roaming

When I moved to Grenoble, there was rumor that the city's airport, originally built for the 1968 Olympics but all but dormant ever since, was about to be resuscitated, kissed from its sleep of decades by the inescapable arrival of budget airlines. Every other little airport in Europe would be just a few euros and even fewer hours away. Progress has indeed been made over the last year. London, Bristol, Stockholm and Warsaw are now closer to home than even Paris, never mind the TGV. Just before Christmas, Rome was added to the growing list of destinations.

I happened across blu-express's web page today, which tells of incredible deals from Grenoble to Rome. If you fly in March, they ask for as little as five euros, one way. Intrigued, I looked a little closer. Besides the inescapable taxes, they also add a fuel surcharge of sixteen euros each way. And while I'm all in favor of fueling the plane before jumping over the Alps, it would seem to me fair business to include that cost in the advertized price of the ticket.

And if it's not, I'm left wondering why Alitalia, which bussed me to Chicago the other day for about €350 excluding taxes, didn't advertize their offer as "€90* (*plus 300% fuel surcharge)".

pol sci 101

The latest hottest news in Europe took four months to fully come to speed. I'm not quite sure if it has made it across the Atlantic (where most readers of this blog live) so I'll join the chorus and add my two cents.

In September, a Danish daily published a bunch of cartoons showing Mohammed, the prophet according to Islam. The project was launched when a publisher couldn't find an illustrator for a book on Islam because of fear of retribution if anything shown was deemed inappropriated. The main point of the cartoons, that self-censorship is not acceptable in Western Europe, was explained in the accompanying article. The increasingly vitriolic outrage that has erupted (or rather oozed - considering the time it took to reach cruising altitude) shows that the newspaper got it all right.

It also shows that some citizens of Europe have a lot to learn about how Western society works. Some say the cartoons are unacceptable because picturing Mohammed is not allowed by the Koran. There are some fine countries where the Koran is law, but Denmark is not one of them. Others are calling for the Danish government to condemn the newspaper for publishing the cartoons. Again, an idea that would fly like a hot-air ballon in Saudi Arabia or Iran. Thankfully doesn't work like this around here.

What the reactions to the cartoons - death threats, flag burning, boycotts of Danish products, a siege to the EU's office in Palestine, threats of violence - show is that radical fundamental Islamists with their predisposition to violence and their inability to communicate, argue and discuss according to accepted standards need to be taken very seriously if not tackled forcefully to maintain peace in Europe and prevent the rise of blind hatred against average Muslims.

The cartoons are shown on the website of the Brussels Journal, together with articles, comments and discussion. And yes, I'm very angry.

poser friends

The other day Gianpiero left the lab to go back to Italy where his wive and a very uncertain future were waiting for him. He unloaded heaps of pasta on me, we went for pizza and sangria after that, and the next morning he took off in his boxy Fiat.

Today in the lab I found more goodies that he had left for me. Cans of beans, a few bottles of wine, tea, and other victuals. I am not happy because a good friend has just left.

"Only posers die" is what Stevo sobbed after Heroin Bob had died of an overdose. I am thinking "only poser friends leave", and I feel a little bit like Stevo myself. But I know that I have also left plenty of friends behind in my endless peregrinations. The world is a village, and that's not always a good thing.

chirac goes bush

Today, Jacques Chirac all but declared war on Iran. The French president made a fine U-turn with respect to 2003 and is now fully in line with George WMD Bush. Chirac promised to use his nukes, so splendidly tested in the South Pacific in the mid-1990s, to free the world of rogue states. And first in line these days is, of course, Iran, whose president discovered, shortly after being elected, that he has absolutely nothing to offer to his eager people but savage words directed at a vilified world. He is desparately trying to distract Iranians from the misery in their country and quell their anger at tyrrany and religious vice.

Big talk and ruthless oppression are nothing new around the world, except this guy is building a bomb. The German secret service reported - since when do secret services report? - that he might only be a few months short of his goal. This is much more than the infamous 45 minutes that Blair, oddly quiet these days, claimed of Iraq three years ago, but all the more believable. At the rate things are going, there can be no doubt that something cataclysmic will happen. I have no desire to imagine what the Middle East will look like if Iran and the Western world, and Israel as an obvious first target, will duke it out on the nuclear battle field. All the wars, aggression, terror attacks, and every-day atrocities that the region has seen in the last 60 years will look like a Sunday at the beach in comparison.

free speech

One of the things France is rightfully proud of is the telecommunication infrastructure. I have never seen anyone use a laptop while sitting in a cafe or on the train, but when the French are at home they like to surf the web with the speed of the TGV Marseille-Paris. A dozen companies constantly top one another with ever more spectacular offers. I signed up as soon as I found an apartment, which was soon connected to the world through an 8Mbit/s ADSL line that ends in an inconspicuous black box. This little box of magic talks to my computer for internet access, my telephone for calls, and my TV for about 40 useless stations. All for a flat fee of 23 euros per month.

This was only the beginning, though. Progess doesn't stop, in particular in anything IT related. So this evening I discovered that I can upgrade my line to 20MBit/s and, for an extra 9 euros per month, get all my phone calls absolutely free. This doesn't just include France. No, the entire European Union, Canada, the US, India, and China are covered. As neuf.fr promises, I can now talk to half the world's population for free. Why I would want to do that is a question they don't have an answer for, but one thing is sure. Once my service is modified (in three weeks or so), I won't have the slightest excuse for not talking to my friends. Make me call you back!

google earth

It can only be a question of time until Google achieves world domination. For many years, this has been the search engine of my choice (and of everyone else's as well, it seems). The launch of Google maps has vastly improved online cartography, and local Google will change the way you look at your city (once it is covered). Google book search might be the best thing to happen since the Sumerians started collecting clay tablet in their temples. All these services are offered online without the need for software to be installed on your computer. I'm all for that.

I'm less enthusiastic when a company, be it Google or anything else, claims it needs the power of my laptop for their offerings to work. Thus I have not made use of Google earth yet. I might have to change my mind, though. This morning I came upon a little gallery that Russell Standring created for his grenoblecycling.com pages, and I must confess that I'm extremely impressed. Now I don't even have to leave my desk in order to ride up mountains.

Hey baby

The other day I walked over to the climbing gym next door to get a membership and to start feeling some (fake) rock again. I gave my name, paid my buck or two, and was on my way to losing serious skin on my fingertips. Something was missing, though.

Today I went snowboarding for the first time this season. We drove up to Sept Laux, a resort in the Belledonne, a short hour's drive from Grenoble. It seemed that every other slope was decorated with slalom poles or downhill gates.

There was no race going on, and no one seemed to mind if people took a chance on the challenge. That's when it finally dawned on me what had been missing in the climbing gym. In stark contrast to when I lived in the US, I had no waivers to sign, no proof of insurance to show, and no one lectured me on the dangers inherent in rock climbing. The same laid-back attitude today in the snow - no waivers, no warnings.

It is so refreshing not to be treated like a baby anymore. You are responsible for your own actions. No one tells you that coffee is hot or that knives are sharp. People seem to know. If you fall off a cliff or impale yourself on your skis, it's your own fault. If you can't handle that, don't go out and play.

But play I did. There was one thing that I could hardly handle, though - the snow. To my spoiled eyes, it looked like grated ice. Falling hurt, after six years in Utah a completely new experience, and not a pleasant one. I ought to go have my board waxed and my edged sharpened. Or maybe I'm just a baby and should stay inside.

bonne année

The new year is already one week old, but I say my greeting anyway because I've only today returned to France. I spent Chrismas and New Year's with family and friends more or less far away. Today I came back from Indiana.

Exhausted from long hours of air and rail travel interrupted by extended waiting periods in chairs that looked like they were designed exclusively for the good looks, I put "Downfall" into my computer. Fifteen minutes later, after much subdued mumbling around me and countless furtive glances at the screen by my seat neighbors, I abruptly end the film. More than 20 hours into my voyage I don't feel like explaining to a Frenchman why I'm staring at Hitler and swastikas galore. This would be a challenging excercise even if it was three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon.

Instead, I opt for a rerun of "Crash", my clear favorite for movie of the year 2005. It's hard to say what the movie really is about. It is an intense, highly stylized and artistic parable of, well, of what? Of humans? Of live? Of ignorance? Of California? To me it is a reminder that every one is a racist, in that everyone has evident or subconscious racial preconceptions that influence how we interact with strangers. This in itself is no problem in my opinion, as long as we act with compassion and humanity and are never locked in our judgment.

"Crash" traces 36 hours in the lifes of about two handful of people whose paths cross over and over again, often unknown to them. Tragedy and happiness, drama and joy, crime and charity, love and hate are so close together that one single action of any one of the actors, even one word or a mere gesture, can tip the scale into one or the other direction.

Before the movie ends, I arrive in Grenoble. Walking through the dark city, my own little multiracial home, I pass Lebanese kebab shops and Armenian grocery stores, Chinese restaurants and African art galleries. I buy a baguette, which doubles as a handwarmer, pass by my favorite Vietmamese store where the smells of tea, spices and overripe bananas unmistakably tell me that I've arrived, enter my entryway and am home.

Happy new year to all who happen to read this.