“Just Go With It!”

Inside Orleans Cathedral, May 2022

I was out on a walk in the country today with some new friends (acquaintances in France, I suppose) when I mentioned the fact that some French cultural norms drive me nuts. One of my walking companions provided the suggestion that I am using to title this post. A good idea, I suppose. Just go with it. I mean, what are you gonna do? Sue? Let me cite an example.

As you may have read, my Surface Pro 4 battery died. I got a new battery and took it to a shop in Angouleme that advertises that it can fix any sort of device. Well, their technician said “no” and they sent me to another place (after about a week.) That place, after about the same amount of time told me that their technician said that fixing it was “impossible” because one has to remove the screen. This is not true, although it was true of earlier models. I cracked the screen on a Surface Pro 3 myself. For the 4 and newer, one removes the back. It isn’t easy: 58 steps, rated “difficult.” But, it can be done. Misinformed? Simply don’t want to fix the thing? Well, maybe. In France, you almost always start by saying that something is impossible. “Walk across the street? Impossible!” Then the other person (me in this case) argues, and you go back and forth, and oh, hell, after a while maybe “no” becomes “yes.” For me though, it just wasn’t worth it. See, the first place first told me that they couldn’t find the battery. I bought one for 50 Euros from Amazon. Then they sent me over. They told me there that their tech was out of town, then a week later that he said it was impossible. If the aim was to wear me down, it worked. I shall attempt to replace that battery myself. Might as well, even though my wife bought me a new laptop on Amazon Prime Day last week, which, as you can maybe tell, works just fine.

For me, a misinformed American, being led around like I was is grounds for never speaking to any of those people again. But, this is France. That’s the way they do things. I used to be a computer systems guy, so I actually have a decent chance of getting that new battery installed and the old tablet working again. A Surface Pro tablet is kind of fun, doesn’t take up much room, and you can get a decent docking station for it and use it as a desktop, which of course is just what I did, for years. So I might as well have a go. If I weren’t knowledgeable in computers and their various quirks, I don’t know what I’d do. Probably just buy a replacement first thing. But, I strongly suspect that, had I persisted long enough, I’d have gotten one of those places to put the battery in for me. For the record, I don’t blame them for not wanting to, but as an American, I say just tell me that. What the hey, you don’t have to fix anything you don’t want to, do you? Does anybody? No, outside of peon-level jobs, nobody does.

I am not complaining, just illustrating a prime difference between French and American culture. In France, the blunt, plain-spoken American response (Sorry, we just can’t fix that old thing ’cause it’s just too damn old) would sound impolite. Saying it’s “Impossible” doesn’t. Get it? Yeah, me neither, but I’m going with it. When in Rome, er, Angouleme, right?

This gives me a prime opportunity to plug frequent backups, preferably to the cloud. (Off-site, as we used to say.) I was able to post here using a Kindle Fire HD 8, a device I like to call the “Windows 98 of tablets” because, technically, it does work. I use Microsoft OneDrive, and Word automatically saves my work for me in real time. I never have to worry about it. I was able to edit an ongoing book project, again with my Kindle, because I had full access to all of my files and data, right there in the cloud. You don’t have to use OneDrive. There are several other services offering the same results, but you should, you really, really should, set up something to do that for you. Local external drive is okay, but if I’d had that I wouldn’t have been able to use my little (cheap) tablet to do any work. I love storage on the cloud, and if you have anything you care about and don’t want to lose, that’s where you should keep it!

End of lecture. Thanks for reading!