Is this thing on?

Well where to begin? It's been 5 months since my last post. Let's see if we can't write a quick summary of the latest developments in my life, while minimizing the requisite apology which usually prefaces my entries.

(I think that's what I used to do).

So, in no particular order, let's get some things out in the open.

I am in fact alive.

I have lived in France nearly half a year, unbeknownst to many, including myself occasionally.

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In that time, I have: <>Lost two wallets, a pair of glasses, three bank cards, a metro pass, my driver's license, my favorite sweater, a Chinese schoolboy shirt (stolen by a Chinese schoolboy), numerous pairs of socks and underpants, and on several occasions, my dignity. Off of the top of my head, that's it for the material losses.

More importantly, I have lost contact with essentially everyone in my pre-French life, with the exception of my mother, who calls me at least twice a week to ask me when I'm coming home.

I wish I had an answer. But the pervasive motif of my life in France is the unknown. All this uncertainty has certainly put a damper on my spirits, but as you can see, it hasn't kept me from keeping in touch with my friends regularly.

I speak French decently. I can't write it all. I think it's almost worse to have a partial command of the language, because it gives people the impression you understand everything that they are saying, which is disastrous because 60% of the time I have no idea what's going on at any given moment. Even when people aren't speaking. What's worse is understanding everything that someone is saying, but being unable to articulate any sort of response beyond 'oui', ' Je comprends' or 'Bien Sur'. Language continues to be a huge issue for me, and while I'm probably not doing justice to the progress I've made in French since I've been here, at any given moment I revert into 'mute American', or 'grunting American' mode. And let me tell you that grunting is not nearly as effective a means of communication as it was in Korea, where profound dialogues are often composed of nothing more than grunts of variable pitches. I remember Koreans deconstructing Confucius using nothing more than clicking and grunting noises. <>

Ahh Korea, I remember it fondly. The food, the friends, the mystifying cultural nuances which somehow seemed 100 times more amusing and 89 times more benign than they do here. Not to say the French can't be funny, but there is a real danger in criticizing the French here, though I'm always being encouraged to express my views on their culture (using my sharp Franco-American-pseudo-outsider perspective). I'll volunteer something, I don't know, something along the lines of 'French people are extremely critical of everyone, but they never criticize themselves...' Those three dots represent the moment when where you are interrupted and pummeled into the bidet for suggesting that the French don't have any sense of self-criticism. Enough about politics, a realm about which I'm questioned every day, and progressively have less and less to say.

'...And what about zis Bushee? Will he win ze next elections?'
'I don't really know. I haven't really followed any news from the U.S. unless it involves Giants baseball or the gigantic Lithuanian stiff that the Warriors just drafted. But I guess it's possible.'

'But how can you let this happen? Don't you care about the rest of the world?'

'Oui, bien sur'

'Et alors?'

'Please pass the wine, it's nearly 1:00 pm, and I'd like to get my buzz on before I have to go back to work.'

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Ah work. Let me see if I can express the sheer fantasticness (fantastacity?) of this topic. Yes I do work, in the sense that I wake up every morning, take the metro to work and put in a good 12-15 hours of work, often sleep at the office, and work on the weekends. But no, I don’t work in the sense that I am paid regularly. All the magic happens in Paris. I work for a start-up company, started by one of my Cousin Patrick's best friends Ben, and his associate Antoine (each of whom deserve their own paragraph). This company, called A9english, had a dream, slightly less Kingly than Martin's, but a dream nonetheless. Their dream: To deliver daily English lessons by e-mail. I've been working for/with this company since the third or fourth week I arrived in France, and the comedy/tragedy of my daily experience with A9 is the dominant factor of my life. <>

I'll start at the beginning, but with all the time I've been absent from this blog, I'm certain to forget some of the highlights of the unholy marriage between A9 and myself. My cousin Patrick (amazing, unique, insane) introduced me to one Benjamin Levy in early April 2004. Ben had just returned from an epic world tour after selling his first business (which he had started at the age of 22, with his Martian friend Antoine) and had recently begun his second venture at the ripe old age of 27. We drank whiskey and coke and smoked hashish in the same office where I was to dedicate the next half-year and beyond of my life. <>

Ben offered me some part time work writing exercises for the company, which had hired an American PhD named Shannon (stay with me here, this is just the beginning) to literally deconstruct the English language into 1000 concise key concepts. Quite an endeavor to be sure, yet somehow this woman did it, although I think at some point she must have said to herself "I've finished 800 modules and covered everything. How the hell am I going to write 200 more modules? Fuck!" (My words, not hers. She probably would have said 'Curses! Or 'Damnation!' I liken her to the baby from Family Guy, though not nearly as funny, a lot older, female, devoutly Catholic and much more concerned with the plight of third world nations in Africa). This development led to the creation of such highly relevant modules as 'The etymology of Aramaic-based words which made their way into modern English" and "Polysyllabic Adjectives of diminishing positive degree." From these key concepts, which were often three sentences or less, I and a crack team of one other French person, were to write 40 exercises for 7 such baffling key-concepts. <>

I don't wan't to go too much into detail because that was 5 months (or moths, if I were to leave that typo where it was) ago, and at this rate we'll never get to today (September 25th 2004--Happy birthday Yuriko Say and Michael Gast). For this incredibly stimulating work of exercise generation, I was to be paid the handsome sum of 500 Euros. In American currency, that comes out to roughly $3,000 dollars. That's not true, but the American dollar is weak, weak, weak. Needless to say, I never received this generous purse because I never finished the 900 or so exercises I was supposed to write. And this, my friends is where my life changed forever. In a bout of abject laziness between cigarettes and coffee, (by the way, my teeth are bordering on 'British' in terms of discoloration at this point) I decided that I would rather not write 40 exercises on the use of 'much' and another 40 on the uses of 'many', partly because it was mind-numbing and totally ridiculous, and partly because the whole point of 'much' and 'many' is distinguishing when to use which word. So I casually e-mailed Antoine and Ben, (at this point I was working at home, unshaven and primarily clad in pajamas and woolen socks) and mentioned how pointless two sets of separate exercises on these groin-grabbingly interesting topics would be. Suffice to say my main goal in writing this e-mail was to weasel my way out wasting another day in front of the computer, the irony of which will play out as this entry unfolds. My e-mail was received with open-arms. I was invited to the office where an impromptu meeting took place between Ben (short in stature but rich in Judaic fortitude) and Antoine (gangly, Germanic and otherworldly). In this meeting, because of my polite criticism of the nature of the work I was assigned, I was offered a chance to work in a more full-time capacity at A9 (and by this I mean I was offered the opportunity to dedicate the next half-year to the project in quasi-indentured servitude). I was asked, in fact to re-write the structure of this PhD into something less academic and structured and more accessible to the average French student. Seemed simple enough, and I'm usually for things which are described as 'less-structured' and so I agreed, blissfully unaware of the madness which would ensue. Yadda, Yadda Yadda, that's the story of 'Much' and 'Many' the quantifiable adverbs and adjectives which launched my career in the grammar industry.

And yes, I am aware that, in the first piece of writing that most of you have read from me in half a year, I just wrote a page about a grammar exercise. And oh, if you only knew how difficult it was to only write that much, as I am so saturated with half-assed grammatical insights that reflexive pronouns permeate my dreams almost as much as bizarre sexual fantasies involving me, and well, women.

Moving right along, I began working at A9, writing exercises, criticizing other people's work and occasionally doing some myself (in typical French fashion) but never really managing to understand:

1. The complex structure which I inherited

2. The even more complex software which was to deliver the daily e-mail lessons

3. The best way to get home from the metro station

4. How to keep the alarm from going off in my aunt's house, and thus avoid the firemen coming to the house, sirens blaring and

5. What the hell was happening...

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In the mean time, in real life: a cousin (Olivier) was married in the south of France, my Mom and brother (Monique and Alex) came to visit for 10 days, my uncle (Leon) passed away, I met for the first time a groin-grabbingly large contingent of unknown family members (cousins, mostly) who were thrilled to finally meet their long-lost pierced, hirsute, chain-smoking American cousin who has remarkably little to say, lost every piece of identity which proved my existence, and in a related development: lost contact with every single loved one in my life. <>

Oh, and I grew my first moustache, and it didn't look that bad. Maybe pictures later.

More recently, I celebrated my 25th birthday with a slice of a delicious tart filled with an unknown berry interior, possible boysenberry (spelling?), and an archived internet stream of a Giants game (9/7/2004 against the Rockies. A tough 8-7 loss). What a time to be born...

And yes, a quarter century on this earth. I think this birthday loomed large for me simply because I celebrated it under circumstances which were so foreign, for lack of a better word. Last year, in the 'Ko, my birthday came less than a month before I finished my contract and left the country. I was surrounded by all the homies of the greater Daegu area. We had soju. We insulted waiters. We laughed a lot. I avoided the pork. We were Caucasian. Good times.

Bah. Enough with this pointless sentiment. Dostoyevsky hated sentiment. And Jews.

Man I'm hungry.

That was abstract, and only a chosen few will understand it.

Back to A9english. Eventually it was decided that we would abandon the highly-entertaining pedagogical structure of Shannon in favor of a more direct, decidedly more half-assed approach written by Ben and I, which basically explains the rules of English grammar to the French in very accessible language, called 'French'. This is where it doesn't help that I never learned how to read or write French, and most of my French experience consisted of asking my mother to pass me more food. But I get by. By far, (or by fart, if my typo is to be left uncorrected) my most important contribution to the development of the project was the decision to create a fictional story line of texts and audios which would make up the content of the lessons, rather than simply have grammar questions in every lesson, which clearly would have resulted in me killing myself. To be more straightforward: I write every day for a living (which implies that I am paid, but we'll ignore that for now). I and Philip (hilarious, a fan of Proust, grandson of Al Capone's chauffeur, who deserves his own paragraph and more) create episodes involving a fictional Perfume company (I know) run by a French man who has lost his ability to smell (I know). His cast of incompetent, yet lovable employees consists of:

Susan Bliss: the highly professional, Oxford-educated, nymphomaniac director of Public Relations

Philip Cheeter: The Quagmire-esque Don Juan director of Sales who won't take 'no' for an answer

Luna DeLune: The new-agey, aroma-therapy loving director of Human Resources (my personal favorite)

Horatio Olere: The Amazonian Shaman imported from Brazil, who creates the perfumes for the company

Kevin Connors: The drunken, money-hungry production manager of the Delavigne Corporation

Polly Watson: The no-nonsense, also attractive personal assistant to Bruno Delavigne

Terrance Cashman: The primary investor in the company

Harold Warbuckle: The Yosemite Sam-esque rich Texan who runs a chain of department stores which sell Delavigne perfumes

Icarus Quincy: The inhibited Professor Frink-like accountant of the company (also a personal favorite)

Bob Carter: In theory, the incompetent manager of the IT department, although he has developed somehow into an aging hippy with a pony tail

Bruno Delavigne: The grandson of renowned French perfumer Xavier Delavigne, who lost his sense of smell in an unfortunate smelling accident in his early twenties.

And finally, my true favorite: Mayor Frederick Flimshaw the fourth- Mayor of the city of San Francisco (Where did you think it was all going to happen?! I'm still repping the Sco!)

There's so much I want to tell you about these people, their lives, my life: how we affect one another. But the easiest way is this. If you want to witness first hand the bizarre pseudo-literary twists that my life has taken, e-mail me and I'll sign you up for the Beta test (that's a little technical term I've picked up from working in the grammar/internet industry) of ... 'GG'.

(I'll give you a second to stop laughing)

Yes that's right, I am the editor in chief of a software which is in fact entitled 'GG'.
As you can see my input only carries so much weight with the braintrust of A9. The name is supposed to capture the 'daily workout' approach to learning English. For a long time before they chose the name, I wanted some business cards. This is no longer the case. But 'GG' carries on despite the name, much like Dick Butkus and Dick Harter.

I'm going to take a break here.

...And since I've been away I've lost another Visa and my metro pass. Seriously though, despite what you might have read in my last entry three years ago, life in Paris much more than constantly stepping in shit. It's striking and ridiculous lines, free social security for bums and artists, and DMV-like efficiency in all administrative capacities. It's angry demands for cigarettes from people on the street, random search and seizures by metro cops, expensive museums, frustrated mimes and muzzled german . Unfortunately I have not been able to enjoy all the fruits of the Parisian cornucopia due to my commitment to the fine people of The double G. And while I occasionally lose myself in the writing of bizarre and funny episodes which will be read by hundreds of confused French professionals, I rarely actually enjoy the benefits of being an American in Paris. And how can I explain the irony of sitting at computer 13-15 hours a day and not writing e-mails to people? That one eats me up pretty badly. Anyway, I think I'll be living in Paris for the forseeable future. I have plans to move out from my aunt's house in the suburbs in a few weeks (the epicenter of awkward and annoying things, which deserves its own paragraph) and into the 10th arrondisement of Paris. I hope this will change my life in some magical way, and I invite anyone who feels inclined to visit Paris, and by doing so verify that I am still in fact alive, to come and stay with me. I think that I'm going ride the G train wave as far as it can take me, and that is pretty much unknown for the time being. On the other hand, I am seriously considering fleeing to a nice deserted island as soon as things are more settled or even if they continue to remain as unsettled as they are now.

I wish I could wrap things up more definitively, but I really have no idea what I'm doing here. I do work extremely hard, and sleep very little. I am a big part of a potentially successful company, which also factors in to my decision making.

All this to say I'm still here.

Andrew