(no subject)

OK, so I'm in France. Got here safely, if a bit late due to rain at JFK. May have gotten two hours of sleep on the plane—is it bad to spend 6.5 hrs with your knees pressed hard against the chair in front of you?

After arrival, I went to the hotel, unpacked, and headed right out. Went to the office, which is right around the corner from the hotel, just to have one less thing to worry about today.

Then I got on the Metro to the Lourve. Didn't go in, but did continue walking. Spent most of the walking time on the Left Bank. The Senne is very pretty. After all that walking, I did the next logical thing: walk up the Eiffel Tower—both floors. I took the elevator down, though.

Got back on the Metro, which by this time I feel I largely grokked, and returned to the hotel for a 5:30pm bedtime. Hopefully that means I'll have beaten the supposed jetlag.

I'm very comforted by the fact that the TV in my room picks up BBC World. English is otherwise hard to come by outside of the more touristy bits of Paris. Tonight I'll empty out my camera to pics.livejournal.com, so you can see. Maybe I'll even take a shot of these odd keyboards.

Excellent! I can change the keymappings so I don't have to relearn how to type!

(no subject)

( Markov Chains are Cool! )

Just one of the many from here

Day Two, Networks^W Monopolies are expensive

Went to work today. Way too early. Seems that I over-estimated the 3-minute walk from the hotel, or something.

Odd thing: I think I'm eating less here in France than I usually do. Like I really only have two meals, Breakfast and Lunch. Dinner's been just ice cream lately. Speaking of which, did you know that here the Ben and Jerry's only put one cookie in their Cookie Cookie Sundae? Quel horror!

I was wrong about the WiFi at the hotel: it is pay only. Worse yet, it's 10€/2hr! I'll grab my Naruto at the office, thank you very much!

I plan to upload the pictures I've taken over the past two days tomorrow at the office. In this very same text file, I'll even put in descriptions so I can just upload, copy, and paste. But you will only get to see the end results at my LJ photo site, under the by-sa Creative Commons license, ©2005 Peter C. Gravelle.

Today I got off at the same Lourve station, but walked further along rue de Rivoli in the effort to get a (non-necessary but nice) plug-converter to recharge my camera's batteries with. Unfortunately, most shops close at 19h, while work lets out at 18h. Tomorrow, I will be more vigilant about time wasted.

I still have not found a place that sells phone cards, which is the ideal method for calling home, I hear. I know I'm not looking hard enough.

T-Mobile sent me an email telling me how to unlock my phone. It leaves me tempted to try and use my cell here, even though GSM 900 isn't all that popular around here. I'll just do it when I get back, or something.

Just curious, has the EU Constitution controversy hit the US yet? Here it's a very big deal, with both liberals and conservatives condemming it as being against their platforms. Sounds like it might just be a good idea, no? France is having a vote on it early next week, so it should be interesting.

Erin, I've started picking up papers for you. I hope they're enough. So, there have been people that have been asking for "something French", and I am slowly accruing used Metro tickets. Just picked up a book of 10, which I hope to go through by Saturday morning.

Methinks I'll send my parents a link to my photo space on LJ. Maybe they'll make it back here. That could be odd.

So, lookie me, trying to be in bed by a reasonable hour, how very odd!

Bon soir