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.