Back Yet Again Again and Unemployed

Yes - I'm back yet again, again. And now I can come back to my blog. I'm starting to explore Paris again. I'm still taking photos - at least I've done that all along.

At the end of March I left a very stressful job. It was kind of like a no fault divorce in that I agreed to leave peacefully and in return I received some extra compensation and the right to receive unemployment insurance. The full story will certainly be told in my autobiography. But right now I'm not naming names so the guilty can't punish me (even more than they did on the job). It's taken over 4 months to BEGIN to recover, which I'm doing now. It also took 4 months to finally get the unemployment insurance. At first they demanded the "right" forms from Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (otherwise known as Sciences Po) which is a fantastic university where I have the pleasure to teach. This had been only 1 course a week and not at all my main source of income. It was not the job I left, nor do I intend to do so. I teach there because I love both the work and the students (imagine - students who are self-disciplined - whoah!). Getting the "right" forms from Sciences Po took 3 weeks in itself because there's only one lady who takes care of it and she was busy working on something else. Then, when I finally did turn in the papers, Unemployment told me that Sciences Po was in the public sector and that their unemployment was separate and so I had to apply there first, get their benefits and then return to regular Unemployment. OK. But when I went back to Sciences Po, the response was "Public? What are they talking about - we're private!" The lady even wrote a note to that effect and I handed that in. The response? "Sciences Po is public, therefore... Luckily, I have a few French girlfriends. In a phone conversation with one of them, I mentioned my predicament and she responded that if indeed Sciences Po was private, there would be certain codes and numbers listed on each pay slip. There were! So I went back to the Unemployment office with a pay slip. Now, you have to understand that Unemployment has been merged with the National Employment Agency. When you arrive, you can speak to a young person of an average age of 19 who kind of knows things, but has no access to your file. If you need access to your file, you have to phone. If you phone from home, you'll never get through because the line is always busy. So it's much better to phone the mysterious people who work on files from one of several phones in the Unemployment Insurance lobby. But I really lucked out because my 19 year old took my pay slip, disappeared into the back office for at least 30 minutes (while everyone behind me waited, of course) and came back with the magic words, "Yes - Sciences Po is private." So, once again I had to drop my application in the letter box by the door. "You'll simply get the money in 1 or 2 weeks." Right. In 2 weeks I did get a letter saying I had been approved retroactively since mid April (by then is was the beginning of August), but the payment was 379 euros. Not exactly a sum to equal 3 and 1/2 months of unemployment insurance. So, back again to the office where the 19-year old couldn't help me. So I phoned and was told that since I'm 60 years old and could get retirement if I wanted, they had to have proof that I was not. It would have been nice if they could have notified me in writing! Then it was time to find other forms, this time from the National Retirement Service, proving that I had not taken my retirement (forms which Unemployment had received but had obviously lost). Success arrived in mid-August - the whole shebang! I'm not rich, but I'm ok for the moment. I can rest up a bit.

Given what I've been through, I decided to explore monuments to the dead in Paris. The monument in the photo at the top is in the Pere Lachaise Cemetary, Metro Pere Lachaise or Philippe Auguste. Take the main entrance on the Bd Menilmontant and walk straight back. There you'll find the monument in the form of an Egyptian temple. It's the work of Paul-Albert Bartholomé who lost his wife when he was very young and dedicated the monument to her spending 8 years on the site. Since everyone seems to ignore it, I wanted to bring it to your attention. The cemetery was full of 19 year olds (obviously on their day off from the Unemployment office) strolling around. So obviously this means it's a cool thing to do in Paris.