Photos et lettres des Philippines, de France et d'ailleurs

This year, in order to attend the annual meeting with my classmates of the Estienne School, batch 1971, I was back from the Philippines earlier than usual.

(Our last meeting in Upper Normandy in May 2012)

On a class of fifteen including two Africans and one Lebanese who returned home afterwards, we are still five of us to meet regularly forty-two years after our first encounter.

(Our first meeting after Estienne in 1971)

At first, we went with our wives and children but now that our offspring are adults, we are just a bunch of retirees and their spouses meeting again.

(Near Marseilles 1972)

(Verdun sur le Doubs, cruise on the river)

(Bourg d'Oisans in the Alps mountains)

(Piriac on the Atlantic Ocean)

(Saint Georges de Didonne near Royan)

(North Brittany)

Like the soundtrack of the movie Interlude of 1968, Time is like a dream, the elapsed time is like a dream, which we remember with pleasure, or pain, that one tries to forget or even prefers to censor when awakening.
When I recollect memories charged with emotion, I do not want to align words directly on the monitor by typing on the keyboard. I prefer to return to the tool of my childhood, which is my old fountain pen where my letters flow with the ink to become words and sentences on a white sheet.
Now let us go back to my Estienne friends and our first meeting in September 1970. I had spent all my free time for several months preparing the entrance exam to the Estienne School in order to be admitted to a full time program for adults during a school year that should give us an advanced certificate training certificate in Arts and Graphics Industries. Attending these courses and get the diploma would transform our professional life and our life quite simply.
After trying to learn as much as possible about printing techniques, the French literature, art history etc..., I took the exam in May1970 and at the end of the day, I no longer believed much in my chances after listening the comments from many candidates that I never saw again later.
In June, when I was attending some evening classes, a friend came to tell me that I was on the list of the successful candidates and I thought it was a joke. I descended the stairs two at once and I saw my name on the list. I think it was one of the proudest moments of my life and yet I knew I had before me a year of deprivation because at that time there was no training courses supported by the employer.
Nevertheless, I came from a very low condition. The son of a bakery worker and a housewife mother of five children, I had strayed into a Lille Latin school, which students in 1958 came mostly from the bourgeoisie. Some teachers and classmates did their best to disgust me at an age when I realized that social differences were not just about money but also a whole set of prejudices.
Therefore, in May 1959, it is at the age of 14 1/2 years old that I left high school and began my professional life. I was first apprentice confectioner and pastry apprentice, then I spent six months in a flax mill and finally chose the profession of my father, baker.
Until my military service, I was successively apprentice then second worker before becoming skill worker.
Overseas volunteer, I was drafted in the fourth regiment of marines for training before being sent in New Caledonia.
The discovery of the tropics, coconut trees and warm seas left forever a deep impression on me. However, I had little time to visit the territory because I was working the night from Saturday to Sunday to make some pocket money.

(1964 in New Caledonia, I am just joking with a broom and a pareo)

After sixteen months in the armed forces including one year in the South Pacific, I returned to France in June 1965 where I resumed my work. However, I now wanted to discover the world and in June 1966, I emigrated in Canada where I found a job as a baker finally finding out that the working conditions were as difficult and not better paid than in France.

(Canada 1966. One of my rare leisure time in Montreal, I am on the left)

Eight months later, I was back in Paris where my mother and my younger brother had moved. I found work easily but I was disgusted about my job after my Canadian experience and I aspired to do something else so I declined the offer and began looking for a job that would let me go back to school with evening classes.

An insurance company, the Union Life, which later became UAP and AXA today, hired me. Because of my years spent performing manual labor, they offered me a position in their printing shop where I learned how to use a small offset printing machine.
In September 1968, the printing evening classes at the Estienne School admitted mean and I got my printing offset vocational training certificate in June 1969. In September, I enrolled again in several evening classes and after having consulted with Mr. Merlan, printing professor at Estienne and to whom I owe my success in my new career, I prepared for the entrance examinations for the full-time school year of 1970-1971.
It was a busy and very studious year. Certainly as the majority of the students, I was not rolling on money because my UAP employer had refused to finance my studies and I had to resign but I was very happy to learn and doing so I understood better the opening that I could acquire through knowledge. In addition, a great camaraderie and mutual aid prevailed among us.  Most were workers like me with a big desire for social advancement through education. Some were already married and had children and for them the financial sacrifice was even heavier because it is ultimately in January 1971 that we obtained a small financial help from the government.
In June1971, we almost all us got our degrees and at that occasion, an old professor, Mr. Bouffil, made that speech: "You think you know a lot of things but you know nothing, therefore if you have learned how to learn, you have won." How true was it!

(New Year 2007, Upper Normandy)

(Le Tréport, February 2010)

(Juigné sur Loire, June 2011)

Thus, forty-two years later, we met again at Pentecost in Upper Normandy, last year it was in Anjou and next year it will be in our Philippines house.

(These two pictures in memory of our two deceased friends, Anne and Albert)

Below the link for the song "Time is like a dream, by Timi Yuro".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qXej8xJeLk&feature=related