Paris and us

Chapter 15

In the first two weeks of May, many French employees will take a few extra days off to link the two public holidays to make a one or even two weeks vacation. They called it 'faire le pont' (to make the bridge). On top of a month off summer vacation or the two weeks off for Christmas, there are not many days when you find the employees in their office. Employees who work 35 hours per week will have five weeks of annual leave, that will be the case for the blue-collar workers. If they are cadre, meaning the managers or the executives, or anyone who work around 40 hours or more per week, they will benefit from the RTT (Réduction du temps de travail), which added two more weeks in the annual leave, that will be seven weeks in total. The only constraint is the employee can only take the RTT days off in a designated period, usually the summer.

Most of the French will enjoy their vacation, but not us. It was time to prepare for the next Haute Couture show in the end of June. Fashion is a never ending cycle of work. We are like the hamsters who run round and round in the wheel indefinitely to catch up the never stopping race.

I hadn't seen Louis after his NYC trip, in fact, I wasn't even sure if he was back to Paris. I should have contacted him to ask him out, but I did not want to appear as those clingy stalker girlfriends, who keep tracking the boyfriends. If a man really wants to see you, he will call you. If he doesn't, he will not even bother looking at your text messages. Louis disappeared in his working maze, and all of a sudden he would show up on my door, I got used to it now.

I gave the almost copy and paste budget planning for the Hong Kong exhibition to Madame de Blois, she did not red flag it or made any comments about it. And of course I included the C&W firm in it, my guess was she acknowledged its existence and chose to ignore it. After all, she did the same planning for the last five years, she might follow the orders by someone up. We were all following the orders from someone superior, then execute them by copy and paste them, to make sure the superior employee would accept them. Robots and AI technology will replace us sooner than we think. There was an AI which could write books and news articles in a similar writing style by simply inputting the first few original paragraphs in them. It existed already.

My fellow readers, maybe what you are reading right now was actually written by the AI.

AI would replace 90% of the workforce in the future, maybe I could fulfill my lifelong dream of living like a cat very soon.

I received a text from Aurélien, asking me to meet him for breakfast.

"What for?" I asked.

"Just come to meet me, I have something to tell you."

He knew me too well, I was curious about what he was going to say.

Sunday morning in Cafe de Flore was the best time to enjoy the experience of sitting in this oldest coffeehouse where once Pablo Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway or Karl Lagerfeld once visited as regulars in a different time. It was the Parisian institution where the poor and bohemian writers, painters, philosophers and scholars met for a drink and engaged into some heated debates. Now it became the major tourist attraction where you pay €20 for a Cesar Salad and €7.8 for a cup of chocolate. Only the Bobos would go for a cup of tea from Mariage Frères after the Pilate class, or the rich American tourists would sit on the patio taking a selfie with a cup of cappuccino and a croissant and posted it on Instagram.

It was 9 am when I walked on the Boulevard St-Germain, most of the Parisians were still in their bed. Not Aurélien, he was sitting on the Patio reading the New York Times, on the little green table there were coffee, a croissant, a raisin Danish, and a baguette with butter and jam. I sat on the chair next to him and said, "Can we meet for afternoon coffee next time? It is Sunday morning, for God's sake, I had to get up so early."