Proceeding & Trembling

I’m back in Paris. After five passionate years in Bangkok. Ah, beautiful Paris, city of fantasy, city of lights, city of ... Well, well, calm down baby girl! You’ll find out early enough that Paris is not what it used to be anymore. It has become dirty, uncivilized and poverty is everywhere to be seen. Oh boy but the infamous French criticism seems as sharp as ever. However, I’m so focused, that nothing can sway my determination: my to-do list is ready to use, I even classified my chores!

- School enrolment: priority N°1 no matter what!

- Home renovation: have the leaky roof fixed before autumn heavy rains, enlarge the attic room, sort the bunch of old stuff out … are you with me?

- Search for work: I’ll be 50 soon, the pivotal age when you cost more than the money you bring in. There is no time to waste, let’s get started ASAP!

- Administrative tasks: notify the tax services we are back (#ouch, #sigh), renew the Health Insurance card (I discovered that any citizen is deleted from the database after five years abroad, #error404), let the suppliers of energy know that the house needs heat, light and water again, switch to fiber (guess what! Our teenagers complained this should be on top of the list #momareyouserious?), register in the National Employment agency (Pôle Emploi) hoping for some financial help.

It looks like we have a plan, don’t we?

Ninety days later, I may say: “no we don’t”. I’ve been wandering relentlessly in the maze of administration’s procedures, and I must confess, … to no avail! This requires some self-reflection on the choice I made 3 months ago.

If I had been back to #Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, I would have certainly written the list in a similar order. No doubt. I might even have dared to recklessly procrastinate on the last bullet point of the list, since the administration back home is so slow and corrupted that starting ASAP or running fast sounds clueless and useless; Anyway, I’d surely have hired a good fellow looking for cash to undertake my boring tasks against a few CFA notes.

If I was to come back to #Thailand, on the contrary, I’d have swapped the unreachable goal of search for a new job (a rather arduous task for a foreigner) with the renovation, that is really a piece of cake in Bangkok; you give a call to the building manager and everything’s fixed the next week: the wall is immaculate, the broken microwave has been changed to a new one, the door’s window is sealed, then you pay (in some cases), take a thumbs-up selfie and post it on Line -the Asian favourite social network- and voilà. Amazing right?! What about formalities? Hum, I don’t mean to brag but, really, it couldn’t be easier: I either contact someone through Line (Yes, everyone shares their private line contact!) to proceed with my bill or health check-up at the hospital, or for tough tasks such as updating the immigration pass, I can rely on one of these freelance office agents who will sort it out for you seamlessly. You’ll be left with one and only task: check the boxes on your list!

But #France happened to be a different story: and as my French friends and relatives were reading this article, I can only imagine, now, how entertained they must have been from line 20, as they had already foreseen me crashing into the abyss of this advanced civilization…

My fault, entirely! I have no excuse; how could I forget that there is no task that can be achieved at once? None whatsoever. Have you ever watched the animeThe Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976)? Asterix and Obelix need to obtain the permit A38! #redtape My story exactly!

“If you log in to the web site, you are kindly asked to dial a dedicated call-charge number; once you believe you’ve reached the service, a charming lady recorded voice lets you know, as the meter has started running, that this number is no longer in use and she invites you to dial another one. As you were not expecting this, the flabbergasted you didn’t catch the number and need to call the number again to listen to it all over again… Because you’re not easily discouraged you decide to go directly to the premises, a much more reliable option to be sure you’ll meet someone face-to-face. Oh, you poor thing, it didn’t occur to you, this day was a bank holiday and find yourself standing in front of a gigantic, closed door. Never mind, you come back the next day… Excuse me?! What do you mean I need to take an appointment on the self-service pad in the hall? Enough! You can’t take it anymore and decide to write a traditional letter with an envelope and stamp and all… The ultimate proof that you are trying to reach someone.” Right, you might suspect an obvious exaggeration of the facts, especially if you know me personally. Is this a joke? « I’m not sure, Madam, do you think I’m paid to mess around with our customers? » That’s the answer I got once from a tele-agent torturing me with intimate questions before providing me with a new password.

I’ve been back for three months now and most of the elements of my to-do-list are still pending. I still have no health insurance card; the tax service has finally acknowledged I was still unemployed and will eventually pay us back at the end of the year, in the best case; my friends from Pôle Emploi have explained that I could not get any pension, despite I’d been working in France for over twenty years, because I should have sent a request less than one year after I quitted, even if I was living overseas (they would have rejected it as I was overseas but then I would have been able to renew my request for 3 years long… if you think about it, that’s quite an out-of-the-box plan!)

My to-do-list is now 3-page long: I’ve added so many in-between steps of which the rationale hasn’t still reached my understanding. Each time I talk to someone, here comes a new step. I am now reluctant to talk to anyone in case I’m assigned a new intermediary milestone. Each time I talk to someone, I relentlessly shake myself, I got angry, then depressed and outraged again. As I grapple with the complexities of the system, I come to imagine my stakeholder on the other side of the life-board, those jerks that make my life so miserable and I realize that they might be as clueless as I am: they are probably following rules designed half a century ago that no director cared to update. What other choice do they have than listening to our yelping, whining, and complaining? Could they afford the risk of stopping the rotten gear of procedures?

There is still a long way to go, I can expect some more ridiculous situations before I get properly aligned with my co-citizens. I’m determined to fit though. I intend to mobilize a bunch of positive energy made in Thailand (mai pen rai attitude that Westerners might call fatalism) together with the magical absence of sense of timing made in Cote d’Ivoire to go through this, without succumbing to the bitterness and collective depression of my city of light that is not ready to enlighten my path just yet. I can’t help but wonder though: “Am I the only one lost in lags and gaps?”

Article proofread by Dimpy Kongsiri.