france, some benefits of living in:

Great pastries on every corner. A society in which a proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 provokes a huge fight, as opposed to a society in which a proposal to give some people health insurance provokes a huge fight. A legal website called Deezer that has free on-demand play-as-many-times-as-you-want popular music (I'm loving this one). Really fast, cheap internet/phone/TV service (also loving). And all the European livable cities/urban planning stuff too, I suppose.

consequences

I missed my train returning from Brussels to Lyon, and had to wait several hours for the next one. That experience was pretty bad, and I was still annoyed when it was over, because now that I had missed a train, I had to leave more time to get to the station in the future, to avoid a repeat.

So when I took my train to the Paris airport, I got to the train station 15 minutes ahead of time, feeling both virtuous and pissed off at the 15 minutes I could have spent sleeping. It was then that I remembered that I had no actual train ticket, and had to exchange my plane ticket for a train ticket at the window, a process that took 14.5 minutes. So in the end I made my train by (I think) the second-closest I've made a train by, and the first-closest without being fined.

fine in belgium

Returning to Brussels from a conference in Mons, Belgium, I was running frantically in order to catch the last train. I took a few wrong turns, then came to the station. After trying all the locked doors, I ran around the side, saw my train, barreled through the underpass and back up, and lunged for the door as I heard a woman yell wait, forced it open and got in. The woman kept on yelling, though, and eventually I exited the train to go up to her. She was the conductor, and very angry at me. We got on the train, through the non-closed door that she had (apparently) been telling me to go to, and she fined me 15.80 euro for boarding the train after the signal for depart. A Belgian colleague told me the next day that someone had boarded like this, then got into an fight with the conductor, and either fallen off the train or thrown the conductor off, and someone lost a limb, so they're very serious about this offense now. It wasn't clear to me how cracking down on this would help the limb-loss, but there you are.

glamorous, foxy foxy

I used the bathroom in economy while seated in first class. Why wasn't that a security risk? Why not say, "For security, please only use the bathrooms in cabins equal to or lower than your status." It's more honest, although I guess for full honesty they also need to drop the "for security."

lisbon

I assume everyone who reads this blog already knows this, but I've been offered a 3-year position in Lisbon, following a successful appeal of the decision not to offer me a 3-year position in Lisbon. Hopefully when I get back to Lyon there will be a contract in my mailbox.

ranking bike programs

I've now ridden bikes through sharing programs in Lyon, Paris, Barcelona, and Brussels. My thoughts:

Barcelona has by far the worst system. You can't choose which bike you want, if there's 1 good bike and 5 broken ones, you have to keep on taking out a random bike until you get the good one. The bikes are lighter, but their "baskets" are pretty useless. There are no temporary cards, which maybe is necessary because of the inevitable tourist onslaught. Worst of all, the system shuts down at midnight, which makes no sense. Points for cute name: "Bicing," playing off the BCN.

Paris, Lyon, and Brussels have largely the same setup, because JC Decaux runs all of them. Props to Paris for: maps on the kiosks, scrollable maps in the kiosks, tap-n-go bikes so you don't have to wait in line. Brussels has all those too, and its bikes have 7 gears (3 for Paris). Paris suffers because it's actually a little big to bike around in, and the ratio of stations to people and area is kind of low. Brussels has 2 nice aspects. First, the city has made almost all one-way streets two-way for bicycles, so bikes can go anywhere they want. Not sure how the cars feel about it, but I liked it. Second, the city is so small that the kiosk maps can be incredibly detailed and also cover most of the city, so you can avoid getting lost.

Lyon still wins in the end, for me, because it has so many stations -- 340 for a population of under a million, as opposed to 1000 for 10 million in Paris, or ~100 for a million in Brussels. There are a lot of bike lanes. Big downside -- the touch screens that make everything a pain.

good thing I don't brush my teeth

(would hate not to have had skin on them)

My flight to Amsterdam was at 10:35 am. I woke up at 7:50 with the goal of catching the 9:20 bus. Piece of cake. I left my house frantically at 9:13, took a velo'v, biked recklessly to the station with my suitcase balanced on the basket, and screeched to a stop next to the driver who was finishing his cigarette. Leaving my suitcase as a gesture of goodwill, I dashed to the bike stand and returned my bike. Since the stand is right next to the bus stop, I could see him close his door and start pulling away as I did this. Of course, the light was red, and there were lots of buses ahead of him, so he was just stopped. I waved at him, showed him my ticket, and pleaded. He refused to open the door. I should have flashed him as an inducement.

I hesitated for a bit there. I have taken a taxi to the airport in these circumstances. On the other hand, there was no reason for me to be in Amsterdam today. It was only because this flight was way cheaper that I had taken it. So I decided to force myself to relax, and take the 9:40 bus, scheduled to arrive at 10:15, right at "last call" for my flight. I did my best. On the bus, I did the full check, and emerged beltless, watchless, etc. I ran, recklessly again, to security, cut in front of a severely disabled person (no, really), asked my way ahead of several other (non-disabled) people, and spread my stuff out on the belt, cutting in front of someone I hadn't asked. I set off the machine because I'd forgotten my coins. Security was sanguine about me making it despite being so late. I was through at 10:25, ten minutes before my flight was to leave. I ran to gate 21E, which was completely deserted. No sign of anything. I was far too late. I slowed down, and saw a carte d'identité on the floor -- not the crappy carte de sejour that I have, but the real deal. I picked it up and walked to customer service. She also seemed surprised that I would have missed my flight, and looked it up. "La porte a changée," she said. "21G." I ran off again, and came to 21G, which seemed to be boarding for Paris. I asked, Amsterdam? He said, no. Amsterdam is another gate, further down. 21J, which in French is pronounced G, and which I never hear as J. I ran there as they were making last call, and handed them the id card. They thanked me and asked to see my own.

the UK needs me for one more year

-- unless the pound is weak. I have exactly 75 points, which is the minimum required to enter the UK as a "highly skilled worker" without any job lined up. I get 5 points for being 30. I'll still get 5 for being 31, but that's my last chance. However, I currently get 20 points for my income over the previous 12 months. If I earn more than £26,000 in a year (currently $41,344 or €27,870), then I can enter the UK whenever I like. Assuming they approve my application.

From the "notes" at math.berkeley.edu

Oct 2: Warning: Due to a known bug, the default Linux document viewer evince prints N*N copies of a PDF file when N copies requested. As a workaround, use Adobe Reader acroread for printing multiple copies of PDF documents, or use the fact that every natural number is a sum of at most four squares.

it all makes sense now

People will go to any lengths to hear Obama speak:

He said Oslo faced a major challenge to get ready for what will likely be among the largest civic events in Norwegian history: the award ceremony Dec. 10 at which Mr. Obama will be expected to deliver a speech.