Goa. 9 years later.

My first Goa post I wrote most of a decade ago.

A lot's changed - for example, the "King of Good Times" Vijay Malia's Kingfisher Villa in Candolim is in lien.  Many, many more local Indians (who the vast majority are male) have arrived for the 2017 New Years' celebration, and relatively few foreigners.

I've also changed.   For example, this time, I haven't arrived alone.  You see, last year, my wife and I married, and this is the beginning of our honeymoon.  So I write as a honeymooner instead of a backpacker.  We've technically been calling this the "pre-honeymoon", as we're intending to arrive in Bhutan for the main deal.

Finally, I couldn't help but see each of the two Goa trips as bookend moments in the expansion of my awareness of the world and my place in it as a person.  So I've also been drawn to thinking about how the world has changed in the past ten years.

World:  China's ascendant.  The BRIC concept would have been more accurately captured with b-r-i-C  .  It's old news by now that the world's nations are turning inward on themselves currently in reaction to globalization.  (I don't need to mention who we elected president).  Canada stands out as having the only recently elected head of state with an outward-looking perspective.  Eyes will slowly turn to France and Germany to see if the conservative wave takes hold there too.

The US notionally has a national healthcare system now.  It's under fire right now, and has built in flaws from the start like lack of single-payer and lack of national uniformity (and the resources / bargaining clout that would go with that).  I pay more for healthcare than I did before but I see it as at least an interim sacrifice if the country's most desperate can get adequate health care now.

The developing world's middle class have swelled, even as the ranks of the developed world's middle class have contracted somewhat.  (Hint: they didn't head toward the rich end of things)

India's working hard to fight corruption. As I write the country is in the midst of "demonetization" which is basically outlawing the largest denominations of currency and requiring them to be replaced with new currency, with the dual intent of flushing out black money, and getting India into a more trackable, more liquid cashless electronic payments society.

Self:  First, I received a diagnosis and got treatment for sleep apnea.  (For anyone in the world who snores, including people I come across hearing you loudly dozing away on airplanes, I have enormous empathy for you).  Second, after a lot of ups and downs, highs and scars, I have a career that faces the world especially it's less fortunate (primarily in Africa) that leverages my technical experience.  Finally, as mentioned, I'm married now, to a woman I met in business school who is sincerely amazing. For all of these I feel truly blessed.

One MBA (and a lot more independent reading) later, I understand economics better than I did before, but there is still so much to learn that is simply not taught in formal curriculae.  The closest I find is "input/output economics", and I am hopeful for what still-nascent economic simulations can teach us about the world we live in.

During these couple days in Goa, my wife complains that I'm being too wistful / nostalgic, which she perceives as depressed, and not being present enough to her.  I try in vain to convince her otherwise, that I'm just a massive introvert.   (My writing this post isn't helping in the immediate term, but I think will help after I'm done and have got the feelings out of my head and onto paper).

I think the key thing is that I need to "put the backpack down", even if my own self-image is the only remaining manifestation of that.  Although she loves travel, this kind of it is definitely not her thing: 4+-star hotels, not guesthouses.  Anyway our near term life plans are incompatible with anything resembling the backpacker lifestyle.  Again I hope this post helps with that.

Our next stop is Bhutan, the "land of happiness".  I sincerely hope it lives up to its intent of being the world's happiest nation, or at least successfully striving to be.  I may or may not write a blog post about it.  For the sake of my honeymoon's happiness, I hope I am not motivated to :) .

Marie in France pt. 4

Strasbourg, September 17

I should be studying right now, but I’m compelled to add some more notes to my journal, especially since it’s so easy to forget one’s activities after a few days.

Friday I showed up for the last class of the week, according to the guide pedagogique emploi du temps, and found two others of our little quartet waiting for the instructor of Seminaire Pratiques d’ecriture[MS1] : traductions adaptations, Lea and Julie, both francaises.  Fifteen minutes later,  I was not at all surprised that she still hadn’t appeared. So off we went again to HQ, slowly traversing the corridor, checking all the panneaux for some sort of communication as to why the class did not take place.  After some time we found a message stating that the class was in session for three hours for each of four days (12 hours total).  But the days were not indicated.  This was supposedly a “trasversaux” or “sem-transversaux” class involving other disciplines. Lea, the most self-assertive of our little group, considered it scandaleux that evidently the other disciplines were notified of the days but ours was not.  We both sent an email to the instructress at the generic email address, with copies to each other. I politely, but pointedly, asked her what in blazes was going on.  Lea’s message was a little more pointed.   As of today I have not had a reply, I will have to ask Lea if she replied to her email.  The following Monday we were assembled for our afternoon class with our director, who hadn’t a clue as to the schedule of Mme-la-prof.  Fortunately one of the second year students, obviously more in touch with the faculty, had the dates. It turns out all my Fridays are free until November 8.  

I suspect this is more for the benefit of the instructors than the students.

Saturday morning I checked out a place which the beauteous Audrey had set up for me.  It was depressing.  Enough said.  This was followed by a trip to Place Kleber for books and supplies.  Returning to the Rue du bon Pasteur, I exercised for the first time since leaving San Francisco, running in the Parc de l’Orangerie which is quite nearby. Sunday, with the help of my Mme. Cazenave, Airbnb hostess I checked out apartment rentals, saw one, not bad but which would not work, no kitchen equipee (stove, oven, sink, etc). But I did get an appointment for Monday evening for an apartment very nearby, which would  be perfect.

Monday my first class was an elective, Arabic, writing and speaking. I’ve always wanted to study Arabic, and I think I can do OK with the speaking, but the writing?  Wow.  Regardless,  I picked up the text at Place Kleber.

The transportation system in Strasbourg is very interesting.  When boarding the trams you buy a ticket at the individual stations, then you validate them at a machine nearby.  Or, if you start on a bus, you can buy the ticket (1.60 euros one way or double that for a round trip), and you validate the ticket on the bus. You can make a connection between bus/tram or vice versa, but it has to be within an hour.  At every place you board you have to validate your ticket.  I was told the system was strictly regulated, a fact I found hard to understand since it seemed that you could board a tram with ease without paying, there was nothing to stop you.  Regardless, being a law-abiding individual, I followed the rules.  On the return from Place Kleber I learned differently. For the first time I saw a ticket agent, who I guess boards the trams at random times.  He checked everyone’s ticket, including mine, which of course was perfectly validated.  Don’t know what would have happened had I not had a valid ticket, maybe I would  be writing this journal from my jail cell.

Monday afternoon my class was “Theatralites”. The subject matter is as vague as the title, and cynic that I am, I suspect that it’s an invention of the faculty to plump up the program.  But it’s going to be an important part of the program, so I better get with it.

Headed for 22 Rue de Johann Sebastian Bach to see the apartment.  Yes it’s perfect, but I was semi-candid in advising the bailleur (landlord) how long I was going to stay, definitely a point not in my favor. He had a couple of other people who were interested, and I will know tomorrow.  Today I sent him an email offering some little incentives which hopefully will put me in a better light.

Tuesday morning there was a presentation on Cervantes, in Spanish,  by a Spanish professor and author, Senor Galicio, very interesting, even though I probably understood only about 70%. In the afternoon I had my Spanish lit class – plays of the Siglo de Oro – more theater. But I did find out that my copy of Don Juan was probably not going to work optimally, and that there was a third bookstore at Place Kleber at the Aubette, a sort of upscale galleria, where I would probably find a more informative edition – this from a student, as it seems a universal law that no faculty member is a source of any practical information.

Mme. Cazenave, my Airbnb hostess is working on a certificate in speech therapy. She was married to a physicist who worked not only at the University, but also in China, England, the US and elsewhere, and she is fairly knowledgeable about the university system in France.  She tells me that on dit (they say) that the professors of non-scientific studies are much less serious than the professors of scientific studies.  I don’t doubt it.

Our group at Rue du Bon Pasteur has expanded to four, with the arrival of Sabrina, a charming flamande, who is in Strasbourg on some sort of teaching internship.  Laure (francaise) is studying biology at a 2 year vocational institution, which sounds pretty rigorous from what she tells me.  The two of them are probably similar in age.  My hostess, a mature, experienced mother and grandmother, is still young enough to be my daughter.  Regardless, I hope we will become good friends.

The nice M. Schneider has sent my helpful hostess an email with the name and contact of another agent immobilier.  If the apartment I’m interested in does not work out I will give her a call.

So much for studying. Tomorrow is another day.

Marie in France - pt 3

Strasbourg, September 12, 2013

Before I start the next set of events, I want to mention once incident which took place the same day I had the encounter with the bus driver (Tuesday September 10).  I did some food shopping at a good-sized market in the neighborhood, and on my list was some cheese.  I am very partial to Bel Paese (Italian) but the lady at the cheese counter had never heard of it.  Another shopper overheard our conversation and remarked that she also liked the Bel Paese, but the French cheeses were even better, and she recommended such and such cheese.  So I said to the attendant, "Bon, Mme. has recommended this cheese and I will take it".  Well, I didn’t like it.  The next day I returned to the market and this time I asked for Emmenthaler, which was promoted on most of the menus I had seen in the last few days.  The same girl asked me how I liked the other cheese, I replied “Pas trop” (not so much).  And she said Hein (hah) and Mme. Thinks she can make a good recommendation.  This particular scenario made me feel like I was beginning to be a part of the community.  The focal point was not that I was an American who needed help, but that Mme. What’s-her-name overstepped her expertise in cheese recommendations.

Yesterday I had a double class with my director.  French/Spanish translation is in one building, Spanish/French translation is in another.  You only have to take one or the other, but you have the option to take both, which I am.  But I think I will only take the exam in one.  In the first class the door was locked, there were a number of us waiting, and then the instructor showed up with the key.  Somehow there were already others in the classroom.  This is where the EMOS students (of which I am one) take the same class as the students who want to be teachers, and there are both M1 and M2 (first year and second year) students.

When the French/Spanish portion was over I followed the crowd to the sous-sol (basement)  batiment 4 for the Spanish/French portion. There were about 30 of us waiting outside another locked door, but I didn’t see the instructor.  We waited about 20 minutes before she finally showed up.  She had been looking (who knows where) for a key to open the door.

My airbnb hostess had referred me to a friend of hers, an agent immobilier (real estate agent) who did not do rentals but who referred me to his colleague Audrey, a beautiful blonde francaise, very nice girl. At this point I realized if I wanted a furnished unit, it would most likely be a studio, and anything larger would be unfurnished.  So I began thinking in terms of unfurnished apartments and furniture rentals. I showed up at their office at 2:30,  Audrey and I talked about various options.  Quickly enough we realized that because I did not have a bank account I could not rent an apartment in France, clearly I could not do anything in France without a bank account.  Audrey made a few phone calls to banks without success, the agent and another colleague got into the act, and for the next half hour the three of them were making telephone calls and checking the Internet, all the while the agent was telling me “We will find a solution.”  Bottom line is the agent made an appointment for me the next day with a bank near where I’m staying, and this banker, based on the information he received from the agent (whom he did not know) agreed that he could open an account for me.  Although not convinced that this would happen, I was hopeful and left their office thanking them profusely.

Meanwhile Audrey had given me an option (once I got the bank account) of a hotel/apartment rental in Petite France, a lovely section of Strasbourg.  But the units themselves were small and sort of non-descript. Audrey had told me that apartment owners would only rent for two or three years, so I presumed this was my only option (I have since learned differently).

My first class this morning (8:00 am) was a seminaire transversal (combination of students in other disciplines) on Renaissance myths and the medieval Mediterannean.  I hope this class will turn out to be as interesting as it sounds.  I say will, because the instructors never showed up.  There were four of us waiting, finally after fifteen minutes, one of the second year students took the lead and suggested we go back to Monde Roman headquarters (in another building of course) and find out what the problem was.  So off we trekked to Batiment 4, troisieme etage, and slowly made our way down the hall looking for signs of human life.  I spied a female functionary in one of the rooms and asked her where this new instructor was.  She said he wasn’t here this week, and he had posted a message on the panneau (glass panel) down the hall.  We must have checked about a dozen panels full of postings, and finally found an 8-1/2 x 11 piece of paper  informing one and all that this instructor was out of town this week.  Not too far away was a similar message regarding yet another instructor, the other half of this invisible team.  So with a sigh, further discussion on the various programs, and an exchange of emails, we all went off to whatever else we had to do.

My "else" was a 9:00 meeting with a retail banker (about 25) at the Banque Populaire d’Alsace.  He had had some concern that I did not speak much French, but seemed gratified that we were able to conduct our business in French.  He spent some 45 minutes with me, explaining everything slowly and clearly, about 90% of which I understood.  Long story short, I walked out with a bank account, transferred some money on line from San Francisco, and returned in the afternoon to conclude the transactions and sign the papers.  I now have a stack of documents in French which I have no intention of reading, but I am assured that everything is in place for me to negotiate an apartment rental (carte bancaire, assurance, etc.) sans souci.

Back to the apartment.  My airbnb hostess explained to me that even if one rented an apartment for two or three years, the renter had the right to terminate the agreement with three months’ notice.  My bank representative confirmed this, although there are of course certain procedures which have to be observed.  I will need more explanation on this, but in any case tomorrow I will check out the units at the Petite Marie, a really lovely part of Strasbourg.  I also have to go to the Place Kleber (Orange, Apple, International bookstore) and pick up a copy of Don Juan by Tirso de Molina, and Robert’s French/Spanish dictionary (I have Larousse French/English and Cassell’s Spanish/English which I will undoubtedly have to refer to).

My only class tomorrow is 2-5, entitled Seminaire Pratiques d’Ecriture: Traductions Adaptation  (the French really seem to like long titles).  I hope this instructor shows up.  On time.  With a key.

Marie in Strasbourg part 2

Strasbourg, Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Sunday morning was a rush getting my bags packed, having breakfast, checking out of the hotel and supervising my luggage into a taxi waiting for me per prearrangement. There were now three pieces, plus the backpack, the third being a huge one weighing over 20 kilos (over 45 pounds) which had been fed-exed the week before.  My hostess greeted me warmly on my arrival, we managed all the luggage into her very spacious unit (I think it’s the French equivalent of a co-op), and then I immediately crashed for a couple of hours.

My room is spacious, I have a huge deck right outside, private shower and sink, toilet off of the hallway.  Everything is modern, nicely tiled floor.  Mme. Was also kind enough to allow me the use of a huge glass table just outside my room on which I promptly installed my PC and various documents relating to banking, school and finding my way around Strasbourg.

Sunday everything was closed, except for some restaurants, so I went exploring in search of dinner armed with a large map of Strasbourg. After about half a mile I found a place that seemed marginally serviceable (hamburgers).  On entering I saw an open bottle of Black Label on the bar. Johnny Walker Black is not my scotch of choice, but there being no Dewars I ordered a glass.  The Black Label had much less of a bite than the Black Label I have tasted in the US, but I drank it regardless, ate the hamburger (the fries were good), and returned chez moi with a headache.  Highly unlikely that I will order another Scotch for a while, even if I can find an establishment which sells it.

Mme. had no problem signing the address verification, so armed with her attestation, my passport and some traveler’s checks I presented myself at the Société Générale Monday moring, fully confident of having a checking account following a few formalities.  Monsieur there was very courteous, and after going over the documents presented told me that all that was needed was an attestation from the taxing authority of my city or state validating the fact that I had paid my taxes for 2012.  Seeing my blank stare he suggested that I might write to this organization, explain the situation, and request the attestation. He wasn’t certain that a copy of my tax return, which was in any case locked up in San Francisco, would be sufficient.  I thought Oh sure, Dear IRS, I am a student in Strasbourg unable to open a bank account without proof that I have paid last year’s taxes, so could you please send same ASAP. Needless to say I still don’t have a checking account -- but I haven’t given up.

On to the Orange store to upgrade my cell service, then to the Apple store where I waited for a hour before seeing a very nice tech who found nothing wrong with my Iphone, finally showed up for my 3:00 class.  Madame-l’instructrice was late (no surprise), but instead of going into the course on Théatralités she spent the time explaining the very complicated curriculum for the next two years (I only want to understand the first semester) and fielding questions from my group.  There are four of us in this group, une francaise, a young woman from Colombia, an Italian signorina (I think) and myself. A lot of explanation results in a small increase in my understanding of what’s going on, so I continue to ask questions of whomever and whenever I can.

Tuesday morning the Secretariat was finally open again, so I got there early to pay my deposit of 250 euros.  Wrong place.  I was sent to another building where a cashier took my money, so I was finally “administrativement inscrite.”  I was astonished to learn that this is all I’m going to be charged for the entire year.  This explains much of what I have observed in the last few days.  The school budget has its limits, different disciplines may be combined if the subject permits, the Secretariat personnel are probably paid for only three days a week (hence the Friday and Monday closures).  The restrooms are for both men and women, there are plenty of stalls, they are clean (this is Strasbourg after all), but – there are no toilet seats.

I took the bus back (buses were running despite a 24 hour greve, ie. Strike).  On entering I asked the driver in French if he was going to the Rue d’Ypres.  His reply was “Bonjour, Madame.”  I asked the question again, and his reply again was “Bonjour, Madame.”

Lightbulb moment – I said “Bonjour, Monsieur, est-ce que vous allez a la Rue d’Ypres?”    

“Eh bien, oui, Madame.”

Another lesson learned in France.  Greet the bus driver.  In fact greet anyone you interact with.  Everybody does.                                                        

Like Monday, Tuesday is pretty light, I had a one-hour course at 4pm again with la Mme-l’instructrice.  This is Spanish lit (15^th-18^th century) and because her background is theater we are studying Spanish drama, beginning with Don Juan, el Burlador (libertine, seducer) de Sevilla by Tirso de Molina (17^th Century) – should be interesting.  The class is conducted in both French and Spanish, Mme. Switches back and forth between the two.  I understand the French more than the Spanish, regardless I understand neither 100%.  There is no central bookstore on campus.  I will have to go to  the International Bookstore at Place Kleber (home of the Orange ad Apple stores)  to buy the texts.

The streets in the center of town are small, and shared by cars, pedestrians and bicyclists.  The cars are very careful, the pedestrians politely try to stay out of their way, it is the bicyclists who think they own the road. Outside of the center the streets are wide enough to allow cars their own space, the sidewalks are divided into a marked bicycle section, and an unmarked pedestrian section.  Neither the bicyclists nor the pedestrians make it a point to stay in their own section.  Sometimes cars are parked on the sidewalk, which results in a catch as catch can situation.  But I am staying is a fairly upscale section, and everyone is pretty polite.

Guest post from Marie abroad in Strasbourg

I'm very pleased and proud to be putting up this guest post on behalf of my mother, Marie.  Ever since our visit together in France in 2008 (described towards the beginning of this blog) we've been planning to get her set up in France to study abroad here.  You see, she's 70 years old, and happily very fit and also just retired. And get this,when she was in undergrad in the 1960's, she *majored* in French, and so despite having excelled in this language, she's only ever visited a couple times since and at most just for a few weeks! So with a bit of help, she applied (and got into!) a program in University of Strasbourg called "monde roman et neohellinique parcours d'etudes iberiques et latino-americaine", which while roughly translating to "Roman and Neo-Hellenic World-  Program of Iberian and Latin-American Studies" actually has her studying languages including Arabic and Spanish (though she's already fluent in Spanish), along with (I believe) cultural and history courses.  With course paths for professional translators and for researchers, she's taking the researcher route. It's a two year program, and she's there for at least a year of it maintaining option to stick around for a second year if she wants to.

And wonderfully she's gone ahead and been writing up her own journal and taking her own iPhone photos and emailing them over, and so with her permission here it is for the internet :)

Strasbourg, Saturday, September 7, 2013

It’s 2:00 in the afternoon, the first time I’ve had some downtime and not been tired since I left San Francisco.  I spent a couple of days with Teddy in Boston.  Monday we walked (and walked and walked) from Brookline to the North End where we had dinner.  Tuesday I had lunch with Celina Valadao, who used to be a rep for Continental, and is now a fundraiser for the Huntington Theater near Berklee.  Hopefully we will stay in contact.

I arrived at Logan around 6:30 pm Tuesday for my 9:00 flight on Aer Lingus.  Turns out they were overbooked and offered me $650 to give up my seat.  I declined saying I had to be in Paris the next morning.  So then they asked if I could go on Air France, which left at 10:30 pm but arrived in Paris an hour earlier (no changing planes in Dublin).  This was acceptable, the exchange was made, I bought a suspense paperback to read on the plane and waited til boarding at ten.  The flight was very comfortable, I had an aisle seat in a middle row with two empty seats next to me and was served champagne with dinner (no extra charge).  I finally slept for a couple of hours, and when I woke up we were about to land at CDG.

After passport control I taxied from CDG to the Gare de l”Est, and it was there, as expected, that I encountered my first issue with the luggage.  Pulling  the medium sized roller, the small roller, and the backpack heavy with electronics, I had to go up 5 steps to get to the station.  Seeing my struggles, a Frenchman pulled them up for me.  After that I managed reasonably well, but was always grateful for offers of assistance.  These came from people other than the French.  A couple of nice African girls helped me download the bags from the train at Strasbourg, and a Tunisian young man helped me tour around the station looking for the taxi stand (on exiting I  had made a left instead of a right).

Made it to the hotel. The room is tiny, but adequate, with plenty of outlets for electronics.  After setting up the machines I realized my mouse wasn’t working which was embêtant.   In French bête means stupid, and embêtant means pain in the neck.  But I can’t think of an English translation using one single word, so I like this word and you will see me using it a lot.  Bottom line is I had to use the touchpad.  Got settled, had dinner, fell asleep at midnight and woke up at 4 am Thursday morning wide awake.  During the previous 39 hours I had had a total of 6 hours of sleep.

My orientation meeting was at 10 am in Salle 4307 at the Patio (pronounced pash-she-o).  The campus wasn’t hard to get to, about a  12 minute walk from the hotel.    Finding the room was something else altogether.  As I eventually found out, the number means building 4, third floor, room 7.  Fortunately I had left the hotel early, so I had plenty of time to wander from pillar to post asking questions.   Got to the meeting in time,  met my director, and after spending the two full hours there, determined that I should really be at the meeting the next day.  Saw my director later on that afternoon with more questions, answers to which I did not fully understand.

As I have said several times, the program I  am registered in is entitled Roman and Neo-Hellenic World  Survey of Iberian and Latin-America Studies. Within this program are divisions, sub-divisions, and sub sub-divisions, with names like formation, parcours, specialites, and composantes.  I have yet to find out what these words really mean.  For example Carole Egger is my Directeur de Parcours, and another lady is my Directeur de Specialités, but Carole is the one I will be most in contact with.  The Thursday meeting was for people who want to teach, and since I don’t want to teach I should be in EMOS (Etudes Mediterraneennes Orientales et Slaves) which I think stands for Mediterranean Eastern and Slavic Languages.  That orientation meeting was on Friday morning so I was there Friday as well.

The “curriculum” for two years is printed on three 8-1/2” x 11” papers, folded in half, to resemble a small booklet with a colored cover entitled “Guide Pedagogique”, etc.  It could have been printed by one of the faculty members, although I doubt it, since they all seem more interested in their vacations than tending to business.  Half of the classes for M1 S1 (first year, first semester) have names like Théatralités, Documents Iconographiques, and Methodologie de la Recherche, and one can only wonder how much Spanish is involved.  The departments seem enclaves unto themselves, with very little connection with, or even understanding of who is actually running,  the university.

I still don’t know how much this is going to cost.  Rick did some preliminary checking for me and the information he got was 760 euros or thereabouts, which seems incredible. I have to go to the Secretariat and pay my 249.10 euros entrance fee.  At that time I can get some more administrative information, find out how to get on the school internet, and hopefully determine what the cost will be for the semester.  The Secretariat is closed on Mondays and Fridays.  I guess by now you must be getting some idea of how they do things (or not) at the University of Strasbourg.

Classes start Monday afternoon.  I will be asking more questions and hopefully get a little more understanding of what I’m supposed to be doing.  At the meeting on Friday the word “obligatoire” was used several times.  There is an EMOS website, which we were all exhorted to telecharger (download).  I guess that’s a start.

The rest of Thursday and Friday was spent doing laundry and trying to open a bank account. I say trying because It is not easy.  You can’t just walk into a bank and say you want to open up an account,  you have to make an appointment first.  I finally had an appointment with BNP Paribas,  one of the largest banks in France.  I spent quite a lot of time with Mlle. Michel,  going over my documentation and the various  options available to verify my address.  One cannot open an account without this verification, so I was prepared to wait a few days for this last requirement to be completed. After some 45 minutes and having selected one of the address verification options, Mlle. Walked off with a handful of papers only to return a few minutes later informing me she was desolee, but I could not open an account with BNP Paribas because I had no regular income. I was stunned.

Mlle. Referred me to a bank across the street whose requirements I guess are less stringent.  I have an appointment with them Monday morning.  I am to arrive with a document they gave me, signed by Mme Marques (the lady I am staying with for two weeks) stating that she has the honour to “heberger Mlle. Marie Sheridan” at such and such an address, that she will advise whoever when this arrangement changes, and that if the contents of this attestation are inexact, she is liable for punishment of up to a year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros.

This morning was spent on electronics.  First I went to the “Orange” store to get a cell phone number.  After a contentious encounter with some burly tech behind a counter who refused to talk to me, kept waving his arms in the air and saying “no English, no English” (I wasn’t about to speak to him in French, he was so brutally rude), one of the customers told me in English I had to register first.  Which I did.  Ten minutes later I was sitting down with one of the more civilized techs who set up a cell phone number for me for one month.  I have to recharge it every month.  I cannot get a subscription for more than one month.  Impossible.  I don’t have a bank account.

Next I went to FNAC, sort of a Best Buy.  My first inquiry had to do with my wireless mouse which no longer worked.  After hearing my story and thinking about it for a few minutes, this nice young man took the battery out and replaced it, removed the pin from the USB port in my PC and reinserted it, and showed me how to turn off the mouse to save battery life.  The mouse works fine now.  This is one of the nicer things that have happened to me in the last few days.

Then I bought a transformateur.  All the communication devices have dual voltage, so all you need is an adapter to plug into the wall.  But my electric toothbrush (or hair dryer, water-pik, or some other personal care device) has only 110, so if you just plugged it into the wall with an adapter it would fry.  The transformer, which is also an adapter, takes in the 220 volts in France, and outputs 110 volts for my non dual voltage device.  

I have spoken to Mme Cazenave, and tomorrow at 11:00  I arrive at her doorstep via taxi  with all my luggage.  The next stage begins and I have to start seriously looking for an apartment.

My French gets better every day.  I understand everything I read in the newspapers, and even if there is a word or two that I’m not familiar with, I can figure out what it means from the context.  Then when I try and verify it in my 50 year old Larousse, it may or may not be there. I had thought that everyone in Strasbourg who serves the tourists spoke some English, but this is not the case.  Consequently I am speaking in French with). the bankers, the techs at Orange and FNAC, and people on the street from whom I ask directions.  If the conversation gets too technical I ask them to slow down and explain a word to me in French.  I also speak French to the faculty at the University.  But I’m not yet ready to ask them to slow down and explain a particular word to me, so I just have to wing it. Thus I’m getting more and more comfortable with the language.  This was my goal, and I am content.

There is a Mass at the Cathedral is about 20 minutes, and I will be going there.  It is abour 50 meters away, facing my hotel. The Cathedral is as I remember it,  truly awesome (and I use that word in its original meaning)   The sound and light show is over for the season, too bad.         

Response to Peter Thiels’ course notes and NYT's David Brooks' article

 The New York Times responded to Peter Thiel's nascent teachings at Stanford.  Specifically, David Brooks was addressing the concept of competition located here.  Like the best articles, the comments make for an even better read than the content itself.  I included two I thought would be most relevant to making today's post. 

So imagine my elation that Thiel and the Times' David Brooks alike are talking about a subject that I think begs so much exploring – value creation.  And to show that this discussion has greater scope than Thiel’s blog, look at leading Presidential contender Mitt Romney’s recent comments:   “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”

All three – Thiel, Brooks, and Romney, are very bullish on entrepreneurship in general.  But by contrast to their optimistic theme, look at the comments to Brooks’ article.  The comment I’ve highlighted here is representative of the many that were posted: 

Richard L. from New Jersey wrote
"I guess my first reaction to this fascinating piece is that it really applies to maybe five people in the whole country. The sheer human capital required to consider a competitive impetus and, rather than succumbing to it, decide to put down the war-axe and successfully invent another game, is rather formidable. And extremely rare.

We certainly need the few who can, at least as much as we need the many who can't and instead merely compete (and win). But let's not lose sight of the reality that very few in any population are so incandescent that they can succeed as "monopolists". Most of us have to make do with being better (or more successful) than others at we do.

I'd suggest that "monopolists", while they create the new games that the rest of us play, are too thin on the ground to secure "the future of the country" without a ton of help from the competitive."


Taken in bulk, the comments of this ilk which represented the majority of those popular enough to float to the surface of all the comments posted, accused Brooks and Thiel of occupying an elite class that actually does have a coveted shot at “hitting it big” with a startup i.e. in Thiel’s case, or in Brooks’ case, with overpromoting the chance of success of those who pursue startups.  Indeed, media in general sings the praises of successes for all to read and reference, yet says little of all the startups that failed.  Entrepreneurs usually prefer avoiding talking about their failed startups in the past, certainly at the level of national discourse and pop media.  I’m 0 for 2 myself, and am on my third . . . but I’m not sure I’d like to talk on national media about it. 

Yet as someone who generally promotes startups and the startup lifestyle - with all of its ups, downs, and more downs – I was surprised at how much negative public sentiment lay in wait for a few individuals’ bullishness on startups.  And I had to wonder if maybe they were right I mean, *everybody* can’t be a Peter Thiel, can they?

After all, it’s a big world with a huge population.  Can a startup culture really sustainably satisfy the needs of everyone?  And by needs I mean, at minimum, sustainably put food on the table every night and pay the rent for all concerned?  All while simultaneously maintaining a shot at hitting the big-time?

Well sometimes I bite off more than I can chew as an amateur blogger and try to think up quantitative solutions to these problems.   I decided to think of 50 startups in the past twenty years and think about the number of people that benefited.  I put together that list here.  Yes, the list manifests all of my biases on how I think about the startup world:  The list is US-centric because I want to compare to the US population, and is centric on either brand names that are well known to consumers in general today, or else only familiar to me and a smaller number of others base on random niche interests.  Yet you’ll probably recognize most of the companies on the list, and hopefully you’ll accept that they represent the bulk of popularly-referenced successful ventures over the past twenty years – i.e. I’m addressing the assumption “These companies’ founders had started a venture one day and look how they turned out, so I’m going to start my own venture”. 

To make the math easy, I estimated most grossly that, on average, 50 people benefited directly in a significantly material, Peter-Thiel-esque way form participating in the early stages of these startups.  So we’re talking founders, early employees, and early investors.  At the extremes of these estimates we have Google where about a thousand people benefited significantly at IPO, and at the other extreme Instagram with about 15-20 people benefiting.   But on average, grossly, fifty.  Well accepted that this metric is very short-sighted, as companies such as those listed can create entire new industries, and in some cases like Google, entirely new forms of economic organization employing millions of people.  But I had to generate some kind of heuristic as a starting point for criticism and improvement, so there it is. 

So 50 companies x 50 people benefiting significantly at each company equals 2500 people.  That’s 2500 people over the past 20 years 1992-2012 of some of the most important technological commercial upheaval the world has ever seen.  So what does that tell us?  Well, just what question *are* we trying to answer?  I offer: “In an age of ongoing and immense tech upheaval, should we all aspire to found ground-breaking companies, or should we take the conservative route and stick ‘conventional’ professional pursuits such as accounting, law, medicine, plumbing, landscaping?” Well, were we to accept the accuracy of the 2500 number (as highly ill-advised as it is to do so), we would have to agree with the NYTimes commenters;  In a nation of 350 million people, including some 150 million non-retired, non-child, bread-winners,  2500 is just such an incomprehensibly small number that it would seem like a fool’s strategy to start a business.

But I think we’re not digging deep enough – we’re dealing too grossly with macroeconomic trends and trying to inform individual value-maximizing decision making with them.  After all, the decision-making individual doesn’t have to succeed in her first business.  She only has to succeed in the last business.  That is – the last of a potentially long string of startups to decide that the philosophy was worthwhile to pursue -  a pursuit that could last decades.   

But the company list is also misleading.  (And I even wrote it).  There were  many companies that one could research that IPO’d or got acquired in the same period that didn’t make my list.  Networking technology in general was huge with a lot of unintentionally low-profile brand names (think Brocade networks, Juniper Networks, Qwest).  In fact, if we somehow had an exhaustive database of companies that either 1) IPO’d, 2) got acquired, 3) just made a large ongoing stream of cash, or even 4) simply achieved a lifestyle-sustaining stream of cash for the founding individual and his/her family, we would find ourselves with a database of perhaps several gigabytes of information. 

All of the principals behind these businesses at some point made a startup oriented decision – whether they wrote up the PageRank algorithm at Stanford or opened an ice cream shop on their local Main Street.  The number 2500 looks silly now, don’t you think? I’d reckon we’d be up to several million to several tens of millions of individuals benefiting directly from a startup oriented approach to life.  How many precisely?  I don’t know.   Maybe it’s only 250,000 individuals, and maybe it’s 25 million individuals.  That’s two order of magnitude, and that’s still too large a range to say, inform policy or even a political / economic debate.  And are there losses along the way? Of course.  Do lifestyles, relationships, expectations get disrupted for many along the way?  Of course.  Can we as a society soften the blows while also increasing the chances of success?  OF COURSE.  For example, #1: 

Eric Ries and his ilk at Stanford and elsewhere champion means of starting up companies that minimally risk valuable resources like cash, time, motivation and focus.  Such entrepreneurship strategies (i.e. teaching entrepreneurship as a science / a rubric that can be roughly followed ) simply were not taught before the most recent decades.  So despite that their potential for increasing startup success rates (or at least reducing rates of unplanned-for failure rates) are still being borne out, they could have huge impact on our economy and entrepreneurial decision making. 

And #2:  another individual’s comment from the NYTimes article is illustrative:

Kenneth B. from Ashland, OR wrote
"There are probably people who have inventive ideas but are not able to carry them out because they lack funding. That's where the federal government can have a role, in the form of federal grants through the National Science Foundation and other agencies. There can be problems with such grants, though, in that peers who review proposals are not necessarily innovative thinkers themselves, so they may turn down the most innovative proposals because they're "too far from the mainstream."

There should be a mechanism to fund very innovative ideas that are outside of mainstream thinking. I can envision a special federally funded program dedicated to the most innovative research and development, with evaluations carried out by our most successful innovators: such people as Bill Gates, the Google founder, and Peter Thiel. Candidates would still have to compete for funding, but they would have a better chance of getting their truly innovative ideas turned into tangible results."

Agreed: Basically, many, if not most startups require funding beyond the Eric Ries lean variety to even show proof-of-concept or demonstrate market demand for an innovation.  And it’s the only solution to out-and-out socialism I can think of in a tech-dominated economy that continuously disrupts industries and professions that rely on some stability of cash-flows to responsibly sustain families over such long periods as the rearing of a child.  And yes, I know there are a million arguments against this approch– government competing with private industry, or effectively causing wealth transfer from taxpayers and the wealthy to startup employees and their CEOs.  Why benefit this class (incidentally, ‘my class’)? 

Because I think a nationalized venture funding approach is the only means to satisfy our national narrative of entrepreneurship that we can still call marginally responsible, without resorting to old Soviet-style property appropriations on an unprecedented scale or widespread, extremely undignified lifestyles such as similarly unprecedented volumes of people living in the streets.  To simplify it to a phrase, if the national motto is encompasses the freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then summarize this approach as “Give people the means to pursue happiness, or else . . . “ 

Here’s a quick nod to the libertarians among you – why can’t the private market solve this problem with more venture creation?  After all there is a venture capital industry and even the likes of Kickstarter for crowdsourced venture funding.  My response is, you guys the private, free market, aren’t working fast enough.  Many so-called VC firms only make one investment per year after reviewing 400 business plans, all backed by dedicated, motivated entrepreneurs.  Moreover, the Occupy movement is demonstrating that unemployment is way too high for the free-market-solves-all model to act fast enough at sufficient scale.  So you can either fund the crowds with welfare payments from your own taxable purse (something I know you find revolting), or ask them to start self-sustaining businesses stimulated from your, you guessed it, taxed funds / income.  

It’s just that I think it’s irresponsible for a society to plan on startup capital – the most vital capital needed to fuel a modern nation’s economy – to come from Mom and Dad.  Why?  Despite after achieving the best, most widespread adoption of Eric Ries’ teachings, I think we’re still going to see high startup business failure rates.  The gains to entrepreneurship are socialized, yet the losses are individualized. (Incidentally I wrote on this topic during studies back at INSEAD). 

So I’m afraid the New York Times commenters are right.  A single individual’s decision to start-up, for the average person (including myself among this lot) is a really stupid idea even under the most forward-looking of today’s norms and resources. 

PS. In researching for this post, I found this reference helpful / motivating:  "The Market System: What is is, How it works, and What to Make of it" by Charles Lindblom  .  And thanks to Charles R. of Moscow who highlighted this text in the same NYTimes article. 

PPS This post would ordinarily go to my normal blog for economic subject matter at http://prodigalmba.rstoem.com  but my Wordpress install won't let me put up new posts for some reason, so here it is on the Walkabout blog.

ProdigalMBA

Hi guys! Rick Sheridan here - that's right the until recently anonymous author of this blog. I've got a new set of posts up at http://prodigalmba.rstoem.com . They describe a pretty different way of transacting than we're used to, but they may also reduce unemployment a little. I'm trying to get as much feedback as possible on them. Check out the posts starting from "Roll Your Own Currency", but be prepared for some long reads. . .!