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Stationary Macintosh Geek reporting
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11 July 2005
Well, it's been a while, and I figure I should add an update in case people want to know what I'm up to, even though I haven't really been travelling. At least it will stop me from forgetting stuff.
Now let's see... what's happened? Well, I'll fill you in on the rest of the saga of the CERN Micro club. You'll remember that I went to three different buildings on different Thursdays only to be told that the meeting was somewhere else, and I was prevented from going on various other Thursdays. Well, a couple of months ago I emailed the organiser to make absolutely sure I was going to the right place, I went there, and... there was a small group of French-speaking people who seemed puzzled that I was there when there's nothing wrong with my Mac and I didn't need help with anything. Not really the kind of club I was hoping for.
So... did that free up my Thursday evenings to start a Geneva chapter of Thursday Night Curry? Nope. About then the CERN Cinéclub started their programme of showing a movie every Thursday night. The first one I went to was Monsoon Wedding, which is about Indians, so it was at least Thursday Night Currymunchers. With the exception of the rather pointless 25th Hour, all the Cinéclub movies I've seen have been very good. Usually there are French subtitles if the movie is in English, and vice versa, so unless the movie is in a different language entirely, I can learn some French while I watch.
On the subject of French, the French lessons here are just awesome. Don't even bother going to a language class that isn't taught in the language, being taught in the language you're learning is so much better for so many reasons. I'm going to make a list of them here so that I can stop thinking about them.
- For a start, it means we spend the whole lesson thinking in French, instead of just thinking about French. I spent five years learning Japanese at school, and three learning Maori (I chose the languages that were easiest to pronounce and spell) but I don't think I ever really thought in those languages, I almost always had to translate sentences into English before I could understand them. In computer-speak, I am writing a compiler to turn French directly into machine code, rather than feeding them through a French-English interpreter and then compiling them with the English compiler. And everybody knows that interpreted languages are slower (though that doesn't stop me from preferring them.) It is so awesome to spend two hours a week immersed in another language and understand it all without even thinking about it. Of course, just about everyone I've met in Europe can do that, but as a native English speaker I was brought up without the necessity to speak other languages.
- In a similar vein, speaking French in conversation is an everyday thing, not just a dreaded oral exam a few times a year.
- We learn the metalanguage, so that we can, and do, ask questions about the grammar of the language, in the language. That means I can continue to learn French even when there is no French teacher or even anyone who knows English around -- and by directly asking what I want to know about the grammar, which is faster than trial and error. I learnt Japanese for all that time and I don't even know the Japanese word for 'noun'.
- People for whom English is a second language are not at a disadvantage. In fact, many of them have an advantage because French is a lot more similar to their native languages than it is to English.
- Being taught by a native speaker, we always hear the correct pronunciation (even if we can not imitate it very well yet) and we learn many idioms, and the difference between Swiss and French French. If you want to be able to tell people you've eaten escargot, but you can't stomach slimy crawly things, eat escargot in Switzerland -- trust me on this.
Unfortunately, the last French class was on Thursday, and even that was an extra lesson (an encore? Geez, it seems funny using that word in English now...) because the teacher was sick for the first lesson, which I would have missed anyway because I was late enrolling. On Sunday the class organised a barbecue at Terrain Jacob nearby. It was a nice site, with room for throwing balls and a frisbee around, and some cats who clearly lived off barbecue cast-offs. I'll put pictures up soon. We had fun, though I can't think of anything specific to say about it. But it's your lucky day... I've finally got around to getting gd working on my new Mac, which means I can test the photo galleries locally, which means I can be bothered uploading them to the web. And it just so happens that the other people who were at the barbecue wanted to see my photos, so I've put up the photos of the barbecue at the bottom of this post.
On the subject of barbecues, there was a CMS barbecue about a month ago, somebody else's photos of which are at http://eric.cano.free.fr/CMS_Party_2005/. That was cool, I got to meet some of the other people involved with CMS, and listen in on (and even understand some of the jokes in) conversations in which the speakers kept switching between Italian, French, German and English for no reason that I could fathom. Someone mentioned recently that they had a friend who applied for some kind of translating job at CERN, who listed being able to speak four languages fluently as a skill. The response was, 'yes, but what do you have that's special?'
And back to French classes... the more advanced course doesn't start until October. I'll have to make sure I get a lot of practice in before then so I don't forget what I've learnt. Watching movies that I've already seen before, with French dialogue and French subtitles, is interesting. I learnt some interesting words from Apollo 13.
This is rather out of order, since now I've already told you about the end of the French course and none of the other things that happened during that time. One cool thing was that toward the end of May, The Library in English had a book sale. I got the most awesome haul of books, about 14 in all I think, for CHF51 altogether. All pretty much unrelated books which seemed like they were especially put there for me:
- Smalltalk with Style
 -- perhaps this was thrown away by a Cocoa developer in Geneva whom I've yet to find out about? No, nobody that sane would throw away this book. I don't program in Smalltalk, and I pretty much know the style conventions for Objective-C, but it's interesting for reasons of historical curiosity, Smalltalk being the object-oriented language from which all other OO languages and pretenders are measured. I've read it already.
- Dubliners, by James Joyce, bilingual (French and English) and very much abridged. The perfect thing for somebody learning French who happens to have spent three weeks in Dublin hearing about how great James Joyce & co. are. I'm reading it intermittently, keeping my place with a St. Patrick's Cathedral (Dublin) bookmark.
- The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. The email client I used for my first ten years on the internet was named after Eudora Welty, so it seemed appropriate to have the book.
- Offshoots -- Writing from Geneva VI. A compilation of writings from 37 writers from 16 countries. It's published by the Geneva Writers' Group, which I think I'm going to have to join. It's been too long since I last wrote anything decent. (Not that I've been writing anything indecent, unless you count the occasional reference to lack of pants.) Their Saturday workshops seem somewhat similar to the WEA ones I used to attend, only more expensive and perhaps more formal.
- Sichtwechsel -- seems to be a German grammar workbook written in German. I have a French grammar book written in French, so it's only fair.
- A University Grammar of English -- written in English. I have a French grammar book written in French, and a German grammar book written in German, so it's only fair. It has a glowing customer review on Amazon which is full of obviously bad grammar, so I'm not sure if that's a good sign.
- A big book with a whole lot of novels by George Orwell. Because I often think of Newspeak when I'm explaining why I want to learn French even though I already know English, which is the language all the Europeans learn so that they can communicate with other Europeans.
- The Mathematical Theory of Communication, by Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver -- I love it when I can't decide whether to put a book on my language shelf or my science shelf.
- New Horizons in Linguistics, edited by John Lyons -- well, perhaps not so new, as it was published in 1970. But I found a lot of interesting information in the book on phonetics I read recently, and that's of a similar age.
- Life on Earth, by David Attenborough. My favourite kind of life and my favourite thing about Earth, together in one book!
- Old French and Modern English Idiom by John Orr -- what more could a modern part-English idiot who is learning French want?
...and some other books on language, mathematics and birds, but I won't bore you with all the details. I've already bored you with just some of the details -- efficient, aren't I?
Anyway, a few days later was my birthday, the day (where 'day' is counted from the start of my birthday in NZ time to the end of it in Geneva time) on which I finally got ADSL at home, bought a printer (from the supermarket), printed some pictures to hang up in my office, and got a birthday present in the mail. The other woman in my office has the same birthday, and somebody gave her flowers, so she bought flowers for me too. Nice, eh?
So with internet at home, my apartment was well on the way to feeling like home, but one thing was missing. I'd asked for my New Scientist subscription to be restarted at the new address, and told that it would begin from the 28th May issue, but it hadn't arrived yet. A month and several emails later, I received the three issues I'd missed in an envelope sent directly from the office in Australia. Four days after that, I received the next issue. The next day, I received the three previous issues again, this time in three separate envelopes... I assume they were the original ones sent through my subscription, which were mysteriously held up. It's been just over a week since then and I haven't received another issue yet, but I'm holding out hope that I'll get one tomorrow.
A few weeks ago some people entered my apartment while I was at work, and reinstalled windows. When I got home, the internet wasn't working. I can only assume that they dislodged or otherwise damaged the cable while dragging the new windows over it. But all turned out well... after some jiggling, plugging, and unplugging of things, and also after buying a new phone cord which I ultimately didn't need, the internet connection was miraculously restored, and the view from my lounge and kitchen is much clearer. (You didn't really think I had the other kind of windows, did you?)
Last week the CERN Summer Student Lecture Programme started. I originally intended to apply to go to the summer school, but when I found out it's only for undergraduates, I applied for a fellowship instead. So this is when my ulterior motive for wanting to come to CERN (well, one of them... some might think that this song is another) comes into play. I'm here as a programmer, but of course, if you've read my incredibly out-of-date obsessions page you'll know that I'm interested in particle physics too, so what I really want to do while I'm here is learn more about it. So I'm going to go to some of the summer school lectures. Of course, I don't have to be here to see those lectures... over the last year or two I've been downloading the videos whenever I've had the bandwidth to. But I'm sure that's not quite the same as being there.
I've seen most of the first few weeks of lectures from 2004, so I haven't been to any yet. Tomorrow I'll go to a lecture entitled 'From Special Relativity to Cosmic Inflation'. It's part of the CERN Colloquium, not the summer school, so even though the description seems pretty accessible I'm fairly certain they'll launch right into details I know nothing about and have little chance of understanding because they're from the great void in between where even the best popular science books stop and advanced textbooks start. Still, I'm here, at CERN, and I have the opportunity to go to stuff like this, with real physicists presenting real theories to other real physicists, so I may as well see what it's like.
I have also taken the opportunity to go to all the 'Discovery Mondays' at Microcosm. I will put up pictures of those eventually too -- yes, I know I keep saying I will put pictures up, but now that I have an internet connection and a working installation of PHP, I actually will. Really. There's been one on robots, one on the CERN transport service, and one on electricity.
On Saturday was the Lake Parade, which is, naturally, a parade around the lake. It was followed by the Lake Sensation, and a party. I went to the parade, and was meandering toward where the Lake Sensation was to be when I spotted two people from my French course. While I was talking to them someone else from the French course turned up, and got squirted by some people wearing what I assume were Heidi wigs (one also had a 'Kill Heidi' T-shirt) and armed with waterguns.
I ended up going to an Italian restaurant with one of the people from the course, who happened to be Italian, and some of his friends (also mostly Italian, though they spoke in French just to irritate any native speakers within earshot.) I had gnocchi gorgonzola, which was quite different from the gnocchi I'd bought from the supermarket. And, according to a genuine Italian, it was good gnocchi. Now I think my quest to understand this cartoon is over.
According to the newspapers today there were 300 000 people at the parade. There sure seemed to be a lot. I'll put up photos of the Lake Parade soon (it's getting late tonight) but until then, you can see several hundred of other people's photos of it here.
The only other thing I have to say is that I erased my iPod, and now, if I'm careful enough not to fill it past the bad sectors, my Mac has no problem with it. That means I only have my music on it, no comedy shows or data, but at least I can update my playlists etc.
Mine, all mine!
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12 May 2005
Well, the landlord says I can do whatever I want with all the stuff in the cupboards. With a bajillion spices I've either never heard of or don't recognise the French/German/Italian for, I have plenty of inspiration for cooking. I can make curry flavoured noodles (with added peanut butter of course), estragon flavoured noodles, ingver flavoured noodles, etc. Okay, I'm no McCoy O'Grady but I'm a bit more imaginative than that... with all those spices and the Swiss cheeses available there are so many possible variations on my favourite food, cheese sauce. I've used half the gruyere. Although, noodles might not be such a bad idea... there are also many fancy looking chopsticks in the cutlery drawer. By the time I've tried all the flavours of noodles and all the different chopsticks, I might be able to get one or two noodles per bowl into my mouth.
The alcohol could be useful in tempting people to come over for some sort of housewarming. The many kinds of tea will make me look nice and domestic should any civilised people come over, and will scare off anybody who just wants a cup of tea. And I found some toilet paper in the cupboard, which will surely be useful in both cases. Also, it turns out there's almost as much coffee as there is tea, it was just hiding before. Home and Garden
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I moved into my apartment on Thursday. It was good to be able to unpack my bags... and interesting to see what it was that I'd packed over a month ago. I kept finding more trinkets wrapped up in T-shirts, socks, inside my shoes, inside each other. I have enough books and ornaments to make the bookshelves in the lounge not look too empty. There's a shelf for fiction, a shelf for science books, a shelf for language books, a shelf for dolphins and shiny things, a shelf for my keyrings and playing cards, a shelf for less shiny things, a shelf for software and blank media, and a few empty shelves.
So here's your virtual tour, with links to blurry low-resolution pictures (they're blurry because the lens cap on my camera wouldn't close, so the lens got dirty. They're low-res because I don't have my own internet connection with which to upload many MB of pictures yet.) The first rooms you're likely to see from the hall d'entrée are the lounge to your right and the kitchen straight ahead. Both are fairly dimly lit by my standards, but that can be fixed. One of the refrigerators doesn't work, and if you touch the stove and the kitchen bench at the same time you'll get a shock (which I'm told has been investigated by an electrician and found to be mostly harmless.) Both the kitchen and the lounge have doors to the balcony, from which there is an excellent view of another apartment block, or, if you turn sideways, several other apartment blocks across the road. If real apartments are anything like the ones on TV there's bound to be at least one person in those apartment blocks with a telescope, looking for people with no pants on.
To your left, you probably don't notice the door to the best lit room in the place, the toilet. It works, but it's really not that interesting. So, through the lounge and down the passage a bit, you'll see the spare room on the left. That's where you'd be staying if you visited. It has bookshelves, a table (at which I am currently sitting) a few chairs, the Edward Hopper print I removed from the lounge, and a NZ/Australian four-plug for all your antipodean electronics needs. Yeah, it's possible for my European to NZ plug adaptor to fit into the sockets here. That means, by the way, that I've charged my old cellphone and for about the next month and a half (until my roaming contract expires) you can SMS or call me on it and it'll probably cost me more than it costs you. Naturally I'm not going to give that number out to anyone who doesn't already have it.
Further along the passage is my room, which (like the rest of the house) has various sophisticated-looking decorations on the wall. Some are black & white pictures of somebody in strange gymnastic poses, without any pants on. The lighting and poses ensure that there's just enough lack of pants to amuse me, but not enough to be rude. The bedroom door is very creaky but otherwise it's a perfectly good room. It even has a bowl of plastic fruit, which I will feed to the first scurvied plastic people I see. The first night I was here I remember looking toward where I was thinking I'd have to put a bedside table with a lamp on it, to see the unmistakable outline of a bedside table with a lamp on it. There's also a rocking chair. There certainly are a lot of seats in this place, I think eleven including the toilet.
At the end of the passage is the rather gloomy bathroom, with bath, shower (over the bath), sink, washing machine, broken towel rack, and the bright orange towel I bought the other day upon realising that I did not have a towel.
My landlord, who has lived here for the past ten years, left behind some cutlery, crockery, cleaning products, food (mostly different kinds of tea!), and several bottles of spirits. I'm not sure whether that was all intentional, I can understand not bothering to keep a few bits of food but most people wouldn't leave their alcohol behind. Strangely, there's a coffee percolator but no coffee, lots of tea but no kettle. Perhaps he left the tea behind because he never drinks it because he doesn't have a kettle. I'll ask before I eat/drink any of it... it would take me years to drink all that alcohol but there's a tempting piece of gruyere in the fridge. It's good to be in the land of cheese and chocolate (maybe that's why they chose the abbreviation CH, although then FRance might claim FRomage.)
It's also the land of Swiss Army knives, and over the last few days I've seen quite a few people in army uniform, and even a tank driving past. I suspect it's the little-known Swiss Army that uses the famous knives. Perhaps there are more of them about because it's a long weekend.
I went to the circus on Friday evening. It was great fun... I couldn't remember the last time I went to a circus. I remember the first time, but I don't remember whether I've been to a circus since. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'd never sat in the front row of a circus before, since who but the Swiss can afford front row tickets for a familyful of kids? So I got a front row seat. It was discounted for reasons I didn't understand, so I spent the difference on a keyring. The spoilt little kid in the seat next to mine was obviously having a great time, as was the one in my seat.
I met my downstairs neighbours while hanging up decorations on my balcony. Don't be too alarmed, I didn't fall off the balcony and onto the downstairs neighbours. They have gardens (which must be on the roof of floor 0 since they're on floor 1) so can look up at my balcony from a comfortable angle. One could speak English, so I slipped into saying in English things which I know perfectly well how to say in French. I have to stop doing that. Mind you, she probably wanted the English practice as much as I need the French practice. The Polish guy in my French class mentioned that he agreed to speak English to one of the secretaries (a native French speaker) if she'd speak French back, so they both get practice understanding the languages they want to learn. I'll meet more of my neighbours later this month... because the whole city is having a party on my birthday!
I don't have my own garden, which is just as well since I expect I'll have a hard enough time keeping the house plants alive. However, three bus stops away is Jardin Alpin (Alpine Garden) which is very picturesque, smells wonderful, has all sorts of flowers, a playground, ducks, chickens and a goat. (I think that 'and a goat' is another ending which would make just about any sentence funny.)
I forgot to mention that Monday was another Discovery Monday at Microcosm. The theme was light, and I think the best demonstration was of how to measure the speed of light using only a microwave, a 400g bar of milk chocolate, a ruler, and a goat. Okay, so they didn't really use a goat, but it was funny, wasn't it? I didn't understand much of the French but as far as I can tell what they did was warm up the chocolate until it got melted in places, measure the distance between two melted spots, and multiply that by the frequency of the microwaves. Though I think there has to be a factor of two in there to get the correct result. Here's a picture of them doing the measuring.
Geek stuff from here on out. My iPod still plays most of its music perfectly well, so its damage only shows up when I plug it into my Mac to try to fix it. Yesterday my Mac decided that the iPod needed a firmware update, since it couldn't tell which version the firmware is. I did that and for a while iTunes refused to acknowledge that it is an iPod, and trying to access the other data was as futile as before. However, now it seems to be a bit better... it shows up in iTunes immediately and with a hint from the newest version of these AppleScripts I was able to copy the 300 or so tracks that the old version had missed entirely. 25 tracks of 2302 are corrupted. The iPod no longer runs that disk scan on itself every time I plug it in, but iTunes and the Finder still have a tendency to hang while they try to work past the corruptions, and I still can't really access the non-music files. It's clearly a very sick device, but I can ignore that fact for as long as I don't plug it in, particularly now that I've been able to remove the damaged tracks. I found that there are no radio stations between 90 and 100FM, so my iTrip broadcasts on 95.5 and my music plays on the speakers in the lounge. Having just paid for about four months of accommodation (41 nights in the hostel, the rest of this month's rent on the apartment, and two months' bond) two months of compulsory health insurance and a year of bus transport, I don't think I'll be replacing I/O Silver in a hurry. Macs, music, and my apartment
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3 May 2005
I missed the Mac meeting of the CERN Micro club again on Thursday. This time I called the shuttle to take me to building 30 but it didn't come, and by the time it hadn't come I had no hope of walking there in time.
The CERN computing rules forbid using the network for personal use -- though apparently sending email to boyfriends is allowed because it's good for morale... if anyone asks, you're my boyfriend. The reason I mention it is that there's a guy just along from me at the CERN Users Office who is watching something very personal indeed. Considering you have to be logged into a CERN computing account to use these computers, I don't think it will escape notice.
Anyway, after work on Friday I went to the Mac shop I keep seeing from the bus (soon to be known as the Mac shop across the road) to see if they had stayed open late in order to sell Mac OS X Tiger, which was officially released at 6p.m. There were two people inside but it didn't seem like it was actually open, so I noted down their URL and went back to CERN. Their website says they're not open on Saturdays, and had no mention of anything special for Tiger's release.
On Saturday I went to another Mac shop I've seen from the bus occasionally, and which is also mentioned on Apple's website, and bought a copy of Tiger. I had the developer seeds from June to February so I've been missing Spotlight and Dashboard whenever I'm not running it. I've also been looking forward to switching from Eudora to the new version of Mail, which seems like it can almost cope with my highly Eudorised way of using email. Eudora seems to be going the way of HyperCard... it's great but it's stuck in Mac OS 9 as far as adopting new systemwide features goes, and I understand the newer versions are not fully functional under sponsored mode and thus require an expensive yearly subscription. I've been using Eudora for more than ten years now, so this may be a difficult change. But while I was in Sydney I was running the unstable Tiger seed almost all of the time simply to use Mail, because Eudora would hang for 30 seconds every time it wanted to download a new advert (the sponsor in sponsored mode) and couldn't. Unfortunately one of the features necessary for pseudo-Eudorification which was added to Mail in a build around that time has been taken out again, as I feared it would be. Probably because it could cause all sorts of strange loops.
After buying Tiger, I went to my apartment to sign the contract, make one of these, hand over the bond, and get some of the weird pink pieces of paper necessary to pay the rent. Why paper is required for something as simple as giving somebody money I don't know. Naturally I also checked the Mac shop across the road, which was indeed closed.
| Non-geeks may skip this part, it has nothing to do with travel | So I installed Tiger, and was happily wrestling with Mail to try to turn it into a 21st century Eudora, when I knocked my iPod to the floor. It was playing through my Mac at the time (if only I'd been using a shorter firewire cable it would never have hit the ground.) Soon the music started skipping ominously. In the hope that merely the firewire cable was loose or something, I disconnected the iPod from my Mac and listened to music through that for a while, but after half an hour or so it started skipping again. I realised it was time to do what I should have done a month ago, the moment I had the disk space to do so... make a full backup of my music. When I plugged my iPod back into my Mac to do just that, the iPod started doing some kind of disk scan on itself, which ended in a reassuring icon with a tick on it. I copied all my music to my PowerBook, with the aid of an older version of this AppleScript (by far the most elegant way of getting music off an iPod.) 18 songs of two thousand or so have come through with zero bytes, but three of those are by Recursion so I can download them again. A few are favourites from CDs which I left on the other side of the world, and some are obscure tracks by obscure bands whose websites have probably disappeared into obscurity by now. I have been unable to make a copy of the non-musical files on the iPod, although I think I have the important things backed up anyway. Disk Utility says:
Verify and Repair disk "I/O Silver"
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Keys out of order
Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
The volume I/O Silver could not be repaired.
Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
1 volume could not be repaired because of an error
Repair attempted on 1 volume
1 volume could not be repaired
TechTool Deluxe hangs for ten minutes or so just trying to see that the drive is there to scan, and then decides that it isn't. The iPod can still play most songs though, so as long as I don't connect it to a computer it almost seems good as new. It just can't be used as a disk or in iTunes without long waits while the system tries to understand the corrupt parts of the disk. And before that even has a chance to happen, sometimes the iPod will do another lengthy disk scan on itself when I plug it into the Mac. If it gets too annoying, perhaps I'll buy a new one the next time new models come out... 20GB iPods are already down to about a third the price they were back when I got this one, and even the post shop sells them. Though it seems like that would be a waste since I just got a new set of iPod earphones as a leaving present from work, and it is perfectly capable of playing most of my music (which is, after all, its primary function) but almost incapable of anything else. Still, It's a good enough excuse to visit the Mac shop across the road a few times while I think about it. I might get a new camera soon too... this one has quite a few dead pixels and lately the lens cover thingy has had trouble closing. |
I asked about getting a credit card the other day, so that I would have a credit card with a European address and thus be able to purchase music from the iTunes Music Store. I was told to get a Maestro card (which basically seems to be an EFTPOS card, as opposed to the money-machines-only card I have now) instead, since a credit card would lock up several thousand of my francs, which doesn't make any sense to me since I'd potentially be paying interest to 'borrow' my own money. Swiss banks are weird.
May 5 is a holiday due to Ascension Day, and May 6 is a holiday to make up for May 1, which is a holiday, (I gather it's the kind of May Day I've read about in books, which has nothing to do with boats) being on a Sunday. I'll have plenty of time to unpack my two suitcases, two backpacks (one used to be inside a suitcase), and ample pockets at the new apartment.
It's now Tuesday. Yesterday there were a few new Norwegians in my French class, one of which used to program with HyperCard! HyperCard went the way of Eudora... it's great but it's stuck in System 7 as far as adopting new systemwide features goes, and I understand there will be no new version. There's another new guy who is Polish, whom I've seen in the hostel kitchen a few times. I just had a conversation with him in the kitchen, and he says I'm the first foreigner to mention Marie Curie as an example of a famous Polish person. Most people only think of pope John Paul II, whom I didn't even think of until Polish Man (whose name I've forgotten and probably can neither pronounce nor spell) mentioned him. I suppose if I'd been reading the news instead of websites about Marie Curie fellowships, John Paul II would have been nearer the front of my mind. Je ne suis plus une touriste
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27 April
I emailed the guy today to say I'd take the apartment, he replied saying I could move in on May 5 and he'd dropped the price a little. So in just over a week I'll be living in a spacious two-bedroom apartment about 150m from the Mac shop I keep seeing from the bus.
Do you know what that means? From 05/05/05 I officially won't be travelling any more. So in order to maintain the pretence that this is a travel log and not merely a run-of-the-mill blog, I won't update this unless I see or do something touristic. Which is quite likely... there's a Swiss circus in town.
I'd better squeeze in some boring stuff while I still can. I found out today that there is a shuttle service which can take anyone from one building to another within CERN. I used it to get to French class today, at the advice of the colleague who has been driving me to the classes until now. It should be useful for getting all the way from building 40 to building 30 for the CERN Micro club meeting tomorrow.
On the subject of micros, the microwave in the hostel kitchen is crazy. Above it is a piece of paper explaining how to operate it, referring to the buttons by the cryptic symbols on them. Only, there are no symbols, cryptic or otherwise, on the buttons on the microwave. There's no sign that there ever used to be symbols, either... the buttons are completely blank. Beside the instructions is a diagram of the microwave showing which symbols go with which buttons. So, instead of reading what it says on the button and then pushing the button, one must read an instruction to find out what the a symbol means, then find the relevant symbol on the diagram, and then find the corresponding button on the actual microwave. Not surprisingly, there's a sign saying that some function is out of action due to frequent misuse of the microwave. Next Page |
