Paris in retrospect

When in Paris, I always get a warm fuzzy feeling, a feeling of awe and breathlessness that seems to be quite absent for me in the US. It’s a strange feeling that some might liken to love. I have never been so infatuated with anything in my life. I pass the same streets, the long avenues every day and never tire of the grandeur surrounding me. “Comme Paris est beau!” I exclaim during the night or the day, the rush hour or the hushed Sunday mornings before the city wakes. And it’s not just the Eiffel Tower or the cathedrals that strike my fancy; it’s the city, its smells, its language, its diversity, its culture. And despite all its imperfections, it remains perfect in my eyes. I always leave the city wondeirng how it will change, how I will have changed, but I always come back to the with a same renewed sense of awe and breathlessness.

I just spent the last 10 days in France, getting my Paris fix. It was the typical I am not a tourist trip to Paris. In fact, I don’t think I did one thing that would be on the typical Paris tourist list. Let’s take a look at the highlights of my trip:

I ate falafel from the best falafel place in Paris : L’as du falafel (which, by the way, raised their prices yet again.) There is nothing like hot falafel balls wrapped in a warm pita layered with hummus, salad, grilled eggplant (to die for) and huge amounts of hot sauce à volontiers (sauce piquante as they endearingly refer to it). In a quarter teeming with restaurants claiming to have the best falafel in Paris, L’as is definately my pick and believe me, I have tasted my share of falafel in the Marais. I think their secret lies in the layering of falafel balls, salad, sauce and grilled eggplant. (more detailed review to come at a later date)

My Cheri took me to a Libanese restaurant close to the Bourse in the 2nd arrondisement of Paris where we ate classic libanese Manouche and tasted a few mezzes. The food was fresh, the quality good, the taste unique. To finish off our meal, we tried a milk flan au fleur d’oranger (because I don’t know the translation but it’s like an orange flavoured syrup made from the flowers or leaves of an orange tree) and a mix of nuts and seeds in a sweet syrup mixed with different fruits.

We had happy hour cocktails at the famous Charly Birdy. I had 2 cosmopolitans which left me feeling a little lightheaded afterwards, seeing as I didn’t eat the whole day.

I had an interview. The lady basically gave me 3 books and told me to write a summary in French for 2 of the books and a summary in English for the other book. She later gave me a dictation. The response was positive. (more about this later).

I ate enormous amounts of cheese in many different forms.

I went to the boulangerie Eric Kayser, one of my favorite bakeries in the city, and bought fresh holey bread. There is nothing like fresh French bread!

I went to a concert at La Sorbonne.

Had a 5 hour, 5 course Sunday lunch at a gastronomic restaurant.

I spent some good quality time with my cheri and his family.

Et voila in a nutshell, my 10 days in France, 10 wonderful days in France. It was a productive trip with fairly positive results. I can’t complain. I am glad I went. I am glad I was able to spend time with my two greatest loves. Now, we will have to see what the future holds.

2008

10 days into the new year and I am tempted to come up with a list of resolutions.  Though I am usually not one to list unacheivable goals for the next 365 days of my life (366 – 10, since this is a leap year and it’s already the 10th day of 2008), I thought it might be interesting to publish my resolutions on my blog.  Next year, 10 days into the year 2009, I will be able to mock my 2008 resolutions.  This will be a short list of doable goals, nothing too extravagent or unacheivable (though chances are, I will not achieve the easy goals I will list anyways).   So here goes.  Welcome 2008!

1.  Make a list of New Year’s resolutions (At the rate I am going, I should be able to acheive this goal in the next 10 minutes!  Woot!  I am well on my way).

2.  Find a job.  I am lining up the interviews!  One more interview this week and one, two or three next week (still unsure). This is not too much to ask for, is it?

3. Write at least 2 blog entries a week (hopefully on subjects that stretch beyond my daily existence).

4. And, hmmm, this is harder than I thought.

That’s enough.  I am sick of resolutions.  I resolve to reduce my list of resolutions to 2 for 2009.   Happy 2008! This should be a good year.  Eight, after all, is a lucky number for the Chinese.  And if you turn 8 on its side, you have infinity .  So, this will be the year of infinite possibilities (or maybe just 8).

Cheers.

And that previous blog entry, my friends, is a perfect example of the type of blog post I never wanted to write and publish.  My, how things change.  It was a moment of weakness.  I will try to avoid blogging about the mundane details of my life next time.

Lining up the interview

I am trying to start 2008 off on the right foot by lining up the job interviews.  My goal for this year is to find a stable job for at least a year or until I go to grad school (if I end up going).  Tomorrow, I will have my first interview of 2008, and instead of winging it (which has proved to be highly unsucessful), I have decided to do thourough research on how best to prepare oneself for a job interview.  So far, I have skimmed articles containing typical interview questions and attempted to come up with the best way to answer such questions.  I have also devised a perfect weakness when they ask that dreaded “what is your biggest weakness” question. I will try to sound half-way confident and to present myself in a hirable way.  Hopefully, I have some success.

My next two interviews are lined up for next week.  These two interviews will be somewhat of an adventure as they will both take place in a foreign country (and possibly also in a foreign language – still unknown).  As my interview skills in my native country are not yet well developled, I am assuming that my foreign country/language interview skills leave little to be desired.  I am not going to sweat it too much.  It’s all about the adventure.  And maybe, just maybe, I might find a career path out of it.

Other than these 3 upcoming interviews, I have contacted the temp agencies I have been working for to let them know that yes, I am still looking.  For some reason, they have had no luck finding me employment.  I might, however, have an interview with some bank soon. We will have to wait to find out about that.

For now, everything is still up in the air.  2008 should be the start of something new (if I can pull myself together enough to get hired).  Hopefully, I will have a new job to brag about 3 weeks from now.

Job vs. career

Looking for a job? Go to the nearest McDonalds, Target or even Sears and ask for a application. Even the local Starbucks is hiring baristas. They will hire almost anyone. Hell, you don’t even need a college degree to find a job – just a clean drug test.

Looking for a career? Oh, where to start? The different industries are countless! You could go into real estate, telecommunications, banking, sales, consulting, pr, marketing, advertising, management, etc., etc. The possibilities are endless. Then why is it so hard to find a career?

For some reason, a career, by definition, is supposed to be more than just a job; it’s supposed to be a calling, one’s lifework. You can draw any old job out of a jar, but picking a career requires thought and purpose. Career choice can affect the rest of your life. After all, this will be what you will be doing until retirement. For the next 40 odd years, you will very much be defined by your profession. You will mention your work at least once during the first 3 sentences of any conversation. And after those 3 sentences, you will be categorized. You will be considered ambitious, hard-working and driven (if you have a career) or lost, lazy, and reckless (if you just work a job.) It’s unfair, but yet, it’s the truth.

Many career conselors have long drawn-out (not to mention expensive) methods of finding a career. They give you aptitude tests, personality tests, IQ tests in hopes of finding the perfect fit. And yet, every suggestion seems to be wrong, insulting. How could they possibly suggest that? Do I look like a [fill in job title]? We rely so much on what other people, tests, assessments tell us and in the end, we lose track of what we really want. Our priorities get all jumbled up; we lose ourselves. Because in the end, maybe we already know exactly what it is we want to do, but unfortunately, life gets in the way.

So what is important when looking for a career? Happiness. Yes, that seems like the obvious answer. But, for me, I am plagued by so many other questions. Will my family be happy with my choice? Will my family be proud of me? What are my chances of sucess? Where will I have to live? Will I make enough money to survive? In taking this career route, am I making an choice that contradicts my ethical beliefs? Can I go to a party and proudly talk about my job? Who will I be hurting? What will I give up? Will I find stability in this career? What is the market like in this field? There are almost as many questions as there are career possibilities. And after answering all these questions, you are left with a passionless career that seems to please everyone but yourself. The one career you once wanted to pursue has already been thrown out several times. And the career you do choose becomes just another job.

I am trying something new this year (though I will most likely not suceed). I am trying to ignore what everyone else tells me I should do. I am trying to rely on my own passion and trust my talents (or lack thereof). The point being I don’t want to forget the thing I know I want to do. I don’t want to fall victim to a passionless life where I wake up each morning only wishing to stay in bed for the rest of my life. I want more than a job; I want a career.

Transcontinental Relationships

Do transcontinental relationships ever work out? I wish I could say yes. I am in a transcontinental relationship with a man who lives on the other side of the world from me. We have been apart for 4 months, 4 excrutiating months of looking for loopholes in the citizenship/visa policies. But as time passes, finding a way to be together becomes more and more difficult. It is no longer a hope but a burden and a constraint. My thoughts oscillate between starting a life in my country and relocation to be with my boyfriend. I can’t make a decision. I am idle.

I have spent the last 4 months looking for work. It has not been easy. I do apply for jobs but the problem is that my heart is not here in the American job market but back in France where I was happy (possibly for the first time in my life). For now, everything seems so temporary. I am afraid to settle. If I find a job in the US, I can’t go back to Paris. If I find a job in Paris, I might be hurting my chances for a real job in the US. The is no permanence in either decision. When is life going to start? There has to be a point where one tires of wandering from place to place looking for some stability.

I really don’t even know which path to take anymore. I am so busy trying to please the world that I no longer know what I want. I am losing my roots. I am losing track of myself. I know I can’t sacrifice my life for a relationship that can turn sour. I know I can’t compromise my future. But yet, I am incapable of letting go of the man I love. I am incapable of letting go of my dream. There is too much uncertainty in either decision. There is no way to move forward without regret.

I am reminded of one verse of KT Tunstall’s song “Other Side of the World” which goes something like:

“Can you help me?

Can you let me go?

And can you still love me when you can’t see me anymore?”

I wonder if he loves me enough to let me go. I wonder if he’s willing to save me the future heartbreak and an empty future. I wonder if he will realize that maybe this is best for both of us. I wonder if I am willing to do the same.

Can you say impulsive?

I am going to Paris next week.  Am I insane?  Yes.  Can I justify my decision to fly across the Atlantic? No.  Do I have enough money to go?  Technically, I have some savings, but as I am unemployed (with over $10,000 of student loan debt), I really cannot afford the trip.  Then, you ask with your right brow slightly raised, why am I going? Impulse, my dear, pure foolish, reckless impulse.  I am chasing a whim.  I am trying to keep my youthful idealism from getting too far away from me.

Next week, I will be on a plane across the Atlantic (as long as Chicago weather cooporates).  It is a 10 day trip.  I will hardly have enough time to get over my jetlag before I am on the plane heading back towards the USA.  It will probably do more harm than good, but I am going.  Frivolous.  I will meet with a potential employeur and then take a trip to the east of France.  10 days will fly by and then the tears will flow once more and I will be back on this couch blogging about another failed interview.

I am impulsive.  I am going to Paris for a stupid reason.  Everyone tells me I am being stupid.  I know I am being stupid, but people in love often do foolish things.  I cannot give up the chance to return to the city I am in love with.

Paris, je t’aime.

The reason I refused to have a public blog

I have another blog somewhere on the internet which is completely private.  Not even my closest friends know the address.  It is not searchable or published on any blogrolls, but it exists.  Why does it exist?  What’s the point of a private blog, anyways? You might ask.  For a long time, I refused to have a public blog because I found it utterly ridiculous to write publicly about the daily occurences of my life.  No one really gives a damn.  I could go from Monday to Sunday describing how the dog (non-existent) would not stop barking.  It just seemed far too mundane to make public.  These types of blogs made me furious.  Go write the events of your crappy life in the pink pages of your diary, for God’s sake.  No one cares! (I am not cynical.)  Or if you insist on using the computer, don’t bother making it accessable to the world.

So for a long time, I had a private blog.  I rarely blogged about my state of mind or the daily occurences of my life, but the blog was nonetheless private because I was very well aware that no one gave a damn about my life.  Now, you ask, why did I decide, all of a sudden, to create a public blog despite all my ranting and raving about the egocentric, masturbatory act of public blogging?  Because writing for oneself is pointless; it leaves you feeling empty, lonely and unsatisfied.

After blogging silently for over a year, I have decided to create a public blog to escape the unrelenting lonliness of solitary writing.

Grad school apps done

Well, friends, I have completed and submitted most of my grad school applications.  I will send out my last application before I leave to France since the deadline is a little later.  I am still unsure about my decision to return to school, especially since I do not think I am cut out for grad studies  (despite what my professors have told me.  I figure that all undergraduate professors shower their undergrads with compliments, anyway.)  I probably will not get accepted into any of the schools I applied to.  I am sure I will be disappointed, but what can you do?  My application is not exceptional in any way.  I have about a 3.8 gpa (3.9 in my major), GRE scores in the 60th percentile, decent recommendations (I assume), experience abroad and a really weird and irrelevant statement of purpose.  But I applied.  I am now $320 + $81 poorer.

Now I will wait for the negative responses to come flooding in.  Hopefully, by that point, I will have job to fall back on, but judging by the ways things are currently, that will not be the case.  If I do get rejected by all the schools, I guess it will just be a really good reason to leave all the academic crap behind me.  It’s about time, anyways.