Vacation is now over and it’s back to work on Monday. Our last stop was Victoria, the capitol of British Columbia located on Vancouver Island. Victoria is smaller than Vancouver, though it is reputed to be equally beautiful. We spent a single day in the city, which proved too little time to do everything that we had planned.
I’ve now completed my tour of Vancouver, British Columbia. Like Seattle to the south, Vancouver is an active town with an abundance of gorgeous waterfronts. Popular stops include historic Gastown, Chinatown, Granville Island, Grouse Mountain, and the Capilano Suspension Bridge.
I’m currently in the middle of a week-long tour of the Pacific Northwest with my parents. We recently finished the first leg of our journey in Seattle, Washington. Seattle has some great waterfront views with its proximity to Lake Union and the Elliott Bay.
This past week I traveled to Toulouse, France, on business to receive training and discuss plans for a near-term integrated display system project. It’s essentially a display with a PC attached to it; think rugged iMac. It’s a sure bet that the system will run a flavor of Linux and utilize an embedded monitoring module for thermal management. I will be responsible for integrating the operating system, drivers, and our in-house applications, which may require modification for the project.
Our French hosts were very courteous and easy to work with. All business was conducted in English and I had no problems communicating my thoughts. Even so, it was satisfying to note my high school French coming back little by little. Every day we were treated to lunch in the Thales cafeteria several blocks removed from the BarcoView Texen site. Dinner was typically at a local restaurant of our choosing. I tried a number of interesting dishes including fondue savoyarde, magret du canard, and cassoulet, one of the local specialities.
Toulouse itself was mostly untouched by the Industrial Revolution so it managed to retain a great small town charm despite its recent growth into an industrial center and the fourth-largest metropolitan area in France. I had ample opportunity to roam the city on Saturday so I took my camera along and tried to capture some picturesque views of Toulouse. You can browse the results using the gallery link below.
Everyone made it to the bus on time this morning. It’s understandable; it’s been a great experience, but by the end I think we were all ready to return home.
I secured photos with all our tour guides (Simon, Amanda, and Jackie) at the airport as we daparted. I also did some last-minute shopping at the airport before our boarding time. I found t-shirts for Mom and Uncle Tinker, and a copy of the Chinese FHM magazine for myself. Even with airport pricing, all the goods at the Beijing airport were pretty cheap. This turned out to be a stark contrast to the Tokyo/Narita airport. During our layover in Tokyo, I picked up some candy and a random manga. Everything else was pretty expensive.
I had to hustle to get to my connecting flight when we arrived in Los Angeles, as I had one of the shortest layovers. It just didn’t occur to me that we would have to go through customs when we re-entered the country. In the end, it wasn’t that big of a hassle and a few kind people even let us ahead. I got to my connecting gate in plenty of time.
Fellow Tech student and mission attendee Matt was also on the same Delta flight back to Atlanta. Speaking of which, I was not impressed at all with Delta on this trip. Delta charges for most amenities on domestic flights�stuff I would take for granted as being free of charge. But the plane arrived without event, and Titus was waiting in baggage claim to pick me up.
So ends my experience on the 2004 International Mission on Engineering to China.
