Carte d’Etudiant, S’il Vous Plaît

It’s funny the things you treasure in times like these that you would otherwise take for granted. I was so hungry yesterday morning, because all I had were three biscuit packs taken from church at the Midland Hotel in Bradford the day before. I could only drink water with my hand from the tap in the bathroom. Buying food was almost exhilarating – I had lunch: a baguette, of course, along with some cheese and a bag of apples. That would last me several meals at least. Now I’ve just returned from buying some juice, tomatoes, and jam, all of which are so precious. New tastes to add to my palate after several meals of bread, cheese, and apples, as if I’d never tasted them before! And getting a plastic cup was like unlocking an achievement in a video game like Minecraft: drinking ability acquired! All these are thoughts I will soon forget as I settle into the confidence of routine, which naturally I long for in these uncertain times, but as in the past I’ve given others the advice to enjoy the uncertainty, for it is fleeting; to ‘live the questions’, I must heed my own advice now.

This morning we went to see the international office woman to get our signed documents back to release our ERASMUS funds, as well as obtain our student cards, a coveted item that would seemingly unlock all else, foremost being the internet. The woman had not signed the documents yet – she is, after all, very busy – and told us to come back the following day. Then another girl, the girl who’d done her best to take us through the blue form, tried to help us get our student cards.

The problematic requirement was called something like responsabilité civile – health insurance of some sort, I believe. That was what the Americans had been arguing about the day before, because their uni had already made them buy insurance and they understandably didn’t want to pay more. ERASMUS students were supposed to only have to pay €5, well, €20 when you add in some other charge, but they were saying we had to have an EU identity card, otherwise we too would have to pay the full €200. No thank you. I was mentally preparing to put my foot down when the American guy, the one who speaks French well, pulled out his international student identity card (ISIC, which you can get from STATravel which entitles you to numerous discounts) and said he had insurance with that card. Now, I had that card as well, having applied for it during the summer for the discounts on flights and other things abroad. But I didn’t know anything about insurance. Nevertheless I pulled mine out and said, ‘I’ve got that as well.’ That seemed acceptable; the international office woman photocopied them (every time a French person is willing to photocopy documents rather than telling us we need to bring photocopies, even though they have a photocopy machine right behind them, I rejoice, for it’s a rare occurrence) and we trooped down to the payment office.

But I knew we weren’t yet in the clear and stayed on prepared-to-put-my-foot-down mode for when the payments woman balked at a card she didn’t recognise. Miraculously, that didn’t happen, and we got away with paying only €20. Well, I say ‘we’, but the Americans probably really did have insurance with their cards – I doubt I do, I didn’t pay what they did. Thank goodness I ordered that card, though.

Confession: The French have not won me over to their bureaucratic, multiple copies required, filled-out-in-triplicate way of doing things. I tend to think that as long as I can get through the process and obtain the end item or state that is required, it doesn’t really matter if I actually have what they’re demanding – isn’t it just the government making people pay for things they’ll only need in the rarest of circumstances? Or institutions covering themselves so they won’t be liable in any case whatsoever? And then even if young French (who, from what I’ve seen so far, hate it as much as we do) resolve to get into politics to change it, by the time they get to a place where they could potentially change it, they themselves are benefitting from it too much to want to change it anymore. Sly fat cats.

Probably not very morally upright or even completely factually viable, but I am fairly exasperated. You’ll see why in a bit.

Back to the story. Again, I couldn’t pat myself on the back quite yet. We had all the required documents, but we still had to make the actual application. We went upstairs to deuxième étage and joined the queue. Thankfully it wasn’t long. Like at the picnic yesterday, I felt I should talk to people, felt it would be a good idea, but couldn’t quite work up the will. Other than those in our crew. Finally my turn came and I went in. I decided to ask, as endearingly as I could, ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’ She looked at me in a sort of cute, helpless sort of way, shaking her head. Guess not. Oh well. Hope there are no problems.

She was stumped with the ISIC as well, and kept asking her colleague things. The colleague was a bit better at English, but not by much, so it ended up being the other student applying at that moment, a German girl, who asked me in English what they needed to know, then told them my answers in French. Germans are so reliable. I bet they’re efficient with their bureaucracy as well. I won’t deny that the thought, ‘Maybe I should’ve studied abroad to Germany after all’ has come to mind more than a few times over the course of this week, but I’m not a quitter.

In the end they accepted the card, but not before sending me back up to the international office woman to get her to photocopy my passport. Thankfully they saved my spot in the queue. The other things required were, of course, two identity photos, which – this frustrates me quite a bit – are so that they can stick one on the application form and scan one for the student card. Why don’t they just scan it and then stick it on the form, and therefore only need one!? I bought eight photos in the UK before coming, wishing I could buy less, and now I’m almost out.

Oh well. No matter. I was on my way to the guy who prints the cards. Could this be it? At long last, was this fabled mythical item, with all the riches and glory that accompanied it, about to be mine? I imagined myself celebrating with hands in the air as if I were back at Far East junior year, right after we won the football championship on penalties. He had me write my name on a list. He put my photo in the scanner. He stamped a single sheet of paper five times and gave it to me. He stuck a blank card in the card-printing machine.

Ennnh. The card came out with half my face blacked out. Ink problems? He adjusted the roll inside the machine and put another card in. That one came out with a thick black line on it obscuring some of the information. He looked at me. I looked at him. No way.

“Vendredi.”

What!! Come back Friday!? It’s only Tuesday! What could possibly take three days about replacing an ink cartridge?? But of course I had none of the French to express these feelings, so I could only muster, “Vendredi…d’accord.”

Then it got worse. As I left the room the girl behind me, the awesome, helpful German girl, sat down and got her card. just. fine.

What.

And everyone after that, including the people with me, got theirs just fine.

What. What. What.

Most of you will be pleased to know I didn’t pantomime the rage roiling within me. I’ve hated foreigners in Japan (don’t take that the way it sounds, foreigners) long enough to know that throwing a fit gets you nowhere, and generally just confirms stereotypes. I’m not about confirming stereotypes, as far as I’m able. So I left with the others. Vendredi? Vendredi.

I did also have that sheet he stamped five times, which contained all the same information as the student card would, so maybe I could procure internet with just that. Our group returned to our Arsenal accommodation and asked about internet. Apparently it wasn’t so much that the student card was the magical item as that the numbers on it became our login username and password details. But the accommodation internet was not, as we’d believed, wi-fi; we would need ethernet cables to connect. Joy. Another thing to buy.

We went shopping. In addition to Monoprix, we’d also found an electronics place yesterday where we were able to by power adaptors (after all my trying to think of how to ask where they were in the shop, the word turned out to be the same in French as in English. Recollections of Japanese…) so we returned there and some of the others bought ethernet cables. I decided to wait until I had my full funding – the soap, shampoo, toothpaste, towel, duvet, and duvet cover that I also bought today nearly cleaned me out. In fact I had to borrow money from my American friend when he and I went food shopping afterward. Not ideal.

[This next bit I wrote this afternoon, whereas the rest I’m writing this evening – or later days and changing the ‘date published’ on WordPress, but never mind – so it is representative merely of my state at that time, not my current state or general state in relation to being in France. It is a comparison of my financial situations in successive study/work experiences.]

The first time around, the only challenge was finding an ATM – there was one in the commuters’ lounge, but it was often out of cash, and the next nearest one was at Wawa’s, about a twenty minute walk away. So I found myself withdrawing large amounts of cash when I was in downtown Philadelphia – two things unlikely to be found together in the same sentence outside of a crime report – to take back to campus. But I’d already had the account, and it already had savings in it.

The following year was a piece of cake as I was earning money and withdrawing from the same account. The most complicated bit was creating that account in Japanese, and that wasn’t that hard – world’s best customer service, for the win. Plus, it being Japan, there was no need to think twice about carrying around large amounts of cash in my wallet.

The second time around (third time, yes, but second uni) was more complicated – I took a lot of pounds with me and deposited them in an account once I’d made one – which wasn’t overly difficult and everything was set up and running, including my debit card, that same day – and that was that until it ran out. There were a few days of panic, but then my parents and I discovered that it was super easy to do a bank transfer from Japan to a Lloyds TSB account in the UK, and I was set for the next year and a half.

This time, the third uni, I’m close to pulling my hair out, in a quiet, internal sort of way. Maybe it’s just that I’m in the middle of it. I thought I’d be receiving my ERASMUS grant almost immediately after arriving. How naive of me – I now know not to expect anything to happen immediately in France [this is the outburst I asked you to take with a grain of salt in yesterday’s post]. As of now I have forty pounds in my UK account. I have plenty of money in my US account, but it doesn’t have a chip so I don’t think I can use it in ATMs! I just need to find something that works and stick with that – or borrow money from friends till the grant comes through.

I can’t help but feel that I am living in an interim period. The globalisation of banking is still playing catch-up to the globalisation of travel. Or maybe I’m just stupid and don’t know where to look. I hear Citibank is good. They call themselves the world’s first global bank. I’m not really in a position to switch everything over to them at the moment, however.

I admit it, I’m stressed out. It’s not consuming me, but sometimes it feels like it could if I let it. It’s not like there are concrete things that are seriously bad, I’m just out of my comfort zone. And this summer I got used to being sat firmly on the couch in the centre of my comfort zone. This is good for me. This is good for me, I keep telling myself. Doesn’t stop me from wanting to scream sometimes. Why am I doing this again? Is there something at the end of the tunnel that makes this worth it? French mastery? What use will the language be if I hate the people and policies by the end of it?

Hah, I won’t hate them. I might just need a long break from them.

[Okay, now that the minor breakdown with brief philosophical interlude to reflect on globalisation is done with, let’s carry on with the account of the day’s events.]

That evening, our group (myself and the two I came from Bradford with, the three Americans, and the other two English girls we met) went out for dinner. We walked through the area called Saint-Pierre, where a lot of bars and some clubs and hordes and hordes of students are; carried on along the river, where we saw even more students doing something – either a freshers initiation or some sort of protest – and found a nice quiet place a bit farther along. As we were all trying to save money, I wouldn’t call it the height of the French dining experience – hopefully that is yet to come – but it was good food, and a good time.

It’s going to be a good year – I’m going to enjoy it. Perhaps I didn’t spend enough time during the summer anticipating this year, as I did before I came to England. It’s important for me to make up my mind that I’m going to love a place, because if I get caught off-guard (as I have, somewhat) it’s easy to descend into bitterness, but I don’t want to live like that. I will enjoy my wine and my cheese, everyone that I meet, and every bumbling mistake and crucified pronunciation on the path to fluency.

Oh, and I should mention – seeing as it’s probably the true cause of my improved mood – that I was able to use my US credit card to withdraw euros from an ATM on our way to the restaurant. That was such a relief. Didn’t need a chip after all, the dreadfully outdated swipe bar sufficed. Thank goodness I changed the PIN when I was able to something I can remember so we don’t have a repeat performance of Turkey! They’ll probably whack me with a massive overseas charge, and since I don’t yet have internet I haven’t seen yet what that charge is, but at least I won’t be out on the street starving. That is unless they cut off my access because it’s coming from a new overseas location. But this should get my by until the ERASMUS funds come in, which will hopefully be by the end of this week.

So today turned out to be another productive day, though no student card. I at least have a full set of bedding, which is probably the most key to my current physical and emotional well-being. That and money. Does that say something about me I don’t want to be said?

Day 11: Intellect And Neopets

Tonight’s going to be short, because I want sleep and I need to get a lot done tomorrow. I worked hard today, so I don’t feel bad about going to bed. I think that when you don’t feel good about going to bed when it’s late in the evening (or in this case, morning, though I’ll make WordPress lie once again), or you go to bed because you feel like giving up on the day, that’s pretty clear evidence that something went wrong that day, that something could’ve been done better. I feel that way a lot, to be honest. Thankfully not tonight, but it’s very possible that ‘worked hard’ will not be good enough come Thursday.

On another note, for a man quickly running out of money and desperately trying to procure some from overseas, today was a not insignificant success. I ate a cereal breakfast, snacked lightly during the day, and absolutely gorged myself at two parties for free this evening. It was wondrous, and I probably won’t need to eat for most of tomorrow. I’m trying to train my stomach to work like a camel’s, and it’s funny to observe how quickly, after returning to life as a uni student, I slipped back into the ‘when free, consume everything in sight’ mentality, and even more this time seeing as I’m paying for things. London may be less gracious to the under-funded, and I will likely be making some changes to my financial schedule, but there are so many free(-ish) things to be found when you look for them.

I love thinking. I do over-think, yes, and I have been hurt by it, but I still love thinking and in general it turns out well for me. I didn’t go into this so much yesterday when talking about films, but I’ll take a twisted, complex film that I have to figure out over a spoon-fed ordeal almost any day. I like sports and games that require strategy as well as physique, like football – and at the last winter Olympics I discovered curling. The preceding Olympics I’d been down on it as a household chore on ice, but this time thanks in no small part to the attractiveness of the Japanese team, I first watched a bit of it, then looked up the rules, then was utterly hooked on it. It combines the rigorous intellectual challenge of chess with the skilful finesse of any precision sport, and includes a physical aspect, to boot. Couldn’t be better. Don’t knock it till you’ve learnt the rules and watched a few ends.

I like my games cerebral too, not left to chance. Sure, a night of Bunco with impassioned friends is riotous fun, but in the intervals I’ll take something I can control, provided I can hang on to the complexities. Tonight, I learned such a game. Ironically, it’s called ‘bumhead’, and even more interestingly, I used to play something very similar to it on Neopets. Do I hear any cheers? Anyone else devote a significant proportion of their childhood free time to this gateway drug MMORPG? Fortunately I didn’t go too far down that path…well, maybe a bit too far, but I did enjoy playing all the games, earning money, and banking or investing it (especially once I realised my pet could be “starving” but would never actually die, and therefore didn’t really need food).

I wasn’t actually going to talk about Neopets here tonight, and honestly I haven’t even thought about it for years, but curiosity got the better of me and I went to take a look for old times’ sake. A lot of it’s changed, but it’s still recognisable and has most of the old trappings – the games, certainly, and even most of the regions of the world, all the shops, over-arching stories, the bank, stock market, and even the scratchcard kiosk was still surviving in Happy Valley (I seem to recall it being in the Ice Caves before, though). I couldn’t just take a look around so I tried to sign in, and, after having them email me my username and password (the advantage of keeping the same email address since the first one I ever created, way back in 5th grade), I was reunited with my old Neopet (2,999 days old, they tell me, to be precise). Oh, and I found out that he was not only “starving”, he was “dying”. But Neopets, like I said, cannot die, and his mood was “cheerful”, so it’s all good.

Everything’s progressed, though. My few inventory items were mostly “retired”, though I may be able to sell a few as antiques and make a small profit. Speaking of profit, I revisited my Neohome and found it categorised as “classic” because they’ve revamped the whole system. So I sold it back to the bank, the whole thing, and made a tidy sum. Unfortunately my bank account hadn’t grown a bit – they make you manually collect interest each day; I suppose that’s one of the ways they keep kids coming back daily – but the story when I visited my stock market portfolio was grandly different. I only had holdings in two companies, but while one had devalued by over 90%, the other had been experiencing record-breaking growth, was leaps and bounds above all the other stocks, and I sold it for almost 4000% of what I paid for it – gained over 20,000 neopoints. Not bad for the first day back after about eight years. I promptly bought up shares in several bottom-lining companies, so perhaps in another eight years I’ll make another killing.

This probably sounds ridiculously childish to you, and it is, but I actually think Neopets has some value for kids. I did notice a monetised section where you can pay real money for ‘neocash’ (not to be confused with the innocent neopoints) with which you can buy more interesting items, and though this is unfortunate and I’d hate to see some little kid begging her mum for the credit card to buy a princess wig for her Neopet, it’s basically inevitable. Every community like this eventually monetises, not least of which being Facebook. But despite that there are so many features from which kids can learn about real life. Sure, the ‘work’ to earn money is just games, but the banking system is somewhat realistic, with interest; the stock market, though random, is similar in usage to the real stock market; you can haggle in the stores or participate in auctions or even sell items in your own store; there’s lotteries and newspapers and forums. A lot more education than Runescape, I daresay, though I’ll admit I did spend some time – not much – on there as well.

Oh, they’ve also upped the customisation system, so I can now buy clothing for my Neopet and put it on him. Just to see how it was I quickly bought up some items; he’s now decked out in a white polo, khaki trousers, and blue sneakers, and though he’s still “dying”, his mood has gone from “cheerful” to “extremely happy”. Attaboy. I’m not so into his red and green skin anymore, though; I may give him a repaint (the more complicated the design, the more expensive, of course). Haha. I’m a phase kinda guy, so this won’t last long (it can’t – I have so much to be doing), but surely you know what it’s like to stumble upon an old toy; you want to play with it again. I wonder if they still have my favourite game…

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that that game showed me a little about how the world works, and got me excited about the career paths available to me. Most games these days don’t seem to do that, they’re just diversions and mind-numbers. Kids are more wary of ‘learning games’, to be sure, but that just means we have to be more creative in designing them. I was perfectly happy to play Math Blaster and Gizmos ‘n’ Gadgets as a child, and I could see the effects of those missions even in junior high maths and science.

So I don’t think it’s too much to ask that our entertainment, whether it’s films, card games, or fully immersive environments, be both stimulating and self-improving.

Hey, tell me what kinds of things you guys did as children that you haven’t thought about for ages but wouldn’t mind revisiting now.

Oh, and I guess this wasn’t short at all, but I didn’t plan on running into thirteen year-old me.

Everyone Has An ‘Is Anybody Out There?’ Moment Sometime, Right?

(I probably do too-long titles, in general.)

I’m really dissatisfied with this site. I’m dissatisfied with a lot of things at the moment, but this is one thing I really don’t like and feel like I should be able to change but so far haven’t been able to. It feels inefficient and ugly. I want it to be simple but appealing, light but deep. But I don’t know how to do that. I could go really minimalist and strip it down to a single blog, but I also like organisation and I do have a lot of different topics and ideas.

Maybe the problem is that I created the framework before the content. I made the TCK section before actually writing any TCK stuff. I thought it would come quickly but I’ve been preoccupied with my real life (and of course a sizeable amount of time-wasting) and it hasn’t.

That’s why I need you guys to let me know what you think and what you want. I feel like I’m always asking that, but then I saw another site with a similar request and I thought, “I don’t really know you, man, just be yourself and put out what you like.” So I guess it’s stupid for me to be asking all of you (the two of you that are reading this, probably) that same question. If you agree with my reaction and just want me to ‘be myself’ then say so. If you’d rather have something else, say so, because I’m a pretty good faker. At some things.

A lot of people have their blog on their home page, but I don’t like that. I like having a set home page that has a little about the site, a little guidance, and a little taste of what I am. No, who I am.

So I shall set about trying to do that.

I also wanted to make this a site I’d feel comfortable linking to from Facebook and other places; you know, really having it represent me. But I’m not so sure about that. I’m quite finicky about online presence. Or should I say skittish. Both delightful words.

Not that I should even be spending this time here. I have work to do, self-improvement to accomplish. Study!

(Oh, on a perhaps related note, I discovered this place called HubPages where you write about stuff and if lots of people come and read it and click on the various and annoying ads, you get some money. So I’m going to try that out because I need money. What do you think I should write about? It’s supposed to be helpful.)