My Childhood Christmas

Some 65 years ago, my Christmas, and that of most of my friends, was pretty frugal and this was literally so true.

Consider this, frugal means “sparing or economical with regard to money or food” which originates from the from the Latin “frugalis” derived from “fruit” and hits the nail right on the head as we were given an orange, a luxury at that time of the year, and a good way to teach what frugality was all about!

The end of the short days

I don’t know about you, I like things positive, don’t stand continued decline and that’s especially true with the steady reduction in daylight that we suffer in December.

So, this week, I’m overjoyed as we’ve reached the time of the year when days grow again, brings us hope, positive options and plenty of light.

I don’t need to travel to Stonehenge to celebrate. Just a quick pick out of my morning windows finally reminds me that we’re headed for the right direction!

Nothing's ever enough for the French!

This past weekend, President Macron announced that he was renouncing not just his monthly pension of $5,700 as president when he’s out of office, as well as his monthly stipend of $12,300 as a member of the constitutional council when he’s out of office.

This, I think is a good way to show that he can “walk the talk”, but of course, Fabien Roussel, in charge of the communist party, blurted out that “[giving up on such benefits] is a luxury that few French people can afford”.

This infers that Macron can afford it, so that’s no big deal, which goes a long way to say that too many of my countrymen have a seriously defective judgment and a culture that is totally off-quilter.

I only hope that Macron won’t budge under the pressure of these imbeciles!

Running behind…

This is the first time I feel I’m running behind my many tasks ever since I have retired. 

Perhaps I am doing too much for my working days or is it just a passing trend? At any rate, it’s not fun and I don’t like it. One of the problem is that I need more sleep than in years past and this leaves me less waking hours.

This, I guess, leaves me one simple option: Increase my productivity!

First ski clinic at Avoriaz ski school

At about this time, some fifty years ago, I had just began working at the Avoriaz ski school and Edmond Denis, its director, had taken the entire ski school to review some critical teaching materials.

I remember that we were working around the late Foillis chairlift, In those days, there was a whole collection of side-slipping Christies that we needed to master, before culminating to the French Technique’s holy grail, also know as “Christiana Léger”, a fine, perfect turn using a slight up and down unweighting and circular projection of the upper body, skis perfectly parallel and close together.

The all deal was executed at the lowest speed and the utmost grace possible. Edmond was part of a French expedition that had premiere the south face of the Aconcagua in Chile, back in 1954 and had lost his toes from frostbite during this ascent.

He was telling us that the secret of all Christies was found in feeling a longitudinal and forward pressure on the big toe. He no longer had any and must have felt his phantom toes!

I liked what I heard, was then a sponge, thirsty for knowledge about skiing and thought Edmond Denis, who was pretty much anti-conformist, spoke smoothly and sounded like the greatest guy I’d ever met.

Four years later, he would leave the ski school and become an inspector checking on the quality of ski instruction delivery, a cool gig for a cool dude...

Biden made no mistakes…

The 6th Democratic Debate was a mixed bag.

The good part about it was that 7 candidates are better than 10, as a lower number of participants makes up for a much better exchange, but the bad part was still there, with no one stellar candidate emerging from the group.

Many imperfect individuals, but no clear and compelling leader standing out. According to pundits, Biden made no mistakes so he kind of won even though he looked like a moribund and made fun of stutterers.

Sanders showed the worst side of his stubbornness, Warren continued to put her anger on displays, and like Klobuchar took a cheap shot at Buttigieg, who – in the end – might be the best of the bunch...

Retirement: France exceptionalism

If you follow the news, you’ve heard about the constant wave of strikes against the proposed reform of retirement rules in my home country.

There are currently 42 different pension regimes available that vary widely in terms of both how pensions are calculated and what age workers can retire at.

Officially, the country's retirement age is 62, but many people with “special regimes” such as train or metro drivers can retire much earlier, in some cases at the age of 55.

If you compare France retirement age on the table with that of other countries, you can see that my countrymen have a sweet deal compared to most of the other European and North American nations, and then, you might wonder, what are they complaining about?