Unrequited Love

I have concluded that I have an unrequited love for Paris. Although I fall in love with Paris on a daily basis, the city haughtily and pitilessly rejects my advances to be one of its denizens. At the end of every day, I return home beaten and demoralized convinced by Parisians (and their dogs) that I will never fit in here. Yet, at the beginning of the next day, the rows of Haussmanien stone buildings and the taste of the pain au chocolat (or any bread here, for that matter) makes me fall in love with it all over again.

My apartment search is illustrative. After spending three days last week walking up and down the streets of Paris, looking at apartment after apartment (as well as some "apartments/closet/trash bins"), I had finally put in my application, or dossier as they call it, at two places, and as both a naive American and savvy Chinese, I thought it was a fait accompli -- I made enough money, I had all my documents, what more was left? I went about looking for items that might go into my new apartment and wondering which direction I might put my American-sized sofa.

I was wrong. Apparently, getting an apartment in Paris is harder than getting a white iPad in Manhattan the weekend it débuts. First, the all-important dossier. This set of documents is your introduction to your prospective landlord and it is on the basis of your dossier that you will be evaluated. At first, I had naively believed that each and every dossier contained a pre-determined number of documents: my passport, an attestation in French from my employer, my salary sheet from my employer, my offer letter from my employer, the last three-months' pay stub from my previous employer, my tax returns for the previous year, and finally the most important sheet of them all, the RIB (releve d'identité bancaire - more on this later).

I was wrong. There is no pre-set number of type of documents you must include (EXCEPT THE RIB -- more on this later). In fact, the only general rule for your dossier is "the thicker the better." Unfortunately for most ex-patriates, without a phone number or a previous address, their dossier will never be as a complete as a good Frenchmen. Unfortunately for me, my dossier includes a picture of a Chinese person in an American passport, oh ... and documents in English (gasp). To top it all off, I did not have a RIB at the time -- "C'est pas grave," I thought, "I'll send it later."

I was wrong. What, you might ask, is the RIB? The French will tell you the RIB is a sheet of paper proving that you have a bank account in France. Physically, the RIB is nothing more than a Word document with my bank's logo, my name, and my bank account number. These basic pieces of information are repeated three or four times on the same sheet of paper so that you can tear it off an hand it out for every transaction -- to get internet, to get a cell phone.... to get an apartment. (If it strikes you odd that you hand out your banking information like samples at Costco -- I agree with you, I don't get how this is consistent with French privacy rules!) Thus, the RIB is the piece of paper proving your existence in France. Without it, you can do nothing and are nothing.

Needless to say, the missing RIB (and my foreign-ness) means that I was summarily rejected from both apartments. The search continues apace. Paris has not yet fallen for me (or my dossier), but I am persistent. Stay tuned for updates!

Selected French Quotes

This is what a French person told me (name omitted to protect the innocent):

A: Orientals have the most beautiful babies.

Me: They have big eyes.

A: Well, yeah, the big eyes, but they have skin that is "matte." And I think they are just the most adorable babies. But when they grow up, they are not so nice. Their limbs are shorter -- I don't know what it is. That's just not nice.

For context, this person had previously told me that I'm "really tall, especially for an Asiatic."

I'm sure there will be more of this to come!

The Arrival

On May 17, 2011, at around 4pm I boarded American Airlines flight 44 from John F. Kennedy in New York to Paris. And just like that, I ended my almost five years in New York City, leaving a city that I had once dreamed of living in for another city that I had always dreamed of living in.

The reasons for my departure were complicated: Certainly, an opportunity to work with an organization in a unique capacity was a factor. But on a deeper level, France and I had always had an affinity (although attenuated since my college days). In high school and college, I had dreamed of living and working in Paris, learning the ins and outs of French language and culture, and simply becoming Parisien. I had assumed that those opportunities had long passed me by, so when the chance presented itself to me (with bells), I could not say no.

My last days in New York had been composed of the slow accumulation of goodbyes and loss. Everyday in the last two weeks were filled with a series of "lasts" -- the last time I would see someone, the last time I would go to a restaurant, the last time I would see something I owned. And although every "last" pulled on the heartstrings, I was too busy to fully appreciate the sum of the parts. I have to admit that I avoided facing the fact of my departure as much as I could, since I knew that regrets and heartache were not going to get me emotionally away from the inevitable. All of a sudden, it was my last ride on the subway (4 train to Atlantic Ave.).

The flight from New York was uncomfortable and possibly unsafe. It was staffed with the some of the most unhelpful and rude service staff I have met, nothing on the flight worked, and there were several times when the airplane fell several hundred feet in the air. I thought to myself, "I will have to remember not to take American on my return trip," when I remembered that it was a one-way ticket.

Upon arriving in Charles de Gaulle, I waited an hour for my bags, wrestled them into a taxi and headed to the 16th arrondissement, the location of my temporary apartment. While spacious and comfortable, my thoughts turned to my (formerly) comfortable 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment in Brooklyn. That apartment does not exist anymore; I've emptied it and sold or given off too many elements to re-create it, I thought to myself. I also asked myself, "How was I going to live here one night, let alone three weeks?"

The first three days were challenging. After my red eye flight, I took a quick shower and commenced an extended and exhausting apartment search covering four arrondissements for eight hours a day. I hardly ate, I hardly slept, and the romance of Paris was completely extinguished by looking at less than desirable apartments with pushy brokers who asked for documents I did not have and could not get. During the time that I was not looking at apartments, I was applying for all manner of documentation, running random errands and involving myself in French-style bureaucracy. Each day was filled with awkward interactions, involving terms I had not heard of or had misunderstood. The fact that my cell phone was mostly useless and the internet kept on going out only accentuated the sense of isolation.

Throughout the experience, I continually reminded myself that this was a dream of mine, and I had decided to do this. "This is what you wanted. ....Right?" However, the dream seemed so far from my reality; the gap seemed uncrossable, the goal seemed unreachable. Would I ever reach a point where this would feel like home? Why did I think Paris was right for me? Could I move back to Brooklyn and could I get back that dining table I had sold?

Today (day four), was the first day that I lived a life away from the realities of the move. I walked and walked the entire day: from the upper crust family-oriented 16th, where people sat on café terrasses, to the Trocadero, where the Eiffel Tower revealed itseff in all its glory, from the Hôtel de Belle Villes (and BHV!) to the Place de la Concorde.

Paris is a beautiful city, made more beautiful by the springtime. It was at some point during this day, that I saw for the first time, tiny glimpses in reality of the life I had envisioned in my dreams. I look forward to continuing to bridge those two worlds.