ALL that partying by bachelor French President Nicholas Sarkozy in late 2007 is over and shattered with the Asian financial markets tumbling down one after the other last week for a collective fear among Asian stockholders of an imminent recession in the United States due to a series of unfortunate events that began when the subprime mortgage sector collapsed a year ago. Yet the French have been known to be resilient and Sarkozy is a model among the French. He handles a balancing act between his private life and in steering the country together with other members of the European community in maintaining the economy. In fact, Sarkozy has already assigned as his advisers to Nobel Prize winners for economics so that they can help him maintain the economic stability of France. “We want the kind of capitalism that promotes entrepreneurship, not speculation,” Sarkozy says as he lambasts stockholders from Asia and the United States for not helping in steering their own economies by bailing out of their stocks instead.

Sarkozy’s resilience will really be his strongest point as his steering of the French economy may outdo him the French presidency. Remember that Sarkozy’s presidency is still in its infancy and it has not even celebrated his 365 days in office. That definitely pales as compared to the presidency of Francois Mitterand or Jacques Chirac who have been in office for almost 20 years. And yet, Sarkozy is already showing his arrogance with lavish spending in public with fiancée Carla Bruni who is an Italian model. But dating Bruni may in itself a strong point, underscoring Sarkozy’s personal desire to reach out to other European nations like Italy.

Of course, the French’s resilience come from their being intellectuals. Foreign students who are taking up tertiary education in Paris can attest that the French are really highly-intellectual people. They know how to think ahead and how to steer a crisis. They certainly know how to woo ladies because they can think. And they have high life expectancy. That’s because most of them are on a strict Mediterranean diet which consists only of fresh seafood dipped in olive oil, the healthiest cooking oil in the planet because of their low fat content. Remember there are lots of olives in France. In the Mediterranean coastline in particular like in the province of well, Provence as well as in the French Riviera such as Cannes, they don’t refrigerate fresh produce from the Mediterranean there. They cook them directly. Most of the seafood restaurants have this aquarium wherein you yourself can pick out the lobster you want and the chef will cook it for you.

Despite being intellectual, the French are a peculiar people. They go to church on Sundays. In fact, most of these Roman Catholics adhere to Joan of Arc as their patron saint. Despite this, they go to nudist beaches to have picnics right after church. It’s how liberated they are in terms of thinking. In fact, the largest nudist resort in the world is located in France. It’s called Cap d’Agde because it’s located in the Mediterranean city of Agde.