Yesterday evening the event that we look forward to with great anticipation every year took place chez nous. Spot two false statements in the previous sentence, the second of which is that it takes place every year. I'm referring to the Assemblée Générale, the annual meeting of apartment owners in our building. Annual in theory - the last one took place nearly two years ago, which is a demonstration of the competence of our syndic, the property management company that is supposed to handle our building. Further proof of incompetence came with initial notice of the meeting lacking several agenda items and specifying a date, time & place (their offices) that suited no-one. Then the corrected agenda had the wrong date, and finally the corrected date specified the general whereabouts (our building) but not exactly which apartment. The latter mystery was resolved the evening before when our upstairs neighbour knocked on the door and asked if we could host it. Cue a two hour frenzy of belated spring cleaning and tidying up yesterday afternoon.
The meeting itself was lively, inconclusive, but productive in the loosest sense of the term. The particular employee charged with dealing with our troublesome building has changed recently, and the new boy was singularly under-prepared and ill-equipped for the haranguing and browbeating he was subjected to for two hours. Apart from approving the accounts of the last two years, which were wrong because an extra 500 euros had some how crept into insurance costs (did I say the syndic was incompetent?) the agenda for the meeting proper was zipped through remarkably quickly and efficiently, mainly by dint of leaving the most contentious issue till last:
Item 10 - changement de syndic: a choice between reappointing the current syndic or choosing one of two alternative management companies; the stick with which the poor chap was whipped into line. He was given one last chance: a month to take action on various contentious issues, or he and his company are out the door. He had no choice but to agree and left looking like a man going to the guillotine. Perhaps he'll spend the next month looking for a new job.
In the world beyond our happy little apartment building, yesterday the demonstrations against the new retirement and pension reforms were the largest yet. Two differences from the previous three journées d'action: the laws against which everybody was protesting are well on their way into the statue book (pushed through parliament over the previous couple of days, just the Senat rubber stamp to go), and some of the strikes have carried on longer than 24 hours. In particular on the railways, in the ports and at petrol refineries. Corsica ran out of diesel last week due to an ongoing blockade of the main port in Marseille, and the region round Nantes is running low on fuel because of a separate strike in the petrol refinery there.
And finally, as the Chilean miners emerge one by one from a hole in the ground, in the Ardèche the rescue of another man trapped underground ended tragically on Monday. The body of the cave diver missing for over a week was found by two British divers when they search the underground river one last time. RIP.
