Well we finally had our review today and it was less than stellar. We have a bunch of actions to complete that will determine the overall state of the program, but it's not really indicitive of the work we have done. oh well. at least its done and over with for now.

i'll be getting on the plane at almost 1pm Toulouse time and will be gratefully landing in LA around 7pm. it's a 2 hour flight from here to Toulouse and a 12.5 hour, yes, twelve and a half hour flight back to LA. yuck.

ok...well no pictures today really since i spent the whole day on the airbus facility. i did manage some pics of the flags showing how overcast and windy it was today.

i finally made it to the hotel bar for a drink to wind down a little bit. i was still hanging out with the irish guy who happens to be staying down the hall here. i also finally had dinner here at the hotel, so here are the pics from dinner tonight. not bad. however, the price was totally ridiculous. my expense report isn't gonna like it at all.

i started with what they called a ham/cheese salad....hahha.....nice salad there Frenchies. i had some veal filets with potatoes and vegetables for the main dish. i finished off with a bowl of fruit since the ice cream was 9EU. wtf....thats $13.50 for 3 small scoops of sorbet. pretty unreasonable if you ask me. also, finally they put the bread on a plate. it's abotu time. 2 weeks here and on m last meal they put the bread down on a plate.

overall, the trip was a success, even though we didn't make much progress, i did get a lot of things done and issues resolved. so that was good.

thanks again to Daniel and his family for taking me out and thinking of me this past weekend.

anyways...its time for bed and my last post from Toulouse.

Aurevoir!

Click here for pictures.

I know this isnt related to France, but it's relevant to me.

Back in December 2005, I was rebuilding my MR2 at a shop down in Gardena/Compton area when the shop was broken in to. They stole two cars that night, but my car was left untouched. The next day, we moved the car over to another shop to complete the build. The shop never opened again, but I never knew what totally happened after that.

Click here for the story.

Nuts.

This entry will have to be a quick one. I'm actually pretty exhausted today. Staying up late the past few nights has caught up to me today, so here's the quick run down.

Work today was ok. Some of the guys from NY didn't put on a very good showing early in the day and the response from Airbus was not favorable either. The electronics side looks ok though for the moment, but who knows, we shall see after tomorrow morning.

I present in the morning tomorrow. After that I'll have to sit through hours of boringness with nothing good to say really. lol. Then I'll be getting on a plane to come home on Friday.

So we had a late lunch and I skipped the second half of the day to actually do some design work. Dinner in the city was long and took quite a bit again tonight. At least I skipped the dessert since I got more than one comment back about looking fat.

Here are the pics for today. Make sure to check the captions because I didn't write the whole story out here.

Click here for pictures.

Toulouse, Fr - Part 2, Day 9

Aurevoir.

Stuff they play on French radio stations that I can't get enough of.

Magic System - Zouglou Dance


Bass Hunter - Now You Are Gone


Jakarta - One Desire
http://www.weekplay.com/jakarta_one_desire.php

David Guetta


Shaggy - Feel the Rush

07.22.2008
Toulouse Part 2
Day Eight: Torrance coming through!

As we near the day of the review with the big chiefs (Thursday), things really get crazy. I’ve been asking for design data from Torrance for about a week, but they really came through for us while we were asleep. They have yet to let me down, although they do like to cut it close. So kudos to the Torrance design team for coming through again.

Ook..so…………On to more interesting things like lunch and dinner and other random things.

Why is there a big rooster in the lobby of my hotel? What do you think that means? It’s very artsy and is semi-creepy in you really look at it. Lol.

Also, this car makes me laugh. I have seen about 3 or 4 of these on the road and they make me laugh out loud every time. It’s a Fiat, and is basically the cheapest 6-seater you can find around. The advantage to this guy is that it has a 3^rd seat up front in between the driver and passenger. This eliminates the need for a 3^rd row in the SUV, so the car still stays Scion xB like instead of Lincoln Navigator like.

Since the weather in Toulouse is abnormally cool for this time of year and there were some spare seats out in front of the usual lunch spot, we sat outside for lunch. I had the plat de jour, which today was cheese ravioli with some kind of meat sauce. The meat was bacon/ham, not ground beef, that doesn’t really exist over here, at least that I’ve seen. I also had a nice piece of strawberry pie and a coffee. The strawberry was strangely reminiscent of the Marie Callendar’s (sp?) strawberry pie, ya, you know the one I’m talking about. Yum-o!

It was a super nice day today. Not a cloud in the sky. What’s weird about the Toulouse weather is that it has been very inconsistent. One day there won’t be a cloud in the sky, and the next day it’ll be fully overcast. It’s strange. The locals say it the weather hasn’t been normal in a while. Is this more evidence of global warming????????????

‘The dungeon’ is in the bottom of the brown building over there past all of the security gates and hoopla.

The team got asked to go to dinner again, so the whole Moog team went out for dinner tonight at this place.

I don’t know the real name for it, but all of the Americans call it ‘The Drunken Chef’, and Daniel confirms this rumor also. However it looks like the real name is: ‘Au Vois Gourmand,’ for which Babelfish has no real translation. Either way, the place looked not so good on the outside, but………………

………..the garden was amazing. anyways...the reason why I am here is because our PM (program manager) set us up with a 7 course team dinner. Mad props to him for it.

So I have 6 pictures of 6 courses, but I skipped one course because it was useless, but good nonetheless. Also, Daniel and the guy from Ireland I ate dinner with last night was very impressed that they didn't catch me taking one picture, even though they tried to catch me mid-picture. Boooooooyaaaaaaaaa!

So, lets get this party started. Now, I have to say I have really no idea what was in all of these things. They came out in broken English and I had no idea what the French words were for all of this stuff, so the descriptions are what they are. Sorry.

Aptertif – Kir royal with a grape.

Course #1 – Some kind of egg/mushroom shot with some type of bread with genoa ham.

Course #2 – Tomato gespacho with cucumber and garlic

Course #3 – Marinated pan seared scallops and raw scallops with green onions and some kind of sauce. There were two other choices here of: 3 different types of foei gras or stuffed something. Dammit, I knew the name of the vegetable, but I cant remember the name now. Oh well…either way, I made the right choice here, the scallops were delish!

Course #4 – Sea bass wrapped in a fig leaf, with rice, and some kind of pureed vegetables. I think its fig, not sure though. There were two other choices here of: lamb sweetbread or goose with foie gras. Again, I think the choice is easy here. Although, the people who had the goose said it was amazing. I got the foi gras from the goose dish from the guy next to me who had foie gras in his appetizer. Wow it was good, much better than the one I had at Chaya Brasserie a few years back.

Course #5 – It was a super small scoop of sorbet to cleanse the pallet. I didn’t take pic because it looked pretty useless, but it still counts as a course. Oh well.

Course #6 – Check out this plate. I mean really. Crème brulee, some kind of baked peach cobbler thing, and chocolate lava cake. Yum-o!

Course #7 – Some kind of frothy dessert that had some alcohol in it, but I didn’t know what it was. It tasted like whipped cream with alcohol with syrup. It was good for sure though.

Here’s a shot of the empty table. Too bad it also doesn’t show the 5-6 bottles of red we went through, in addition to 2 bottles of white. Even though we went through a lot of wine, no one was faded thankfully and it was still pleasurable.

This is a final shot leaving the garden from the upper part of the entrance to the restaurant. It ended up being a really nice place. Kudos to the program manger (PM for you non-engineers) for sacking up and taking the team to a nice dinner again.

Remember my friend Bris that took me out to dinner on my bday last time I was here? Here are some new shots of his new Honda CBR1000. It’s sick. I want a bike. Seriously.

Ok..off to bed. The next two days will be spent in really really boring and pointless meetings, so we shall see if I have anything good to write about.

Until then, I miss you guys. Take care.

Aurevoir.

07.21.2008
Toulouse Part 2
Day Seven: Longest Day EVER!!!

Sorry to disappoint, but today has been pretty long and fairly frustrating. I don't have very many pictures today except for my lunch and dinner.

Oh...and I do have a few pictures of being stuck in the elevator today, but I am too exhausted to write up everything at the moment. However, I will expand on the elevator things because it's the only non-work related interesting thing that happened today.

The short story is, I got in the elevator by myself and around the 3rd floor I heard a loud crash and felt the elevator drop a few feet. It turns out that the elevator stalled between the 2nd and 3rd floors. I was pressing the 'alarm' button for a few minutes, but with no avail. I tried to pry the doors open, but that didn't work well either. I was able to get the inside doors open, but I was not strong enough to hold the hotel doors open and still climb out. I decided to call a guy back in Torrance who I was just talking to a few minutes before that who comes to France often. Thankfully he was at his desk and was able to call the Palladia and let them know that I was stuck. A few minutes later, a guy came with a huge screw driver to open the doors and I was able to climb out. I am just glad that the elevator didn't fall any further while I was trying to get out, that would have been bad.

Also, I found out today that the rest of the team from the East Coast (a team of 8 guys at least) is staying over at the Crowne Plaza hotel in the Capitole at 400EU a night, while I'm over here at 99EU a night. No wonder I couldn't bring some of my team with me, it was all eaten up by their team at some fancy hotel. MFers! Ok...I'm done monkuing about that.

Also, I found out that our presentation thats supposed to last only 8 hours has 257 slides. WTF. My team has only 25 of those. WTF!!! I have 1 hour of 8 to talk about 25 slides and they have 7 hours for 232 of them? That's 0.6 slides/minute. Ya right. Since I have the last 25 slides, they may never get to me. What are the odds of that? Pretty high I think. With all of my good luck I'll probably have to stay through until Friday. *ugh*

Since it's almost 1am, I am just gonna put up the pictures. I think you can figure out what is what.

Aurevoir for now.

Click here for pics from today.

PS - EDIT - Daniel's wife's name is spelled Christelle. That's much nicer than I thought it was. Good stuff.

07.20.2008
Toulouse Part 2
Day Six: Touring the French Country Side

After a great day yesterday, it was gonna be tough to beat today, but I think I did it.

On Friday night, Daniel and his wife Christelle agreed to take me out to the French countryside to see some castles and have a nice day with the kids. He picked out the itinerary which included some cities out past Montebaun. I have included a map below so you can get an idea of where we went.

The pink/red pushpin there on the map is L’Aveyron which was the first destination today. The blue pushpin is Bruniquel, which was the second destination today. The Hotel Palladia where I'm staying is the teal pushpin down in the corner.

So Daniel, Christelle, Aubin, and Anouk came to get me at the hotel at 9:30am this morning in their station wagon (yes, I am sad I didn’t get to ride in the yellow truck). The station wagon is more convenient (has A/C) and has more belted seats, so the wagon was a good choice.

The road out to L’Aveyron was quite nice, I took a few pics of the area on the way. It looks kinda like the drive up to San Francisco, as sad as that sounds, but of course its much more beautiful. There are lots of apples trees which is a main product of the Montauban region, which we had to pass through on the way to L’Aveyron. It was quite a nice one hour drive actually.

L'Aveyron is a small town in the Aveyron region of France built back in the 12th century, and its easy to tell by the architecture when you first arrive.

Evidently L’Aveyron is quite the canoing sight, because there were lots of people out canoing in the river.

However, the best part about L’Aveyron is the Sunday Farmer’s market, which was an absolute zoo. I was a little overwhelmed to say the least, but I held my own ok I think. I spent some time pushing the kiddos around in their strollers so they could try to pick up lunch. And as you can see by the crowd, pushing a stroller in this crowd was no easy task.

I wonder how many years it would take to eat all of that cheese. I wonder if in my life so far I have consumed at least that much cheese. Hmmmmmmm……………………..

Check out all of the ham and sausage!! I didn’t leave without trying some which I am going to bring back (don’t tell customs). Lol.

After cruising through the market for a bit, we decided that doing a picnic by the river was not going to be an easy task with all of the people around so we decided to ditch the farmer’s market, go for a quick tour of the town, and then head off to the second destination for lunch. So here are some pictures of market, and of the town.

Most of the city was done in the 12^th and 13^th centuries and is still standing. Some parts of it have obviously been remodeled to accommodate 21^st century life, but it still remains a nice little town.

Christelle and the kids sure had a nice time!

Oooh…and check out the neat Renault Turbo GT!!

Well after leaving L’Aveyron, we were headed over to Bruniquel, which is another small town located atop a cliff overlooking a small part of the valley. Daniel remembered a nice place in Bruniquel that we could have lunch, so up the hill we went.

Once we got to the top, we found a nice table in this garden area for lunch. Aubin found a nice cat that kept him occupied for most of the lunch and Anouk had some baby food to tide her over, while Daniel and Christelle had their salads.

I chose a dish form the salad section, but what I found was not so much a salad as it was a plate of meat. Pictured are two different kinds of pate, some ham, and some really good salami.

After lunch, we went for a little walk to digest our lunch and catch some of the sites of the town.

Here’s a picture from the top of the city. It has quite a view of the valley and the river.

More sights of the small town. There are a lot of artisans up here, but there is not much steady work, so most of the people that live in the town own their own stores and art or are retired. Because the town is so far from anything industrial, it would be almost impossible to work for a corporation and still live in a small town like this. However, it’d make a great vacation spot.

The pic above is of the original 12th century road to the hotel which still contains the original stones!!!!

On the way out of town, Christelle had a craving for some coffee and we stopped at this small little café on the way out. They were also having a special on fondue, so what would a trip to France be without some fondue?

Aubin seems to have liked the fondue as seen by the chocolate on his mouth. Hahaha….

After finishing up there, it was time to get back home. The kids were tired (not to mention their parents) and so was I, so we headed back home. Since the drive was only an hour, I still had the rest of the afternoon/evening to rest and plan my dinner.

I decided to chill out a bit and watch some of the DVDs I brought over. I decided on The Good Shephard and wow was that good. Thumbs up to Matt Damon and Robert DeNiro (director/producer) for a job well done.

After finishing the DVD, I was feeling kinda lazy, so I decided id go look for a real kebab this time in Centre Ville.

I parked at Le Capitole and headed toward the river on Rue de Pargaminieres. I found this place and got my kebab, Fanta, and almond baklava to go and headed out toward La Garronne.

I found a nice spot on the water to eat while the sun went down.

I really cant explain how much I really love these kebabs. I mean really. The best part is the end when you get a good mix of the fries, chili sauce, and cheese. Yummers!

And since I was by the river, I figured I’d try to get a few pics in on the bridge again. One of them I did on the timer, and one I had a guy take as he was passing by. Not bad huh?

Anyways…I better head to bed. Its getting late and I have been known to have a case of the Mundays, so I am gonna head to bed.

Have a good week everyone! I’ll be home soon. Miss ya!!

Aurevoir.