Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category
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Christmas holiday employment in France
December 29th, 2006 | 
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In Belfast just about every shop window has a “help wanted” notice. In France, I’ve yet to see one.
How does that square with the 35 hour week in periods coming up to the likes of Christmas? That’s a very good question as clearly the shops are considerably busier over the pre-Christmas period than they are normally. In Belfast which doesn’t have the 35 hour limitation and few limitations on overtime, they still want more staff over peak shopping periods yet France doesn’t seem to require them or at least doesn’t advertise the vacancies. There certainly are vacancies though, but what happens in some shops is that the queues just get longer and longer. Even in normal times, we have twice abandoned our trolley in Leclerc after seeing a 45 minute plus queue for all the checkouts; I wouldn’t even consider going there at this time of year.
Other services similarly slow to a crawl. The French post office received orders from Amazon on December 12th yet hadn’t managed to deliver them by December 23rd.
Perhaps you are thinking that the jobs are advertised at the equivalent of job centres? They may be, but it’s not possible to register with those centres over this period as the interviewers in ASSEDIC who are the gatekeepers to these centres don’t seem to turn up for work themselves.
So unlike in the rest of the world, there doesn’t really seem to be much in the way of Christmas employment. Even the Santas just move from their normal office so that’s not even an extra job!
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Christmas markets in Belfast compared to France
This year, Belfast has put on a Christmas market with a continental theme in front of the City Hall. One of the things that we found a little peculiar about it is that it actually has more French stalls than the Christmas markets in Perpignan. Of course, it also has substantial representations from Germany, Italy and even China. That’s something that you don’t get in France. For the most part, it’s either French or it isn’t there.
That applies to pretty much everything in fact. In a French supermarket, you get French cheese. In a UK supermarket you get UK cheese, Swiss cheese, German cheese and, of course, French cheese. Whereas even the largest French supermarket has only a tiny “ethnic” foods section, a typical UK supermarket doesn’t have an ethnic section at all because the food in the aisles is from everywhere. There are hardly any Australians living in Belfast yet it’s possible to buy Vegemite in Tesco; in France you’d need a really major supermarket to stock it.
Some would say: why shouldn’t it be French food in France? Well, obviously you would expect to have more French food in France than anything else but in every other country in the world you seem to get a reasonable representation of a selection of other cultures. The closed mentality in France makes that the rare exceptions to the “France only” rule very pale in comparison to the equivalent elsewhere.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Merry Christmas from France
As you’ll know if you’ve been following our saga, we were off to Belfast to see my Dad on his 80th birthday.
Of course, as we were there pretty close to Christmas it was a good chance to do some Christmas shopping and even more so as we had, in theory, up to 100kg luggage allowance between us. The usual flight delays meant that it was after midnight on the 11th before we reached the Great Southern Hotel at Dublin airport. Definitely an excellent airport hotel for a late night arrival as they have a 24 hour shuttle service (most of the airport shuttles only operate up to about 9pm or so which is far from clear from their websites).
Next morning it was off to Belfast though with an early lunch in the airport as the bus trip takes getting on for three hours. Had it been France, there’d have been no lunch as, aside from the likes of McDonalds, the restaurants just won’t serve you lunch outside noon to 2pm.
Our late arrival meant that we ended up getting Dad’s birthday presents on the morning of his birthday before having a very nice meal in the Jurys Inn in the city centre that evening.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.Non-standard computing: the Sharp Zaurus
After using Windows for so long, you get used to having to load new drivers for every new piece of hardware that you pick up but that’s not the case for other operating systems.
For instance, we were heading off to the UK for a while I thought that it would be an idea to get a little modem for my Sharp SL-5500 Zaurus. Anyway, a quite hunt round e-bay turned up maybe a half-dozen compact-flash modems. Would they work though?
A quick search on google revealed next to nothing about connecting such things to the Zaurus. Anyway, I figured that the HP modem would be pretty standard and at £5 wasn’t a massive outlay either.
So, what do you need to do to install it? Nothing, just plug it in and off it goes. That’s how Linux handles such things. So no need for the CD that came with it to add the Windows drivers.
Of course, as we’re in France, it’s not quite so simple to start surfing. We used to use tiscali as a backup dial-up service but they’ve now ditched that so I’d to sign up with freesurf before I could get surfing with the Zaurus.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.What happens to the childrens’ English when you move to France?
The vast majority of people don’t seem to consider what will happen to their childrens’ English when they move to France. They seem to just assume that they’ll grow up bilingual without any effort. After all, they’ll learn English at home and French at school.
That’s not what actually happens though.
In practice, children end up speaking the English of about an 8 or 9 year old if they’ve moved here prior to that age. For those older (and this includes adults!), their English basically stops at the level it was when they moved to France.
Surely I can’t include adults in that statement? Well, yes. Think about it. If you’d moved here even 10 years ago, chances are you’d not know the English words for Internet, e-mail, Child Tax Credit, etc. So, yes, your English stops developing too.
Don’t forget the education that children here won’t get. If they move over between 11 and 18 then they won’t learn the English versions of all those words that they’d have picked up during their GCSE and A-levels. In fact, if they went to age 16 here and tried to move back to do A-levels, they would have a very restricted range of subjects that they’d be able to do. History? No chance: they’d be taught that Nelson was the enemy for instance. Geography: would they know that the Etats-Unis was America? English: no chance, naturally, as they’d have been taught English as a foreign language. In fact, apart from French, it’s doubtful if they would be able to do A-levels.
The effect is much more noticeable in younger children. Try talking to someone who was born here to English parents. Unless their parents have done something about it, chances are that you’d find it very difficult to speak to them. Such children are rarely fluent in English.
What can you do about it though?
Up to age 11 it’s fairly easy. Just get the likes of the Ladybird books and read to them and let them watch UK TV. That should keep them fairly much up with the English that they’d have spoken if they’d have remained in the UK.
Beyond that, it’s much harder. I suspect you’d need to send them to a bilingual school (note: international schools are quite different).
Anyway, something to think about. Most people don’t get as far as thinking about it so you’re way ahead already.
Copyright © 2004-2014 by Foreign Perspectives. All rights reserved.
