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’tis the season to be gaming…

Every year, it seems that more and more good games come out to take up my time, especially at the end of summer…

So, right now I’m playing both Bioshock and Zelda: Twilight Princess. I’m certain MooBob42 will come by and raid my room soon if I don’t finish this game and return it to him! I only just got out of the underwater temple, and I hear that’s about halfway through the game. I’m 20 hours in, so that sounds about right.

Bioshock is… disturbingly fun. Between the "Lost" like mystery of what the heck happened in Rapture, to the survival-horror like whispers and splicers jumping out from the shadows and finally, the "big daddy" minibosses that basically kill me a half dozen times before I can take them out, it’s a lot of fun. The little sisters are a pretty disturbing concept, zombie little girls that you can either kill or rescue. Seems that the muggle media is already picking it up as another sign that video gamers are evil!

Next week: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Halo 3 at the end of September. What can I say, I like FPS with stories! And I still need to start a half-dozen RPGs before school starts!

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iPhone vs. Smartphone

Fast post comparing the Apple iPhone to my old Motorola MPx220 Smartphone

iPhone Advantages

  • Actually does video playback decently
  • Syncing podcasts and video podcasts is nice in getting new material automatically
  • Google Maps is much better compared to the Smartphone version
  • The web browser is usable for all sites instead of a select few that work with the Opera Mini browser
  • The large screen makes showing off photos a lot nicer
  • Camera does not take photos that are total crap… They are merely slightly crappy
  • Onscreen keyboard is much more usable compared to T9 on a keypad
  • The iPhone can open many files, including Word, Excel, PDFs, etc. from email attachments! I could never do this by my smartphone! The stupid thing would not let me save the attachments to the phone memory!

iPhone Problems

  • No automatic switching of ringing profiles whenever you have a meeting scheduled
    • The iPhone has a physical switch that has to be flipped instead
    • Windows Mobile Smartphones have had this functionality since 2004!
  • Calendar synchronization is broken
    • Looks like a bug in iTunes. The appointments you make in iPhone will be synced to Outlook, but any appointments made in Outlook will not be synced to the iPhone
  • Lack of 3rd party applications, so no fun games, or other funny applications like tip calculators. This can be mitigated by using web apps, but the load time over the EDGE network does make loading these apps significantly slower.
  • No "To Do" list, no syncing of notes.
    • Even though the iPhone comes with a "Notes" program, there seems to be no way to get anything you type on the iPhone off to your computer

Overall, iPhone is great for fun use, but I wouldn’t use it in a business environment just yet. The Calendar synchronization bugs are a huge issue as one significant part of iPhone functionality is simply broken. The lack of full Microsoft Exchange support is something that also needs to be fixed before it can be taken even semi-seriously in the corporate environment.

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About the French/Parisians…

Some interesting observations about Parisians, or possibly about the French in general…

  • PDAs (Public Displays of Affection) are common. Since arriving, I’ve seen couples french kissing in the middle of a crowded Metro while standing between lots of other strangers, couples with their hands in each other’s back pockets, couples hugging in the middle of the park, couples laying down and kissing each other while lying down in the grass, lesbian couples kissing each other right in the middle of the store as they change shifts…
  • The French like their bread. Every evening, I’ve seen people walking away from the Metro, on their way home carrying a couple of loafs of bread under their arm. Breakfast, lunch and dinner all have bread of some sort
  • In fast-food/street restaurants, it is customary to just leave after you finish your meal and let the staff clean up. This is in line with the rest of the world, but conflicts with the U.S. way of doing things where the patrons are expected to clean up. I wonder why the U.S. has the custom of cleaning up after yourself?
  • Eating takes forever here… 2 hour lunches, 3 1/2 hour dinner… when do they find time to do anything? It’s nice and relaxing, but sometimes I do want to go somewhere after I finished dinner! On Thurs night, I wanted to do some shopping after dinner, but when dinner takes 3 1/2 hours, it makes it hard to make your next appointment!
  • Service varies hugely, both in restaurants and other places. At some restaurants, I’ve had waiters doing their best to introduce the food, even when speaking broken English, teaching how to eat something, while other restaurants, where the waiter actually knows perfect English, they don’t help out at all, take forever to bring stuff you ask for, even when you’re trying to pay the bill. I’ve had hotels where they bend over backwards to make your stay enjoyable, while other places where you can barely get them to accept your room key when you are dropping them off. One of our profs explains it as the French being a people of extremes, wanting to takes both the good and the bad, where they would not be able to appreciate good things unless they experienced some bad, while Americans like to standardize things… I’m not sure… I think I prefer the minimum level for a standard, then be surprised when the minimum level is exceeded!
  • Beggars are annoyingly insistent here… Then again, I think this is only around the tourist areas. In many places, I’ve seen these young, waif-like girls walking around barefoot, dressed in rags and running up to people asking "Do you speak English?" If you look at them or answer them, they hold up a piece of paper as though expecting you to read it and respond in some way. I’ve actually never seen anyone respond to them yet, and I’m wondering how effective they are, but I’ve seen them at three tourist attractions and at the train station
  • Tourist vendors are also very insistent. When leaving the Eiffel tower, everyone on the elevator was raided by a group of street vendors selling cheap keychains and trinkets, running up to you and virtually yelling in your face "1 euro for two!" I think I counted 2 vendors for every passenger, with nobody buying! When visiting Montmarte, some weird vendor was approaching everyone and asking them to follow him to do something "related to the church". I saw that he was selling some weird string thing that goes around your wrist. The worst part was that these people were actually actively blocking your way, grabbing onto your arm and not letting you proceed. Such behavior would probably end with a fight in the U.S. I had to fight my way through these people twice in an hour. The first I just turned and walked in a different direction before he could catch up to me, but the second I had to actually shout down before he would back off.
  • The French can be very friendly, and extremely unfriendly and snobbish… it all varies and depends on who you talk to, how you talk to them, and who knows what else…
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Last days in Paris

I’m now in London, having taken the EuroStar train under the English Channel.

Let’s see… the last two days in Paris were pretty wild, even as we were wrapping up our study program. On Thursday, we visited one of L’Oreal’s manufacturing facilities on the outskirts of Paris. They have a nice auditorium for hosting guests and making presentations, not too surprising since they are a large company. The facility itself was mostly a "no photos" place since actual work goes on here. Inside the buildings, we were on a raised platform overlooking the manufacturing facility. This was an assembly facility for L’Oreal’s Garnier brand where hair coloring kits and skin care products are assembled. I’m surprised at how many brands L’Oreal owns, including Lancome, Maybeline and even does stuff for other brands.

I’m sure everyone has seen pictures or videos of manufacturing facilities before… lots of machines, with very few people walking around. At this site, there were very few humans working, the machine almost fully automated, pulling supplies out from crates, performing everything from filling the bottles, grouping the necessary components for hair color kit together, to boxing it all up, assembling cartons and putting it all together on a pallet. There’s even a complicated machine that does nothing but tilt a box on its side, and another machine that makes sure bottles and bottle caps are all lined up in the right direction! It’s quite hypnotic to watch the machines at work, churning out hundreds and thousands of completed products. The only time I saw a human get involved was when refilling the supplies, or when a machine had a rare jam.

For fun stuff, I broke away with a few friends that night to go see the current show at the Moulin Rouge, "Faerie!"  We managed to sneak in to the 11pm showing, last show of the night, and when I say sneak in, I mean it! (Ask me about this sometime 😉 ) This was a strictly no photos affair and I saw them asking people to check cameras at the reception. After all, this is a topless show! Still, that didn’t stop people from taking photos using cell phone cameras… ahh, technology. The show itself was quite impressive, with a stunning display of aerobics and gymnastics, and the actresses were quite… talented. One particularly impressive performance was of a mostly naked girl inside a raised glass tank full of water swim-dancing with snakes.

Between acts, they had a few comedy scenes come in for the intermissions. They were quite funny, with little-to-no speaking, and reaches out to the very international crowd. You can also get the gist of the storylines as they are pretty dramatic in their motions, even if you can’t understand the French songs. The show ended with the traditional cancan.

Friday was the last day of class. I was expecting to be completely out of it in the morning since we had 4 hours of lectures, and on average, each of us only got about 4 hours of sleep, but our lecturers were quite interesting and held our attention for the entire time! We finishes with ESCP-EAP with a nice buffet lunch, followed by an informal certificate presentation ceremony for each of us. Most of the class then went to Versailles for a quick tour, but since I had already been there, I decided to go to Montmarte instead.

Montmarte is on a small hill on the north side of Paris, with a cathedral at the top. It’s quite an impressive building, one you can see from almost anywhere in Paris and has one of the better views of the city. Unfortunately, it was raining, so I didn’t take that many photos. Strangely, I seem to always hit a church during mass! The streets around Montmarte had lots of small shops and souvenir stores. Oh, one more thing, apparently a big sale takes place in France every year starting on the 26th or so, with prices being cut by up to 50%! Many clothing stores and more had lots of things for sale, and the Parisians were out in force to snap up bargains!

IMG_0665 From Montmarte, I walked up the street to the Moulin Rouge to get a photo of the famous windmill since I didn’t bring my camera the night before. As you can see, the weather isn’t too good, with rain coming on and off throughout the day. The area around the Moulin Rouge is the Paris red-light district, lots of strip clubs, lap dances, and various sex shops all around the area, with a few people trying to drag you in. It was getting a little annoying trying to dodge people after a while. I guess when they see a male tourist wandering around alone, they assume he’d be a customer.

After a brief rest at the hotel, it was out again for the evening, meeting up with most of the class for a cruise around Paris and our final dinner together. Quite ironically, the cruise was the last thing I did in Paris, getting a final look around the city and seeing all the sights I’ve visited over the last two weeks one last time. I guess if you’re coming to Paris for the first time, it would be a better idea to do the cruise first 🙂

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Brussels & the EU parliament

Long day today, starting out with a 6:30am Metro ride to the train station, then a 1 1/2 hour ride to Brussels to visit the EU parliament. We took the TGV, the Europe high-speed train cutting through the country side at ungodly speeds. I guess I’m used to these high speed trains now after spending time on the Japanese shinkansen, so it wasn’t that big of a treat, but I still like the convenience of taking trains instead of planes.

We all brought our passports, thinking that we’d need them for entry into the EU parliament building, or simply into Belgium since that is another country, but to our surprise, we ended up in Belgium without crossing any visible border, just showing up in the middle of Brussels when our train arrived. I guess the borders in the EU really have been torn down!

The morning started with two lectures on the layout of the EU government, the parliament, commissioners and role everyone plays. The bad news with starting at 6:30am in the morning is that virtually everyone was half asleep. During the lecture after lunch, I had to dig up some caffeine stimulation in order to stay awake, bad combination. I’m also getting completely overwhelmed by the amount of drinking going on here, wine, rum, beer, all in the middle of the day. I got overwhelmed by the little bit of wine I drank at the hosted lunch and started to feel dizzy by 1pm 🙁

In the afternoon, we got a rare chance to see the EU parliament in action. They actually let us into the parliament’s debating chamber when the session was going. We got to see the German chancellor giving her speech, and the signing of a new agreement to eliminate cell phone roaming between EU members. (At least, I’m pretty sure this is what it was. Need to double check). Here’s a photo of the chamber just before they signed the agreement. You can see the reporters all lining up in front of the table preparing to take photos.

IMG_0603

What’s also neat is that they have translators for all languages of the EU working behind the glass windows surrounding the chamber, with headsets available for everyone to listen in their preferred language. It’s incredible how a union of this many different countries, cultures, languages can work together so well.

In late afternoon, we had some time to roam around historic Brussels. Having no clue IMG_0611 as to what to do or where to go, we followed our guide through the city until we arrived at what was obviously a tourist region. This surprisingly church-like and old building turns out to be the city hall.

The only other "tourist" thing we did was to visit… erm… this statue of a boy pissing… yup, this is apparently one of the major tourist attractions in Brussels. Don’t ask me why, I’ll probably go figure it out sometime when my brain actually works. IMG_0631 Interestingly, every French person who we told about our short trip to Brussels knows about this statue, so there must be some sort of story behind it. Directly next to this statue is a store that sells… chocolate versions of this statue. Almost feels a little surreal.

There wasn’t that much time left after arriving at the historic downtown region, so after eating some Belgium waffles, drinking Belgium beer, and buying some Belgium chocolate, it was back on the train to return to Paris. Slept the whole way back…

Just two more days in Paris, then it’s off to London for different adventures!

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School in Paris

I’ve been slacking a little on the blogging, but that’s mainly cos I’ve had a crazy schedule, early morning to late nights! Just some fast impressions here while my brain still works. I’ve taken some notes, and I’ll probably post more in detail once I get more time.

Day 1: Visiting Atos-Origin, an IT Service Integrator firm, handles all IT for the Olympic games. Very impressive presentation. The overall impression I received from their IT services was that they tend to be very risk-adverse, which is good considering the impact of screwing up the Olympic games, and they are proud of working closely with the public sector, including the French version of Google Earth, IGN.fr

The day continued with a visit to the Chamber of Commerce, in a historical building that looked like it was another tourist palace! Current impressions: The Vice-Chairman of the Paris Chamber of Commerce & Industry in charge of Education & Training is doing his best to express the welcome of Americans to France, extremely friendly. He, and the presenters, were pushing the image that Paris is technologically advanced, including in the IT/software fields, biotech, and animation/entertainment. The fact that they are trying to push French as a business language is interesting as I haven’t seen that happening much in the U.S., where English is the primary language, and people from other countries still use English to conduct business. I also find it interesting that the government helps out with businesses and innovations, funding research labs and "Tech Clusters" to help new ideas get off the ground, but the lack of angel investors in France prevents many ideas from launching. Many innovators are leaving France to SV in order to obtain funding for their ideas

An interesting takeaway from the dinner I got from Professor Piret (I think) was the idea that combining knowledge of two different fields in a single mind is what makes each individual very valuable to a company. Two people with specialities can get together, but since they do not share a common point of view, they would not have as many insights, or be as productive as one person who can see two different fields. This is definitely something I’ll have to investigate in enhancing my own career.

There is a "wealth tax" in France, 0.55% of your net worth from over 700,000 euros. A lack of investors could be simply that the wealth leaves the country once they hit the wealth tax!

Day 2: Visiting BNP Paribas, the largest bank in the Eurozone. Our host was the CEO & President of BNP’s new technology subsidiary that is based in the U.S. The banking industry here is very risk adverse, not wanting to compromise on security for the convenience of their customers. Also interesting is that the French are very brand loyal, staying members of a single bank for their entire lives, even when they may work for a rival bank! Competing on services may just not be something that is necessary since all banks have the same service set, and you have customers basically for life! Still, perhaps competing on services during the "customer attraction" points as identified in the presentation might be something worth investigating.

Final stop of day two was at ESCP-EAP, the European school of business. An incredible campus right in the middle of Paris. One thing that struck our whole group was how young everyone was, in their early 20s, unlike the typical U.S. MBA candidate. The internship here is where they get their foothold into their first jobs. Professor John Kennedy gave us a good overview of the France economy. Some interesting points: Employing people in France is expensive, with an additional 40% of the base salary going to social security in France. Due to this added cost, companies expect higher productivity, and invest significantly in capital equipment(technology). With a higher productivity, we end up with less employment, and hence, high unemployment (21+% for the under-25 crowd!) This is leading to young adults leaving for places like London in order to find jobs to survive.

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Paris – Food Blog!

A long delayed post about food! After all, the French are supposed to be great cooks, right? So where is all the food?

The first few days, food wasn’t that impressive… a panni for lunch, steak & frittes for dinner, nothing out of the ordinary… It was hard to find food at all, much less good food… until I figured out the problem. Being used to eating right around sunset, I had been delaying dinner until just about when restaurants were closing! 8, 9pm is too late for a decent meal, and sunset isn’t until 10pm. More effort is necessary to get to restaurants in time for dinner!

About restaurants… I’m not sure, but I think the word "Brassiere" means restaurant in French since I’m seeing that word everywhere. Their restaurants tend to have a small indoor, and a large outdoor section just on the street where you can sit down and just watch traffic flow by. Waiters are friendly and speak limited English unless you’re right next to a tourist area.

IMG_0011 First "interesting" food item, Forie Gras and Millie Fille, two pattie dishes that are served with bread. Normally a starter item, they make a good mid-afternoon snack. The forie gras was among the best that I’ve ever had, and paired with lightly toasted bread, was just heavenly. This was at a small cafe near Versailles.

For dinner, Steak Tartare, that is, raw beef! IMG_0057This dish actually looks very daunting! I mean, look at it! It looks just like raw minced beef with a raw egg on top! I wasn’t exactly sure how to start on this, but after just digging in, it turned out to be very good! The various pickles around the beef do a good job in contrasting with the taste, and the egg provides just enough moisture to make it roll off your tongue. Also, look at the presentation of this dish, every component carefully laid out around the main course.

IMG_0249 With a little time to burn before tackling the Eiffel tower, dinner consisted of escargot. I was expecting this dish to be served in a specialized dish, with the snails already out of their shells, but in France, they are served inside the shells! The shells themselves are filled with the cooked snail soaking in butter and garlic, making a very tasty appetizer. You have to go in there and dig the snail out yourself! The waiter recommended that the garlic & butter sauce be used with the bread for even more flavor.

Oh yeah, dining in France is a very slow affair… From what I’ve seen, many Parisians sit down and spend at least an hour, if not more on a single meal. They’ll sit, talk, read, smoke, or just relax while looking out on the street, and the waiters will just let them sit and not disturb them, none of this "how is your meal" business like in the U.S. If anything, the way I’m eating is much too fast. We’ll sit down, order, eat, ask for the bill, pay and leave in the time it takes for a Parisian to go through their appetizer!

One cute little thing about presentation… On the way back to the hotel from Les Invalides, I stopped by a small bakery/pastry store on the way back to the hotel and IMG_0533 bought a chocolate eclair (one of my desert weaknesses!) for a late afternoon snack. Instead of simply dumping the eclair into a bag, or just handing it to me since I wanted to eat it right there, the waitress wrapped it up elaborately in paper that would almost be origami! There’s an eclair sitting at the bottom of that pyramid!

Alright, that’s it for now. Should have more interesting stories next week, especially since I’m supposed to be having a formal dinner as part of the study abroad program! I wonder what food in London will be like…

Oh yeah! Nearly forgot… every hotel I’ve been staying at so far includes breakfast. It appears that a standard French breakfast includes corrisont, bread, orange juice, coffee or tea, plus French bread with either jam, or cheese, and sometimes a hard boiled egg. Quite a breakfast, though very bread heavy!

Final thing… as part of the study abroad program, a few companies, and the local business school here, ESCP-EAP have been hosting us for lunch. The ‘take out’ lunch box they serve here is incredible! Served in a huge box, with professional placemat, excellent presentation, an actual glass cup for water… I can’t imagine anything similar in the U.S. Waiters on Wheels looks worse than McDonalds! And a ‘buffet lunch’, which was really embarrassing… we descended upon the buffet area like a pack of ravenous dogs, grabbing everything, piling the plates up, preparing to stuff ourselves with just that… Then the host comes around and tells us that it was just the appetizer course, and that the main course would be served in a few minutes, followed by desert and coffee. They eat right out here!

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Shopping, Fashion & Paris

So Paris is the fashion capital of the world, oui?

The weather wasn’t that good today either, with overcast skies, not worth visiting any major sites, not to mention I’m running out of sites to visit! Montmarte is worth visiting during a sunny day when you can get good photos of the city, and I’m going to be staying near Bastille at my next hotel, so there’s no point making a special trip out there. Shopping in the Latin Quarter would mostly be outdoors, and I had enough of getting caught in the rain already, so it was back to the Opera district to do some indoor shopping!

The French department store, Printemps seems to cater heavily to tourists. They sponsor the maps that every hotel gives out to their guests, and offer a 10% discount if you bring your passport. They also have easy processing for the 12% VAT refund, and have a special Takashimaya area for Japanese tourists! Printemps itself is pretty large, occupying three buildings, split into men’s, women’s and home furnishings. The store is actually a historical building, with marble signs and stained glass along the outsides of the building, but inside being a complete department store, about 6 levels in each building.

Interestingly, the French make it a point to display the brand names of all the brands on a level, making it easy for you to find things. Of course, Printemps was catering to the brand-conscious, so it was almost like visiting brand-name stores. There was one floor that was labeled "Designer Fashion" and every item there was at least 400+ euros… designed by famous designers? On the other floors, there were other, cheaper brands like Nike, Converse, and Levis. Those floors were more crowded with Parisians actually doing shopping, looking for deals. Interestingly, there was a floor dedicated to the "Classics", where it seemed that people over 50+ found clothing that they liked. The floors seemed to be divided up by function, with a "fashion" floor, a "city wear" floor that seemed to be full of office clothing, and a "urban wear" floor with casual clothing.

Parisians do dress up when they go shopping. Tourists were easily picked out from the crowd, the ones shabbily dressed or carrying backpacks! The Parisians were dressed neatly, hair combed, often in long-sleeve shirts, casual slacks, nice dresses, high heels, or with a sweater fashionably slung across the back. I did see a few sports jackets over shirts and jeans from some young men as well.

Along the side streets were smaller stores with much more reasonable prices, and a different selection. I still think this was a major tourist region, but there were more locals walking around and actually shopping around there. A brief walk from the Printemps shopping area was the Opera region, where a beautiful Opera house was… undergoing renovations >.< Oh well, didn’t take too many pictures, and didn’t bother going in. Along the steps of the Opera house, there were many people just hanging out, Parisians seemingly waiting for friends to show up, and lots of tourists standing around and taking photos. There were two, what looked like Indian girls running around barefoot trying to talk to tourists, asking "Do you speak English?", looking like they were begging. Most people ignored them. A tour bus stopped in front of the Opera house, and what looked like American tourists poured out of the bus, lined up neatly on the steps, took a photo, and got back onto the bus… It was the weirdest thing, and one major reason why I’d hate to go on a group tour. Oh yeah, and almost everyone on the tour was at least 50+.

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Business, the EU and France

This week, it seems that there is an EU referendum, some sort of major meeting in Brussels. It appears that there is a large debate/issue between Poland and Germany in the EU government. Poland is not happy, arguing with Germany over some issue, even bringing up World War II as the reason why their population is low!

Seems like the EU is not as united as they appear outside of the continent. Britain is supporting Poland, and the previous road blocker, France, is working with Germany to try to resolve issues… Quite an interesting union, treaties and various issues that each country tries to fight for, or threatens to withdraw from the union to get what they want. Lots of compromises…

Apparently the issue is to do with foreign job policies & powers of the government. Poland is afraid that since they have a smaller population, they will end up losing out since Germany has a larger population that they can export. They are also afraid that since their government does not have a constitution, that the EU constitution will end up overriding their rights. Britain is afraid that the foreign policies and social security systems will be overridden by the EU systems.