Stop Sign In Montreal

I don’t think I’m your typ­i­cal French.

First, peo­ple seem to be sur­prised when I acknowl­edge I’m French: appar­ently, I look Latina, Russ­ian, Span­ish, Ital­ian… any­thing but French. Sec­ond, I must admit I’m an awful French: I can’t sing the national anthem, La Mar­seil­laise but for the first two lines; I didn’t travel my birth coun­try much, I wouldn’t know how to rent an place, find a job or deal with the admin­is­tra­tion any­more because I left after grad­u­at­ing from high school. And last, I have an under­de­vel­oped patri­otic sense and didn’t even party when France won the World Cup in 1998 (I actu­ally bitched about the noise and the fact that drunk fans puked all over the city).

Yet, I am French. I don’t mind it. I like to call myself a “word cit­i­zen” but this is the coun­try where I was born, where I grew up and where I was educated.

And it occa­sion­ally catches up with me…

Smok­ing: I smoke. Well, duh: it’s my genetic and cul­tural her­itage after all! That said, I don’t drink pricey grape juice like many of my peers.

Cheese crav­ings: and I can eat even the stinki­est ones. That includes blue cheese and runny Camem­bert. Not very glam­orous, I know… this is one of my deep dark secret. That said, I don’t usu­ally eat cheese in Canada because the imported stuff is expen­sive and I don’t like the local cheese.

I loves pol­i­tics: and deep down, I think that there is no prob­lem that can’t be solved through a good demon­stra­tion or strike. North American’s gen­eral indif­fer­ence to pol­i­tics dri­ves me crazy. The first time I wit­nessed a demon­stra­tion in Canada (five peo­ple walk­ing in cir­cle hold­ing plac­ards in front of the Par­lia­ment), I almost wanted to step in to teach them how to do it.

Scarves as a fash­ion acces­sory: sure, it’s cold in Canada. But I must admit that the num­ber one rea­son why I love scarves is because they are soft and look pretty. I have been told that French women have an inim­itable way of wear­ing scarves… is it true?

Awk­ward tip­ping: I’m now used to tip­ping 10% to 20% in restau­rants, but I still don’t under­stand peo­ple who tip a lot at hair salons or spas. I mean, styl­ists or mas­sage ther­a­pists don’t work min­i­mum wage, do they? I don’t see why I should tip $20 on top of an already very expen­sive (yet straight­for­ward) hair­cut. And where do we draw the line? Why tip an employee at the con­ve­nience store but not your doc­tor? Is there any­body I’m not sup­posed to tip? I’m start­ing to won­der…

Dri­ving: like most of you know by now, I’m a shitty dri­ver and I’d rather walk every­where. Unlike pretty much every­body here, I don’t see cars as a con­ve­nient way to get around. I’m still scared of dri­ving and I won­der if I will ever get over it. I don’t know any­body here who doesn’t have a dri­ver license (most peo­ple take it while in high school) — but in France, almost none of my friends have one.

Dis­tances: I don’t think a city located 500 kilo­me­ters away is “right next door” like most Cana­di­ans put it. Nor I’d drive there for the day (but then, again, I don’t drive). And I still find kind of cool to live in a coun­try with sev­eral time zones.

Fast food: let me put it this way; I’d rather stand naked in the mid­dle of a busy street on a Sat­ur­day after­noon rather than being seen eat­ing McDon­alds or other sim­i­lar crap food. Sub­way doesn’t count though, it’s kind of healthy. I’m still quite French when it comes to food, even if my cook­ing is way less elab­o­rate than you might imag­ine.

I have a “yahoo.fr” email address: yes, “fr” like in France. Peo­ple never seem to under­stand it when­ever I spell it. I reg­is­tered with Yahoo in 1999 and I didn’t speak Eng­lish at the time, so I nat­u­rally signed up with the French Yahoo. Most peo­ple in Canada have .com or .ca email address.

Food: pou­tine, a hot dog or a bucket of fried chicken is not a din­ner. Now, a baguette with but­ter, ham, cheese and pick­les is. What can I say, it’s cul­tural… I don’t like peanut but­ter (and I really don’t under­stand people’s obses­sion with it), I don’t eat ice cream (it’s already cold enough in Canada) and I like crois­sants bet­ter than muffins.

Now, as usual, I’m curi­ous. How about you, fel­low expats, immi­grants, world cit­i­zen? What did you retain from your birth country?

I’d like to ask a few of you the ques­tion: what are the 10 clues that you are still _________?

• Blue­fish, Cana­dian and Tawainese, now liv­ing in Denmark
• Bar­bara, Amer­i­can from Hawaii, liv­ing in France
• Gean, Brazil­ian, liv­ing in Canada
• Los Ziegler, Argen­tin­ian, liv­ing in Canada
• Rowena, Amer­i­can from Hawaii, liv­ing in Italy
• Priyank, from India, liv­ing in Canada
• Expat Trav­eler, from the U.S.A, liv­ing in Canada
• The Writer, from Indone­sia, liv­ing in Denmark

As usual, no pres­sure, but I’d be curi­ous to know!

Related arti­cles:

1. 10 Clues I Became Canadian
2. French And Eng­lish (3÷10)
3. Is The French Diet Still A Good Diet?
4. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
5. French, Eng­lish and Montréal