the bordeaux roller rink and other cultural adjustments

Last week, on this blog, I referred to my internet connection as having the reliability of a tin-can telephone.  Upon which it promptly shut down for four days.  (that'll teach me).

Bordeaux looks like a modern city:  cars, public transportation, a grocery store open until 10 pm (that's big).  But if the city infrastructure looks modern at first glance . . . oh, les bordelais.

Some days they make you feel like you're living in rural Greece in the sixties.  

Its not the fact that, six weeks in, nobody seems to be able to install internet in our apartment.  That, I can put down to bureaucratic snafus.  It's more stuff like the fact that all repairmen, no matter what company they come from or what they're repairing, arrive in the afternoon (regardless of when your appointment is) reeking of wine, and in the space of ten minutes make two jokes of questionable taste, further break your already broken appliance and leave telling you someone will be in touch.  I would like to live in a house where every immobile object is not covered with drying clothes!

What took the cake, today, was when Benoît called me to tell me that Seal (the singer) will be performing a concert at the local roller rink.   Heidi Klum on Project Runway and Seal at the Bordeaux roller rink?  Where am I?

this wired posting about craigslist   made me laugh.