to the sewers of Paris.

Outside the toilet doors, the Lifts of Fate watched on. Tomorrow is another morning.

turning francophile

Living in Paris is entirely different from visiting Paris. It's the psychological trauma of appearing stupid because you can't speak the language. I remember my amusement at those Koreans in UP trying to learn English.

First of all, the French expect you to speak the language. It’s the least you can do after all. They probably can speak anglais, but they probably won’t.

From the Boisserre Metro Station I traversed their fairly easy to follow subway system. Colors and arrows speak a universal language. Right. First day at the job and I need to get my Medical exam done and dusted. First, I had to get to Montrouge. I preplanned my trip using the facility at www.ratp.fr which tells you the fastest way between two addresses.

Armed with my map, I make my way to Avenue Pierre Brossolette with little drama (except I had to ask for directions ONCE to a very nice lady). The map was filled with little roundabouts and I couldn’t quite figure out which end of the street I was at, as I’m terribly illiterate when it comes to mapspeak.

The whole medical exam took about an hour and several ‘parlez-vous anglais?’ to different staff. (I lie. I didn't even get that sentece right.) It wasn't even the full medical checkup, which was great, just your weight, height, eyes and a chest xray. No blood tests, urine tests and the (eew) stool tests which just makes me feel for the unfortunate folk that check them.

After my medical exam, I tried to find my way to the office in the La Defense area, which is the business district of Paris. It is situated in the glorious shadow of La Grande Arche http://www.grandearche.com/ (the building to the right of the the grande arche).

At the station, I grabbed  a simple chicken sandwich as I didn't know the facilities in the office. I just copied what the girl in front of me said ‘Un big chicken, sil vous plait’.

Only the French can make a simple takeaway chicken sandwich taste really good! The bread was soft and tasty by itself too.

On my way home, my metro billet (ticket) didn’t work Un billet nu marche pas!!!!!…I didn’t know what to do. This very nice french guy on the other side of the ticket machine tried to help me by saying I needed to ‘piggyback’, i.e., follow closely the person getting through so I can get in with them. I tried it twice but always got locked out as I was too slow (obviously a newbie). He gestured that I should follow as close as possible and even spoke to a french lady if she can slow down and let me piggyback as my ticket wasn’t working. All throughout this exchange, we spoke in the silent, awkward language of signals and my mortified laughter.

I am loving France so far. London is still calls to me as 'home' but it is Paris that I want to conquer for now.