A letter home from study abroad
Well, friday started innocently enough. I got up at about 10 in
order to meet Nikita (the husband of an ACTR research scholar) at 11 to go
to "Netcom 96" a computer and networking trade show. After locating the
exposition center and presenting our complimentary tickets, we got to
wander around inside. It felt like every trade show i've been to in the
states...except nobody was giving away any tchotchkes....and for an
internet trade show (among other things) there was surprisingly little
connectivity (I spent a bunch of time trying [and failing] to locate a
machine with a net connection....well, there were several, but those were
"hands off") I did, however, find that lots of pavilions had unix boxen
(mostly suns) out to play with. Almost all were demoing net traffic
analysis software. All had shells open. All but two were logged in as
"root." I think a security consulting gig could make a lot of money here.
As we walked around, I discovered that Nikita is terribly interested in
the field of e-commerce. So, I spent a lot of time chatting with him
about various systems. [No, Utopians, I didn't violate any NDA we may or
may not be under ;)] Toward the end, we were in a booth of a fairly big
reseller/consulting company toying with their hardware. Some guy comes up
to us and askes us if he can help us...we get to talking...i ask them if
they have any programming gigs open. He shakes his head. I pipe up that
I can also do Mac, PC and Unix support. "Macs?!?!? You know Macs? One of
our biggest clients has been having trouble with their macs. What's your
phone number? Can you call me on monday? You'd probably be needed over
there about three times a week...How much do you charge? Well, we're
charging them $50 per hour...you and I can work something out on monday."
At this point, I grinned and asked him about the work environment. I
swore that I was never going to take a shirt and tie job, but since it
appears to be the only game in town at the moment, I'll try it once and
see how it goes. If I like it and they like me, I'll grab another
permanent press shirt or two and invest in a second tie.
I was very amused. I headed back to the dorm to hang out until
8:30 when Carrie was supposed to show up with some friends to go out to
the cafe Margarita (Named for the character in Bulgakov's _Master and
Margarita_) Well, we went to the wrong metro by the wrong pond. When we
figured this out, we wet to the first cafe we saw and were told that they
didn't have any food, wouldn't we like a drink instead. After briefly
toying with attempting to obtain their 4-foot long inflatable tube
of Mentos, we continued our quest for food. Seconds later, we
narrowly avoided being struck down by a tram by diving aside. Upon closer
inspection, we discovered that it wasn't just a tram but a
tram-restaurant. Prices wer high, but not terribly high.
At about 11, we returned to the dorm to take a breather before
going off to meet Carrie's friend Nancie to go to some form of "Native
African Music Festival" which started at 12. George decided to tag along.
When we got there, we discovered that the price wasn't 60 T.R (minus
student discount) as advertised but was 80 T.R. 16 bucks....for music
till dawn. George took this opportunity to bail....he decided it wasn't
worth it......but it was...it turned out to be a disco/rave. We danced
for about 3 hours straight. Everything from an R&B band to white russian
rap. Definately not "traditional african music" but perhaps something got
lost in the translation. Smoke machines, A great light show, some weird
music, russian rave kids and some very bizzare individuals on a variety of
mind-altering substances made this one hell of an interesting
people-watching venue....Finally, at about 3:30, the real acts had gone
home and were replaced with a string of Russian kids with
synthesizers...each of whom seemed to sound like what one might imagine
Depeche Mode to have sounded like before they learned how to
play....Shelly and I each played one game of $1 pinball in the basement of
the venue before deciding that it was definately out of out price range.
Returning upstairs, we found Carrie and Nancy fast asleep. We decided to
go to the Starlight diner for some coffee and something to eat. The
Starlight is supposed to be open all night, but we realized that we had no
idea where it was. (As it turned out, I'm pretty sure it was a block from
where we were, but we had no idea) We hopped a cab to nancy's appartment
where we all piled in and promptly fell asleep.