Author Archives: Eric

Cellular plans while traveling

2015-07-01 – 19:39

When traveling in 2015, some of the biggest concerns often relate to cellular and data connectivity. I don’t have all of the answers here, but I do have some tips for a few given countries.

United States

When we travel to the US, we often have a lot of activities planned. In my case, in particular, I visit a lot of people in a lot of places. Having a reasonably-priced SIM with voice and data is thus very important to coordinate everything. I’ve tried a few and the winner for me is T-Mobile. For my length of trip, it tends to be the best deal among the major providers. There are, of course, small regional companies that lease airwaves from the big ones, but because my first stop in the US is not always in the same region, it has been too inconvenient to learn the best in each place. When I arrive, one of my first stops is always the local T-Mobile shop. Last time I went back, I was even able to save money because my old SIM had not yet expired (which happens after 3 months) so I just needed to top it up. Normally I get a plan in which I am forced to load the card with some amount of money and then a few dollars are deducted every day that my phone is turned on. I have to warn you: it’s not that cheap. I think there are cheaper packages if you order online, though I’ve never gone this route.

As an American, I have a Google Voice account. After buying a SIM, I immediately get on the internet and link my Google Voice number to whatever cellular number I have. Often, my first stop is Connecticut, so I have a SIM from that area code, but my friends around the country can call me using the same number I’ve had for years.

In the US, it is probably feasible to do without a data plan, as free wifi is fairly easy to find in most areas. The local coffee shops are hit or miss, but it is getting more prevalent. As much as I hate to do it, I often go to one of the chains, including Starbucks, Panera Bread, and Dunkin’ Donuts. They aren’t interesting (OK, well, I do like Dunkin’ Donuts quite a lot) but at least I don’t end up driving around forever.

There are some providers that I would not do business with, based on past experiences:

AT&T

The reseller gave me incorrect information on what plan I needed and then he had to charge me some additional minimum to top me up so I could get my data working. This led to me overpaying by $5 which I had no use for once I left the US. His hands were tied so I contacted AT&T customer service, which was completely unhelpful. They had my money and weren’t giving it back, regardless of the questionable legality of their bait and switch. I complained via the internet, filed a case with the Better Business Bureau, and then was contacted by Don Arteaga and Jackie W. Sutton. Nobody cared.

A reply from Tina LeBlanc: “The account that you are asking about is no longer an active account. I am not able to issue refunds for prepaid services.”

Jackie Sutton stated, “the prepaid account was cancelled and any unused account balance was forfeited upon expiration. A refund cannot be provided.”

Obviously the account was no longer active. It was a prepaid account and they waited forever to respond to my problem. It’s not my fault the account they defrauded me on happened to be a prepaid account. I hope they’re happy they got their $5, because all my business since has gone to T-Mobile. So anyways, stay away from those guys.

Family Mobile from Walmart

A salesperson at Walmart once conned me into thinking this was prepaid. She was fairly dumb, so she might have believed it too. But it’s not. I immediately returned it and, though the contract wasn’t immediately cancelled as they said it was, the company (T-Mobile) actually made it right.

Germany

In Germany I have always just gone to Saturn (big electronics store) and bought a cheap SIM card just for voice usage. This is usually about EUR 10 and trouble-free. However, I had a lot of trouble the last time I was in Germany. It led to me paying for, but not having, data for the entire trip. The card was branded Fonic but it actually was from a company named Callmobile. I guess they are basically reselling O2 service at a lower cost. This particular trip I decided I also needed data. For whatever reason, the activation never worked properly and the messages I was getting on the phone were confusing and indicated I was not getting the package I chose on the website (normally you buy the card then activate it on the web). I contacted them via the webpage and they totally ignored my messages. I sent them a message each day for the entire week I was there and even now, six months later, I have never heard back. I guess they basically got my money and knew they screwed up so they weren’t going to bother with me. I contacted Fonic on Twitter but they disavowed any connection to this since it was sold by Callmobile. I told Fonic that it kind of is their problem if they let fly-by-night companies put the Fonic name on crappy products. I can’t exactly tell you how to know which card not to get (there is generally some fine print), so I’m going to just recommend not to buy any card from the Fonic brand.

If you are familiar with a town, relying on wifi might work, but the problem in Germany is that you don’t know where it is unless you are a local. Yes, it exists in many bars and coffee shops, but you just kind of learn about it as you live in a town. It’s not generally advertised. Of course Starbucks is also around. They have wifi and slightly better hours, so in extreme circumstances I’ll go there.

France

I’ve never needed a prepaid SIM card in France, given that I live here. A traveler could probably do without data and just use wifi around town, though business hours in France are quite limited. It is better than Germany though, in that the existence of wifi is usually clearly indicated with a sticker in the window. Around France, it is very easy to find restaurants, cafes, and bars that do have it.

Other considerations

If you have a proper European SIM (I’m not sure how this applies to prepaid ones), European Union law limits what a provider can charge when you cross borders within Europe. This often has the result that some aspects of the service (SMS is a common example) can actually be cheaper when traveling than they are at home.

A final note for Americans: It is important to ensure that you have an unlocked GSM phone. For example, Verizon phones are simply not compatible with the network over here (unless you have a “world phone,” with a GSM slot). A phone from AT&T or T-Mobile, on the other hand, will generally work fine so long as you have it unlocked. Doing so will require you to call your provider. Laws and policies vary from year to year and provider to provider regarding if they will unlock your phone. Another consideration is which bands the phone supports. Often providers in a given region will utilize a couple bands and these may only partially overlap with those in use by your provider at home. This means that connectivity could be limited. If none of this works for you (wrong provider, wrong bands, etc.), you can also just buy a cheap flip phone for use only while traveling. For my first six months living in Germany, I was using a phone I bought from Saturn for maybe EUR 15. It was the cheapest they had and it actually was quite indestructible. After I replaced it with a Galaxy Nexus, it made a suitable phone for visitors.

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The king’s tax collectors

2015-06-26 – 01:03

The French government got me! They caught me driving by one of their speed cameras. Of course, the photo clearly shows that I was driving well below the speed limit. But what do facts matter when the real purpose is fundraising?

This ticket alleges that my car was traveling 97 km/h in a 90 km/h zone on the A6 down in Écully, just north of Lyon. Because there is a 5 km/h buffer to allow for error on posted speeds of less than 100 km/h (above 100 km/h, it would be 5%), this means I was formally charged with the crime of going 92 km/h in a 90 km/h zone.

I would never expect to have a good chance of success in fighting a ticket anywhere in the world. I’ve driven a lot, been ticketed, and fought tickets before. Interestingly, my tickets have been wrong more often than they have been correct. (My last photo citation showed somebody else’s car.) I am thus very aware of the uphill battle when wrongly ticketed, but I think it’s important to document these stories, even if we must live in places with such reduced liberté.

My case

I know society has a tendency to prejudge these situations (“Oh, he’s guilty, but he just wants to exploit some technicality. It’s a photo so it must be correct.”). I ask you to please try to forget those biases, and remember the following points:

  • There is no wizard! Technology isn’t magical. It has specifications that must be respected if you intend to get the desired result.
  • If you violate these specifications, in some cases the evidence can actually be evidence of innocence.
  • The roads do not become safer by wrongly punishing innocent drivers. Guilty drivers will generally be found guilty, even in a system designed to protect the innocent motorist.
  • It is more important to protect the innocent than to convict the guilty.

My argument closely mirrors that of this guy. I guess he won in court, but he’s French so he clearly has an advantage over me.

Here is the certificate (French) for the Mesta 210C speed camera. In the middle of page 2, it is clearly stated that the camera should be oriented at a 25-degree angle to the trajectory of traffic. This relates largely to what is known as the cosine effect, the idea that a car moving away from a radar looks faster than one moving across its beam, however it seems that this particular model has other reasons that make the discrepancy even worse.

Here is an official report from Metz (French) on the impact of improperly aligned cameras on reported speed. At the bottom of page 2, you can see a table showing the effect of small angular error on the reported speed. Note that the effect is very large for even a small deviation from 25 degrees.

Here is a photo from the certificate, taken from a properly configured camera at 25-degree angle from the trajectory of traffic. This angle can be verified with trigonometry (which I have done), but given that it comes from an official document just assume it’s correct.

An official photo with the car at the correct angle.

Below is a photo from my ticket. It is easy to see that the car is changing lanes and that this angle is different from that in the other photo. (Disregard the direction of travel, as the system works either way.) Trigonometry shows that this is approximately a 16-degree angle from the camera line of sight, but the difference is also very obvious to the naked eye. This difference in angle is so blatantly obvious that I don’t really need to type anything else to disprove this citation.

Speed camera photo of my car.

Some points to take away from these photos:

  • This ticket was issued in clear violation of the 25-degree angle in the camera certificate.
  • It is clear to the naked eye that this is true. Anybody who says otherwise has an agenda.
  • Based on the French government study linked above, this amount of deviation would lead to speed being over-reported by a lot.
  • It is unlikely that vehicle dynamics would allow for crossing lanes at a 9-degree angle while traveling at 97 km/h.

One more note, before I proceed to slam the system. The document regarding the government study stated that it is illegal to operate the camera in violation of the 25-degree rule. This means that the person who sent the ticket might be guilty of a crime.

Due process rights obliterated

The only thing more offensive than being found guilty of the crime, in which any bystander would have seen my innocence, is the complete lack of due process rights along the way. The entire system is set up to be as painful as possible for anybody attempting to challenge a ticket. This includes lost time, lost money, and stress (though, to be fair, this is most government interactions in France). Notice how long this process takes. There is no excuse for this slowness. The system is just incompetent and they probably like it that way, as a deterrent to those who might contest.

The timeline:

  1. October 25, 2013: “Infraction” committed.
  2. October 29, 2013: Ticket issued.
  3. November 2, 2013: I requested photos.
  4. November 12, 2013: Photos were sent.
  5. November 21, 2013: I paid EUR 68 “deposit” for the privilege of due process (early payment and admitting guilt would have only been EUR 45).
  6. December 13, 2013: I sent appeal letter by post.
  7. December 19, 2013: Notice was sent that file had been transferred to local tribunal de police.
  8. April 22, 2014: I requested information on the status of the appeal.
  9. July 1, 2014: Police sent letter requesting me to visit them on July 8 with info about driver’s license. (received on July 6, so limited time window to contact them about rescheduling)
  10. July 15, 2014: Police meeting. No translator was present, though I had called to request one. Because there was no proof of who was driving, I didn’t need to present my license to get points assigned.
  11. October 31, 2014: Written appeal rejected. (received several weeks later, but there a clock ticking on the 30-day limit to submit opposition letter)
  12. November 25, 2014: I appealed the written decision.
  13. December 19, 2014: I requested all details of the camera configuration via post.
  14. April 8, 2015 (4 months later!): Response to request for technical details was sent, though it didn’t actually have new information.
  15. April 27, 2015: I received service to appear in court. I had to go across town to collect this myself.
  16. April 27, 2015: I requested camera configuration specifications again, but never received response.
  17. June 3, 2015: Court date.
  18. June 24, 2015: Notification of decision.

Also note that, in the best case, the cost more than doubles if you fight it. In the worst case, the judge is free to impose a fairly extreme fine. You only fight one of these out of principle. The bureaucrats worked out the math so it’s always a bad financial move to contest, even if you are innocent.

The implications

This should have been a straightforward decision. Anybody can see that the car was changing lanes and it was therefore at an incorrect angle. The prosecutor, Lionel Gauthier, may very well have known his evidence was shaky, as he didn’t put up a serious fight in court. Though he was speaking too fast for my translator, it doesn’t seem that he ever really argued against the actual points I was making. The judge, Sylvie Lagarde, was friendly, but remember that traffic court doesn’t exist in any country to protect the innocent. The translator was nice, but it was her first time in court and she was unable to keep up just due to the nature of the interactions. Nobody was pausing long enough for her to get everything translated. So this alone was pretty unfair. The judge should have taken steps to ensure that every sentence was translated. As it was, 75% of what the prosecutor said was never relayed to me.

This presents a few problems for France:

  • This would be a hard enough process for a local to navigate, but successfully challenging a ticket as a foreigner seems impossible. Where is my égalité?
  • Because of the translator, I got to go first in court. The translation also meant that my appearance went very slow. It took about 35 minutes. When you have a courtroom of people waiting behind me on this, that has a negative effect on productivity.
  • There is a stereotype about French engineering. This ordeal is a data point in support of that. It’s troubling that a ticket with this problem was even mailed out.
  • The taxpayers lost money on this case. Yes, they charged me some money to fight it (in clear violation of standard due process principles) but they still didn’t make enough to pay all of the people involved:
    • People to process the multiple documents going back and forth,
    • Person to rule on written argument,
    • One hour of the translator’s time for the court appearance,
    • At least 45 minutes of the prosecutor time, and
    • At least 45 minutes of the judge’s time.

And you want to know why I recommend against living in France?

But, more seriously: Life is hard. I have a lot of legitimate stresses with respect to moving around and searching for jobs, etc. I want to feel like the government is there to serve the people. I want to feel like the government is there to stand up for the little guy and keep things fair. In general, I’m not anti-government. But when a government behaves like this, victimizing people for no good reason, it’s really upsetting and it leads to a lot of internal conflict about who the government is really there to serve. I know “life isn’t fair,” but in theory aren’t our interactions with the government supposed to be? Are we really supposed to sit back while the government randomly demands our money without any obligation to provide sufficient evidence of wrongdoing?

If the people of France want to reinstate the king’s tax collectors, they should just make it official.

Update (July 15, 2015): I’ve written a detailed description of the math and science behind these problems at https://wheresthecop.com/cosine-effect-and-invalid-photo-citations/.

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Replacing a Macbook power adapter in France

2015-06-23 – 11:17

I wrote a long time ago about my good service at the Apple Store in Dijon. Now I want to briefly share another good experience, this time in Lyon, though it was actually Tiffany who went down there.

As anybody who owns a Macbook knows, the power adapters are horrible. The wire invariably frays after about two years. This problem has persisted for years, occurring on each of the four Macbook Pros I’ve owned. The good news is that in America I’ve found in the past that many, if not all, models have a service bulletin allowing for free power brick replacement even after the warranty/Applecare expires. The even more exciting news is that they honor this in France as well. Tiffany was told that normally the French must pay for replacements, but if the laptop was purchased in the US then the replacement brick is free. I’m happy not only because this policy exists, but also because the Apple Store in Lyon actually knows about it and honored it with no problems.

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Futur en Seine

2015-06-16 – 21:59

We just got back from another great weekend in Paris, which is currently my favorite big city. As usual, a work mission brought me there. I was in town to demo the project I work on, VARI3. It’s a challenging project, with a handful of French partners spanning industry and academia, in which we use an iPad Mini to interact with a virtual car model for purposes of design review at Renault.
Eric demoing VARI3 in Paris at Futur en Seine

I was surprised by two things. First, this was a very large event. It took us a few hours to see a mere fraction of the demos. Second, all of the demos we saw were of things I believe are neat and useful. A few notable examples:

  • KEECKER is a robot that travels the home projecting things on the walls or ceilings. The most basic purpose seems to be watching movies on whatever surface is convenient and bringing a movie with you from room to room, but really it’s based on Android so the possibilities are kind of endless. It’s easy to imagine remote home monitoring tasks, for example. At only about EUR 1500, it seems like a good price, given that a decent projector alone can cost EUR 1000.
  • Vinoga is a game in which the objective is to grow your own wine. I guess you get to choose the grape varieties and maybe the techniques, while purchasing various types of equipment. Their business model is interesting in that the game is free, but it is set up so that the resulting wine is always one of 50-something types, which they can then sell you from real producers (labeled with your own chosen name, of course). To be honest, this seems a bit silly to me so I doubt I’ll be buying wine this way especially given our refined tastes. But I might give the game a try to see if I learn something.
  • Art Graphique & Patrimoine is a company I’ve seen a few times before at such events and I’ve often chatted with one lady in particular. They make augmented reality applications for cultural heritage. This time, they were promoting a prototype application to augment an exhibit at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine museum in Paris. They were giving out free tickets to visit the museum and try the app on a loaner iPad. It was pretty cool, though a bit heavy. Once the iPad recognized a particular piece through the camera, it displayed a virtual church all around. This is not the first time I’ve seen such things, but it’s catching on and I believe it represents the future of museums. See the photo below.

Eric using augmented reality at Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine

There were also plenty of VR applications, though I didn’t try too many. There tends to be a line at those demos and it was quite crowded.

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Privacy Contradictions

2015-06-09 – 23:52

I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Europeans have some intense views on privacy, and this has some very real effects on photographers. There is this idea in many European countries that a person owns images of himself. I question the legal rationale behind this and it certainly limits the possibility of a free press. It also might be a little naive in today’s world. But, at this time, I don’t intend to really criticize this stance offhand (because, hey, I like privacy too). I don’t even really want to talk about the legal side but, instead, just the cultural side. I don’t feel that these demands for privacy are very principled, at least in France.

I think it’s generally good policy to respect people’s wishes. If a friend asks me not to share a photo, that’s basically fine. I don’t even question it. I myself shield my face in public when tourists are around. I am not overly shy about the camera, but I just find it disrespectful to take photos of people you don’t know. So I’m cool with this idea. However, I do find it a bit unfortunate when you take a photo with friends and then cannot share it because of one holdout. I see a subjective distinction between the case of some friends taking a photo together and a tourist snapping shots of random people.

That being said, my big problem with it is the inconsistency with other areas of French life. It seems OK to have a cultural shyness in which you don’t want to broadcast your activities to the world. However, if that’s how the French feel, I wish they would stop sending my birth certificate and passport all around the country in unencrypted emails. This is a huge problem in France. It’s even common for hotels to request credit card numbers via email. My requests/demands that people don’t do this with my personal information are generally shrugged off. My concerns are seen as unfounded and certainly not worth the hassle of finding an alternative. (Of course email is a huge privacy/security problem for personal information.) To me, this makes the whole thing less genuine. It seems like there is an indignation-laziness tradeoff at play here. They’ll get indignant about you trampling all over their privacy by sharing a photo, but using encrypted email or sending things by post? No, that’s inconvenient. Privacy isn’t that important.

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French fire safety

2015-04-06 – 15:06

It is no secret that the French culture embraces regulations. Illusory or not, they love the feeling of controlling the world around them with policies, procedures, and assignment of responsibility. These regulations slow down all activities in France and, in many ways, hurt France’s standing in the world. Of course tradeoffs exist, so we should be careful not to conclude that they are a bad thing in all cases.

What astounds me is that, even with all of this government intervention, common-sense safety regulations really don’t exist. In some cases, this seems like a good thing. It is liberating to not be protected from myself at every turn. But here they don’t even have basic safety features in flats and workplaces.

Take my workplace, for example, where there is a single usable fire exit (UPDATE: See below). The building is not particularly small. It is quite modern, and fire exits do exist all over the place, but they are all locked or barricaded in various ways. The only way out is the front door, and many parts of the building will likely be quite cut off from this exit in case of a fire. I don’t know what French law actually says about this situation, but such an American lab would be inspected and shut down promptly. It is true that some codes in the US are ridiculous, but I’d go so far as to say that the effective lack of fire codes here is stupid. One would think that a responsible employer would solve the problem, but I guess this lack of action illustrates the need for workplace safety regulations and enforcement.

The situation at home and around town is more complex. There are a lot of old buildings in France, including much of the housing. For this reason, it is undoubtedly difficult to implement safety rules across the board. That said, there are some things that are just silly. Last month, though we already had one, a law went into effect that finally mandated smoke detectors in rental housing. This is shocking to me, given that this has been regulated in pretty much every American town for decades. I don’t know the laws in the rest of Europe, but there was also no smoke detector in my flat in Germany. The silliness also extends to the construction domain, with almost every door in France swinging inward. Even worse, many doors require a key to exit. In our flat, for example, we must manually unlock the door to the actual flat and then also the one downstairs to exit to the street. If we don’t have our key on us, we’ll be trapped. I’m not just arguing for the value of regulations. I also believe that responsible landlords and architects should solve these things voluntarily, and it astounds me that they largely haven’t.

Imagine living in a place where right turns on red are universally outlawed but the fire exits are chained shut. It’s mind boggling.

UPDATE: I’ve been told (for unrelated reasons) that there is a second exit that does work in our lab. As far as I know, there is still no alternate exit from the large room with the VR equipment, which has 3 out of 4 exits locked, but is the most likely place for a fire.

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Freedom of speech around the world

2015-03-07 – 00:20

There is often talk, particularly among Americans, about freedoms and who has more of them. I have lived in the US, France, and Germany, and have traveled extensively elsewhere, so I want to make some comments based on my understanding of the different tradeoffs in these places. I may write additional posts, but first I want to cover freedom of speech.

United States

Americans like to talk about freedom, but in reality they have given up more than a lot of countries. Americans give up freedoms mostly in direct exchange for the feeling of security. Note that this doesn’t often translate into actual security, as many of the programs that suck up American freedoms cannot demonstrate any positive outcomes. However, freedom of speech is a glaring exception.

There are many in the US who are fighting for censorship, with arguments that hate speech isn’t covered by the first amendment (it is) and uninformed references to the “fire in a crowded theater” quote. Their efforts have been slightly successful, as we are seeing some actions being taken against people for what should be protected speech. For example, public universities have been really going down a bad path lately. Ultimately these people are OK with limits on speech, as long as they get to define the limits.

Additionally, police action is often not on the side of free speech. There have been many examples of military-style crowd control to intimidate protesters. There are also plenty of examples of police beating people up and arresting them for verbal insults.

That said, the courts often come down on the correct side (in my view) of this issue, finding that the government cannot place limits on objectionable content. In the US, speech is instead supposed to be regulated by society. The government cannot stop you from saying things unless they are credible threats or defamation (which must be believable, harmful, and false), but they also offer no protection against repercussions from your fellow citizens. Obviously that citizen can’t go violating other laws when giving payback, but you get the idea. Things aren’t perfect, but this is one issue on which I believe the US really shines as compared to the rest of the “free world.” It’s a shame that so many people are trying to ruin it.

Europe

I was surprised to learn that there really isn’t free speech in Europe. Every government over here seems intent on defining lines and limits on what speech is allowed. Britain is generally known to be the worst offender, with laws against all sorts of speech that might disturb the feelings of any subset of sensitive citizens. I’ll comment a little more on Germany and France, as those are the ones I have the most experience with. But note that the laws are not very accessible to non-native speakers so I don’t always know them with great precision.

Germany’s big thing, with regards to speech, is that you cannot deny the holocaust or say anything antisemitic (or other types of “hate” speech). This seems to actually be the case around Europe, and I understand their history is a bit different, but it certainly doesn’t seem to have eliminated such groups. Germany also has some, let’s say ridiculous, limits on insulting people. You quite literally cannot call names in Germany, and the truthfulness of a statement is not a defense. While I don’t condone limits on speech, I must say that Germany is a very civil society.

French speech laws are similar to those in Germany, though they seem to have less emphasis on the personal attacks (i.e. you may be less likely to be sued for calling a name). Worse than a normal personal attack is insulting an employee of the government, an activity that receives great protection in the US. One can also not legally insult the flag or anthem. Germany does have a law against desecration of the flag, but I think the French law differs in that verbal insults, for example, would be illegal too. Think about that: They allow “free” speech, but one cannot fully mount a campaign against the government (certainly not its agents), which is arguably the most important reason to have protected speech. France has also been getting in trouble lately (after the Paris attacks) because of the lines they have drawn regarding religious insults. This is the danger when you start to draw lines. Once you draw them, every special interest group wants them moved. Finally, it is also illegal to publish anything promoting the use of drugs, which can limit arguments about reforming drug policy. So, ultimately, France has left setting limits on speech in the hands of the majority, which is a very dangerous move. Instead of “je suis Charlie,” they should say “je suis hypocrite.”

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The quest for authority in France

2015-02-19 – 00:33

This is something that I mostly notice in the workplace, but it seems to be the case generally in French culture. The people seem to absolutely love to have responsibility assigned to them. By this I mean they want, more than anything, to be in charge of some thing, place, or activity. These responsibilities are often minimal. For example, perhaps there is some piece of equipment that needs tending or a document that needs completed. In the US, these duties may be ad hoc or just a small part of somebody’s job that is rarely mentioned. In France, it is formalized and you are made to know about it.

I used to think this was all just about a cultural need to have policies and procedures in place. It may be a little of that too, but as time has passed I’ve become more and more convinced that a big part of it is to maintain each individual’s sense of importance. I believe this because of the silly emphasis on these tiny side projects. Related emails and signs give an air of importance around what is often a minor footnote in my day.

I’m sure part of it is the language, and this isn’t surprising because languages seem closely related to culture. I work in a small building with 15-25 people on a given day. If a hypothetical policy comes down from above that applies to some system in my building, really a casual note is all that’s needed:

Hey everybody they want us to start doing X to the widget, so could you go ahead and do that when appropriate?

Instead, we get an authoritative email:

In accordance with the policies that have been enacted due to the recent events pertaining to the use of university widgets, I have been assigned the responsibility of widget control officer until further notice. A new policy regarding widget use is now in place for all staff and students. You will now be required to do X to all widgets upon completion of activity Y. Any deviation from this plan is strictly prohibited.

Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong, per se, with the second email, but hopefully you can see how this comes across as excessive and self-important to an American. I’m also not pointing fingers at anybody in particular, as I see this sort of verbosity from many different people.

Finally, the point of these assignments is not productivity. If the guy who is responsible for a given task goes on vacation, it just doesn’t get done until he returns. As an example, we have a system in my lab where a single person is responsible for the reservations of an important piece of equipment. (Note that in 1.5 years, this policy has changed 3 times.) Unfortunately, we have a couple months of holiday every year in France, so he’s often gone. We cannot properly reserve the equipment during that time. Yes, we can still use it because in practice the reservation system is useless given the general lack of competition for the equipment. But this just goes back to my point about responsibilities being assigned purely for the sake of assigning responsibilities and not because a policy is needed.

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Wine tasting in Burgundy

2015-02-01 – 17:47

We have been living in Burgundy for about a year and a half now and we have really gotten into the wine culture. In the past, I have never been a huge fan of wine or alcohol in general. I drank from time to time, and I sometimes enjoyed it just fine, but it was never a big part of my life. However, wine is an important part of the culture here, and beer was a big part of the culture when we were living in Germany. So as outsiders it kind of makes sense to really embrace these drinks as a way of learning about the cultures. When living in Germany, we tried many types of beer, I toured a couple breweries, and we even went to Oktoberfest once (which is nowhere near where we were living). Now that we are in France, we have really embraced the wine culture, to an even greater degree than we embraced beer in Germany. This is a great way not only to learn about wine, but also to see a lot of small villages around the region. We rarely drink at home. Because of our relatively cheap weekend hobby, we have really gained an in-depth knowledge of these places and the people. We’ve even become acquainted with some of the producers, who have been very welcoming and generous to us.

Terroir

One thing that makes Burgundy unique, as compared to tasting anywhere else in the world, is the incredible diversity available from only a couple grape varieties. Most of the grapes here are either Chardonnay (white) or Pinot Noir (red), though there are a few minor exceptions (Aligote and Gamay, for example). In terms of differences then, the concept of terroir is very important. It’s a very complex subject, but basically the ground expresses itself through the grapes. Grapes grown in a different village or even on a different part of the same slope will have different sun and wind exposure, as well as different minerals and water availability in the soil, for example. This affects the taste drastically and, from what I’ve heard, there is basically no other place on earth with such diversity. Also, this concept is very historic here. Many of these vineyards were mapped out by monks centuries ago, because even they understood that different plots of land produce wine of different quality, some of which is subjective, of course.

Finding Burgundy wine events

There is a wine tasting event within an hour’s drive almost every weekend. However, one thing that I noticed when we first moved here is that it isn’t entirely clear how to best find these events. Yes, there is a website that lists a lot of them, but it is poorly designed and it lists special festivals and open houses right in the same list as tasting opportunities that go for months. There just isn’t a great events calendar for Burgundy wine tasting and certainly not in English. That said, you can check the following sites for some information:

It is also sometimes possible to look at the websites of any villages that you find interesting. They often will list local events.

Tiffany at Saint Vincent Tournante 2014 in Saint Aubin

Occasions to taste wine in Burgundy

Just to give you an idea of what to expect and the general etiquette, here are a few types of occasions on which one might go wine tasting in Burgundy:

  • Regular tasting at an individual domaine: Some domaines have an open tasting room many days of the week where one can just come in and do some tasting. In this setting it is considered good form to buy something. We usually do buy at least a bottle of whatever our favorite was from the tasting, within our price range of course, and this way we always have a collection of wines at home that are not always super fancy but very decent stuff that we like. For example, we often go to Domaine Berthenet in Montagny. They are open most days and they have quite a solid selection of good wines.
  • Portes Ouvertes: This is where an individual domaine or even an entire village has a free tasting event. For these, you just follow the signs and taste wines. Usually it does not cost anything, but once in a while they will charge a couple euro. Though it is considered good etiquette to buy something if it is free, realistically these events are crowded and not everybody buys. Our deliciousness threshold to buy at an event like this is higher, because we can’t taste at every place in town and buy something everywhere.
  • Wine festivals: This is what we mainly attend. For various reasons, throughout the year many of the little villages have special festivals. For these, you generally pay 5 or 6 euro to buy a glass and walk around the village tasting wine at each domaine. Just due to these events, we have way more glasses than the number of people we could ever entertain in our home, and each village has their own glasses so it’s a fun collection for us. Because you pay to participate in one of these festivals there is less expectation to buy bottles. In fact we’ve been to events where the producers didn’t even have bottles available for sale.
  • Expositions: Sometimes in the larger towns (think Beaune or Mâcon), there are indoor events with an admission charge. These events typically also have food available to sample and buy. The downside of being indoors is that you are isolated from the character of the town, and instead it really is just about the food and wine, but we do usually try to walk around the town afterwards.

Note that here I’ve only listed the types of events that are generally practical for our income bracket. There are some events where you pay something like 70 euro and walk around tasting wines in a vineyard. These may be cool, but we haven’t done one yet just because it’s not really necessary to spend this type of money to taste really good wines in Burgundy.

There are some events that are seasonal and they occur in many villages around the same time. For example, the past couple weeks has been filled with events related to Saint Vincent. We actually attended a banquet in Buxy (for the Montagny appellation) two weekends ago, for the second year. Maybe Tiffany will be writing about that, because it’s an awesome story in itself. In addition to these various events around Burgundy, each year one village holds the Saint Vincent Tournante. This is a big tasting event and it is worth seeing at least once if you get the chance. We went last year when it was held in Saint Aubin. However, last weekend we opted not to go to the 2015 event. It’s just not as interesting to us as the little festivals in random villages. There are crowds to fight through just to get a taste, the number of tastes are limited (this is sometimes technically the case at other festivals, but it is rarely enforced), and it’s expensive (15 euro for 7 tastes this year). Additionally, outdoor tasting at this time of year is not really great for enthusiasts because the wine is always too cold.

Stay tuned…

This was a broad overview of how to taste wine in Burgundy. Of course there are also businesses, such as large cellars and wine shops, where wine can be tasted. We do go to these sometimes, and some are awesome, but here it was my intent to talk about opportunities to get a little more culture. Hopefully we will begin writing some things about individual villages and events we like. We are not experts on wine, but we are learning. We want to share what we can.

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France is broken

2015-01-17 – 16:51

There are many things I like about France. I like the tourism. I like the cheese, wine, and cuisine, for example. We have a good time driving around Burgundy on weekends visiting wine festivals in small historic villages.

However, France is a very hostile place to foreigners trying to live here. I do not mean the people. Though the French have always been known for their dislike for foreigners and their languages, and they are becoming well known for their racism recently, that stuff is another story for another time. Overall I have not had big problems with individual people and I find that people all over the world have similar desires, goals, and needs, and really we are all the same. What I want to rant about here is the bureaucracy, though I do recognize that it is really the emergent sum of the people.

Everything here takes forever and it is often done incorrectly. First, this is true with the government. We spend a lot of time at the local sous-prefecture (administrative office) dealing with slow and incompetent bureaucracy.

  • It took us nearly a year to get our health insurance cards. We have heard stories of others taking a couple years. Sure we can still get medical care in the meantime, but it means that we must submit the paperwork ourselves. This is obviously not ideal when you cannot speak the language or understand the system, but this is what all immigrants deal with.
  • The immigration system is awful, though probably better than that in the US. They take so long (on the order of several months) to issue visas so people often end up with what is called a recipisse. This is a receipt of an application for a visa. It is valid if the cops need to see paperwork while in France, but it is not valid for entry at the border. This means that they are giving foreigners, the very people who might have a reason to leave France a lot, a document that does not allow for them to leave France. Tiffany had one of these for almost 6 months. In her case, the short story is that they lost papers and were generally slow. The sous-prefecture told her that if she wanted to leave France she should just lie to the border control upon reentry. When you have one government office telling you to lie to another because their bureaucracy provides no way to obey all of the laws, then you are dealing with a “broken” country.
  • Each employee at two different prefectures gave us a different story regarding my ability to legally drive with my license. Some of these people had a very wrong understanding of the basics of the law. This is ongoing and I hope to write more once it is resolved, but so far it has already been five months (with no driving) that we have been querying these authorities.
  • I got a photo citation more than a year ago. I still haven’t been given a court date to appeal it. But don’t worry, they made me pay immediately so they have had my money for the whole time.

This is also true in the workplace. It is comically absurd how many things are broken in our building and in our organizational systems. I cannot usually blame any one guy. I believe that the problem is cultural throughout the organization.

  • It took me about 3 months to get paid when I first started working here.
  • I work at a national university, with campuses all over France. To hire a new researcher, the paperwork must be signed by the head of the entire university. (Yes, take a moment to think about how ridiculous that is.) So this means that every new contract has to go to Paris and wait to be signed, as part of a two month process. In some cases I guess people can start working in the meantime, but it is also a roadblock for getting visas.
  • Countless things are actually physically broken. I have never before worked at a university where you cannot just call maintenance if something breaks. As an example, our building’s work centers around a large room full of virtual reality equipment, but unfortunately the light switches to that room barely work. It is nearly to the point where we will no longer be able to turn the main lights on in that room. The first switch failed in May (8 months ago)!
  • I waited more than 3 months to get a key to my new office.
  • When I go on missions, I sometimes get under-reimbursed. There is no recourse. At every level of the hierarchy, unless something goes horribly awry nobody cares about the misfortunes of others.
  • I have a bunch of vacation days (which is great), but because the system is so complex (long story) I never know ahead of time how many days I have in order to plan trips far in advance. I can email the human resources people and they rarely reply, but if I did get ahold of them in most cases they will not know the answer either.

The French always talk about their quality of life. But I ask you: How high is my quality of life when I go months without a paycheck or the ability to drive? I think the French system is unrealistic. Though it is the largest country in Europe, it is a mere footnote when it comes to the world’s economy. There are lots of resources and a good strategic location, but with all of these inefficiencies the French are increasingly unable to compete with the world around them. For these reasons and others, I do not see a bright future for France and I believe the quality of life is going to go down before it goes up.

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