I'm a Frenchman in London

“Oh, I'm an alien, I'm a legal alien, I'm a Frenchman in London...” Great track, no reason for me to carry on assassinating it. I am close to the 15^th anniversary of my arrival in London (to be honest, I don't remember the exact date. I remember it was raining, but that doesn't tell me much about the date). 1997. What a time it was to be a fresh faced 25 year old, slightly naïve, a bit lost at first, exploring the multi cultural city that is London. It's fair to say that I did a fair amount of growing up here. In those 15 years, I think I got a pretty good grasp of what it's like to be a foreigner in England. Not any foreigner, mind. A Frenchman.

First thing first, I love London. I do. It's a love-hate relationship. Sure, I have lived in a lot of other places in England, but I've always ended moving back to London. I even went back to France for a couple of years (unplanned, I have to say!), hated it, and ended up in LDN. Must be something in the beer water.


And my love-hate relationship with London might be inspired by another, famous, love-hate relationship. Also known as l'entente cordiale (by the way, it's in French so that the French can also understand. Plus it sounds better). The England – France relationship. Or rivalry. Sometimes.


It's fair to say that the English speak about the French a lot. And rarely  in glowing  terms. I have read these books, and behind their casually racists titles, they are, in fact, perfect examples not only of British humour at its best, but also of the deep respect the Brits, and particularly the English, have towards the French. As a counterpart, these books also exist (for the record, I have not read any of these books. I do not need to know how to act French. Bizarrement.). And to me these two sides exactly represent the English attitude towards the French : “We'll take any cheap shots we can at you (all in good humour, what what), because quite frankly, we're jealous.”


There, I said it. The English are jealous of the French. Or at least, they're jealous of the image they have of the French. And that's very different. It's only an image. I'm not talking about the stripy shirt, rusty old bike, string of onions one, obviously, but the better lifestyle, better food, and altogether classier image. You know, the famous French flair?


As I said I did recently spend two years in France. And hated it. Oh sure, we still eat well. If you can afford it. Better lifestyle? Not so different than the one here, to be honest. People in London complain of the cost of living, but it is higher in Paris. Paris is the seventh most expensive city in the world, London is seventeenth. French flair is expensive!


I love watching those shows where Brits move abroad, and particularly when they move to France. I love seeing them struggle, I can't help it. First of all, of course, is the language barrier. French is especially engineered so that we're the only ones who can speak it correctly. And boy, do we enjoy mocking those who try! Beyond that, there is the cultural barrier. An even tougher one to overcome.


Very quickly, when living in France, you'll have to deal with the French administration (the government workers). And you're entering a world of pain. A world. Of PAIN! Imagine having to deal with someone who actively hates you (nothing personal, mind, they hate everybody equally). A person who seems to get up every day on the wrong side of the bed, then fall down the stairs. Head first. Into a table. A person that is always in a bad mood. A very, very, very angry person. Only taking it out on you can make their life slightly less miserable (to be honest, if after my 35h week I only had 7 weeks holidays, I'd probably be pissing with rage too). The fonctionnaires (French for jobsworth) will very quickly make your life hell in France. No amount of steak frites can make up for that... And I stupidly started a business there. I was happy to be back in England after that, if only for the drastic reduction in paperwork (paperwork is a religion in France).


Don't get me wrong, I'm still immensely proud of my nationality, and even more of my culture. But in the last 15 years, I seem to have become more and more anglicised. I still have the ebullient French character lurking in the background, so it is a bit of a weird and dangerous (and slightly unstable) mix.


When I arrived in England, I saw myself as, maybe not an ambassador, but at least a representative of my country and culture. Over the years I have not always be successful in giving a positive view of it, but in general, I think I've done quite well. I hope I still do, in a way. And in a weird twist, I have also found myself to be an English ambassador in France (on top of being the translator!). Ok, most of the times, I had to defend English cuisine (it's no accident it's a French word, though). It's the first subject that comes up when talking about England. Actually, it's usually the first subject that comes up in any French conversation. It's either food or sex. And I'll respect l'entente cordiale, I will avoid talking about sex in England...


It's fair to say that we do not have the same sort of jealousy towards the English. In fact, we have no jealousy towards anybody, because, you know, we're the best... The French sense of humour is very self depreciating (my favourite French joke: Why do we have the cockerel as our emblem? Because it still sings while being knee deep in shit), but only we are allowed to do so. Try this : denigrate France in front of a Frenchman or woman (for extra added fun, add one of the clichés, like “Don't get your stringed onions in a twist”. We love that). Then run. You do not insulte la belle France, rosbif! We might say our country is shit, but it's still way better than all the others. I mean, come on, when we do revolutions, for example, we do them right : England went all industrial, we went all royalty heady choppy! Which one do you prefer?


I am sensing this post is going the way I feel at the moment. It started brightly, I had all intentions of talking about life in London as a Frenchman, and I end up talking about, hating and then defending France. No wonder I'm confused! And I am. After all this time here, I don't really know what I am anymore. If I have a love-hate relationship, it's not with London, it's not with England, it's with my country, and to a greater extent, my cultural identity. Proud of my French culture, but I have spent most of my adult life in England. I love London despite all its flaws, and yet I regularly go back to France, under the pretence of “shopping” (which I do), but in all honesty, it's to get the English smell off my skin and bathe in Frenchness. My passport says I'm French. My accent, even though diluted by now, says I'm French. Yet I can't deny I have absorbed a lot of Englishness in my (nearly) 15 years here. Am I a mix of the two? A Frenglish? An Englench?I'll let an Athenian Greek Socrates have the final word:
“I am not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”

We're all extremely valuable online

I confess, I'm a social networks addict. I get nearly all my news from Twitter, which I promptly repost on Facebook and Google+. Sometimes I even check LinkedIn. I'm still not quite sure what this Pinterest thing is all about, but I'll figure it out....


And the great thing about all these social networks is that they're all free! Isn't that amazing? All these sites for free. All you have to do is hand them your personal data.


There is not a week without yet another “outrage” in the tech world about the use of personal data (some of the latest ones being the Path scandal and the Google one). How could companies mistreat their customers like that? The answer is easy. You are not their customers.


I disagree with the saying “If you're not paying, you're the merchandise being sold”. At the moment it's not quite true. Most of these social networks are ad funded, so technically, you're not being sold, you're being sold to. Sure, the companies use the personal data, both location and personal preferences to feed their “smart” algorithms for targeted advertising (very advanced algorithms, by the way. I was listed as “single” on Facebook, so I got a lot of ads for dating sites. Wow. Give these developers a medal, this is mind blowing!).


In a certain way, these sites are not different than a TV or radio channel, a TV provides content paid by advertising aimed at you, a social network provides a service paid by advertising aimed at you. And the personal data collection is no worse than a supermarket fidelity card, after all, the supermarkets track all the purchases you make, know your spending patterns, what you like...


However, there is one pretty big difference.


Take Tumblr, for example. The latest figures I've seen put the number of blogs on Tumblr at 44.3million. Tumblr has raised a total of $125 million over the years. Yet, it's not sure how much revenue they have. All evidence points to very little. Let me say that again. Raised $125 million. Valued at $800 million. No revenue. What could possibly go wrong?


After all, it's always a good idea to invest or buy companies with no or little revenues. YouTube and mySpace are two shining examples... Other companies have more revenue (as recently published, Facebook has a very safe level profits), Pinterest is an interesting one, as it seems to have found a very clever way to monetize their offering.


The current “business model” for online tech startup seems to be : Come up with a reasonable idea, do a minimum implementation, give the service away for free, get users, raise investment, get more users, sell or go for an IPO, hopefully with a massive profit. For some weird reason, this comes to mind...


So what do they sell? What do they have that is so valuable? Why, you, of course! You, and your lovely, lovely personal data! One day, Facebook will falter, it's just the way the web goes, but one thing that will not go away, and will be the most valuable asset Facebook has, will be the very large amount of personal data the company has collected over the years. Facebook is currently valued a $94 billion, with approximately 845 million monthly active users. Does that mean that each active user is worth $111 to Facebook? I would say yes, as Facebook's income come from targeted advertising and social games. Tumblr, valued at $800 million, with 44.3 million blogs : $18 per blog. And remember, they have no revenue.


You're not these companies customers, you are what give these companies value. You're their assets. Isn't it a great feeling to be valuable?

Nobody's bigger than the club.

When I started this blog, I said to myself, I'm not going to write about the Arsenal. Mostly because other people are doing it so much better than I can. And it's an emotional subject for me. I luuuuurve them Gunners. The longest relationship I've ever had and ever will.

As once again our season is painfully drawing to a close with a whimper rather than a bang (rather ironic for Gunners), I can't help but think that for the last few seasons, watching the Arsenal has been like watching a sick loved one. Who refuses to tell you what's wrong with him. Oh sure, he has the occasional moment of glory, he goes bungee jumping, he tells you he has great spirit, but you know. You KNOW. You can see him fading away before your very eyes, looking more and more emaciated, pale and weaker months after months. But still he doesn't tell you anything. So the only thing you can do is wonder.

And that's pretty much the situation we're in with the Arsenal at the moment. We can all see that something is badly wrong, that our seasons are getting from bad to worse, and yet we're not being told anything.

I have supported Arsenal since I arrived in England (six months after Arsene Wenger, funnily enough). 15 years. A mere blip in our history. And I will still be a proud Gooner after the current team is gone, after the manager is gone, after the board is gone. Just like all the other fans who fill the Grove, like all the other fans worldwide. All supporting the club. We're not bigger than the club.

I don't believe for one minute, that a man as clever and successful as Arsene Wenger has suddenly forgotten how to pick a team. How to buy players. I don't believe for one minute that he is convinced that fourth is like a trophy. That's Arsene Wenger we're talking about, our most successful manager. Still, he's not bigger than the club.

Far from me the idea that as fans, we're owed an explanation. Arsenal is a business (as we're constantly reminded), and a troubled business has no obligation to explain its failings to its customers. But Arsenal is also, primarily, a football club. A football club with 125 years of history. It was a football club long before it was a business.

My plea to the people in charge at Arsenal, be it the board, the manager, the chief executive, is this : Out of respect for the football club, its history, its values, out of respect for the people who made this club the great club it is, out of respect for its founders, the players who have proudly worn the shirt, the generations of fans, open up. You're not bigger than the club.

In these hard times we are currently experiencing, we should all regroup, and get behind the football club we love. It has happened many times before in our history. Instead, we, the fans are getting anxious and angry because we are left in the dark. We can only wonder what the problems are, and ignorance creates resentment and fear. We know, we KNOW something is not right at the Arsenal. It's clear as day. Open up.

Just as we cannot do our utmost to support the loved one who refuses to tell us about his problem, we, the fans, can not do our utmost to support the club we love if the people in charge don't tell us what's wrong. And we desperately want to give all the support we can give. Open. Up.

All I ask for is a little transparency. An honest assessment. A reason to silence the growing fear and uncertainty. A reason to make my church, the Grove, my happy place again. We may not be bigger than the club, but the club is bigger when we're all together.

The fitness obsession part deux, the TMI post.

It's been a bit more than a month and a half since I've posted about my desire for a healthier lifestyle. Inspired by my friend Linda, I thought I would also do an update with far too much information. But as I'm a dude, I can completely outgross her!

A month and a half ago, I set myself two main short term goals : Energy levels and better sleep. Well one out of two ain't bad. My energy levels are definitely up, but I'm not sleeping any better. However, it's not so much of a problem, now that I've moved, my commute is a lot less gruelling, I have plenty of time to rest.


Also, one thing I was looking for when I started, were results. On that front, I have not been disappointed.


On average, I have been to the gym about 4 times a week. I started really brightly, after the first couple of weeks ramping up exercising, I was full or energy, and for two weeks running, even went 5 times a week and that was simply too much (“I am Hulk! I am power! I am... Ouchhh!”), I nearly hurt myself (I had sore knees and I took that as a sign I was getting close to injury. Also, I have been told I got the wrong shoes for running. After I went to a sports shop and specifically asked for running shoes. Sports Direct in Burnham, you suck hard). So I went back to 3 or 4 times a week (I try to go every other day) and got into a pretty good rhythm. I mix cardio and weight training, and I have also had quite a few sessions with a personal trainer (highly recommended by the way, once you've found one you get along with).


“Tell us about the results, then!” Ok, ok, hold your horses! I can't tell you whether I've lost weight or not, as I'm not interested in the weight itself, or how it fluctuates. (I did weigh myself once, out of curiosity, and was surprised to find out that I weigh a lot less than I thought. Always a nice surprise). What I'm after is a general feeling, I know what my body looks and feels like, so it's quite easy to notice the differences. So yes, I am thinner. The first sign was that my clothes were feeling looser. That's a good sign, right? The first bulge to start going was the beer belly. It is now a lot flatter than before (picture available on request). Now I think the fat loss is more general, bar a few trouble area, as even my shirts are too big for me now (I have always bought my shirts too big in the false hope it might hide the bulges, but now I have even more space. Give it a couple of months and I will properly look like Charlie Chaplin). So yes, there is fat loss, but there is also a build up of muscles, believe it or not. Yes, there's muscle under the moobs! (picture available on request). As I've been working mainly on muscle build up in the upper body (at my age, and having sported a fine pair of moobs for at least 15 years, losing weight means it goes saggy. Picture available on request) to try and replace fat with something better. There is even some definition starting to show. My lower abs, where the beer belly used to be, is beginning to show the classic V shape, you know, the one pointing to the good stuff? (picture available on request). I haven't seen that for a good, oh, 20 years.


So far, I'm pretty happy with the results. Of course, it's only the start. There is still plenty of work to be done, I have only started a month and a half ago after all (I'm looking at you, love handles. You may have resisted so far, but this is WAR! Picture available on request). What really satisfies me is that I have not become obsessed with it. I genuinely like going to the gym. I feel very good afterwards. It fits into my new, healthier lifestyle. I still have a few things to change on the lifestyle front, but so far I have adapted very well to it. And that's the important thing. I have found a lifestyle that works for me. My previous one, as fun as it was, was the reason why I got overweight and unfit in the first place, so it had to change. I don't want short term results, I want lifelong health. And I feel I'm nearly there! I can look forward to the next few months and I can't wait to see how my body evolves. It might be wishful thinking, but I notice improvements weekly now.


And that's something which also helps with other areas in my life. Achieving something makes me want to achieve more, to know that I can work hard to get the results I want at the gym, convince me that I can do the same out of the gym. So I can look forward to the next few months for more than just health.


For anybody who would like to try, and I can not recommend it enough, this has to be the only advice I can give : Find something that works for you.


Oh, and a word of friendly advice : Don't fart in the sauna. I nearly choked in there. The other guys were not too impressed either (scratch and sniff available on request).

Romance (not really), parallel lives, and a smidgen of bitterness.

Valentine's day. A lovely day of commercialised romance. Such a shame I cannot participate this year. So I thought, for a change, I would do something special for Valentine's day. I would like to thank all the women who have rejected me, or split up with me since the beginning of my dating days, about 25 years ago. Thank you. Thank you so much. Seriously. That is not where the smidgen of bitterness is hidden. No, I haven't finally lost it, I genuinely thank all the women I've dated, no matter how long. To the women I don't really remember, to the women who left their mark, to the women who are still actively trying to avoid me (I like to leave a lasting impression), to the women who are still obsessed with me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! It will all make sense at the end, I promise.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about what my life would be had I taken different decisions at important points in my life. For example, at 14, I applied to go to a catering school. I wanted to be a chef (that was not a fad, by the way, 20 years later I seriously considered becoming a chef again. And one day, no doubt about it, I will open a restaurant). What would have happened if I had been accepted in that school? Would I be a good chef? A restaurant owner? Writing cooking books? Or would I be stuck in a crappy kitchen, a dead-end job, hating my life? In short, would my life have been better or worse?

And these sort of decisions are taken nearly on a daily basis. If we consider our lives to be a timeline, every time we take a decision and act on it, we add a junction, a parallel timeline. Do I wait for the light to be red before I cross the road? Or do I take my chances? I might be run over. Obviously, we will never know where these branches go, where they would lead us, but sometimes, I like to think of what would have happened. Of course, what I imagine my parallel life would be is a conjecture, but how would I know if I made the right decision otherwise?

See, I talked about decision making, but in my 14 year old case, I didn't choose. This particular choice was made for me. I didn't get accepted into the school I wanted, so my life carried on as it is now. This was the result of my previous actions, of course (my grades were not good enough, I was not a star pupil, to be honest), but still, somebody else made that decision for me. And for a control freak like me, it is a very scary thought. I am not in control of my entire life. People will make decisions for me. Based on my previous actions, but still, this particular branch added to my timeline is out of my hands. (no, that's still not where the bitterness comes in) As much as I would love to know that my life is entirely my own to decide, and I'm not one to shy away from my responsibilities, I completely assume my actions, when interacting with other people, they are bound to make their own mind about me, sometimes correctly, sometimes with good reasons, and sometimes too quickly, without spending the time to get to know me, taking rash decisions in the process.

So, back to the ladies in my life, and choices, made by me, or by them (no, still not the time for bitterness). I got proposed to at the age of 19. Yes, I did get proposed to, get over it. What would my life have been had I said yes? At the time, she was studying to be a teacher, I was studying IT. In all likeliness, I would have got an IT job in Paris to start with, then kids perhaps, followed by trying to move out of Paris, probably to the south of France, like many of my university friends have done. I would probably not have joined the games industry, something I have always wanted to do, and I would certainly not have moved to England a few years later. Would my life be better? Or would I be bored out of my skull?

Approximately 6 years ago, I proposed to a lovely lady. She said yes. For various reasons, we didn't go through with it. What would have happened if we did? Would I have joined the company who flew me around the world on business for nearly two years, visiting countries I never thought I would visit, and meeting amazing people? Would I have had the guts to start my own business afterwards (sure, ruining myself in the process, but giving a bigger sense of purpose that I would have got being married)? Not likely. I would certainly have thought twice about risking it all had I been married.

So yes, ladies who rejected me, thank you. I hate being rejected, it is a failure of sort, and you know how much I hate failure, but as with any failure, it is there to learn from, it is an opportunity to be taken. So, ladies (here comes the bitterness you've been waiting for!), when you tell me “it's not you, it's me/I'm not ready for a relationship/I don't want to hurt you/There is no spark/You're a great guy, but/You're an obsessive nutter and ought to be shot” or whatever the cliché du jour is, just think. By rejecting me, you're not only making me a better person, you're also making my life better. And for that, I thank you all.

Happy Valentine's day!

What can we learn from the MegaUpload debacle?

We are still dealing with the aftermath of the shutting down of Mega Upload. Other similar services ( such as FileSonic, FileServe or Uploaded.to) already have started shutting down the file sharing. In these times of SOPA/PIPA and the far worse APTA being discussed daily, what can we learn from the MegaUpload debacle?

First of all, let me be clear that I feel absolutely no sympathy towards Kim Dotcom. (look at this, what a nice guy ). I'm even quite upset some people tried to make him a martyr after the shutdown of MegaUpload. There is absolutely no doubt, in my mind, and I'm sure in the mind of the judges he will face, that the site was geared towards piracy. The business model he put in place doesn't lie. Paying the people uploading popular content on the site will be his downfall, at least on the piracy charges. It was quite easy to make money with MegaUpload, upload the latest movie/game/TV shows, spam a massive amount of people with the link to the download, rake it in. There is no way you can tell me that this is not a business model promoting piracy.

However, online piracy is a much more complex issue than the MegaUpload story let on. Reading this article, I tend to agree with most of the arguments the author puts forward (especially the “revenue loss” argument from the industry. I am so sick of hearing that one). There is one quite common mistake in this article, though. You cannot put all pirates in one bag. At a basic level, pirates have to be separated in two groups. The people providing the pirated content, and the ones consuming the pirated content. I use the verb consume with a very specific intent.

Take the MegaUpload example again, as simple an example of online piracy you can find, and let's have a look at this separation. The providers were obviously there to generate revenue for themselves, the site were paying them to upload the pirated content. Whereas the consumers paid the site to use the bandwidth, in short to consume the pirated content. This is quite a massive difference between the two. The consumers were willing to pay to get the content. As stated in the article linked above, they didn't have a legal alternative, or at least not one economically viable for them. To me, that is the main learning the industry (movie or TV) should take from this débâcle. I have already talked about this in my post about movie distribution, I just can't seem the understand the idiocy of the industry at the moment. What do you call a company who refuses to sell their product to consumers willing to buy? A dying one.

I love watching TV series. There are quite a lot of American TV series I enjoy watching, and every new season there are a few more. I never watch them on TV, fixed schedule TV is dead to me. So I have to wait for the series to be released either on a physical support, or available legally for download or streaming. I can discard straight away the legal download option, the prices online are nothing short of insulting, usually more expensive than the physical copies. That is yet another slap in the face of bona-fide consumers like me, and shows how far removed from the consumers the studios are. And as for streaming, well, the options here in the UK are very limited.

That is, if the series in question is even released in the UK. There's a couple of French series I had to download because they will never be released in the UK, and I cannot buy them from a French site like iTunes or Fnac because I do not have a French credit card. How ridiculous is that? Of course, I'll eventually buy the DVD or BD on one of my trips to France, but still, this is another example of a consumer (me) willing to spend money on legal content, and not being able to. Madness.

So yes, I do download content on the internet. I'm a filthy pirate. The consumer kind. The jilted consumer kind. One that spends a large amount of money on DVDs and BDs. And would happily spend more. Many a times have I downloaded movies or TV series and then bought a physical copy afterwards. What a filthy pirate I am.

The software industry at least tries to address the issues, with SAAS (that's software as a service, for the uninitiated), you can use the software you want on a pay-as-you-go basis. That's a very forward thinking position, and one that is bound to be the future of the software industry, especially now that WebApps are a viable alternative to native applications on many platforms. Cloud gaming, if it ever takes off, is a good representative of these new business models.

Sadly the way the movie and TV industries are thinking at the moment, as always, is short term profit. As much as possible in as short a time as possible. Not only is this a really bad idea in term of business, but because here we are dealing with culture, it can have disastrous consequences. We have already lost a large amount of early recorded music and movie history due to a general lack of interest at the time, and the decay of the support. Now that support is not an issue (multiple copies of digital content do not all degrade!), we're faced with losing the content due to idiocy. Something to be proud of.

So that is the state of play right now. Rather than helping the consumer stay legal, short sighted studio executives are actively encouraging piracy, by denying convenient access to their products at an attractive price point, if at all. It should be a simple problem to solve, really. Granted, the technology (mostly available bandwidth in consumer's homes) for wide spread streaming is not quite there yet. Will it be in 5 years time? Probably, but of course by then we would have moved on to higher definition formats, such as 2k and 4k, increasing the bandwidth requirements. Physical supports will not disappear as long as the available bandwidth cannot deliver the highest quality content. Long live piracy then. And it might not be such a bad thing. An often overlooked benefit of piracy is the technological push to deliver the pirated content to the consumer. I am convinced that without Napster, we wouldn't have Spotify now. Or at least not for a few more years. Piracy challenges the existing business models, exposes their flaws, and ultimately, leaves a lot of space for genuine, legal new businesses to fill that gap in consumer demand. Is that such a bad thing?