WE travel session starts at my MBA. Actually it was a long planned week-end, but still it felt great. Not that I am anywhere tired of London (I have visited little else than the School-Home area these two months).
Last weekend in France was great. A little intense -woke up at 3am both on Saturday and Sunday- with many hours en route, but no one said getting to l’ÃŽle d’Oléron was an easy task. Went there for the wedding of our friend Laet, the bride, who was beautiful, charming and inspiring, and I had the opportunity to meet the groom, which I approve of (quite a big deal, because I always wanted the best for my friends and if I know them before they get with their partners, I am always wary about them!). Great time at the wedding, nice to see many friends again 
France is still a funny place: Food is great, service sucks, etc… but the novelty is a certain general depression of living in a Paradise Lost coupled with a vigorous blamestorming. The feeling goes like this, with multiple variations: “Someone (preferably our political and business class) has done something wrong or evil and therefore they have eroded our privileges as inhabitants of a great nation”. It is a surprising perception for a foreigner, because…
- No matter how you look at it, France is one of the richest countries on Earth, and living standards are very high.
- The country’s intelligentsia and population do nothing proactively about the increasing interconnectedness of economy. This globalisation thing is evil, therefore let’s do another strike and close borders. I’m exaggerating, but as Thomas Friedman would put it, “France is playing defense, not offense”. And it is nowhere near keeping its benefits by playing defense, quite the contrary.
Change is a matter of life, and trying to resist it only brings frustration. A final quote, just to close this post:
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Aldous Huxley
