22nd September

Let me start today post by thanking Stéphane B. who emailed me the reported 777-200 yeasterday is N777AS, a model 24E/ER, delivered new to Mid East Jets by Boeing and custom modified for business and corporate use.

Clear sky, hight visibility and temperatures in excess to 25° Celsius are the masterwords in terms of meteorology. On the con side, and didacted by predominent westerly winds, runways in use at CDG and LBG are 26/08 and 27/09. When observed from either Nanterre or Reuil-Malmaison, aircrafts off from those airports are see climbing to cruise level instead of seen while on finals when easterly winds prevail.

To make matters a little bit worse, bus 304 is trapped in a traffic jam when entering the motorway. This part of the ride last a real eternity instead of a couple of minutes. To avoid complete boredom, I observe passengers sitting in the cubicle located at the far end of the riders' cabin. An High School girl is sitting right on my left. She is concentrating on her previous lesson in Mathematics as transcripted in her large sized copy-book. She goes back and forth from histograms to tables, but reconciling figures laid in the latters with axis and probability plots doesn't look to be her favoured exercise. Next to her and probably a classmate, another teen age girl is grappling with her latest lesson of English. But Tetris on embush in the cell-phone proves to be too tantalizing. Behind them, a lady in her 40s is reading the french translation of Julie & Julia. In the meantime, the bus driver resorts in steering the articulated bus on the emergency lane in order to reach the access road to downtown Nanterre.

Bus 304 in action

Once at the station, I select a Saint-Germain bound ZEBU train as today's first improvised stage with the intent of leaving

at Reuil-Malmaison, home of Heinken, Unilever, Wolters Kluwer, Exxon and Astra-Zeneca as far the head-quarters of their french subsisdiaries are concerned.

Once there, I can see a Pilatus PC-12 climbing to cruise level and

a Boeing 737-800 showing up with blended winglets and soaring above.

An Agusta A.109 donning a dark green and grey battle dress on a similar pattern of the one illustrated by Mr François-Xavier Simon is hovering afar

Back at the cybercafé, teen-aged network-gamers have been litterally crashing at the upperfloor since the previous Sunday. I can't resist figuring out on them to another gentleman of the same age as I. I come pretending they are unable to even recount by writting their day(s) dedicated to network gaming. Personnally I am even sure that 7 year-old Cameroonian schoolchildren attending Ecole de Saint-Dominique-Savio at Douala are more fluent in French reading and writting.