happy holidays

mini-tornado

Crazy.

10:38

So recently I went to the prefecture as part of the process to renew my visa. The last time I had to do this was ten years ago so things had changed. 

First off everything was online.  The site wasn’t great but at least I was struggling in the comfort of my own home.  I sent my paperwork into cyberspace and waited with no news for 8 months.  

Then suddenly I got an email telling me to come to the prefecture at a particular date at a specific time:  10:38.

10:38?  I thought to myself, that is definitely very specific.  They also specified the room I had to be in (1) and the widow (5B).  They also listed all the documents I had to bring.  

Easy peasy!    

Alarms went off in my head.  

Because with the French administration, it’s never easy.  

Alas since I hadn’t dealt with this in ten years, I was rusty and no longer knew where my originals of all the documents I’d ever gotten since being in France were so I stuck to the list.  Looking professional in heels was out of the question should I have to stand outside waiting in the cold.  

I have to admit, I was nervous. 

I still gave myself plenty of time before my appointment because who knows what curve ball would be thrown at me.  None were, public transport worked just fine and there was no line.  I got there 45 minutes early.  

When I got into room 1, I looked for a ticket number machine.  None were to be found so I asked a guy and he said I was just to find my window and sit and wait till they called my name. 

Ok….

So I found window 5A, found a seat and got settled.  I had 45 minutes before 10:38 and I was in the right place at the right time. I could take out my book right?  Except I couldn't shake an uneasy feeling, kind of like, a false sense of security?

Sit and wait for them to call your name. 

I started to look around.  Indeed the people at the window would call people’s names and people would go up.  The thing is, I couldn’t make out the names being called.  The native French speakers were obviously having trouble pronouncing the non-French names.  

Right… so the system is:  People who probably don’t speak French very well have to listen as native French speakers pronounce their non-French names.  No visual cues, just listening.  Read: The system for non-French people is made for French people. 

I looked at the guy at window 5A and tried to assess if he looked like he was someone who could pronounce my name in a way that I would recognize it. 

I had my doubts.  

I also realized he said the names very fast and didn’t pause much between names.  I looked at the 80 year old woman next to me with a cane.  

Right.

I inquired around me as to what time everyone had and their window.  The young woman behind me had my window and 10:21.  This is stressful, she added while scrolling on her phone.  

Logically she would be called first?  And logically they wouldn’t call my name before my allotted time of 10:38 right?  RIGHT? 

Then all my experience in dealing with the French administration came back to me.  Anything can happen.  There is no logic.  They have all the power, you have none.  Think the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld.  

Oh I wanted that soup.  

I put my book away and focused on listening.  At 10:15, I heard it, or at least, I heard what I thought was my name.   So I grabbed my stuff and went up. 

Except another guy went up because, like I said, the guy didn’t pause much between names so he was probably called first but by the time he got up there the window guy had called my name. 

I sat back down, lamenting this opaque system.  Where was my name now?  In this guy’s memory?  I looked at him to gauge his short term memory capabilities.  

I had my doubts. 

When the other guy left I went up.  

I’ll call your name madame, window guy said. 

Ok, I smiled realizing now that I might have angered the soup nazi window guy which in this kind of power dynamic is bad.  Very bad. 

I sat down but stayed in his line of vision. 

He eventually calls what I think is my name (it was) and I produce what I think are the right documents (they were). 

The system has improved but then again, maybe so have I. 

Shut it down, uh, uh, uh, uh

Indeed

How you bike that

So I rode my bike into Paris today for lunch.  I remember the first time I tried to cross the périphérique on my bike. I turned around simply because I didn’t have any id on me. If a car hit me, I reasoned, they wouldn’t be able to identify my body.  

Since then I have slowly ventured further and further away from home by bike.  It started by googling the rules of the road for bicycles.  In the end, it’s just one simple rule:  Make sure cars see you. Advice: Get a bell. I did. 

It’s not for the cars/vans/buses I share the road with (they’re not going to hear my bell - ding, ding!) it’s for the fellow bicyclists, electronic scooters, motorbikes, pedestrians, joggers, and the homeless that, in addition to cars/vans/buses, at any given time, come from any given direction.  

It’s madness, yet a testament to people’s faith in other people not to run them over.  That the priority is human life.  

Christmas morning

So I went for a walk yesterday.  The news was depressing but the weather gorgeous, sunny and 80 degrees.  It was an occasion to wear an outfit I had found in a cute boutique in Paris, 50% off.  

It was the pants that first caught my eye.  The green, red, white checkered motif and the two embroidered suns felt like Christmas morning. I inspected them, taking in the soft tissue between my fingers but moved on. I could tell they were too big. 

Then came the shirt, white with a loud positive message in big red letters. Also too big.  

But what if, I thought to myself.  Could this work with those pants?  

I ended up buying the outfit.  I thought it would sit in my closet till next spring but yesterday the unseasonable warmth gifted me the chance.  

Influenced

So a couple of summers ago we had gotten back from the States and the kids were up at night and totally wired due to the jet-lagg.  My husband thought it would be a good idea to have a war-like pillow fight to tire them out.  Seemed like a good idea until we got a text from our downstairs neighbor complaining about the noise.  

Then she started complaining about them on Sunday mornings.  “I work every day except Sundays so I need the rest.” she informed us.  

Oh, I thought.  She must be a nurse or something. 

Then I was having coffee with someone and they casually mentioned there was an influencer in my building.  Turns out it’s her.  

My first thought was: I have been calming down my children for an influencer?  

Followed by: They work that much? 

And finally: Wait, that’s a job? 

I thought it was just something you call people, like “gamer”.  But apparently yes, it is. 

I thought about all this when I saw an article about Pope Leo canonizing the Saint Carlo Acutis, “God’s Influencer. ”  

P.S. Gamer is also a job.

Ms. Moon

So in order to be an ecologically responsible Blink, I tried to download Your Green Step but I couldn’t find it. 

Luckily the YG sustainability report gives me what I need to calculate it manually:



It even provided an example!

So along with Ms. Sun's numbers here are Ms. Moon's numbers:

1. Paris suburb to Gare du Nord:  By bus (40 mins, 8.3 km) = 8.3 * 68 = 564.4 g GHG
2. Gare du Nord to St Pancras: By Eurostar (2 hours 17 mins, 346 km) = 364 * 14 = 4,844 g GHG
3. Getting to accommodation:  Walk (7 mins, .5 km) = 0 (Yessssss, take that, Ms. Sun!)
St Pancras to Wembley:  Metro (underground, YG didn’t give me the metro calculation so I used this.) (42 minutes, 16.9 km) = 16.9 * 40.5 = 684.45

Ms.  Moon, who lives in Paris(ish) used four modes of transportation to travel approximately 371.7 km to attend the concert.  Her journey resulted in total emissions of 0,0060924tCO2eq.

Ok, this calculation is all well and good but, as an ecologically responsible Blink what, YG, can I do about my carbon footprint?  

They don't say so I thought to myself, what would Blackpink members, the Advocates for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, do?

For some reason their travel is not included in the calculation despite the fact that they were sponsored by Korea Air for the Born Pink tour and apparently traveled by Private Jet.  

YG substainability report itself admits "substantial emissions typically associated with air travel" after stating that the "segment contributing most significantly to GHG emissions was identified as "audience travel".

 

 

So what do I, identfied as part of the "segment contributing most significally to GHG emissions", to do?

I guess I could walk and swim.  This would put me in par with reaching carbon neutrality along with YG by 2040.

In the meantime to offset my significant contribution of GHG to the concert I'll see about buying a $45 P-REC.  According to my calculations, this buys me 71,400 concerts. 

Sweet.

La réntree

So yesterday was the first day of school.  This year the class list was posted day of.  When the kids saw who their teacher was, my daughter off-handedly mentioned that her teacher was nice but wasn’t around a lot. 

Then I ran into her best friend’s mom who informed me that the teacher was in fact absent that day. 

Guess she’s sick, I thought.

At noon I got an email from the principal confirming this and using the word congé (leave) when describing the teacher’s absence.  

Very sick. 

Later I got another email informing us that they were able to find a substitute teacher until the end of the week.  

Oh that’s good.

When I went to pick them up another parent who’s part of the PTA informed me that the teacher was in fact coming back in March. 

 

Happy back to school! 

Substainabilabubu

So emissions reduction is one of 7 frameworks in YG’s plan for sustainable concerts which, according this this survey, 60% of Blinks are in agreement with:

Take that AKKADEMYs and Teumes!

Haha. Ok, on to serious business.  As an investigative reporter Blink here is my experience at Deadline for each Framework: 

01 GHG EMISSIONS MANAGEMENT





 "YOUR GREEN STEP" booth to calculate audience travel (identified as the biggest emitter of emissions).

Confirmed.  I saw one booth.  

02 IMPROVING CONCERT ACCESSIBILITY

Um.  I didn’t see anything specifically about this but we did get stuck trying to get in the turnstile rotating entrance doors so a lady let me in using the disabled entrance and that was flawless.  So, confirmed? 


03 FAN ENGAGEMENT

 

Confirmed.  

04 EMBRACING POSITIVE AND RESPECTFUL CONTENT



So I guess it's positive and respectful if you put on stockings and cover your legs?  Lisa’s Labubu outfit’s boots cover half the bottom part and maybe she’s wearing sheer stockings? 



Confirmedish? 

05 VENUE SAFETY MANAGEMENT



I actually wanted to leave the concert early because I know the nightmare it is getting onto public transport with the crowds but this was met with a lot of resistance so we stayed till the end.  I was pleasantly surprised because there were authorities there to stop everyone from cramming onto the metro.  

Confirmed. 

06 REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF CONCERTS

Can’t say I saw anything but apparently in Seoul there was Blackpink paper pack bottled water that lowers the environmental burden. I wish I had, it would have been a lot cheaper than the 50£ t-shirts.  



Cost: 2,000 KRW (1£)

Unconfirmed (in London).

07 SUSTAINABLE CONCERT GOVERNANCE

I guess they started in 2023 Bornpink and they want to fully implement its sustainable concert framework by 2030.  Deadline is 2025 and I didn’t see any real slacking between the Bornpink pictures and Deadline so confirmed for now?

Conclusion:

01 GHG EMISSIONS MANAGEMENT - Since audience travel was identified as 95.8% of emissions this is the fan’s responsibility?

02 IMPROVING CONCERT ACCESSIBILITY - Venue’s responsibility?

03 FAN ENGAGEMENT - The cost of screens included in the price of the ticket?

04 EMBRACING POSITIVE AND RESPECTFUL CONTENT - The costs of tights probably also included in the ticket? 

05 VENUE SAFETY MANAGEMENT -  Venue’s responsibility/Local government?

07 SUSTAINABLE CONCERT GOVERNANCE (for YG) - YG.

So yeah, YG does what it does best (marketing) and ultimately the consumer fronts the bill.



Does this make me feel better about the price of the ticket?  It does not.  

Bonus:  When Spice Girls played in Wembley in 1998 the cost of a ticket was 18£. And yes there were big screens. 

Climate Action in your area

 So I ran across this video of Blackpink at Buckingham palace in 2023. Intrigued I googled why. 

Turns out King Charles III presented them Honorary MBEs for, wait for it, their work in the environmental field.

Real.ly? I googled further. 

The initial results were people pointing out the obvious contradiction of their work and the environment. Then I found this:

“BLACKPINK was appointed as Advocates for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) in 2020 and has been delivering powerful messages to the world ever since.”

I had no idea.  Maybe I’m not a Blink afterall.  Or maybe I could be an investigative Blink, like what concretely was done? 

And then I found this about YG, their parent company:

“As part of this initiative, YG Entertainment will offset the electricity consumption from BLACKPINK’s Seoul and London stops on their upcoming world tour using Peace-Renewable Energy Credits (P-RECs) generated by an IOM-managed solar plant in South Sudan and issued by Energy Peace Partners.”

So I actually don’t know what this means but it’s something like this.

I wasn’t able to find out how much they spent but I found this.   

 

Based on their [BORN PINK] FINALE IN SEOUL, 6,000 tons of emissions for a two day event.  Of the 6,000, 239 tons was from energy consumption.  

According to Energy Peace Partners, an average P-REC costs $45.  1 P-REC equals 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of verified renewable energy.

How many megawatts is 239 tons of emissions? According to this website:

2,300 kilowatt-hours emits one ton of CO2e

2,300 kilowatt-hours converted to megawatt-hour:

0,0023 megawatt-hour = 1 ton of C02e

0.5497 megawatt-hour = 239 tons of C02e (two days concerts in Seoul)

0.5497 megawatt-hour * 2 (London + Séoul, both 2 day events) = 1.0994 megawatt-hour

1.0994 megawatt-hour = 1 P-REC

1 P-REC =  $45

So… to offset the estimated electricity consumption from BLACKPINK’s Seoul and London dates, they are going to buy one P-REC that costs $45? 

Someone check my math. 

Teddy bear

So if you were to ask me who my favorite Blackpink member is I’d say, Teddy. 

Blink:  Who is your favorite Black member?

Me: Teddy. 

Blink:  [blink, blink]

Me:  [heartshape with my hands]

Haha.  No seriously.  Teddy is their producer/songwriter.  He appears in “Light up the sky” as the mysterious guy wearing the mask you see at the beginning. 

Teddy is of my generation, born in Korea in 1978 and then moved to the east coast United States (holla) when he was young, then moved back to Korea in his adult years to be part of the kpop group 1TYM (one time, one time, two time, two time ) which came out with their first album in 1998, On Time for Your Mind.  So yeah you see the 90s influence. 

I listened to K-pop in the 90s but not 1TYM.  What was popular was H.O.T (Candy, anyone?).  

At the time K-pop wasn’t mainstream.  My Asian friends and I listened to it along with the mainstream stuff like Nirvana, Cranberries, No Doubt, Green Day, Coolio, TLC, 311, Atlantis Morissette, Spice Girls. 

Ah the Spice Girls.  Came out in the ‘94 when I was in highschool.  I remember everyone was asked which Spice Girl they were when the question came to me, I would say Sporty Spice probably because she was a brunette and the most modestly dressed.  The truth was, I wasn’t represented by any of them but when you have to pick, you do. 

Blackpink did Wannabe at their show in London.  Whether they are mainstream is debatable but H.O.T. would not have played to an audience of 70,000 strong in Wembly, London that’s for sure.  

Blink

Bruh

So I was in earshot of my nieces slamming each other:

Niece 1 [puts on sunglasses].

Niece 2:  You look like an aunt.  

Niece 1:  Well you look like mom’s sister.  

Thanks girls, thanks. 

Rhonda

So I recently interviewed Rhoda Scott for an Oral History project.  After numerous responseless email attempts I decided to call her.  I figured that nobody answers their phones and that I could quickly call her and leave a message.  She picked up on the first ring. 

Caught off guard I introduced myself and told her about the Oral History project. 

“So would you be interested in the project Rhonda?” I said. 

“It’s Rhoda.” she replied, rightfully.

“Oh sorry of course…” I said hoping she wouldn’t hang up on me, “Would you be interested in the project Rhoda”? 

“I would be willing.” she said. 

So obviously we were up to a good start.  I managed to schedule a zoom meeting feeling very intimidated.  What had I gotten myself into?  I didn’t know anything about jazz.  To mitigate my ignorance I spent hours googling her and realized what a big f-in deal she was. 

On the day of the interview I called her beforehand to prep.  I let her know that the zoom meeting would cut off after 40 minutes but that we could continue with a new link. 

“Or maybe we can keep it under 40 minutes.” she replied.   

Yes of course.

Just stick to the questions, I said to myself before the call, and don’t, I repeat, don’t call her Rhonda. It’s Rhoda. Rho-da. Rho-da. Rho-da.

I repeated her name in my head as I connected until the screen pulled up and there she was, sitting in what appears to be her kitchen, waiting expectantly.  

She was lovely.  This amazing woman that came to France on the SS France in ‘68. A woman that, as a jazz icon, questions what is jazz, and in her 70s got a masters in jazz history to find out. 

"The final outcome is that jazz is like different families. Because you have a lot of different styles of jazz, but you have to accept the families of jazz because you cannot say, this is not jazz. This is not jazz because improvisation is considered the main point of jazz.".  

After having spoken with her I think Rhoda is jazz itself.  Undefineable, improvising along the way, resulting in something beautiful that unfolds.  

Oh yes and if you’re wondering I did accidently call her Rhonda, but just once, towards the end. 

Damn it.  

Late

So I’m not sure when I started to realize my parents had their own lives outside of me.  I think it was much later, after I had my own kids.  I realized my kids thought I was only there for them when actually I had my own life and intended to keep it that way.  When I applied this to my parents a lot of things about my childhood made more sense.  

I remember one time after our swimming lessons my mom was suppose to pick is up but she wasn’t there.  After waiting for a while my sister called my dad to come pick is up.  My mom arrived shortly after and go mad at us for calling our dad.  I remember being mad at mom for not being where she was suppose to be.  She was suppose to pick is up and she didn’t.  She was suppose to be there, and she wasn’t.  We were right to call our dad, why was she mad?  We were the ones who had the right to be mad, not her.  

When my daughter was eight years old I dropped her off at her theater class and went to cancel my metro pass.  I walked because taking the metro meant I had to use my pass and I couldn’t do that because I was canceling it.  I had calculated that I had time but then I forgot I was in France and things take forever.  I remember the moment when I realized that I might be late for pick up.  It was when I was standing in line.  As I considered abandoning, it was my turn.  

I was hopeful. I could make it! 

I didn’t.  They lady had computer problems, my account was weird, whatever.  Long story short I was late, about 10 minutes to pick up my daughter.  When I got there she wasn’t in the waiting area so I knocked on the door of the class.  

“You’re late” the teacher said when she opened the door with my daughter waiting in the sidelines of the class.   

“Sorry, problems with the metro” I replied meekly. Everyone stared as my daughter walked towards me.  She was mad.

So was I.  I wanted a break.  I was never late.  Just this one time.  And it was only ten minutes. 

I remembered my mom in this moment.  How she was late and nobody was cutting her any breaks.  I wish we had. 

I also remembered my little mad self.  My daughter was equally mad.  I understood.

From then on before class she would say “Promise you’ll be here five minutes before the end of class.  Promise!”.  

I did, and I was.