Paris

Last day at FNAC. They need to do some mainframe system upgrades (TCP/IP, CICS, and more) before they can successfully run our stuff. I might be returning.

Tonight the guy in charge of the FNAC project, Didier Houselle (SeeBeyond’s Professional Services Manager for Southern Europe), took me out to dinner. In his mid thirties (?), he showed up at my hotel looking the epitome of the dashing young Frenchman, in jeans and jacket, motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm. From the hotel, we walked to one of the many nearby open-air brasseries, and spent three hours over dinner.

When he suggested we start with foie gras, I cringed – I’ve had a lifelong disgust for liver in any form – and when he assured me that this was unlike any other liver in taste, I thought yeah, I’ve heard that before. But here I was, in a Paris café, and how could I not try such a famous delicacy? It looked a little like head cheese, served as a slab (not a pate) with toast and some sort of jelly-like substance that was there for texture—and as long as I didn’t look at it too closely, or think about it too much (the force-feeding scenes from Mondo Cane kept coming to mind), it was fairly edible, with only a hint of the dreaded liver taste (how’s that for a recommendation?).

For a main course, I had a lamb chop (excellent) and baked potato, followed by raspberry sorbet. But the best part of the meal was the bottle of wine—a 1997 red Bordeaux. Usually, I become too involved in conversation to give much thought to even a good wine after the first sip or two—but every sip of this wine was as special as the first, in the midst of great conversation.

We talked some about work, of course, but mostly of other things—our backgrounds, our families (he and his wife have four kids between them), and so on. He was full of ideas on what I should see tomorrow (Saturday), and said that when I come back from London, he’ll take me on a nighttime driving tour of the city. He also said that when Robin and and I make it to Europe together, we must stop in Paris for at least a night - and he has a good friend in Italy that can help us with plans there.