An inadequate meal in Paris??

Time to get some coffee and begin the workday.

While heading out of the apartment, I listened to a “Sawbones” podcast episode about Hepatitis C. Disease exposure was on my mind with the pressing crowds of Paris. Of course, for the rest of the day I obsessed over whether everyone I met had Hepatitis C…

Just a few blocks over I found a café that made an “iced mochaccino”. Will it stand up to my absurd mocha rating scale? We shall see! (Spoiler alert: No. It scored a 5 out of 10.)

I ordered tiramisu and it was totally different from what I got in Brussels, but still quite good. Also different from what I got anywhere in America. I should have expected this, really.

After scarfing that down I joined a work meeting with four other people in it, and listened with my earphones while I walked the half mile back to the apartment. A weird new first: Participating in a work meeting while strolling around in Paris with my phone, headphones, and some keys as my only equipment. I’m too old to be a yuppie, so I guess I’m an “uppie”.

Back at the apartment I wrote code for several hours, then did some documentation, and then the rest of the day was mine. I set out again for food, choosing to stay on foot for a change instead of using the bicycle.

I randomly chose a restaurant, and sat down at the usual microscopic outdoor table. Dinner was a Caesar salad which was way too dry and some “fresh squeezed’ orange juice that definitely tasted as though it sat around all day. As I finished it, I almost laughed at the thought: “Hey, it’s my first unacceptable meal in Paris! A new milestone has been reached!”

As I dined, and later on as I walked slowly around the city in the evening gloom, I listened to some of “A Distant Mirror“. This was going to be a favorite of mine for the rest of the Paris visit. While contemplating stone walls, canals, and random strangers, I heard about the arrest and torture of the Knights Templar, who were basically yet another pointless aristocracy that ran afoul of the church and were devoured by it. Their head honcho was burned alive right in front of Notre Dame (like so many, many others, especially later when witch trials began.) Earlier in the week I’d passed by the very spot on my bike.

I also heard about the 13th-century expulsion of Jews from France, and how they were scapegoated as “money lenders” specifically by the church, which considered the lending of money “unclean” but was forced to admit it was a necessary part of large-scale commerce, so they mandated that role to Jews to deliberately enflame their status as “unclean”. All dictators need a scapegoat and a war, and the church was no exception. Tale as old as time.

Back at the apartment I went down a completely different digital rabbit hole, reading about old computer games from my adolescence that I’d missed out on because they were distributed only in other countries. I ran into a game called “Princess Maker“.  Weird.  And weirdly compelling.

It is what it sounds like — sort of. You guide a young lady through her adolescence by setting her work, school, and travel schedule. You don’t control her directly, or even interact with her directly. The majority of the interaction consists of picking menu items. If you get her stats and reputation high enough, she becomes queen of the land. Lesser outcomes include “housewife”, “con artist”, and “wandering wizard”.

There’s a framing device where you – the player – are described as a heroic knight that saved the kingdom from an invasion, and as a reward you asked to start an orphanage. I assume the framing device is there to give male players a more comfortable angle to participate: Consider it practice for being a Dad? (Well, as long as being a Dad consists of picking menu items with a mouse.) It’s the attitude that counts I suppose.

Hey whaddaya know, there’s a PC-98 emulator for MacOS called “DosBox-x“, and some usage directions. An interesting rabbit hole. I felt a bit too lazy to actually play the game, but it got my mind churning about cultural differences again. When I was a boy growing up in California, role models of men spending their time raising children were pretty thin on the ground. You could join the army, fight crime, be a really good dancer or singer, kick ass at some sport, or perhaps be one of those interesting and windswept loner types, but being a Dad? Maybe you could be a “sitcom dad” like Tim Taylor and dispense some life lessons, but it was mixed in with acting like an idiot half the time.

Perhaps this is why I always felt a kinship with Scrooge McDuck, who spent half an hour each weekday living an adventurous life but also taking care of three nephews at the same time.

Travel sends my brain in funny directions…