jj and i entered the subway through an entrance for people who already have metro tickets, because it has no ticket office. when we got there, the doors were open so you could just walk in, but that’s not a free ride. people jump the turnstiles all the time. there are “controllers” who are in the subway checking your metro tickets to make sure they have been stamped. we haven’t seen many of them recently, but jj’s friend got caught the other day without her ticket. she had stamped it but foolishly threw it away. they never believe it when people say that, so she got a ticket for 40 euros. the kids were scandalized. they think they are immune. jj said, “but she’s a kid! and she had used a ticket, but threw it away”. that’s why i’m always telling her to keep her ticket. so when jj was faced with the open door, i told her she had to have a stamped ticket in case she got “controlled”. we had to transfer between subway lines, and lo and behold, around a blind corner, were the controllers. jj was very glad (as was i) that she had her stamped ticket.
we were on our way to visit an architect’s office where jj has been offered an internship through our friend marie. shigiro ban, is the japanese architect, who is quite well known. he co-designed the new centre pompidou in metz, france (with marie’s brother, jean de gastine). marie is office manager for the paris office, which is near the beaubourg museum. since it is jj’s half day today, we went to have lunch first. there is a fountain there, with sculptures by nikki st phalle and i remembered that next to it, used to be a cafe called “dame tartine”. (a tartine is an open faced sandwich). the cafe was still there with tables outside. it was a beautiful day and we had a nice lunch. meanwhile, there was a man wading in the fountain picking up coins. we were talking about the controllers and the metro and the youth i once watched jump the turnstile and proceed to beat a vending machine with no one stopping him. we were talking about getting arrested for stupid things and she said “going to prison is REALLY bad for your resume”. glad she’s on track...
marie came to pick us up at the cafe to bring us to the office. it’s in a fabulous part of town, right in the middle of the marais on a little street, in an old building on the top floor with lovely views of chimneys. ( i took lots of reference shots.) shigero ban has done really inventive work. he built shelters for the japanese made homeless by the kobe earthquake. the task was to make something strong, weather proof but recyclable and cheap. he used cardboard shipping tubes attached together to make walls. he did several projects using those. his latest theme is lattice work and the metz beaubourg uses this theme. jj is SOOO lucky. what an opportunity! to have an internship with such a creative architect. she is focused on making models and they have a master model maker in the office. the japanese in the office speak japanese and english. the french in the office speak french and english. so jj will probably not be practicing her french, but that’s ok, since the rest of the internship will be such a great experience.
after our visit jj went home on her own, and i went to BHV (dept store with extensive hardware store in basement). the challenge in living in a foreign country includes figuring out what things are called, and where to find them. i wanted to buy a can of compressed air to clean my old laptop. i had asked the computer stores around my neighborhood and the appliance store, but they didn’t have it and had no idea where to get it. they understood what i was looking for, even though i didn’t know the words to describe it. i put some french words together that i thought meant “can of compressed air” (“boite d’air compresse”). finally i looked on the internet (where i should’ve looked to start with) and found the term “bombe d’air comprime”. anyway, i figured out that BHV had them.
it reminded me of the time (forgive me if i already wrote about this) when i was looking for parsnips in the marche. i could only ask for “the vegetable that is the same shape as a carrot, but white”. the first vendor said, “yes, i know what you’re talking about, but i can’t remember the word for it, and i don’t have any.” the second vendor said EXACTLY the same thing. finally, i learned the word which is “un panais”. someone told me that the french ate ALOT of parsnips during the war and so people got very sick of them, associated it with that time and didn’t want to eat them for decades.
Print this post
No comments:
Post a Comment