Status Updates From Down and Out in Paris and L...

depression is the word

Seru, sudut pandang melarat ala orang inggris yg tinggal di perancis. Banyak pengetahuan ttg eropa yg didapet.

Trying to swallow all that stale bread and rancid margarine.

Liking it a lot. Orwell's observations are quite hilarious at times!

Liking it a lot. Orwell's observations are quite hilarious at times!

'Pray for it, you mean. Ah, you don't get much for nothing. They can't even give you a twopenny cup of tea without you go down on you - knees for it.'

"Probably part of the reason for our success was that the patron, with the sole gleam of sense he had shown in fitting out the restaurant, had bought very sharp table-knives. Sharp knives, of course, are THE secret of a successful restaurant. I am glad that this happened, for it destroyed one of my illusions, namely, the idea that Frenchmen know good food when they see it."

"Probably part of the reason for our success was that the patron, with the sole gleam of sense he had shown in fitting out the restaurant, had bought very sharp table-knives. Sharp knives, of course, are THE secret of a successful restaurant. I am glad that this happened, for it destroyed one of my illusions, namely, the idea that Frenchmen know good food when they see it."

"It was a saying of his that the rules of chess are the same as the rules of love and war, and that if you can win at one you can win at the others. But he also said that if you have a chessboard you do not mind being hungry, which was certainly not true in my case."

I've read this before but since my trip to Paris I want to read again. It's a classic. Wonderful insight into Paris and London, another age and economic situation.

When I first read this book, it was difficult because of how unsettling it was. Now it is difficult because of how real it is...

I had forgotten about Charlie...

'The queer thing about Fureux was that, though he was a Communist when sober, he turned violently patriotic when drunk.'

'It is not a figure of speech, it is a mere statement of fact to say that a French cook will spit in the soup—that is, if he is not going to drink it himself.'

'Well, say the opposite of what the Daily Mail says, then you can't be wrong.'

'It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty—it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring.'

Makes me feel better about my current situation in comparison.

So far, this has been a pretty interesting read. Some parts are funny, some sad, and some really disturbing.

He's now in London. Already an interesting contrast between the two urban mentalities. Less likely to starve to death in London, and sure he will find work

Loving this!

You just got to say to yourself, ‘I’m a free man in HERE‘‘—he tapped his forehead—‘and you’re all right.’

He had lived on this filthy imitation of food till his own mind and body were compounded of inferior stuff. It was malnutrition and not any native vice that had destroyed his manhood.

I saw a hang-dog man, obviously a tramp, coming towards me, and when I looked again it was myself, reflected in a shop window. The dirt was plastering my face already. Dirt is a great respecter of persons; it lets you alone when you are well dressed, but as soon as your collar is gone it flies towards you from all directions.

in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the. average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well.

We were working people, and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?

There was—it is hard to express it—a sort of heavy contentment, the contentment a well-fed beast might feel, in a life which had become so simple.

عالم تـــاني

There aren't enough books to satiate my Parisian craving

في مديح البؤس :)

"أنا لا أقول أن معظم المتشردين هم شخصيات مثالية، بل أقول فقط إنهم أشخاص عاديون. وإن كانوا أسوأ من الآخرين فإن هذا نتيجة لا سبب لطريقتهم في الحياة"