10 juin 2010 jeudi
Today, one of the chief designers of the new generation iPhone explained to me that if the particles of water are fine enough, and if one is high enough in the air, one can see a circular rainbow. It’s true. I saw one from the window of the plane as we sprung out of the high clouds over Newfoundland, preparing for the long journey across the Atlantic. Thierry Dannoux, for a reason apparent to neither my parents nor I, took me under his wing for the first third of the seven and a half hour flight from Newark to Paris. The man is quite possibly one of the most intelligent people I have ever conversed with in French—excepting perhaps Dr. Vines and Dr. Rodina, although we speak mostly about literature and 20th century philosophy. M. Dannoux and I talked about the evolution of the television (he helped to invent LCD technology), human genomes (yup, he worked on those too), the origin of the expression ça va (although it is used to ask how one is doing, it apparently originally was a question asking how one’s digestion was going), where the stones used in Parisian houses come from (they originally were quarried under Paris itself, believe it or not), powdered milk (which he claims was responsible for millions of deaths in Africa due to contaminated water), among other things. He also informed me that I have a québecois accent. Bugger. I blame Mme. Rodina.
Although I only left home (*brief mental calculation*) nineteen hours ago, my trip thus far has already been chock full of those strange little incidents that I tend to encounter almost habitually whenever I’m abroad. There has been no bar dancing or soccer riots thus far, but I did meet a Defense Agent who thought I would make a good CIA agent (I told him I was thinking about the Peace Corps instead), and I had a brief stolen property scare. When exiting the plane on my flight from Cleveland to Newark, my backpack (aka: my life) was curiously not in the overhead bin where I had left it. I immediately sprung into a furious/anxious/horrified/irate panic, and (according to my mother) began swearing and directing my wrath at the first class passengers that were seated below my bag (ie: WTF, what business do those damn first class passengers have stealing anyhow—they’re f***ing rich enough to have gin and tonics delivered to their spacious seats before their asses have barely hit the seats, etc.). In short, it turned out that a flight attendant had simply shifted my bag around to make room for other bags, and it got lost in the shuffle. I apologize, first class passengers, for blaspheming you all in an airport gate.
Anyhow, all things considered, the flight to Paris was lovely (although the airplane food was a bit too salty and the croissant a bit too flat). We descended through the clouds with the rain, and landed in a gloomy Paris. And yet I couldn’t help but smile at the sub-sub-sub compact cars puttering along on the highway, or the poppies growing in the ditches, or the sudden influx of French dialogue. After customs and passport checks and baggage claim and coffee and other necessities, I helped my parental units deal with the debacle that is French transportation. Yes, we successfully navigated through the car rental process and highway system to find out way to our little “bungalow” (it’s a long story), which is conveniently located on an island in the Seine.
Well, I’m off to meet Alex Menrisky and do the great telephone swap, and goddamnit, get a demi-fraise.
*sigh*
Hi honey, I’m home!
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