I watched a pretty intense and telling video taken by some French reporters in China. The original article and video can be found here. The following is a translation to the best of my ability from French to English just given the audio from the video I watched (and the header from the article):

Thursday night, "Envoyé spécial" broadcasted an investigation on Foxconn, primary manufacturer for Apple in China. Journalists managed to get into factories to unveil work conditions of factory workers. Anne Poiret, the director, met students who had been forced to complete "internships" at Foxconn, like Jing Li (pseudonym).

Poignant parts from the video:

REPORTER: We return to Jaingsu, where they assemble the iPhone 5. It's there we find workers, and where we meet two young women where we ask them questions on hidden camera. They are 16 years old, workers at Foxconn for 3 months. Contrary to the law, they are still here against their will.

REPORTER: You are studying medicine but you work at Foxconn? But why, what's the relationship between the two?

STUDENTS: No relationship, we just work here on the production line.

REPORTER: This doesn't have to be related to your studies, does it?

STUDENTS: Either way, it was the school that sent us here. Nobody would want to come, otherwise. But our teachers told us it was mandatory.

REPORTER: Do you work days or nights?

STUDENTS: We do both.

REPORTER: How do you feel?

STUDENTS: Not great, it's very tiring [work].

REPORTER: What would have happened if you had refused?

STUDENTS: They told us that they'd withhold our diplomas and I heard they could withhold our scholarships as well. Our parents are worried. They don't want us here. They tried to negotiate with the school, but it didn't work. Our parents have no solutions and aren't happy at all. They feel we're too young to be in this type of environment.

REPORTER: These students are forced to work, and it has nothing to do with training. They worked nights. All of it illegal.

Paris, alive

People always told me the winters in Paris are a bit dreary.

When I came to Paris in September, the weather was fantastic, an unusual week of mid-80s weather at the end of the month. It progressed to much colder weather pretty quickly, and it soon became gray and wintery in Paris.

Being no stranger to fog, I didn't think much of it. However, I spent the last 2 weeks of February reveling in the sunshine of Istanbul, Turkey. That was when I realized how little sun I'd gotten in Paris and how depressing that is. I got back to Paris, where, surprise(!), it was still gray. That bit of sunshine and Vitamin D I had gotten in Turkey had a still-lingering effect, and my outlook on Paris got a little better.

Fast forward two weeks and the weather has become... phenomenal. As I type this, it's over 70 degrees in Paris, a welcome change from the sub-50s (and often sub-freezing) weather we had throughout the winter.

As a result, Paris has, well, transformed. The way I always remembered Paris was starting to match with reality again. Paris has a distinct smell when it's a bit warmer. Nothing bad, unless you're being baked alive among the smell of vagrants in the Métro. I found that all of these smells and sensations I was used to from my many summer-only trips to Paris just vanished in the winter. Maybe we don't perceive smell as well when it's cold. Maybe smells are just more obvious when things are warm and stagnant. Maybe it's both.

It's not just the smells that make Paris what it is in warm, sunny weather. It's the liveliness of the city. If you visit the Luxembourg Gardens on a cold, cloudy weekday, you'd think nobody but park maintenance ever visited. I found this to be true even last week on a cloudy day. Today, people were out in full force, walking the streets, biking, and queuing up for the museums.

A colleague from work and I decided to go to the Musée d'Orsay today to see the Degas exhibition, the theme being nude poses, paintings, and sculptures. Fortunately we were able to get in for free since we had our passports/visas with us; those under the age of 26 and who are residents (and not necessarily citizens) of the EU get into national museums free of charge. We were even luckier since most exhibitions cost money whether or not you're a resident. In this case, both the museum and the exhibition were free.

Lots of tourists were there, and consequently there were lots of security staff telling people to turn their phones off. What I hadn't noticed is that photos are also forbidden, though everyone seemed to have a camera.

20 feet from the entrance, I decided to take 2 photos of the fantastic architecture before heading out, since the afternoon lighting made for some great color. I pulled out my phone - not even a camera - and got two pictures before something quintessentially French happened (in French, here's the approximate English):

Security guard: Hey, no pictures in here!
Me: Oh, sorry.
Security guard: I should throw you out right nere, nobody is respecting the rules!
Me: I apologize, sir.
Security guard: You're wearing glasses, look at the sign next to you! No photos!
Me: Sorry.

Admittedly, I was just a foot from the sign that had an impossibly long list of things you can't do in the museum, of which taking pictures was one. I wasn't facing the sign, so I didn't see it before I took pictures. What I continue to not understand, however, is why some museums allow pictures and some don't – we weren't even in an area with artwork (the lobby is the best way to describe it, but doesn't quite do it justice).

Oh well. Thanks for the polite farewell?



Vélib, again


Feeling guilty about the idea of taking the metro home (and not about my two disallowed photos), I decided to take a Vélib bike and bike the couple of miles back to my apartment. With major landmarks, I can navigate just about anywhere in Paris with a loose degree of precision before I get lost enough to pull out a map. I gave up about a mile from my house when I ran into a bunch of one-way streets that were not favorable to the direction I was going. Naturally, there was a Vélib station nearby, and I replaced the bike and went into the corner store to grab a Coke.

I got passed the odd cluster of one-way streets and found another Vélib station, and tried to take another bike. Refused. I went to the kiosk to see whether it had been five minutes since I returned the last one. It had no record of me having returned the last bike. What!? The last thing you want is to be liable for the cost of one of these bikes, so I got a little panicky. I decided to walk back to the station where I'd left the last bike, only to find that the station was without power and the lockup post hadn't actually given me confirmation of returning the bike.

I checked my phone and realized I didn't have enough credit to make what would probably be a 10 or 15 minute phone call to Vélib. Then, I found out that their kiosks at the rental stations can connect you with a representative. So, I stood there, probably looking mentally deranged, as I talked loudly into a kiosk in broad daylight. (This is something I've never seen done and most people probably don't know about.) I eventually explained to the representative what had happened, and after many repeated phrases, locations and "no, I don't remember the exact number of the post where I left the bike"s, they told me that they'd taken care of it and not to worry.

After all that, I ended up walking home.