The weather has turned fine again for consecutive 3 days. I don’t think it would snow again and the temperature has been climbing steadily, nearing to 10 degrees. As I walked to the office, I realized that the “People of Travel” were gone. Their mobiles houses were not there anymore and the carpark was empty. Maybe they come to Rennes to avoid the winter as it is relatively warmer here than other parts of France. Now that spring is coming, they probably are moving back to their original places. But I wonder do these people have a place of origin?
At 10am, a participant came knocking at my door (sounds like Maroon 5 song) and he was the unlucky one. I had scheduled him to do the 285 tests. He finished it without complains and for that I gave him 2 sweets instead of one. From now on, I would give those who did the longer exp 2 sweets or more. It is really quite tiring. After analyzing the results, I went for lunch with the guys at 1140am. Very early today because one of them had a train to catch. On the way, I talked about going to the forest of King Arthur which in French is called Foret de Breceliande. Mr. Giant said he been there twice. First time he went there on his own and felt nothing much about the place. The second time he went with the tour and after the explanation, he felt that it was more meaningful. However, he wasn’t sure if I would have a problem going without a car. And the guided tour was conducted in French. He also mentioned that the places of interest at the coast are all very nice but there is no need to visit all of them. Just one or two and I would get the feeling already.
At lunch, Vincent asked if I am playing soccer tomorrow and I said no because it is at 1030pm, too late for me. He said it is changed to 930pm. Since they asked, I had no choice but to agree to go. It is not like I hated going. I wanted to go very much. But at the same time I wanted to save the money for my weekend tour. He then asked why would it be too late even if it is 10pm because they all have cars and can send me back. I said by the time I get back I would write my journal and would have to sleep very late. Mathieu then said that 25th March would be his last day in IRISA and I said I would bring camera then to take picture with him. Hopefully with Mathilde too. After lunch, I had an email from Mr. Giant giving me info on the Forest and numbers and emails which I can contact. I quickly sent an email to ask about the tour in English. I wanted to call but again my office phone couldn’t call out to ext number. He also passed to me the last CD for the anime Cowboy Bebop which I am watching. He was very enthusiastic to share his anime because when I asked if he has the anime “.Hack/SIGN”, he said he had all the sequel, prequel, everything of .HACK and can bring them tomorrow. I said perhaps next week as I am still watching Cowboy. Mathieu said that he would burn a DVD anime for me before he leaves. Great colleagues I have here.
The 2nd customer for the day was a PhD student I dragged down from upstairs. As mentioned he was unwilling to do but too bad for him. But I really regretted asking him because he wasn’t professional enough when doing the exp. His was the shorter one with 180 test cases and at the 100 mark, he asked me how many more to go. I said sorry I can’t tell you as it will influence your timing but I assured him that he is doing fine and can take a break if he wanted. He finished the test grumpily and at the end of the exp, I actually wanted to ask him a few more questions but he was already at the door. Really eager to get out. Still I sent an email to him thanking him for the help. I had about an hour before the last customer turned up and so chatted with hui. We started planning our tour and it was really hard because we had to discuss via msn. It would be much easier to discuss side by side. At 4pm, I had to pause the planning as the last participant turned up.
I have spoken with this guy before over the phone and not only does he speak good English, he was very enthusiastic about the experiment. This guy is really professional because in the beginning he wasn’t getting the correct results that I wanted. But I had to show a straight face and be neutral although I was quite nervous whenever he chose the wrong answers. Then at Test 54, he began to realize something is amiss and the exp is not as easy as it seemed. He paused and asked me some questions which I can’t answer him as it would affect his performance. I just assured him that any peculiarity that he observed is part of the exp and not a bug of the program or hardware defect. In the end, his results were getting better and when the tests are done, he asked me to discuss with him about the exp. This is one guy who really is interested in the exp. Not like some of the previous ones who gave me the impression that they are here for fun. In the end, I asked him if he could spread the word around for me. He said even without me asking him, he would forward my email to everyone in his Project TexMex and asked them to come for my exp. At least he would “force” his students to come because he really felt that it was interesting. Immediately I got 2 people from his team sending me emails.
After that, I resumed my planning of the tour with Hui. In the end, we had a route in mind which apparently is the most ideal one so far. Although yesterday I said that it would be too early to disclose the plan here, I am just too excited about the tour. So here are the destinations that we planned to visit but I have forgotten the order.
Marseilles
Nice
Geneva
Pisa
Rome
Berlin
Lyon
Paris
London
Amsterdam
At 10am, a participant came knocking at my door (sounds like Maroon 5 song) and he was the unlucky one. I had scheduled him to do the 285 tests. He finished it without complains and for that I gave him 2 sweets instead of one. From now on, I would give those who did the longer exp 2 sweets or more. It is really quite tiring. After analyzing the results, I went for lunch with the guys at 1140am. Very early today because one of them had a train to catch. On the way, I talked about going to the forest of King Arthur which in French is called Foret de Breceliande. Mr. Giant said he been there twice. First time he went there on his own and felt nothing much about the place. The second time he went with the tour and after the explanation, he felt that it was more meaningful. However, he wasn’t sure if I would have a problem going without a car. And the guided tour was conducted in French. He also mentioned that the places of interest at the coast are all very nice but there is no need to visit all of them. Just one or two and I would get the feeling already.
At lunch, Vincent asked if I am playing soccer tomorrow and I said no because it is at 1030pm, too late for me. He said it is changed to 930pm. Since they asked, I had no choice but to agree to go. It is not like I hated going. I wanted to go very much. But at the same time I wanted to save the money for my weekend tour. He then asked why would it be too late even if it is 10pm because they all have cars and can send me back. I said by the time I get back I would write my journal and would have to sleep very late. Mathieu then said that 25th March would be his last day in IRISA and I said I would bring camera then to take picture with him. Hopefully with Mathilde too. After lunch, I had an email from Mr. Giant giving me info on the Forest and numbers and emails which I can contact. I quickly sent an email to ask about the tour in English. I wanted to call but again my office phone couldn’t call out to ext number. He also passed to me the last CD for the anime Cowboy Bebop which I am watching. He was very enthusiastic to share his anime because when I asked if he has the anime “.Hack/SIGN”, he said he had all the sequel, prequel, everything of .HACK and can bring them tomorrow. I said perhaps next week as I am still watching Cowboy. Mathieu said that he would burn a DVD anime for me before he leaves. Great colleagues I have here.
The 2nd customer for the day was a PhD student I dragged down from upstairs. As mentioned he was unwilling to do but too bad for him. But I really regretted asking him because he wasn’t professional enough when doing the exp. His was the shorter one with 180 test cases and at the 100 mark, he asked me how many more to go. I said sorry I can’t tell you as it will influence your timing but I assured him that he is doing fine and can take a break if he wanted. He finished the test grumpily and at the end of the exp, I actually wanted to ask him a few more questions but he was already at the door. Really eager to get out. Still I sent an email to him thanking him for the help. I had about an hour before the last customer turned up and so chatted with hui. We started planning our tour and it was really hard because we had to discuss via msn. It would be much easier to discuss side by side. At 4pm, I had to pause the planning as the last participant turned up.
I have spoken with this guy before over the phone and not only does he speak good English, he was very enthusiastic about the experiment. This guy is really professional because in the beginning he wasn’t getting the correct results that I wanted. But I had to show a straight face and be neutral although I was quite nervous whenever he chose the wrong answers. Then at Test 54, he began to realize something is amiss and the exp is not as easy as it seemed. He paused and asked me some questions which I can’t answer him as it would affect his performance. I just assured him that any peculiarity that he observed is part of the exp and not a bug of the program or hardware defect. In the end, his results were getting better and when the tests are done, he asked me to discuss with him about the exp. This is one guy who really is interested in the exp. Not like some of the previous ones who gave me the impression that they are here for fun. In the end, I asked him if he could spread the word around for me. He said even without me asking him, he would forward my email to everyone in his Project TexMex and asked them to come for my exp. At least he would “force” his students to come because he really felt that it was interesting. Immediately I got 2 people from his team sending me emails.
After that, I resumed my planning of the tour with Hui. In the end, we had a route in mind which apparently is the most ideal one so far. Although yesterday I said that it would be too early to disclose the plan here, I am just too excited about the tour. So here are the destinations that we planned to visit but I have forgotten the order.
Marseilles
Nice
Geneva
Pisa
Rome
Berlin
Lyon
Paris
London
Amsterdam
Before I left for France, I met an ex HJC canoeing girl at Double O and she said she would be doing her training in Germany. So now I am trying to find her contact so that maybe I can link up with her in Berlin. Then hui told me that the VISA of those Singaporeans in Grenoble restricted their stay only to France. Once they leave, they couldn’t come back to France within that period. This made me worried about our VISA although on it was written MULT for the “number of entries” blank. Still feeling uneasy, I sent an email to the Singapore Embassy in Paris and hopefully I would get some good reply. If it means I have to stay just in France, it would be quite disappointing. But a good news is that Hui did a rough calculation and estimated that we would need 750 euros each for the entire tour. So I guessed I have saved enough for that by now and thus would go for all the soccer games. I really want to play in fact.
Back in INSA, I went straight to the kitchen to cook rice and canned food. Then I saw a pot of soup with potatoes and tomatoes on the stove. It was already cooked. I was like Goldilock, turning my head to see if anyone was watching me. Then I lifted the cover and took a sniff. Wow! It sure smells nice. 100 times better than my puny little pot of rice. I waited for half a day for the water to boil and started to daydream about the tour again. That was when I realized that the stove was not working! I tried all other stoves and none were working! I began to panic not because I would waste my rice (think since it is not cooked, I can still keep it), but I was afraid that the admin would turn off the stove during the weekdays and only switch them on during weekends. There is a rule saying that no cooking is allowed to be done during weekdays. This is the stupidest rule ever and of course no one cares about that. I went to check with my neighbour and he said he wasn’t sure but thought perhaps it was because of the disinsectification tomorrow. There is a notice saying that pest controllers would come tomorrow and spray insecticide in the sinks of our rooms. I hope my neighbour is correct if not I would have to go back to the old days of eating bread for dinner. First thing tomorrow evening is to check the stoves.
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