Keskidi ?!

A few weeks ago on Ross's blog, I was referred to as "tragic and hilarious", which I found quite amusing and, given the evidence he provided, quite accurate. Today while eating my camembert sandwich and between dropping the crumbs all over the keyboard, I was reading the news and came across a story which I found tragic and hilarious. Maybe not hilarious but quite funny all the same. Bearing in mind that I was tired, it was Friday afternoon and I'd spent all week sitting in an office, a working environment I still haven't adapted to the slow pace of yet. After working in a kitchen for most of last year, spending 10 hours at a stretch on my feet, getting hit by a blast of 250C air from the oven every 5 minutes and leaving the place stinking of grease and feeling I'd earned my pay, working in an office is something of an anticlimax where you leave the place sleepy but no less physically tired than when you went in, and wondering what the hell you've done to earn your money. Not that I'm earning much anyway as I'm an intern, but I digress. One of the things I did manage to get done today was to read this particular story on the news.

It turned out that an English guy, a member of the Freeconomist group which thinks that the world would be better off disposing of money altogether and letting humanity return to a communal way of life where everyone supports everyone else (which, apart from being completely and utterly unrealistic, isn't a bad idea at all), decided to prove a point. His point was that currency was useless and that the heart of each human is warm enough to support anyone who comes across his path. With this in mind, the guy set off with no money, and no intention to touch any, on a walk from England to India. The aim of this project was firstly to prove that humanity is generous and open enough to support him on his trip, and secondly to take a pilgrimage in doing so to the village where Mahatma Gandhi was born. His walk through England was successful, and he then arrived in Calais, where he realised that he didn't speak French. People there, not speaking English, thought he was a freeloader or an asylum seeker and he didn't find anywhere to stay. A few days later, he returned to England with his tail between his legs. Metaphorically speaking.

Now this leads me to make two points.

Firstly, I do admire this guy's idea but it seems that the level to which he was misguided in his beliefs is only matched by the level of suspicion with which people in the rich world treat anyone else. Anyone who is tall, young and male (such as I am) walking around a city anytime after dark will realise that some people will switch their bags to their other arm to protect them, start running and then walk again once they've got past you, or just shuffle along looking at the ground as if looking at my face would unleash some kind of violent force in me and send them to a sudden yet painful death. One day last year, I was walking in a well known large city in France with my cousin who is, like me, male, tall and young. He's in the army part time and has a shaved head, and what with it being the summer and all, I had short hair too. Several people crossed the street to avoid us. And this is outside on the street, in a public space. I could probably live in this city my whole life and never be invited by anyone I didn't know to their house. That doesn't bother me in itself as I don't particularly expect that and, having been brought up in this environment, if someone did invite me to their house I'd probably wonder what the hell they were after. Having been lucky enough to visit other, much poorer parts of the world, it strikes me every time how people are generous and have much less of a concept of personal space. I've slept in many houses belonging to people I had barely met, even though I have not had a sex change, a growth spurt or a sudden, unexplained rejuvenation since then. I have had several haircuts but I don't see any correlation between the length of my hair and peoples' generosity with their personal property, so I won't try to discuss that. This is what leads me to think that, even though the ideas of the Freeconomists are ridiculous and completely unachievable in a practical sense, it's grounded in something decent. In another, less theoretical sense, if we had no money, we wouldn't be able to get our hair cut so often and this might reduce the effects of the apparently mortifying effect we have on people.

The second consequence of this story on my psyche was a reflection on how damn funny the guy's failure was. Not in the failure itself, but the circumstances surrounding it. The concept of hilarious tragedy is, in my opinion, well encapsulated by the sight of two people trying to get a point across to each other without a common language, and this is what I imagine happened to this unfortunate character. Living in Belgium, I see this with alarming regularity. The best examples come in the shape of short term visitors, usually from England, who don't speak French and have that well known Anglophone view that everyone should speak English because... well just because !! The unproductive exchange of views between these people and checkout operators, for instance (and I've noticed that British Airlines air hostesses are almost always guilty of this linguistic idiocy, having seen them quite often in the supermarket under the City2 shopping centre), leads to absolutely nothing except sighs on the Anglophone side and rolled eyes on the Francophone side. It's very possible in Brussels to hear a conversation somewhere along the lines of this. Let's imagine we have Barry, the Englishman who's just moved to Brussels and speaks no French, and Chantelle, the cashier who doesn't speak any English. Or, just as likely, both speak a little of the other language but can't be bothered.

Barry - "Excuse me, do you sell light bulbs ?"
Chantelle - "Quoi ?"
Barry - "Do you sell light bulbs ?"
Chantelle frowns to indicate, without having to say anything, that she does not understand
Barry - "Light bulbs. Light.............. bulbs. Light bulbs."
Chantelle - "Je ne comprends pas l'Anglais hein ! 6 Euros 50 s'il vous plaît"
Barry - "Never mind then. Cheers."

Of course the third guilty party here is me in the queue not stepping in to help these two, but it's far too entertaining to put to an end. It's probably equivalent to seeing a guy walking down the street reading a book, unaware that he's heading straight for a lamppost. Your conscience tells you to step in, your sense of humour and ridicule tells your conscience to shut up. In the end you haven't got the same sense of satisfaction from helping people, but you've had a good laugh.

I also remember a few years ago that a Belgian cartoonist explained Belgium's disappointing performance in Euro 2000 along these lines. In his cartoon, which appeared in a national Belgian newspaper, the guy without the ball exclaims in French "Passe la balle !". The guy with the ball looks at him and exclaims in Flemish "Wat zegt je ?". It's sadly reflective of reality. It makes you wonder how come the Dutch, Swedes, Finns etc can actually learn another language and then actually speak it. M was born speaking one language (once she'd actually learnt it - I don't mean to say that she profusely thanked the doctor for cutting her umbilical card and asked him what the weather was like today), she now speaks four. Whereas in Belgium they refuse to speak each others languages on principle, the English and the French don't learn because a) they're generally useless at it, and b) they don't see the point. All three of these reasons are quite ridiculous.

As a product of both France and Britain, I can speak both French and English, and I've tried to learn a variety of others on the side. This means that, besides being able to understand the rationale behind making the effort to be able to communicate with people of other cultures and consequently making that effort, I can also ask for a haircut in most countries in the world. I'm aware and grateful that I've been given this headstart but if I can learn Finnish they hey, anyone can learn anything.
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As an epilogue, the guy from the news story is now walking around England and learning French as he does so, to try and walk back to India next year. One can only wonder what will happen when he gets to the Italian border.

Intro

This blog was born at 1pm on February 28th 2008, in an office in the centre of Brussels, to mixed parentage. On one side, I wanted something to do while i was eating my sandwich. On the other side, it reflects a desire to see things, express them as I see them, and take it with me along the wild ride of life. Back in my suburb on a rainy, miserable and windy evening, I'm ready to have my first conversation with the newborn.

At the moment, I'm in Belgium. I'm here for several reasons. Firstly, I grew up here and Brussels is as close as I have to a hometown. Secondly, I found an internship here which would act as a blade of grass to my desertified CV. Thirdly, I quite like the place. And now that I write, I think that's about it. It gets a lot of crap, this place, without really deserving it, and simultaneously while deserving all of it. It's seen as boring, pointless city in an equally boring and pointless country where gangs of guys in suits tell everyone else in Europe what to do. having spent 8 years here since I moved over, I know it quite well and, even if the roads are falling apart, the system is infuriatingly dysfunctional whenever you need it and totally inflexible when it works, and it rains all the time, there are some decent things to do. My bank account informs me that I have 3€ left so i might not be able to have the sort of entertainment that the gangs of guys in suits might be able to enjoy but this is one of the few cities I've been to in Europe where i can walk around aimlessly and actually enjoy it. That's not to say I want to stay here. 8 years anywhere is far more than enough. 8 years of battling with Belgian bureaucracy is also far more than enough. More on that another day.

Fortunately for me then, in 4 and a half weeks, I'm moving out, to Finland. Helsinki's a place I know a little, given that I lived there for 2½ years before I came back here for a bit last October. Although it's a pretty unattractive and boring place, there are several reasons I want to go back there too. Firstly, in the right conditions, it's not a bad place to be. This means either at the beginning of the winter, when you haven't become bored of the snow, or at the beginning of the summer, before you've realised that it's not going to get above 20C this year. Again. Secondly, Finland in general is a very attractive place which I could happily bum around in for quite a while. I'd imagine that if you don't like lakes, trees or mosquitos then you'd probably like it quite a bit less, given that there's not much else, but I happen to like two of those three things. Thirdly, you don't get taxed out of your eyes and nose, it's possible to live cheaply and the pay is pretty decent, which is all completely the opposite of here. I've got a job probably waiting for me as soon as I arrive, which is lucky because they're tough to find if you don't speak Finnish or Swedish. Once you get onto the system though, saving up to do something big is quite easy there. And I'm saving up to do something big. Fourthly, and surely the biggest reason, is that M is there.

I'm going to miss the mitraillettes, the waffles, the chocolate, and drinking beer that can actually be tasted but it'll be worth the move and I'm looking forward to it. And that's all. I'll be spending the next 24 hours trying to poke around and find my identity in cyberspace, identity that I've been looking to avoid outside the screen. And I'm also sure that no one will have read this.