Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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My cell phone becomes a French
phone during the summer. I remove its
AT&T chip and insert an Orange (formerly France Telecom) chip. This is a prepaid system that I’m pleased
with, but Orange is starting to behave like an American telecom company, and
I don’t like that. Among other things, Orange
tries to sell me things that I don’t need by sending me text messages. Some of the magic of their salesmanship is
lost on me since I take the French language very literally, word by word. Yesterday morning, on the last
day of August, I received a text message from Orange telling me that my
account was no longer available as of that day. Yet when I pressed the #123# to
find out the amount of time left on my account and its current expiration
date, Orange still said I have three quarters of an hour and the expiration
date is September 30. Three quarters of an hour
doesn’t seem like much, but dear European telecom companies only charge you
for outgoing calls. Since someone else
is paying for incoming calls (the person calling you), they don’t charge you
for those. Makes sense. That is only fair, right? So why can’t American companies do that? Why do they feel it is okay to charge twice
for the same darn phone call? Anyway, back to the Orange
message. I decided that the only way to
get to the bottom of this was to ask a real person, face to face, just what
was the meaning of these contradictory messages. We wanted to go to the Vaisellerie store
anyway, on the rue de Rennes, and I remembered that there is an Orange
boutique near there. We went to the Orange boutique
first. It was a very tiny one, with a
tall, handsome young man whose thick, long hair was slicked back into a neat,
fluffy ponytail. I had to use French the whole
time because his English was super minimal, and that was an embarrassment to
him. I didn’t want him to be
embarrassed, so I used my simple French pipes. I explained the message,
showing it to him, and also explained what Orange tells me when I dial
#123#. He examined the message, then
used my phone to check several things about my account. He, too, was mystified about the
message. He asked the young woman
sitting near the rear of the store about the meaning of the message. They had quite a discussion, which was too
rapid for me to completely follow. She
clearly knew the ways of Orange much better than he did. He must be a new employee, or at least much
newer than she is. She didn’t try to
help him in communicating with us, however. Finally he turned back to us
and with a very serious face said that there was nothing we could do. I thought that was bad news at first. But after we exchanged several sentences,
it became clear that Orange was just trying to sell me a new plan, called the
Bon Compte or something similar, and I had missed my opportunity to buy it. When I realized what he was
saying, I turned to Tom and explained in English, “Oh, they were just trying
to sell me something. It is okay. The account is fine.” The young man looked
embarrassed about his employer’s shameless behavior. To change the subject, Tom then asked him
what we would need to do to keep the same phone number for next summer. The young man expertly
explained that if we could get a friend to recharge the account in December,
we could keep the plan and phone number that we have. I think it can be recharged for as little
as 5 euros, so we will ask Elisabeth if she might be willing to do this for
us. We thanked the young man, and I
told him he was a genius, which he seemed to enjoy immensely. We went on to the Vaisellerie
(dish store), which is always a crowded little madhouse. After buying two coffee mugs, two espresso
cups, and saucers, we went on to Hé, a gourmet food shop. Tom bought very high-quality organic jam
and I bought an organic 85% dark chocolate bar and a bottle of organic
Sancerre blanc. The next stop was the Nespresso
boutique, a calm, spacious, air-conditioned oasis of modernity where Tom
bought coffee capsules. We walked through the animated,
old, narrow streets between the Place Saint Sulpice and the boulevard Saint
Germain to the Place Diderot to buy newspapers. By then, it was tea time, so we
went back to the apartment and consumed refreshments, including slices of
country bread with tapenade and fresh slices of tomato on top. Later, for dinner, we talked about
going to a neighborhood Italian place, but thought maybe first we’d check out
the Polidor, a place Carol and Ron tried.
It looks very authentic and serves traditional French food, but the
tables are arranged such that you are basically sitting with strangers, and
Tom didn’t like that. I’ve become more
accustomed to this kind of crowding at dinnertime, but he’s not, so we didn’t
go there. Near there, on the rue Monsieur
le Prince, we saw a restaurant called Maitre Paul. It looked very good, and the prices on the
traditional menu were not too bad, so we went in and asked for a table. And so we managed to be served
a wonderful, big dinner starting with an amuse
bouche, then country terrine and green salad that we shared, lamb chops
for Tom and roasted chicken with mushroom sauce and rice for me, and a slice
of walnut cake for each of us for dessert. We’ll have to try it again to
see if it is always this good. On the physical front, I’m
still a bit messed up from the Great Stepstool Fall. The bruises are horribly dramatic looking
now, and the stab wound is starting to hurt.
Plus I’m still stiff and sore, and I sleep a lot. Time will heal it all, though, I’m sure. |
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Looking
toward the Ile de la Cite from the left bank of the Seine.
Ballroom
dancing on the Seine on Sunday.
People
watching the ballroom dancers.
Flowers
growing near the dancers, on the Square Tino Rossi. |
