Reading (For Dummies)

American Mathematician in Paris

The hotel room (room number 102 in the Hotel Opera Maintenon)

The room is small and had a mirrored ceiling, which suggested that its use is limited. For the less crafty, a portrait of a young French woman in some state of nondress [picture] would be enough to fuel the masturbatory fantasies of all but the least imaginative of men.

Our Sunday was mostly a wash: None of the group was able to sleep on the plane, a meager lunch at a small French Cafè (tomatos) left me with not enough energy to do much but find my way home on the subways and get some sleep.

The Hotel is in the Opera district of Paris, surrounded by Japanese restaurants, "masagi" parlours and fetish boutiques. My first dinner in Paris was indeed sushi. "Watashi wa bejetarian, sorekara sakana ga suki. Nani wo tabemasho ka?" I asked our Asian host. He didn't understand a word. Laosian. Damn.

Monday proved a little more fruitful. Robbie's birthday coupled with a "touron" (== "tourist" + "moron") bus tour to give us the kind of overview of the city that only an automated electronicated tour could give us (available in Japanese, French, German, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Serbian, Greek, Chinese, Swahili, and several kinds of English) left us wandering the streets of Paris, looking for a little action.