Apartment

Chinese torture

Thursday, January 27th, 2011 at 13:36 | categories: Apartment, General mumbling

The Chinese have a clever way to torture people. They tie the person into a chair or a bed and then let water drip on their foreheads until the procedure drives them mad. Supposedly they also have a milder version of the method where you only hear the sound of dripping water, and that is often sufficient for the patient to lose his nerves.

Well, I sleep under the latter conditions. The water in the heating system keeps dripping during the whole night and it drives me mad. Thankfully I brought earplugs which I hope will keep me sane, sort of.

The Chinese torturer

The fix

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Preparation: the apartment

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 16:45 | categories: Apartment, Information

The last few days I’ve been a bit under the weather, on Monday my fever peaking at 40.0C (around 104F). That was slightly worrying, but I’m still alive. Since I haven’t really done anything worth mentioning, I’ll tell the story of how I found the aparment in which I currently live.

The story in a nutshell really is: I was lazy. I asked the Finnish representative of international studies, Kaisa Nikku, how the people studying in Sophia-Antipolis have usually found apartments before. She told me to contact a Finnish dude studying in Sophia-Antipolis at the time, which I did. We quickly realized that after he left, his room would be vacant. So here I am.

Truth to be told, I wasn’t all that lazy. I did browse around the internet and looked for other places. This one, however, seemed to be located nicely and I knew I could probably trust the owner, since the arrangements had worked before. Having talked with the other exchange people later on it seems that the rent is somewhere just above the average, which is around 500-600€. Some pay less, some pay more, but in general the prices are surprisingly steep.

The second balcony which can be accessed through each of the three rooms

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Bonjour and whatnot

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 at 16:16 | categories: Apartment, Travel

Turns out finding the bus was the hardest part of getting to my apartment. The SKEMA guide said the bus number 200 would leave from terminal 1, but in fact the stop was ~500m outside the airport. I took a couple of rides between the terminals, but found my way eventually.

After getting out of the bus, I realized 3G roaming didn’t work for some reason, which meant I couldn’t use Google Maps (yeah, I wouldn’t survive a day without technology), so I had to visualize the map in my head. To my great surprise, I found the right street immediately and after having my first conversation in French with a helpful stranger, probably a Jacques or a Jean-Pierre, I found the right house.

As I got to the apartment, I also called the school to ask whether I should go there or not to which they promptly answered “the orientation day is over”. Well, tomorrow’s another day!

Here’s a couple of pics from the place. Looks decent enough!