Le Going to France

I went for a job interview at the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (or just INRIA for short), the French national research institute for computer science research. I landed in Paris on Sunday morning, and in getting ready for my first interview talk the next day, I managed to look up the word for "clothes iron" (it's "fer à repasser" btw) and ask for it completely in French! Pretty cool, eh? Except that I ended up with the grossest, nastiest iron and ironing board ever:

Oh well, I didn't need to iron my clothes anyway...

My Tuesday talk was the more formal interview: I had a 25 minute slot, with 12 minutes for a talk and 12 minutes for questions. Boy, was that intimidating! But, I did wear my sweet suit. Don't I look nice?

Turns out it didn't help. I didn't get the job. Boo! So, what did I do about it? The same thing any red-blooded American does when disappointed: I ate! Probably my best meal was on Tuesday night. Having just finished reading the book Cod, I remembered the French word for it ("Cabillaud"), and I ordered some. It was delicious!

You can just barely see in this picture how awesome this seat was, where I could watch all the people go by as I ate my dinner. I finished off with a cheese course, which I unfortunately cannot remember the name of (saint someone-or-other), but it was fabulous:

The next day (after visiting the famous Sacré Cour), I also found some real French macarons:

Of course, what trip to Paris would be complete without... Sex Toys? Don't forget, zapping is only 2 euros: