Why is holding on to a car with a bike not a great idea

If you are a teenager or an adult who remembers his youth well enough (very rare), you might know that during that certain period of our lives, we devellop that typical teenager ability to believe we are invicible and above all sorts of comments from anybody because we are smarter than everybody. And because I develloped that mentality myself, I decided it would be fun and also quite a show in front of my friends to get pulled by a friend's car while on a bike. We had already done it before and in all sincerity, we had become quite good at it, and it was almost a habit for my friend to tow me to my house back from school. However, it is important to know that we had never gone any faster than 60 km/h, because I had felt that the bike was getting hard to control at this speed already. But as usual, and as a teenager, I decided that you did not know what your limits are until you reach them. Therefore, on a sunny friday afternoon, I let my friend push the pedal to 70km/h. Of course, when confronted to such a high speed, my bike got out of control so I yelled to my friend driving to stop but it was too late. He had started to slow down so I fell at 55km/h instead of 70, with no helmet on of course. I skid on the road's rough and hard concrete on 5 metres. Luckily, I had managed to push myself away from the car and my bagpack had taken the worst of my skidding. But I still got enormous bruises and scabs on my knees, arm, hip and back, not to mention the small ones. Those hurt a lot but I was very happy I was alive because I knew this type of accident could have ended in much more of a tragic manner. But in the end, I am able to look upon this accident as an experience because after all, only those who do nothing get nothing, and that includes scabs and experience. Therefore, I am able to say that I wont hold on to a car while on a bike anymore, or at least not for a while and not as fast. So we can say that I have gained not only experience but also a good story to tell my friends which will allow me to show off even more than if I had not fallen.

Quebecers

When I first came to Canada, I was just an ignorant French kid who thought Canada was just a gigantic country with snow and bears everywhere. Also, like most of my people, I believed that Quebecers spoke a ridiculous type of French and ought to be made fun of. During my first two years in Canada, I learnt that Canada was much more than just snow and bears but, being surrounded by anglophone Canadians, I stuck with my belief of the stupidity of the Quebec culture, like so many other French people who, althought are a great nation, have the ability to judge and think of themselves as better than cultures they know nothing about, which is quite stupid. On my third year in Canada on the other hand, I moved from Lord Byng Secondary school to l'Ecole Secondaire Jules Verne, in order to do the International Baccalaureate. That school was a French school, like so many others which are built all around Canada because of the pressure people who want the French language and culture to be preserved put on the government. In that school, I met Quebecers for the first time in my life and it turned out they were'nt bad at all. Sure, they spoke with a funny accent which was hard for me to understand at first, but most importantly, they are some of the friendliest people I have met in my life, and their funny accent gives them a predisposition to be people with a great sense of humour. In short, they are warm people in a cold country. Unfortunaly, I had to go back to leave Jules Verne and go back to Byng for my last year of high school because I thought the IB (International Baccalaureate, remember?) was too much work, but I still hang out with what I call, my francophone buddies and I will never forget that special year.

Using social networks to show off

In the past two or three decades, the world has witnessed the arrival of an invention entirely different to anything invented before: the Internet. The Internet was very special because it was not something physical which one could touch, and yet it soon became one of the biggest sources of money ever. In a few years, all the developed countries acquired it and it soon became the main source of communication, thus making quite a number of industries such as the press or the post old-fashioned and obsolete but who cared? The number of possibilities the computers' white and shiny screens offered seemed endless. Soon, men became unable to function properly without their precious internet. But the addiction was pushed to its peak when a few years ago, social networks were invented. Suddenly, everyone felt the need to talk to people they so every day and became curious about what those people had done in the past hour, and started uploading hundreds of photos of various things which, let's face it, are often rather pointless, because one photo of a dog is cute, but two hundred photos of the same dog in different shades or angles get boring. But of course there are some good sides to the fact that websites like Facebook or Twitter are now the center of any normally formed teenager. Of course there is the whole we-can-stay-in-contact-no-matter-where-you-go side of it but most importantly, we are now able to show off to all of friends without even talking to them. How? you might ask. Well for that, there are a few techniques, which I will graciously share with those who take the time to read this, so that they might not feel like they have wasted their time. Using Facebook, you can have a lot of friends (about 400 is the minimum, but it does not matter whether you know them or not) and thus show off your "social skills" to all those people and in fact it is now possible to see people argue about who has more virtual friends, an activity about which I choose not to comment. On the other hand, you can also go for the less popular choice of only adding a few people and then saying: " I don't want to be like all those lame people who add strangers for the vanity of having friends on facebook, I know all the people I add." If this works, you can kill two birds with one stone because not only do you prove that you are not conformist and therefore better than everyone, but you can still show off your social skills by having slightly less virtual friends than your acquaintances by implying that you truly know your "small" circle of friends (in this case, about 200 to 300 friends is recommended.) Lastly, a good way to show off using social networks is uploading photos of you and your friends doing something judged cool by the teenage society or just you doing something cool or being somewhere cool. Now of course, I would be a hypocrite if I said I never did any of the things I am judging right now because otherwise, how would I be able to talk about it. I use Facebook to show off like everybody as you can see in my next post and for that, I say: thank you Facebook for making us all addicted to you.

Free project

Scout story

As incredible as it may seem, I was in the  boy-scouts for six years, and during those six years, my friends in the scouts and I have been through many adventures, and this one is one of my favourite.

            The summer camp which I had been part of every year had started like all the others, with the 35 scouts from Paris leaving in a packed bus while singing loudly until the driver, as every year, stopped the bus on the side of the highway and, while our scout supervisors watched with eyes that seemed to say “here we go again”, the driver went to the back of the bus and screamed:

-“ If you don’t immediately stop your barbaric singing, this bus is going right back to Paris and too bad for the summer camp.”

Once he had said this, we would be quiet for a little while, and we would start singing 5 kilometres later, as every year.

            After about 500 kilometres and 6 long hours in the uncomfortable bus, we arrived in the field which had been lent to us for the two weeks we were going to spend. As usual, our supervisors had chosen a field in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of France with one faucet 500 metres away for all our water. But as every year, we were all happy to be in the “wild”, from a Parisian point of view at least.

            As soon as we got off the bus, we set off to setting up the tents, making a fire pit, and of course a very elaborate washroom which consisted of a hole in the ground. As always, we had been divided into groups of 5 or 6 per tent called a  patrouille (translate patrol). Each patrouille was then assigned to a certain task for the camp life, for instance getting wood, preparing food or washing the dishes, and we rotated every day. It was also with our patrouille that we were always teamed up during the games we played every day, and thus a patrouille was sort of like a house in a school.

            One thing which was, at least for the kids my age and I, different that year was that we had just left the louveteaux and become scouts. At this point, a little clarification is probably needed for those who are not familiar with the scouting world. Since the scouts are a very large organization composed of children from 8 to 21, and even later if you consider the supervisors, the scouts are divided in four sections, depending on age. From 8 to 12 years old are the louveteaux (wolf cubs), then the scouts from 12 to 15, the pionniers (pioneers) from 15 to 18, and the compagnons (companions) from 18 to 21. The idea is that the older you are, the more independent and autonomous you are and in fact, in the compagnons, there no longer are any supervisors as you are your own supervisor.

            Thus my friends and I had were 12 and had just become scouts; and were proud to be part of the older group, where we knew we would be treated more like grown-ups. One day, our supervisors gathered us all after the Sunday mass (let us not forget that the scouts are also a catholic organisation, although no one of a different religion has ever been forbidden to join.) and told us that on the next day we would go on our exploration. The older boys who already knew what the exploration was chuckled and started telling each other stories of previous explorations but the younger ones, me included, started excitingly whispering to each other that the day had finally come and that the veil of mystery which enveloped the exploration would be lifted at last, for we had heard so much of the exploration. The supervisors slowly told us that the next day, each patrouille would be given 50 euros and a map with an itinerary to follow. We were supposed to use paths and roads to go to a house, but usually a basement owner by people who had previously agreed to lend part of their house to 6 young scouts for a night. We were supposed to buy food ourselves with the money, and walk back to the camp on the following day, and all this in an environment completely unknown to us, hence the name exploration. As we went back to our tents that night, none of us was able to fall asleep right away for we were all trying to imagine what would happen the next day and we were all making up scenarios in our heads as to what might happen.

            The next day, around 9 am, one supervisor came to wake my tent up and told us it was time to go. My tent and patrouille was composed of two boys my age whom I also knew from school, Hadrien and Bruno, two boys two years older, Matthieu and Henri, and Cyprien, who was the oldest and thus the head of the patrouille. We quickly went around the camp fire, ate and breakfast and waited for our supervisor to tell us what to do. Our supervisor gave us a map and showed us where we were going to spend the night and how to get there. Unfortunately, that year the exploration had been rushed and quickly organised by our supervisors and all they had found for us was a house in construction with no roof that had been lent to us by the city hall of the village in which the house was. Nonetheless, we were all so overcome by our happiness of being granted so much freedom that the idea of sleeping à la belle étoile did not least bother us. We could hardly restrain ourselves from jumping with joy, especially when we were given the bill of 50 euros, which was of course a huge amount of money for boys our age. Thus, after saying good bye and taking with us two baguettes, cheese and ham for the trip, we left the camp and entered the wild world alone, three boys of 12, two boys of 14 and one of 15.

            My patrouille had been bravely walking for five hours, and, conscious of all the liberty we had, we had enjoyed every minute of it. We had stopped in a supermarket earlier to buy as much junk food as possible for our dinner and breakfast, because yes, it is possible to buy food for 5 people with 50 euros, for 2 days. As we were walking on a very small road in the countryside, we took a quick break next to a house in construction by the road. The house was empty and there was a large truck next to it. As we were about to start walking again, I felt the need to annoy Cyprien, as I always did, by snatching his hat and running away with it. I obtained the effect I was looking for when he immediately stood up to chase me. As I was running away from Cyprien, I turned my head around to see how far he was, and ran head first into the back corner of the stationary truck I have mentioned earlier which, of course, was as sharp as a knife. The shock I had just received had thrown me on the ground and at first, my friends started laughing which I cannot condemn for the scene must have been quite funny. I started laughing a bit while touching my head with my hand but I stopped laughing when I realized that my hand was covered in blood. It is usually in such moments that one realizes how soft the human skull really is, and as funny as my running into the truck might have been, the story became slightly less funny when Cyprien told me that I have a cut 5 centimetres long on my head. Without losing his calm, he told me to lay down while he called our supervisors. The problem was that we only had one cellphone which had of course no money, and we could not call a regular number. My friends then called the firemen because their number is free of charges, and started telling them what had happened. The other problem was that we did not know precisely where we were because the road on which we were was in the middle of nowhere, and as my friends were trying to tell the firemen our location, the phone shut down. That is when we realized that the phone was out of battery. Thus here we were, 6 young boys in the country, one of them with a huge cut in the skull and unsure wether the fireman knew where we were or not. After fifteen minutes, we heard the sirens of the ambulance in the distance, but it did not come near us, instead we heard it driving around us without being able to find us. Luckily, at this point, a local farmer went by in his car and stopped when he saw us by the side of the road. In his peasant accent, he asked us what was wrong and we told him of our misfortune. Since he happened to know the fireman who was on duty when we called, he pulled out a cell phone which seemed to us like quite a contrast for a man who looked so rural, and he called his friend, saying that he had found “them” as though he was talking about an object the entire world had been looking for.

            The man decided to stay with us until the ambulance arrived and while we were all waiting, two old ladies and then another peasant came by, and as they all knew each other, they started talking about the “pauvres garcons” who were so unlucky. Before I knew it, about half the rural community was around me and talking about what was best to do, and the scene became rather unusual:

-“Back in my days, being in the scouts was not so dangerous” said an elderly lady.

_”Yes but they are good boys nonetheless Madame Joubert, one can see it right away.” Answered another

-“And by the way, how is your elder son, the one who was himself in the scouts?” said a third one, who had just appeared out of nowhere.

-“Oh well he told me he is doing very well in his engineering school, he is the nicest boy.”

Et caetera…

            Although having many people around was rather soothing at first, the constant blabbering of the old ladies and the peasants soon became annoying and I was quite happy when the ambulance finally arrived and took me away. Thus I left my friends and rode towards the hospital of the obscure town of Brive-la-Gaillarde, which I had never heard of before in my life. Once in the hospital, I patiently waited for my turn in the waiting room while everyone was watching the rather unusual sight of a 12 years old boy in a scouts uniform and with dried blood all over his face. After an hour, a doctor told me to come in his room and made me sit. He was huge and had hands that would have best suited a butcher than a doctor, and he too talked with a peasant accent. Seeing my cut, he pulled out a huge stapler and started stapling the two sides of my cut together. Now I do not know much about medicine, but it seems to me like he should maybe have cleaned my cut from the dried blood and shaved my hair before stapling my head, but I am a polite person and decided to let him do his work. As he started absently stapling my head, he starting talking to his nurse as though I was not here:

-“Ah those scouts! – Tchak! one staple- They’re so irresponsible! –Tchak! Two staples- To leave young boys –Tchak! Three staples- alone in the wild! –Tchak! Four staples- How irresponsible! –Tchack! Five staples- Never will you see my children with them –Tchak! Six staples- Never! –Tchak”

After seven staples, my head was on fire and had there been one more, the tear that I was restraining to the corner of my eye would have most likely dripped down my cheek. Once the good doctor had finished his job, I must that I looked much worse that before, sort of like a scout version of Frankeinstein. As I left the doctor’s room, a new problem arose: it was now around midnight, I was in an unknown town with no cell phone and I did not know my supervisors’ cell phone number. Therefore, I asked to use the hospital’s phone and called the only number I knew by heart, my father’s. So at midnight, my father received a call from his 12 years old son saying that he was in a hospital in Brive-la-Gaillarde, that I would explain everything later but that I needed my supervisors’ phone number. My father’s reaction was simple:

-”Is this a joke?”

La patrouille

-“No, no dad, I’ll explain everything later but right now I need you to give me my supervisors’ number.”

My father has many qualities, but one cannot say that my father is very organized. He was aware of the fact that I was in a scouts camp but he did not have my supervisors’ phone number. Therefore I told him to call my grandparents, because my mother had just gone to Vancouver and was not taking care of me that summer, and once he had the number he could call the hospital back and give me the number. I do not know how my grandparents reacted when he called them because before he called back, my supervisors had come to get me themselves after my patrouille had called them with one of the old ladies’ phone and informed them of the situation. They had ended up sleeping at the old ladies’ house who apparently offered them very comfortable beds and good food  when they heard that my friends didn’t have time to reach the house where they had to go before nightfall. In the end, my misfortune was good for them because the place in which they stayed was much better than a house in construction. As for me, I went back to the camp that night with my supervisors and waited the next day for all my friends to come back and tell them of my adventure.

Childhood memory

Scavenger Hunt Poem

Two down, a lot to go

        As I have aforementioned, Ben Ali of Tunisia and his family have all fled from Tunisia after rebellious Tunisians rose in anger against the high cost of living and the lack of democracy in Tunisia. It had also been said that Mubarak of Tunisia might follow soon enough. Well, on February 11th, after 31 years of reign, Mubarak and his clique have had to leave the power in the hands of the army. But after these two autocrats have stepped down, there still is plenty to do, and plenty that could go wrong. It has often been seen that once people get a taste of rebellion and revolution, they find it hard to go back to regular life, and such us the case in Tunisia where the protest have been going on even now that Ben Ali has left for the protesters now want the provisional government to leave. Even worse, extremist have been known to always take the opportunity to gain complete power over a country after a rebellion, and it is possible that in Egypt where the army is currently in power, islamist may try to gain power which would make the situation worse than before.

Bahrein, Pearl Square protests

         On the other hand, it seems that this jasmine revolution really has become a revolution of the arab world for in the past week, large protest have been organized in Morocco, Algeria and Yemen, though they did not lead to anything concrete. In Bahrein protest have been successfully answered by the prince who has agreed to start a dialogue with the protesters. In Libya unfortunately, the protest organized against the oppressing dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi have been violently put down by the army which shot the protesters and made several deads. In Iran protest have been organized as well but because of the country's usual no-reporters policy, not much is known of those protests. In short, most of the arab world is now prone to rebellions and protests but is leaders, especially the worst ones, do not seem to be ready to let go of the reins of power. Nonetheless, we wish the protesters of Libya and Iran good luck in their struggle, and we hope that Egypt and Tunisia will soon have stable, democratic governments.