Woo hoo! I'm finally legal!

Yes indeed, dear readers, you will be happy to know that I am no longer residing illegally in the République. Why just this morning, after months of haggling, and begging strangers for help, and seriously considering ripping the visa out of my passport, I had my medical visit. Now those of you who haven't attempted to gain residency in this fair country, may not know that before you get any piece of paper (or plastic now - they've upgraded since my last one), you have to be certified "in good health" by a doctor at the prefecture. It's kind of a zoo here in Paris. When I did it in Chambéry, you had to go to one building for the chest x-ray (really fun, especially when you have to sit in a cold room half naked with a bunch of strangers) and then walk all the way across town to see the doctor, and then a few weeks later you get summoned by the prefecture to pick up the paper. Here in Paris, it's all done in one place, in something like assembly-line fashion. They call out your name, you do the eye test, height, weight. Then you go sit back down until they call you again, when you go into one of the closets hidden behind doors number 1,2, and 3, and you sit there naked from the waist up until they come and get you. Then you put your clothes back on and go sit down again, until the doctor calls your name, and takes you into the office where she looks at your chest x-ray and asks a few questions. They're clearly still very concerned about consumption here in Europa, but I luckily do not have consumption and so will not die a 19th century romantic death (although I probably shouldn't say that as I may now die of cholera and CBAM will have to burn me on a funeral pyre on a beach in Italy like Keats).

The best thing about the whole day, aside from getting the residency permit, is that you also get to keep your chest x-ray! The last time I gave it to A. who turned it into an art piece with the help of a machine the he invented to resemble the light box that doctors use to look at your x-rays. It is currently in a prominent place in our living room in Harlem. It's nice to have two, though, because I can compare the deterioration of my spinal curvature. I'm kind of afraid that I will turn into the Hunchback pretty soon though - it's not so pretty.

But to throw you off on this very cold stupid Valentine's Day, I will post some pictures of the Chinese New Year parade, which I viewed from the balcony of my friend Katie's apartment last Sunday. Katie throws a mean Chinese New Year party, complete with the most amazing cocktail (sparkling wine, ginger, star anise) and guacamole! She kept wandering around with the wine bottle refilling my drink so I must have had about 10. I'm pretty sure that Monday morning I had the worst hangover of my life. But it really made the parade more fun. Of course, she also lives in the area known as Chinatown (although they're almost all Vietnamese) so there were lots of amazing Chinese firecrackers that probably destroyed all the cars parked on the street as well as our eardrums.

This is a picture of the apartment across the street that started the firecracker madness. They were having a wicked party, and as you can see by the pile of destroyed firecrackers on the ground, enjoyed the explosives immensely!


Here are some pictures of the parade, including the float from Thailand that was apparently vandalized by jokers who turned it into the "Inde" (India) float.





Happy New Year of the Rat to you all!

CORRECTION: The funeral pyre on the beach in Italy was in fact for Shelley and not Keats. I'm always getting my romantic poets' biographies mixed up!