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Standing on the balcony of my hotel room in Malaysia on my birthday. In the background is the office of the prime minister of Malaysia! (Derek Zoolander say relax!)

I’m going off on a trip to Malaysia tonight til Oct 1st for work! There will be some time for play. Any suggestions for what to see or do?

I went to Paris, France on business a couple weeks back. Here are some more notes from the trip. Previously, Previously.

Had a crepe formage 2 blocks from Notre Dame :-)

Right-click and download this giant panorama for best results.

Notre Dame is pretty awesome. The structure totally rivals the Taj Mahal, which I had the pleasure of seeing in February. Personally, I liked Notre Dame better than the Taj Mahal. I took that image to the left. Right-click download it and view it up close. The panorama came out pretty awesome!

Went inside Notre Dame at about 11:30pm following a procession in the doors. The Virgin Mary and son had left at about 10:30 with a grande accompaniment celebrating the Feast of the Assumption. I looked at the holiday’s calendar and darn if I didn’t miss Gregoran chanting at the cathedral by just a few hours! The interior looks like… well… a Catholic Church. The ceiling is pretty nice.

The confessionals in Notre Dame have awesome little Get Smart Cone of Silence things surrounding the traditional wooden cubbies. I hope they work better than the real Get Smart Cones ;-)

Had an “Andouillette AAAAA moutarde de Meaux” for lunch at Dudule just outside Place d’Italie. When I picked it with my patented menu order randomizing system our French host Arnaud cautioned me “be careful with that”. Sounds like a dare, right? What other food based on a dare do you know about? That’s right, Scottish Haggis! The anduillette was umm.. err..  Ok, it was pretty gross but I’m glad I tried it. It’s a sausage made with intestines, not just the casing but the whole thing. When I cut open this unassuming sausage, it looked like it had lots of rolls of.. I don’t know.. Maybe little rolls of soggy paper. Not so bad. But it smelled like… When I held it to my nose, Arnaud immediately said “It tastes better than it smells, like cheese.” he was somewhat correct:  as long as I didn’t use my nose, I couldn’t smell the stench of death and entrails bundled on my plate! It smelled awful. It had the texture of soggy rolled up postit notes and had almost no flavor (barring the stench).

I passed through Gare d’Austerlitz station many times on my way to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and other spots. Here’s a nice panorama of the place I  stitched  together:

Saw a guy jump a 5′ tall turnstile on the Metro. It was amazing. The guy was walking and then he was springing 6′ in the air. And there was only like 3′ clearance to the ceiling. I might have told the station attendant who was 5′ away but there’s that language barrier.

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The energy around the eifel tower totally had a Burning Man feel to it! All these people are milling around this grand structure trying to figure out exactly how to extract the vibrant energy of the moment, and even just trying to characterize the energy… is it national pride, or an engineering achievement, or just the pretty lights that makes it so magical?

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At once, blacks seem to be more integrated into French society than in the US and also  seem more prone to being an underclass, working worse jobs (like window washers and runway crew at the airport) and having sketchier roles (like the kid at the restaurant who acted grabby and the guy who jumped the turnstile).

The black kid at the restaurant: he was maybe 12 years old, accompanied by a 40ish white woman. The kid did little things that made me feel like he came from poverty. He grabbed at food like it was going to be taken away from him. He called to the dog as if it should serve him. He grabbed at things on the table that he thought his matron was going to grab. He literally was shifty-eyed. It was really strange watching this play out during my dinner.

5:31am the phone rings. My coworkers are downstairs ready to go to the airport. I throw the last items in my bag, a still-wet jacket and my computer, and head downstairs with it rolling behind me. Brent and Arnaud are standing in the sleepy dark lobby. The smell of fresh pastries fills the room. They are  ready to go. The  concierge  brings out a plate of chocolate and plain  croissants for me and sets them on the bar. Holding an empty glass in his hand, He asks what I would like to drink, coffee or orange juice. It is wonderful.

Brent and Arnaud look at me. The tension of “time to go”  pushes on me. I walk over to the bar, place a hot chocolate croissant in my mouth and hold a plain one in my hand. Oh if I only I could carry more! We walk out  into a cool drizzling morning and get into the car.

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Oh yeah, and the real reason I was in Paris… setting up a new camera rig for earthmine.

My company of is looking for a full time office manager. Look here for the job listing

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ofc/1907786796.html

Find out about the company: earthmine

If you’re a friend of mine, tell me you’re applying and I’ll make sure your resume gets seen. This kind of job usually pays 35-45k, more if you’ve got solid executive management skills.

The Crucible is having a sale on fall classes, including all my beloved Kinetics classes like Flame Effects, Mechanical Sculpture, and Arduino.

Here’s the deets:

Crucible Friends and Family Promotion

SAVE 30% on all Fall class tuition, exclusively available to Friends and Family of Crucible Board, staff and faculty!

Available by telephone orders only — call 510/444-0919 and use the code FRND10 to get this unprecedented discount.
Registration must be completed by 6PM on August 31 to qualify; discount is only for tuition, class materials fees are additional to discounted tuition

For a complete listing of classes, visit thecrucible.org

Woke up yesterday grumpy. It hasn’t been sunny in SF in a while. Finally got moving and grudgingly rode my bike to a Public Bike party at South Park. (an emotional grudge, not logistical. Thank you so much Cindy for the invitation!!).

I got to talk to a product designer at Public about this weird little loose-ish screw on the bike. (I won’t go into it here) and he responded “That’s quite astute of you to notice”. Ha! We had a great little product design and user experience conversation.

I got to meet the owner of The American, a new Grilled Cheese restaurant in San Francisco! I’ve spoken with Charlotte many times somewhat flippantly about wanting to open a grilled cheese restaurant. You can make them sweet or savory, it’s almost the perfect food! (ok, I don’t want to hear any non-perfect comments… to me, it’s almost the perfect food!). I explained how I didn’t know anything about being a restaurateur. His response, “Me neither. I just quit my job at Oracle and put my life savings into the business! We’ve been open 3 months and, so far, it’s going really well.” Anything is possible, eh?

At the end of the party, Cindy’s friend Dan had to get his Fun Cycle conference bikes back home. He was asking “Hey who wants to ride these bikes back to Pier 39 and Golden Gate Park?” I was thinking, “Umm, my legs burned on the way here via bike, I don’t need to push it. But I’ve got nothing else going on today… Feh, why not” And we were off!

Ok, conference bikes are fun! We must have had our picture taken 50 times on our route down Embarcadero to the parking lot near Pier 39. People are all waving and smiling. We stopped and got beers for the ride, and did donuts out on one of the piers! It was such a blast!

We parked the bike and Patrick and I went into the Spy Shop across the street from the parking lot. Boys Toys!

Then it was back to South Park to pick up our bikes… but first a stop at 21st Amendment for drinks! Wee!

On to a birthday party for Cindy Woo in the Mission!

Laurie suggests we go to a party at Adobe Books and then the Lexington, and we’re off! Adobe has it’s requisite compliment of fun and weird! Then we’re off to the Lex where I met Carla :-). We meet up with these Brits who say this is their last night in San Francisco after a whirlwind tour and keep demanding we show them the “real gay San Francisco”. Carla and I walk them from the Lexington to The Cafe in the Castro, meeting a few characters along the way. These 2 boys saying joyously despondently “Oh, it’s 1 am, all the good looking guys are already gone!” I say hopefully to our British contingent, “Now there’s just desperate guys left. Maybe even some good looking desperate guys. You’ll find yours, don’t worry!” We drop off the Brits at The Cafe, get some pizza slices and walk back to fetch her car from a garage in the Mission. :-)

What a night!

I got to see Jonathan Richman (of Modern Lovers et all musical immortality fame!) at (of all places!) Lost Weekend Video. Went with Charlotte. About 300 people packed into the video store! First thing was they they started playing the movie There’s Something About Mary. Charlotte and I wondered, a little disappointedly, if we’d have to wait until the end of the movie to hear Jonathan Richman play. But just 30 seconds in, a bold voice shouted “Ok, stop it right there!” Jonathan gave commentary throughout several parts of the movie, it was awesome! If you don’t recall, he did the music in the movie and had a few greek chorus singing cameos.

Initially we walked up to the video store and the line to get in went up Valencia and around the corner! We thought we’d never get in so we meandered around for a while. We finally committed, saying that we’d likely not get in. It turns out that we were the LAST people allowed in… which put us right at the front door… FRONT ROW SEATS :-).

I got this email today. NBC doesn’t want people downloading SNL.

From: complaintresponse@abuse-att.net

Dear LEE SONKO:

We recently received the attached notice from NBC Universal claiming that your Internet account may have been used for copyright infringement. Specifically, NBC Universal claims that your account was used to reproduce and/or distribute copyrighted content without authorization to other users of an Internet-based file-sharing network. We are forwarding this notice at the request of NBC Universal — please see the enclosed document.
Continue reading ‘Saturday Night Live is Protected by Internet Gremlins’ »

Had a crepe formage 2 blocks from Notre Dame :-)

Notre Dame is pretty awesome. The structure totally rivals the Taj Mahal! And in my opinion surpasses it… But that’s just me.

Went in to the cathedral at about 11:30pm following a procession in the doors. The Virgin Mary and son had left at about 10:30 with a grande accompaniment celebrating the Feast of the Assumption. I looked at the holiday’s calendar and darn if I didn’t miss Gregoran chanting at the cathedral by just a few hours! I saw that the confessionals have glass “cones of silence” around the traditional tiny wooden rooms; pretty funny

Had an anduillette AAAAA for lunch. When I picked it with my patented menu order randomizing system our local coworker cautioned me “be careful with that”. Sounds like a dare, right? What other food based on a dare do you know about? That’s right, Scottish Haggis! The anduillette was umm.. err.. Ok, it was pretty gross but I’m glad I tried it. It’s a sausage made with intestines, not just the casing but the whole thing. When I cut open this unassuming sausage, it looked like it had lots of rolls of.. I don’t know.. maybe little rolls of soggy paper. Not so bad. But it smelled like… when I held it to my nose, Arnaud immediately said “It tastes better than it smells, like cheese.” he was somewhat correct: as long as I didn’t use my nose, I couldn’t smell the stench of death and entrails bundled on my plate. It smelled awful. It had the texture of soggy rolled up postit notes and had almost no flavor (barring the stench). I felt it appropriate to try and get used to it. Well, it’s been 10 hours since that meal and my stomach and mind still haven’t gotten used to it. :-(

During lunch it rained really hard. I watched and smelled it… Being in San Francisco so long, I miss the occasional “real” rains you get in Boston, New Jersey and Florida.

Saw a guy jump a 5′ tall turnstile on the Metro. The thing was designed to be very hard to jump. He did it with ease, it was pretty amazing. I might have told the station attendant who was 5′ away but there’s that language barrier…

French TV is much like US… channel surfing I found:
a modern drama with a good guy vampire
a cartoon that looks Ren and Stimy-ish but the story was stupid and the French speaking actors all had horribly American accents
several mediocre pop music bands (I’m guessing it’s easier to hear sloppy music when you don’t speak the language)
Some pretty darn good rap, though culturally different from American rap (possibly a plus)
French World Series of Poker,
A sitcom that was waaay more sit than com
A nice cultural food program with goat cheese making, salt harvesting, honey gathering, dessert making and all things French.

Croque Madame in a Parisian restaurant on Place d’Italia. One of our party had a whole burger’s worth of steak tartar! He says it’s fresh enough in Paris.

Eiffel tower! (I’ve got a better photo on my real camera) Did you know that it twinkles on the hour for 5 minutes. Aparently I was there for 2 hours… 3 twinklings.