French Diary: May 16,17,18,2009

I have so much to write, Nice, Antibes , office but i prefer to read this ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

PS: Do not know why ..

French Diary: May 15,2009

May 15,2009                                                                                                                                       6:05p.m

It’s a strange irony. Right now, I am sitting with Issam Tahiri(a Morrocon guy who is my roommate in the office  and is pursuing his Masters in Morrocco.He is here for an Internship on wireless networks)  and we are in a talk about extra terrestrial people in MediaTek(a public center near our hostel, which is like a hub of social activities for people in Sophia , it contains a library, a computer café and lot of other things{ I have not explored it fully}).The irony is, the lecture is in French and it seems I am the Alien here J.All the people around me are listening to the task and I am the one playing with my laptop.

Today was a great( rather an important day) at office. I am increasingly into this belief that this intern could be the turning point of my life. I have always seen myself doing an MBA after my under grads, working in a company as a manager. But the more time I spent in office, more I am inclined towards research. I want to study well and gather as much as knowledge as possible over here.( I do not know whether these are permanent thoughts or transient ones). Today we had our first project meeting( Btw, I think I have not mentioned that I am a part of SPREADS project being carried out by MASCOTTE team. It is a three year project which began at sometime around December in 2008 and would research in areas of Peer to Peer Data Storage Systems and would study the feasibility of these systems under resource constraints like bandwidth). We had in the meeting, Michael Syska(the supervisor of

I was thrown out !!

Je ne connais pas francais!!

(I do not know french language)

I was working with two small windows. The one in which I was typing my diary and the other one, a notepad with the above written. So that if people at back or on my sides see me, they see this sign also and would have pity on me and allow me to continue with the laptop. But a lady in front almost turned back, and asked me to stop using my Laptop (Issam decoded her encrypted message to me) and I had to put the lid down L. Mr Sarkozy, please  take a note of this thing, you may call france as much multicultural and ethnic you want, but always add a post subscript with it” that they all speak French”. Anyway, I think I knew most of the things that were being taught (Extra Terrestrials  building the pyramids and other).(Btw, I did not leave the place right at the start of the talk, because we were sitting in the middle of a row, and I did not want to disturb so many people and Issam also told me that we are allowed to use our laptops in talks( which I did in one talk yesterday), so I thought it is better to stay here and utilize this time for blogging( plus I could see the animations that the guy was showing, he actually started in a great way using the themes of Superman and Star Wars to give his Introduction, so I thought that maybe I could grab some ideas)

So continuing from where I had left, We had in the meeting, Michel Syska(the supervisor of Nikhil), Frederic( my supervisor), Olliver Dale ( he is a really big guy) and Julien and Patricio( the two phd guys in the same project), Nikhil and me. Michel told us about the work that had been done on the project and what we would do during our internships.

Lunch: I think, Today I had lunch with the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in person( again this could be a transient thought). She is from Argentina and knows good English and is pursuing her undergraduate studies over there. She is basically here for an internship like me and would leave on July19,2009.( very close to my date). We talked about the educational systems in our countries and lots of other stuff. She is not in our group but usually have lunch with our team. She lives in Nice on a rented appartmentL ( and not in CIV) { I am seriously thinking about the idea of living in Nice}. We talked a lot and when we were going back( me, Issam and Nikhil had left the table early, so I was not going back with her), I realized I had forgot to ask her name L.  Anyway, two months !!!

Week End: So, finally a weekend. We plan to go to Nice( Shit ! I just realized she lives in Nice !! If we go there, we could invite her along with us!!) or may be Cannes this weekend( Cannes film festival is going on) and next week, we have a holiday on Thursday and Friday is off for the Mascotte Team as some construction work is going to be done in Lagrange.( It is the name of our building). So we have an extended weekend of 4 days, and most probably Paris !!!!!

Bon Weekend 

PS: The thought of quitting chatting during my stay here is increasingly getting over me …( do not which smile I should use over her..)

French Diary- May 14,2009

Ronan left today( for Brazil) and Nikhil arrived today.

I guess these are the only two big things today apart from me making more frnds( i guess after this intern i would have frnds from more than 10 countries), eating more french dishes( I tasted hot chocolate today),  more nain sukh prapti..

I have to cook my dinner now( Maggie ..)

see ya ..

PS: I forgot ,the biggest news is , I got a sgpa of 9.23 .

French Diary: May 13,2009( May 11 , 12)

Bon nuit!!

May 13, 2009(May 11, 12) 11:25 p.m
So, two days without blogging. Yesterday, was too tired and day before that a ‘man nahi kiya’ .So important updates in these two dates
1. I have got tones of work to do. Frederic has in short explained me what I have to do, basically a paper on peer to peer system under bandwidth constraints for two models, Queuing and matching. These two days I have been trying to get svn working on windows( Day1) and then finally have shifted to Linux.( one has to do a lot of things to get ssh client and other stuff, which I do not want to write down here basically I was trying to use Netbeans only but now has shifted to Eclipse). And then Markov chain models, probability funde , Latex revision and then bandwidth lecture by Frederic.
2. We cooked out dinner!!! basically these are ready to eat things, but even then you have to do lots of stuff. Today we went to Cafeteria at 8:30 and returned at 11 .While the rice were being cooked  , we played cards( Flash , Sweep ) and infi lukkha(IITB Lingo).We had Poha and Zeera Rice today along with Knor Soup and UTpam ,Maggi and Rajma-Chawal the day before yesterday. Yesterday we went to Mister Pizza( it is a small pizza joint in front of CIV) and had a Margherita and another one called Naponliane( both tasted horrible). Basically everything was cheese, there was virtually no base, no toppings over it, cheese and cheese and cheese (frumage). After we had Pizza, I clicked a picture of the place and all the workers were pleasantly surprised.( do not know why..)All three days, we had breakfast at CIV where you can choose three items out of many places there. I choosed Corn Flakes with milk, a yogart( that is something like curd) on one day and juice on another day, and the third one an apple. You can take as much bread( loafs) with butter and jam. So breakfast is pretty good. We take lunch at INRIA and whoosh !! you have so many things to eat and you do not know what to eat !!today in non veg , they had shrimps, chiken and another sea animal !!I have not tasted non-veg yet, relying on French fries and rice. If you are veg, you can take 4 other items. I usually take a desert( which mainly has fruits), a plate of salad( but have always left a 3rd of it), a slice of cheese( which I then put in a bread loaf ) and a fruit( usually an apple, so I am eating 2 apples daily ).At lunch , the entire team has food together and since most people are French, Brazilians, Spanish and Chileans you would hear a lot of French , Portuguese and Spanish on your table. Occasionally they stop for some time and ask about me . But people are good, when they feel, that I am also trying to listen to what they are saying, they start speaking english( although their English is not good) and try to in involve me in conversation. Today, Joseph , the guy who works in adjacent cabin, asked me about ongoing elections in India and asked me chances of Mayawati becoming Prime Minister..:).
3. Water, water everywhere not a drop to drink…( in reference to girls in france ) 
4. I have not been able to make a decent conversation with my neighbour. The maximum conversation we have yet is “Bonshour” . But I came to know that her name is Saima and she is in INRIA only in the team Ariana and the good thing is she does not look like French.
5. Co-ed bathrooms: You never realize its full potential until you see it in reality .Today in morning when I was waiting for Chirag and Dhakkad, a girl( when ever I say a girl add all the adjectives you use to describe beautiful girls ) wrapped in towel with wet hair passed in front of us and it certainly hit me that I have been living in co – ed!! I have been unlucky not to see any one in the bathroom( I have taken a bath on all the three days  ) but today, when I actually saw it , it was like wow! Assuming her to be north pole of a magnet, out necks were like south poles only hinged with our body.
6. Buses: We travel from CIV to INRIA through a Bus. And the bus drivers are mostly females with their goggles on and looking more like FBI agents. There is a bus called 100( it is completely pink in colour) which is free for everyone so we usually try to take that bus saving out one euro. If you travel in bus, you realize the true diversity in races, languages, ethnicity in france.( I have seen that in my hostel also..)
I think it is enough for today( btw , Cannes film festival has started and is till 24 May and Monaco Gp is on 21,23 and 24 May. Lets see …)

Bon nuit.

French Diary: May 10,2009

May 10, 2009                                                                                                                      11:35 p.m

Huh! What a day! First the boarding pass problem and then I missed my connection flight from Paris to Nice( which was obvious since, there were only 40 mins in between the two flights), then the wireless problem..

Right now, I am in my room (single) with a great mountain view and with an Internet access (this is an important point as only few rooms in Basion( the building in which I am staying) have the internet available with them. The thing is all the rooms that are close to Agora building( which has the router in it)  are able to catch the wi fi).

I have already told you about the boarding pass thing..

Connection flight & Laptop Wi-Fi: I was to reach Paris at 6:15 and had to check in at 6:45 for a flight from there to Nice. There were so many immigration checks that I was bound to lose my next flight, which I did. Julian , one of the PhD student in our group, had already told me about these problems( He was the person who was supposed to pick me up from the Nice Airport) and had asked me to inform him if such a situation arises.

After you lose your connection your connection flight, you have to go to a specific counter (F25A) so that they can arrange another flight for you( Btw, the Paris CDG Airport is big !! infact it is huge). The next flight to Nice was at 10:25 and I had to check in at 9:45 so that meant I had nearly 3 hours to pass my time and I was also to inform Julian about the change of flight. The officials were nice, they gave me breakfast coupons (which is like customary if you miss a connection flight). The Airport was Wi-Fi but you had to buy a Login Id and Password to access it. I thought that there must be Café nearby where I could access the internet for like 10 mins and inform Julian about it, but to my dismay, there was no such café at the airport. So I had to buy the coupon( 6 euro for 30 mins!!! That’s like Rs420 for 30 mins internet, In Sangrur you can do it for 15 rupees…) but that was not the end of problems. Due to my reinstalling both the VISTA and UBUNTU, I didn’t have the drivers of Wireless and wi fi was not working on my laptop. (The things couldn’t have been more bad, I never expected this could happen)I started looking around so that I can find a person having Laptop( now the only and perhaps the biggest problem in France is that people do not speak English here, Even if they know the language, they are reluctant to speak it). I asked a guy who was working on a laptop but he plainly refused it   saying that he fears there are lots of Viruses in the network!! I asked another guy ( who seemed to be quite decent) and he agreed to lend his laptop to me for some time. The problems do not end here…He had a French keyboard and due to lots of special characters in my gmail password, I had a really hard time figuring out the keys( there are even 4 characters on one key). I was somehow able to do all this, had my free breakfast, didn’t miss the new flight and was able to reach Nice by 12:15 where Julian was waiting ..( Btw, you can take the trolley  at the Nice Airport only if you pay 1 Euro !!)

Julian left me at CIV with Ronan( a guy from Brazil who is also doing an intern in the same group).( Julian told me a number of things about Nice, Antibes, our group during the car journey from Nice to CIV) and through Ronan’s laptop, I was able to get my wi fi working ..

CIV: co -ed.. co-ed.. co-ed.. After staying 4 years in boys hostel ( 2 for JEE preparation and two in IIT), I finally got a chance to live in a co-ed hostel. There is no distinction and even the bathrooms are common( In IIT, the girls hostel is 1.3 Kms away from my hostel and now there is a girl’s room at less than 10 feet from my room J ) CIV seems to be a great place to live in, the rooms are clean, furnished and weather is awesome. I have not yet talked to my “niegbour” but would do that in next few days. Met Nisarag and other IITB guys ..

It is 1724 words till now !!( last 26 hours) and I cannot blog anymore. Plus I have to wake up early, do not want to be late on Day 1(and no idea  whether I would be able to continue blogging like this..)

Bon nuit!!

French Diary: May 9,2009

May 9, 2009                                                                                                                                                        10:21 p.m

Sitting comfortably in the airport lounge, I finally got a chance to do what I always wanted to do ..start my 76 days French diary. It had a beginning which I did not expect, had a fight with dad(which I do not know always happens over small issues), last minute packing hassles and then finally a good and happy farewell from the dear ones…

A foreign summer intern was always a dream, a dream which came true on 27^th February,2009 through the mail of Jean Bermonte Claude, the head of Mascotte project. Behind this dream mail were several hours of boring efforts, the apping.  I remember how Abhinav, Ankit, Priyanka , Abhishek ,Shikhar and I used to app religiously for hours in winters, reading the infinite webpages of various professors, manipulating our cover letters according to those pages and then finally send them the final draft.( Many drafts had a resume mentioned as attachment, but they didn’t even have a trace of that long PDF document.. ). So after getting those “see you in MS studies, we have no place for you” replies, I gave up once the semester started. In the process, I had send about 150 applications and got about 25 to 30 of those replies.  So, if you do not get a summer intern outside India, the next option is SURA in IIT. So i along with Katyal and Ashish met Prof. Sandeep Sen for a SURA in Cache Oblivious Algorithms and on one bright day, Feb 27,2009( the last date for submitting the proposal was Feb 28,2009 ..:)) when we were busy making the proposal, my inbox notified me  of one mail. A reply to one of the application I had send on Jan3,2009( !! ). I opened  the mail quite reluctantly( did not want to see another  “dude , no place for you”) but to my greatest surprise, the first positive reply… and I was happy( the word “happy” should have a scale associated along with it..) I had finally got an intern in France at a place called INRIA in Sophia Antipolis( INRIA is a computer research institute in Europe and an intern over there is like “Wow”)

(Btw, right now I am 9144 m above you displaced by a distance that would take you to Afghanistan and moving at a speed of 527 miles per hour after a horrible fiasco with my boarding pass and now after a good meal and it is May 10, 2009, no idea about the time as not sure in which time zone I am right in…I had left the blogging at the lounge as it was time for check in and then I had a really bad time..carry on..)

So, going back on 27^th of February , I told Katyal and Ashish that I would not be joining them and went straight to Abhishek Prateek( a 4^th yearite computer science guy who had gone to the same place in his second year) and asked about the place and the institute. After a lot of exchange of mails  with Frederic ( I would be supervised by two mentors , Frederic Giroire and Stephanne Perennes during my stay in INRIA) and Patricia( the HR person who was handed the responsibility of completing the administrative formalities for me( or rather with me)), I finally got the VISA on March 16,2009.(Yepiee!!)

(Right now, I am with Gunjan, an IITG girl who is going to INRIA in rennes and Mayank, from IITD only going to the same place as Gunjan)

The Boarding Pass Fiasco

Guard Sahib(who incidentally  was a bhaji J) :Boarding Pass??

Me: Yeah, just a minute.

And I started looking in my file, I found everything except the boarding pass.(Goddamn it, it was nearly 12:10, only 30 mins left..Look!Look..)I searched every corner of my bag but could not find it

Lady1: Sir, are you sure you put in the bag?

Me: Yeah, 100 percent. Let me check again, it should be here.

Guard Sahib: Do not worry Sir, mil jayega..

Lady1(to Lady2): What to do if he has lost the pass?

Lady2: Well, I think we need to redo the whole procedure, let me ask the Sir.

(Shit !! 25 mins..)

Guard Sahib(to the Air France official): He has got the immigration check cleared on his passport, I take his guarantee ..

Thanks!!

Air France Offical: No, we have to do the whole process again..

In this whole time , I was frantically searching my bag perspiring badly in temperatures of 15 degree Celsius.

Lady 1: Sir, you must have forget it at the final security check. I will go and check it out.( to Lady 2 now) those guys(Security personnels) usually stack the forgotten things..(Who is as dumb as me??)

At this stage, I was really worried now as only 20 mins were left and I had no idea what was going to happen.

Guard Sahib: Do not worry Sir ji…(What….)

I had left searching my bag and was looking forward to do all those shit things again in real quick time when

Lady 1:  I got your pass,(huh!!!!!!) you forget it at the last security check, just as I predicted…

During the whole time above, I was worried beyond I can describe it in words.

(Btw, AIR FRANCE is awesome!!)

I think it is 3:14 now according to the Indian Standard Time, which means a good 6 hours are still left before the flight lands, I am going to have a good nap and play a little with the new digicam, new mobile and of course these fantastic seat controls..;) )

Bon nuit!!

bye ..

going to France today …