Reigning Confusion

One of the things involved with moving house is buying new household products since, I for one, will not schlep half-empty bottles of detergents and dishwashing liquids across the ocean.

I have a friend who raved, as one does, about the new Dawn foaming dishwashing liquid. I took this opportunity to try it myself.

After a couple of uses, I thought to myself that my pots still kinda feel greasy. I took a closer look at the bottle. Here it is (I must admit, the bottle does look rather snazzy compared to its peers):



Wait, a closer look:


"Antibacterial HANDSOAP" followed by "Citrus Kick Dishwashing Foam"

I got confused. Is this handsoap or is this dishwashing liquid?

I thought, surely, there's gotta be more info on the back of the bottle. What I found, however, confused me even more:


Now, I clearly remember picking up this bottle in the aisle with other dishwashing liquids in the supermarket. How could it be, that on the back of the bottle, all it mentions is the use and directions for washing hands? No mention of dishes, pots and pans?

So which is it, is this a handsoap or is it a dishwashing liquid? Is it interchangeable? If so, why does the bottle not mention anything about dishwashing on the back?

I thought it was just a fluke from the Dawn brand. Imagine my astonishment when I found the exact same on a bottle of Joy!?





I feel like I'm totally pulling a Jessica Simpson (is it chicken or is it tuna?) - but honestly, is it handsoap or is it dishwash?

Googles Searches Tell Lots!

Here are some sample google searches I have had to do in the past couple of weeks since arriving in St Martin - most are self-explanatory and will give you a gist of our new living situation/challenges/preoccupations:

> capturing lizards in house

> mosquito repellent effective for kids

> mosquito netting

> installing window screens

> difference riptides and undertow

> hurricane categories

> plywood window boarding hurricane

> hurricane readiness supplies

> no leak swim goggles for kids

> Storing rice hot climate

> Ciguatera fish poisoning

French Titles

OK August was a bust, no postings at all - shame on me. Will have to fill in the details about our move and all that at some point. For now, a much more pressing matter to report:

I read a few books this summer and I especially enjoyed the Stieg Larson books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

I was a bit taken aback when I discovered these books on sale locally:


Les Hommes qui N'aiment pas Les Femmes

Translation: Men Who Do Not Like Women

Now how is that a justifiable title for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Of course I get it, the book is about men who abuse women, fine. But why not La Fille Tattooee or La Fille a Tattoo de Dragon? Why do the French have a tendency to make everything so obvious? Similar to the question I had on Movie Title translations, who gets to make these executive decisions?

Should we take a look at the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire?


In French it's called La Fille qui Revait d'un Bidon d'Essence et d'une Allumette.

Huh? The Girl who Dreamt of a Gas Container and a Match?

Do the French not play with fire? Cannot fathom such a notion?

OK so for the third book, which I have not yet read, which in English is: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

In French:



La Reine dans le Palais des Courants d'Air

Hmmm. The Queen in the Palace of Moving Air, or in the Palace of Air Currents. Maybe I am translating too literally myself, maybe the palais of courants d'airs means something symbolic in French that I am unaware of, or seeing how the French love to state the obvious, maybe there is really an airy palace of some sorts in the book. Nonetheless I am surprised at how the French title is so far from the English title. Do they not get the risk implied with kicking the hornet's nest? Do they not have hornets in France? Could they have replaced it with Bee's Nest?

That makes me wonder, what are these titles in its original language, Swedish? Are we the ones butchering it? I suspect not, but I have been wrong before....

French Originals

A good friend told me the other day that she went to the premiere of a movie called "Dinner with Schmucks". The title sounded vaguely familiar to me, so I asked her what it was about. She uttered maybe 5 words before it hit me - it was a remake of a French movie that I absolutely love, called "Diner de Cons".

This made me think of the countless times when the French were quick to point out to me that a lot of things that, to me, are American are actually French in origin.

I was once flabbergasted and incredulous when we heard Frank Sinatra belt out "My Way" one day, and one of PeeWee's friends turned to me with what resembled panic in his eyes, and asked me, you do know that this song is actually a French song? I of course went, "no way". He was insistent and accused the Old Blue Eyes of stealing a very well known French song called "Comme d'habitude" by a hugely popular (and dead) singer called Claude Francois - huh? I thought this to be evidence that everyday Frenchmen still suffer from illusions of grandeur from the country once being a World Power.

Then came a series of American movies that I actually knew to have been French originally, because I had actually seen them in French a few years before they were adapted by US studios: "Three Men and a Baby", "La Femme Nikita", "Cousins", etc.

Then a month or so ago, I came across an old article in Vanity Fair about the heydays of Disco, and it says that two of the founding members of the Village People were French!! Wow! I sure was impressed!

Give them credit where it's due, I guess. Now I am dying to see Dinner with Schmucks. The Schmuck is played by Steve Carell, and I think he will have a lot to live up to - the original character is played by Jacques Villeret, a very famous (and now dead) actor. Compare the two:

The French one:

The American one:

Long long winter

The calendar says it's Springtime, but the weather has its own ideas.

It's absolutely freezing here in Rennes. I always am incredulous when people here say, "oh mais c'est pas normale!" (this crappy weather is very unusual!) but this time I believe it - it's by far the worst month of May we've had in the three years that we've been here. Usually May is full of long weekends and people striking to take advantage of milder weather, but no such luck this year.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this pop up on my iPhone the other night - look at the "real feel" temperature - that is exactly how I really felt, and it was reflected on Accuweather of all places. All other cities on my list had normal "real feel" temperatures - Rennes was the only one that really felt like -200 F!



Technical glitch? Or is the Accuweather app now reading my mind/body temperature?

French signatures

One thing we used to do for a laugh during my early days at Citibank was to whip out the signature books. There used to be these books filled with authorized signatures from major banks around the world. The biggest laughs were reserved for the signatures from French banks.

The French, it appears to me, do not take signatures very seriously. Nobody I know ever signs their full name. Every French adult, at one point or another in life, has created a simple single-stroke personal "emblem". Here are some examples, actual signatures I happened to have lying around on various documents around the house:





See what I mean?

London Calling... again

I had to travel to the UK on a short notice last week and, because I got there too late in the evening, I ended up staying with my friend K, instead of going to a hotel in a London suburb where my meeting was the next day. I woke up super early the next morning, and walked down a very empty Gloucester Road - I almost had the street to myself and I was struck by how lovely and clean it was. This is a street that I pounded on daily while last living in London - but I never saw it like that morning - calm, clean, glistening wet from the recent rain. It strangely lifted my spirits.

It got me thinking about England, and more particularly, things that are just so particularly English. One train of thought I had involved people's names. There are some names that are just very English, as in, while they are very commonplace in England, you would be hard-pressed to find people with such names in the US. For example:

Graham
Nigel
Simon
Colin
Liam
Ian
Duncan
Alfie
Jasper
Rupert
Sadie
Fiona

I wonder why that is? And they are mostly boys' names. Hmmm.

And some expressions remain resolutely English. Like if you have done something well, they would say to you "good on you!" - or when you thank someone for holding the door for you, they would reply "that's ok" instead of "you're welcome".

It also felt good to be in an English speaking country again - it's been months - and seeing many familiar but missing-in-France-outside-Paris shops like Starbucks and the Bagel Factory and Krispy Kreme. Yum!

Alas, this post ends on a critical note (being a critical person that I am) - one thing that used to annoy me living in London was the poor spelling of the locals. In newspapers, in flyers, in office memos - and I'm not talking about UK spelling protocols vs. American protocols - I mean, pure spelling mistakes. Here is one I caught at the airport on the way back - see if you can spot what I'm talking about:

Cheerios!