Marseille Gare

Marseille is a really cool place. Very busy, very multicultural, dynamic, a lot of history (that is very visible in the architecture), and quite naturally beautiful. I'm at the Gare right now waiting for my train home and -- marvel of technologies -- writing this on my phone. Marseille is exciting with people everywhere and a very clear cultural imprint from being closer to north Africa than to Paris (I'm pretty sure that's accurate..).. One interesting thing is that there are a ton of people here who don't seem to work. I mean, you see this everywhere to an extent but here in the city centre all the bars/cafes are filled all day long with people -- young and old -- sitting around drinking coffee. What a life...

The coolest thing happened yesterday. Around Marseille there are these "Calanques". I guess they're basically fjords and they're an amazing geographical phenomenon. I guess in essence they're like rocky small mountains that start near the coast and then on the other side the water has cut large inlets into them. I'm likely totally off with the terminology but whatever.. There's a picture on this post of the one we went to. Anyways, there are a number of them and each are different in their own way with respect to ease of access, beauty, activity (swimming, hiking, etc). So we went to one by taking the metro then the bus then about a 2 hour walk. But we wore flip flops (duh) so it was tough.. It was definite hiking territory. Anyways, we got down to the water, had a drink and then needed to take the long arduous journey back. We started walking way up up up and finally (not yet even probably 25% of the way there) had to take a rest on a rock. Cars are allowed to go down there and we'd seen lots of people trying to hitch hike out of there without much success. But after sitting down for about 1 minute, the very next car slowed down and offered us a ride. It was a couple and their little girl so seemed pretty safe (though at that point I likely would have gotten in any car).. Not only did they drive us over the mountain but all the way to the bus stop then they saw that the bus was coming so drove past it to the next stop so we wouldn't miss the bus. We got back to the hotel at about 6 whereas if we'd just walked out of there it probably would have been 8 or so before even making it to the bus stop. And they talked to us about how they were about to take a 3 week trip to Canada where they had rented a camper van to go across the country. Cool stuff.

Cycling Around Grenoble

Another post so soon! It must be some sort of miracle or freak of nature or who knows what.. Anyways, sometimes during the day I think of really good ideas to write about (really) but then by the time it's night time and I actually have some time to write on here then I usually forget everything. Oh well.. But the reason I'm doing another post SO soon is because I got the pictures off my phone (and on to my computer) that have been on there for a while and so it seemed like a good idea to put some of them on here.

Most of the pictures are from our bike rides but there are a couple of Instagram standard Will-and-Sandi posing-like pictures that I liked so I'll start with those. Standard Sandi-sitting-at-a-table picture at a café in Grenoble:

Me in front of some new-age-ish architecture in Grenoble:

The bike path that goes along the Isère:

Sandi on said bike path:

Again:

And again:

This was after a huge wind storm. Tons of giant trees had fallen down in the night and obstructed passage on the bike path. This is just one example (you can see the guy carrying his bike over the tree in the background). However, a few fallen trees didn't stop us (or others) and to give you an idea about how good they are with keeping these things maintained, the paths were completely cleared the next day:

Some mountains:

Scenery:

Sandi beside the river near our home:

At the top of a mountain south of Grenoble taking a rest after a hard climb:

Sandi making her way up the mountain:

Almost there:

At the top!

Scenery (with menacing sky):

Cool view:

On the Rue du 8 Mai 1945 on the 8th of May 2012:

Some friendly mountain animals:

More scenery:

Taking another well-deserved rest after another hard climb up a mountain:

And finally some more scenery...

Giro d'Italia, PhD defence, Marseille, Kalmar, etc.

Have you been watching the Giro d'Italia? Ryder Hesjedal has held the pink jersey (leader of the GC) on four separate occasions and he currently sits in second place 30 seconds back of the leader. With 4 stages to go (with the final stage being an individual time trial) he has a real chance to win. Before this year no Canadian had ever even led for any amount of time in the Giro. Today's stage didn't change anything at the top but the top contenders distanced themselves from the rest of the competition so -- barring any huge disasters -- Ryder should be able to comfortably finish no worse than 3rd. And he still definitely has a chance to win... On verra...

Despite our purchase of a super cool red-bordered Samsung HD tv, we haven't been watching the Giro on television. They only show it on Eurosport and we can't get that channel. In fact, we couldn't get it with our provider even if we wanted to pay extra for it (I read multiple forum posts on our Internet/TV provider and you definitely can't get Eurosport for some reason to do with licensing by the big media/provider companies... stupid monopolies! Many François will work on that??). However, we've been able to catch some of it on the Internet thanks to online streaming! Good old Internet...

Work is going not too badly. I'm still having some problems 'getting going' but things do seem to be progressing at least a little bit. It has also made me feel a little better (schadenfreude? not really because I guess the main thing is that it shows that it's hard) is that everyone seems to be having a hard time moving forward on this particular project. Interestingly, however, I'll be involved in another separate project that starts in July and I will be attending the project 'kickoff' in early July in Brussels.. not the most exciting place to go but it should be interesting. Tied in with that is that I have to come back to Canada for my thesis defence at some point. This has been dragging its heels forever it seems but hopefully some progress is finally being made. A lot of the details to do with it are driving me a little bit crazy but I can complain about them in more detail elsewhere. I just mention it here to complain a little more and to mention that I'm starting to get times filled up so that it will be harder and harder to find a good date to do the defence for everyone and obviously for me because it can't conflict with my work commitments in early July (for example) or... with our Ironman!

I found some good deals on plane tickets to Sweden the other day and when I checked yesterday the price had gone up by a little bit. I checked again today and they'd raise again a little bit so I took the plunge and purchased our tickets tonight for getting to Sweden in August! We'll be there for 2 weeks and have one week before the race and one week after the race. So, we fly out of Lyon on Sunday the 12th and fly back on the 26th. Exciting times! But I came to this by mentioning that this is ANOTHER complication for scheduling the defence. But, it had to be done as we registered for this race (by paying an exorbitant fee) several months ago and we've been training hard and sacrificing time on other things for quite a while as well (and will continue to do so) so there's no two ways about it! The absolute best would be to be able to do the defence in mid to late June but the chances of that happening are similar to the chances that Mike Weir will ever win another golf tournament!! HA!

More immediate exciting news. Next week I'll be presenting a paper for work that outlines the 'vision' for our project. It's just the 'vision' because we haven't come close to accomplishing that vision yet! But, I get to go to Marseille to do the presenting, the workshop where I'll be presenting takes place next Tuesday, and Monday is (as most days in May in France tend to be) a holiday. SO, Sandi and I will take the train to Marseille on Sunday and we'll come back Wednesday. It should be nice since it's finally fairly consistently warm here and even more so 'down south' so it will be like a real beach vacation! Of course I have to be at the conference all day Tuesday but Sunday and Monday should be fun (hoping for sunny weather).

Let's see... Since I'm on a roll and writing a lot I suppose I will continue, no matter how mundane the subject matter may reduce to. Last Thursday (a holiday, natch) we did our first outdoor swim in France at the Bois Français just outside of Grenoble. It's a bit like a Conservation Area like Guelph Lake or Elora Gorge and there are 4 lakes. One for swimming, one for fishing, one for canoing/kayaking/paddling of any kind, and one for waterskiing. They are quite small (especially the swimming one) but it's better than nothing. Anyways, we went and it was really quite nice because it wasn't THAT warm and it's still early in the season so there were hardly any people there and we threw on the wetsuits (with all park-goers staring intently) and did a few laps of the mini lake to get in around 2000m of lake swimming. We're hoping to go again tomorrow because out of the three sports that we're training for, swimming is definitely still my weakest and the hardest by far to get done around here and tomorrow is supposed to have nice weather so that is the plan! By the way, that is an actual picture of the BF from their website below..

Our new coffee machine is quite amazing. Now we have lattes for every breakfast and espressos when we get home. On the weekends we mainly drink coffee all day long. BUT there's an unfortunate problem (ugh). The machine works fine functionally (in that it makes amazing coffee) but it's supposed to tell us that it's out of coffee beans when it's out of coffee beans but it does not! So I called the guy where we bought it and we have a 2 year warranty but that doesn't mean they just give you a new one (of course not!). Instead, we have to take it to the SAV (service après vente) so they can fix it (free of charge, thankfully). However, we have to (1) get this giant thing there sans car; and (2) be without it for probably a full week. Ugh, it seems that whenever I buy something expensive it always has problems right away and then I get stressed about it and it's something else to worry about / deal with and it sucks. But, then I think about how we get to now "live an Italian lifestyle at home" (written word-for-word on the box for the machine) and I think 'I guess it's worth it'. By the way, this is our machine (although the one in this picture probably has the "replace beans in bean hopper" warning light working)... sigh...

Let's see... what else is new and exciting in the world? If Sandi and I had been alive in the 50s or 60s and come to live in France I think it would have been a lot cooler. There are of course many differences here compared to Canada but, for the most part, we can get any product or service that we're used to in Canada without any problems. It's even 10 times more so than it was when I lived in France just 13 years ago (wow -- I guess that's not "just" anymore.. 13 years??? insanity...). AND, all the products have English labels for the most part and it's just not nearly as different and I guess not as 'exotic' as one might think. The other thing is of course the Internet which I of course go on every day and I can read everything that's happening in Canada. I don't need to hear about big news in letters or wherever because I read the Globe&Mail online every morning. So I know that Harpo's still screwing us all over and wrecking everything (APU) and I know all about the Canadian that died on Everest, the kids striking in Quebec (thank god I finished at McGill 5 years ago now... wait.. THAT was 5 years ago? this is nuts...), the environmental destruction of Canada, and of course that LA will make it back to the stanley cup finals before Montreal. Of course there are some upsides in that it's much easier to stay in touch (eg. this blog) but maybe then it's not as meaningful. Due to the price coming down so much in communication I can call anyone in Canada for free. Back in the day it would have cost the Earth but therefore would have been a lot more special. Sometimes I call friends and they say "oh I better let you go because this must be costing you a lot".. I kind of want to say "oh don't worry it's worth it" but I tell them the truth and say "well, it's actually free..". Another upside is that we can watch House in French 5 days a week.

Here are some more pictures. First, here's me in our kitchen window drinking a Campari:

Next, here we are in our "ASPA Run" t-shirts that we got at the 10 k race we did a little while ago (this is -- of course -- AFTER the pictures that I posted last time of us actually RUNNING in the ASPA Run). Oh ya, this also gives a small glimpse of our living room.

And finally, here is a good old fashioned picture of some food that we made to show that we are still making some large amounts of tasty food at home. Burgers and fries with French beer (I'm pretty sure you can get 1664 at the Beer Store but it's much easier to get here so I guess that's kind of a neat thing...)

We'll try out best to take lots of pictures in Marseille and post them here. À la prochaine...

ASPA Run

Victory

It is hot. Like orca-hot. 31 degrees and sunny. Summertime, even. Just as an advanced warning, this 'photo blog' post will be fairly devoid of photos. But here is one:

So the France views are likely me (by the way these are the view statistics for this blog for yesterday), Canada is any one of you Canadian people whom I would expect to be reading this, but who are these mysterious Russians and single mysterious American? Strange, no?

By good friend Francois Hollande was victorious as you've no doubt heard. We're hoping he'll get right on giving us some extra holidays. I mean, next week I have to work Monday, Tuesday, AND Wednesday... Ugh...

Last weekend we went on a long bike ride through the mountains and did one short climb with an 18% grade. That may not sound like much but IT IS. In fact, it's insane. The famous Alpe d'Huez's most inclined section is only about 10.5%. I could do that on a unicycle!* It was crazy. We didn't get THAT high up, though. Grenoble is quite low in terms of elevation. We are at around 210m above sea level. At the peak of our climb we hit just under 1000m I THINK but definitely at least 700m because I saw a sign at one point. L'Alpe d'Huez, on the other hand, is between 1500 and 3000 m or something like that so although it's not necessarily the steepest, the climb is long and you get a lot higher. We're thinking of maybe going next weekend (not this weekend as in tomorrow/sunday but the NEXT) so hopefully that will happen...

We bought a coffee maker that is really amazing. It's essentially a gift from Xerox. I will post pictures soon.

* Actually I've never even tried to ride a unicycle, so maybe I couldn't.

La Fête du Travail and other great things about May in France...

Hello! First, I apologize that -- again -- it's been difficult for me lately to get around to posting some news/photos/&c. here. But here we are... Since the last post (where I believe I talked about our trip to Montpellier -- but I only 'believe' because I can't remember for sure and I'm too lazy to look. Actually, I don't know if 'lazy' is the correct word because I know that it would have been less work to go check than to write out this whole parenthetical explanation, but there you go...) things have continued to be going well. Two weeks after Montpellier we spent another long weekend in Avignon. I had a paper at the Workshop on Semantic Analysis in Social Media at the European Association of Computational Linguistics conference (or SASM/EACL, if you prefer). The workshop was Monday the 23rd of April so we went to Avignon on the Saturday morning and had a nice time over the weekend and then stayed for my conference. During that day Sandi got to do some more 'touristy' stuff and I presented my paper which went well. Avignon is quite a beautiful city (as it seems most French cities are) and we of course saw the famous Pont d'Avignon and the Palais des Papes. We again rented bikes to go around the city and we spent most of my April salary at an amazing restaurant called 'Les 5 Sens'. Absolutely incredible. Here are some pictures to back up my alleged stories...

Me drinking a coffee and eating a moelleux au chocolat

Me eating sushi just before taking the train home

Sandi in the sun just outside of the 'city centre' (completely surrounded by walls)

@ Les 5 Sens: Sandi with her appetizer

@ Les 5 Sens: Me with my appetizer (and wine)

My appetizer up close (smoked salmon with other delicious stuff)

Sandi's appetizer up close (stuffed [STUFFED!] mussels with other deliciousness)

@ Les 5 Sens: With our main courses

My main course (magret with other assorted delicious stuff)

Sandi's main course (some kind of casserole type thing with various meats, etc.)

One of our desserts (café gourmand)

Sandi @ O'Neill's Irish Pub (with Kilkennys)

Having lunch in front of the Pont d'Avignon

Le Palais des Papes

Biking on another pont in front of the pont d'Avignon

Dinner at a pizzeria on the island in the river

Sandi at same pizzeria with red highlights

Me just before my conference (looking very much like a conference-goer)

So there you go. But where was I? Let's see... In Avignon we also went to an Irish pub but this is in fact quite a French thing to do because there are several of them here in Grenoble and also quite a few that we saw in Avignon and they are generally quite packed.

Anyways, Avignon was really nice and at the end before we took the train home we had sushi at the Sushi Shop which is like a chain restaurant in France but it was actually quite good (for French sushi which generally isn't THAT amazing and is normally way more expensive than it should be and WAY more expensive than sushi is in Canada).

The weekend after Avignon -- which was last weekend -- was almost like a long weekend here but not quite. This past Tuesday was a holiday (la Fête du Travail) so a lot of people took the Monday off to make it a 4-day weekend. I didn't but it was fine because hardly anyone was at work on Monday and then Tuesday was off and it really felt like a Sunday so today felt like a Monday but somehow tomorrow is already Thursday! Great! AND, if that wasn't good enough, NEXT Tuesday is the exact same thing because it will be la Fête de la Victoire (end of world war 2). FURTHER, the week after Thursday will be a holiday because it's Ascension (40 days after Easter, I believe) but this time Xerox will close down for the Friday so EVERYONE gets a 4-day weekend at that point. So it's a great month here in France.

Now about the last weekend.. We did our first race in France and it was a good one. We ran in a 10 k race put on by the running club in Meylan (the city where I work just outside of Grenoble). It was a really good race that was put on really well and we got t-shirts and the organization was great and it was only 5 euros each!!! Most importantly of all, however, Sandi got 3rd place female so she won a bunch of stuff including a ski pass and some hand cream products and sun screen! We also both had pretty good times (under 45 minutes for 10k) and don't worry, I still managed to beat Sandi (even though I didn't get to go on the podium like she did!). On Sunday (the race was Saturday) we finally got to go for a long bike ride that we need to be doing for our Ironman training and we haven't been able to do for various reasons like the weather, etc. and we go to bike 100 km. It was really nice weather and we were really lucky (the rest of this week not so much so far).

Ok I guess that's it for now. We don't have any other trips planned any time soon except I will likely go to Marseille for work at the end of the month to present our project and our friend Thony will likely come to Grenoble for a visit at the start of June. We wanted to go to Italy for the 4-day weekend but the plane tickets are very expensive and the trains are not going well in Italy right now (constant strikes).. Also tonight is the debate between Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy with the final vote this Sunday (go Hollande [obviously])...

À la prochaine...