Pretty moon and laundry sorcery

A quick one tonight - I'm dying for some sleep after another evening of street hockey. Four goals! Not bad for the sixth time ever. :)

I walked out of my office last night and up in the sky was an incredibly pretty moon. The photo doesn't really do it justice but you get the idea.

A majestic view of an Ambatovy roof - OH and a moon.

Because real men use ZOOM!

Next on the list it's time to cover a very important topic in my life these days, the laundry fairy. You see - in each room is a magical yellow bag in which you place all of your dirty clothes. You then take this bag in the morning and simply leave it outside the door to your room. Presumably while you're away at work during the day the magic yellow bag is visited by the magical tide fairy because at the end of the day there is a yellow bag waiting for you on your bed.

What's this? A magical gift?

With some sort of note on top? Presumably documenting the bounty within...

SORCERY!

Folded AND starched! DAAAAAMN!

So how's everyone enjoying their laundry?

What's a Toamasina?

Last Sunday was spent lazing around, sleeping in, and generally accomplishing nothing of value. This Sunday I was determined to do something more worthwhile and therefore I proceeded to sleep in, read, and then remember that I needed to get off my butt and accomplish something. I went for a walk in the height of the mid day heat, took some photos around the camp, sweat like I'd never sweat before (until hockey last night that is), and then came back to my room and didn't finish posting anything. I'll call it a draw.

Anyway - I figure I'll pick up where I left off with my last post about Madagascar. The first obvious question is - what's a Toamasina? It's a city - more specifically it's the city that I live in while in Madagascar. Wikipedia tells me that in Malagasi Toamasina means "like salt" or "salty" buuut I've never heard anyone mention that so I won't even pretend to take credit.

Sometimes called Tamatave by those damn rebel French that refuse to call anything by it's real name (a big mac is a big mac OK?) Toamasina is the largest and really the only commercial sea port in Madagascar. Wiki tells me the official census in 2011 says ~180K people but since the project and factoring in the fact that it is really the largest economy in MG right now I'd say that number has grown significantly. OH - and you tell me how the census guy finds everyone in a city that was seemingly laid out by a draftsman that sneezed while drawing each line.

Toamasina, Madagascar (http://goo.gl/maps/u1Tu3 - for a google map)

If you click on the google map link in the photo caption you'll see just south of the city what looks to be an enormous industrial site. That would be the Ambatovy project. East of the industrial site is the camp. I'd continue to describe the map but by now Mom is probably so lost on the internet that she's reading about Russian Nuclear Submarines or some sort of enhancement medicine rather than seeing the google map (love you Mom!). Instead - I'll post a picture, which by the way gets bigger if you click on it.

Behold what 5.5 billion, 17 years, and a ~30,000 people can build. There is a mine too but that is a post for another day.

So to the West you see the plant site and the totally awesome private runway the charter flies out of, East of that you can see a U-shaped ring of buildings with some service buildings to the South, and East of that again you can see a town looking thing just West of the ocean. These are the Ops Camp duplexes, the cantina/bar/pool/gym/basketballcourt, and management village respectively. If you're here rotational you live in the Ops Camp, residential with family and important enough you live in the village, and if nobody likes you and/or you're crazy you live in town. The drive from town is insanity in the mornings and the afternoon and I don't know how any of them do it.

I live in the Ops Camp. As per my drawing below which I have labelled so awesomely fantastic in MSPaint - that's right Mom & Dad, two years at NAIT and this is all I learned! - you can see where I work, live, and eat. Pretty fancy looking hey? Yea.. not really. It's a step up from a Ft. Mac camp I'd say but beyond that it's basically a hotel room with crappier food and a nice pool that I can't use because I'm stupid and forgot my bathing suit. :)

I'M A COLLEGE MAN!

The management village for residents is quite a bit nicer but there is equally little to do but presumably lay on the beach and/or yell at kids from your porch about staying off your lawn. They also have a pool, small international school, bar, tennis courts, etc but it doesn't matter because I don't get to live there. :)

But Matt, I thought you said you took a bunch of photos and all you've done so far is rip off google maps and wikipedia! You're correct you jerk! I was trying to provide a bit of background information and ended up rambling on and then having fun with Microsoft Paint and now it's time for the gym so you'll just have to wait for tomorrow.

Good day!

Adventures with feline spring rolls(I kid, I kid), electronics shopping, and tasty snacks AKA Saturday

I'm going to try to catch up on some blog posts here.

We'll start with Saturday when I had a chance to go out for lunch with a couple of co-workers to a place called Darifify, which I've spelled wrong and it is pronounced not the way you'd think All you need to know is they make absolutely fantastic deep fried spring rolls full of mystery meat which were honestly some of the best I've ever had. They also make what they call an upside down bowl which is white rice, chicken, beef, shrimp, pork, and two friend eggs all done in a bowl and then flipped over onto your plate, and you eat it with the following view:

Yea - that's the ocean, and a palm tree, and what? No snow!

Of course there were drawbacks to this two course meal for three, that we ate by the sea(poet), in +28C(oh yeaa)... It did cost roughly $35 - for all of us. :) OH and we had to put up with a couple of really cute dogs and this cat who sat like this for an hour and a half.

Of course the thought just occurred that the cat may have stuck around to mourn his cat brother who may have been in my spring roll. Sorry feline friend - he was tasty.

It was a tough lunch.

On the drive to and from the plant / camp you pass an area of land that was gifted to the people a year or so ago by some local politician. Said politician essentially decreed that from X location to X location people were free to homestead and setup houses etc. This led to an enormous amount of huts springing up in a matter of weeks I'm told which was great until the politician died in a boat accident before the decree was side into law. The drama is ongoing over whether or not the law is going to be passed but in the mean time I snapped a pic of an occupied hut to give you an idea of what some people over here (not all mind you but a good portion) live in.

Later on I'd like to take the camera out and get some decent photos but this will do for now.

This is "rural" housing. Cities / etc have more permanent housing ranging from concrete beautiful places to things stood up all over the place with seemingly whatever is laying around.

It certainly makes you appreciate what you've got.

Following lunch Leo and I (my boss / partner in work crime) went and did some shopping in downtown Toamasina. He needed to find a cellphone for his daughter in Cuba and I needed a TV to replace my god awful 19" CRT that they give you with your room. Most impressive was that we found a chinese android dual sim phone unlocked brand new for $70. Pretty hilarious.

Almost as equally awesome was shopping for TVs. There are a few "major" appliance type stores in Toamasina that stock quite a lot of stuff. If I had to guess at square footage I'd say they are about the size of your average 7-11. Anyway, we hit up those local establishments to try to find a cheap 32" LCD TV. They had them if you wanted to pay 1,000,000AR - or about $500CAD for a four year old panel. Pretty stellar deal I'd say.

I'd all but given up on a TV when mid phone hunt we passed a hole in the wall shop that had four LCD TVs, a billion fridges, about 30 deep freezes, etc all crammed into a rectangular shop about the size of half of a single car garage. They had a new 32" Philips that we bargained down for more than half of what the other guys wanted - it felt very Saudi like to me. Needless to say I was able to watch Formula 1 without sitting in my chair about 20" from the screen and squinting. Totally awesome.

20" OF BEAUTIFUL 240 INTERLACED AWESOME - NOW WITH INTEGRATED DVD PLAYER! I'd love to know where in the hell they found ~200 of these in 2008 when they built the place. Insane. 

Sweet sweet sanity.  Gotta haves my racing.

Following the shopping trip of which I took no pictures, I know I'm bad at this blogging thing, I finished off Saturday with some more terrible eating by picking up my favorite Malaysian snack from the commissary and watching Formula 1. I loves me some prawn crackers. The other package are local peanuts, which are also tasty.

Nomnomnom.

That covers off my super exciting Saturday! IM SURE YOU WERE ALL GLUED TO THE SCREEN!

Anyway, I was planning on doing Sunday's blog for which I took a whole bunch of pictures of my room and the camp but it's way too late to be awake now so I'll have to do Sunday tomorrow. I'd planned on having more time tonight but I was invited by a bunch of guys on the project to come and play street hockey. Well actually I got invited by some other guys to play tennis but there was five of us for doubles and I am horrible at tennis so I joined in with the hockey folks in the other tennis court.

So for the first time in over a decade I played an hour of street hockey. I followed that up with my regular workout and now I'm having trouble moving let alone keeping my eyes open. It was a hell of a lot of fun, they play three times a week and I plan on participating as much as my legs will allow. I am also happy to report that I wasn't the worst player! I credit my good Canadian genes.

This is what an hour of street hockey does to me. You can't tell from the photo but my shirt is soaked all the way through with my manly awesome sweat. And yes - that is the worlds oldest "new" Blackberry.

Until next time!

Vazaha foibles pt.1

I think the goal of any expat should be to make as much of a positive impact as possible while offending the least number of nationals as possible. In the pursuit of that goal in Madagascar you tend to hear the term Vazaha or "white man" a lot. :) Not entirely in a negative light but in a more "oh dear god what is that idiot doing" sort of fashion. So in order to avoid hearing it in the what-the-hell-is-that-Vazaha doing way I am using this blog to keep track of things not to screw up... again.

First on the list today is "svp". When your team receives an email written in French with a whole bunch of sentences in capital letters and it's sent from the admin assistant of an upper manager and the only thing you recognize is SVP at the end DON'T PANIC! SVP does not mean Senior Vice President so whatever you do don't immediately walk over to your boss and ask about it. They will laugh at you and explain that SVP means s'il vous plaît.... Yea. Don't be that guy.

Second on the list, when a question is answered with "well received" it means "thanks, I'm working on it" not "you should send me a follow up email because you have no idea what well received means".

And the last protip for today is when ordering business cards always remember to capitalize your last name and not your first name or you're doing it wrong. So that would be Stupid VAZAHA not STUPID Vazaha. Though the second spelling would be more suitable at this point. :)

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by:

Where exactly is Uncle Matt?

So where exactly is it that I am spending 6 out of every 8 weeks for the next year you ask? Why what a great question my dear nieces! Auntie Lisa said you guys were curious at your Dad's Birthday dinner on Sunday (happy Birthday Trevor - I am a terrible brother in law for forgetting, sorry!) so I thought I might do a quick post to explain to you two where I am.

Madagascar (you know - the island with the lemurs and the musical animals from the movie we watched) is almost as far away from Canada as you can get on a plane from your house! It's 15,830KM away, which is roughly the same distance as if you lined up 1,256,349 of your school buses nose to tail! If you could walk on water and you started walking today and you walked for half of the day every day it would take you 236 days to get here, that's 2/3 of a year! In other words - it's pretty far!

Anyway, Madagascar is an island - a really big island! - off the Eastern coast of Africa (that's the big continent with all the animals, think Lion King). It's so big that it's actually the 4th biggest island in the world.

That's it - right there!

The neat part about the island is that it was isolated for nearly 90 million years (that's a looong time - almost as old as mai mai) so most of the plants and animals on the island are found nowhere else in the world, like the Baobab trees pronounced bay-o-bab.

Baobab's are neat!

It's also home to a whole bunch of different kinds of Lemurs (those are the annoying singing things we saw on the Madagascar movie). They are curious, cute little animals but like all wild animals have to be shown proper respect so you don't upset them. I got to meet some last time I was here but they didn't want to say hi to me, they were more interested in throwing poop at each other. Pretty funny hey?

Ring-tailed poop throwers or as I like to call it - Taras!

Not only is it home to a whole bunch of neat plants and animals but it's also home to nearly 22 million people or almost 22 Edmonton's worth of people. The best part is, you guys would have no problems talking to people here because most of them speak French! I on the other hand am begrudgingly having to learn French again. :) Maybe when I'm home at Christmas you can give me lessons.

Anyway, that's all I've got time for tonight. Next time I'll post a bit more about where in Madagascar I actually live. I hope you enjoyed my little post, in the mean time be sure to keep being good for your Mom & Dad and to give Auntie Lisa lots of hugs for me when you see her! :)

Party like it's 1986!

So picture this - you've been in Madagascar for 5 days, you're feeling a little weird as you've got a funky sinus drainage thing going on, you're still not completely adjusted to the time zone, and your new team comes to you Friday afternoon before they leave and says "you're coming to the party tomorrow, right?". Party? What? Yes. Yes I am.

Head to work for 730 and fast forward to 1030 and myself and my boss hop in one of the totally rad Mitsubishi Diesel 4 door 1/4 tonne pickups they have all over the place here and proceed to drive an hour out into what I think technically is actually the middle of nowhere. A guy at work said "it's at the beach." but I saw no such thing.

So we arrive after a rather exciting ride over some unique roads where I discover sitting in the back bouncing around a truck at speed makes me a wee bit queezy (yet another thing I blame on you Mom). Anyway, the shindig is at a place called Taratra Village (http://taratravillage.com/ for those rushing to make reservations after reading this) to what appears to be a gigantic cultist party of some sort. It is then I'm told (whilst being laughed at) that apparently they gave out Ambatovy shirts to everyone (~1000 people) and it was mandatory to wear it to the party today. Awesome! I'm 6'5" and wearing a black polo in a sea of gray! Woo! The positive side is that it served as a good conversation starter with everyone that I met, or looked at, or that simply looked in my direction.

BEHOLD THE SPLENDOR!

Taratra village - where questionable food, incredibly nice people, and horrible cover bands make for a sweet party!

To be fair the place is actually quite pretty. The part Ambatovy rented was the front side which is essentially a large field with a stage, basketball courts, a volleyball pitch big enough for a 40 person volley ball game, and some tents they'd set up with chairs / tables and food.

Note the pretty sky. The sky here changes faster than Alberta weather. Crazy.

Soccer field & gratuitous company plug. :)

Tents, food on right, stage on far left past tents, dance thingy in front of stage. You get the idea.

Anyway - we'd just sat down at a table with a bunch of the team from IT and I'm enjoying the local band they've hired who was playing some music that I'm told is common in the North of Madagascar (HISTORY LESSON - One of the local guys told me that I guess each province in Mada has their own very distinct sound when it comes to local music. Pretty neat.) when I'm convinced the single greatest thing I'll ever experience in Madagascar happens. The local band finishes a rocking - I want to say Caribbean sounding local song, and all of the sudden out of nowhere switches gears to 80's synth-mash mode to begin the single most hilarious rendition of Europe's 1986 Megahit (thanks wikipedia) The Final Countdown.

Yes. This song.

I cannot even begin to describe the awesome. Not wanting to be rude I kept my camera in my pocket but I can't tell you how hard that was. So I'm sitting there laughing on the inside and desperately scanning for more beer on the outside, all while listening to this magical song when the chorus hits and the packed dance floor (field? pitch? thing?) simultaneously yells out "THE FINAL COUNTDOWN". These Malagasy's, they know how to party! It is certainly an experience I will never forget.

Things were not nearly as exciting following The Final Countdown but I did get a chance to have some BBQ. Thankfully I've yet to spend copious throne time regretting the decision to eat the below but it has only been ~6 hours.

In no certain order I present salmonella, ecoli, tapeworm, a fried banana and some sort of Saurkraut tasting white vegetable misc?

At the time I tried not to think of how the hell the project got enough food for that many people an hour into the middle of nowhere, prepare, cook, and serve it in ~30 degree weather and still maintain some type of hygenic scenario. It wasn't until later I discovered up the hill was a very nice banquet type kitchen thing. Still, definitely crossing fingers for no food issues. :)

All in all the party was quite enjoyable! It was nice to see some old faces and meet a ton of new ones and even nicer to see the company putting something on with the entire staff. The music other than the Final Countdown was actually really neat, and the food despite my initial worry was good. A heck of a way to spend your first Saturday in Madagascar I'd say!

Tomorrow is Sunday and I have HUGE plans. Hit the pool, take some photos of the living space to blog about and watch the F1 race.

The instant coffee that isn't

So the first time I came to MG I e-mailed some former Fort Sask co-workers that were on project here and said "Hey - what do you need me to bring?". Requests came in all over the map but the one thing that I remember thinking was a total waste of time was Starbucks VIA. Yes. That stuff. The thing you see at Costco for like $19 for a single cup of instant coffee packaged in enough plastic to kill an entire flock of unsuspecting birds.

The first trip out I bought $120 worth and sold it to the group here in minutes. The second trip out $200 and so on. I'd never tried it though as I'd always been going home relatively soon and/or made do with the very tasty espresso machine in the IT office. The thing is ... it's amazing. Seriously. This is not my Mother's (sorry mom) horrible horrible horrible folgers instant vague approximating of brown liquid. This is a damn good cup of coffee and it even smells like fresh grounds when you open the package.

All of the sudden those $15 cups of coffee seem worth it.

My adventure with french shampoo or why I should quit messing around and learn French...

Another item I forgot to bring with me is shampoo... Normally this wouldn't be an issue as there is a grocery store in town that carries all the essentials but I've been so busy thus far that there hasn't been an opportunity to get there yet. This morning I ran out of my poor travel pack of some horrible dove something or other so I figured after the gym tonight I'd hit the little store we have at the camp and pick up some shampoo.

So post-gym sweating like a banshee sweating banshees that are sweating I wander in to the store mere moments before the poor fellow is closing up so I quickly scan the meager shampoo selection and snag the least girly looking one they have. I figure being blue and orange, both fairly manly colours, that I'd be OK....

Elseve right? Sounds manly. Antipelliculaire... anti.. it means it's fighting something.. Pelliculaire? That can't possibly mean anything weird right? Anti peculiar maybe? Whatever it says anti on it a bunch and I see actif in there too it must kick some ass at shampooing.. Yea, sure. That'll do. Pay the man and get out, he wants to go home.

So google translate post gym shower tells me the guy at the commissary thinks I have a dandruff problem now. Like a really really bad one. Apparently this stuff lasts for days and destroys itchy scalp and dandruff after JUST one use!

*sigh* Time to learn French....

I swear the days are faster here....

I went into the office just after 7 this morning and started working on getting my head around the architecture here and then it was noon. I went to the oh so wonderful (think really bad elementary school cafeteria quality) mess hall and had whatever ginger fish is. It vaguely resembled what I think happens if you were to take the fish that isn't good enough to make into fish sticks and coat it in the stuff you make ginger beef out of. Regardless it was pretty unique.

I followed lunch up by continuing to study the infrastructure and do some objective planning and then it was 7PM.... Awesome.

Not much exciting today in the world of wildlife or otherwise so this is a pretty short one. Managed to get in a workout after dinner tonight which was pretty awesome. I'm trying to think of a way to track the workout progress on here to keep myself responsible. We'll see how far I get there.

Also added a sidebar of things I forgot... I'm learning it's going to grow quite substantially. I am so far pretty flabbergasted at what I've managed to not bring. Oh well!

Off to bed for me!

Of note - Blogger is smart enough to autosave posts it seems as I tried to tag my location and it crashed Blogger... I nearly power pooped as I HATE it when apps do something silly but was pleasantly surprised to find that it had auto-saved my post. Yaay! Going to try to tag location again.

Day 4 or 1.. or... yea..

So today was my first full day in Madagascar and first day altogether at the office but technically my fourth since leaving home. I'm happy to report a minimal amount of Jet Lag thus far... I am holding off on celebrating yet as it usually kicks me in the ass a few days after I arrive but so far so good. Good enough that  I was able to work a 12 hour day, grab some dinner with a contractor that I know from my last project, and am still planning on going to the gym later.... We'll see how that last bit goes but no narcoleptic head in soup moments yet!

Not much to document when it comes to the day. I went in and met with the team (all people I have worked with before) and we spent some time discussing goals for the year, my role, etc. Then came some HR stuff in getting my permanent badge and doing induction training - NEWSFLASH: H2S is STILL dangerous! - I followed up that intellectually thrilling exercise by getting my new work laptop, monitor, phone, blackberry, etc.

A brief geeky interlude - they run Dell as the standard hardware supplier here for laptops/desktops. It's been a while since I've had my hands on a Dell product and thus far I've been blown away by the quality of the Latitude product. It feels better in my hands than my trusty old ThinkPad. We'll see how it lasts over the course of the year. Thus far though I am quite pleased.

The rest of the day was filled with work believe it or not. The team is great and my boss and I have been on the same page when it comes to expectations for a while so I've been able to jump right in. Definitely feeling a bit lucky there.

Dinner tonight was an oven baked flat bread Margarita pizza and a couple of THB's with the contract fellow in from Toronto. For those wondering what the hell a THB is it is the hilariously awesome Three Horses Beer a locally brewed can of awesome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Horses_Beer)... I use awesome very lightly.

On the way back from dinner at the door to the room I was greeted by this little fella on the mat out front. Frog legs anyone?

The Trip to 5B4

After various delays from the work side, mini-crisis with paperwork (and self caused crisis of OMG panic), and many fantastic evenings spent catching up with friends & family before being (mostly)absent for a year I left on Saturday, November 10th. My parents were kind enough to meet Lisa & I for breakfast at Denny's and drive us to the airport in some of the most horrible road conditions I've seen in a while. The breakfast was gross but the company was good!

At the airport some quick hugs and my parents were off to allow Lisa and I a minute. After checking in my single 37KG bag (that sound you are hearing is baggage handlers chiropractors applauding), giving Lisa a hug or six and saying goodbye I cleared security in short order despite their amazement at my ability to fit two laptops, an ipad, ereader, iphone, blackberry, 2 harddrives, two pairs of headphones, a digital camera, a jacket, and a couple of other large items like chargers into my backpack. Protip: Don't take that much crap in one bag. I am pretty sure my spine is crooked now.

The enormity of the decision Lisa and I made to take advantage of this opportunity didn't really hit until I cleared security. I had a bit of a "what have I done" moment but quickly moved on. Rather than sit in the lounge and drink free beer (a bad idea pre flight) I found a seat in the badass new section of EIA and took in my last prairie winter view for a while.

The flight to Montreal was delayed leaving EIA because loading luggage is hard... evidently so is flying a plane through decent weather as the flight was horribly bumpy. The 2 hour layover in Montreal was easily passed walking around and looking at pretty watches. TW Steel makes some badass stuff! A certain TW678R Team Lotus Edition nearly went home with me but I decided to take my own advice about not buying stuff until I get paid and left it in the pretty case it was in.

Next came the flight to Paris. Rather uneventful as well although coming over the Maritimes we hit some gnarly bumpy stuff. You know it's serious when they cut out dinner service midway through due to bumps. Luckily this time I got my cookies before they had to sit down. Crisis averted! 

It was during this post cookie turbulence that I formulated the brilliant plan to not sleep until I got on the flight to Reunion some 24 hours after leaving Edmonton. The fatigue would help to reset the sleep schedule and perhaps allow me to sleep through the always bumpy 10 hour trek across Africa. So rather zombie-like I arrived in Paris bright and early at 7AM and waited in the baggage line up until 9 before finally beating down a crowd of rude line-cutting frenchman to get my bag.

The plan was to check the bag and my carry on at a luggage storage locker in the airport, hop the train and spend some time in Paris during my 11 hour layover. Interestingly enough apparently they closed all of the self storage baggage lockers post 9/11 because they thought people were going to blow them up so I hauled my now nicely broken  37KG suitcase (thanks Air Canada / Karma) all the way across from terminal 2A to the baggage storage joint in terminal 2C thinking it would be a quick thing and I'd be on my way to Paris post haste.

At 11AM I got on the train to Paris.... after fighting with the agent about why a baggage storage place would have a weight limit when the airlines don't and her explaining to me in a French accent that the man that hauls the bags around is little or something... Anyway - after pouting for a while I remembered that in my suitcase was my flattened gym bag and quickly transferred some of my heavier junk into that, paid the 18 Euro ransom to store my bags for six hours and hopped on the train.

I met a nice older British lady on the train who was in town from London for the day to visit some Aussie friends of hers. She and I were the only two people in the train car we were on which we should've been smart enough to recognize as an ill omen but alas we didn't discover that there were indefinite train delays due to "track construction" until we'd been sitting in the train 1 stop from CDG for 45 minutes. If only there had been more people to enjoy listening to myself and this old British lady sarcastically complain quite loudly about how horrible the French were. They'd of got a kick out of it (or beat us up at the very minimum) I'm sure.

After passing the HUGE construction project which actually turned out to be two French dudes with shovels standing in the middle of the tracks I hopped off the train at the Notre-Dame cathedral stop. It only took three flights of stairs and one hobo to point me in the right direction of the street where I was greeted with a rather awesome view.

Simply stunning. Paris in Fall / Winter mode is absolutely beautiful - even if it is French. I'd forgotten how pretty it all was and was way too young to appreciate the awesome that is old architecture. I wandered all the way up whatever road this was stopping at various street vendors to peruse the paintings, old books, 1.8 billion crappy eiffel tower replicas, and various other eccentric little knickknacks and nearly made it to the tower.

I then decided it was time for a beer and something to eat so I stopped in at the Great Canadian Pub (totally awesome I know) and had an awesome pint of Stella and about six fork fulls of a terrible $24 Chicken Ceaser Salad. Unfortunately by this point I was running close to a day without sleep and my foresight was not really working so hot, 1 pint of Stella after a long walk on no sleep and no food since the night before was a rather horrible idea for the disposition. I sat off the ill effects off the poorly timed beer with a coffee on the cafe patio next to the Seine and then hopped a bridge and walked down the other side of the river to head back to the Metro.

On the way I discovered rather by accident that I'd stumbled upon the Louvre. I was honestly too tired to justify spending the 40 Euro to enter but instead wandered around the huge campus of really awesome old buildings that make up the museum. Never in my life have I seen such a wonderful array of millions of tiny Eiffel Tower souvenirs! And I suppose the architecture was neat too...

It's funny - the architecture is amazing, the surroundings just beautiful, the quality of sculpture second to none, but the only thing I could think of was how long it must've taken for some poor bastard hundreds of years ago to lay the cobblestone in the courtyards. I was absolutely fascinated by the uniqueness of the courtyard cobble stone. Beautiful stuff.

Anyway, my walk brought me back to the Metro via another beautiful walk. By this time it was late enough that hopping back on the Train to CDG was my only option, I had to repack and check-in after all. Lightheadedness from the beer aside the International terminal at CDG had been reno'd since I'd last been there in 2009 and was quite a bit less craptacular than I remembered. For an airport of it's volume though I'm amazed that a place like EIA blows it away in terms of quality.

7PM brought the boarding call for my flight to Reunion Island and thankfully the whole ride was quite a blur as my brilliant plan succeeded and I managed to sleep for nearly 8 of the 10 hours. The only time I was really awake was for the hour or so it took to pass through a huge thunderstorm we encountered flying down the Southwest coast of Italy. It's the first time I can recall being inside a lightning storm. Very spectacular but also very stressful.

Exiting the plane in Reunion I begged my way into the First Class lounge and discovered much to the happiness of anyone that had to stand within 20 feet of me a shower. Best. Shower. Ever. Feeling human I passed the 6 hour layover in Reunion by finishing off A Dance With Dragons on my e-reader. Two notes on that topic, 1 - The Kobo Glo is awesome. Buy one. 2 - Fuck you George R R Martin. You suck.

A quick jump to Madagascar and a very interesting experience in customs where the Malagasi fellow that spoke as much English as I do French tried to confiscate my underwear and I was through to the awaiting driver. A quick check in at the camp and I was handed the keys to my new home for the year - room 5B4. I already met one of 4 fellow duplex mates who it turns out I'd known from my last few trips to MG. He's a pretty stellar guy and we had a good chat about motivating Nationals. He had some awesome tips that I'll have to try.

That brings me to the end of the 3 day journey of getting to my new temporary home of 5B4. I hope you enjoyed this ramble. I'm going to make it a goal to write something on here each day I'm in MG. Some days may be inspired and others may consist of single word posts like "bananagram" or "verisimilitude" but I shall try nonetheless.  Let me know if there is anything you want to see in particular and I will get it looked at.

Mattawhatwho?

As of November 12th, 2012 I'm off to Madagascar for a year on a 6 week in, 2 week out rotational basis. A few people suggested I keep a blog - this is your fault.