to work or not to work

My dear faithful followers (all 9 (visible) of you),

Here is an essay I found about work that I wrote 3 years ago for an English philosophy class. This is a feeble attempt to keep this blog going as I've been extremely buys with work, ironically.

Do we really need to work this much? 

This essay will study today’s work habits in the society and ask if it is truly necessary to work as much as we do. We have worked 8 hours a day since 1886 and one must ask if that is normal. This is not the first time in history that social critics question our work habits. There have been written innumerable papers and articles on this subject and we are all mostly aware that too much work can have negative effects on the society, and we know that work is one of the driving forces behind capitalism and materialism. This essay will touch lightly on capitalism and materialism because it is necessary for this debate, but will focus more on how work ethic has developed in the western societies. I will try to find the answer to the question of “how much work do we really have to put in?” Of course we would not like to degrade that much that we are not able to provide ourselves with basic needs, nor do we seek the opposite; that we overproduce this earth to destruction and work ourselves to death. More specifically, this essay will try and answer the question on how we should work?



Work is virtuous – to a fault.


“Ah yes, he is a hard working man”. One of the best compliments you can get in the western world. It is ranked up there next to honesty and trustworthiness.

In our society today, working is considered as being virtuous. There is a social more which encourages work and discourages leisure. Being unemployed is generally considered as something negative and almost everything possible is done to fill up the past-time of the unemployed by various free trainings and other constructive activity. Most governments truly believe that it is bad for the unemployed to go idle and seek all means to escape that.

In every aspect of our society we find some form of encouragement for work. One can see how religions rally for work; you will find it in many places within the Judeo-Christian religion, the most obvious one being that sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, so you better work. In Prophet Mohammed’s traditions it states that: “Whoever finds himself at the nightfall tired of his work, God will forgive his sins”1.

Politicians throughout the spectre of politics also encourage a lot of work. The left demands work for everyone and the right needs workers constantly to work for them. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers, had his own list of thirteen moral virtues and ranking at the 6th place was: “Industry. Lose no Time. Be always employ'd in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary Actions.”2 Furthermore, working is considered as a basic human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in their 23rd article section (1): “Everyone has the right to work, [...] and [...] protection against unemployment.”3

The importance of work even found its way into children’s literature. We all know how it went for the animals on the farm that wouldn’t help the Little Red Hen with the harvest, threshing, milling of the wheat into flour, and baking the flour into bread? They got no bread!

The list is endless.

It is needless to say that work plays a big role in our lives. Obviously, you have to have some sort of output to achieve some sort of input, if not you cannot live. In the simplest terms; you must pluck the apple from the tree in order to eat it. But it seems as though work has gone beyond its original intention. Not only does it provide a person with an income to tend to its basic needs for living, but it is almost like today we are born only to work, and leisure is very much frowned upon. Was it not, that when you were asked in your childhood what you wanted to become when you grew up, that the more prestigious the answer the better the reaction from the questioner. Already then the value of a human being is measured by their job title. Maybe it is an indulgence into childrens´ grandiose and limitless perspectives on the world, or it could be that the social pressure is already at work. A good job seems to be the answer to everything. And later in life when kids realise that being an astronaut or a doctor takes many years, a lot of funds and hard work, plainly a more simple job is the disappointing reality later demanded of them by society. Even though Karl Marx proposed that: “the writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money”4 we assume that leisure activity, like reading and painting, should not be done unless there is something to gain from it; students read to graduate and find a job, while painters sell their paintings to be able to continue to paint. There has to be a concrete contribution somewhere. Nothing is done for the sake of nothing.

A large part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal”, which saved the United States from that ongoing crisis in the 1930’s, was creating jobs. The jobs that were created were construction work like repairing or building roads, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals and the like, as well as farm work and even maintaining or restoring forests, beaches and parks.5 Through every means possible jobs, labour jobs, were created. The crisis subsided, America got back on her feet and Roosevelt was celebrated as a hero.

Roosevelt was one of many that encouraged the idea that more working hours is the answer, and if there is not enough work about, job-creating is the answer. In time of crisis people tend to think that the wheel needs to be spun faster, harder, more. Dig trenches and fill them up again, and dig them again if necessary. The first thing we hear in time of crisis where unemployment rises is: “must create more jobs” and a common political promise is: “vote for me and I will create x amount of new jobs!”

So we have established that work is perceived as of the good kind and the harder the work is and the more we work; the better we are, the more virtuous we are. The meaning of life is to work, no matter what. Yet at what point does work become ineffective and unproductive? Digging trenches and filling them up again just for the sake of work seems odd. Work is virtuous, but definitely to a fault.

The need for a second revolution.

Up until the industrial revolution in the 18th century work hours were long, and everyone worked, even children and old people. The French philosopher, Michel Foucault pointed out a very interesting idea in his book Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison: “Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”6

Now, today with technology bringing us inventions into the society on a daily basis there are two options available as Bertrand Russell points put in his essay “In praise of Idleness”, with the pin factory analogy; that with new technology that increases production by half you would imagine that the logical reaction to that is to cut short the working hours for the workers by half and everything would continue as normal.7 That is not what happened. Instead, production was doubled, and fear set into people. Fear of losing jobs to machines and capitalism flared up, as it is the nature of capitalism. As soon as it gains a new field it goes wild. Time and again it has been shown that capitalism always goes wild until the structures fall down, and destroys itself. And in capitalism there is this great paradox; to pay the employees as little as possible, but make them spend as much as possible. Double the production means that you have to double the sales. How do you get more out of the worker than what you give him and how do you make him spend more than he earns? After the industrial revolution it seems, to concede with Foucault, that we became enslaved most vigorously to the capitalist cycle of overproduction and under consumption. When humans think that they are appreciated by the work they do it is not the quality of the man that is appreciated but the quality of the slave.
The shift in the society that has unfolded over the last 200 years, especially the last four decades, has expanded the social pressure beyond the need to hold just a job, as well as increased the capitalist pressure of consuming; we need double the amount of pins we have used so far. This has evolved into the need to own two cars in the garage, and have a summerhouse in the countryside, not to mention
owning the right kind of clothes and accessories. Could it be that this materialism stems from people's need to affirm with others that one holds a good job? If so, then we can see by your outside how good of a worker you are? Or it could be that consumer pressure has arisen over time; the demand of the society to have this and that and the constant dependence on purchasing goods, almost to the point that we can’t live without certain products? Whatever the anthropological social answer could be for this change, it is certain that the need for basic things as the driving force behind working has been replaced by consumption, and it´s no surprise that in the western society that consumption is excessive. But as this essay is neither about capitalism nor materialism, let us go back to the problem of whether or not we really need to work this much.

The harm done by too much work.

In order to keep our consumption up to par, we work long hours, even holding down more than one job or two, at times even three jobs. We take out loans, a subject to which a whole book could be dedicated. And the job is not confined to the 8 hours that we work per day. There´s commuting time, time spent thinking and developing ideas and work related projects and much more. Again we encounter a strange paradox: the curse of overproduction. Overproduction is what causes pollution, unhappiness, low salaries and then, ironically, worse living conditions. Overproduction is our biggest problem today. The main problem is not so much the surplus in production itself, but more how products and profits are distributed.

So we can safely establish that consuming less would be positive; pollution would subside, we would not spend so much money therefore we would need less of it. According to the basic economic law of supply and demand, when demand goes down supply becomes more valuable and wages should rise. Direct consequence of that would be that we may consider working less and therefore have more time for leisure which may increase happiness.

How should we work?

To answer this question let us have a clinical look at what work is, and how do we define this activity? An online dictionary definition says that work is: “Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward
the production or accomplishment of something.”8 Looking beyond rigid definitions we see that Bertrand Russell, in the same essay as mentioned above, characterises work in two ways: “first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.” He goes on saying that “The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”9 There is an obvious variation in job tasks. The dictionary differentiates between physical or mental work and Russell speaks about how one job is pleasant while the other is not. We all recognise having had terrible jobs where time seems to take forever to pass and or the kind of jobs where we were more under the impression we were partying rather than labouring.This tells us that we would rather work less if the task does not inspire us, but we can spend long hours if it ignites our creativity. I would not mind working as a check-out girl, but 4 hours a day would do for me. On the other hand, I can paint for days at end.

The abolishment of slavery has been a very important feather in our society’s hat. We stand proud when we say that slavery is in the history books with colonialism and wars, but we cannot differentiate when we look how enslaved we are by work.

All agents that rally for less work do not fail to mention the old Greeks, how manual labour was something for slaves only, while men could participate in the governing of the state, play sport or create. While the slavery that aided the Greek society´s function is something that today one cannot agree with, the value that was attributed to creation, leisure and mental pursuits would be a noble priority for today´s society.

Referring back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states, “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”10. Benjamin Franklin’s moral virtue number. 9 preaches modesty and asks us to avoid extremes. In Lafargue’s essay on the “Right to be lazy” he points out how Christianity actually portrays the perfect idleness: “after six days of work, he rests for all eternity.”11 So where did we go off track?

There is this prevailing idea in the society about how we are measured by our jobs. People would be truly aghast if an individual were to answer the question “what´s your job?” with “nothing”. They immediately judge you to be of the lazy kind. We seem to be measured by our work and position, and people automatically feel ashamed or embarrassed if they “just” work as a waiter or part- time mechanic.

The social pressure is hard, but we have to stop measuring humans for what they produce and instead take them for what they are, as people who are literally killing themselves because of work. France Telecom, a communication company in France, lost 6 people to suicide in January 2010.12 This is an extreme case, but still true.

Nonetheless, it is crazy how much we work in today´s society and it is nothing but slavery in a suit. We should start working fewer hours and the work we do should be in a co-op fashion; we should be the owners of our company and the profit of the company should be split between the owners. Then the work will be done because we want to and not because we need to, and we will have the feeling of contributing something to our own lives rather than to some other unknown ones. People will shout: “but who is going do the work that no one likes to do, like taking the trash, and how do I go about paying all my bills and if I suddenly need a large sum of money etc?” These are minor adjustments in the social infrastructure. If the consumption is already down, the amount of trash should subside and if this would be labour work that got divided, people would be motivated to take care of their immediate environment. This is but one example of co-op living. There are many successful co-ops of all types today which have existed for years. One good example is a Maleny in Queensland, Australia, a little village with 7000 inhabitants with all their operations based on co-ops even their own bank.13

Radical thinking was going on in Paris in the beginning of 1998 at the University at Jussieu. What first started as a “simple” demonstration of the unemployed turned into an ongoing movement where people could meet several times a week and exchange ideas about how society should really work. One of their ideas was: “The best way to abolish unemployment is to abolish the work and the money that are linked with it.”14 These ideas are very radical and scary to most people, but it brings a little awareness to the question if you want to live for work or if you want to work to live?


Bibliography:

Texts:
Russell, Bertrand. In Praise of Idleness. 1932. http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

Sites:
Muslim World League, Canadian Office. Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh. http://www.mwlcanada.org/publications/traditions.htm

Ben Franklin’s thirteen moral virtues. http://ploticus.sourceforge.net/stevepages/moralvirtues.html

United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. http://secint50.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Franklin D. Roosevelt American Heritage Center Museum. New Deal Achievements. http://www.fdrheritage.org/new_deal.htm

The Free Dictionary by Farlex. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/work

Why Work. We don’t want full employment, we want full lives! http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/knabb.html

she took the midnight train going anywhere

There must be a million of gods out there that gets prayed to. This is mine: riding the steel tracks, southbound, over the waves of snow, so very present in the motion. Hear my prayers.

I'm trying to grow up. It is hard. And harder still when the tentacles of the past are still entwined around my ankles, not letting go, like a naughty child that refuses to be left behind. But, fake it until you make it and consequently I have been applying for what is considered as mature and responsible positions.

Trying to manifest new behaviour. Moving into unknown territory.

I've seen people do it on TV.

… thus, I found a position, perfect position. Follow up interviews and all. Too good to be true. And it turned out to be exactly that. So I don't understand my god; does he really want me to become a telemarketer again (a brief position I held whilst living in 'Dam, where I had the luxury of being constantly stoned, the only possible state acceptable if you have to call total strangers up and ask them corky questions)?

[during the proofreading of this piece I received a phone call from a teleresearch company scheduling an interview - god? is that you??]

So I'm leaving town. I decided to stop putting my life on hold for something that potentially can happen in the future and rather receive and enjoy the gifts of this abundant world (while it lasts). One being a train ticket with an invitation.

When I travelled to Bruxelles I left my worries at the French border, and lo and behold they were ready to be picked up exactly where I had dumped them. This time, although there are no border crossing, I'll be leaving my worries at the train station, to be picked up on my return. Unless there are any takers? Any?

Destination: Saint-Etienne.

Destiny: unknown.

Don't stop. Believing.

Bruxelles – unimpressed.

We can now, with certainty, establish this as a travel blog. Obviously, it came about because of travels, but although I've been trying to keep up some writing, managing on average one blog per month (if even), my inspiration is to be found only on the road. Like some people must exhale, I must move. And if I'm not physically on the road being mused, then it is my memories of travelling that seems to be squeezing itself out, down my arms, out through my fingertips, on to the keyboard. I have some attempts of fiction in the working, but it all reeks of daddy issues or other similar abandonment issues and I have not detached myself enough from it to be able to freely write it into my short stories. Back to the drawing board, or couch, or whichever furniture you wanna do this on, Freud.

So, being here – Brussels. I received a phone call some time back in October from my dancer friend in Brussels that said she had an ominous feeling that she would be alone for New Years. Being the Provocatrice of Providence I decided right there and then that I would come up for New Years and in the worst case scenario we would be alone together. My dancer friend has been a frequent guest at Ella's Bed & Breakfast (or rather Ella's mattress on the floor & crazy salads) and with all her visits, an invitation always followed: come to Brussels any time. New Years is just as good a time as any.

Now, how do you visit a place where you've been, but not really been? In the past I've driven through this city, on several occasion, with the marvellous coach service that drives all around Europe, inexpensively, but never uneventfully, going between cities like Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen – I even went all the way up to Edinburgh once in these fine rides. Can't say I use them very much today, as my serenity has no monetary value and I choose my mode of transport accordingly.

The paradox is that although I haven't been that much present in Brussels, Brussels has been very present in my life. Goes with the Parisian territory. Brussels is only 261.29 kilometres, as the crow flies, north-east of Paris and and is considered the capital of Europe, in a political sense. And rightfully so. Belgian bureaucracy is so complex that the French bureaucracy looks like a walk in the park in comparison. Belgian chocolate is the best, although that has no impact on a chocoholic: I eat anything made out of cocoa beans, even if it has been through the intestines of civet monkey-cats... no, wait, that's coffee beans. And then you have the famous (infamous, disputable) Waffles and of course the fact that Belgians are the butt of many French jokes, as the Swedes are for the Norwegians and vice versa (the Baltic countries laugh about the Estonians, the Spaniards about the Portuguese and the Reykjavikians about the Hafnafjordians, the list is endless).

But now I'm here – I'm not impressed. Between the ceaseless spells of rain and being groped shamelessly on the public transport, I can't say I've found much here that inspires me. Even the well known landmark Manneken-Pis is so small I almost trudged passed it had it not been pointed out to me.“The Little Shit” is its unofficial name, and Brusselians have the constant need to imitate the statue on every street corner after dark. Parisians as well, for that matter.

But, this is the 1^st of January 2013 and I'm gonna count up the good stuff, just to set the tone for the year, as my New Years resolutions is to keep up the good work!

I get to hang out with my good friend. Priceless. In cool Flemish café where an onion soup and a green tea rings up to 5.20 €. A breath of fresh financial air for a Parisienne like me. Finished a job application as an assistant to the Australian Ambassador in Paris. We'll see what that yields. Been on some solid walkabouts from the city centre out beyond the Small Ring and back. Saw the sunset from the panoramic view of the city in front of the Palais de Justice. Cool graffiti. Went to the cinema and saw Tom Cruise's latest B-movie-ish movie. Highly entertained, in a bad taste way. And finally celebrated New Years Eve in a super cool, live in, workshop art space hosted by a part of the Brussels dancing community and got my tango-cherry popped by a very nice Belgian boy. Was also appointed the DJ for the night after I put Arabian Horse on by Gus Gus. Very flattered. I'm not a nationalist, but I do pimp out my country whenever possible. Danced into the wee hours at, what seemed to be, a college campus club before taking the Puke-Bus home. Did get the notion of not being so young any more, but that feeling left just as quickly as it came. Tomorrow I'll be heading home again (on a bus as a matter of fact) to my unemployed life, unwritten metaphysics paper and unfilled tax returns. It's a shame I don't have a cat any more, or this stereotypical image of a single, white female's life would have been perfect.

reminiscing

Now all this mess is happening down by the Mediterranean sea (not that I'm particularly fond of it, I'm more of an Atlantic Ocean girl) where grown ups can't seem to behave themselves and is blatantly shitting on humanity with all that violence, I am being reminded of my trip there the summer before last (the genesis of this blog) and all those wild episodes that I never had any time to blog about, as it was, like I said, wild. I do think, though, you guys need to know about the one episode called 'Crazy Myriam', but before I can start that chapter I think I need to start with the one called 'When Ella pretends she's a Jew' or even a little before with 'the Templars' loo'.

Here goes: When I landed in Tel Aviv airport summer of 2011 I took the train straight up north to Haifa where I was very generously received by some friends. After having explored Haifa through and through I took an overnight bag and went further north. First, I went to the Arab city Akko/Acre where the ruins of the Knights Templar's HQ from the crusades still stands (another bloody affair). I managed to take a picture of their loo (fascinating!) before my battery ran out and as I had, unfortunately, left my charger in Haifa there are no more pictures from that trip within a trip. But I can quickly conjure up some mental images for you by describing how I had the yummiest hummus ever in their crazy maze of a souk, and how the orange juice seller at the harbour let me climb up in the tiny lighthouse to catch the view, and how a young kibbutznik picked me up in their communal car and and we went cruising in a nearby Kibbutz checking out eucalyptus trees, horses and other kibbutzy stuff.Oh, and I almost forgot the coffee bean salesman (how could I?!) who'd lived in California and the two fishermen, Ali and Ali (they are cousins).

The next day I moved on to Tzfat/Tsfat/Safed/Zefat, a Jewish village on top of a hill where on a clear day you could see beyond the Libyan border. This is an über Jewish place where the Kabbalah mysticism originated with one Rabbi Ari something (forgive me, his name escapes me) and the cheapest hostel in this place is the one for Jews only. So I went.

Receptionist girl: “Shalom and welcome to the Ascent.”

Me (with my guide book open on their page): “Shalom. Do you guys have any beds for tonight?”

Receptionist girl: “Are you Jewish?”

Me (ultra honest, as usual): “No.”

Receptionist girl: “Then, unfortunately, no. The Ascent was founded by Jews and meant for Jews only, to study Judaism.”

Me (ultra fast thinking, as usual): “Even if you're descended from Jews?”

Receptionist girl: “Who's Jewish in your family?”

“My mother's mother”, I said as I silently prayed for forgiveness for converting Grandma Jenny for my own personal gain. “But she stopped practising when the Germans occupied Norway during WWII” I continued, praying now to God to not send me to Jewish hell for all these lies.

Receptionist girl: “but if she is your mother's mother, then you are Jewish.”

“Oh”. “I am?” I said, feigning a little surprise. “Even though she stopped practising?” I asked, to not sound like someone who is trying to con her way into a cheaper bed, but more like someone who is pleasantly, and somewhat naively, discovering her true origin.

“Just a second” the receptionist girl said, as she picked up the phone and hebrewed something down the receiver. I could see in her eyes that she knew that I knew that she knew it was all somewhat of a bullshit story, but she also knew that I knew that if I say I'm a Jew, she can't really contest it. At least not in this hostel scenario.

After what seemed to be a validation from up above (Yahweh?) she gave me the green light and asked me for my passport to be able to go through with the check in. When I pulled out my beautiful blue Icelandic passport (see prior blogs) and started to explain how my grandmother had married an Icelander, the only truth in this story, she just gave me that shut-your-lying-mouth-look and started with the check in. I'm not going to write in detail on how if you took classes you'd get 20 shekalim rebates on the room and how I said yes to one class, thinking I could do with some Kabbalah (and a discount on the already very cheap bed), but realising that obviously mysticism doesn't come after one Torah class about how if someone from the tribe of Abraham goes away and forgets his origin, he is no less of a Jew still. Never have my cheeks burned that bad and never have I wished to disappear through the chair that hard, as I was sure I had 'Gentile' written all over me (although my real Jewish cousins say that lying about being a Jew to get a cheaper room is very Jewish indeed).

What I am going to tell you is who I shared my room with (all girls, of course) as of this point in the story enters: Crazy Myriam. The first room mate I met was a cool middle aged hippie lady that was on her way out on a date. She is originally from the States, where she lives, but would travel quite often to Israel and Tzfat, having created relationships (oh yeah). She was really fun and spunky, like those guys that just seems to embrace life and everything living. My bunk bed buddy was a girl my age, also from the States. She was there with her boyfriend, who was in another room of course. They were both participating in classes and seminars that the Ascent has going on all year around (I still get their seminar invitations by email, they're obviously not yet on to me). The morning after, I brunched with her and so it happens, a part of the Knesset and Israel's Premier Netanyahu himself coming to Tzfat for the Shabbat that weekend. They must have gotten the intel that I was dining there through their very efficient Mossad network, as the village itself was brimming with agents on every street corner and crossroads (probably just regular police officers, but where is the suspense in that?). I felt ready to get out of Dodge as I started to feel the burden of being a Jew and the mysteries of Kabbalah were still very much cryptic to me. I raced the sun to collect my stuff and get to the bus station before it set as Shabbat was looming and everything would then shut down. To not backtrack (I hate backtracking) the only route to take was the bus to Tiberias, by the see of Galilee. And guess who else was lining up for the bus to Tiberias? Crazy Myriam! At this point I had no idea how crazy she was as the simple hello and the little chit chat in the room had not yet betrayed her level of insanity. So technically I should call her just Myriam. We greeted each other like long lost friends who hadn't seen each other after 40 years of desert tracking (sorry, Jew joke, couldn't resist).

Myriam (her Aliyah name, don't remember her original name) is an Aussie girl my age who had made Aliyah and resided, under normal circumstances, in Tel Aviv. She told me how she was travelling to get out of town for a while. I can understand that, I need to get out of Paris from time to time. Normal. 

We sat together on the bus and she started full on telling me about her boy problems back in Tel Aviv, the same way how I talk with my very close friends back home. Normal. 

I felt happy about having already this level of intimacy, this feeling of alliance. I was travelling alone on this part of the trip and I welcomed this instant friendship. Normal. 

The bus ride didn't take long, but long enough for me to know the whole story of her and her married-lifeguard-Netanya Mafia lover relationship that was extremely complicated (no shit) and was the reason she'd skipped town for a bit. Normal... I guess. 

We found a hostel through my guide book (welcome to all) and we shared a double room with a TV. We stashed our stuff in the room and decided to catch the afternoon sun down by the sea of Galilee. Normal. 

As we're walking to the sea side she asks me if I had noticed all the Mazdas (I had actually, but for a totally different reason than what she was implying). In retrospect I see how me acknowledging all the Mazdas was a terrible mistake as she goes on to tell me that her Mafia lifeguard lover imports these cars and the guys driving around are actually keeping her under surveillance. Not normal. 

I decided to ignore what she just said, like one ignores the sound of a fart in the metro, but I started to get a little uneasy as one gets when the smell follows the sound. When we got two big cups of ice tea from one of the seaside shops she elbows me in the side and nods towards two guys hanging over a banister, talking and smoking. Looking confused at Myriam, I hear her whisper how those guys belong to the Netanya Mafia and are here on a mission from her lover to follow her around. Nooooot Normal. 

Again, I chose to ignore her paranoiac comments as this is not the first time I run with psychos; half my family is on the verge and all my exes are clinically insane. To take my mind of things I tried some walking on water, ended up swimming (ha ha, Christian joke), but knew that our instant friendship had to end, hopefully as quickly as it began. I ended up excusing myself and going back to our room where I just chilled out, channel hopping. When Myriam got back and took control of the control, I did not object much as my strategy at this point was just to let this night pass and continue my journey, alone, the day after. Kind of how you would slowly back out of a lions cage. She eagerly showed me pictures of her lifeguard Mafia lover, mostly they were of his backside, with him in the distant and very blurry. How strange, I thought, sarcastically. She also told me how he did not only import cars, but was in charge of the MTV music station that broadcasts in Israel and that how he spoke to her through music videos by selecting the videos. And as she was compiling and sending seriously long text messages to him (strangely, never a message back) and singing along to Whitney Houston's Peace be upon her (score! Muslim joke) 'I will always love you' I did not have the heart (nor the guts) to point out we were actually watching VH1.

(Disclaimer: I do not discriminate, I make equally fun of everyone)

Family – Ugh!

As you guys might have gathered (have you been faithful readers of mine) I am blessed with family members all over the world. I've gotten to live in various countries, with family members close and sometimes closer. I have been able to travel to various places and I've been exposed to all variety of cultural and traditional happenings, that has done nothing but enriched my spirits and my disposition to life. Fantastic.

Last Sunday I flew to Iceland, the place I think I travel to the most. Once, twice a year, minimum. My need to breath the air where I was born seem to be an innate feeling that can't be discarded. But interestingly, I've noticed, that as soon as I land and I'm driving into the capital I feel tremendously satiated and I realize if someone would order me (good luck with that!) to turn around right this instant and go back home, it would not bother me the least. Funny.

Maybe I also like to come back here periodically to pay tribute to the country that gave me my passport, that heavenly blue passe-partout. In my 32 years of living, studying, working and general breathing in these various countries, I have never encountered any problems as long as I've waived this master key of a blue booklet. Not even when we accidentally drove into Switzerland on our way through the continent, with the car plenty of illegal substances and an Eastern European hitch-hiker in the back seat, did we get into trouble (tip: talk about Icelandic horses, the best distraction). Helps to have big eyes, just as blue as the Icelandic passport. Freaky.

But, regardless of my initial reasons coming here, I cannot disregard the fact that I am in the very place where the majority of my kinsfolk is to be found. The very humans, among 7 billion other humans, that have the same nucleic acid chain as mine, the descent that resulted in me, my blood, my tribe, my parents, my siblings, my grandparents. Family.

Which brings me to today's uncomfortable topic: Relations & Ships

Example: the only thing me and Grams can agree upon, and we've covered a wide range of topics, is that her bathroom scale shows 2 kilos too much. And when every other subject of discussion comes crumbling down on us like boulders, and we cannot even agree upon the weather, we go back to the fact that the bathroom scale is up. Fucked up.

True story(s)

Once, I had a really horrible teacher. Of all subjects, he taught Indian philosophy and because of that I thought he was going to be this cool, levitating guru who wore a loincloth sitting on a spike chair and would show me the path to Nirvana. Oh, how disappointed I was. He was (and still is) this snob of an academic with a bent down nose and crooked, tight lips that gave the inward effect of a black hole suction in the middle of his face. What I first thought to be a smile was a lift of the cheeks that turned the eyes into two slits and a slight nodding of the head, which was obviously not the regular nod of compassion that you get from people, as it reeked of disdain and superiority.

He would hold us captive for 3 hours in a small, airless classroom where no one dared to open the windows. During the supposed break in the middle I would run downstairs to have the quickest pees in my lifetime, get two machine coffees and run back up again, only to be the last (as I was the only one who dared to venture this far) that walked into the wall of non-oxygen space we had created during the firs 90 minutes.

He would talk non-stop for the whole time and after my inbuilt 45 minutes of concentration was up I would go on my regular out of body journeys until he'd stop jabbering. No one dared to ask any questions as he would take that student and thoroughly belittle her/him in the ultimate condescending tone with accompanying body movements: he would pull maniacally at his ears to indicate that we should listen better as he had already said it before, so the student's question was made instant-redundant, or he would fiercely point between the blackboard and the questioning student as the answer was of course already written up there, you imbecile! He was (and still is) the most disagreeable person I have met.

I hadn't been this sad with a teacher since my maths teacher 14 years ago. I left both those classes unfinished, with no regrets.

Once, I lived in Toulon for a semester. As a francophile, I was excited to try the Mediterranean side of France. Although the school was not promising, I did not care so much about that since it was my Erasmus semester and all I wanted was to live by the Mediterranean sea for a few months. Toulon is a nationalist city located between Marseille and Nice, between the mountain and the sea - it is neither like Marseille nor Nice, it is not a bird nor a fish. It is nothing.

It has a navy school and a library, a zoo on top of a mountain and a few cinemas. And a ton of hairdressers. The school was in the middle of an industrial zone far outside of the city centre and there was one bus that went there, once an hour. Getting there was an extreme nuisance, but finally when you got there, things would be worse as their Erasmus program was fucked, mildly put. Needless to say, I spent all my time elsewhere, except for my weekly walk across town to the library where I would pick up cartoons and French films. I would hang out with Buddhists in Fuveau, a tiny village inland, or with sober addicts in Aubagne. We would drive down to Cassis with their famous calanques cliffs, some 5 meters high and we'd jump in half naked/naked.

I left that city gladly and with no regrets.

Last week, I though destiny had called me on a mission to Nice. So I went. Had a lovely time with an open heart, mind and eyes – on the lookout for what was supposed to cross my path and change my life forever. After a whole week of 'same shit, different day' I realized that me being in Nice was not supposed to be life changing for me particularly (maybe I should have given that weirdo a time of day when he approached me walking the Promenades des Anglais one night?), but I still held on to that thought as I boarded the train coming back to Paris. Maybe someone smart, cool and funny would sit next to me? Well spoken, well dressed with BO's under control? Maybe even a boy! (with that, I mean a man).

As the train choo-choo'ed along the coast I silently watched people getting on, families from vacation, teenagers on their fist solo-trip, wondering who would finally occupy the seat next to me. The train stopped at Antibes, Cannes and St. Raphaël, but no one claimed the seat and I was starting to think that I would have all this space to myself the whole train ride. Then the train stopped at Toulon and I felt a twitch of nostalgia as I hadn't laid my eyes upon that city since I left it three years ago. I looked out on the platform and to my horror I saw a very familiar black hole suction face. Isn't that my old Indian philosophy teacher? 

Oh. My. Ganesh.

“Please don't sit next to me, please don't sit next to me, please don't sit next to me” went my silent mantra and I thought my prayers had been answered when he walked straight past me. I was breathing out in tremendous relief when I found him standing over me nodding disdainfully at my handbag in what seemed to be his seat, lifting up his cheeks so his eyes turned into slits of superiority when I apologetically moved my handbag for his royal academic ass.

"God, you're such a joker", I thought, as I left my body, with no regrets.  

Pétanque (French pronunciation: [petɑ̃k]; Occitan: Petanca [peˈtaŋkɔ])

From Wikipedia:

The current form of the game originated in 1907 in La Ciotat, in Provence, in southern France. The English and French name pétanque comes from petanca in the Provençal dialect of the Occitan language, deriving from the expression pès tancats [ˈpɛs taŋˈkats], meaning "feet together"[1] or more exactly "feet anchored".

Pétanque in its present form was invented in 1907 in the town of La Ciotat near Marseilles by a French boule lyonnaise player named Jules Lenoir, whom rheumatism prevented from running before he threw the ball.[4] The length of the pitch or field was reduced by roughly half, and the moving delivery was replaced with a stationary one.

Observation of the above mentined game in front of the Matisse museum today

Tools

Metal balls

Piece of cloth to rub the balls

Small wooden ball

Red circle (not imperative)

String with a magnet on the end (if you're sick of bending down and picking up your balls) – can also be used to measure the length between two balls in case there is disagreement of which ball is closest

Three legged camping chair

Great swear word vocabulary

Gauloise cigarettes

Game

Each contester has 2 metal balls and the object of the game is to get their ball as close to the tiny wooden ball that is thrown first out into the field, of approximate 4x4 meters, that seems to be mobile depending on the sun, shade, slopes and the general mood of the contestants. A red circle is laid down to mark the point of throw of every contestant. Contestants either throw to get close to the wooden ball or they throw to push other balls out of the way much to the opposing contestant displeasure manifested with theatrical and sarcastic remarks. Teams or individual play is optional. All good throws in the first round procures banging of balls together. For obvious reasons this does not happen in the second round. Contestants can either observe, standing or sitting on their camping stool while others are throwing, or practice throwing on the side if they feel the game is moving to slow. At regular intervals there is an assemble hoovering over after the final layout of the balls to discuss and decide who's the real winner.

Tactics

No subject seems to have the same tactic of throwing. Here are a few methods observed:

• bending of knees all the way and swing arm high with a hand-twist on the metal ball so it spins
• stand straight, lean forward, arm swings half way up, great force in the hand-throw (followed by some body movements in hope that the metal ball is telepathically connected to the body and will copy the movements)
• position straight up and then a slight lean to the right with the weight on the right foot, arm swung three quarters up and left foot leaves ground slightly when the ball leaves hand.

It's remarkable how every individual is clearly marked with their own trait and character and the only thing they have in common is the love of the game, buoyancy in the knees and the fact that they all push out their chest when a girl in an orange skirt walks by.