French In-Laws

Naturally after the birth of a child, everyone wants to come by and visit. Leïla's mother was here last week and her father and his partner made it down over the weekend.

Leïla's father and partner

It's interesting having in-laws I struggle to communicate with. My French is improving and I can generally follow most of the conversation ... until that one strange word hits and I lose the thread while trying to figure out what was meant. It's much worse when I'm tired: I'll understand every word in a sentence without a clue how they relate to one another.

I'm also getting a touch more used to French culture. Oftimes when the French discuss ideas, they do so strongly. They raise their voices, wave their hands and get impassioned about the topic. To the outsider, this can seem like a strong argument. Years ago, when I met Leïla for our first date, I assumed that it wasn't going well because she was reacting so forcefully to some things I said. Turns out that this wasn't the case at all. She was actually enjoying having a chance to get into a real conversation rather than the dull "where do you like to eat?" sort of first-date drivel.

Speaking of languages, if you really want to learn a new one, tomorrow I'll list some resources for you.

Photo Collection: Libya

As last week I focused on Egypt due to their uprising, this week's photo collection is of Libya. Let us hope their revolution is successful.

Libyan history goes back 14,000 years.
Photo by Jim Trodel

Ruins 130km east of Tripoli, from the 3,000 year old city of Leptis Magna
Photo by Bob Rayner

Turkish baths in Tripoli look quite comfortable
Photo by R. Barraez D'Lucca

I love finding the delightful ancient architecture everywhere
Photo by David Stanley

And the ubiquitous street vendor. Perhaps they will now become a symbol of freedom.
Photo by Vincenzo_P

And finally, something to think about ...
Photo by Darla Hueske

Cat and Baby

Due to a colicky baby and a terribly sick cat who must be rushed to the vet today, there will be no post. Sorry for that.

Our sick cat, Valentin.
He's lived in France, Scotland, England and the Netherlands. A real "cat of the world".

Libya and Adventurous Expats

From an expat point of view, the carnage in Libya is our worst nightmare. I stayed up a bit reading the Al Jazeera¹ live feeds trying to see if Gadaffi was going to flee or try to cling to power. As of this writing, he's still there and multiple countries are now trying to figure out how to rescue their expatriates.

For many would-be expats, "Paris" is the height of adventure for them. I completely understand this point of view as the world is so vast and wonderful that there's plenty of wonderful things to discover everywhere.  But just as there are many Peace Corps volunteers who sadly sneer at other volunteers who have nicer accommodations as being in the Posh Corps (because, you know, electricity is the height of luxury), there are expats for whom it's just not an adventure unless things are harsh.

There's enough beauty in the world that
I don't need to risk death to enjoy it.
Photo by Paul Beattie

That's not me. I've gone sky-diving precisely once and I've no intention of repeating this. There's nothing wrong with sky diving, but there are certain levels of perceived risk I'm willing to tolerate and imminent death is not one of them. At the same time, my love of adventure means that while I'm not particularly interested in risking death, I've also shied away from high paying jobs in Dubai because I'm not particularly interested in risking imprisonment. Call me a coward if you will, but so far I've had a pretty damned good life and I have few regrets.

But for the expats in Libya, I feel for them. Many of them are there working for oil companies and claiming a high wage. I confess there's an attraction to that, but for those who think you have to "rough it" to have a real adventure: piss off. Try being a parent.

In other news, I clearly need to write more articles about the French Foreign Legion. There's a small, persistent stream of search engine traffic for them. I suspect the primary demographic there is "young American male". I don't think they would really fancy the 10% mortality rate of Legionnaires, but some will consider anything to "get out".

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1. If you you've not checked them out before, they're an excellent source of news coverage. Their opinion pages are often starkly anti-US, but once you begin to understand where they're coming from, it's not entirely unreasonable.

Europe's Strange Relation to Religion

Today is a bit of an unstructured ramble. Parents of newborns will appreciate that they can soak up quite a bit of time, but maybe if I call this a "stream of consciousness" instead of a ramble, people will be more forgiving.

I'm curious to know how Tony Blair — a man who might have made a great Prime Minister of the United Kingdom if he hadn't been running for Vice President of the United States¹ — feels about converting to Catholicism a few years ago now that the Church is beginning to resemble the largest organized pedophile ring in history. Still, as has been pointed out repeatedly, the spectre of the pro-abortion Blair converting to a religion which opposes his beliefs made a lot of sense if he wanted to become the first president of Europe.

As we all know, he failed in his quest to be first president of Europe, he never recanted (that I recall) his support for abortion, people are leaving the Catholic Church in droves over the widespread pedophilia scandals and Blair is still facing pesky questions about the UK's involvement in the Iraq war, involvement which is getting increasingly harder to explain, particularly in light of the Downing Street Memo. So unless there is more to the inexplicable Blair/Benedict marriage than meets the eye, I suspect Blair's conversion is doing neither of them much good; alleged pedophiles and alleged war criminals don't seem the most natural of allies.²

One of the things I love about Europe is that few get really upset about people with different beliefs, so even the strange conversion of Blair to Catholicism, while appearing cynical, doesn't cause too much of a fuss. As a contrast, I don't believe in God and back in the US I've been physically assaulted twice for this, been verbally abused many times and even my own mother forbade me to speak about my beliefs in her presence. I was taught early on to "keep my mouth shut".  So on a trip to Ireland a few years go, while reading a copy of The God Delusion (which, despite Dawkins' protests, can be a pretty mean-spirited book at times), I found myself taking off the cover lest someone see it and be offended. Then I realized a couple of things.

First, I didn't take the cover off to avoid offending anyone. I took the cover off out of the residual fear I still had of strangers finding out that I am not a Christian. Second, I was being stupid because I had already discovered that even the most devout Christians over here tend to be extremely tolerant about the beliefs of others.

And this all brings me to the real point of my ramble: I feel bad for many of my colleagues. As it turns out, quite a few of them are Catholics. However, this seemed an almost reluctant admission to me and some admitted that they were ashamed and embarrassed by their church. How horrifying must it be to find out that the primary symbol of your faith was working overtime to protect child rapists? I strongly suspect that when your church fails you, you are going to start questioning your own beliefs. That's what led me to realize I don't believe in God and I suspect that others will find the same path. Already there is often a distrust of those who profess their beliefs too strongly; it's a short step to questioning those beliefs.

Another reason not to talk too much about beliefs is because frankly, the US is an embarrassment here. Many in the US are quite proud of being so forcefully "Christian" and they're becoming quite a laughing stock to many around the world. There are things to admire about the US, but they get lost in the wash when stories about Tea Party members introducing bills to overturn all local LGBT rights appear.

But what really prompted today's rant is reading local news about a Dutch Cardinal working hard to protect a pedophile priest and this is only the tip of the iceberg here. It's not surprising that even here in Holland, increasing numbers of people are leaving the Catholic church.

Religion is really not a big deal in much of Europe, but as we move forward, it's looking like the influence of the Catholic Church is on the wane. Of course, the gay Vatican prostitutes didn't help the issue one bit, and the Pope is now widely mocked as Pope Palpatine.

This is not a great time for Catholics in Europe.

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1. Don't worry if you didn't get that joke. The British do.
2. Though self-confessed gay male prostitutes and alleged war criminals apparently get along just fine.

More Politics?

There are a couple of times I try to avoid discussing religion and politics.

• Around people I don't know
• In this blog

Not a popular conversation topic
Photo by Glen Van Etten

The latter might seem ridiculous as this post rather puts the lie to that, but for those who know me, it makes sense. I blog relentlessly about politics (and sometimes religion) because it's an important topic to me. However, I deliberately tried to avoid topics like this in this blog because this is more of a "how to", but as I've mentioned before, my wife has pointed out to me that people will want to know why they want to move somewhere as much as they want to know how. Thus, without some discussion of culture, this blog would be rather limited. Plus, I like religion and politics, so there you go. From now on, I'll be dipping my toes into the political waters a bit more often. You've been warned.

As mentioned, I try to avoid discussion religion and politics around people I don't know simply because I don't want to offend and — unlike the computer enthusiast who assumes random stranger X is going to be fascinated by a particular bash script said enthusiast wrote — I don't assume people have my interests (sadly, this often leaves me in a position with little to say). However, lunch at my workplace is fascinating. Last I heard, we have over 90 nationalities working there and with just over 2,000 employees, that's a remarkable number. It also leads to fascinating conversations at work — well, when people of different languages don't split off to their own groups as sometimes happens. Thus, when the topic turned to Catholicism, my internal voice said "danger, Will Robinson!", but I was astonished at the response. Several people there were Catholic. All of them stated they were ashamed of their church.

I actually have more to say on this topic, but my daughter woke up and must be fed and changed and she's more important than this blog :) Thus, my discussion of Catholicism in Europe must wait for another day.

Photo Collection: Egypt

In light of recent events in Egypt, I thought a photo collection from around Egypt would be nice, to remind the world that there's a lot more to Egypt than Mubarak and a square full of protesters.

Karnak Temple, Luxor, Egypt
Photo by Dennis Jarvis

Cairo
Photo by Simona Scolari

Cairo
Photo by Ed Yourdon

Montazah Bay
Photo by Dennis Jarvis

Dahab, Egypt
Photo by Igor Klisov

شرم الشيخ مصر Sharm el Sheik
Photo by Dr. Mohammad Bahareth