Joyeur

Back in the air again on my way to Dallas this week. Staying at a hotel in Richardson called “The Richardson”. Telecomm corridor and all that. Lots of packets moving around. Meet for dinner?

We got back from France last week. What a trip! I’m normally in bed by 10 PM in California. Its so dark. In France, it was 3 AM. And sometimes I fell asleep right there in the bistro, a double serving of Armagnac or Calvados right in front of me. Boy what Paris can do to a man. But what shopping!

When I arrived in Paris, my bag had not. The luggage attendant even came up to me saying “Mr Young” and told me my bag was still out in the system somewhere. Uh? So I had to go clothes shopping. We found what looked to me like the French version of Old Navy: Cielo. I hate to try on clothes in a store. When I got back to the hotel I found out size equivalents (even though printed right on the label) between US and French sizes are not precise. The shirts I bought fit. So did the socks. The jeans barely fit over my ankles.

We stayed at the Hotel-le-Senat, a very respectable boutique hotel near the Palais Luxembourg. I was in a room that had an upstairs and a down stairs. Off the upstairs was a small “terrace” with a wonderful view of the Latin Quarter, the Louvre, Sainte Chappelle, and Notre Dame. Off in the distance to the left was the top of the Eiffel Tower. I got very uncomfortable standing on that terrace with five other people: especially since the whole thing seemed to sway and we were on the sixth floor. But that was at 3:30 AM.

To paraphrase my two year old daughter: “Paris yummy”. I was drawn a few times to the “Bistro Mazarin” for its liberal pours and amazing french onion soup. We also enjoyed meals at “Les Editeurs” and a turn of the century (19th to 20th) bistro whose name loosely translates to “Root Soup”. We had suckling milk pig in a restaurant down in a cave (name? something about a roasted cow) just across the Seine from the Ile-de-la-Cite washed down with some very good Bordeaux and Burgundy. The meal started with a very nice Chateuneuf du Pape. Cheese plate after cheese plate. The prix-fixe menus are adventurous. I’m a natural conspiracy theorist, though, and began to look sideways at menus offering: green salad, carpaccio of river fish livers(!), steak frite, cheese, creme brulee. One of these things does not belong. That’s like a childs menu that includes: mac and cheese, dinosaur chicken nuggets, apple sauce, oysters on the half-shell, hot dog, cheeseburger.

My travel companions were either atheists or confused technocrats so I had to visit the beautiful churches myself. I’m always struck by the relative state of disrepair of French churches compared to a country such as Italy or Mexico, even. The church of St Suplice has a meridian line place at a diagonal across the transept of the building. There is also a note denying any connection between the line and Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code”.

We met a number of Joyent customers. All very cheerful. Geeks are the same the world over. Very declarative. 1s and 0s. Shy about taking a drink at first. But passionate about the second one and through to the end. We even had Sabina and Keith come down from southern Germany to be at one of the dinners. Sabina is an oncologist in the Lake Constance region of Germany. She told me she works many different positions as a doctor. She’s strictly an end user of our stuff.

Which gets me back to why we were in Paris. While we spoke English at the dinners, there’s nothing like saying “couchon du lait”, “roudenons aux monsieur”, or “zapateros de la corona en suisse”. I just can’t translate those parts.