La Révélation (The Revelation)

1. A message for AIESEC Australia

A HUGE Congratulations to Ralph Panebianco, MCP-elect of AIESEC in Australia. When it comes to any AIESEC elections I am a lot tougher than I used to be, and am much less likely to throw my support someone mindlessly than I would in the past. Having said that, and having scrutinised his platform very carefully, I have complete faith in Ralph to be an excellent national President. I think he really has got the national priorities straight. In particular, I like his committment to the 'Culture of Excellence' strategy - AIESEC is not going anywhere until we get that minimum correct. I'm glad to see it is high up in his priority list.

I wish best of luck to all the MC candidates too - it is a tough election, I think there are roughly double the number of candidates than there are positions. Even if you aren't elected this time, treat it as a learning experience and move on to the next challenge. My Local Committee collapsed just as my LCP term was about to finish - not exactly the greatest morale booster in the world! However having reflected on the year, and done my best to rectify the situation, I have learnt an unbelievable amount and am so much the stronger as a result. No more how devestating the situation is, you can always get something incredible out of it by treating it as an educational experience.

On a much lighter note, and nothing to do with anything, today I saw a street called 'Rue Craponne'. Make what you will of that.

2. Bureaucrastan

France is well and truly Bureaucrastan. Everything requires pages and pages and pages of paperwork to complete, not to mention the obligatory passport photos. When paying for my accommodation, I had to give in 3 passport photos. When getting my student card, another passport photo. When apply for a residency card, another 4 passport photos! The application for the residency card is particularly frustrating...it contains about 4 forms, most of which ask the same questions as each other. We have to supply along with the forms a whole series of documents (I believe there is about 10 or so), almost all of which we needed to use before when applying for a visa. Why do we need to send them all again, if they know they exist due to the fact that we have a visa????

Another feature of Bureaucrastan is extreme disorganisation. I have been to far too many classes where nobody, including the professors, has any idea which room we were supposed to be in for the class. We will spend the first 10-15 minutes hunting around for the correct room, and will sometimes just crash in some place that looks empty. If the other students don't know where we are, their problem.

There are also many, many occasions where the professors simply don't turn up. Apparently something else more important has grabbed their attention, like calling their mistresses, so they decide not to come into 'teach' that day. Given the way most of the lectures seem to run in FRance, they should seriously just tape it and send that in to the IEP, and hire another bureaucrat to press play and stop when necessary. To give an example of this frequency of cancellation, in one day I walked in twice to the IEP from my residence ( a good half hour walk), and BOTH TIMES the classes were cancelled. They even have a week called 'Rattrapage', where the professors run make up lessons for all the canceled classes. Tom Bowes tells me this is by far the busiest week of the year.

It is worth noting that IEP is actually run by a branch of the French government, and is thus subject to the same management style (or lack thereof) governing the French public sector.

This has been a good experience for me. I used to be a fan of big government, but seeing the shocking levels of bureaucracy in this country has convinced me beyond all doubt for the need for mass privativisation. In a bizarre twist for quasi-socialist me, I can imagine myself joining a protest by a group of economists, with bad slogans like 'Outsource everything!' and 'Efficiency, not bureaucracy!' I used to think that big government ensured protection of the little people from the big people, but that is the role of the judicial branch, not the executive (as represented by administrators and bureaucrats). Furthermore, an economy which is dominated by an inefficient publiuc sector and which drowns people in a flood of paperwork is definitely to the detriment of all, big and little alike.

3. More interesting characters along the way...

Obviously I have not been sticking completely with the 'group' I mentioned earlier; it turns out there are a lot more IEP international students at my Residence, and I have also befriended a good deal of other people at my residence who don't go to IEP. There are too many to talk about now, so I will talk about a few of them in different places throughout the blog.

Marc-André: A really tall guy from Quebec, he is possibly double my height (or close). He has a very strong Quebecois French accent, so strong in fact that when he speaks in French to the locals, they respond to him in English! I had problems understanding his French as well, but speaking to him a lot has helped me decode what he and other Quebecois are saying. Thankfully he speaks very good English too, if we are in need of clarifying anything that I don't understand. Marc-André is unintentionally extremely funny - he says things which are so utterly blunt and politically incorrect without realising it, that we can't help but burst out into laughter. Or I can't help it anyway. Marc-André also happens to the be the biggest Lord of the Rings fan I have ever met. There are bigger ones, but I am in no hurry to meet them. He's read The Hobbit 4 times, Lord of the Rings 6 times and The Silmarillion 5 times. At one point he was able to read Elvish, but he decided it was probably a better idea to pursue a living language like Spanish.

The Dutch: Jos and Adinda. Jos is a big, friendly, wine-tasting, good-cooking, intellectual sort of guy from the Netherlands. Whenever there is a social event of some sort, Jos is there. He is one of those people who, even though I don't know him REALLY well, will come to define my exchange experience by his continual presence. Jos has recently completed a minor in European Union Studies, so we often listen to him talk about the EU, which is alwys quite interesting. Adinda is fairly quiet so I don't know her too well, but she is definitely a friendly individual.

The Norwegians: Marie and Christiana. Marie is like Jos, in that she is alwys present at some sort of event, and will be one of those people who define my memories of this part of the year. An avid smoker, she says she had once quit but restarted because it was 'the French Way'. She knows how stupid a reason that is, thankfully, but that hasn't slowed down the cigarettes. She is quite a good cook, and has always shown a lot of concern for me as a vegetarian and ensured that there is food for me to eat. Definitely a very friendly, warm individual. Christiana looks like a typical Norwegian - she has blond hair, a sort of 'Scandinavian look', and of course her voice oscillates up and down when she speaks in her accented (but very good) English. Character-wise I have difficulty separating her out from Marie, but I guess I need to get to know them better.

Emelie: She lives on my floor, and is completely insane - in a good way. When someone introduced me to her and said I was Australian, she immediately said she had only met one other Australian before, and that Australian was not capable of speaking in non-swear words. Wonderful introduction. Whenever I see her, she always has something bizarre and random to say, usually accentuated by her dramatic delivery. And for some reason she is always carrying toilet paper. I don't know if I only see her when she is off to the toilet, or if she just enjoys running down the halls with rolls of toilet paper in her hand. From Tahiti, French is her native tongue but her English is not so great - we have committed to teaching each other our respective native languages. Today she taught me the word for toilet paper.

Bernard: Rob's neighbour, and possibly even more insane than Emelie. When I first met him I thought he was drunk, but he actually speaks like that all the time, or is always drunk. Of an enormous stature and with a great orange beard and hair that covers most of his face, he looks a good deal like Frederick Barbarossa. He is German, but speaks exceptionally eloquent French. The story of when I first conversed with him is an interesting - I was walking up the stairs, and he was in front of the coffee machine buying something, when he randomly asked me if I thought a 'prejudice' and a 'cliché' were the same thing - I had never even spoken to the guy before! I discussed the question with him for 30 minutes, completely in French, and we reached some sort of agreement. I could tell by his expression and seriousness that he felt very profound in asking that question and in asking it as randomly as he did, but in retrospect I think it was quite pointless. He is a litterature student, and the profound silliness of the question did nothing to improve my opinion of philosophy, especially of the student / café variety. Nonetheless he is still an interesting person, because I am able to describe him in terms other than 'friendly' and 'nice'! Perhaps 'random' is the way to go with this one.

That is all the characters for now...stay tuned for more in future blogs...

4. The Revelation

If you know me, you know that I am a super stressed-out person. I can sometimes get so stressed that I am incapacitated for 2 days at a time. This is not healthy, and naturally has been taking its toll on my health. The other day I felt my stress levels reach new highs, with the combination of culture shock and administrative nightmares and all sorts of imaginary problems. I was no longer able to think clearly. I hopped on the internet and starting searching for ways of de-stressing myself. I found some Buddhist literature on calm, and a quotation by the Dalai Lama which I will never forget as long as I live:

"If your problem has a solution, then there's no need to worry. If your problem doesn't have a solution, then there's nothing you can do, so there's no point worrying anyway."

This probably seems like simple common sense for many of you. But for someone in a state of super stress, this little quotation was like a God-send. I really thought about the phrase and what it means - it means that no matter what, we NEVER need to worry about anything! Worry is a completely useless state of mind!! This was a grand revelation for me, and its consequences have been extraordinary. Since I stopped worrying, I feel like I've woken up after years of being asleep. It's amazing. My ability to think clearly and creatively has increased enormously. My feeling of self-disclipine (e.g. doing things like daily back stretches, getting up at 6:30am, etc.) has increased exponentially too. For the first time in a long time, it really feels good to get up every morning, and to use every moment of the day to its fullest!