2009 May 15 « Sandeepinlife’s Weblog

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