From East to West

At 30,000 feet, heading west over the US. I'm really, really tired. Haven't written in a while because things have been crazy. It seems the price of taking time off to have fantastic trips is the catch-up work that needs to be done after. So let me tell you briefly about what I've been up to for the past two months and where I'm heading right now.

I returned stateside on May 5th in the late evening, after 10.5 months away. Linda stayed behind in London to do a pastry internship at the Ritz. She just got back this past monday - we were apart over 7 weeks. It was really difficult, I missed her lots. But it was such a great experience for her professionally :-) And I had my fill of stuff to do, so having her away in some ways made it easier (I didn't have much else to do except work) but also harder (she couldn't be there when I hit the rough patches). My first week back was basically consumed by recovering from my illness in Morocco and taking care of 10 months of errands, doctors appointments, paperwork, and various other chores. Then I left for Tucson, AZ where I attended my brother's graduation. Was great to be there, but not super-relaxing as I spent half the time working and the other half doing family stuff. Then I came back and had 3 weeks to get my dissertation proposal done - a 30 page document outlining what I've got to do to complete my PhD and a talk in front of a faculty committee, defending that proposal. But even bigger than the paper requirements was the work that I needed to do to figure out what I've been doing and ought to be doing with the intellectual contribution that composes my PhD. I came up with something good enough, still wrestling with it, but I guess that's just the game.

So those 3 weeks were stressful and filled with work and angst. Missing Linda made it harder and knowing that I also had a major publication deadline looming two weeks after that distracted my attention as well. Thankfully friends and family were really supportive (my folks kept me housed and fed and my friends met up, bought me dinner, and occasionally put me up/lent me their apartments (particular thanks to Eli & Adi, Perry & Stephanie, Yair & Aviva, and Lawrence, who were really generous when it counted ;).

I passed the dissertation proposal, went out to dinner, slept. The next morning it was back to work, if anything even more intense. The past two weeks leading up to this one were basically 14+ hour days, every day except Shabbos. The second week I came ill and ran a fever much of the week. But I made it. And Friday evening as the sun set, I went downstairs, had dinner with my folks, took a bath, and collapsed. Thought I'd spend Sunday recuperating, but it wasn't to be.

You see, this past year has been a whirlwind. I worked on Wall St. at Credit Suisse for two months before things blew up. I travelled with Linda to the Indian subcontinent - spending two weeks traveling in Nepal before settling down in Bangalore to do an internship with Microsoft Research India. Spent three months there having just the most fascinating time - and doing some good work, sadly it came out a bit half-baked, but perhaps it will eventually lead to a publication. Left India ill after coming down with a cold my last week there (was really healthy otherwise). The illness followed me across three continents and back to America, but I think I may have finally kicked it. Spent most of a month in Israel celebrating the holidays with friends. Then went to France where I worked at Thomson's Paris Networking Research Lab for 5 months. Again, fascinating and growing and I got some really fantastic work done (although it only completely came together in the past two weeks). Then took a month, went to the south of France, Israel for the Passover holiday, Austria to visit family, Morocco for kicks (first time in Africa - we were told it would be rough and people would be aggressive - they were puppies compared to the Indian beggars and merchants) , and then for a brief stay with friends in London.

If you've been reading you probably know most of this. But what I haven't written about is that while I was in the south of France, my advisor emailed me and said - "here's an internship position in Microsoft Research Redmond, apply for it". So I did and I got the internship and I'm heading to Seattle in what appears to be act two of my big adventure - my fourth internship in just over a year! But first I'm taking a little time which brings me back to where I trailed off two paragraphs above.

I thought I might relax on Sunday and sleep. But we had to sublet our apartment (for obvious financial reasons) for our time in Seattle. So I ended up needing to drive into Manhattan and spend most of the day taking care of apartment stuff. Monday I picked Linda up from the airport and spent the day doing stuff with her. Tuesday I drove us to Staten Island and Manhattan to see family and friends and take care of apartment stuff. Wednesday was filled with making arrangements for the trip, returning deposits, taking deposits, packing up more stuff to take home and meeting friends for dinner. At 3AM this morning we made it back to West Hempstead, slept for a couple of hours and dragged ourselves out of bed. The rest of the day was a mad rush of sorting, cleaning, and packing - oh and running simulations for a tech report associated with the publication we submitted. We finished right as our cab pulled up at 5:30PM (okay he ended up waiting 13 minutes for us ;-) to take us to our flight. We will get into Seattle where our wonderful friend Rebecca will be picking us up and taking us in for the weekend - I'm eagerly looking forward to chilling out. We should land around midnight. I'm as tired as I've ever been. I'm also incredibly excited about the next two weeks.

So the last part of the story is that my mom had over a year ago finally booked the family cruise that she's been dead set on booking for the past several years. My parents, my brother, his wonderful fiancé Mia, my mother-in-lay Judit, Linda, and I are all going on a one-week cruise to Alaska! It will be my first cruise and probably the complete opposite of the rest of the travel I've done this past year (and probably pretty much the rest of my life as well). I'm really looking forward to a trip that's more relaxing than challenging - and to spending time with the ones I love and care about most in this world ;-) We leave this Sunday and return the next., Linda and I are going to take a week before I start at Microsoft. Monday July 6th, we will drive up the coast to Olympic National park and see the temperate rainforest. In the evening we will take the ferry to Vancouver Island and stay with our friend Eva at her family's vacation home in Victoria. Another 6 days of relaxing (I'll probably need to do a bit of work, but mostly I think I'll take down time - I'm definitely on the edge of burning out and I expect my internship this summer to be quite challenging) and then we start the adventure of living and working in Seattle. Insanity. I'm going to be turning off my email when we board the ship (it costs like a dollar a minute and I think I need to unplug for a week - everyone most important to me is going to be on the ship anyway). So I don't know when I'll write next, but I'm sure when I do, I'll have something interesting to say (although it's an open question if what I'll end up saying will be interesting ;-)

Thanks for reading.

Something You'll Never See in Paris: A Quick Primer on Dealing with the French

Living in Paris was an amazing experience, but not always an easy one. When people ask me how I felt about it - I often answer that it was "difficult, but really worthwhile". I tend to feel the same way about the French themselves.

The single most salient stereotype that French have of Americans is that of fatness (as in overweight and over-consuming) and that Americans have of French is of rudeness (as in impolite and superior). As with most stereotypes both of these have a good deal of basis both in reality and also in misunderstanding of the other. In fact after many months of having lived in Paris, I have many adjectives - both positive and negative - that I can use to roughly characterize its inhabitants as a group. But rude isn't in there (although of course, like people anywhere else in the world, the French are capable of being rude ;).

So on a whim (and at risk of making enemies) here's a short list of much more fitting adjectives:

warm-when-shown-respect, intolerant of difference, fashionable, proper, inconsistent, appreciative of life, entitled, passionate, pessimistic, generous, passive-aggressive, liberal (e.g., socialist, gay rights), conservative (e.g., keep-the-status-quo, anti-immigrant) and last-but-certainly-not-least, proud.

And it's this last that prompted me to write this post. You see, I've recently returned to New York, which has been a great shock to my system and I've been noticing everything around me all the more (it doesn't hurt that we are having a lovely late-spring in New York right now). So a couple of days ago, I was walking by Morningside park in Manhattan and I saw the following, completely ordinary sign (pictured above), instructing my fellow New Yorkers to clean up after their dogs on penalty of law.

What struck me so strongly about this, is that you'd never see anything remotely like it in Paris. You see the French in general love their dogs. Paris is a city filled with people walking their dogs. But the thing is, almost none of these dog walkers would be willing to clean up after their dog - from what I'm told (often by other French), the idea of cleaning up dog poop is an anathema to proud Frenchman. This was a bit difficult for me to swallow - and for a good many French. After all why should everyone have to get shit on their shoes, and have to pay tax levied on all to clean up, because some think that cleaning up after the mess their pet makes is somehow below them?

But that's the way things are and I can understand how it has come to pass, given how proud I've found the French can be. And the French really are that proud - of their culture, contributions to history, language, dignity, etc. The thing is that they have earned the right to be proud - it's not like they are wrong about how wonderful the things their people and country have done. But often (as a group) they take it a bit far and go from a genuine appreciation of what is so good about themselves, to a tunnel-vision of the world in which the contributions and quality of other places and cultures are marginalized. In this they are actually ironically similar to Americans - in fact from what I could tell from conversations, to other Europeans, the French are the "Americans" of Europe (insofar as "American" connotes domineering, superior, relatively ignorant of others).

To me this proudness was reflected in many facets of French life - from the trivial (dog walking, to the primary/secondary education system which appears to place French poetry and grammatical complexity on par with Science, Math, History, etc.; to international politics where Former President Chirac walked out of a UN session along with the entire French delegation because a French businessman had the temerity to address the session in English (which happened to be the working language of that particular session)!

Which brings me back to my previously unexplained assertion that the French are not, despite the overwhelming stereotype, rude. My feeling is that foreigners mistake the way in which French react to a variety of situation as rude, when the French are for the most part quite proper and polite. You see the French are very proud and can be quick and brittle to react when their pride is injured, which it easily is. Consequently, a small matter or comment that an American or other foreigner likely wouldn't even contemplate having been offensive, can turn out to be a major insult to a Frenchman or woman - with the obvious cross-cultural mal-effects - the response to the insult usually will be nasty, dismissive, or otherwise bad, although often mildly so. Of course the foreigner, not having realized that their action had been interpreted as being insulting in the first place, will mistake this response for unprompted rudeness - which in my observation it rarely is.

So how does one deal with this? Well as regards the dog crap, all you can do is step carefully. And it turns out the same strategy works with the French as well (although a good subset of people living in France aren't actually that touchy at all, it's just that many are ;-).

Below are a couple of helpful rules for engendering productive interactions with the French:

1. Smile warmly and speak gently
2. Try to stutter something in French first, even if you can't speak much, before attempting English. At the very least, ask if they speak English es-koo-voo par-lay-le-francay? If you do this, you will find that most of the time, people who might had seemed distant or rude, will engage you warmly and try strenously to communicate with and help you. Under no circumstances should you abruptly start speaking to a Frenchman in English as if you expect to be understood! There are few ways more likely to keep you from getting anything out of the interaction. Most French have a little English and many actually speak quite well. But I've seen many times where a French person I knew could speak English reasonably well, pretended they couldn't understand even basic words like yes, no and tomorrow b/c they weren't treated respectfully (as per their understanding of respect).
3. Don't rush them (insofar as possible) or get aggressive. The French aren't focused on service or speed. They believe in savoring life and get very aggitated by the brusque manners of foreigners. Be prepared to wait.
4. Don't talk loudly, try not to cough in public, sneeze or be otherwise improper. Hard to avoid, but many French are very proper and hypersensitive (from my viewpoint) to this.
5. Remember that it's their country not yours - don't tell them how to be, even if it strikes you as a bit ridiculous. Not worth the fight - you're a visitor, try to treat them how you'd like to be treated (viz-a-vis their own cultural mores and norms).
6. Finally, avoid putting up any stickers (insofar as possible) on the mailslots or buzzers of an apartment you are renting. Parisians, at least, are irrationally sensitive (from my viewpoint at least) about this. We had a simple sticker listing our names on it placed on our mailbox, so we'd receive the mail. Sounds straightforward? Well it wasn't. First someone began ripping our sticker off periodically (but they didn't remove it cleanly so it looked much more messy than before). Never tried to contact us nor let us know who was doing it so we could discuss it (see what I mean about passive-aggressive?). Our landlady told us to just keep putting up new stickers. Eventually this started to get ridiculous as we were putting up a new sticker every day. Finally around this point, someone put up this note, written in illegible French on used, ripped paper, attached to the middle of the glass front door with scotch tape and a business card stapled to it. I had an idea of what this note might be, so I took a picture and asked a friend to translate. The gist is that 'no one should put stickers on the mailboxes or buzzers, because it is inappropriate and ruins the asthetic quality of our living space. Instead you must have a metal plaque made out with your name, business card attached. Thank you'. Of course it was signed by "Members of the Building Committee" (passive-aggressive again) and someone helpfully added to the corner (top-left) in a messy but legible scrawl "this is just normal, I did it when I moved in" (guess they weren't subletting for just a couple of month). So to summarize: the folks in my building were so aesthetically sensitive that they covered the beautiful glass front door of the building with a scrawled note on ripped, used paper, for two weeks to let me know I needed to buy a metal plaque in order to receive mail (notice any inconsistency here?) - My friend who translated (happens to be a Parisian told me that this apparently is characteristic, but also told me how stupid she thought it was, so did my landlady.

So this should help you get off on the right foot - although I admit the last point is a bit more of a rant than advice. But then again, most places the in world have some particularities that are bound to baffle anyone who wasn't born there (and possibly many who were). So take it with a grain of salt and enjoy - because there really is a lot to enjoy of the French and their country!

Reverse Culture Shock

After 3 days of being back, I'm finally just starting to realize that I truly am here. And it's a bit strange, particularly the little details. One of the first things that struck me when I got back, the first morning in fact was how luxurious everything here is. My parents' house (where I'll be living until I head out to Seattle on June 22nd - a story for another time) is a nice, but not ostentious place. But I easily had the best shower of the last 11 months there. There was so much hot water and it was so hot, as hot as I could possible want it. And consistently so, no points where the temperature fluctuated - in most of the places I've been, while the hot water lasted (which often wasn't long) I'd spend half of the shower fiddling with the knobs as the water kept moving back and forth from too cold to scalding. There was just hot water, perfect temperature, and seemingly endless. Then I dried off and the towel was so soft. Softer by a good measure even then the towels at the resort in India where we stayed for a weekend so long ago.

And then there was the bed. I've always put a lot of weight on having a good bed - I mean the average person spends something like between 1/5th and 1/3rd of his or her life in bed. So I've always felt it was worth making the investment in a really good bed (I bought my first Tempurpedic when I was in college), even though I always sleep well as long as the surface is flat and not entirely hard. On our trip, we've slept in a lot of different places, and some of them actually were really comfortable (some weren't ;-) but nothing matched the feeling of lying down in the bed at my folks place.

After two showers (one in the evening and one the following morning) and a night's sleep at my folks, I told me day "you do realize that you live in the lap of luxury?". And I like the creature comforts - honestly I probably need them at this point: my health is a bit shot (I've had a cold on and off for over the last half-year), I lost a bunch of weight (was only 145 lbs when I got back - even after copious feeding by our friends in London), and I'm just generally worn out. But I've got mixed feelings about how nice things are in the States.

I think it's great to have a creature comforts, but some of them really cost - socially, environmentally, etc. Thankfully for the first time in almost a decade, I'm really feeling like Americans are starting to think about what the right balance for our society is - Costco apparently had a sale on composters just this last week, my mom went to pick one up, but the entire batch had already sold out!

In any case, returning to more of my observations, it really was the little things that got me. The money in the US is like nowhere else. I use a really neat plastic wallet called the JimiX it's a great alternative to the traditional leather wallet, with a small sliding cardholder case and an external money clip. But everywhere else I travelled I couldn't use the money clip because the currency was so slippery - Rupees, Euros, Shekels, Dirham, Pounds. Only the US bills which are apparently made out of cotten and linen rag paper don't slide around.

I took a drive today to do a couple of local errands, and again it hit me - after driving small manual transmission vehicles in France and Austria, my mom's Impala (a smaller car by American standards) felt both ridiculously easy to operate. It was silent, smooth, powerful, you can't tell the gears are even changing - I felt like I was driving a mountain. And as I said it's not a big or expensive car. It was nice, but if this is the simple car, what are the fancy, big cars? Before I left, US-style vehicles had struck me as wasteful in my rational mind. But coming back I experienced this same feeling in a much more viceral way. Not so much regards my mom's car, which is perhaps more than necessary, but a pretty conservative vehicle (and safe on the US roadways which are filled with hulking monster cars), but more by the idea that this is what passes for a conservative vehicle here. I have to say, it was nice to drive something so comparitively luxurious, and super easy - but I also missed the fun of interacting with the manual transmission.

Yup I'm having reverse culture shock.

Argan Oil Touring

I don't remember when it was I first read about Argan oil. Must have been at least a year ago, probably longer. The story I read told how a rare and ancient tree grew at the edge of the Sahara. This tree, called the Argan tree, was a relict of Earth's Tertiary period - a living anachronism (although only 1.6 million years out of date - compare that to the California Redwoods which are something like 200 million). These shrubby, thorny trees grew stubbornly in the most dry and difficult climate, able to hang on for 200 years or so, but only viable in this small sliver of land so

far away.

Now the Argan tree bears a small green-yellow fruit. Not something humans would eat, but goats love it. And people have figured out a way to make use of this: The goats climb the Argan trees, nibbling on the leaves and eating the fruit. After ingesting the fruit the goats either (a) spit it back out or (b) poop it out (I've heard differing accounts). The core of the fruit and its seednut are not digested by the goat - much like the reknowned "catshit coffee". Locals then take this partially digested fruit, remove the seednut, crack it, roast it, and grind it. Once ground they knead and mix it with water until it forms cakes. They then squeeze the cakes and out comes the reward for this lengthy process - pure Argan oil. After tasting it, I can tell you that it is nutty and delicious. From what scientists are claiming it has more natural vitaman E then almost any other ingestible substance and all sorts of other healthful properties to boot. Because of these properties Argan oil has become all the rage with foreign companies buying up supply and using it for food, medicine, and beauty care products.

This whole story completely intrigued me - these ancient relicts living at the edge of the habitable world, the complicated procedure, and of course the goats. I dreamed of someday going to Africa and seeing it - but I figured it would happen one day in the indefinite and far future. What I didn't realize was that the main place in Africa where Argan trees grow is actually in Morocco, outside of Essaouria, at the northern edge of the Sahara desert. So when I found I, I was so excited and resolved that if Linda and I only saw one thing there, we'd make sure that we went to an Argan oil co-ops, see the trees, and hopefully see the goats as well.

On our second day in Essaouria we made arrangements through our hotel - the Riad Nakhala - to have a driver take us to one of th

e co-ops to see how the oil is made and purchase some. After that the driver would show us some local sights and hopefully help us find trees (lots of these) and goats (harder to find). We spent a bit on the half-day journey (400 MAD ~ 50 USD) but we definitely got our money's worth.

Our driver was Mohamed Elkhadir of La Arbah Rent A Car and he showed us a great time.

First we left town and stop at an overlook where we could see Essaouria and the surrounding areas stretched out before us in panorama. Then we took a drive to the Coopérative D'Argan Marjana. Now there are about a million co-ops selling Argan oil that have opened in the last decade. Most employ women (widows, divorcees, etc.), but Mohamed told us that this one was probably the best, owned and operated solely by the women for their benefit and that of the surrounding community. While there we met the women, who made the oil in the traditional way, by hand and got to taste the nuts (both roasted and unroasted( - boy were they strong and bitter (particularly the unroasted ones). I really enjoyed the zing the taste gave me. After learning a bit about the oil we went to the co-op store where they gave us moroccan mint tea (a bit lukewarm) and tastes of both the oil and Ambo - a delicious mix of Argan oil, local honey, and almonds. Both were delicious, but I liked the oil better and we ended up buying a whole liter of the stuff (cost us 450 MAD which was probably 150 to 200 above the market rate - but it was clearly highest quality and we felt like we were contributing to the community).

We left the co-op and went off in search of Argan trees and goats. Finding the trees was easy. They are all over the place - completely dominating the area. In many places all that grew was Argan trees, a bit of dried grass, and dirt. It's amazing to think that the population of trees is actually only half what it was two decades ago. The trees themselves are finicky - getting them to reproduce is something people are just starting to understand. Additionally, given how sensitive they are, climate change doesn't appear to have been good for them. Finally the people in this area are very poor. Argan trees were previously cut down to use for food, or overgrazed and killed by the goat herders. But know everyone realizes what a lucrative treasure these trees are and both the locals have become very protective as well as the government (it's a really big fine if you chop one down). So we stopped a couple of times to look at the trees, and look for their fruit (there was a drought the previous two years, this year finally raining, so few of the trees were fruiting). It was wonderful to see them up close.

But the real treat came when we found the goats. To do this, Mohamed drove us around for an hour or so, continually scanning the countryside as he drove. He took our request to see the goats really seriously. And finally perserverence paid off - we found two teenage shepherd boys with a flock of goats, 3 camels and some sheep. The goats were all over - different sizes, males, females, kids. All of them from the oldest to the youngest were climbing the trees (the little ones were really cute - being more tentative and less stable on the branches than their elders). Mohamed spoke with the boys and got their okay for us to

wander and watch to our hearts content.

And we did. Linda and I probably spent about half and hour just

watching the goats antics. They would place themselves in the most precarious positions. One goat had three feet perched practically on the same place on thin branch while reaching with its mouth for an even higher and significantly thinner branch. It tried several times to brace its fourth foot against what essentially was a twig, but eventually thought the better of it (goats aren't stupid, at least not terribly so ;).

I even got in on the action climbing into the tree with the goats - although the first time I did this I spooked them, which led me to be more cautious and less noisy on my second more successful attempt (the first one had ended with me sitting in a tree alone, all the goats having abandoned ship)!

It was an amazing and fun experience. When we left we gave each boy a 10 Dirham piece (about 1.25 USD) which was apparently a great gift for them. We then headed home, stopping for soda at Mohamed's house (he invited us for dinner, but we already had plans so we declined). Mohamed did offer as well to get Linda tagines for cooking and CDs of music we had heard in the car. So the next day we stopped by and went shopping (got two tagines for 50 Dihram which is basically nothing - 7 bucks). While we had been watching the goats, Mohamed also showed me the type of foodwear that the hearders use. They make sandals out of pieces of old tires, cobbled together with short nails. When he mentioned that he used to teach poor children, I asked him if he could find someone to use the pair of old shoes I was wearing and he told me that he definitely could and thanked me for my generosity. This was a bit humbling for me - I was going to throw these shoes out, they weren't worth shlepping around anymore, it wasn't any sacrifice for me - rather I was glad to have the opportunity to see they did something more beneficial than end up in the wastebin. So in addition to a great time, big help shopping, and hospitality, I also got to get rid of an old pair of shoes and bluejeans in a useful manner. The whole business made me really happy.

Touring in Morocco

We've spent the last couple of days in London, resting and relaxing at the house of our wonderful friends Erica and Mike. This will be my last stop before returning to NY (I get in Tuesday evening) and I still haven't processed that fully. Probably won't until after I've gotten back home.

Our time here has just been so lovely. Particularly, Erica and Mike's warm hospitality has really been exactly what we needed after our recent journeys in Morocco. Last weekend we spent the Shabbos in Fez. After davening with the community (which we just barely found) we went back to our rather dank hotel and I made kiddush on a bottle of Leben (a type of middle eastern yogurt drink) and had that and an orange for dinner. This week Mike made a gourmet meal which we ate in their warm and comfy home, then retired to an airy, comfy guest room ;-)

But while our travels in Morocco were a bit rough, we did have a fantastic time there! We started our trip by traveling from Paris to Tangiers (we stayed overnight in Paris at our friend Marianna and Ana-Kaisa's). But as I've written previously we ended up spending most of that day in transit. I'll be writing (hopefully) at greater length on each of the spots we visited in Morocco, but this post is mostly about giving the overall scope and timeline of our trip.

We got to Tangiers on Wednesday evening and settled in, seeing a couple of sights in the evening. Thursday we took a tour of Tangiers and the surrounding areas in the morning and spent most of the late afternoon in an unsuccessful and incredibly frustrating negotiation. Friday morning we headed out to Fez on long-distance train ride. After about 5 hours or so we reached Fez, settled into a (not terribly nice) hotel (Linda was ill and we weren't able to shop around). In a bit she recovered some and we went out and managed to find the Fez Jewish community just as evening was coming in (okay we were late, but we did make it to services). On shabbos I went to shul in the morning, and we went on a walking tour of the medina in the afternoon. Sunday morning was rainy. We went to see the Jewish cemetery and then took a train to Marrakech. We ended up just missing the 10:50AM and had to wait until 12:50PM to go, but it was a really pleasant wait in the end (we sat in a cafe, drank tea, and I pick up some food for the ride).

The trip was supposed to be 7 hours, but it took 8 and a half. We were tired, and I was taking ill (finally succumbed to exposure to Linda's germs). Next day we did a half-day tour of Marrakech - I think I started running a fever towards the end of that. So we just hopped on a bus to Essaouria, a relaxed tourist town by the sea and decided to spend the remainder of our trip there. Really good call on that by Linda!

We got into Essaouria and spent a lovely couple of days seeing sights, recuperating a little, and generally having our most vacation-like times of the trip. Thursday midday we headed back to Marrakech. But of course our bus broke down and after much trial and travail I managed to get our hotel to send us a cab to take us to Marrakech. There were some other problems with the cab (a story for another time), but we finally arrived at 9PM. Made some friends along the way, including Alan, a North Irish trader of Moroccan goods, operating out of London. Ended up going to the Marrakech night market with him, having some great food, drinks, and fun times. Midnight we got back to a really low-budget hotel, got to sleep at 1AM for 4 hours and change, then met our (second) driver from the previous night, who took us to the airport. From there forward everything was smooth going and has been since. Looking forward to filling in all of the stories when I've recovered a bit more ;-)

Time Lag

For those of you who check the twitter updates, you'll know we've actually been in Morocco quite awhile now. The "new" posts are simply older material that I managed to finish up now. I've got no idea when I'll find the time to tell you all about our adventures here (and they have been plentiful and good) So don't be too confused and if you want the quick lowdown just check my twitter log which provides quick and up-to-date bytes and where and when we actually are.

Stuck in CDG on the way to Morocco

Rather irritated at the moment. Today we were supposed to leave Paris Charles De Gaulle airport for Tangiers just before 1PM. We even checked the flight before we got to the airport. Got here on time and checked our baggage with Royal Air Morocco downstairs (which incidentally is the only place one can change flights - after you've gone through customs you are stuck - you can't leave and you can't change). Everything goes smoothly (although the service is rather slow) and we get our boarding pass which lists boarding as being at 11:50PM. But the thing is when we get upstairs a couple of minutes later we are told that the flight isn't leaving until 4:30PM. They can't change us, can't let us go back downstairs, can't let us make a call to Morocco (to notify the guide who was supposed to meet us), and won't even give us gratis internet. They did provide some orange juice. Pretty sucky way to waste a day of vacation.

When I complained to one of the airline fellows he told me that 'the airline's job is to take you from point A to point B, the rest isn't our responsibility'. It's interesting and mildly telling that this was his view.
My view (which I expressed to him at the time, little good it did me) is that actually the airline's job is to get me from point A to point B at a particular time (which has been agreed upon by both parties well in advance).

Air Morocco is heading onto my list of $h!tty airlines, along with such esteemed company as Air Italia and the long defunct Tower Airlines. The only saving grace is that the part of CDG in which we've gotten to lose our afternoon has reasonably comfortable lounging chaises and it gives me time to catch up on writing blog posts and other work.

[Time passes]
So we are now much of the way to Morocco. The plane started boarding at the time they had previously claimed we would leave (4:30PM). It's not a bad plane, but they forgot our vegetarian meals, so I didn't have much to eat. They didn't have any hot water, so no tea, and there doesn't appear to be soap in the bathrooms. Definitely a $h!t airline.

One thing that really got me - and I can't claim this Air Morocco is the first airline I've gotten this from - is that when we asked for our meal, they looked at our tickets, told us there was no special meal marking, and then implied it was because we had failed to "confirm" our special meal at check-in. Now as I've just said, other airlines have given us the exact same line - despite our having a printout from the airline confirming that we are booked for such-and-such flight w/ vegetarian meal (or kosher meal or whatever we happened to order). I just don't get airline logic. If I request a special meal when I book my ticket and the airline confirms that choice in writing on a receipt, what possible justification is there for that meal not to be present? I mean, (a) I've checked in, (b) I've previously requested the special meal and (c) the airline has confirmed receipt of that choice. Thus in my world (a) AND (b) imply that the airline ought to put a special meal on the plan since I'm on the plane and (c) implies the airline is aware of the above conclusion. Yet, still apparently it is somehow my responsibility (despite no airline every having informed me of this obligation beforehand) to "confirm" my meal choice. I give up. Although I did get soap when I managed to find a stewardess to ask. But all the bathrooms were occupied by that point. Fu&*ing airlines.

Großmugl / Schillingers

One of the first things we usually do when we travel to a new town in check happycow.net
Happycow lists vegetarian restaurants worldwide w/ reviews and other info - and they do it fairly throughly. This usually determines where I'll be eating out in a given city as I only eat at either kosher or vegetarian places.

My dietary restrictions (strictly vegetarian, mildly kosher) often prevents me from sampling local cuisine, although I do my best to try what I can since I love trying new things and experiencing the places I visit as throughly as possible (and I'd argue eating is one of the most fundamental modes of experience). So when I visit a place like Austria where most of the traditional non-dessert, non-beverage cuisine is throughly meat, I tend to be a bit sad.

So when I read about Gasthouse Schillinger, I was really excited. Schillingers is traditional Austrian guesthouse/pub/restaurant located about an hour outside of Vienna. It first opened for business in 1793 (so order of magnitude its as old as the US) and has been continuously owned/run by a man named Karl Schillinger ever since. Something like 7 Karl Schillingers have run this place and the current incarnation decided 10 years ago to make the place vegan. Yup, vegan. They serve all the traditional Austrian meat dishes, just they don't happen to be meat. The existence of a 200+ year old authentic Austrian guesthouse where I could get as close to eating true Austrian cuisine as any vegetarian is going to blew my mind a little.

So with the kindness of Zsofie and Gabor (Linda's cousin and her husband) who lent us their car and GPS, Linda and I took a road trip there on Sunday evening. Before I continue I should also thank Perry & Stephanie Vais without whose instruction in the art of driving a manual vehicle some weeks before and willingness to rent a manual vehicle (respectively) - I wouldn't have known how to drive - and my mother's willingness to mail me the replacement license (which arrived shortly before my 29th birthday) - without which I wouldn't have had a legal license.

Anyway returning to the story, we drove out to Großmugl where Schillingers is located and really enjoyed the sunny afternoon in the most beautiful countryside. The trip was mostly uneventful until we came within about 5 minutes of our destination, at which point a huge mound rose out of the gently rolling countryside. The huge mound was topped by a huge (but much smaller cross) and a group of Austrians we later learned were having a picnic! The appearance of this thing answered one question that had been on my mind while opening another. You see on the Schillinger website in the directions page, a large mound with a cross on top was displayed, and not much else. I had no idea what to make of this, until of course I saw the mound. After seeing the mound, it was clear why this previously cryptic picture had been displayed. Of course, the new questions was "what the heck is it?".

As much as I wanted to stop, evening was coming and we were running late for our reservation. So we went to the restaurant, found they weren't too crowded, and Linda graciously agreed to return for a visit to the mound.

We got there, walked around, and then climbed up (rather steep and a good 50 feet up). At the top we met a collection of Austrians about our age having a picnic. They explained what the mound was - a 3000 year old pagan burial heap, the largest of it's kind in central Europe (its even got its own webpage) apparently at was probably closer to 60 feet high when it was made. This not only answered my question, but also explains the town's name - which translates to English as "Big Hill". We chatted with them a bit - really friendly folks. Looked around, savored the sunset on the countryside, took some pictures and then headed/slid down. Really neat and really unexpected! The only part that miffed me a little was the cruxifix. It seems a bunch of folks stuck it up there a couple of years ago. The locals seem to have a penchant for crosses - the locals crucify a Jesus figurine and stick the 2 meter (6 foot) business right at the roadside wherever someone dies in a traffic accident - the first one we passed gave me a bit of a scare. Anyway, so they took this historic, ancient, and oddly beautiful pagan burial place and went and stuck a 3 meter (9 foot) high cross at the top, like it was some kind of bizarre wedding cake needing decoration. Now I'm not a pagan (and I'll admit I've got no love for crucifixes or other instruments of torture), but I do respect the dead and it honestly seemed a bit wrong to put that crucifix up there - the mound builders went to what was evidently alot of trouble to bury their dead according to their belief system and then 3000 years later some folks decide to desecrate (from what I'm guessing the mound builders point of view would be) their gravesite with paraphenalia from a religion that wouldn't even be born for a millenium.

Returning to my main narrative: we waved goodbye to our Austrian friends (they had been tickled to hear what brought us to Großmugl) and drove back to town for dinner. The ambiance of the place was great. Drinking and smoking (which I don't love, but will admit creates a certain mood) Austrian (apparently locals) filled the place. Next to us was a group of guys with a large dog that occasionally started to bark at people. The benches were wood, the floor was wood, the place just seemed like it had been there forever and would continue to do so for as long as it pleased. But the waitresses foamed soy milk for the drinks and everything was vegetarian (most was vegan). We ended up ordering Amdudler (the Austrian national softdrink), two traditional soups, and a huge tasting plate. It looked awesome and I loved it. Linda loved the ambience, experience, and concept. Food-wise, well for her it just wasn't the real thing, but she didn't eat badly. I was a little sad we didn't both savor the experience (at least the gustatory part) equally, but as well as we work together there's always going to be some culinary gap between a relatively unrestricted carnivore and a vegetarian - but I don't think that's a bad thing :-)

After finishing up most of the meal, I couldn't resist ordering another dish to go - Deer ragout, bread dumplings, and pear and beery sauce! We shared an excellent berry tea while we waited. Then we drove home in the moonless (or what seemed like it), countryside darkness. Fun!

Technical: Mac OS X Permissions Issues - ACL

Today I've spent much of the day cleaning up my computer (which had started stalling and doing other sorts of strange things indicating that it was unhappy). I sorted through all the files that had accumulated in random places during the made rush of first work and then traveling which left me with little time (and more importantly little emotional energy) for the process of sorting them. Then I attempted to back everything up.

This went well up until the time I attempted to made an image of my Documents folder. This is the place where I keep all of the important non-media (e.g., non-picture, song, or movie) files. I keep this in a separate hard-drive partition so I don't have to recopy it everytime I want to swap the OS in and out. However, it is important to keep at least one, preferably more backup copies of this very important directory kept elsewhere.

But here I ran into a problem. When using the Mac OS X Disk Utility program to make an image of the directory (from folder), I kept receiving errors along the line of "unable to create Documents: permission denied". Now this was quite irritating, so I went and checked the permissions on the directory. Permissions are essentially just a bunch of data about your file stored along with your file (metadata) that tell you what different groups of users are allowed or prohibited from doing with your files. User groups include: you, everyone, and custom groups of users that are more than yourself but less than everyone. Actions include things like reading, writing, and executing the contents of a file.

Being fairly familiar with permissions from over a decade of *nix experience, I expected to solve this quite easily but reseting everything to some reasonable default (e.g., chmod -R 770 Documents - which means me and other special folks can do everything and people who aren't us can't do anything) but strangely this didn't work. So I had to search.

What I found was that Mac OS X uses an extended permissions system called ACL, which in theory is probably really nice, but in practice seems to be mostly a pain-in-the-ass.

To explain: regular permissions look something like the below.
The first character lets you know of the file is special, e.g. d (a directory), l (a link), or - (normal).
The next 3 sets of three characters lets you know if the file is readable r, writeable w, and executable e, respectively. The first set is for the owner, the second for the group and the last for everyone (else).
drwx------ 4 reich staff 136 Apr 10 02:34 Desktop
The stuff on the line following this lets you know who the owner of the file is, the group of the file, it's name and other identifying info.
Here is a slightly more complicated entry for a symbolic link
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root staff 27 May 11 2008 Documents -> /Volumes/storage/Documents/

Not too complicated (although perhaps a bit daunting for the beginner), but in systems using ACL some entires might have a + symbol after the 10 character permissions string. This indicates that the file has extended ACL permissions as well. To actually see these permissions one types
ls -el
(technically only the e is need to see the ACL stuff, but I like to use l as well to get a more complete picture)
Here's an example of what you might see:
drwxr-xr-x@ 6 reich staff 204 Oct 7 2008 Movies
0: group:everyone deny delete
also you might notice that instead of the 11th character being a + it is a @.
This indicates that not only does this file use ACL, but its using some type of extended attributes thing. My suspicion is that the @ symbol doesn't necessarily imply the + symbol, but that when both apply the @ wins but I'm too lazy to find out right now.

Anyway it turns out for reasons I haven't bothered to discover that Mac OS X sometimes decides to do weird things to the file permissions - giving them special ACL-based restrictions - that cause the type of errors I experienced. So the quick solution is to kill all of these irritating ACL metadata (no guarantees that it won't cause your computer to explode, but I've not had any negative reactions from doing this)
Each ACL permission that is attached to your file will have a number indicating which rule it is.
All my problem have come from rules that look like
0: group:everyone deny delete
so you want to delete rules with these numbers (in this case rule 0)
chmod -R -a# 0 username
and after that things should be much more hunky dory.
Good luck!

Where I'll be for the next bit

Haven't posted in a while. Just too much work. But I'm taking a break for the next month-and-change (or at least much of it). Hopefully might even find some time to blog. But for now, I'm just going to provide a quick overview of where I'll be/what I'll be up to and instruct those curious to check my twitter updates until I find time for more blog posts.

Tomorrow, Linda and I leave Paris early in the morning. We are heading down to Nice, where we will sight-see and relax until Thursday evening. Then we head to Israel on an overnighter. Get in Friday morning and spend the next two weeks seeing friends, catching up on sleep and a little work, and celebrating the Pesach holidays. Leave Israel after the holiday, stop in Paris for a couple of hours to see friends from New Mexico, then off to Vienna to visit Linda's cousins and newborn child! Couple of days in Vienna and then back to Paris for the night of the 21st of April. 22nd we head to Tangiers, Morocco. After that Fez, Casablanca, Marrakesh (and maybe other places in between). Then at the end of the week (can't remember if its the last day of April or first of May, we go to London for an extend weekend with good friends. Then I return to NY and work at Columbia (May 5th in the eve) and Linda will be travelling, learning, and cooking in Europe until June 21st. Okay now to sleep b/c I have to get up EARLY.

Just Plain Stupid

"Phelps Disciplined Over Marijuana Incident" - give me a break. What? Now the world's best athlete is being disciplined ovr using a performance dehancing drug?! Marijuana couldn't do anything but make you a worse swimmer. Negative effects of inhaling burning toxic gas aside (a.k.a. "smoking") it's probably one of the most innocuous drugs ever used from a pharamacological perspective (okay chocolate for the non-chronically obese probaly is a tad milder, tea likewise, although coffee is questionable and alcohol definitely much stronger).

I feel a rant coming on, so I'll cut myself short and simply end by observing that I don't see anything wrong with a octuple gold medal winner enjoying a smoke. If he's done it before (overwhelmining likely) it surely didn't cause (and evidently didn't prevent) his success, and if you are going to argue that it somehow degraded his drive, mental acuity, or physical health - well, I'd probably call you a nut. Not that there would be much, if any basis, to such a claim based on medical evidence (but that never stopped morons or politicians from making them).

Addition: The other quick thought I had was that the majority of athletes who use illegal substances to cheat rarely get penalized on this level (if at all - those in lucrative sports like baseball pretty much get carte-blanche even when it's common knowledge they pop steriods like a third-world traveler uses petol bismol) - either legally, professionally, or financially. People generally get in a huff over drugs (even when it is reasonable to do so) when the targets are athletes in random niche sports that Americans only give a damn about once every 4 years.

Missing New York

Everything is a lot better. But with the good comes the busy (at least at this stage in my life). So not much time to blog still. However, I might find time to do the occasional short post.

We've settled into Paris at this point and I'm really enjoying myself. Still got a bit to the trip - should just have gotten home in 3 months (Linda will probably travel for another month-and-change after), but definitely at the point where I'm thinking fondly of home. Then I saw this NY Times blog post - I LEGO NY. I never thought LEGOs could evoke home so well!