Final update

Well, work ended a bit early today, so I'm sitting in the conference room scanning through email. Enough of this, though. I'm going to sign off and head out for the day. Tomorrow, I catch a train back to Paris and will have one last night there. Will probably hook up with Cedric (assuming he's managed to stay out of jail) for some dinner. Then, I catch a flight home on friday. Hopefully my cats will still be talking to me.

I may not get a chance to go online again before arriving at home. So to anyone who's been following along (hi mom!), I'll say adieu, au revoir, and good night.

The longest sentence ever constructed

I have a reservation for my return trip to Paris, scheduled to leave in the late afternoon and arrive around 9:00 pm. I decided that wasn't very convenient - I'd have to hang around Lausanne all day (luggage in tow) and it didn't give me enough time for one last night in Paris. So, I headed down to the train station last night to see if I could change my reservation.

While there, the person at the registration desk didn't speak English. So, I managed to construct what had to be the longest sentence I've ever uttered in French: "J'ai un reservation pour aller a Paris, et je voudrais connais est ce que c'est possible pour moi aller dans le matin." Amazingly, the man behind the counter actually understood perfectly. I was so proud of myself.

The experience would've been *so* much better if he hadn't spent the next ten minutes explaining to me that my reservation, in fact, was already for the morning and that I had misunderstood what was printed on my ticket.

Swiss update

Well, I've made it through my first work day here in Switzerland. It'll apparently take two weeks for any of the local shops to order a replacement power supply for my laptop (why am I not suprised?), but I've managed to bum one off a student in my class for the time being. The voltage isn't quite the same as my old one, but it hasn't fried anything yet, so I'm optmistic. At least the customer site lets me tap into their internet connection.

I'll probably grab a taxi (assuming I can find one) down to Lausanne tonight. There aren't many restaurants within walking distance. That, and I'm just about finished the reading material I brought with me. And with a four hour train ride and ten hour flight ahead of me, I'll be in desperate need :)

Btw ... my intent was to upload photos of my travels. I even brought my camera and media card reader along with me. But, unfortunately, the card reader crashes my laptop, so I haven't been able to upload the photos. So ... that'll have to wait until I arrive home. (technology can be a real pain in the *ss sometimes)

Switzerland on my mind

I made it to Switzerland without issue. The train ride
was a novel experience - quiet and comfortable. I'm
struck by how tolerant people are of dogs around here.
I've seen them on the streets and the metro, of
course, but also in hotels and restaurants. I mention
it because a woman sitting across from me on the train
had a small dog with her as well.

The train dropped me off in a town called Lausanne,
and then it was about a twenty minute taxi ride to
Crissier, where I'll be staying and working for the
next few days. Lausanne seemed like it had lots of
shops and restaurants, but there really isn't much to
do in Crissier. I spent yesterday walking around the
area, but it's a typical small city - car dealerships,
malls, houses, etc. Being sunday, all the malls and
stores were closed.

Tragedy struck on Saturday night, though. The charger
for my laptop up and died on me. *Hopefully* I can
find a new one from one of the stores around here.
It's going to be a long and difficult week if I
cannot.

I'm running off battery for now, so will keep this
short.

Leaving on a jet train

I'm off to Switzerland today. I've never been there, but hear it's
beautiful. So I'm kinda excited. I'm taking the train from Paris to
Lausanne. I'll have tomorrow to explore a little bit, and then get to work
on monday. Next week's going to be busy. In addition to my day job, I have
two conference calls that I'll need to attend in the evenings. They're prep
work for my next trip - to Kentucky. Somehow, it's hard to get as excited
about Kentucky :)

Count de Monet

So here I am in Paris. Been here all week, actually, but haven't been able to go online very much. And let's face it: it's hard to write a travel blog when you don't have internet access. Tonight, though, I'm in geek heaven. My hotel offers wifi access. So here's a brief update of the week.

All in all, I'm having a good time. It's my second visit in recent months, so I know my way around the city pretty well and have been bouncing from place to place. I've even got a sidekick this time. I'm here with a coworker, Cedric. He's new to the company and this is his first visit to Paris, so I've kinda been showing him the ropes, so to speak. And I haven't gotten us lost once :)

I visited the Musee D'Orsay today. I've decided it's my favorite museum. It's not so overwhelming as the Louvre. The galleries are smaller and more intimate, with a handful of pieces in each room. In contrast, the Louvre has these huge halls of paintings stacked floor to ceiling. The overall effect is that the artwork is more accessible. It's all right at eye level and you can literally reach out and touch it (they sorta frown on that, naturally).

One piece in particular caught my attention today. It's a winter landscape, and therefore dominated by the white and grey of the snow and clouds. But upon closer inspection, I was amazed at how much color was actually used throughout it - even in the seemingly "white" spaces. He used color to add texture to the ground, and a sense of depth to the field and trees beyond the gate. It gave me, someone who's largely ignorant of art, a small iota of understanding about impressionism.

Not bad for a friday.

iPod fanatics

Much has been written about the Apple iPod and the degree of fanaticism it has inspired among gadget freaks. And, I must admit, I really, really love my iPod. I had to chuckle, however, when I came across this post on an iPod forum. I'll quote the salient part:

"I have both iPods after the divorce (muahahah) ..."

Maybe it's just me, but that opening line struck me funny. We go on to read that he doesn't know his ex-wife's password, and so he can't copy the music off the device.

Oh, the irony.

Hero

I went to see Hero yesterday, which has rocketed to #133 in IMDB's Top 250 movie list. Now, I'm not an afficianado of kung fu flicks or Hong Kong-style action films. I've never even seen any of Kurosawa's work. Rather, I was just hoping to kick back and enjoy some elaborately choreographed, highly stylized butt kicking, in the mode of Kill Bill. I got so much more than I bargained for.

Whereas Kill Bill was merely an excuse for flashy action sequences, this film transcends the genre. The plot outline is simple: a lone man defeats an infamous trio of assasins and earns an audience with the king. But all is not what it seems, and through a series of flashbacks, the film explores the characters' motivations and their respective paths to enlightenment. It touches upon themes of war and peace, love and honor, loyalty and deception.

There are no simple answers. The king wages war in the pursuit of peace. Is he a tyrant or a visionary? And what about the warrior who lays down his life for such a man? Is he a hero or a fool? Can death be an expression of love?

As if that's not enough, the movie was also visually stunning. Major scenes took place against a backdrop of hyper-reality: desolate desert vistas, crystal mountain lakes, and a heart stoppingly beautiful grove of trees shedding their autumn leaves. At times, it pained me to drop my eyes to read the subtitles. The actors struck just the right chord, as well. The nameless warrior's dignified humility. The king's righteous authority. The assassin's relentless pursuit of justice. The lover's anguish.

So, this film just seemed to fire on all cylinders: a captivating story, stunning visuals, masterful action sequences, and nuanced acting. Not bad for eight bucks.

Starbucks announces a coffee-flavored doughnut

Hah hah. Just joking. That would be silly.

Office Productivity Tool

What's your high score? Mine's 105.

If you build it, they will come ...

The odd bit for the day ...

(and if you read farther down the column, I gotta admit I'm curious to know how far a pumpkin can fly.)

Art imitates life

Liz's blog contained a link to a nifty little web page that lets you create your own South Park character.

So, without further adieu, let me introduce my own likeness done in post-modern South Park style. Astute viewers will note the rumpled hair, ever-present solid color T-shirt, and jeans.

Olympic Gold

There were several members of the US Olympic Softball Team on the plane back from Brussels. If you look close, you can see she's wearing her gold medal tucked underneath her Late Night with David Letterman t-shirt.

What can I say? I was kinda starstruck.

Home at last

(ok ... I've been trying to get this post out for days. Here it is finally)

I'm back in Dallas (and *desperate* for a steak; or even a burger. I haven't eaten any beef in two weeks). Wednesday was exhausting - traveling for about 24 hours straight. Up at 5:00 am to catch my flight out of Bratislava. Glad I got there as early as I did, 'cause Austrian airlines couldn't figure out how much money I owed for changing my return date.

All in all, the trip was a success and the customer was pleased as punch. Here are a few photos from my digital camera. They've got better resolution than the ones I posted previously from the camera phone. I'll try to post an annecdote or two later on, as well.

Note that you can see all the photos at my yahoo photo site. Look for the two directories labelled SK. One has the highres digital camera shots. The other has the lowres camera phone shots.

Photographic proof that I was actually there ...

	Bratislava
	Donovaly

In case you thought I was making it all up about the switch site ...

My sidetrip to Donovaly ...

On the mountain

(I'll try to upload the related photos to my yahoo photo page site ...)

Well, that seemed to be the right bus. I made it into Donolavy just fine. It's a cute place, cut into a mountain valley. The mountain roads were littered with little chalets, winter homes, and sport shops. All of this seems a bit out of place in the midst of the summer.

I found a trail and hiked up one of the mountains for a couple of hours. It seemed to be a maintenance road of some sort - just a couple of tracks in the dirt really. Eventually, it dumped me out onto a ski slope maybe two-thirds of the way up the mountain.

Now, I just gotta admit it wasn't a hard hike, but I was still breathing hard at points. Dallas is just too damned flat for my own good :)

Anyway,I just sorta chilled up there for a while, enjoying the peace and quiet. A light rain fell, pleasant in its own right, as I made my way back down. A late lunch in the village, and then I caught the bus back to Banska Bystrica.

I had a wonderful nap back at the hotel, and then spent some time working as I listened to VH1 on the TV (one of the two english channels).

Feeling the need to get out of the room a bit before bedtime, I made my way back into the town center and am sitting in some club listening to dance music. The place is nearly empty though. Kinda quiet for a saturday night, but again it's off season.

So, all in all, a pretty good day.

In search of ... pine trees.

It's saturday morning, and I'm going to play tourist for a while. The surrounding area is basically a big winter resort area, so things are pretty quiet in the summer. The mountains are pretty, though and I'm off in search of someplace to go hiking. Vlado (my Slovak buddy) wasn't very familiar with the area, but suggested a head toward Donovaly - a village known for its ski resorts. So, that's what I'm doing.

I'm sitting on a bus as I type this on my phone. I *think* it's the right bus :)

Blog entry by proxy

Ok ... I don't have the time or means to integrate them into a proper blog entry, but if you want an advanced look at some Slovakia photos, go to my yahoo photo page.
Use the slideshow mode to view photo descriptions.

"Cheese ... now!"

(I had problems posting this yesterday ... here it is again.)

Quick update ...

I've been working my butt off here, but then the idea isn't to blog work activities. Looks like I'll probably be here an extra day or two.

You may recall that caught a ride to the customer site with another guy. He's been here all week, so we've been hanging out at night, eating dinner in a quaint little village square. He's looking up an old friend tonight, though, so I'm on my own. I'm working late (still in the lab, actually) but hope to catch a cab back to the hotel. My friend here has coached me on the equivalent of "taxi ...< address> ... to < hotel> ... now." Of course, < address is only one word so we'll see how this turns out in the end.

I can't help but think of my brother, who moonlights as a taxi dispatcher. Wonder what he'd do with such a call.

A few more random thoughts ...

The locals assure me that this is not a new building per se. Apparently, they're just adding on to an existing building. What-ever.

These people really dig cheese. I mean, I like cheese as much as the next guy (ok, maybe not quite that much), but come on people. Cheese for breakfast. Cheese for lunch. Last night, I ordered some chicken without the cheese on top. The waitress helpfully suggested that I might instead like the one *stuffed* with cheese instead. Then, she looked at me funny and my companion shrugged as if to say "what-ever."

As I mentioned my destination to folks, I can't tell you how many guys responded by saying "the women there are really hot." Apparently, there's like a whole czech aisle in the adult video stores (< ahem> not that I'd know). Well, I gotta say they're not entirely wrong. Maybe it's all that cheese?

The Bare Necessities

I think, if it really came down to it, all I need is a toilet and a good internet connection. I mention this because those are exactly the two things I've been living without the past couple of days. Yes, I'm still at a customer site here in scenic Slovakia. In a comment to one of my previous posts, Liz described her mental picture of the customer site as an isolated shack somewhere in the woods.

If only.

Imagine if you will an urban construction site. In a little out-of-the-way section of town, they're constructing a new office building. Down a couple unmarked alleys and behind some delapidated warehouses. There's a concrete facade of a building and big holes in the ground cordoned off by plastic tape. Crews of men are pouring concrete and pushing wheelbarrows around. It's exactly the sort of place the Russian mafia would go to dump a body.

You enter the structure of the building and carefully make your way up a couple flights of stairs. Carefully, because there are no walls in the staircase and it's a long way down. Everything is bare concrete. You make your way past the construction debris to the center of the building, to a flimsy temporary wall with a door.

Passing through the door is like moving into a different world entirely. Miraculously, there's a fully operational switch room inside: power, lights, racks of telco equipment, raised flooring, the whole nine yards. Hell, they even got security cameras up. I can't even begin to imagine how or why they installed all this equipment into a halfway finished building. Or, for that matter, why they considered plumbing to be so non-essential. Apparently, that's a "phase two" thing.

As for the internet connection ... you'd think I'd be in geek heaven. I'm in the middle of a freakin' data center, surrounded by LANs, IP switches, and high-speed data links. But it doesn't do *me* any good. Company security policy forbids me from jacking into their network. So I'm hobbling along with a GPRS phone that's "connected" to my laptop via the infra-red port. Of course, IR is a line-of-sight thing, so if I move the phone on the desk (or pick it up to answer it), I lose the connection.

Anyway ... that's all I got for now. Shutting down and going to bed.

The introvert express

I took this job six months ago, knowing that it would involve some pretty extensive travel. I had this romantic vision of jetting around the world, seeing new places and things. Having adventures. Not suprisingly, it hasn't matched the hype.

It's not that I *haven't* been jetting around the world, seeing new places, and having adventures. It's just that I didn't fully appreciate the downsides. Turns out that this is far different from leisure travel. It's tiring, stressful, and sometimes just plain inconvenient. And something else I didn't even anticipate.

Travelling by yourself is lonely.

True, I've strolled the beaches of the south pacific and the avenues of Paris. And that's cool and all. But I've done it alone. And it's not as much fun when there's noone to share the experiene with; to discuss what you've seen and plan your next step; or to laugh with or get a little wild and crazy.

I mean, it's been over a day since I've exchanged more than three sentences with anyone. I hear other people tell crazy stories about how they meet people on the road. How they cross paths with other groups of travellers for an hour or an afternoon. Maybe it's just me. Maybe introverts just aren't cut out to be world travellers.

Anyway ... gonna try to get some sleep before things kick in in the morning.