Mid-Week Stream of Consciousness

Today is one of those days when I feel like my head is a claw vending machine. My thought process has just been incredibly slow (and I don't know why) and I can never find the information I'm looking for, even if I know that it's already stored somewhere in the lump of grey matter in my head. I keep aiming for the big stuffed teddy bear, but I seem to catch everything but that bear.

On a different note, I came across a video this morning made by someone who (in part) runs the TCK website TCKID. It's a video of people he knows at his hospitality school (I think that's what it's called anyway) in Switzerland. He knows a bunch of TCKs there and since he's graduating this year he decided to make a video of all the people he knows explaining their 'story'. It's great to see so many people with similar stories - similar in that we can all relate so well to the basic experience, and yet disimilar because they are so varied in their content. It's made me realise how much I've missed that international feel at university. I mean, I know a couple of what they call international students, but they're more like 'foreign' students - students who still come from somewhere specific and have their own culture. And to be honest, they don't necessarily mix that well with other students. They aren't international students in the same way as I am or as those people in the video. In fact, in the 4 years of my degree so far I've only met 2 TCK students. Most of my friends/acquaintances are 'local' students. I've become friends with them, but there's always this feeling that I can't really talk about what I've done in the past, because they just won't get it - especially when so many of them haven't even left Europe.

Also, again changing topics as quickly as George Bush does when asked a question on foreign policy, I'm beginning to wonder if I should've done something along the lines of hospitality school. It would certainly enable me to travel, live in interesting places and probably interact with like-minded people. Hopefully this is just another brief wandering of my mind and not a continuation of the complete lack of direction and the general uncertainty I seem to have with regards to my future.

Ah, the French...

Why is it the French can't have a 'normal' bureaucracy system with the typical level of red-tape you find in most Western countries? For some reason they decided they had to make it far more complicated. My issue with them at the moment concerns obtaining a carte vitale - the card that ensures you're at least partially covered by health insurance (I believe it's around 70% coverage). In France, when you go to the doctor, you show your carte vitale, pay the full fee at the end and then get reimbursed 70% of the cost. No carte vitale, no reimbursement. When I was living in the UK I applied (and received) a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), which covers UK citizens when they travel within the EU, but now that I'm a resident in France (and don't have a UK address), I'm no longer covered by said EHIC card. I'm also paying a contribution (taken automatically 'at the source' from my monthly salary) towards the French social security. Which means that I'm entitled to use the French system and, ergo, a carte vitale. Simple, right? Wrong.

Well, kind of. I am actually entitled to all of that, it's just a matter of convincing the French that this is the case. The first time I went to the CPAM (Caisse Primaire d'Assurance Maladie) de Haute Savoie, they told me that I was covered by the EHIC card and wasn't allowed to get a carte vitale. At the time I wasn't sure on the rules for this, so I didn't argue about it too much and left (although not without first asking why, in that case, I was making a contribution to the French system if I didn't actually benefit from it, but their reply was that that's just how it is).

I did some research when I got home and found out that I'm not actually covered by the EHIC card. This could've been quite serious, since if I wasn't covered by my parents' private health insurance it would've meant that I'd been skiing uninsured for the last 3 months... Anyway, a few days later I went back. This time I spoke to another woman and I tried a different approach (using words that were a little more vague) and, presto, I got to the next step. Which is a person in a room who quite clearly hates her job and couldn't get rid of me fast enough. I'd come prepared, with copies of every single paper I have in my possession (pay slips, birth certificate, passport, rent agreement, work contract, bank information, etc.), so I was feeling pretty confident by this point. I should've known better.

Turns out the bank information I had wasn't good enough. In France you have what's known as a 'Releve d'Identite Bancaire' (RIB), which is the information needed for someone to pay you (in the case of them needing to reimburse me). Normally you have to ask your bank for all of this information, which is printed on an A4 sheet of paper, however my bank had sent me this nifty little card with all of the same information on it. Rumor had it, said my bank, this card could be taken with you in your wallet and used exactly like one of the flimsy paper RIBs. Turns out, that rumor's wrong. So the woman took all of my papers and information, except my RIB, and told me to return the following day with a paper RIB (which I had at home, and by this time was cursing myself for not having brought). I did this, and put it in the mail box on the outside of the building she'd indicated to me the day before. I figured that was it, I'd get a letter soon-ish asking me for 2 pictures for my card.

Sure enough, this week I finally received a letter. Except inside I found my RIB and accompanying letter, with a note saying that I needed to provide my social security number... except I don't have one yet. So god knows how they're keeping track of my payments, but I'll worry about that later. Anyway, I went back into the CPAM today (I have to take time off work each time to do this as well) and explained the situation - all I wanted to do was attach my RIB to my file. Of course it couldn't be that simple though. Normally a file is only accepted when ALL of the information has been obtained (including the RIB), but in my case for some reason my file was already 'en cours' (in progress) which means that they couldn't do anything with it (although nobody could explain the reason why it was suddenly untouchable). I now have to wait for them to send me a letter giving me my 15 character social security number and asking for my RIB. Then I can send that in, and in theory, finally be asked for 2 pictures for my card.

However, since I'll be leaving in 2 months, it's all beginning to seem a little pointless, especially since guess what happens when I leave the 'departement'... that's right! My carte vitale is no longer valid. Besides, if I even get my carte vitale before I leave I'll consider a miracle - or at least a triumph over the French red-tape in the face of adversity. Something like that anyway. What I care about most anyway is my social security number because as far as I know that's what I need in the future to prove that I made payments into the system (in particular for my pension in who knows how many decades), and in theory that should be the next thing to arrive. I highly doubt it though. I have a sneaky suspicion I'm not going to hear from them again...

But it's this kind of unhelpful attitude which the French have which really puts me off ever living here for an extended period of time. It's ok for holidays or short periods, but I can't see myself putting up with it for more than a couple of years. Once you get to know someone they're fine, but with strangers (foreign or French) they're very unwelcoming. Sadly it's pretty much endemic and is like that even between people on the streets (for example, it's amazing how many rude comments you get from pedestrians or fellow bikers when you're cycling on a cycling track, because they think you've encroached on their space - when it's either them who's doing the encroaching or when there's plenty of room for everyone and you're being perfectly respectful of their space).

Anyway, enough of that - if you've made it this far, congratulations. I'd give you a cookie for your trouble, except... well, I can't.

On a different note, I decided to clear the hot air in my head after all of this by going for a walk along the lake after dinner - it was very windy today (which helped with the clearing of the hot gases...), so there were some impressive waves on the lake (impressive given the size of the lake anyway):

A not so exciting weekend in the life of the wanderlust tck...

This weekend has got to be my laziest one in Annecy so far. This is about as close to doing literally nothing over a weekend as I've ever come to before. On Friday after work the weather was quite good, so I went for a bike ride around the lake. Right after getting home though, the weather turned cloudy, then the rain came and... well, it's been like that ever since. So on Saturday I slept in late, eventually got up and went into town to buy some cheese from the Cremerie du Lac (a great cheese shop - they buy cheeses and then 'affine' them in their own cave). Apart from that, I've been holed up in my room watching a couple of movies and occasionally watching the clouds pass overhead... it's a tough life.

In fact, my week in general has been pretty quiet, although I decided to go into town one evening to take a few pictures (one of the few evenings in the last two weeks when it hasn't been raining). The best pictures I took are on film, but I took a couple on my digital camera. Some of the locals (actually, most of them are probably tourists) sampling the local ice cream (naturally I joined in - it only seemed polite):

The building below served a number of purposes. It was originally built as a palace (le Palais de l'Ile) for the lords of Annecy in the 12th century, when the counts of Geneva moved to Annecy. However in the middle ages it became the prison and was in use as such until 1865. At one point the local government wanted to destory it, but at the time had some trouble finding the money to fund its destruction. Luckily some people had some sense and started a petition to protect it, which succeeded. It is now listed as a Historical Monument.

Finally, this is the Saint Francois de Sales Church. Initially a church, it was transformed into a barracks under the French Revolutionary occupation, a factory in 1794, apartments and shops in 1812 and finally back into a church in 1923 for use by the Italian community.

My next trip

That's right, I've finally booked my next trip! Here are some Google-sourced images of my destination:

I'll be flying into Budapest and spending 2 weeks in Hungary this summer. I'll be flying solo (well, I'll be doing the rest of the trip on my own as well...), because most of the other people I know are either on a different budget, going somewhere else, or aren't interested for one reason or another. It would be nice to travel with someone else, but on the other hand travelling on my own will mean I can do what I want, when I want, how I want.

Fear of Death

No, this post isn't about how I'm afraid of getting old and dying and how I never want to die. It's about the fact that these days death is such a taboo subject. Sure, we all have relatives who die and we all know that accidents and natural disasters happen every day, killing hundreds or thousands of people. But our exposure to that death is very limited. When I look at my 'experience' of death, I realise that I have been extremely sheltered. I'm 21 years old and have never been to a funeral. Granted when I was living on the other side of the world to my grandparents, it wasn't exactly easy to ship the entire family back at a moments notice when someone died. But for your average kid who grows up say in a European country with his or her family around, the occasional family funeral is probably all they know about death.

I've been 'lucky' enough to have seen more than that while living overseas - from a body wrapped in cloth floating down the Ganges to a body burning in a funeral pyre to the dead man I once saw on a train station platform with flies all over him while on a school trip.

What I don't understand is why people have this fear of showing death. Obviously it's not pleasant, but there's no point in hiding from it. Looking at the two most recent natural disasters in the world - the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in Sichuan - there are potentially anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people who have lost their lives within the space of merely a few hours. Sure, we hear about the numbers of dead and we see images of rescue operations, but does that actually give us a true picture of the reality of the situation? When it comes down to it, a number is just a number, and rescue operations, as important as they are, are only one aspect of it. I believe it was Stalin who said "a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic". Not that I support his ideas, but he has a point. Consider this: what would affect you more, hearing that 50,000 people died in an earthquake, or seeing a picture of a single child killed by his school collapsing on him? Having lived in Asia for half my life and travelled through Sichuan and South-East Asia, I feel more connected to the disasters than your average European or American, who probably will just see the coverage on tv, say "that's terrible" and then go back to eating dinner.

I'm mentioning this because of some comments I saw here. People call the pictures offensive, but how can a picture portray anything but reality? They can be used to target certain emotions or to get a certain point across, but when it comes down to it, what you're seeing is real stuff folks. Personally I find the pictures compelling and well worth displaying.

It's definitely a cultural issue as well - in Western cultures I find people are far more sheltered from death. I have to say though that when it comes to that, I definitely side with the more Asian view, which although of course it varies from country to country, on the whole displays death but in a dignified and respectful manner.

The Changing of Seasons

The other day, during one of my (frequent) bored moments at work, I was looking at a calendar and I realised that I'm already more than halfway through my stay in Annecy. It's amazing how quickly the first few weeks and months can pass. Before you know it, you're already counting down the weeks to when you leave - whether it's in apprehension over the future or in anticipation of leaving, although it's usually the former rather than the latter.

In the first three months of my time here I've been pretty active - sensibly enough, since I'm living essentially in the middle of the Alps! In the first 12 weeks I've been skiing 12 times, most of the time with fantastic conditions - the season was great this year, with plenty of snow and sun. Now though with the air warming up a bit activities generally involve cycling, walking in the mountains and soaking up the sun on the edge of the lake bien sur! Yesterday I cycled around the Lac d'Annecy (40km) in 1 hour and 38 minutes, which is a new (personal) record. I'm hoping to get under 1 hour and 30 minutes by the time I leave. Last Saturday I also went for a walk on a mountain nearby called the Tournette, although we ended up turning around partway up after the second avalanche... we ended up climbing a lower altitude hill/mountain just next to it called the Col de la Forclaz. This was the view from the top:


Unfortunately work here hasn't improved - I have absolutely no interest in what I'm doing and don't understand half of it. Often my supervisor talks as if a) I've been with the company for years like him and know the organisation like the back of my hand and b) I've taken a course or studied the type of work I'm doing here, neither of which is true. I don't get along with my supervisor either, and my job is certainly one thing I won't miss when I leave. At least I now know not to accept a permanent job like this when I graduate!

Sadly that doesn't significantly narrow down the possibilities - I still have no idea what to do after university. I'm still struggling to see how I could ever settle down, but I often wonder if that wouldn't be the best thing for me. It's funny, when I was younger my parents always thought I would settle down and my sister would keep moving around, but now it looks like it's the opposite. My sister seems pretty happy where she is (and has been for 6 or 7 years now) and seems to have established a life and routine now from what I can tell. But I guess for me it will be a case of waiting for time to run out at the end of university next year, forcing me into taking a decision.