keithtom.com

i’ve been on the run for a bit but have a couple hours of nothing now. unfortunately i have a bunch of posts that are written on text files on my ipod or gaby’s laptop, neither of which i can get the posts from. so i’ll just start writing from 2 days ago.

Sunday, July 19

the morning half was spent traveling back from normandy to nantes, where i am now. it would have otherwise been an uneventful day even though i had fun talking on the train ride. arriving in Nantes, i had to find a place to stay so i began walking around and after trying out a few places i noticed an older guy in the same situation, so i just decided to ask him if he wanted to split a room and he did.

turns out he was from montreal and he had an almost unbelievable tale that we began to talk about in the room and carried over to dinner. it’s too long to recount here but it’s one of those stories with a series of large coincidences and events that make you stop and wonder about this life. we ended up discussing a bunch more about separatists and philosophy. it was fun. i guess he’s back in montreal now…

Monday, July 20

the guy from yesterday gave me a few tips on traveling as he had done much in his youth. so first and foremost was find a new place to stay: that hotel was okay to split but i wasn’t paying the single rate. its friggin expensive to travel alone. so i went to the tourist information to find out the cheapest place to stay that wasnt terrible, and she directed me to an auberge de jeunesse, which is where im staying now. great place actually, and roomed w/ a young guy from paris, a university student from yugoslavia and a older guy, 40 or 50 something which i havent really spoken much to.

the rest of that day was exploring nantes and dropping by an internet cafe. its a nice small city but only has a few nice sights to see.

i think i’ve been pretty lucky in the people i’ve been meeting and talking with. with the young guys, the topics were physics, to WW2 history, to the state of things today. one pretty interesting pt was about how it seems like the mass media sometimes makes the world seem a lot scarier than it is – please don’t go telling me that the world is in fact dangerous, i know this. but one example that the parisian brought up was how a couple years ago fox news (hah) made it seem like paris was in civil war (which i personally remember seeing it and thinking the same thing), and the guy was saying that friends in the US would call and ask if everything was okay, if they wanted to come to the US and stay there for a bit. now granted, the moral of the story may just be ‘dont watch fox news’, but i’ve often heard how dangerous traveling is, how you can’t trust strangers, and at this point i’ve taken that for granted without really testing this in the slightest.

the initial results: the world isn’t even half as scary as i thought and you can trust strangers more than you think.

Today

I woke up with strange stiches near my left kidney and i feel like it is missing…

that was a joke. the room is cleared out and it is just me and the old guy, who i still havent had a chance to speak to. he leaves early and just appears at night. today was a great day. got a ticket to goto la boule tomorrow, which will have beautiful sandy beaches, old naked ppl and the great ocean. can’t wait.

on my way i discovered this amazing garden, which i have to upload all my photos for. it was right under my nose: for those of you heading to Nantes, make sure to see the Jardin des Plantes. I pretty much spent the entire day there – walking around, taking pictures, and listening to some Tony Robbins actually. good stuff.

i came back to the hostel to hand wash my clothes, get ready for tomorrow and write all this. im gonna head out soon to go out with gaby and her classmates. they’ll probably go drinking since it is the end of classes soon and they aren’t even legal in the states so this is like a field day for them. gotta say im glad quebec lets you get that out early.

well i’ll take a bunch of pictures tomorrow and try to enjoy more cheap french wine because thursday is fast approaching and by then classes are over, and we are headed to berlin, germany. i hope they have cheap internet there…

i’ve just set my alarm for 7 am and im about to head to sleep. i need to get an early start on tomorrow as the festivities are beginning early. the person i was staying with in belgium mentioned bastille day can get a bit crazy but it’s a lot of fun.

originally, i thought the place i was staying in was a bit sketch and it kinda is at night. but apparently its in a good part of france and i just recently discovered the good streets to hang out on. it took a while because the first couple of days were taken up doing the sights of paris and museums. i’m going to try to do a small write up on a website with all the info im getting from this experience. lots of pics to put up but the net here is kinda flaky so i’ve been behind on updating that as well as.

the quick summary:

• anne frank house = powerful and thought provoking
• went to the louvre, saw the mona lisa, venice de milo and many other really great art works
• eiffel tower
• went on this walking tour with a bunch of landmarks, very cool and will put more abt that on the info site

blogging doesn’t really seem like a good format for this stuff. seems like its something better tweeted… i’ve been trying to use facebook, then created a posterous acct to try to see what worked. i think i should have got an iphone before leaving. oh well.

Travel Europe

Posterous

Belgium Pics#

I think I’ve been a little too caught up in my programming and reading as of late. What I’ve been up to:

• columbus tech scene
  • dabbling in some erlang
  • checking out coworking spaces w/ craig
• reading 7 habits of highly effective ppl
  • ( highly recommended for introspection and self improvement, my buddy chris recommended me this one )
• europe planning
  • practicing french w/ gaby (if you are interested in learning a language, google ‘coffee break podcast’)
• taking zoe to the park

I also ended up going to a volleyball game that Gaby organized yesterday. Had a blast and really love the sport. I need to find a way to get something regular going.

Other things on my mind, I feel that petty crime has been going up here in Ohio. I don’t know if it is just my perception or if this is true. With a bad economy, I sometimes worry what happens when the poorer half get desperate.

Some misc. interesting links that I picked up along my reading / cleaning out my rss feeds:

• the possibilities of the Universe
  • this reminds me of how small I used to feel after some astrophysics lectures in CEGEP
• on Education vs schooling
  • a write up from my brother’s blog on the education system
• Tips to think better from a savant
  • stole this from kevin, really interesting to see how this guy thinks
• Firefox > Facebook?
  • the future of the browser and online experience…
• Seth Godin: you can change everything

didn’t think montreal was that hot for tech – apparently i’m wrong. this article gives the run down but the main point: now is the time to be an entrepreneur in montreal.

so far california has been great, but i gotta say i’m looking forward to being back in a comfy bed in columbus.

these days i’ve been doing a lot of reading and learning, which is already great. i’ve decided to make a separate programming blog and keep this one personal. i ended up using blogger cause i just wanted to get something up quick and i hate dealing with server issues.

i’ve also started looking into my france trip w/ gaby which is going to take a lot more planning. i’m currently deciding if i should be taking a longer trip and enjoying this opportunity, or if i should be conserving funds. either way, this trip will be low budget and that’s probably just cause its crazy expensive there. maybe i’ll get lucky with a student sublet. ca fait un long temps que je pratique mon francais ecrive et en plus, mon espagnol es tous melange avec mon francais parle.

some other random interesting things, i just realized youtube shows movies. not always amazing ones but i watched super size me on it. right now i’m watching the future of food on hulu (dont think it works in canada) but i can now say i hate monsanto a lot. its quite scary actually – what nature originally provided for free is now being perverted into something that depends on products from a company. sounds like if you screw up enough, we just wont be able to grow food anymore – like ever… for the whole planet. luvly.

one think that speaks to california’s amazing hacker culture: i attended a super happy dev house yesterday, which is like a warehouse filled with hackers just hanging out and coding. very cool place. free food and drinks. you can meet tons of interesting ppl.

its been a relaxing couple days. drove down to santa cruz with kevin, beau and his gf michelle. the drive was fun: a windy road, driven pretty hard in a WRX STI. and the beach of course was great, mostly relaxing in the sun and some frizbee. the ocean here is fierce.


Today I spent a good couple of hours biking the golden gate bridge in San Fran. I think I biked pass the wild parrots of telegraph hill. It was great exercise so I feel good about that.

view from golden gate out to the pacific


SF from golden gate

fyi niraj, i got a compliment on that shirt.

the hacker house at palo alto has been pretty chill. people just coming through here and leaving, from all different places. so its a cool chance to meet interesting ppl. it was a bit hectic at times though – i mean i think there were like 9 or 10 guys and a girl living in a 5 bedroom place – oh and a dog.

20$ bill under the milk?

I don’t even know how this happened, and no one in the house thinks they did it… just ridiculous.

dropped in on the facebook offices. took a quick drive by of stanford – i should probably go back and do it for real.

tomorrow, its back to real work.

so i’ve been here since monday and what a change from peru. if learning spanish has been hastened by being immersed in the language, coming here is like being immersed in tech, geek and startup… its awesome on many accounts.

i’ve been learning a ton and not even trying – just being exposed to whats out there and what some of these people are doing is both humbling and inspiring. you just have this feeling that anything is possible.

i’ve been meeting a lot of ppl, mostly programmers and exchanging ideas and learning. alsom reading a lot of blogs and catching up on technologies. these are exciting times.

i think im getting fed up with mephisto (my blogging software) and will try to move to a wordpress blog probably. they’ve got some nice stuff those php fellows.

i think that’s all for now. i might update this later.

amazing ted talk.