skating, databases

I went skating on Friday night. Ok, so since I got back to Paris I've been skating everywhere to avoid taking the metro, but this was special: a chance to really test out my new wheels and bearings, and my first "randonnée" since getting back to France!

Right, um, not that you know what that is, or care, but I'll tell you anyway. It's basically 5-10 thousand inline skaters whizzing around the streets of Paris every Friday night. Lots of fun, really fast, occasional injuries. In short, it's soooo much cooler than going clubbing! (right ...)

I was at the head of the pack this time, and that meant seeing the streets empty ahead of me. It's funny seeing people dash one last time across the street as the onslaught of skaters arrives, it kind of looks like people dodging sniper fire or something, except that the only danger is getting stuck on the wrong side of the street for at least 15 minutes as the group goes by.

In other news, I'm still working hard on the database for my thesis, but yesterday I hit a milestone of finally having entered ALL the questionnaires! Now it's just a question of fixing all the little problems, doing something about missing data, and generally spending hours and hours and hours tweaking little bits of data, but at least I don't have to carry around any questionnaires anymore.

So that's my life right now: skating and databases. And the occasional cool movie with Claire and/or my roommate. And complaining about school. And worrying about the big thing on everyone's mind: What happens next??? What's the real world like again?

awesome apartment, brownies, presidential candidates, why I dislike French higher education, etc.

Hi all,

Wow, it's been a long time since I've written anything. And in case you've written me email, my apologies for not responding. Basically, it's really busy here. The highlights:

I now have an awesome apartment in the center of Paris (Oberkampf for those in the know), shared with a Scottish friend Carrie. It's a bit pricey but my life is oh so much nicer than it would be had I stayed at the Cité Universitaire, the hospital-style building (on the inside) where I lived last year. I have a nice kitchen, so I actually cook, the place is fully furnished, and there's even a fireplace. One of the neighbors also has an open wireless network. And since it's in something like the Mission of Paris (the bars and restaurants, not the immigrants), it's easy to get people to come over to our place for drinks or dinner or parties, or just go out nearby. It's really nice not having to go far to have a good time, and I can walk home at any hour! You should all be very jealous, because everyone here sure is. I'll put up photos one of these days.

What else ... school of course! Basically I'm sick of the place, but I'm really happy to see my friends again. Half the time we basically bitch about how sick we are of the place (Claire and I are masters of this), how crap the library is, and our post-grad school job hunt. They did however finally get decent brownies, for cheap, in the cafeteria, so that's a big step in the right direction. Claire is actually organizing a brownie tasting for my birthday, so we can really decide which place is the best in Paris.

Along with school of course goes work on my giant project from Colombia. This essentially is database work -- entering questionnaires, verifying the numbers, trying to fill in missing data. With 260 8-page questionnaires it goes kind of slowly. Hopefully cleaning up the database will only take another week or two.

Otherwise, I have a few good classes, and three crap ones. My Spanish class is especially heinous since it's ridiculously easy and the bastards (I'm not using this lightly here) in the administration won't let me skip one more level to get into a class where I could learn something and not automatically speak better than everyone else. I'm all in favor of having somewhat homogenous classes, but damn, at least make it worth my time. I usually spend the class reading or typing away on the computer because otherwise it's a total waste of my time.

Finally, France is as lovely as ever, but French politics are just annoying. The presidential election is coming up in a few weeks and Sciences Po (my school) managed to organize a forum with all the candidates. So I just saw Sarkozy, France's version of Bush, leave the building (he's really short), and got a few blury photos of Ségolène Royale, the hot socialist candidate, and hopefully I'll be there when Le Pen, the rightwing dude, gets egged in the middle of my school. That would be awesome!

So there you go. Sorry to have neglected you, my dear readers.