Cote d'Azur

Its Saturday morning. I'm all set to goto Nice, by TGV - my first trip on this train.

Trains have always fascinated me. My mother says that my first train ride was from Chennai (where I was born) to Hyderabad (where I would spend all my childhood) when I was 3 months old. I think we struck a bond then - trains and I. I have always dreamed of traveling by the world's fastest train ever since I heard about it, when I was eight years old.

So there I was, having unhesitatingly spent 108 euros (thats almost the price of a return air-ticket to Rome) on the one way fare between Paris and Nice (about 700 km away). Having located the right train, I went and sat in the least crowded seat could find. About minutes later, I decide to shift to the upper deck of the carriage, to get a better view of things. The train was bound to start in 5 minutes. As I sat happily at a window seat in the upper deck, soaking up the ambiance (the inside looks like an aircraft), a sudden thought crossed my mind. Included in the cost of my TGV ticket was something called a reservation fee, that other trains did not have. This meant that seats were reserved for every passenger. Though that is a good thing in general, here it meant that I could be siting in the wrong place. The ticket is quite complicated, and my French literacy isn't great, so I asked a lady who was seated nearby. She mumbled something in French, from which I gathered that I was in the wrong place. I couldn't understand too much else.

Then, thankfully, an English speaking gentleman intervened and explained that she was in the carriage too, and both me and her were in the same carriage. Hence, following her to the carriage would be the best thing to do. I did that, and after 10 minutes was seated in the right place, looking at the French countryside, and relishing as the train went really fast.

After about 3 hours, at 1700, the train came to a halt all of a sudden. By then I had begun conversing with an elderly French gentleman, who was on his way to Nice where he lived, and was quite friendly. The message on the PA system was that there had been an accident somewhere down the line, and the train would be delayed. I was quite worried, as I had made a reservation at a student hostel, which would become void if I didn't turn up there at 1930. Only later would I know what was in store for me when I got there.

So, as the train lumbered along at a much slower pace, the scenery changed from wheat farms to the coast and soon we were oing through hilly terrain. Finally the train arrived in Nice at 2030, as against a scheduled time of 1915. I was worried about the reservation, and made my way to the room, following the instructions given on the website. In about 10 minutes, I had found the fancy sounding Hotel Faubourg Montmarte, only to be quite stunned.

Panoramic Pictures

These are some panoramic pictures that I created from photographs that I took. You can click on the pictures to download them, or visit the full gallery at
http://picasaweb.google.com/siddharthshankar007/PanoramicGlimpses



I had a lot of fun doing this. I guess my innate geekiness comes to the fore during such endeavours.

Lab day

There comes a time in the life of every lab when the wheel turns one cycle and the lab is yet another year older - the occasion of the Lab's birthday. Some new publications are added to the journals, some people finish (or get fed up) and leave while some other curious people join - the 'vicious' cycle of university education continues. But in the midst of all this , it is imperative to stop the wheels for a while and look back on the eventful year that has just passed, share some experiences and memories, and look forward to the bright (or gloomy) year ahead. It is also a great time time to catch up and make sense of what has been happening over the last year in the research community and try to make a semblance of sense out of it all.

In true lab tradition, we celebrated the birthday of the MAS lab at Ecole Centrale with full pomp and glory. The previous week ended on a not very high note for our lab, as we had just lost the Inter Lab Soccer Cup - but all was forgotten and everyone was keen to have fun today. The proceedings started with the customary speech by the lab director and then went on to have presentations by some members of the lab. It was the first time I actually saw the lab in almost entire strength(some were out of town) and it was nice to see everyone taking the day off, in essence, and having a nice little party. Martin was the only presenter whom I knew, and I tried hard to pay attention but soon was all out at sea - was it because I did not have the required background, or because it was indeed a very difficult subject - hand tracking? Or perhaps, it was because his and all the other presentations were in French, of which I hardly can understand even common parlance, leave alone technical terminology.
Soon, I was holding "Neverwhere " (an English book that Regis mercifully gave me that morning, sensing my incompetence at understanding the proceedings, and not wanting to be subject to a French to English translating session again - translating the pre-movie advertisements, when we had gone to watch Tarantino's Death Proof had convinced him that that was disastrous) in my left hand, a cup of orange juice in my right and balancing mini versions of croissants, pain au chocolat and pain au raisin on my thighs. Having food in the room while the presentations were running, was a very good move by the organizers, and it was good to see that everyone stayed in the room throughout. At every available opportunity (the end of each presentation), I would go for a full refill. In an hour, I had consumed 40 pages, 4 each of the aforementioned bakery items and a litre of juice. I now felt like I had just been through a series of short haul flights, where juices and bread are all you get while inside.

Finally the director of research wound up proceedings and called for lunch. In a few minutes the very room that was host to 40 odd chairs and was like a board room just a moment ago, now looked like the last page in an Asterix comic book, just before the big banquet. The food spread was amazing - everyone (well, almost everyone) brought something along and the huge table was soon filled with all sorts of food.

Now at this stage, you would expect that I would have monopolized the endo-foodulation, but I was intimidated by the conspicuous absence of vegetarian food. And just when I was faced with the scary prospect of going straight onto dessert, Salma saved me by giving me a foil-wrapped package - she had brought Arabic preparation, Mtabka,and had made out some vegetarian versions, just for me! They were great and I was amazed that they bore an uncanny resemblance in taste, to the Indian Dhokla.

That and some Greek epinard and fromage dumplings that Kostas had brought formed the bulk of my main course, along with some baget(French bread) that I had with Camembert(pron. "camom-bear"), my favourite French fromage(pron. "fromaajzhe", cheese). This fascination for camembert had begun a couple of weeks ago, when Charlotte had given me very generous helpings(in fact, packs!) of a few varieties of fromage, made in the traditional way. I felt a magnetic pull toward this innocent looking melt in the mouth cheese that was just irresistible - I now knew exactly what to have at the multitude of French restaurants that one finds all over Paris. Bread with 3 fromages - camembert, camembert and camembert.

Once the main course was done, I continued the conquest in familiar territory, and soon had more than a mouthful of cakes, pastries and confectionery. Then, it was time to play and we all waited outside the gymnasium for quite a while, not having the key. Once opened, volleyball, basketball and badminton were going on in parallel, and we kept switching between them. Martin & Radhouenne, and later Regis & Takure joined Chaohui and me in some nice games of badminton, where nobody fully knew whether we were playing by the old rules or the rules, save for that we were playing. But in the midst of this I had lost total track of the time, and was jolted when Regis left the game, saying it was 5 pm! I was supposed to meet Tanya(a friend from Switzerland, who was at IIT Madras last year) at 6 in Paris, and it was quite late. An SMS from her saying that they would be arriving at 6 pm "Indian time" was very comforting. I reached the Saint Michel fountain at 6.10 and while I waited, was pondering - During the course of my trip so far, I had realized that "French time" was not too far from "Indian time", definitely not 3 1/2 hours behind!

Regis' Birthday

On Saturday, Matthieu was to arrive in Paris on a 2 day visit. During the day, I began by roaming around quite aimlessly, but soon found myself having lunch at a Sri Lankan restaurant serving Indian food. I can tell you that if you are a vegetarian and you are forced to eat nothing but bread and yogurt everyday, a south Indian thaali (even if its for 10Euros), once a week is the only way to keep those trousers fitting. Soon after, I was riding the tramway on a direction less journey, seeing several beautiful sights along the way. On the geeky side, there was the Sevres museum, where the standards calibrating the metric units, namely kilogram, metre and the second are all located. The building is quite impressive, with its typical European architecture overlooking the busy highway in front of it. The tramway is along the river Seine, but you rarely get to see it, as there is a huge barrier separating the river from the tramway, presumably to prevent it from falling in. But the whole ride is a feast for the eyes, as you get to see many things while sauntering along at a decent pace. The weather was quite warm, but not too uncomfortable either.

I have grown quite fond of the Parisian transport system, and its great because a car is just not needed if you make a judicious use of the 3 wings - RER (pron. "Aero-Air", mostly-above-ground train), Metro(pron. "meth-hho", mostly underground) and the BUS(pron. "byuce") of the transport system. For most places, there is a near doorstep bus-stop, but even otherwise, there is a metro station not more than a mere 150 metres from any given place in Paris (thats like 14 seconds for an Olympic runner, or about 5 min for me and the average "you").

After some initial place confusion, I managed to find Matthieu at Notre Dame, and realized quite soon that the photo bug had bitten him long and hard in India. I was to see lots more of this passion later. I had a really hard time finding my way that day, and after facing great difficulty finding Regis's house(he's my colleague at the lab; we were going to his birthday party). Matt was quite stunned that I had tried to find Regis's house without a map, having never been there before. This was a very stupid idea, as I soon realized, and we stranded, asking every pedestrian for some instructions. Yeah but you might have guessed, we didn't find it and were unbelievably lucky to bump into Fatima(another lab colleague) at a corner, along the way in the chaos, who led us to our destination without too much trouble.

We spent Saturday evening at Regis's birthday party which was a lot of fun; beer flowed freely , and soon there were more unopened beer cans & bottles than water to dilute it - people had been asked to bring whatever they wanted to have in excess of what would be present at the party ("if you eat a lot, bring some food along"), and not too surprisingly, almost everyone chose to bring beer! There were about 30 people (about half from the lab where Regis and I work) in a 40 sq m area and things soon began to get hot. And I don't just mean the temperature. Soon everyone was heading for the balcony to catch some fresh air.
There were a lot of interesting people, from many walks of life; it was also great to see many people who had visited and fallen in love with India, some for its beauty, some for the mysticism and spirituality and some just for the fact that "India is one of the trendiest destination for Europeans today" - Regis, on India. I think Regis was quite surprised when we from the lab presented him with a WII, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii). I'm confident that we will soon have a few gaming nights at his house, with the gaming going on until the wii hours of the next morning. Meanwhile, Matt went crazy with his new Canon SLR camera and began shooting all high and sundry. Soon I think the 4GB memory stick was filled with countless images of everything, and I think one of them was the room's lampshade from at least 20 angles for that perfect shot! But, you got to hand it to him, he's got commitment and a passion, and there's not much you can do but stand and admire the pro at his work. I can learn a lot from him when it comes to pursuing a dream. Maybe someday, I will. And then, after the reminder from Chaohui(lab colleague and neighbor at the student residence) that the bus service to our residence stops at 0015, Matt and I found our way back home in the South of Paris, half drunk and very very tired, just managing to make it in time for the last bus home from the train station.