And the result

And higher-quality pictures of the original letter:

first response

The consensus is that I should reply to the note that was left in my mailbox. In a very polite way -- handwritten, apparently, is the way to go. So my friend Alex is going to copy it out for me. However, since I have no French people to call on right now, I'm asking all of the dozens of my friends who speak better French than I do to help me craft/edit this letter, so that I can put it in Le Conseil Syndical's head's mailbox on Sunday night (30 hours to go!). Hopefully, I will get it reviewed by an actual French person, but here is my first attempt. (Non-French speakers are welcome to critique the English version, below.)

A l'attention du Conseil Syndical,

J'accuse réception de votre lettre du 18 Décembre. Je tiens à présenter toutes mes excuses pour avoir pu malencontreusement oublier dans le passé de verrouiller le local à vélos. En effet, je croyais avoir verrouillé le local quand je l'ai utilisé, mais, malheureusement, j'ai dû oublié. Veuillez accepter toutes mes excuses. Veuillez croire que dorénavant je serai attentif à le fermer systématiquement à chaque fois que je l'utiliserai.

Peut-être serait-ce d'autre part une bonne idée d'y installer une affiche qui rappellerait précisément de verrouiller le local, genre aide-mémoire? Si vous ne pouvez vous en charger, je serais très heureux de pouvoir me rendre utile.

Sincères salutations,

...

And I think this says:

To The Building Council,

I acknowledge receipt of your letter. I regret infinitely to have forgotten to lock the door to the bike room. I had thought I had locked it each time, but it seems that I forgot on those occasions. Please accept my apologies. I assure you that I will be very careful from now on and that I will lock the door to the bike room each time I use it.

A good idea would be to put up a sign that says to lock the door, to aid memory. Would you be able to make this sign? If you cannot, I will be happy to make such a sign. With all my compliments,

...

more bike shed

Another bike shed issue, that may bear on the note. As I've mentioned, it appears that only two people use the bike shed. This was a bit annoying at first, because the bike shed is full of unused bikes, and there wasn't really space for mine. However, when I would get home, the other person was often not home yet, leaving the best space vacant. So I would take that spot -- as far as I know, bike shed rules do not include assigned spaces. Invariably, the next morning my bike had been moved. I lock my bike to itself, and my bike is pretty big, so this is not a fun thing to do. I was a bit annoyed, and a bit amused. I found that, unless I locked my bike to the bike rack (which was insecure, since then the frame wasn't locked), my bike would always be moved. I assume that the sole other user of the bike shed is the one who reported me to "Le Conseil Syndical." (The head of Le Conseil Syndical is far too short, fat, and filled with nicotine to bike -- he is the one who lent me his basement/bike shed key for me to copy initially, which is how, I presume, Le Conseil Syndical "knows" that my rental contract does not include bike shed access, which assertion I'm actually a bit dubious about.) But I don't know how pure her (I think it's a her) motives are -- she may just want to not have to move my bike each night to get to "her" spot. For the time being, I have stopped leaving my bike in that spot.

more notes and bad photos

When I came into the lobby of my building after receiving my wonderful note (click to get a better view -- sorry, no camera, so had to use my inferior webcam), I saw, attached to a lamp that has been by the garbage cans for about a week now, the following:again, click for a composite photo pasted together from my phone (the paper was actually a uniform color, without breaks in the letters). The text:

A l'attention de l'occupant qui a déposé ce lampadaire dans le hall:

Celui-ci voudra bien enlever le lampadaire dans les plus brefs délais.

Ni la cour ni le hall ni aucune des parties communes de l'immeuble ne peuvent être et ne doivent être considérées commes des décharges.

Nous nous permettons de rappeler que l'immeuble est doté d'un règlement de copropriété, qui a été remis à tous, locataires y compris, règlement qui interdit ce genre de pratique et que toute entorse à celui-ci constitue un délit. (Arrêt de la cour de cassation) dont la copropriété est légitimement en droit de demander la réparation en saisissant la justice au besoin.

Dans le cas où l'occupant indélicat ne s'exécutera pas nous serons donc contraints de saisir la juridiction compétente afin de faire rechercher le propriétaire, auteur du délit et de lui en demander réparation en appliquant le barème de sanction qui s'impose.

Pour mémoire, le non respect d'un règlement de copropriété par un locataire est un motif sérieux et valable d'expulsion immédiate d'un locataire et ce, sans qu'aucun recours ne puisse être opposé à cette décision. (Arrêt de la cour de cassation).

Le Conseil syndical

Wow. Translation:

To the attention of the resident who deposited this lamp in the hall:

This person will please remove the lamp as soon as possible.

Neither the lobby nor the hall nor any of the common parts of the building can be and should be treated like dumpsters.

We would like to recall that the building has rules of joint ownership, which have been presented to all, tenants included, rules that prohibit this type of action, and that any infringement of this rule constitutes an offense (Ruling of the Supreme Court) for which the joint ownership is legitimately entitled to seek redress before the court if necessary.

If the offending resident does not do this, we will be therefore forced to take jurisdiction to find the owner, the offender, and to seek redress in the scale of punishment as needed.

For the record, failure to satisfy a joint ownership rule by a tenant is a serious issue and valid grounds for immediate expulsion of a tenant, without any recourse to this decision. (Ruling of the Supreme Court).

The Building Council

Luckily, I did not throw out this lamp, nor could I have, since my apartment is pre-furnished, and I certainly didn't lug a lamp up to my apartment only to throw it out again. But again, wow. I kind of think that they think I did throw it out, since I don't know how many renters there are in this building, and that letter does seem pretty concerned about tenants, as opposed to owners.

The lamp was still there on Friday. I don't think it's going anywhere.

first aggressive note

I received this in my mailbox this evening, on a single printed sheet of paper:

Monsieur,

On nous a rapporté qu'à plusieurs reprises vous avez laissé le local à vélos ouvert, vous voudrez bien à l'avenir veillez à le refermer à clé systématiquement faute de quoi, nous nous verrons dans l'obligation de vous en interdire l'accès en remplaçant la serrure.
Pour info ce local n'est pas une prestation comprise dans votre contrat de location et que c'est à titre gracieux que la jouissance en est proposée aux locataires de l'immeuble et que si on continue à le laisser ouvert l'usage en sera restreint aux seuls propriétaires occupants et ce sans recours possible.
Comptant sur votre compréhension, votre civisme et votre respect d'autrui,

Le Conseil Syndical,

Which roughly translates to:

Sir,

It has been reported that on several occasions you left the bike room door open; you will in future be sure to close the door with the key, failing which we will be forced to deny access, replacing the lock.
For your information this room is not a benefit included in your rental contract, but is freely offered to tenants of the building, and that if you continue to leave it open, use will be limited to homeowning residents, without any possible recourse.
Counting on your understanding, your civic feeling, and respect for others,

The Building Council,

Now, I'm the last person to deny that I leave doors open. Sometimes even with the keys in them. I had thought that I'd been good about locking the bike shed, but it's quite possible that I haven't. I do wonder how people know it's me -- maybe because I'm one of only two people who uses the bike shed, as far as I can tell (more on that later). But this note seems to go a bit over the line. My actions, in their position, might be:

1. Put a sign up on the bike shed.
2. Wait, no, that was it -- problem solved.
3. Fine, hypothetically, I keep on forgetting. Then speak to me in person, or maybe put a note in my box, saying "You've been leaving the bike shed open. Please stop, or we'll have to bar access."
4. Ask me for my key back.
5. Upon my refusal, change the lock.
6. Upon further protests, point out that, as a tenant, I have no right to complain.
   

I am, frankly, baffled as to why step #1 wasn't followed, before #3+#6 was executed. I guess because they're French? I mean, honestly, what's the point of the second paragraph -- just a big "fuck you" to make sure I know my place?

Notes on cooking

I didn't realize you could burn your mouth by eating food with too much vinegar in it. Maybe the error lies in classifying what I just ate as "food."

The amount of garlic I put in a dish is limited only by my patience for peeling/chopping garlic. If I ever bought one of those jars of chopped garlic, I would empty it into the first dish I used it in.

Ducking

Ok, so this properly belongs on my defunct politics blog, but the election is over anyway. So Josh Marshall thinks that the Secret Service reacted pretty slowly to Bush's getting shoes thrown at him, and also notes that Bush reacted pretty quickly in his ducking. But the guy threw both his shoes at Bush, one at a time. Aside from the obvious reasoning of two feet = two shoes to throw, so maybe another one's coming, you'd think that the president would be trained at some point that if a projectile is hurled at him, he needs to get out of the situation immediately. True, Bush successfully dodged both shoes, but why was he even at the lectern for the second one? There was enough of a gap for him to have done something else, or even just remained crouching behind the lectern. Granted, not the most dignified of positions, but getting hit in the head by a shoe would have been a lot worse.

Photos

I was asked by a potential subletter to show him some photos. So here they are. With captions! (Thanks Meghan!)

Bed.
Bedroom from living room.
Left side of living room, with bedroom door open.
View of living room. Note unused television hulking in corner, and used LCD preening in other.
Second view of living room.
Third, rug-heavy view of living room! (Guess where I spend my time.)
Glimpse of foyer from living room -- has two large closets (which I forgot to photograph) and connects to bathroom, toilet, kitchen.View from window -- not much, but long.
Bathroom.
Bathroom sink. Large cabinet next to it.
Kitchen.
Kitchen table.
Stove (one electric burner, three gas, electric oven).
Glasses.
Bowls, cups, plates, some cookware.
Silverware, knives, pots and pans.
Toilet, with large cupboard above and New Yorkers below.
Close-up of hulking TV.

The Onion's continuing coverage of Bush

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/bushs_eyelid_accidentally
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/bush_passes_three_pound
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/bush_dragged_behind
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/bush_tumbles_wildly_down
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/crocodile_bites_off_bushs

Fête des Lumières

I went out to the Fête des Lumières today, which was pretty great. The whole city has fancy lights, and then there are light shows on the sides of buildings in most public squares. I imagine this was pretty pedestrian back in the day, but with high-quality digital projectors, you can really put on a show. Since I don't have a camera, some pictures I found on the internet. My friend Javier took some pictures, some of which follow (his bluelephant photo stream at flickr is here with the rest):


I really liked how they took buildings, like churches, and added fake features to them (like heavy relief sculptures of saints, or a rapidly moving clock). Some buildings were "digitally altered" like this, and others were basically huge screens for projected psychedelic movies, which still integrated with the buildings.


And the streets were packed. I'm not sure why it's not like this every night. Here are the most impressive of the rest of the pictures -- these same ones, plus some less impressive ones, are posted to facebook as well, and also available at Javier's flickr page.

Go Google

Google maps has added StreetView to Lyon! Pretty remarkable, no? Here's my front door. By the way, if you pan a bit to the left, you'll see two people with their faces tastefully obscured. I have no idea why Google thinks StreetViewing Lyon is a good idea, but thanks anyway, Charlie.

slowly collapse

I'm trying to make flan right now. Actually, since a friend texted me for a drink, I'm practicing to make flan right now, since I won't have time to cook it. I'm currently melting sugar for caramel. It didn't appear to be burning, but there was a very unpleasant burning smell, which I was a bit puzzled by. Turns out I didn't take the pan's label off the bottom, so I had waxed paper over a gas flame for about half an hour. Did I mention that my apartment has no smoke detector?

or I could install a hidden camera

My building's bike shed doesn't really have room for all the bikes, although I've only ever noticed one other bike being absent from the shed -- the one in prime position, directly opposite the door. I've now left my bike in that spot twice, when it was vacant. Both times, the following morning I discovered that my bike had been moved to the back of the shed. It's locked to itself, so it's a pain to move it, but apparently someone really likes that spot. I'm considering locking it to the bike rack and seeing what happens. I don't want to antagonize my neighbors for no reason, and it's possible that I'm just unaware of some etiquette as regards bike spaces, but it seems like a douchey move to pick up someone else's bike and move it because you think you're entitled to the best spot (unless you are, in fact, so entitled). Also, locking it might lead to an awesome passive-aggressive note.

seasonal

I haven't spent an autumn in a place that actually has autumn for 7 years. I'd forgotten that fallen leaves are pretty cool. Rotting fallen leaves, less so.

It's not racist if it's true

Readers of my dearly departed livejournal (hi Mom!), will recall that I wrote about being Indian in England, and how it was a little weird being the approximate equivalent of black in the U.S. Barcelona has a lot of South Asians, who seem to be apportioned among the jobs of restaurant owner, bodega owner, beer-seller, and drug dealer, at least in my sketchy neighborhood. I learned what that meant for me on my first night. I was with Jon Wolff and his friends in a locked park, and we found a set of keys by a statue, and then a plastic bag shoved into a crevice. We were joking about the meaning of the keys, and a very nice, fairly drunk Dutch girl said, "It's probably drugs. The Pakis hide their drugs all kinds of places." I didn't really have any desire to be offended, or to make a big deal out of it -- my first reaction to "Paki," as Rushdie says in Satanic Verses, is to think it's spelled "pachy," and associate it with elephants. But I was also uncomfortable, and my body language presumably showed it. We were in a group, so I hoped that the conversation would just move on, but Charlotte continued, in what I thought was an unaware fashion, but which turned out to be far too aware. "I mean, it is true, so many of them in Barcelona are drug dealers . . ." Beat. To me: "Where are you from, originally?" Why not, having put your foot in your mouth, just stop talking? Is it really necessary to then ask someone else, "did you notice how I put my foot in my mouth? Because I think you did, but I'm not totally positive." But Charlotte, if you ever read this, don't worry about it -- we're square. It was just funny.

Barcelona

Barcelona's a great city. European cities tend to have two things American cities don't have -- really narrow steets, and really wide boulevards. I like the former and dislike the latter, and sometimes I think that how much I like a city has to do with whether or not I'm in a narrow area or wide one. I was in a narrow one in Barcelona, hence, liked it. But, honestly, what's not to like. They have beaches, and pedestrian "ramblas," and very pretty architecture, some of which was not even designed by Gaudi. By the way, I assume this has been said before, but Pan's Labyrinth definitely has some Gaudi echoes in the design of the dream-world, although I'd have to see it again to confirm, and I'm not so sure I want to.

The weather's good too, and Barcelona is apparently all about being arty. I'm not, but it's cool with me if other people want to, so long as they don't spend a lot of time talking about it. In Barcelona, it was hard to tell the difference between shoe stores and art galleries, and even the graffiti adorning shop shutters looked pretty cool. They also have a walkway that basically seems to be an excuse to walk into the sea with cool lights


Apparently, Barcelona resurged after the Olympics, and did things like put sculptures up everywhere. One was a giant cat.

locked in

I spent Election Night in a Barcelona bar. After some wandering around, Meghan and I found our way to a bar that we'd seen before that promised to have election results until it was over -- a promise that turned out to be truer than I thought. We got there at 12:45 am, 6:45 pm EST, just time to settle in for the countdown to Indiana's poll closing. The crowd in the bar got steadily more American as the night wore on, which you had to expect, given that the first mildly interesting result, Pennsylvania, came in at 2:30 am, and Ohio was called near 3:30 am. The foreigners just didn't care enough. (Props to fellow post-doc, o-minimalist, and guy with a long last name, Serge Randriambololona, for staying up all night despite his being a Frenchy.)

Most bars in Barcelona close around 2 am, which I call a crock of shit, given the reputation the Spanish have of eating ham and occasionally embracing fascism partying late, but this bar stayed "open," in that it had a lock-in. The concept was quite literally foreign to me, since it's British, but it's apparently common there, and since the bar was, of course, Irish, they knew how to do. The wikipedia description is a bit sketchy, but basically accurate. The key point is that the solid metal shutters at the front of the bar were pulled down and locked. Thus, the bar looked (although it might not have sounded) closed, and the patrons couldn't get out without the owner unlocking the shutters. One more example, of course, of Europeans' flagrant disregard for fire safety. When Jon Wolff, who'd been having a grand old time at a bigger bar but with no TV view, came to our bar and called me, the owner very kindly let him and his one seven other friends in. I don't know your name, owner of the Quiet Man in Barcelona, but I salute you.

Right before 5 am, when CNN (the owner refused throughout the night to put Fox News on, for which I salute him again) had already called Ohio, I realized that, if they had called Pennsylvania right when the polls closed, they would also call California, Oregon, and Washington right when the polls closed, pushing Obama over 269. CNN's countdown was on the screen until the next poll closing, and I started a chant, which broke off at "3" when they put on the graphic for "CNN PROJECTION." Clever bastards, they knew the projection would take three seconds to queue up. Of course, everyone has that moment of the race actually being called for Obama, and this wasn't any different, despite it being at 5 am, locked in a Barcelona bar. It was amazing. No matter what Obama does over the next four years, that moment of elation will remain.

did they not have shirtwaists?

For an American, brought up in the tradition of fire drills, smoke detectors, and safety matches, the cavalier European attitude towards fire safety is a bit mystifying. No smoke detectors, no sprinkler systems, no fire escapes, and no law about always being able to exit a room -- front doors usually need a key to undo the deadbolt, so you can easily lock your pesky 7-year-old in the house to play with matches while you go off to work. When I brought this up, the astonishing claim was made that European houses are so old that fire safety isn't such a big deal -- they're made out of stone, so it's fine. I think that a history of plagues and other ravages so inured Europeans to catastrophic fires that they just don't care anymore. To be clear, I'm opposed to fire safety in the U.S. -- in college, I would stay in my dorm room while the deafening alarm system went off, just on principle -- but I didn't expect this to be the area where Europe didn't regulate squat.

at the Alliance Française

My class, to my surprise, has only one American in it -- me. There is a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Swiss, a Russian, two Vietnamese, and the rest are Chinese. And here I thought I was going to miss Berkeley classes. Communication between the students is interesting -- some of us can communicate more easily in English than in French, and we sometimes do so covertly. But the Chinese students don't seem to know any English at all, so we're in the curious position of speaking recreational French. It's much more difficult than talking to a French person, because neither of our vocabularies are that good, nor our accents, and also, I think that they know fewer English words than the average French person. The word "internet" drew a total blank.

This also affects the conduct of the class. As far as I remember, my textbooks in high school had English in them. The Alliance's do not, which makes sense, but I have to believe there is some inefficiency there. When I have to look up the words used to give a grammatical rule, I'm not learning that rule as easily as I might have. The teacher's job is way harder as well. When teaching people who speak English, i.e., me, the preferred technique is to start listing synonyms until either I know one of them or I know a cognate. French-Chinese cognates are not so easy to find.

It is nice to see all of us with our different-language dictionaries out, though. The Chinese students have little electronic dictionaries, but the rest of us can be seen frantically thumbing through our dictionaries at random times while the teacher goes on.

And more xkcd

Damn you, MyBrain!

I didn't realize how much of a cliché I was

This was me over the weekend.

Apartment weirdness

Apartments in Lyon don't appear to have numbers. So the best direction you can give is the floor. This makes sense for old buildings with only one apartment per floor, but fails somewhat spectacularly for newer ones. It's not clear what's up with this. I'm thinking of unilaterally giving my apartment a number, but I don't know if that would be extra-confusing.

Most buildings don't have intercoms, but, as a consolation, there's a "digicode," which is a keypad at the front door, which opens the door when given the right code. This enables you to tell friends, plumbers, future vengeful exes, etc., the code, so they can enter without you having to come down and let you in.

best part of my day

is probably the commute, at least until I learn how to cook Lyonnaise food, which seems to be an almost ideal combination of butter, cream, and mustard. My commute goes through Le Parc de la Tête d'Or which combines the usual attributes of a park (walkways, grassy fields), with slightly less usual ones (a lake with several islands in it, a botanical garden), with even more unusual ones (a fairly open-plan zoo). Today, I entered the park and biked by the heavily-antlered deer, who were in a lounge-off with a number of people relaxing on the benches, separated by a moat. I think the deer were winning -- I've never seen them move. I then continued past the flamingoes and pelicans, monkeys fighting in the trees, three giraffes who appeared to be taking a shit simultaneously (I was on my bike, so I'm not sure, but I couldn't think of another reason for those splayed legs), and a few elephants. I need to start coming back before dark so I can get a double dose. Maybe once I've gotten internet installed.

Lyon -- first hits

Although it's become somewhat asymmetric with expansion to the west (where the university is), the ideological center of Lyon is the presqu'ile, which, as you might guess, is very close to an island. It's formed by the Rhône and the Saône, and, while the two rivers meet to the south, they tail away from each other above, hence the "presqu'." There is a plethora of bridges over the two rivers, most collinear, so that you can walk straight across the presqu'ile, and in a multitude of different styles, from nice old-looking ones to an elegant bridge supported by a single structure at one end with steel cables extending from it at intervals all the way to the other side, to a frankly not very beautiful bridge that looks as though it were built in the 60's.

Speaking of being built in the 60's, my campus is absolutely hideous. Most American campuses have some relic of that inglorious era, but this one is like that in every direction. When I first saw it, the grass was extremely overgrown and weedy, which I assumed was French energy-saving style, but it turned out to just be a summer thing, so it looks a little bit better now, and less like an abandoned industrial estate. The only bright spot is the quiet, efficient, and altogether endearing tram, which runs to right in front of my building. A pleasing feature I haven't seen before is train tracks laid into grass, which is necessarily kept nicely shorn.

My temporary housing, which ends September 24th, is in Vieux Lyon. My house is of undetermined age, so we'll just say, really, really old. I believe that it predates indoor plumbing, judging from the placement and internal piping of the half bathrooms, and probably also electricity as well. My ceilings are very high, and formed by massive wooden beams. My windows are enormous, but, due to the dark wood and the crowded buildings, the house is dark nearly all the time. I technically have a roommate, but apparently he rented this place because he was divorcing his wife. Shortly afterwards, he reconciled with her, and so he doesn't use it at all. I wish them the best.

Public transit in Lyon is great, with 4 subway lines, some trams, and a slew of buses, all part of the same system. The city is also quite compact, so no two places are more than a half-hour bike ride apart. At least, no two places you would "want to go." It's interesting hearing people in Europe try to say things about non-whites -- they know they should be tactful, but somehow they don't know how. It's like the Simpsons -- "I don't want you stalking anyone, Homer!" "Don't worry Marge. I'm just going . . . outside . . . to stalk . . . Lenny and Carl." I'm offended on behalf of undetermined ethnicities living in undetermined neighborhoods.

Velo'v -- post only for the practically bike-minded

Lyon has a highly successful bike sharing program. They really are everywhere, and a lot of people use them as their primary mode of transportation. They're basically free -- 10 euros for a year's membership, with 5 of that going towards ride credit. Since rides under half an hour are free anyway, and you can make one-way trips, you probably won't need much ride credit. Of course, the year's membership requires the usual hoops the French make you jump through for any card -- proof of residence, etc., mailed to some address. However, assuming you have a French credit card (more on that later), they're easy to rent in the short term too -- 1 euro gets you a week-long membership.

The bikes themselves are a bit strange -- extremely heavy (I've heard 50 pounds), with what looks like a dashboard mounted on the handlebars, which, I assume houses whatever computing power is necessary, and also makes it hard to steal the front part of the bike. There are three gears, although that's not a guarantee, and lights that appear to be pedal-powered, and go on only at night, but I've seen exceptions to that.

It's generally good practice to check out the bike you're about to take, since the odds are about 1 in 5 that there is something wrong with it. Those odds go up markedly the fewer bikes there are at your station. This is less an issue with maintenance, though, and more a reflection of desperation caused by commuting -- since the bikes can be used for one-way trips, some stations will be emptied out in the morning, save for the defectives. However, it turns out that the full stations are actually a bigger problem. Because you have not returned the bike until it has been put in a slot at a station, and the stations have limited slots, you can find yourself in big trouble. I had to bike for around 2 miles once before I found a station with open slots, although I'm sure my geographical ignorance played a role, since when you're at a full station, you can use your card at the machine, and it will tell you what are the nearest stations with free spots (although not how to get to them).

The short-term (and long-term) memberships give you a card, which you touch to a kiosk to start the process. You have to enter a PIN on the extremely finicky touch-screen (one station's touch-screen had cracked glass for a few days, which made it impossible to check bikes out, although bikes could be left there), and then you choose a bike. After a 30 second pause, you can remove the bike from its post, and you're off. To return the bike, you just slide it into the slot, where it makes a satisfying clicking noise, and then a beep, for good measure. If you then use your card at the kiosk, you will be asked if you want a receipt, or if something was wrong with that bike. If you say the latter, you can check out another bike.