At INSEAD we love to drink and drive

The freshmen have just completed the pointless half-day exercise of making posters to discourage drunk driving. These posters are all campy, full of sexual innuendo and puns and completely inactionable. Then the same week they went over to the party in Fleury, got stupid drunk and all drove home through the forest full of boars. Not just the freshmen, but the P4s as well. By P4, we’re experts!

Now, Professor Bartolome would just tell me that I’m too uptight. Surely this moralistic perspective is just a result of my rushed potty training, or a product of my overly conservative upbringing. Actually, my moralizing comes from having a college boyfriend whose mother and sister were killed by a drunk driver while he was in the back seat of a car. But of course nothing like that would happen to anyone here. We’re all way too privileged and precious. Oh, wait. It HAS happened to people here. But how soon we forget.

I [can almost] understand how people manage to justify bad decisions when they’re already drunk at a party. But the problem is that these future business leaders can’t seem to make a good decision up front. How about planning ahead and designating a sober driver? Nah, too much planning. Better just grab my keys and head out! The best is when someone volunteers to be a designated driver and then you see them getting wasted. What kind of a selfish asshole do you have to be to care that little about the lives of the people you’ve VOLUNTEERED to drive home? I’m gonna go upstairs now and ask my neighbor this exact question.

Maybe that’s something they should incorporate into Management Decision Making. I’d like to sell 30 contracts for “At least one INSEAD student will get maimed or killed in a drunk driving accident during P4.”

INSEAD is hardly free from blame. When a couple of idiots last year got arrested, rather than actually take any action within their abilities, some admin wrote a completely impotent e-mail reminding students that ‘at INSEAD we do not drink and drive.’ Oh, GOSH! Thanks for the reminder! I was going to funnel 5 beers and then drive home, but I’m glad you e-mailed me to appeal to my ethics. It’s great that you have a bus that makes two trips a night between the party and Fonty. That way, the people in Fonty, most of whom don’t have cars, can get home comfortably. But if you happen to live in Bourron Marlotte, and the party is in Barbizon, well, you can just count on your shit-drunk buddy to get you home. It’s no problem. The pitch-black forest isn’t teeming with boars and deer.

How about some actionable repercussions? Removal from the Dean’s List? How about failure to graduate? Being barred from on-campus recruiting opportunities or a removal from the alumni database?

Put your money where your mouth is, INSEAD.

P Quatro

I’m happily back in the bubble and life once again moves at breakneck speed. And for the first time in a really long time I find myself being hyper-motivated and really effective. So much so that I haven’t had time to update my three loyal readers (and all of you December 2010 hopefuls who are Googling ‘INSEAD vs HBS’ and ‘INSEAD waitlist’) on the goings on of the penultimate period. Penultimate is a good word; rather underused.

So… what’s going on?

:: FRESH MEAT ::
There are freshmen on campus! Today I got to meet quite the awkward lot of them at the club fair. It’s hard not to think of them as so young and naive, even though a good half of them are older than me.
Freshman: “So um… I’m interested in this-and-that.”
Me: “Oh that sounds great! What about this-and-that interests you?”
Freshman: “Um… I dunno. I just wrote my INSEAD essay about it. So… how how will your club help me get a job?”
Me: “Uhh… come again?”

What else…

:: SCHOOL WORK ::
My classes RAWK! The Brand Management class is so cool. We’re doing cases on Russian Vodka, Steinway Pianos, French Perfumes. Almost all of the cases have been written under the prof who created this class. So totally worth the high bidding points! I’m being a huge nerd and reading ahead in the cases because they’re so interesting.

The Industry Competitive Analysis is slightly less thrilling but also great (thanks, Resipsa, for the rec!). Not reading ahead in this class though. Norddeutsche Affinerie’s energy strategy also interesting though somewhat less spellbinding and will be read once I’m done procrastinating with this blog post.

Realizing Entrepreneurial Potential is amazingly inspiring – the premise being that you don’t have to build a business from scratch to be an entrepreneur. You can buy one. And so during the class you go through the process of acquiring (or… err…. attempting to acquire) a company. I’m steering my group to look at something more exciting than concrete fence posts, lawn equipment and cathode ray tubes. Watch out, Hummus Brothers.

Yes, still obsessed…

Psych Issues in Management is a weird fish. I’m hoping that it will be something like LPG – incredibly frustrating until you have a big a-ha moment at the end and everything falls into place. I just wish the guy would stop cursing.

:: RECRUITING ::
Among other news, the recruiting circus is in town. I’ve decided to forego the consulting recruiting. I’m not interested in it enough in the job, and not convincing enough to fake it – and can really do without any more rejection in my life. So, it’s a relief to keep the tap dancing shoes in the closet for now. But – not to worry! – I plan on getting filthy drunk and dominating convo with McKinsey on Friday night in the best of traditions.

To London, with Love and Squalor

[First, a shout-out!]

One thing that’s worthy of mention though is how much the INSEAD alumni rock. For a while, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep investing time and energy into networking in a city that I couldn’t see myself living in. But then I decided that talking to interesting people about mutual interests couldn’t hurt. It didn’t. Those who don’t stand you up at breakfast way the hell across town because of a hangover (We’re cool, mate. I’m pretty psyched about discovering a taste for Marmite) have been wonderfully helpful and eager to help. I’ve gotten a reply to all but one e-mail I’ve sent, and have gotten the chance to meet with a dozen or so alumni, who have been total rockstars. Thank you!

[Some sort of skillful segue goes here]

The summer is winding down. The lack of blogging is not so much correlated with the lack of activity in life – though much of it doesn’t seem blog-worthy. Or rather, much of it is not INSEAD- and MBA-related. Do the people who read this want to hear about the cockles in Whitstable, or about the bizarre, quirky sense of humor of Salinger (assigned reading from the boy I’ve been fake-dating all summer. Yeah, we’re cerebral like that…)? Probably not.

Less than one week before the London crew disperses to Fonty and Singapore. When I say crew, I mean the three people out of forty that I’ve actually hung out with. The rest have been drinking L14 cocktails at rooftop bars from which many a banker have plunged to their deaths.

I can hardly wait to get out of this angry, mean, overpopulated, overpriced yuppie hell and get back to the idyllic life in Fontainebleau. I’m exaggerating on all counts here, of course. In the recent weeks London and I haven’t quite gotten to be friends. But the weather has stabilized to something almost pleasant, I love the rotunda of the British museum, the art installation in the vaults by London Bridge I saw last Friday was whack-ass (in an amazing sort of way), and I haven’t gotten into any fights with any bus drivers in at least 96 hours. I’d say we’re moving toward becoming solid frenemies.

I thought I could trade baguettes for convenience and macarons for culture, but found that I couldn’t keep up with the pace of life here, with the deafening noise, the crowds, the lack of personal space, the constant assault on all senses. Too much heart, some would say.

I can’t wait to see my BFFs back from Singapore, to reconnect with friends I’ve missed over the two month break, to pick up the almost-friendships that started to develop in P3, to my personal space (own bathroom, my fabulous kitchen knife). I know I’m over-romanticizing France right now. I haven’t quite forgotten the fact that Je ne parle pas a squat of French or that the Monoprix closes before class is done on most days. Oh, and the fact that we’re not coming back to sit and watch the world go by on a picnic spread by the reflecting pool. We’re coming back to kick off the recruiting season.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that this summer internship – or rather 6 weeks spent googling various combinations of words (aka market research) – job will help me transition into doing the next thing. But it’s more likely that the summer internship has helped me realize that the ‘next thing’ is not actually the thing that I thought I wanted to do. Well, all good learnings. After fiddling with the resume format this way and that, I decided that the current internship was not worthy of displacing another activity I’m more proud of. So, it’s like it never happened. Plausible deniability?

I know I’ll look through the hazy veil of memory, and remember the time I’ve spent in London as fun and adventurous and larger than life. Rather than ‘claustrophobic’, I’ll remember feeling ‘alive’. Rather than ‘constantly angry’, I’ll remember feeling ‘exhilarated and inspired’. I’ll be driving my SUV through Virginia suburbs, taking my fertility treatment twins to soccer practice and tell them stories of, ‘back when mom was young and lived amidst squalor in London’ – and it’ll all be terribly romantic – but for now, I’m ready to get outta here.

A thank you note and a suggestion

Dear McConslutting & Co,

Thanks for the booze. Please forgive the tone of this note. I’m still a bit drunk. Drunk enough to have done some drunk dialing on my way home to someone I haven’t even broken up with (or gotten together with, for that matter). Drunk enough to know that I’ll probably have a headache tomorrow. Drunk enough to have felt at ease monopolizing every conversation, thinking that everything coming out of my mouth tonight was terribly clever. Drunk enough for my parents to be partially amused but kind of disappointed when talking to me on Skype tonight. [Sorry, guys!] Drunk enough to still be contemplating whether or not I should take a shower tonight for the risk of slipping and drowning in the filthy shower I share with 5 other people because my roommate has had his whole family staying with us for the last week.

Since I know how much you enjoy continuous feedback, I thought I would give you some feedback. Rather than doing it positive thing first, I’ll cut to the chase and tell you what you can improve. I was kind of hoping you would have had hummus at your event tonight. In fact, as I was shoving my way down Regent Street this evening, I said just that to my friend, “Oooh, I bet they’ll have hummus.”

I can’t believe you didn’t have hummus. One of my best friends in your New York office always tells me that before they ever bother to do any work, you take the team out for some team bonding at Jean George or at L’Atelier Joël Robuchon. Only after the seared foie gras with raspberry reduction or the sea urchin with lettuce foam do they commence that cost cutting pharma project where they make half the client company redundant. So I figured there’d be at least something mundane like shrimp cocktail. Or hummus! Maybe next time you could call me ahead and I can pick up some hummus on the way. I don’t mind! There’s even a place called Hummus Brothers in London. In fact, I’ve been doing this mental exercise all weekend: what’s the next Hummus Brothers (i.e. what’s the next completely ridiculous food fetish?). I know it’s the recession and all, but this bbq was quite possibly worse than an INSEAD bbq at Tavers. And trust me, that’s pretty bad. Next time, you could just serve drinks and salty snacks.

On the bright side, I enjoyed the chit chat. Or rather, I enjoyed hearing myself talk.

Sincerely,

MBA/MRS

Excitement!

Sing or no sing?

I’m alive. And so far I haven’t been afflicted by the swine flu that my roommate and half of London has. The reason I haven’t been writing is because I’m following the old adage “When you have nothing nice to say…” And I have nothing nice to say.

It seems that Chicken Little and I have done a Freaky Friday role reversal. While he has found his London heart, I’m quietly flipping my shit as I elbow my way through the humanity of Picadilly Circus in the rain. I don’t feel too bad about emotionally dumping all over him because he owes me one. Or ten. Except that he’s not very good at talking me off the wall.

To keep this blog alive I will temporarily suspend my resolve to fake positivity, and satisfy my readership [my mom and dad, a fellow blogger or two, 4 friends, and the folks on the INSEAD waitlist who keep googling 'INSEAD class size'] with a few not-so-nice things I have to say about my summer.

I was so psyched to have a job for the summer that I didn’t think to spend any time talking to people inside the company to figure out what exactly the work would be like. Although talking to the people in side the company now that I’m here doesn’t seem to reveal that any of them are aware of how painfully boring their jobs are. Though many of them do cringe and twist in their seats when I ask whether this job fulfills their aspirations.

Being in this transitionary (transitory?) year means that I am constantly having the ‘what’s next’ conversation with myself, my friends, everyone I meet. It’s weird to now be with a group of people who might not be asking themselves that question in such an immediate way. Their next move might be a few years away, or maybe they don’t think of their lives as consisting of a number of steps and progressions. Maybe they have arrived, though I have trouble believing this could possibly be the embodiment of anyone’s dream.

As it turned out, I am being managed by a consultant about three years my junior who has the world’s most annoying voice. She has a way of sneaking up behind me and nasally intoning a “hi” that lasts about five minutes: “hhhwwwwwooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeee” What also makes her hard to take seriously is that she’s about 4ft tall, wears a lot of pink, and laughs continuously in an awkward hiccupping way when speaking. I have to bite my tongue to keep myself from asking her what exactly is so freaking hilarious about market research on the green hotel industry.

It also turned out that no one does any work in Europe during August, so my project has stalled because there’s no one around to provide input on the client side. And being in a giant, hierarchical beast of a company means that I can’t just e-mail people to ask them to do their jobs; I have to elevate the matter via a memo the head of somethingorother who will then e-mail them to follow up (when he gets back from vacation in three weeks, that is). That said, I’m having lots of fun applying the LPG teachings of GP in deciphering the complexity of formal and informal organizational structures at play here.

Since I’m left projectless, my legally blond manager has been racking her brain and spending her entire days writing e-mails to me of possible things I could do. She has come up with a list of projects which will culminate in power point presentations (Arial Narrow, Red 188.20.25, Gray Tint2 174.175.176) – the latest and greatest developments in the self-storage industry! – that no one will ever read. I’ve countered her offer with a proposal to use my time to write some free-lance pieces for a couple of industry journals and blogs. But I think she didn’t see the value-add of my self-promotion on the company dime (err… company pence?). So I’m working on that anyways.

I also put together a proposal for work for a high tech startup I met at a conference during P3. Somehow I managed to convince this company that I know something about marketing of high tech products. The thing about consulting is that if you know marginally more than your client, you’re in good shape. “Consumer-led innovation” just has a catchy ring to it, doesn’t it? They’ve offered me a nice chunk of change, but I’m nervous to jump in because this temporary activity will take some focus away from the job search. After this summer’s experience I feel the pressure to better define what exactly it is that will make me famous in 5 years. (Yes, I’ve said it. The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a narcissist.)

from here

Excuse No. 2 for my absence from blogging is that instead of writing, I’ve been reading. Not business cases but travel writing! This summer I am traveling vicariously through pictures posted by classmates on facebook, and through travel writing. Don’t take this part as complaining. In all honesty, I’m not a very good traveler. It takes me a while to warm up to new surroundings (5.5 months in the case of France) before I come to love a place. I’m a much better staying-putter.

Reading good writers has a way of making me feel incompetent when I try to string words together in a post. And in this case, consoling myself that English is not my native language doesn’t work either, because the writer is Italian and writes in English.

“A Fortune Teller Told Me” is written by an Asia correspondent for Der Spiegel who is one day told by a fortune teller that he must not fly for an entire year or he will not survive an air accident. He decides to take the fortune teller’s prophecy seriously, or perhaps finds in it an excuse to mix things up a bit. And so spends a year traveling by land and by sea and diving into the occult – seeking out fortune tellers, witch doctors and practitioners of black magic in every city and village he visits. He writes about his experiences with a critical eye of a journalist and a descriptive ability of a great story teller.

He also writes a particularly harsh chapter about a week he spends in superficial, artificial, suffocating, straight-jacketed Singapore. Reading this chapter coincides with my own vacillation about whether or not to go to Singapore. I’m reading between the lines that this particular journalist doesn’t really like food, as not a single meal is mentioned or described. Meals happen in the background – during meetings with Thai government officials or Cambodian royalty – and the food is never described. So perhaps he was unable to turn a blind eye on the politics of Singapore in favor of the XO fishhead noodles or the Bak Kut Teh, as I will surely do. He probably didn’t carry a Makansutra everywhere.

I’m on the waitlist for P5, and will most likely be able to get a spot – but am starting to wonder whether going to Singapore just for the food is justifiable. Yes, there’s also the travel – but my carbon guilt compounded by my fear of flying won’t make for lots of trips around Asia.

So, another rambling, ranting inconclusive post. Watch this space.

Lessons from London

:: Look Right. Look Left. Sometimes you’ll still manage to look the wrong way, and a double decker bus running a red light will come two inches from running you down. The only thing that saves you is that the crowd collectively gasps. At which point you just start bawling in the fucking middle of Oxford Street. Not because you almost got killed. But for all the other reasons life is confusing/hectic/sad/unsettled right now and you’ve been wanting a good cry for a while. I’m just saying: it could happen, so look right first.

:: The Paul on Marylebone High Street has Chausson Pomme, not Chausson Aux Pomme. Not sure what gives. I’ve been craving one for a week now and felt particularly smug pronouncing the ‘aux’ this morning. Tasted like the real deal too. Shouldn’t make it a habit at £1.70 and a stick of butter for breakfast. And anyway, according to a Frenchman INSEADer also in London, Paul in Paris is for subway stations. Paul in London tries to be fancy. The lesson here might be that abroad I’m brand illiterate.

:: Burkas are totally in this summer. Everyone in Hyde Park is wearing one. Only £7 at Primark. Black only.

:: Londoners hate lunch. This is my conclusion in face of the overabundance of really well-branded lunch places and the level of art to which the triangle sandwich has been elevated. All the Wasabis, the Pret-a-Mangers, the Eats, the Itsus – they’re all a testament of London’s loathing of lunch. Don’t get me wrong; Itsu’s miso-based dumpling soup with toasted pumkin seeds is divine. Hating lunch is not the same as hating food, though I cringe at the sight of apples shrink wrapped to death and pre-bagged portions of broccolini that make you feel pathetically lonely. They seem to be saying, ‘if you had friends, you’d be dining out.’ Well, fuck you, broccollini. Who cares what you think, you fucking veggie?

Right.

But lunch here is not an event. It’s not a time to make conversation. You go and pick up your crawfish, rocket, garlic aioli, whole grain bread triangle sandwich. Then you hurriedly stuff it in your face at your desk.

Maybe I’m just getting sentimental about lunches in the park in the summertime and lunches at a huge communal tables made from reclaimed bowling lanes at my old firm. Lunch was done when the conversation ended, not when you finished your food. I miss lunch.

:: Pubs have the most bizarre compound names that involve two unrelated, incongruous words. The Bear & Lettuce, the Hog & Arms, the Ship & Shovel, the Lamb & Pilgrim, the Swan & Fiddle. I’m still on the lookout for one to call my own.

Warm beers, weak handshakes

Last night it intermittently pissed and poured as I pushed my way through the crowds on Oxford Street – trying to steer clear of short people with umbrellas, swinging them dangerously at eye level – on my way to meet a friend in Notting Hill . I swung by Primark in order to buy a couple of sweaters; this morning I spent some time reading their CSR policy to find out whether they had slum children in Jakarta making the rain jackets that retail for £7 and shirts at 2 for £1.96. Seemingly no, but I remain dubious.

I missed the heat wave by a week and since my arrival have enjoyed some combination of gusting wind, occasional sun and pissing rain – usually all three alternating every 2 hours. It’s no wonder the Brits talk about the weather so much. It’s just as well, since I’m spending the summer at a desk instead of on one of those striped lounge chairs you can rent in the park.

I really want to fall in love with this place – I really do. If nothing else, than to justify having spent all this time, effort and money trying to end up here. I’ve felt the stirrings of London love when I had come to visit the then-boyf back in P1, but I wonder if I wasn’t just mirroring his own resolve to love everything about his new home. I didn’t quite expect that coming here would bring back all the hurt and resentment that I feel because of the lack of closure in that great love affair that ended so abruptly. In the relative isolation of the Fontainebleau forest, and the busyness of life in P3, I didn’t give myself time to be upset about the breakup. Now, it seems I have too much time on my hands.

London, I’m looking to foist upon you my misplaced emotions. I can overlook your bad teeth and your crazy crowds (as an aside, I’m convinced that the driving on the wrong side of the road causes chaos on the sidewalks – in most other cities, you walk on the right, pass on the left. Here, the pedestrian areas are a mess). I will stop complaining about your scaly water and can maybe even suck up paying £750 per month to share a bathroom between three people (well, for another 5 weeks, and then NEVER again). Eventually, I might swap my z’s for s’s and even start putting extra u’s into words that don’t require them (colour, humour, rumour) and get over feeling embarrassed about my totally obvious American accent and accept the fact that British men weren’t brought up to hold doors. I’ll even look up some cricket stats so I can relate to the boys at the office. I’ll do this in favor of the tranquil gardens with crazy looking blue-beeked water fowl, and the free art galleries, and the mushy peas, and big mugs of coffee, and English fry-ups, and concerts in the park.

It’s just that at the moment, my powers of self-delusion are failing me. It’s not you, it’s me. Give me some time, okay?

NW16DP

Last night I had settled in and commenced “freaking the fuck out”. Wondering why I’m here, instead of just about anywhere else. Where I really want to be is home with people (and cat) I love and care about. I’d even settle for back in the French countryside where I’ve loved whiling the last few days away in the blossoming garden of a friend’s villa, listening to her stories, and laughing what felt like continuously and a little too loudly.

Maybe last night’s pissing rain was a sign of good luck for the journey ahead. Maybe living in this shit apartment with its peeling walls and its scary shrieking water heater will be great fodder for the novel I one day write about my quarter life crisis.

I called an amigo who’s doing an internship in a developing country and requested some Skype therapy. He’s having a genuinely magical summer. Not the fun and high-flying stuff you want to capture in a photo and put on facebook so that everyone else at INSEAD can see how your summer is so much cooler than their summer. But a summer of experiences that cannot be related. The conversations that last until the wee hours of the morning and have nothing to do with who’s-hooking-up-with-whom INSEAD gossip. Eating exotic fruits you don’t know the names of. Waking up with nothing to do but read Borges and stroll to the seaside market to buy clams.

I had the same panicked, sinking feeling when I first got to Fonty, which didn’t serve me well. So this morning I woke up and resolved to make this town mine.

Step 1: food. The nearest Marks&Spencer is three blocks away. The Tesco is closer, but I still have my self-respect. Soho is walking distance and has tasty pork belly. I’m still on the lookout for a Waitrose and the odd farmers’ market. The coffee is served in large cups. Heaven.

Step 2: classical music. The BBC Proms start this Friday, I’ve book-marked all the schedules for other venues and I have a list of Evensong services to attend for every night of the week.

Step 3: Art. The Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition blew my mind. I resolve to use this summer to make up for my philistine ways of the past six months.

It’s going to be okay. Oh, and I start my job tomorrow. Collated copies and coffee, oh boy!

When I was young and vacationed in the south of France…

Drive drive drive (S 402km) :: fields of sunflowers on all sides – all facing the same way :: dinner for five at the brand extension of a Michelin starred bistro. food is lacking but the bathrooms are fancy :: an INSEAD classmate is at a table next to ours. small world :: the city itself is gorgeous. i find myself wondering if i could live here :: 12:30AM :: drive drive drive (S 229km) :: staying awake by having ‘cultural exchange’ with travel companion whose parents mortgaged their house so he could attend INSEAD. he insists on the importance of Dean’s List. for him, this is a high stakes gamble. i wonder whether or not I should be taking myself a little more seriously as well :: 3AM. night guard at shitty hostel won’t let me park car inside the gate (his logic goes like this: “What is everyone who came in at 3AM wanted to park inside the gate?” Um… I guess you could do your job and open the gate for them too?) :: under the scorching sun set about discovering the alleyways of a medieval fortified city of the popes :: quaint, lovely. my parents were here just a few years ago. wonder if we noticed the same things :: soft serve for lunch – cassis melon swirl :: a visit to Les Halles makes me wonder if i could live here too :: drive drive drive (SE 260km) to try to make it to a hotel that won’t take reservations. we don’t make it but realize that we hate the town we’re in :: regroup, rebook, retrace steps :: get takeout lunch and sit on the beach :: drive drive drive (W 77km) :: check into adorable hotel on top of a hill overlooking the sea :: discover that the town has two streets and no one is serving food. beer and olives for dinner it is. the kids next to us are wasted – keep saying, “we love you, English.” we don’t contradict. their drinks are bright green. they tell us it’s called Jet (written Get) :: sleep like a rock :: the town is weird in the daytime. packed with old people. i keep thinking they know something. some big event is happening just on the outskirts of town, but no one is telling us. there’s a tiny circus in town. the cage with a plaster gorilla on top has a dog in it. :: drive (S 5km) :: beach is scorching hot. lots of topless old ladies :: drive (E 22km) :: soft serve break – Cola flavor. might be my new favorite. the rest of the trip is spent searching for it, to no avail :: I’m on a boat! Boat’s fun until it slows to a crawl in front of rich people’s villas so that the guide can fill us in on the gossip :: guide keeps making tacky comments at me, telling me which of the villa owners is single. the presumption of course is that i could never possibly do anything worthwhile enough to earn enough money to buy a fancy villa of my own – or at the very least rent one for 40K/week. he clearly hasn’t seen our NBV business plan :: a sunset walk through the vineyard and world’s biggest salad for dinner. rosé. mmm… :: hit the town and get some Get of our own (tastes just as foul as it looks – Mouthwash and ToiletDuck) :: more beach :: drive drive (NW 121km) :: bum around another old French town. they’re all starting to blur :: major strike out on both lunch and soft-serve :: drive drive drive (N 154km) :: sunflowers, lavender, windmills :: check into a hotel in a weird, nearly deserted town. there’s a brand new nuclear power plant on the outskirts of town, and the town is seemingly filled with single men who work at the plant. there are no women in town, so the attention we get will hopefully tide us over until P4 :: giant sundae to celebrate fourth of July. we say the pledge of allegiance to our sundae. a car backfires on the street and we jump, thinking the town is having fireworks. return to the hotel and watch the Boston Pops on YouTube as consolation. i’m crushed when i find out that Keith Lockhart divorced Lucia Lin (2 years ago). sing along with the Star Spangled Banner and call it a night :: at check-out have completely ridiculous argument over 4 EUR parking charge when told parking was free the night before (“Sir, why would we lie to you about this?” Full body shrug. “Perhaps you’re trying to gain 4 EUR”) we can’t decide if what transpired was very French of if this man’s brain is addled from living too close to the nuclear power plant :: drive drive drive drive (N545 km). time flies as my travel companion tells hilarious dating disaster stories and we compare notes on a certain classmate (closeted gay v doesn’t-know-what-he-wants debate continues) :: at home, i find my roommate gone, my visa still not here :: write blog entry :: resume existential crisis.