An American in Provence

She's a rebel and she'll never never be any good...

Our vacuum recently decided to permanently retire. We can't complain too much, Alain's parents gave it to us for free when we set up household eight years ago.

After months, no make that years, of reading motorcycle reviews, searching the internet, and talking at me about it, Alain finally decided that he wanted his next motorcycle to be a Yamaha FZ8.

He found a used on advertised on Leboncoin, and we went to see it two weeks ago. It is the 2011 version, bought in July 2012. It has 13,000 km on it, and the guy was selling it for 6000€. Original price- 8900€.

Alain decided to take it, so I went and got a bank check for the amount and Alain called his sister, our insurance agent. She said no problem to insure it, just needed the registration ("carte gris" in French). Except the seller couldn't find it. Apparently, he is separating from his partner, needs to sell the motorcycle for the money, and left it at his parent's house, and couldn't find the registration.

We can't buy it without the registration, as it would then be impossible for us to register it under Alain's name. We weren't sure if he really couldn't find it or else someone had offered him more and that this was his excuse.

Anyway, I guess he really couldn't find it because he went and got a replacement registration card.

We set up the sale for Saturday morning, yesterday. We drove west from Marseille towards Toulon, and met up with the seller. Alain signed the paperwork and we handed over the check. We then drove off, he on the motorcycle, me in the car.

Except then it started pouring rain. He had brought his rain gear with, so we pulled over at a rest stop and he changed. The rear tire needs to be replaced, completely bald, so Alain was afraid of having an accident in the rain. We drove slowly all the way to his parent's house, crossing Marseille.

In the afternoon, we went to a Yamaha dealer in Salon-de-Provence, and ordered handlebars for the passenger, a new tire, and a central kickstand. The 10,000 km revision also needs to be done. So next Saturday, Alain has to take it back to the dealer at 9:30 a.m., for a total of 900€, plus the insurance of 1300€, this thing is starting to add up.

Anyway, the new one should keep him happy for a few years at least.

If he starts talking about buying a more powerful motorcycle, he is going to get kicked in the shins.

So now we have two motorcycles, the Yamaha and his Kawasaki ER6N. He will eventually sell the Kawasaki, but will be sad to see it go. It has almost 60,000 km on it, so I doubt we will get much for it. Le Sigh.

My Husband:



(photo courtesy of Yahoo!)

I just couldn't resist. A frog on a bright green motorcycle.
(and his name is Oui)

The instant I saw this photo, I burst out laughing. I showed it to Alain, saying "look! it is you! A frog on a green motorcycle!" He didn't think it was quite that funny.

Ah 2012. Goodbye.

January and February- quiet months. Me studying for my exam and Alain preparing for his habilitation.
March - my final exam and Alain's Habilitation, within days of each other.
April - the French presidential election, me voting in France for the first time
May - car troubles
June - another exam, in Paris
July- 14th of July celebration with Alain's sister and her family, my exam results, a last-minute trip to Taiwan for Alain
August- last minute trip to the US for us for three weeks, a much needed break
September - return to work, studying for my oral exam
October- oral exam in Paris
November - nothing of interest
December - holidays

Here are our plans for 2013:
January- nothing
February- nothing
March- nothing
April- nothing
May- hopefully meet up with Mom and Dad when they come over to Europe
June- nothing
July- nothing
August- vacation somewhere in France/Italy
September- nothing
October- re-take my oral exam
November- nothing
December- nothing

So hopefully it will be a quiet year with not too many exams for me.

We are passing some quiet holidays. We went to my in-laws for Christmas Eve, and stayed over. My mother-in-law hosted Christmas dinner. Everyone was there except pepe, who wasn't feeling well.  Manon was feeling sick and was rather out of it, Alain's sister and her husband were stressed because they are renovating their apartment (adding on a mezzanine level under the rafters) and are approaching the final days.

Now, here we are, New Year's Eve. Alain isn't feeling well, he thinks he has a pinched nerve in his lower back. He originally wanted to go out for New Year's (which is something we have never done), but due to our general exhaustedness and his back pain, we are staying in. He spent all day yesterday making ravioli for New Year's dinner, which will be at his aunt's house (the one to whom I gave the LAVANDE cross-stitch). Then, back to work on Wednesday.

Best wishes for 2013!

In summer, Alain wears exclusively white t-shirts.

And no, not just one per day. Two.

Not one in the morning and then changes into a second one when the first is sweaty.

No, no my friends.

Happy May Day everyone!

Did a little spring cleaning this morning, and I even got Alain to broom the floor. That's what he calls it. I can't break him of it.

He either says "I'm going to pass the broom" or "I'm brooming", obviously derivations from the french of "passer le balai' or the verb "balayer".

For awhile I tried to get him to use "sweep" but then he started calling it a sweeper, so faced with the choice between broom used as a verb and sweep used as a noun, I decided to go with brooming.

Let's conjugate, shall we?
I am brooming
I broom
I broomed
I was brooming
I will broom

This is always quite a production in our household. I have to run around like crazy, getting everything off the floor before he gets to that room. Then he takes the vacuum, but has the tendency to vacuum up stuff I don't want vacuumed up. Like stuff on top of tables. If he ever vacuums up my jewelry, I will kill him.
(like the time he used our teak salad bowl wedding present as a cutting board for a watermelon.)
So this brooming operation took about an hour.
After which we had a salad lunch, then he left on his motorcycle to go to his parent's house in order to wash and grease his motorcycle, while I stayed home, watched my TV series, sewed, and ate chocolate.
Hey, to each their own.

Happy May!

Most of you probably don't know this, but Alain has his PhD.
In what? Physics.
What is his research on? Stuff.
I am pretty sure he is the smartest person I know.
He has as a goal "Win Nobel Prize".

All I can say is, thank goodness there are people in the world who really get excited by the movement of atoms and nucleation of crystallized ions and all that baloney.

His two favorite things to do on a weekend morning:
1) Go to his motorcycle classes
2) Sit at the table and do pages and pages of equations, chemical formulas, phase diagrams, and sketches of silicon lattice structures.
My two favorite things to do on a weekend morning:
1) Nothing
2) Drink coffee and eat a croissant.

I keep a pile of scrap paper ready for when he is overcome by an urge to calculate the second derivative of a logarithmic equation so as to better understand the movement of electrons in a phase 2 silicon-germanium structures, or some other such nonsense. The problem is that afterwards we have pages and pages of unintelligible scribblings sitting around the living room that I don't know what to do with. I'm scared to throw them away, in case the next E=mc^2 is in there, but if ever he does want to find a particular page again, it will be quite difficult as there is no rhyme or reason to them. I just smoosh them up into a pile once a week or so and throw them in a cabinet.

Occasionally he will ask me something along the lines of "Do you remember the thermodynamic coefficient for the transition of a solid state amorphous quantum dot?"
Honey, first of all, it's 8:30 on a Sunday morning. Second, I studied that stuff like 8 years ago. And third, I haven't had my cappuccino yet. Can you check back in a few hours once I have had time to wake up and flip through some old text books?

At any given time, our living room table has one of the following books sitting on it:
- Fundamentals of Microsystems Packaging
- Electronic Materials and Devices
- Introduction to Conventional Transmisson Electron Microscopy
- Crystallography
- Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffractometry of Materials
- Introduction to Statistic Thermodynamics
- Hybrid Microelectronics Handbook
- High Resolution Focused Ion Beams
- Physical Metallurgy for Engineers
(most of these are mine by the way, and I paid a boatload to have them sent here from the US)

I get a kick out of him because he will be busy doing equations and then look up and ask me stuff like "What's eight times six?" Um, that I think I know the answer to!
Lately I have had to ban math equations while we are eating dinner. I can just see me in about ten years telling our kids "Why can't you complain about having to eat your broccoli like a normal kid instead of doing math during dinner? Stop it right now!"

I have tried to teach him that when well-meaning relatives ask him how his research is going, they don't want the 45 minute PhD-defense version. They want the dumbed-down 5 minute version. When their eyes start to glaze over and cross alternatively and their responses consist of 'umm?' 'hmmm.' 'hmmm?' 'uh huh' and 'uh?' that means that the most they are understanding are the the's and's and I's.

He usually asks me to correct his scientific articles. Mostly the grammar and spelling, but also to see if the article is understandable. After five years of doing this, I have discovered that it is pretty much like a Scientific MadLibs.
Want to sound like you too have a PhD in Physics? Are you a researcher stuck for ideas? No problem!
Just do the following (all words/phrases taken from his articles):

noun1: Transition, Diffusion, Control, Segregation, Separation, Influence, Morphological evolution, Auger spectroscopy, Crystallization, Epitaxial growth, Fickian diffusion, Surfactant mediated growth, Biaxial stress, Thermodeposition
preposition: of, in, on, from, to, within, across, after, among, at, below, between, by, into, near, upon
adjective: amorphous, anomalous, self-assembled, crystallized
noun2: silicon, germanium, SiGe, atom, ion, electron, dopant, islands, Si(001), Si1-xGex/Si(001) substrate, grain boundaries, atom sites, heterostructures, quantum dot, thin films, lattice, nucleation sites
verb: using, during, trapping, implanting, growing, measuring

Then put them in the following order:
noun1 preposition adjective noun2 verb noun2 preposition noun2
For example:
- Transition from anomalous silicon islands during epitaxial growth of SiGe heterostructures
- Segregation of self-assembled germanium islands using Fickian diffusion of grain boundaries
- Morphological evolution within amorphous Si(001) measuring electrons within thin films
- Auger spectroscopy on crystallized quantum dots trapping nucleation sites

See? There is nothing to it! You don't need to have a PhD to do this.

Try it and give me, in the comments section, your best Scientific MadLibs Journal Article Title!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you "The Evolution of Dating".

Is 5 years old.

After months of begging and bugging, Alain finally convinced me that he should get a motorcycle. In a way, it makes sense. Parking is hard enough for one car in Marseille, let alone two. Plus, if I have to keep taking the train, I might just break down into a quivering, sobbing mass of jelly in the human-pee stinking underground tunnels at the train station as I wait for the strike to end.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Community Center in Rognes, where Alain teaches karate once a week during the school year. They were having a demonstration of karate, which mostly means little kids doing stuff and their parents filming it. Next week is the final karate competition for the area, which Alain has to help referee, and the next day is the end-of-the-year paella picnic (for more on paella, go here), along with games and sports.
I tried taking karate for about six months. I was whiter than white belt, and didn't much like being in the 6 year old division. Doing the katas (series of movements) was okay, but I didn't like the competitions. Had enough of that doing boxing and wrestling at VMI thanks. Also, Alain didn't appreciate that every time he got punched in the stomach, I shrieked. Here is a little video clip of Alain doing turn jump kicks. (yes, that is the official Japanese name).

but my husband is charming.
(Translation of ad I found in an old magazine). Not quite sure what this had to do with coffee, but I thought it was cute.
Today is our four month wedding anniversary. Yay! So far, everything is going well. We survived the hot hot summer, went on our trip to Italy, and are looking forward to buying an apartment in the near future.
Sometimes I look at Alain and think "he is so cute and so smart and I am so lucky." I can't even believe that we are married sometimes. Not that it is because I have post-wedding blues or anything, it is just that it seems like the wedding was a dream.
Happy Anniversary Cherie!

September 9th is the day of Alain.
Not his birthday mind you, but his Saint's Day.
Thankfully, it is not required to name your kid the name of the Saint of the day they were born. Ugh, Agatha and Sebald.
Every day of the year has a Saint associated with it. Alas, there is no Saint Megan. I guess I have to be content with Saint Margaret., Nov 16th. Close enough surprisingly.

From Catholic Online
about Blessed Alain of the Rocks
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=482

Meganing of Alain
Handsome, calm.
9 septembre
Characteristics- authority, decision, ambition, innovation, energy.

There is also a very exciting song
Bonne Fete A Toi
Bonne Fete A Toi
Bonne Fete A .......(insert name here)
Bonne Fete A Toi
(sung to the tune of Happy Birthday I am guessing)

Taken from Wikipedia about French naming customs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_names

French people have one, two or more given names. Only one of them, almost always the first, is used in daily life; the others are solely for official documents, such as birth, death and marriage certificates. Thus, one always speaks of Jacques Chirac and never of Jacques René Chirac; and Henri Philippe Pétain is always referred to as Philippe Pétain (or Marshal Pétain), because Philippe was the given name that he used in daily life. Middle initials are not used. For example, while English-speaking scientific publications may cite Claude Allègre as Claude J. Allègre, this is never done in France. Typically, second and further given names may be somewhat old-fashioned, given in honour of the child's grandparents etc., though such practice has now become less common.
Traditionally, most people were given names from the Roman Catholic calendar of saints. Common such given names are Jean, Jacques, Michel or even Jean-Baptiste(John-the-Baptist) for males, Marie, Jeanne, or Chantal for females. In certain regions such as Brittany or Corsica, more local names (usually of local saints) are often, but not always used (in Brittany, for instance, male Corentin or female Corentine; in Corsica, Dominique (suitable both for males and females). However, people from immigrant communities often choose names from their own culture. Furthermore, in recent decades it has become commonplace to use certain foreign first names, such as Kevin, Enzo or Anthony for males; for females, Jessica, Jennifer, Karine or Sonia.
The prevalence of given names follows trends, with some names being popular in some years, and some considered definitely out-of-fashion. As an example, few children born since 1970 would bear the name Germaine, which is generally associated with the idea of an elderly lady — however, as noted above, such old-fashioned names are frequently used as second or third given names (middle names).
Almost all traditional given names are gender-specific. However, a few given names, such as Dominique (see above, Corsica) and Claude, are given to both males and females. Compound given names, such as Jean-Luc, Jean-Paul, or Anne-Sophie are not uncommon. These are not considered to be two separate given names.
It is possible that the second part of a compound name is one normally used by the opposite sex. However, the gender of the compound is determined by the first component. Thus, Marie-George Buffet has a female given name. In particular, there exist male given names ending in Marie, as in Jean-Marie or Bernard-Marie.
First names are chosen by the child's parents. There are no legal a priori constraints on the choice of names. However, if the birth registrar thinks that the chosen names (alone or in association with the last name) may be detrimental to the child's interests, or to the right of other families to protect their own family name, the registrar may refer the matter to the local prosecutor, who may choose to refer the matter to the local court. The court may then refuse the chosen names. Such refusals are rare and mostly concern given names that may expose the child to mockery.
To change a given name, a request can be made before a court (juge des affaires familiales).

Oh where were you Courts when Apple, Moses, and Moon Unit were brought into the world?
It is quite true that the French do not understand American middle names or the use of initials. They could not understand that Kathleen is my middle name, not just a part of my first name, nor the of S. in my signature.
Alain told me a story once of a family whose last name was Bon. They wanted to name their Jean. Jean Bon (sounds like ham, jambon) I guess the courts said no.
I guess it is also very expensive to change your name, and that sometimes people just change a few letters to change the sound/spelling.

Anyway, while some people send cards or flowers on Saint Days, Alain doesn't put much stock in it. I had to remind him that today was his Saint Day.