（一）法国大选第一轮。
晚上八时，倒计时，第一轮选举结果公布：胜出的两位候选人分别是萨科奇和罗亚尔。名列第三位和第四位的分别是Bayrou和 Le Pen。没有任何意外。据统计投票率高达85%，算是创下历史新高（五年前由于民众对政局失望，太多人没在第一轮前往投票，结果极右翼候选人Le Pen居然在第一轮胜出左翼社会党候选人若斯潘，把全法国乃至全世界都吓了一大跳，若斯潘失望得宣布退出法国政坛）。法国到底会不会在二零零七年诞生有史以来第一位女总统？我的预测是萨科奇这个略有民族主义倾向的右翼候选人会打败漂亮而魅力四射的法国政坛美女罗亚尔，最终成为法兰西第五共和国的下一任总统。我们五月六日来看看我猜得对不对。
今天下午去市中心逛了一圈，发现这个周日比以往要热闹许多。车来车往，人来人往，大家都走出家门来投票了。看到很多老人互相搀扶着去投票站，也有很多刚够选举资格的青年兴奋地前往。我出于好奇陪Audrey去了位于市立图书馆的投票站，她进门后先向一位工作人员出示投票卡，在一张长长的桌子上排列了十二叠名卡，分别写了十二位总统候选人的名字。为了尽量公平的目的，大家一般都每一叠抽一张，因为如果每个人仅仅拿自己要投的候选人，那么后来的选民就会看得出之前投票的趋势从而影响到他们的选择。Audrey取了名卡，就走进了一个拉了小窗帘的投票亭，里面的情况我就不清楚了，她出来后向另外三个工作人员出示身份证件，其中一个工作人员专门负责记录选票号码，另一个工作人员核对证件后，大声报出她的姓氏，Audrey回答“是”，该工作人员就又接着大声说“有权投票，并已投票”。
什么时候我能在自己的国家投票直接选举国家领导人呢？好期盼这一天。
（二）我的草。
出土了。连着两个星期万里无云的大晴天，温暖的春天的阳光终于哺育了我撒下的种籽。今天早上去看望我的小草时，分明看到了三颗小苗，茁壮地破土而出。
不过我的葱却不太往高处长，只是结苞想开花，让我不知如何是好。只好抓了把剪子每次看到就把它们扼杀在摇篮里。
（三）海边的生活。
无论人们如何对诺曼底的气候挖苦打击，我还是要说，住在这样一个海边的小城，真的很惬意！
天气转暖以来，每到中午时分，我们再也无法安分地呆在公司餐厅就餐。三俩结伴开上几分钟的车，就来到了海边的沙滩上，铺个小毯子，吃个三明治，沐浴着阳光，遥望蓝蓝的大海，就这样悠闲下身心，再也不想回去上班。。。
这个周末，朋友在他的院子里邀请我们BBQ，大家都着了夏装，享受啤酒烤肉的美味。听一个男生抱着吉他弹唱夏日的调调，伴着悠扬的口哨声，就这样懒散地仰在青草地上，任凭天地安静下来。要不是这样，生活还能怎么样美好？
今天一早醒来，又是个好得不忍心待在家里的天气。约了朋友就来到海滩边，看海。
呵，这个城市的夏天，太美好。
（四）英语。
今天晚上邀请了两个美国人来家里吃饭。说了一晚上的英语。感觉不错。要多和他们一起玩，多讲英语，不能被法国人同化。
Monday, April 23, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
花草周记（一）
第一个星期过去了。
Sandrine家院子里种的上海小青菜目前还没有长苗。
我家迷你小阳台上的葱自上周末从Sandrine家的院子里连土移植过来后，好像没什么生气。虽然我每天浇水。
薰衣草没有动静。（据说运气不好要等到明年春天）
Persil和Basilic的那个盆子也没有动静。等种子发芽真是让人心急啊！
天气开始越来越好，春天的气息快快感染到我的种子们吧！
Sandrine家院子里种的上海小青菜目前还没有长苗。
我家迷你小阳台上的葱自上周末从Sandrine家的院子里连土移植过来后，好像没什么生气。虽然我每天浇水。
薰衣草没有动静。（据说运气不好要等到明年春天）
Persil和Basilic的那个盆子也没有动静。等种子发芽真是让人心急啊！
天气开始越来越好，春天的气息快快感染到我的种子们吧！
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Fwd : Tribal workers
FRONT PAGE - WEEKEND Financial Times: Tribal workers
Today's generation of high-earning professionals maintain that their personal fulfillment comes from their jobs and the hours they work. They should grow up, says Thomas Barlow.
A friend of mine recent ly met a young American woman who was studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. She already had two degrees from top US universities, had worked as a lawyer and as a social worker in the US, and somewhere along the way had acquired a black belt in kung fu.
Now, however, her course at Oxford was coming to an end and she was thoroughly angst-ridden about what to do next.
Her problem was no ordinary one. She couldn't decide whether she should make a lot of money as a corporate lawyer/management consultant, devote herself to charity work helping battered wives in disadvantaged communities, or go to Hollywood to work as a stunt double in kung fu films.
What most struck my friend was not the disparity of this woman's choices, but the earnestness and bad grace with which she ruminated on them. It was almost as though she begrudged her own talents, opportunities and freedom - as though the world had treated her unkindly by forcing her to make such a hard choice.
Her case is symptomatic of our times. In recent years, there has grown up a culture of discontent among the highly educated young, something that seems to flare up, especially, when people reach their late 20s and early 30s.
It arises not from frustration caused by lack of opportunity, as may have been true in the past, but from an excess of possibilities. Most theories of adult developmental psychology have a special category for those in their late 20s and early 30s. Whereas the early to mid-20s are seen as a time to establish one's mode of living, the late 20s to early 30s are often considered a period of reappraisal.
In a society where people marry and have children young, where financial burdens accumulate early, and where job markets are inflexible, such reappraisals may not last long. But when people manage to remain free of financial or family burdens, and
where the perceived opportunities for alternative careers are many, the reappraisal is likely to be angst-ridden and long lasting.
Among no social group is this more true than the modern, international, professional elite: that tribe of young bankers, lawyers, consultants and managers for whom financial, familial, personal, corporate and (increasingly) national ties have become irrelevant.
Often they grew up in one country, were educated in another, and are now working in a third. They are independent, well paid, and enriched by experiences that many of their parents could only dream of. Yet, by their late 20s, many carry a sense of disappointment: that for all their opportunities, freedoms and chievements, life has not delivered quite what they had hoped.
At the heart of this disillusionment lies a new attitude towards work. The idea has grown up, in recent years, that work should not be just a means to an end a way to make money, support a family, or gain social prestige - but should provide a rich and fulfilling experience in and of itself.
Jobs are no longer just jobs; they are lifestyle options .
Recruiters at financial companies, consultancies and law firms have promoted this conception of work. Job advertisements promise challenge, wide experiences,
opportunities for travel and relentless personal development.
Michael is a 33- year-old management consultant who has bought into this vision of late-20th century work. Intelligent and well-educated - with three degrees, including a doctorate - he works in Munich, and has a "stable, long-distance relationship" with a woman living in California. He takes 140 flights a year and works an average of 80 hours a week. Some weeks he works more than 100 hours.
When asked if he likes his job, he will say: "I enjoy what I'm doing in terms of the intellectual challenges."
Although he earns a lot, he doesn't spend much. He rents a small apartment, though he is rarely there, and has accumulated very few possessions.
He justifies the long hours not in terms of wealth-acquisition, but solely as part of a "learning experience".
This attitude to work has several interesting implications, mostly to do with the shifting balance between work and non-work, employment and leisure.
Because fulfilling and engrossing work - the sort that is thought to provide the most intense learning experience - often requires long hours or captivates the imagination for long periods of time, it is easy to slip into the idea that the converse is also true: that just by working long hours, one is also engaging in fulfilling and engrossing work.
This leads to the popular fallacy that you can measure the value of your job and, therefore, the amount you are learning from it by the amo unt of time you spend on it. And, incidentally, when a premium is placed on learning rather than earning, people are particularly susceptible to this form of self-deceit.
Thus, whereas in the past, when people in their 20s or 30s spoke disparagingly about nine-to-five jobs it was invariably because they were seen as too routine, too unimaginative, or too bourgeois. Now, it is simply because they don't contain enough hours.
Young professionals have not suddenly developed a distaste for leisure, but they have solidly bought into the belief that a 45-hour week necessarily signifies an unfulfilling job.
Jane, a 29-year-old corporate lawyer who works in the City of London, tells a story about working on a deal with another lawyer, a young man in his early 30s. At about 3am, he leant over the boardroom desk and said: Isn't this great? This is when I really love my job."
What most struck her about the remark was that the work was irrelevant (she says it was actually rather boring); her colleague simply liked the idea of working late. "It's as though he was validated, or making his life important by this," she says.
Unfortunately, when people can convince themselves that all they need do in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives is to work long hours, they can quickly start to lose reasons for their existence.
As they start to think of their employment as a lifestyle, fulfilling and rewarding of itself - and in which the reward is proportional to hours worked - people rapidly begin to substitute work for other aspects of their lives.
Michael, the management consultant, is a good example of this phenomenon. He is prepared to trade (his word) not just goods and time for the experience afforded by his work, but also a substantial measure of commitment in his personal relationships. In a few months, he is being transferred to San Francisco, where he will move in with his girlfriend.
But he's not sure that living in the same house is actually going to change the amount of time he spends on his relationship. "Once I move over, my time involvement on my relationship will not change significantly. My job takes up most of my time and pretty much dominates what I do, when, where and how I do it," he says.
Moreover, the reluctance to commit time to a relationship because they are learning so much, and having such an intense and fulfilling time at work is compounded, for some young professionals, by a reluctance to have a long-term relationship at all. Today, by the time someone reaches 30, they could easily have had three or four jobs in as many different cities - which is not, as it is often portrayed, a function of an insecure global job- market, but of choice.
Robert is 30 years old. He has three degrees and has worked on three continents. He is currently working for the United Nations in Geneva. For him, the most significant deterrent when deciding whether to enter into a relationship is the likely transient nature of the rest of his life.
"What is the point in investing all this emotional energy and exposing myself in a relationship, if I am leaving in two months, or if I do not know what I am doing next year?" he says.
Such is the character of the modern, international professional, at least throughout his or her 20s. Spare time, goods and relationships, these are all willingly traded for the exigencies of work. Nothing is valued so highly as accumulated experience.
Nothing is neglected so much as commitment.
With this work ethic - or perhaps one should call it a professional development ethic" - becoming so powerful, the globally mobile generation now in its late 20s and early 30s has garnered considerable professional success.
At what point, though, does the experience-seeking end? Kathryn is a successful American academic, 29, who bucked the trend of her generation: she recently turned her life round for someone else. She moved to the UK, specifically, to be with a man, a decision that she says few of her contemporaries understood.
"We're not meant to say: 'I made this decision for this person. Today, you're meant to do things for yourself. If you're willing to make sacrifices for others - especially if you're a woman - that's seen as a kind of weakness. I wonder, though, is doing things for yourself really empowerment, or is liberty a kind of trap?" she says.
For many, it is a trap that is difficult to break out of, not least because they are so caught up in a culture of professional development. And spoilt for choice, some like the American Rhodes Scholar no doubt become paralyzed by their opportunities, unable to do much else in their lives, because they are so determined not to let a single one of their chances slip.
If that means minimal personal commitments well into their 30s, so be it. "Loneliness is better than boredom" is Jane's philosophy. And, although she knows "a lot of professional single women who would give it all up if they met a "rich man to marry", she remains far more concerned herself about finding fulfillment at work.
"I am constantly questioning whether I am doing the right thing here," she says. "There's an eternal search for a more challenging and satisfying option, a better lifestyle. You always feel you're not doing the right thing, always feel as if you should be striving for another goal," she says.
Jane, Michael, Robert and Kathryn grew up as part of a generation with fewer social constraints determining their futures than has been true for probably any other generation in history. They were taught at school that when they grew up they could "do anything", "be anything". It was an idea that was reinforced by popular culture, in films, books and television.
The notion that one can do anything is clearly liberating. But life without constraints has also proved a recipe for endless searching, endless questioning of aspirations. It has made this generation obsessed with self-development and determined, for as long as possible, to minimize personal commitments in order to maximise the options open to them.
One might see this as a sign of extended adolescence. Eventually, they will be forced to realize that living is as much about closing possibilities as it is aboutcreating them.
Today's generation of high-earning professionals maintain that their personal fulfillment comes from their jobs and the hours they work. They should grow up, says Thomas Barlow.
A friend of mine recent ly met a young American woman who was studying on a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford. She already had two degrees from top US universities, had worked as a lawyer and as a social worker in the US, and somewhere along the way had acquired a black belt in kung fu.
Now, however, her course at Oxford was coming to an end and she was thoroughly angst-ridden about what to do next.
Her problem was no ordinary one. She couldn't decide whether she should make a lot of money as a corporate lawyer/management consultant, devote herself to charity work helping battered wives in disadvantaged communities, or go to Hollywood to work as a stunt double in kung fu films.
What most struck my friend was not the disparity of this woman's choices, but the earnestness and bad grace with which she ruminated on them. It was almost as though she begrudged her own talents, opportunities and freedom - as though the world had treated her unkindly by forcing her to make such a hard choice.
Her case is symptomatic of our times. In recent years, there has grown up a culture of discontent among the highly educated young, something that seems to flare up, especially, when people reach their late 20s and early 30s.
It arises not from frustration caused by lack of opportunity, as may have been true in the past, but from an excess of possibilities. Most theories of adult developmental psychology have a special category for those in their late 20s and early 30s. Whereas the early to mid-20s are seen as a time to establish one's mode of living, the late 20s to early 30s are often considered a period of reappraisal.
In a society where people marry and have children young, where financial burdens accumulate early, and where job markets are inflexible, such reappraisals may not last long. But when people manage to remain free of financial or family burdens, and
where the perceived opportunities for alternative careers are many, the reappraisal is likely to be angst-ridden and long lasting.
Among no social group is this more true than the modern, international, professional elite: that tribe of young bankers, lawyers, consultants and managers for whom financial, familial, personal, corporate and (increasingly) national ties have become irrelevant.
Often they grew up in one country, were educated in another, and are now working in a third. They are independent, well paid, and enriched by experiences that many of their parents could only dream of. Yet, by their late 20s, many carry a sense of disappointment: that for all their opportunities, freedoms and chievements, life has not delivered quite what they had hoped.
At the heart of this disillusionment lies a new attitude towards work. The idea has grown up, in recent years, that work should not be just a means to an end a way to make money, support a family, or gain social prestige - but should provide a rich and fulfilling experience in and of itself.
Jobs are no longer just jobs; they are lifestyle options .
Recruiters at financial companies, consultancies and law firms have promoted this conception of work. Job advertisements promise challenge, wide experiences,
opportunities for travel and relentless personal development.
Michael is a 33- year-old management consultant who has bought into this vision of late-20th century work. Intelligent and well-educated - with three degrees, including a doctorate - he works in Munich, and has a "stable, long-distance relationship" with a woman living in California. He takes 140 flights a year and works an average of 80 hours a week. Some weeks he works more than 100 hours.
When asked if he likes his job, he will say: "I enjoy what I'm doing in terms of the intellectual challenges."
Although he earns a lot, he doesn't spend much. He rents a small apartment, though he is rarely there, and has accumulated very few possessions.
He justifies the long hours not in terms of wealth-acquisition, but solely as part of a "learning experience".
This attitude to work has several interesting implications, mostly to do with the shifting balance between work and non-work, employment and leisure.
Because fulfilling and engrossing work - the sort that is thought to provide the most intense learning experience - often requires long hours or captivates the imagination for long periods of time, it is easy to slip into the idea that the converse is also true: that just by working long hours, one is also engaging in fulfilling and engrossing work.
This leads to the popular fallacy that you can measure the value of your job and, therefore, the amount you are learning from it by the amo unt of time you spend on it. And, incidentally, when a premium is placed on learning rather than earning, people are particularly susceptible to this form of self-deceit.
Thus, whereas in the past, when people in their 20s or 30s spoke disparagingly about nine-to-five jobs it was invariably because they were seen as too routine, too unimaginative, or too bourgeois. Now, it is simply because they don't contain enough hours.
Young professionals have not suddenly developed a distaste for leisure, but they have solidly bought into the belief that a 45-hour week necessarily signifies an unfulfilling job.
Jane, a 29-year-old corporate lawyer who works in the City of London, tells a story about working on a deal with another lawyer, a young man in his early 30s. At about 3am, he leant over the boardroom desk and said: Isn't this great? This is when I really love my job."
What most struck her about the remark was that the work was irrelevant (she says it was actually rather boring); her colleague simply liked the idea of working late. "It's as though he was validated, or making his life important by this," she says.
Unfortunately, when people can convince themselves that all they need do in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives is to work long hours, they can quickly start to lose reasons for their existence.
As they start to think of their employment as a lifestyle, fulfilling and rewarding of itself - and in which the reward is proportional to hours worked - people rapidly begin to substitute work for other aspects of their lives.
Michael, the management consultant, is a good example of this phenomenon. He is prepared to trade (his word) not just goods and time for the experience afforded by his work, but also a substantial measure of commitment in his personal relationships. In a few months, he is being transferred to San Francisco, where he will move in with his girlfriend.
But he's not sure that living in the same house is actually going to change the amount of time he spends on his relationship. "Once I move over, my time involvement on my relationship will not change significantly. My job takes up most of my time and pretty much dominates what I do, when, where and how I do it," he says.
Moreover, the reluctance to commit time to a relationship because they are learning so much, and having such an intense and fulfilling time at work is compounded, for some young professionals, by a reluctance to have a long-term relationship at all. Today, by the time someone reaches 30, they could easily have had three or four jobs in as many different cities - which is not, as it is often portrayed, a function of an insecure global job- market, but of choice.
Robert is 30 years old. He has three degrees and has worked on three continents. He is currently working for the United Nations in Geneva. For him, the most significant deterrent when deciding whether to enter into a relationship is the likely transient nature of the rest of his life.
"What is the point in investing all this emotional energy and exposing myself in a relationship, if I am leaving in two months, or if I do not know what I am doing next year?" he says.
Such is the character of the modern, international professional, at least throughout his or her 20s. Spare time, goods and relationships, these are all willingly traded for the exigencies of work. Nothing is valued so highly as accumulated experience.
Nothing is neglected so much as commitment.
With this work ethic - or perhaps one should call it a professional development ethic" - becoming so powerful, the globally mobile generation now in its late 20s and early 30s has garnered considerable professional success.
At what point, though, does the experience-seeking end? Kathryn is a successful American academic, 29, who bucked the trend of her generation: she recently turned her life round for someone else. She moved to the UK, specifically, to be with a man, a decision that she says few of her contemporaries understood.
"We're not meant to say: 'I made this decision for this person. Today, you're meant to do things for yourself. If you're willing to make sacrifices for others - especially if you're a woman - that's seen as a kind of weakness. I wonder, though, is doing things for yourself really empowerment, or is liberty a kind of trap?" she says.
For many, it is a trap that is difficult to break out of, not least because they are so caught up in a culture of professional development. And spoilt for choice, some like the American Rhodes Scholar no doubt become paralyzed by their opportunities, unable to do much else in their lives, because they are so determined not to let a single one of their chances slip.
If that means minimal personal commitments well into their 30s, so be it. "Loneliness is better than boredom" is Jane's philosophy. And, although she knows "a lot of professional single women who would give it all up if they met a "rich man to marry", she remains far more concerned herself about finding fulfillment at work.
"I am constantly questioning whether I am doing the right thing here," she says. "There's an eternal search for a more challenging and satisfying option, a better lifestyle. You always feel you're not doing the right thing, always feel as if you should be striving for another goal," she says.
Jane, Michael, Robert and Kathryn grew up as part of a generation with fewer social constraints determining their futures than has been true for probably any other generation in history. They were taught at school that when they grew up they could "do anything", "be anything". It was an idea that was reinforced by popular culture, in films, books and television.
The notion that one can do anything is clearly liberating. But life without constraints has also proved a recipe for endless searching, endless questioning of aspirations. It has made this generation obsessed with self-development and determined, for as long as possible, to minimize personal commitments in order to maximise the options open to them.
One might see this as a sign of extended adolescence. Eventually, they will be forced to realize that living is as much about closing possibilities as it is aboutcreating them.
Monday, April 16, 2007
花花草草
对花花草草的疼爱之情，还要从那次长跑说起。我们三个姑娘糊里糊涂报名参加了一次只有男生参加的八公里跑，结果主办单位悄悄为我们准备了特别的奖品，赛后发给我们一人一盆花。我叫不出花的名字，只知道我的那盆粉红鲜嫩，生气怒放，别提有多漂亮了。
拿回家后，我去上班忘了关暖气，结果一天下来把它干着了，枝叶一下全都耷拉下来，伏在桌面，仿佛一点支撑下去的力气都没有了。艳粉的花瓣儿也失去了光鲜，奄奄一息地垂向地面。我生命中第一次对一盆花心疼，心疼得不得了，心急火燎地浇水灌溉，万分神奇的是，半个小时后，它又完全地绽放了，挺直的身躯，向天空生长着，满满地散发出生命的气息，只比以前更美了。
打这以后，我对花花草草逐渐产生了前所未有的欢喜。这个新的爱好经过发展和演变，现在已经衍生到对种植各类植物的向往。我的同事也是好朋友Sandrine和他的丈夫住在一所带个大院子的石头砌成的房子里。他们什么都种，简单归纳一下就有Salad，红白洋葱，菠菜，小洋葱，蒜，葱，萝卜，小西红柿，大葱，西葫芦，桃树，樱桃树。。。他们也种只管看不吃的植物，薰衣草，郁金香，把院子点缀得有声有色。
这个周末去他们家玩，主要任务就是帮他们一起打理院子。春天是播种的季节，他们教我如何除草，翻土，撒种，学得我不亦乐乎。我从瑞士旅游归来从表姑妈家带回了上海青菜的种籽，也趁这个机会在他们家种下了，就等着收获的那一天，我这个可怜的孩子又可以有家乡的青菜吃了，饥渴阿！
我的公寓没有院子，但是有个迷你小阳台。于是我种下了一盆葱（烧菜的时候就现用，灵伐），一盆薰衣草（薰衣草在法国好像没有浪漫的特征，就是很香，放到洗衣机里用，真正地薰衣），一盆组合的persil（类似香菜）和Basilic，等长出来了也可以烧菜现用。
我的花花草草，现在成了我重要的朋友。每天回家放下包第一件事就是去阳台看它们，跟它们问好，看它们又没有被杂草欺负，够不够水喝。。。最后，小学生作文的结尾：我爱我的花花草草，呼呼！
拿回家后，我去上班忘了关暖气，结果一天下来把它干着了，枝叶一下全都耷拉下来，伏在桌面，仿佛一点支撑下去的力气都没有了。艳粉的花瓣儿也失去了光鲜，奄奄一息地垂向地面。我生命中第一次对一盆花心疼，心疼得不得了，心急火燎地浇水灌溉，万分神奇的是，半个小时后，它又完全地绽放了，挺直的身躯，向天空生长着，满满地散发出生命的气息，只比以前更美了。
打这以后，我对花花草草逐渐产生了前所未有的欢喜。这个新的爱好经过发展和演变，现在已经衍生到对种植各类植物的向往。我的同事也是好朋友Sandrine和他的丈夫住在一所带个大院子的石头砌成的房子里。他们什么都种，简单归纳一下就有Salad，红白洋葱，菠菜，小洋葱，蒜，葱，萝卜，小西红柿，大葱，西葫芦，桃树，樱桃树。。。他们也种只管看不吃的植物，薰衣草，郁金香，把院子点缀得有声有色。
这个周末去他们家玩，主要任务就是帮他们一起打理院子。春天是播种的季节，他们教我如何除草，翻土，撒种，学得我不亦乐乎。我从瑞士旅游归来从表姑妈家带回了上海青菜的种籽，也趁这个机会在他们家种下了，就等着收获的那一天，我这个可怜的孩子又可以有家乡的青菜吃了，饥渴阿！
我的公寓没有院子，但是有个迷你小阳台。于是我种下了一盆葱（烧菜的时候就现用，灵伐），一盆薰衣草（薰衣草在法国好像没有浪漫的特征，就是很香，放到洗衣机里用，真正地薰衣），一盆组合的persil（类似香菜）和Basilic，等长出来了也可以烧菜现用。
我的花花草草，现在成了我重要的朋友。每天回家放下包第一件事就是去阳台看它们，跟它们问好，看它们又没有被杂草欺负，够不够水喝。。。最后，小学生作文的结尾：我爱我的花花草草，呼呼！
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