
What is it about the French ? Why do they insist on going out of their
way to annoy people ? Steve has always disliked the French. When I ask why he shrugs his shoulders and says well they are French. I used to stick up for the French, I lived in Belgium for a few years and it’s right next door to France, I speak French. Sure I don’t have a deep love of cheese and wine and that’s probably just a cliche but when I see French movies or an article in English and French I feel a bit smug, oh yeah I speak French it’s cool no biggie.
Well the French suck. There I said it, sure for years I’ve defended them but it’s time to come clean, the French are lazy in addition to being overbearing. I was reading this article which reminded me how annoying the French can be.
A minute later we gave the game over to the French: “Who wins, Coca-Cola or Uma Thurman?”
The French didn’t answer and remained staring out the windows—it might have been Battersea, or Shepherd’s Bush. Then the French director said, “That is not a game.” He started coughing. “It is so Anglo, this game. It is not a game. How do you judge this? It is a soda and a woman. Then how do you decide?”
“One wins, one loses. Just pick,” I said. But he refused: “It is nothing a French person would think is a game. It is so stupid.”
The traffic wasn’t moving. I asked him to suggest a French game instead that we could play. “OK, OK, here is a French game,” he said. “We will talk about something for a little while. It will be about nothing. We will talk and talk and talk about it. Sometimes I will take the other side of the conversation, just to say you are wrong. And then we will stop.”
He resumed his brooding silence. The composer turned to say he agreed, this was a classic French game.
See that’s why people don’t like the French and until yesterday I didn’t care. See yesterday I finally decided that I had enough of carrying around books with me when I traveled. I am one of those people who can’t sleep much on planes and I am a fast reader so I tend to take at least two books with me on every trip and most times that’s not enough. The other problem is that in most destinations and airports you can’t buy any decent English books or if you can they are prohibitively expensive. For example an English book in the Rio airport costs about $22, that’s a soft cover book.
So I decided to invest in an ebook reader. The Amazon Kindle looks like crap, the Sony reader is only compatible with Windows so that left the Booken Cybook. I ordered one 2 days ago and got an email that said they got my order and charged my credit card. Their website explicitly states that the Cybook is in stock and they will ship asap.
Like a kid waiting for Santa Clause I waited and waited for the shipment order. Ok so I waited a day but in our wired age I expected to see the shipment order right away. Except for one thing, Booken is a French company. It is Easter weekend right now and there is no way you could pay anyone in France to work over a holiday. So they have charged my credit card and I will be lucky if they ship the damn thing in the next 2 weeks. After all I am just a customer and it’s easter weekend. This is classic French customer service. I’d complain but then I am worried they’d cancel the damn order.
Update: Ok the cybook arrived today, I take back everything I said about the French, even though they never responded to my email to customer support.