Château de malmaison

Two weeks ago, March 20th, was Naw-Ruz, the Baha'i New Year. I took the day off work and we decided to go on a short day trip to welcome in the new year. The weather was pleasant -- bright but cloudy, dry and reasonably warm. It was a welcome change from winter.

The château de malmaison.

We settled on visiting the Château de Malmaison, the former residence of Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife. This is in the suburb Rueil-Malmaison, a short train or bus ride west of Paris.

If you know some French, you probably realized that "Malmaison" sounds like "bad house": mal means bad or wrong (like in the English words maladjusted and malnutrition), and maison means house. Sometimes when you see curious expressions like this in place names, it's actually a coincidence, and the name originates with some other words, perhaps words which are now archaic or forgotten, or even from a different language. For example, the names of the English towns of Puddletown and Catbrain are actually derived from Middle English phrases meaning "farmstead on the marsh" and "soil mixed with clay and stones", respectively.

In the case of Malmaison, however, it really does have the meaning we think. In 846, a mansion in this area was burned to the ground by Viking invaders. The area was then dubbed malmaison, meaning "mansion of back luck". Looks like the name stuck!

On the way to the chateau, we bumped into the parc de l'amitié, the park of friendship, a local park with some Japanese gardens, a rose garden, and some other features. Given the name and the Japanese theme, I thought that perhaps it was a garden of international friendship -- perhaps the results of the town being twinned with somewhere in Japan, or something like that. But I was unable to find any evidence of that. As far as I can tell, the city planners just wanted to build a cool park. That's okay with me!

The Japanese garden featured a pond and a scenic bridge. And blossoms, lots of blossoms.

In the grounds of the chateau itself is an art collection of Daniel Iffla, a 19th-Century French financier and philanthropist who named himself Osiris (yes, the same name as the Egyptian god). It was a modest collection of various objets d'art from various cultures around the world -- China, Persia, Greece, Rome. It was also really dark inside (presumably to protect the art), and quiet. It doubled as a good place to quickly change and feed Maëlys, too.

Osiris himself!

It was lunchtime when we arrived, and the chateau closes for lunch! The gardens were still open, however, so that afforded us some time to enjoy our own lunch (we'd packed a little picnic) and look around. The gardens are home to a large rose garden, not in bloom at the time of our visit, and several statues and little streams dot the area. Attempts have been made to have the garden resemble how it was at the time of Empress Josephine, although in her day the gardens extended much further in all directions. Josephine grew up in Martinique, in the Caribbean, and so apparently having a well-tended, diverse garden was a particular source of joy for her. There used to be a greenhouse where she grew pineapples!

One of the garden paths, with the chateau in the distance.

As you can see in the picture at the beginning of this post, it is a nice building, but not particularly grand. That is, it is an excellent example of a stately home, but if you had asked me to guess who lived inside, I would not have imagined "empress". The reason for that is because Josephine purchased the mansion way back when Napoleon was just a general, busy invading Egypt. When Napoleon returned, apparently he was upset at her for purchasing such a run-down mansion that would require so much work to renovate! He didn't have much time to be angry, however, as he was busy planning a coup d'état to overthrow the unpopular government and install himself as emperor. They divorced in 1810 following acrimonious disputes about affairs and Josephine's infertility, although she remained Empress.

Anyway, the inside of the chateau was decked out as it was at the time of Josephine. There were lots of grand paintings, intricate timepieces, and fancy chairs. Absent was any kitchen or obvious servant's quarters, but apparently they were in other buildings in the grounds which have since been destroyed.

One of the receiving rooms inside the chateau.

There was a lot of Napoleon-themed pieces around, including the original version of the famous painting Napoleon Crosses the Alps, which depicts (in grand heroic style) Napoleon heading from France into Italy in 1800. Not pictured: his army!

Napoleon Crosses the Alps!

After we'd seen around the chateau, we hopped back on a bus and then a train and made our way home. It was a lovely trip outside of Paris for the day, and we're going to try to do more day trips like this as our move to Hawai'i gets closer and closer! As I looking back on the pictures from the chateau, it all looks a little drab and grey in comparison to the weather we've had here in the last week or so. It appears that we did a good job of welcoming in the spring!

Winter travels part 4: Hawai'i

If you're counting, yes, this is my fifth trip this winter, the third trip that involves crossing the Atlantic. I've seen a lot of films on aeroplanes now. This wasn't a trip I had anticipated making, but I got a call inviting me out to Hawai'i for a job interview! (All travel costs covered, of course.) This wasn't totally out of the blue -- I'd applied for the job, and I'd had a preliminary Skype interview, but there are usually so many applicants that the odds of being invited for an in-person interview are very low. So, it was time to pack my bags!

As you may know, my contract here in Paris ends at the end of August, so I've been looking for new opportunities. As I explained in my post "What is a postdoc?", my goal is to get a permanent position in teaching and research. That'd be a "lecturer" in the UK, an "assistant professor" in the US, and a "maître de conferences" in France. The Hawai'i job is an assistant professor job, so it's a big deal if I can do it right.

It's nearly 7,500 miles from Paris to Hawai'i (that's nearly 12,000km), and that's plotting a straight line. There are no direct flights from Europe, so you have to fly via some major hub in the US (or in Asia, which is slightly longer but doesn't make that much difference). All told, it was about 24 hours from takeoff in Paris to landing in Honolulu. The time difference from Hawai'i to Paris is 11 hours.

The Sans Souci State Recreational Park. Yep, sans souci is French for "no worry".

Given all of that, I decided to arrive in Honolulu on Monday evening, which gave me a couple of days to adjust my internal clock before my visit formally began on Thursday. Academic job interview visits in the US are fairly intense. In this case, it involved meeting one-on-one with each faculty member in the department (for 30 minutes to an hour), presenting a research talk to the whole department (faculty and postgraduate students, plus any other interested parties), teaching a (real!) class as a demonstration of my pedagogical methods, being formally interviewed by the entire faculty of the department, meeting with the dean of the college, meeting (and being interviewed by) the postgraduate students, and then also going to dinners with various faculty members in the evening. It's a real marathon, designed to test your skill and aptitude as a researcher and educator, and also your collegiality and ability to get on well with others. Those extra days were crucial for me in de-fogging my jetlagged brain, and also in allowing me time to explore the island and investigate what it'd be like to live there. This last part was especially important as it's not a temporary position, so any relocation to Hawai'i has the potential to be permanent.

Of course, you don't want to know the details of the interview process -- you want to know what was Hawai'i like?

A view of Honolulu. The hilly crater in the distance is Diamond Head. Buildings on the left are part of the university campus.

Well, it was quite lovely, especially in contrast to Paris in February (rainy, cold, dreary). It was apparently a little colder than usual when I visited, but I didn't notice. Since records began in 1877, Honolulu has never been colder than 11C (52F) or warmer than 35C (95F). It's usually between 23C and 27C year round (73F to 81F), so it's extremely pleasant.

A lovely tree at Kailua beach. Hawai'i has lots of lovely trees.

Some miscellaneous observations:

• Everyone wears flip flops.
• No-one is in a hurry.
• Apparently there are centipedes and flying cockroaches. (I didn't see any myself.) They lurk.
• I had been in Hawai'i for three days before I heard a car sounding its horn. (You might get three minutes in Paris if you're lucky.)
• A quick scan through some radio stations while driving revealed chamber music, reggae, Japanese punk rock, Korean slow jams, and surf rock.
• This will sound strange, but the closest point of reference I have is New Zealand. Hawai'i is like New Zealand, but tropical and American rather than temperate and British.

There are several dramatic cliffs with secluded beaches below.

The island of O'ahu, where Honolulu is located, is about the size of the isle of Skye in Scotland, and is home to about 950,000 people. (Skye has 9,000 people.) This means that it can be pretty crowded, especially in the city; but it also means that you can find most goods and products that you need, like any major city. You will pay a lot of money for them, though. Most cost of living indices put Honolulu at about the same level as San Francisco or London, just behind New York. It's not cheap to live in paradise.

Part of this is because most goods must be shipped in on planes or container ships. At more than 3,000km from the closest continent, Hawai'i is by some measures the most isolated archipelago in the world. Unlike the isle of Skye, there is no convenient bridge connecting you to the mainland.

A panorama of the Mānoa valley, the neighbourhood where the university is located.

Even with the extra time I built in, it was a whirlwind trip. I was able to tour around Honolulu and some nearby places, but there's only so much you can do and see, especially when you're fighting an 11-hour jetlag! The 11 hour time difference also made it difficult to stay in touch with Talia. We'd talk in the mornings and evenings while we were both awake, me sharing stories of banana trees and mangos and her sharing stories of baby poops and interrupted sleeping. Before I knew it I was on a plane back to Europe and home in sunny Paris.

PS, I got the job! I start in August.