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| on my way to toulouse at
mxp in milan. if you care to know, i flew alitalia and very much
enjoyed their snappy green uniforms. |
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| not quite the stuff that
makes the back cover of 2600 but
you never know. :) i wonder how you say phreaking in french.
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| there was internet access
as well. not sure how i'd bring up an xterm to connect to berkeley
though. :)
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| allaying the concerns of
my advisor, my
most reasonable accomodations.
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| when i slept, i often did it
here. |
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| wells fargo screwed me with
my traveler's checks. thus, i ended up carrying 5000 ff (approx
$833 usd) in my wallet instead.
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| conveniently located a couple
minutes from the conference center, the novotel hotel, where i stayed. |
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| a most friendly and helpful
person at the front desk who helped me check in and provided me with
a french to us adapter for my laptop, which i incidentally never used
for that purpose. |
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| i'd been on a plane for over 14
hours and stayed up the entire night before flying out. nonetheless, i
felt compelled to immediately wander the streets and snap some photos
for the web page. hope you enjoy them. |
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| on boulevard lascrosses, a fancy
looking hair salon. following this street south, one can fork off onto a
number of interesting places as shown later. |
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| like everyone else from the
islands of hawaii, i like to gamble. one can imagine then my disappointment
when i discovered that "casino" is not really a casino in toulouse but rather
a chain of small grocery stores! |
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| i suffered from internet withdrawal
syndrome while waiting for the conference to start and hence tried to get my
fix at a french internet cafe. as i blasted away a url in netscape i suddenly
noticed that my typing was wrong, wrong, wrong! check out this bizarre
arrangement. how unix-unfriendly is this! |
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| as i roamed the streets, i took
some pictures. this is the place wilson. taking pictures makes me
feel productive when i'm lost and without a map. |
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| while lost, i stumbled
upon the cathedral saint-etienne. it's been around since the 11th
century. |
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| it's a thousand years later
now, so i decided to take a look inside. i think it'll be another
thousand before you get me back in there. :) i was unimpressed. |
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| but i was hungry. and so, despite
the graffiti-covered walls and the limited visibility, i pressed on in
search of food. |
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| this place looked non-threatening
enough and so i ate here. there were some communication "issues" at first, but
soon enough i was gobbling a panini and jamming to the beats of lionel
richie's "hello" on the radio. i can tell that you're envious. :) |
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| the center of town. a map
would have proved useful at this point. |
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| but i figured i could find my
way back and so for a couple of hours, i got a lot of exercise walking
the same streets while observing scary french y2k decorations. |
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| i eventually gave up. note the
highly deceiving ads for the "casino" on this taxi! i can't imagine anyone
would be so excited about buying vegetables in france. guess they really,
really do enjoy eating here. |
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| the previous vehicle wasn't
stylish enough and so i waited for the mercedes instead. :) on my way back,
i chatted in french and in english with a classy taxi driver who
introduced me to the various gadgets in her ride. shown here, the gps
that all taxis come equipped with.
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| i did a thorough exploration of
the novotel's room service menu while i was there. (no stingray on the
menu. damn!) shown here: cassoulet toulousain (cassoulet duck and pork with haricot
bean dish, a toulouse specialty) and a half bottle of cotes de rhone "domaine de deurre".
these half bottles of wine are served all over the place in toulouse. they're
wonderful! :)
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