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.