A tag from Thnidu: Find five songs whose titles begin with “K” and put them on your blog. I have gracious permission to stray from English lyrics (not that I hadn't intended to anyway :-). On the other hand I will supply translations (not singable ones, however, that's for another day).
Kaikki häipyy, on vain nyt
Eppu Normaali
Lapsuuteni kesät sumuun vajonneet,
palasiksi muistojeni läjään hajonneet.
Palapelin kokosin paksuin rukkasin,
ihmetellen minne kaikki palat hukkasin.
En unta saanut ja näin… jäin miettimään…
Kaiken minkä muistan aika kutistaa,
mä sitä pelkään, sua tahdon rutistaa.
Kuullut olen ikuisuuteen kaiken piirtyvän,
ja kaiken suhteen, kaiken siirtyvän.
Niinkuin kuuluu asiaan kaikki tähdet,
kuu ja kaikki muu, aikakin.
Niin myös aikanaan sinä lähdet,
pois häipyy taikakin,
siksi rakastan sua nyt.
Oli mielessäni elämäni kuolemattomuus,
puun takaa mulle nauroi ikuisuus.
Ei huomista, ei eilistä,
vain tämän hetken voi nähdä peilistä.
Niinkuin kuuluu asiaan…
Valovuosiensa takaa tähdet vilkkuen,
unelmille ihmisen hiljaa ilkkuen.
Tiedänhän että pieni oon,
kun siltä tuntuu mahdun hyvin kainaloon.
Niinkuin kuuluu asiaan…
Aamu sarastaa,
öiset hetket varastaa,
meidät valo hukuttaa,
meidät nukuttaa…
The summers of my childhood have foundered in fog,
my memories broken into pieces in a pile.
I assembled the puzzle with mittens,
wondering where I'd dropped the pieces.
I couldn't sleep…so I stayed up thinking…
Everything I remember is diminished by time,
I fear that and want to hold you.
I have belonged to all eternity,
and all relations, everything moving.
As must be, all stars,
the moon and everything else, even time.
Like them you will leave,
even magic will disappear, that's why I love you now.
I had in mind my immortality,
eternity laughed at me behind a tree.
No tomorrow, no yesterday,
just this moment in the mirror.
As it must be.
Winking stars lightyears away,
silently mocking human dreams.
I know I am little,
feeling like that I fit in your armpit.
As it must be.
Dawn rises,
steals the moments of night,
light drowns us,
puts us to sleep…
Eppu Normaali (“Abby Normal”) started out as a punk band in the 1970s, but have now mellowed considerably. Their lyrics on the other hand have always been playful, creatively rhymed and often satirising contemporary Finland.
Kaipaan kahta sanaa
Toivo Kärki
Paljon pyytää, paljon kaipaa ihminen, tiedän hyvin sen.
Saavuit kerran niinkuin uni kauniimman. Miksi saavuitkaan?
Mutta tuskin itse arvanneet miksi mua ymmärtänyt et.
En soimaa enkä kiitä kun lähdit sinä pois.
Ei tuhat sanaa riitä jos kaksi tarpeen ois.
Tuhat sanaa kuulla sain, kahta sanaa kaipaan vain.
Sä lausunut et niitä, et sanonut "Sua rakastan".
Katseesi toi mieleen helikuutamon – kylmä sekin on.
Silmiesi loisto niinkuin timantit, turhaan odotin.
Kauniit kylmät sanat multa ei, siksi tieni pois sun luotas' vei.
En soimaa enkä kiitä kun lähdit sinä pois.
Ei tuhat sanaa riitä jos kaksi tarpeen ois.
Tuhat sanaa kuulla sain, kahta sanaa kaipaan vain.
Sä lausunut et niitä, et sanonut "Sua rakastan".
Man asks for much and longs for much, that I know well.
You came like the most beautiful dream. Why did you come?
But you did not understand why you did not understand me.
I don't blame you, I don't thank you for leaving.
A thousand words are not enough when two are needed.
I was told a thousand words, I just want two.
You never spoke them, you didn't say "[I] love you".
Your gaze is like the full moon, just as cold.
Your eyes shine like diamonds, and I waited in vain.
No beautiful cold words from me, that's why I left you.
I don't blame you…
The late Toivo Kärki is one of the foremost Finnish tango composers. Note that since Finnish is a “pro-drop” language, it only takes two words to say “I love you”.
Karin hos mig
THS datatekniksektion
Jag blev kär i Karin idag, hon sprider värme och välbehag.
Det låter väldigt underligt, hon är inte någon tjej.
Hon kan hålla i en telefon, hon har en syster en halvmeter ifrån.
Syrran är inte lika bra, men med övning ger det sig.
Åh, jag måste ha retat brudarna när jag föll för dig!
För ända sen den dag de for, har jag Karin kvar hos mig.
Karin Knytnäve gör mig lycklig, hon är het och trång!
Och sen min flicka försvann har Karin och jag hålligång.
Åh, jag minns hur det brukar va', man jagar flickor varje da'
och i sängkammar'n vi gjorde vad andra människor gör
men Karin hon är bra och trogen tills jag dör.
Hon blir bara bättre…
Flickor har jag nästan glömt bort
för mot Karin står de sig kort.
För ända sen den dag de for, har jag Karin kvar hos mig.
Åh, jag måste ha retat brudarna när jag föll för dig!
För ända sen den dag de for, har jag Karin kvar hos mig.
Det låter väldigt underligt, men jag behöver ingen tjej.
Och mer lär det bli
när jag på syrran har fått pli,
för från den dagen min bror
har jag båda kvar hos mig.
I fell in love with Rosie today. She gives me warmth and pleasure.
It sounds very strange, she is not a girl.
She can hold a phone and has a sister half a metre away.
The sis isn't quite as good, but practice makes perfect.
Oh, I must have annoyed the girls when I fell for you!
For since they left I have Rosie still with me.
Rosie Palm makes me happy, she is hot and tight!
Since my girl left me, Rosie and I have kept at it.
Oh, I remember how it is, you chase girls every day
and then you do like other people in the bedroom.
But Rosie is good and is faithful to my death.
She keeps getting better…
I have almost forgotten about girls,
they can't stand up to Rosie.
For since they left I have Rosie still with me.
Oh, I must have annoyed the girls when I fell for you!
For since they left I have Rosie still with me.
It sounds very strange, but I don't need a girl.
And it will get better once I get her sister in shape,
for then, bro, I'll have both with me.
Ahem, a song from the traditional December 1st Singing contest (Sångartäflan) among the students at the Royal Institute of Technology.
Kathy's Song
Paul Simon
I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls
And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies
My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day
And a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme
And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you
And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I
Well, I don't really need to say anything more here, do I?
Kom och killa mej på ryggen
Robert Broberg
Kom och killa mej på ryggen
det är så underbart
när du killar mej på ryggen
åh, så rart vi har´t
Dina fingertoppar – toppar allt!
När du killa mej på – vadå?
När du killar mej på
Måndag, Tisdag, Onsdag, Torsdag,
Fredag, Lördag, Söndag
hela veckan lång!
när dina fingrar, fingrar, fingrar
fingrar på min kropp
är det mer än håret i nacken
som reser sej opp!
Kom och killa mej på ryggen
Come scratch my back,
it's so wonderful
when you scratch my back,
we have a good time.
Your fingertips beat everything
when you beat my—what?
When you scratch me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
all week long!
When your fingers finger finger
finger me
you make more than my neckhair rise!
Come scratch my back!
Robert Broberg, actor, painter, musician, word trickster. It's hopeless to translate his triple entendres…
2007-02-28
2007-02-26
Consider my mind officially blown
Please watch the video made by Amanda Baggs shown at Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth and have all your preconceptions of autism kicked out from under you. I feel like having walked through a Philip K Dick novel.
Thanks to Thnidu for the link.
Thanks to Thnidu for the link.
2007-02-25
Retro Fits
Behind the University Village Shopping Center in Seattle is a park-like area. I asked what it was and got the explanation that it was a cemetery. “It's really old, it's from the 1930s.” I responded with a look of European condescension, and didn't even have to say out loud that my home church is early 13th Century for my interlocutor to be suitably chastened.
On the other hand, the church is the oldest still extant building in Huddinge and may well have been the only stone building at the time, so when I go to places like Italy I feel much like my US landlord—here there are not just scattered remains of mediæval ceremonial buildings, but entire towns of 700-year-old houses that people still live in.
Of course, you can't go through that much history and keep the building in original shape. Apart from repairs, you also need to adjust the house to new needs, expand it for the kids, connect to the house next over that you just bought cheaply, put in fancy new plumbing and so on.
But, what struck me during a visit to Florence was that so many, if not all, of these modifications seem to have been made without any effort whatsoever to hide the work. I decided to make a collection of Unhidden Tuscan Modifications, and here it is:
On the other hand, the church is the oldest still extant building in Huddinge and may well have been the only stone building at the time, so when I go to places like Italy I feel much like my US landlord—here there are not just scattered remains of mediæval ceremonial buildings, but entire towns of 700-year-old houses that people still live in.
Of course, you can't go through that much history and keep the building in original shape. Apart from repairs, you also need to adjust the house to new needs, expand it for the kids, connect to the house next over that you just bought cheaply, put in fancy new plumbing and so on.
But, what struck me during a visit to Florence was that so many, if not all, of these modifications seem to have been made without any effort whatsoever to hide the work. I decided to make a collection of Unhidden Tuscan Modifications, and here it is:
 |
| Whether because the church couldn't afford stained-glass windows or because the carts in the streets kept breaking them, but the openings are now bricked up. |
 |
| Santa Croce. The monastery needed a vault, so they just bricked up the windows and stuck in an arch. |
 |
| Santa Croce. Interesting that giving Galileo a monument was more important than retaining the religious painting, but maybe the Church was feeling penitent. |
 |
| Piazza Santa Croce. So what if the façade is ancient and protected, you can still stick a modern building on top of it. |
 |
| The tower is 13th Century, the buildings enveloping it much more recent. |
 |
| Near Piazza del Duomo. I find it hard to unwrap exactly how many layers of rebuildings (I hesitate to call them renovations) there are in this house. Of course, an expert could tell just from the shape of the bricks at which exact times the rebuildings have taken place. |
 |
| Palazzo Vecchio. There are at least three layers of rebuildings of this part of the wall, the outside of the great hall of the Signoria. |
 |
| Palazzo Vecchio. An entire new building has been attached, so the windows on that side have to be bricked up, but then we need a new window, and a new door to get to the new balcony. |
 |
| Palazzo Vecchio. So for some reason yet another window had to be bricked up, but the frame was too pretty not to keep. And of course, then the little plain square frame also must be allowed to remain. |
 |
| Palazzo Vecchio. Which windows get bricked up and which not seems a bit random sometimes. |
 |
| Palazzo Vecchio. One would think that when you put a new house next to an existing one that you somehow try to take that into account, but these seem as if they had been prefabricated somewhere else and then scrunched together as closely as they can be made to fit, and then a bit. |
 |
| Ponte Vecchio. OK, let's just slap on an extra level on this house, on a bridge, over the river. |
 |
| Churches in Sweden are always well separated from any other buildings, surrounded by a church yard for additional space. They are clearly not a part of daily life. Italian churches on the other hand are mostly right there with all the other buildings in the block, or even, as here, with the nearby houses squeezing so close they bulge out on the church roof. |
 |
| Still the Arno, but now in Pisa. The arches seem out of proportion with the rest of the building, one wonders if they are just decorations, but they are not matched up with the windows either. |
 |
| More Pisan arches. My grandmother's house had an unpainted spot on the wall right under the roof, because there wasn't a ladder tall enough to reach up there. These arches seem unfinished in the same way. |
 |
| Here it is clear that the arches are not just artefacts of painting, but real structures that have had windows knocked out of them—however that has been done without fatally affecting the structural integrity of the wall. |
2007-02-24
2007-02-12
2007-02-11
Tree sluggers
I read in Nice Matin about « les antibois » and was for a moment confused by these people who were opposed to wood, until I realised it simply referred to the inhabitants of Antibes.
2007-02-07
Clearly, I've earned the right not to believe in it
You know the Bible 100%!
Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!
Ultimate Bible Quiz
Via Pharyngula.
2007-02-05
Double-deckers are in, smokers are out
Having managed to go by train to Brussels, it was time for the test of manhood: the thirty hour train-ride from Stockholm to Sophia Antipolis for a week of standardization work. As I couldn't reasonably pack clothes for a week in my backpack, this time I pulled along the cabin bag. It doesn't roll very well on snow…
The journey started on a Saturday with the usual 12:20 train from Stockholm C towards Malmö. X 2000—wireless Internet and power plugs by every seat. I crammed as much preparatory material as I could and jotted down comments and questions.
In Malmö I grabbed a quick sandwich and changed to a regional train to Copenhagen. In the train I found a DSB inflight magazine (or whatever the train equivalent is called) and I impressed myself by working out most of the crossword puzzle, in Danish. (The bit that stumped me was in which city Frasier lives. Seattle, it turns out.)
When I entered the main hall at Copenhagen H I just stopped at the top of the escalator and stared. There were large signs up saying that since a few days earlier smoking was prohibited in the main hall. In Denmark! Seriously I had thought this would be the last bastion of bastards, but no, they too have succumbed to civilization. Admittedly not all present had quite grasped the concept yet, but the difference to my previous visit was clear as day. On the other hand it was bleeding cold in the hall, all open to the outside and no heating, I gather. I bought a few postcards to send to neglected friends.
Well, with time (and on time! quite unusual for DB) arrived my next train, a sleeper bound for Cologne. I had a berth in one of those double-decker sleeper cars and even had the compartment all to myself. To my annoyance the shaving power outlet in the compartment didn't actually have any power, so I forewent the laptop and instead spent my time reading some paper-based articles. Soon, though, I folded out the berth and tried to sleep while the train juddered through Germany. In the morning I arrived, breakfasted and showered, in Cologne, posted my postcards, got some new ones and caught the Thalys train for Paris. No power here either, so I read some more papers.
At Gare du Nord I was confused about how to proceed until I figured out that the unobtrusive boxes by the walls were ticket machines and thus managed to get into the Metro part of the station and after a bit of trial and error got to the right platform. (I'm not sure what the problem was, but I found it difficult to work out what trains went where.) To my great surprise they were running double-decker trains underground. I caught one of these the two stops to Gare de Lyon. I had plenty of time before the next train, so I had lunch at the station restaurant and then wandered about the scores of shops in the station, trying to find one that sold stamps. None did.
Eventually I proceeded to the southbound TGV train. Oh, a double-decker again. However, I ended up on the lower level and by the aisle, so I had restricted outside vision. And no power for the laptop. I read about compiler theory and snoozed while the train zoomed by the edges of Massif Central. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground and fir forests. For some reason this surprised me, I don't know why I didn't expect fir trees in France.
Towards sundown we reached the Mediterranean by Marseille, but continued eastwards without stopping there. Finally we stopped in Antibes and I got off. Should I eat or proceed to the hotel first? I knew that the hotel did not serve dinner, so I checked out a café near the station. It looked too smoky for my tastes, so I decided to find a taxi instead. The taxis of the town seemed to be elsewhere, but eventually one turned up and off we drove up into the hills beyond Antibes. In my hotel I was greeted by a porter looking and behaving much like John Le Mesurier. I was immediately identified, which was rather gratifying, but later on I found there weren't very many staying at the hotel, so it was no problem to figure out who I was. It must have been the off-season, as the hotel turned out to be better than its two stars would suggest.
I got a very thorough and actually quite useful introduction to the hotel and the area. In particular, for dinner I was directed to Restaurant La Table in another hotel nearby, carefully marked out on a map. (A photocopied sketch, to be precise, there does not actually seem to be a map of Sophia Antipolis as such, indeed you will not find it on many maps at all. I believe it is not a geographical region as such, but simply the group of high-tech organisations located in the municipalities of Valbonne, Mougins, Biot, Vallauris and Antibes.)
I walked along the unlit roads (at least they had pavements) to the restaurant some ten minutes away and then had to spend ten more minutes figuring out how to enter the carefully fenced-off hotel area. Finally I got the gate to magically roll open. The restaurant was well-lit and had a non-smoking section that actually seemed to be smoke-free. The waitress looked very much like an ex-colleague of mine. I wonder why I saw so many lookalikes all of a sudden, perhaps the modeller at the company producing my life is running out of face ideas. The food was good but the dessert to die for. The French, they do know their desserts.
The next morning, breakfast with croissants, yey! And the breakfast area is non-smoking, double-yey! Then I read the local paper, Nice Matin. Much excitement in France, beginning February 1st, smoking will be prohibited in all public places. Beginning January 1st 2008, smoking will be prohibited in all restaurants. My mind boggles, is this France? Can the leopard in fact change his shorts? Will I in fact be able to go places and eat in peace and quiet all over Europe soon?
In a euphoric cloud I grab my laptop and start the ascent to ETSI. It's half an hour's uphill walk, with nice views of the surrounding mountains, with concrete-and-glass buildings sticking up here and there. Apparently neobrutalism never went out of fashion here. In addition it's awfully cold, there's actually frost on the ground. I, who had hoped for balmy days by the Mediterranean, am a bit disappointed.
At ETSI I get my badge and locate the conference room where I will spend the rest of the week. Round table introductions of everyone in the new working group. A consumer representative, how unusual! Some are (politely?) enthusiastic about such a thing, others accept it without comment, a Chinese delegate is clearly skeptical. Things proceed, I desperately try to absorb as fast as I can everything about procedure, plans, principles and in general what's going on. We all have our laptops up, and I notice many have privacy screens on them—plastic sheets that restrict the view of the screen to straight ahead. Many also have card readers and other security enhancements in their laptops. For my part I have Wikipedia up and check up unfamiliar terms at disconcertingly frequent intervals.
Finally lunch, at the adjacent France Telecom canteen. Then back to work again. In the afternoon I'm feeling rather empty-headed and am grateful when our sessions end, others just continue to other sessions late into the evening. Documents are produced, revised and commented. I make comments every now and then and perhaps I even cause the generation of a new work item. I decide that apparently I Make A Difference. I go for dinner at La Table and then to bed. So the week goes. On Thursday when I get to La Table in the evening, they no longer ask me if I want a smoke-free table as the entire restaurant is smoke-free now—why wait an extra year?
Friday is a short day ending at 15:15; I walk back to my hotel room and fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon.
Saturday morning is early awakening, pack the last things and take a taxi down to Antibes. For some reason I cannot leave with the TGV from here, but instead have to take a regional train to Toulon. The regional train is a double-decker, but fairly full. I end up in a seat where the folding table does not stay up but heavily smacks me on the knees every time I return it to the upright position. I try to lock it in place with the handle of the cabin bag.
In Toulon I decide to have lunch and seat myself outside the Café de la Gare. They don't really serve lunch yet, but seeing my obvious hunger the waitress relents and I get my escalope de volaille. It's definitely the best main course I've had all week. I am very satisfied and sit and bask in the sun a bit until it's time to catch the train.
This time I get to ride on the top level and enjoy an excellent view of the Rhône valley while trying to write poetry. Then Gare de Lyon and double-decker metro to Gare du Nord. There I decide to have dinner at a bar in the station. This was apparently a mistake. The food is OK, once it arrives, but service is extremely slow. I cannot avoid the suspicion that this is so that the “I've lost my ticket, would you please lend me a couple of hundred euro so I can buy a new one, I'll pay you back as soon as I get home, honest”-scammer that sits down at my table will have time to go through the spiel. A tip to would-be confidence tricksters: If you want to seem trustworthy, do not attempt to find out the mark's credit card number within 15 seconds of starting a conversation… I gulp down my food, pay (in cash) and rush to the train.
The Thalys train is full of loud and elated people, many with fancy digital cameras for some reason. Eventually we get to Cologne and after yet a while my sleeper train arrives. I am fascinated by the schedule, the train will continue from Cologne to Berlin, where, in the wee morning hours, it will be split into three parts, one going to Prague, one to Binz on Rügen, and one, my part, going west again to Kolding where it will be attached to another train coming from Munich and the results continue to Copenhagen. Appparently I am very tired as I sleep through all of this shunting.
I arrive in Copenhagen on time, stroll around the still smokeless main hall until my connection to Malmö arrives and then leaves. Lunch in Malmö and then the final leg to Stockholm. By now travel is taking its toll and my sensitivity to the X 2000 trains asserts itself—I'm seasick most of the way. Still, by mid-afternoon I am home and back in the office the next day.
The journey started on a Saturday with the usual 12:20 train from Stockholm C towards Malmö. X 2000—wireless Internet and power plugs by every seat. I crammed as much preparatory material as I could and jotted down comments and questions.
In Malmö I grabbed a quick sandwich and changed to a regional train to Copenhagen. In the train I found a DSB inflight magazine (or whatever the train equivalent is called) and I impressed myself by working out most of the crossword puzzle, in Danish. (The bit that stumped me was in which city Frasier lives. Seattle, it turns out.)
When I entered the main hall at Copenhagen H I just stopped at the top of the escalator and stared. There were large signs up saying that since a few days earlier smoking was prohibited in the main hall. In Denmark! Seriously I had thought this would be the last bastion of bastards, but no, they too have succumbed to civilization. Admittedly not all present had quite grasped the concept yet, but the difference to my previous visit was clear as day. On the other hand it was bleeding cold in the hall, all open to the outside and no heating, I gather. I bought a few postcards to send to neglected friends.
Well, with time (and on time! quite unusual for DB) arrived my next train, a sleeper bound for Cologne. I had a berth in one of those double-decker sleeper cars and even had the compartment all to myself. To my annoyance the shaving power outlet in the compartment didn't actually have any power, so I forewent the laptop and instead spent my time reading some paper-based articles. Soon, though, I folded out the berth and tried to sleep while the train juddered through Germany. In the morning I arrived, breakfasted and showered, in Cologne, posted my postcards, got some new ones and caught the Thalys train for Paris. No power here either, so I read some more papers. 
At Gare du Nord I was confused about how to proceed until I figured out that the unobtrusive boxes by the walls were ticket machines and thus managed to get into the Metro part of the station and after a bit of trial and error got to the right platform. (I'm not sure what the problem was, but I found it difficult to work out what trains went where.) To my great surprise they were running double-decker trains underground. I caught one of these the two stops to Gare de Lyon. I had plenty of time before the next train, so I had lunch at the station restaurant and then wandered about the scores of shops in the station, trying to find one that sold stamps. None did.
Eventually I proceeded to the southbound TGV train. Oh, a double-decker again. However, I ended up on the lower level and by the aisle, so I had restricted outside vision. And no power for the laptop. I read about compiler theory and snoozed while the train zoomed by the edges of Massif Central. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground and fir forests. For some reason this surprised me, I don't know why I didn't expect fir trees in France. Towards sundown we reached the Mediterranean by Marseille, but continued eastwards without stopping there. Finally we stopped in Antibes and I got off. Should I eat or proceed to the hotel first? I knew that the hotel did not serve dinner, so I checked out a café near the station. It looked too smoky for my tastes, so I decided to find a taxi instead. The taxis of the town seemed to be elsewhere, but eventually one turned up and off we drove up into the hills beyond Antibes. In my hotel I was greeted by a porter looking and behaving much like John Le Mesurier. I was immediately identified, which was rather gratifying, but later on I found there weren't very many staying at the hotel, so it was no problem to figure out who I was. It must have been the off-season, as the hotel turned out to be better than its two stars would suggest.
I got a very thorough and actually quite useful introduction to the hotel and the area. In particular, for dinner I was directed to Restaurant La Table in another hotel nearby, carefully marked out on a map. (A photocopied sketch, to be precise, there does not actually seem to be a map of Sophia Antipolis as such, indeed you will not find it on many maps at all. I believe it is not a geographical region as such, but simply the group of high-tech organisations located in the municipalities of Valbonne, Mougins, Biot, Vallauris and Antibes.)
I walked along the unlit roads (at least they had pavements) to the restaurant some ten minutes away and then had to spend ten more minutes figuring out how to enter the carefully fenced-off hotel area. Finally I got the gate to magically roll open. The restaurant was well-lit and had a non-smoking section that actually seemed to be smoke-free. The waitress looked very much like an ex-colleague of mine. I wonder why I saw so many lookalikes all of a sudden, perhaps the modeller at the company producing my life is running out of face ideas. The food was good but the dessert to die for. The French, they do know their desserts.
The next morning, breakfast with croissants, yey! And the breakfast area is non-smoking, double-yey! Then I read the local paper, Nice Matin. Much excitement in France, beginning February 1st, smoking will be prohibited in all public places. Beginning January 1st 2008, smoking will be prohibited in all restaurants. My mind boggles, is this France? Can the leopard in fact change his shorts? Will I in fact be able to go places and eat in peace and quiet all over Europe soon?
In a euphoric cloud I grab my laptop and start the ascent to ETSI. It's half an hour's uphill walk, with nice views of the surrounding mountains, with concrete-and-glass buildings sticking up here and there. Apparently neobrutalism never went out of fashion here. In addition it's awfully cold, there's actually frost on the ground. I, who had hoped for balmy days by the Mediterranean, am a bit disappointed.
At ETSI I get my badge and locate the conference room where I will spend the rest of the week. Round table introductions of everyone in the new working group. A consumer representative, how unusual! Some are (politely?) enthusiastic about such a thing, others accept it without comment, a Chinese delegate is clearly skeptical. Things proceed, I desperately try to absorb as fast as I can everything about procedure, plans, principles and in general what's going on. We all have our laptops up, and I notice many have privacy screens on them—plastic sheets that restrict the view of the screen to straight ahead. Many also have card readers and other security enhancements in their laptops. For my part I have Wikipedia up and check up unfamiliar terms at disconcertingly frequent intervals.Finally lunch, at the adjacent France Telecom canteen. Then back to work again. In the afternoon I'm feeling rather empty-headed and am grateful when our sessions end, others just continue to other sessions late into the evening. Documents are produced, revised and commented. I make comments every now and then and perhaps I even cause the generation of a new work item. I decide that apparently I Make A Difference. I go for dinner at La Table and then to bed. So the week goes. On Thursday when I get to La Table in the evening, they no longer ask me if I want a smoke-free table as the entire restaurant is smoke-free now—why wait an extra year?
Friday is a short day ending at 15:15; I walk back to my hotel room and fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon.
Saturday morning is early awakening, pack the last things and take a taxi down to Antibes. For some reason I cannot leave with the TGV from here, but instead have to take a regional train to Toulon. The regional train is a double-decker, but fairly full. I end up in a seat where the folding table does not stay up but heavily smacks me on the knees every time I return it to the upright position. I try to lock it in place with the handle of the cabin bag.In Toulon I decide to have lunch and seat myself outside the Café de la Gare. They don't really serve lunch yet, but seeing my obvious hunger the waitress relents and I get my escalope de volaille. It's definitely the best main course I've had all week. I am very satisfied and sit and bask in the sun a bit until it's time to catch the train.
This time I get to ride on the top level and enjoy an excellent view of the Rhône valley while trying to write poetry. Then Gare de Lyon and double-decker metro to Gare du Nord. There I decide to have dinner at a bar in the station. This was apparently a mistake. The food is OK, once it arrives, but service is extremely slow. I cannot avoid the suspicion that this is so that the “I've lost my ticket, would you please lend me a couple of hundred euro so I can buy a new one, I'll pay you back as soon as I get home, honest”-scammer that sits down at my table will have time to go through the spiel. A tip to would-be confidence tricksters: If you want to seem trustworthy, do not attempt to find out the mark's credit card number within 15 seconds of starting a conversation… I gulp down my food, pay (in cash) and rush to the train. The Thalys train is full of loud and elated people, many with fancy digital cameras for some reason. Eventually we get to Cologne and after yet a while my sleeper train arrives. I am fascinated by the schedule, the train will continue from Cologne to Berlin, where, in the wee morning hours, it will be split into three parts, one going to Prague, one to Binz on Rügen, and one, my part, going west again to Kolding where it will be attached to another train coming from Munich and the results continue to Copenhagen. Appparently I am very tired as I sleep through all of this shunting.
I arrive in Copenhagen on time, stroll around the still smokeless main hall until my connection to Malmö arrives and then leaves. Lunch in Malmö and then the final leg to Stockholm. By now travel is taking its toll and my sensitivity to the X 2000 trains asserts itself—I'm seasick most of the way. Still, by mid-afternoon I am home and back in the office the next day.
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