Tired in Paris

Finally things have calmed down a lot. I am so tired of working, searching for an apartment and life in general. The new French president talks about working more and earning more, with all the law reforms that supposedly will take place. Yes, brilliant as an idea, but already I am working day and night and cannot fathom the idea of working even more (and cannot, even if I want to!).
The thing that really ticks me off is that I don’t remember ever having worked so hard in my life. What’s more, I don’t even think that I am more productive and sometimes think that I am even less productive than when I worked less. Many of our time indeed is spent negotiating how to do our work (calming down colleagues who get nuts thinking we were up to some no good or something that could have negative impact on them in comparison which seems to lead to the idea better make sure others do as little as me), leaving not much time to do the work itself (and too tired).

Working environment cannot be more different between Australia or the US and France. If the default assumption among my American colleagues was trust (for example, I cannot make it to the meeting, and I don’t expect that I will be fucked over just because I was not there), here the assumption is distrust and méfiance. Meetings become extremely important because everyone expects to get the worst end if not present. But of course the important decisions have been discussed outside among cliques. But this does not prevent everyone to have their say in very long discourse that goes right, left, up and down until everyone including the speaker often forget what is being talked about. This explains why meetings tend to drag on and on. And what’s surprising is that often whilst someone is talking the others would discuss loudly among themselves!
As is the rule in French conversation, people don’t wait for a gap to jump in verbally. No, they just speak louder and drown the other speaker (who in turn would turn up the volume too). This will take some time to master for Anglophones who tend to wait for a gap (and of course, among Anglophones, they say that in conversation, the opposite of "speaking" is really "waiting", and not "listening"!).

Back to my complaint, now I work much more for less of a salary than what I had when I was more junior in other countries that seem to pay their workers more. But, I tell myself, I am in Paris (and I look longingly at all the lovely apartments that those moneyed or well connected seem to have). And Paris is Paris is Paris!

That’s probably what you’re thinking too, complaining when one lives in Paris? Actually, these are the moments when I remember fondly being a tourist in Paris. Then, Paris was indeed the romantic city that holds a lot of mysteries, the Parisians did not bug me because you project onto them your ideas formed from films and novels (charming, secretive, daring, impulsive, but always romantic). Well, the more you know them the less you rely on these images and, frankly, like everywhere else, the reality often lags behind the ideas…Indeed sometimes I see a person that would activate the image I used to have of Parisians, but the person has to really fit this image...otherwise, it's just other people like me doing boulot, métro, dodo (translation: work, subway, sleep).