Hey! Over here…Yeah… F-r-a-n-c-e.

In the months that have intervened since I wrote about the horrors of getting ADSL in France, the stories just keep coming.

M., a Brit expat lost all his phone service for 4 months when he signed up (on my advice…shudder) to Free, the second largest broadband provider in France. For the first few weeks he kept calling Free who said it was the fault of France Telecom, then calling France Telecom who explained that it was most certainly the fault of Free. These infructuous ’support’ calls cost 96€.

After a few weeks of such merde de taureau, one learns to live without a telephone because the alternatives are all serious felonies, even here in France. Rest of story: several months later, M. happened to walk by a France Telecom sales office, which are generally located in lovely historic districts of midieval cities, right next to the MacDonalds. He thought, ‘What the hell’, walked in, exposed his tale of woe to a friendly salepersonne, who called up a webpage, grumbled ‘hmmm’, clicked a box, and then said to my friend, ‘Hmmm. Go home, see if your line works now’. And it did.

Another M. American this time, had her Freebox (Free’s ADSL modem that is supplied Free with each subscription), burn out during a lightening storm. A 3€ call to Free’s hotline helped determine that the modem was indeed fried and that Free would send out a replacement right away, but it would cost 190€. Rather shameful considering that Freeboxes can be bought at any openmarket in Taiwan for about 6¢/piece, but hey, that’s global capitalism for you. M. said ‘Send it on’. She also called me.

I went by a few days later with a spare Netgear modem that we have for cases such as these, tried it on M.’s line and it worked (I am skipping a few steps here for brevity). I suggested that she would be better off keeping the Netgear and that she tell Free to shove it. It was already 10 days since Free had promised a Freebox right away.

The subsequent multi-€ call to Free support revealed one of the least surprising surprises that can occur in daily french life: Free hadn’t any record of an [tag]ADSL[/tag] modem for M. If I hadn’t showed up with the Netgear, M. would still be waiting. To their credit, the first Free support personne put M. on hold while he ‘did research’. After about 4€ of phone time he came back online, confirming that no one anywhere in their support centers in India, Morocco, Poland, or Paris had a trace of a request for a new modem. Then asked rather politely, “Is there anythng else I can do for you today?”

If [tag]customer service in France[/tag] only sucked in the ADSL sector, it would be petty to criticize such an old venerable culture with great health care and really inexpensive wine. After all, we all choose to come here as a lifestyle choice (except me, I was kidnapped and woke up in a vineyard at dawn in December), so we have to assume the consequences.

But there’s more to the story of customer service. Stay tuned.

Last night, over dinner and just the right amount of wine, I listened to a story by an 18-year-old Swiss girl visiting Albi for the summer who had not drunk any wine at all.

Last year, she told us, I spent 2 months with an American family in Colorado. I went to school, to fast-food restaurants, to the mall, to the mountains.

A well-rounded teenage summer, american-style.

But what marked me the most, however, was an experience that happened to someone else, a Swiss school friend of mine who had participated in the same exchange program as I had, but who found a spot in Texas. One day, my friend was in class, where she had been well-received by all. The teacher had turned on the television, and everyone was watching a newsreader tell greater Houston about the latest casualties in the Iraq war.

First mentioned were the number of American war casualties. The class was horrified, tears welled up, there was silence. Then the newsreader mentioned how many Iraqis had been killed in a horrendous marketplace suicide bombing. The class was transformed, cheering, applauding, punching the air.

What can I add to this? I know this young girl was telling the truth and I can’t imagine that her friend was making this up. It is like discovering that your chums’ bodies are inhabited by malefic extraterrestrial parasites. Are wide swaths of the USA (or maybe just Texas) fucked up beyond all repair? What is is the effect of such an event on a young sane mind, eager and excited about discovering America?

Good grief.

Yes. Yesterday. Sixty. Happy birthday to me!

And instead of doing nothing about it, did quite a something and it worked out.

2 months ago, in one of those rare instances of thinking ahead, I had tried to reserve a table for my birthday meal at Michel Bras’ restaurant up in the hills of Aubrac 2 hours north of Albi. It’s a place renowned for its sumptuous (but paradoxically, contemporary) setting, sumptuous food rooted deeply in the notion of terroir, and its 3 Michelin stars. A place to go before you die.

At the time, I was told that they were full up for lunch. (Damn!) I was told that I could be on the waiting list. (Well, umm, OK). Last week, I received a call from the resto, telling me that a table was mine. (Youpee!)

With 3 friends, Robin, Meredith, and Ann, we trundled up to Aubrac, heart of the Aveyron profonde. A tiny sign, easily missed, points to the path that leads up to the hilltop restaurant. The place is an interesting glass, stone and slate complex that looks out over the valley. Everything, including the valley itself, is lush and austere. It’s a combination that works.

We were greeted cordially then seated in a circular salon d’apéro where we were meant to settle down, have a drink, get happy, look at the menus, look out the glass wall that made up 100% of the large room, make serious decisions about what we were going to eat. Certain of the menus (called ‘carte fixe’ in frenglish, I believe) could only be ordered if everyone at the table ordered that particular menu. We all ordered the “Découverte & Nature” menu.

We were then ushered into the dining room, which was lush and modern. Comfortable. Muted. Another window wall, more fields of grass and valleys. It felt to me like no effort had been spared to swaddle the senses, put them, put oneself, into a sublime state of aisance, a necessary preamble to the meal we were about to have.

Then did the wonders commence. I didn’t take notes (hahaha! Does anyone take notes at a meal like this?) and my memory capacity is that of a 60 year-old, but here’s what I remember:

• an amuse-gueule of an egg and chanterelle soup served in a perfectly cut eggshell accompanied by a multigrain biscuit and onion tarte tatin. (We asked, they have a machine to cut eggs)

• The signature gargouillou, a plate of many, many vegetables, mostly cooked (lightly), arranged as a salad.
• a foie gras poelé, served with a few poached cherries and various sauces. I loved this, because I had “invented” the same dish last year, and got to compare my cooking to Michel Bras. (Ok, I have a lot to learn. But I also have a small staff.)
• the best piece of turbot that I have ever tasted.
• the second best slice of lamb that I’ve ever tasted, composed with little vegetables and edible wildflowers.
• a cebe, another signature dish, a braised sweet onion powdered with black Aubrac truffle.
• The largest cheese plateau I’ve ever seen, only local cheeses. But no disappointment there, aside from the fact that we were all feeling very well fed by now.
• A series of wonderful desserts, like angelica ice cream on a warm raspberry-filled sablé, and a few other sweets.

Service was perfect and unstuffy/friendly/helpful. Not at all what I would expect to expect from a reputed French restaurant. More happiness. We were all up for a walk after this meal and lo! and behold, the hilltop around Michel Bras’ is scattered with marked walking trails through the beautiful countryside. It was the perfect way to wind down. At this point, I should mention negatives, make some critique of what they got wrong. But, darn, there was nothing to criticize here. A perfect 3-star experience on a memorable birthday with wonderful friends.

PS: Robin and Meredith gave me a birthday card that said, “A friend is someone who likes you even though they know you”. Which proves, at the very least, that they know me.

>

France is on a roll. Elections promise much-needed movement, then there’s this, seen in the Times Online:

French exiles unhappy with NHS

They like the way the economy is run in Britain, believe there are more professional opportunities here and that there is a better spirit of enterprise, but French citizens living in Britain believe that the French health system, the quality of life there and their schools are better than over here.

Those are the findings of a GfK NOP study of more than 1,000 French people living in Britain who voted in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday.

…

A total of 79 per cent of all respondents had a preference for the British way of running the economy. But there was a thumbs-down for the NHS. Eighty-nine per cent thought the French system was preferable to Britain’s, and 67 per cent thought that the quality of life was better in France. French schools were favoured by 62 per cent, but the British university system came out on top, 43 per cent to 40 per cent.

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That is Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany and current President of the European Union, getting leadership lessons from the Great One.

Body Mass Indexes from around the world. (From Wikimedia)

In the Guardian, Terry Jones of Monty Python fame makes some interesting points about the barbarian practices being used by the Iranians towards the 15 captured British naval personnel that they are now holding.

Amongst the disgraces that no civilized anglo-saxon should tolerate:

1. Instead of putting cloth sacks over their heads when shown in public, the one woman captive (Faye Turney) is forced to wear a headscarf. The men’s heads are all… naked!!!
2. Instead of putting duct tape over their mouths (before putting the cloth sacks over the heads), the captives are allowed, when shown on TV… to speak.
3. Instead of putting each captive in solitary confinement, they are allowed to write letters home.
4. And finally, “What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her (Faye Turney) “unhappy and stressed”. She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed”

Will us civilized westerners be able to maintain our sang-froid in the face of such affronts to our deeply held beliefs about what constitutes dignified treatment of prisoners? This is going to be a difficult test.

Update (2 april):

Just received this from Meredith:

or, why getting ADSL in France really sucks…

(follow up to 5 Days Without and my ISP FAQs)

The French media is abuzz today with news that customer complaints against French broadband providers are up over 50% year-on-year for the 2nd year in a row.

In a land where there are 400 different words for cheese but none for customer satisfaction it is not surprising that French customer service has the reputation of being the worst in this quadrant of the galaxy. And, if there is any one industry segment in France that has worse customer service than all the others, it is arguably the broadband supply sector.

So we are talking really really bad. Which looks like this:

The French consumer, who until recently lagged behind the rest of the so-called Modern World in terms of Internet uptake, has finally discovered the benefits of Internet, ADSL and illegal downloads, and is rushing to a) buy computers and b) hook them into the network. To spite the ex-telco monopoly, France Telecom, (”Serving France badly for over 200 years“), the French are using their new-found consumer empowerment to choose new broadband companies such as Free, Cegetel, Alice, etcetc. to supply high-speed internet. (That many of these new companies are ex-monopolies from other European countries or Old France is an unworthy detail.)

Once a frenchpersonne decides to go for it, there are 2 ways to approach getting an ADSL connection. According to where one lives, one can either choose to keep one’s good old FT line and piggy-back third-party ADSL onto it (called adsl non-dégroupé), or, heh heh, one can renounce FT altogether, and have the ADSL supplier furnish a techno-enchilada — voice services, TV, and broadband (called dégroupé).

Whichever ADSL is chosen, it is always an FT technician (FT still owns the copper wires) who takes the consumer’s phone wires at the central station and plugs them into either blackbox A for non-dégroupé customers or blackbox B for dégroupé customers. Afterwards, the technician certifies the information to the ADSL supplier, who immediately starts debiting the client’s bank account for 30€/month.

This is when the complaints generally start. A huge proportion of new ADSL subscriber lines simply don’t work from the get-go, even though the customer is told that they do. To add insult to injury, many of these unfortunate victims lose their voice line in the process (which was working perfectly up til then, thank you very much).

All one can do then, is call the provider’s support line. You use a friend’s phone of course, because you don’t have a phone line anymore. You should be prepared to beg, plead, and whimper. This costs you up to 1€/minute for the call. You are put on hold for 10 minutes. You are told that you should call back another time because all the support staff has gone home for the day. Or, if there is anyone left to talk to you, you are told that a) it’s all some dumb-technician-who-works-for-another-company’s fault and you need to call France Telecom. Or, you are told that your line checks out perfectly.

You are asked if there is anything else that you wanted to talk about. Numb, you answer “But, but, but..” but it’s into a dead phone line.

Since it’s your neighbor’s phone, you don’t bang it against the wall until it’s reduced to plastic shards. You owe your neighbor 12€ for the call. You are mortified. Apoplectic. You’ll have to do it all over again tomorrow.

Dante never saw Hell so darkly as this.

Explanations?

1. Well, we are in a country where the very words ‘customer service’ generate severe migraines.
2. Phone calls to tech support generate a sizeable proportion of a broadband provider’s revenue.
3. Some people theorize that the FT technician mentioned earlier plugs a certain number of the new lines into a hitherto unidentified top secret device, call it Box C, which is really made of styrofoam painted to look like a hi-tech ADSL DSLAM and is connected to nowhere. FT and the third-party supplier, split the support line revenue.
4. I don’t know.

My best advice

1. Don’t go with FT’s service, Orange. It is expensive and dull.

2. When choosing amongst the other contenders, never ever ever order ‘dégroupé’ (which means that you’re giving up your France Telecom phone line) straight away. Not because FT is good or warm or fuzzy (they’re not) but you’ll need the voice line to call tech support for the first few months while your ADSL doesn’t work.

3. As a corollary to ¶2, if you live in a part of rural France that has only just received ADSL service, you have probably been using RNIS or Numéris phone service (ISDN in english) for your internet. In your joy about finally having broadband possibility, DO NOT cancel your RNIS line at the same time that you order a new analog line to carry your ADSL. You will probably find yourself without telephone service for months or years.

Order the analog line with ADSL, then when it all works fine, cancel the RNIS.

4. I have recommended Free for many years, and it is true that their service, when it’s up and running, is the most technologically correct. But over the last year, I have noticed that new lines ordered through Free rarely work for the first few months. You spend 50, 100€ on tech support phone calls and all the while, they’re debiting you 29.99€/month. It can’t be allowed anymore. Choose someone else.

It was the comments that blew me away in a recent Charles Bremer blog post.

One says:

France is a great place to live if you are white and have a job. Non white and jobless, it’s probably as enlightened and as much fun as Alabama in the 1950s.

or

Today France is synonymous with an aging polity embedded in a very bureaucratic culture and structure. Its economy is stagnant and France has fallen behind in those areas where it used to lead the world - Wines, haute cuisine, haute couture, car design, and luxury goods generally.

In its foreign policy France is synonymous with a very narrow and self-interested approach to the development of the EU and even its “principled” stance on Iraq can be explained in terms of its economic interests in the region.

French people may like to think that they still lead the world and that others aspire to be like it. They may actually believe what they were taught in school (”Children learn at school that France is regarded by the world as “the home of human rights” and model for civilisation”) but no one I know outside France actually thinks of France in that way. It is seen as a very pleasant tourist destination and perhaps a good place to retire to, but no longer a leader in World terms.

Another replies:

In xenophobic France, one in four has a grandparent of foreign origin.
Racist France welcomes and gives citizenship to people of every race on earth.
Islamophobic France has the largest muslim community in Europe.
Anti-semitic France has the second largest jewish community in the world and has been governed by several jewish PM during the last century.
And so on…
But as usual War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.

In my humble opinion, there is truth in all of these affirmations. But where does one hang one’s hat??? If you don’t mind what happens to your hat, try here.

A friend just told me that she has heard on the news that immediately after GW Bush left Nicaragua on his current tour of South and Central America, local Mayan leaders performed a “cleansing ceremony” to rid their country of those nasty Bush vibes. I did a little searching and came up with this:

That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,”
Juan Tiney, director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders.

I’m thinking that if this is an effective tool, people of all races and cultures would probably want to learn how to perform such a cleansing ceremony if there was the slightest chance that it could somehow lighten the horrible blight that the US President has unleashed on our world.

I have just learned a new word.

It rhymes with genocide, homicide, insecticide, fratricide, infanticide, matricide, regicide, or suicide.

I discovered this new word in a French newspaper article describing French carmakers Peugeot and Renault’s belated entry into the lucrative SUV gas-guzzler market. The word is how several environmental groups describe the inevitable effects of the carmakers’ initiative. Given the way Frenchpersonnes drive, other words ending in ‘icide’ might also apply.

But back to climaticide. It is an interesting word.

Now, who can tell me what it means?

Back in June in this blog, I extased about my visit to Tallinn, capitol of Estonia. A beautiful medival city in a tiny Baltic state that was joyously grasping Life after liberation from the greyness of Russian occupancy.

Since that visit, I have learned that Estonia is considered the ‘Hong Kong of Europe’ for its forward-looking, distinctly non-European approach to facilitating entrepreneurship and encouraging innovation with acts, not words.

Today, I have just learned that Estonia will become the first country in the world to ever have a national parlamentary election completely held over the internet.

More here and here (in french)

Airbus, the flower of pan-European industrial cooperation and, importantly, nearby Toulouse’s largest employer, is in major disarray. The results are pretty sad, definitely shocking: Airbus has gone from world #1 aircraft builder to industrial basket case in an amazingly short time. Layoff of 12000 workers in France, Germany, England and Spain is announced. Some heads are rolling, others are making the usual silly noises.

The problems, it seems, boil down to an innovative type of mismanagement over the years, whereby Airbus’ major players, European countries working together in apparent and noteworthy harmony, have actually been working together in petty old-European (read French vs. German) rivalries and these have kept Airbus from honestly and frankly confronting the challenges that any major global business confronts on a daily basis. (Disclaimer: I am not a major global business, but I’m pretty sure that they face challenges on a daily basis.)

Segolène Royal, socialist candidate for president, who did not mention ‘Industry’ or ‘Economic Development’ once in her 100-point platform for modernising France, has called for a moratorium (ie, cancellation) of the French layoffs.

It is Martin Malvy, though, President of our local Regional Council here in Midi-Pyrénées, and pure non-reconstructed socialist (and incidently, brother of my late companion’s first husband), who takes the prize for political silliness. He has just proposed that the various French regions should each take a stake in the capital of Airbus.

Putting this in perspective, the French central government (aka, the Republic) has long held the title for worst/sleaziest business management in the known universe. Bull, Credit Lyonnais, Air France, France Telecom, Total were, during their state-owned stints, but a few breathtaking examples of how badly a company can be run.

What Martin Malvy is grandly suggesting is, given the dire straits that Airbus is in, and the dismal private sector management record of the Republic, why not give the bickering, conflictual regional governing bodies, who have no experience managing an enterprise of this weight, a shot?

Embarrassing.

Just so January isn’t a totally blog-free month on Cocagne, am putting up these breath-taking photos of Paul Wolfowitz’s socks and toes. My, my, the president of the World Bank.

Thank you, Guardian.

I’ve been taking a break from blogging these last few weeks, waiting, wanting to see what rises to the top when the waters are undisturbed. But I just read a particularly insightful explanation of Little George, the current president of the USA, by author Jane Smiley, that leaves me breathless. It is so convincing and so frightening that I want to mention it here in the hope that it will bring a few more people to read it, and like me, tremble with fear for the world’s future.
Link to article.

In an article in this morning’s Le Monde relating to a french rocker’s (Johnny Hallyday) defection from France to Switzerland for fiscal reasons, a new poll and analysis has been released. Among the notable factiods contained therein:

• 29% of the owners of french enterprises with less than 20 employees have thought of leaving France because of the weight of the tax structure on businesses.
• 68% of these same people ‘fully understand’ why Johnny left France, and ‘would do the same thing in his place”.
• The total ‘charge fiscal’ in France, ie, the percentage of annual private production that is transferred to the state in the form of taxes is 44% (EU average 39%).
• Although the highest tax bracket on personal income tax has dropped from 48% to 40% over the last 5 years, the total weight of taxation has increased, as taxes on businesses and new social charges have more than taken up the slack.

I mention all this because as much as I love the ‘art de vivre’ in France and appreciate that I don’t have to lock my doors when I’m away, I have experienced the french attitude toward business first-hand and know it has to change if France’s youngest and brightest are to stop fleeing to friendlier countries in search of livelihood.

And here is why:

The FCC Song

In this morning’s Le Monde, one of the reader’s comments to an article on the latest twists and turnings in the upcoming French presidential elections proposes the following as a reader’s poll:

Amongst the possible candidates to the presidentials, which ones would you most like to see disappear forever from the French political scene?