Friday evening was capped by a trip to a 15th century mideival village in the Provence part of Southern France. This village was St.Paul de Vence and was the most fascinating and interesting part of my trip. It also opened up my eyes onto travel and vacations. I have some pics on flickr from the trip.

The village itself was encased in a stone wall which we walked on for about 500m. The interior of the village complex was filled with artisty stores, wine shops, restaurants, apartments and other gift stores. I also watched people playing the game of Patanque with boules. In all it was a memorable experience.

Tomorrow I leave for states

This evening I braved and traveled to Juan les Pins on south central France. The drive was very pretty and had a wonderful time strolling the streets and having pizza at le Vesuvius restaurante.

Checkout the set on flickr.

As I am posting pics to Flickr, I wanted to showcase random set in the Wordpress theme. I updated the default simple theme to 3 Columns Theme by Mr.Clemens. Hope you like it.

We recently used OD Moving to move our storage stuff from Delaware to Austin TX. It was awful and horrible and I recommend to the world not to ever use OD for anything.

Stef had scheduled the move for Sat 24th of June, as that was the only day I could be available in Philly area to oversee the move. The sales person (Dee from OD) assured this date was locked. On Thursday (June 22) I call them to confirm the pickup time and they tell me that it has been scheduled for Sunday 25th at 9am. My flight left at 7am from Philly on Sunday. So I call the big chief at OD and John (with a foreign accent) and he said that there was no way to change this to Sat 24th, totally violating the agreement. John promised me that we should also have our stuff by mid next week. When it was apparent that there was no way to change and it was imminent that I had to make alternate arrangements. John assured me that he will have his pickup guys in DE around 5:30AM. After triple confirming that they would actually showup at 5:30am, I got online and changed my flights from 7am to 11am.

I get up at 4am and get to DE around 5:00am. I am waiting from 5 to 6 and no sign of the movers. I call every number possible, leave messages..7am goes by no sign of movers. At 7:30am I get a call from movers that they are 30mts away and will be there by 8. The guy I spoke to was middle eastern. I was beyond mad and had to tell them that I had to leave DE by 9am to make my flight. 8am rolls by no sign of the movers. I call them and basically figure out that they were LOST. It was not before 9:10am that they showed up. At this point I am frantic and sign the papers so I can just leave. So here I was, planned for all this over 2 months, to oversee them pack and load, only to be there for 5mts to show them the storage area and sign blank paperwork for the movers to pack and fill in.

Tuesday we get a call from David (almost French accent) from OD, stating that we will have our stuff by the weekend and to except a call from movers. We change our plans for the weekend and wait the entire 3 days calling OD multiple times and left numerous message to John, his boss, Dee and David an no calls back. This was getting beyond RIDICULOUS!

Finally on July5 I get a call from Edy (latino accent)  that he is onhis way from NYC to TX with our stuff and he promised that he will be here on Wednesday. That saturday we leave on vacation, so it better be before Friday that he delivers. Given the situation we were in I couldnt believe anything anymore.

Since I had Edy’s number, I started calling him daily to check on the status, numerous times. Finally he showed up at 6:15pm on Thursday (july 6). The stuff was packed poorly and in shambles. Although most of the  stuff made it the whole thing brought tears to Stef as she saw her items being shoved all over.

We are looking into legal actions as well as insurance to cover for the damages. Stef and I have moved plenty of times - used numerous movers and have never had to go what we went through with OD. Next, I am off to various moving websites to post the comments and link to this post about OD.

Safe travel and moves….

I made it to Nice France. I will be posting joirnal entries as pictures via my Flickr set. I am glad I am here - Stef was right.

One of the highlights of our trip to MO was having custard varieties at Andy’s Custard. If you are in any of the towns that they are located, you should give them a try. Its heavenly!

I wouldnt mind driving few hours every week to get a taste of their Blueberry Concrete..

Here is where you can find it..Hopefully I will update it with interesting pics from my travels..

We just returned from Show-Me state. We visited St.Louis, where Stef grew up and Columbia, to UMC. It was relaxing as we swam almost every day and played with the boys while catching up on Ruby. I havent completely gorked it, but have had enough foundation to start writing utilities for my productivity.

Columbia is growing rapidly. We visited the bookstore where I was the supervisor for the last 6months and Eva J’s where I worked in Wok. My first jobs ever - taught me how to interact with Americans, speak proper english and make $$ to pay for my way through school.

I am glad to be home and prepare for my trip to France.

Folks that know me will be shocked to find out that I have become somewhat of a Star Wars geek. May be not crazy enough to wear a costume and spend my life savings on a mask for the next gala event, nonetheless, in my own way I have become interested in StarWars culture. All this due to my boys.
Just about a few weeks ago, I didnt know who Darth Vader was or who Luke Skywalker was, let alone that they were related. My kids (especially the 4 year old) has been giving me juicy bits of info about the movie series. They also went and got cheap lightsabers from Walmart and were pretending to be Luke and Mace Windu. So one lazy Saturday afternoon (about couple of weeks ago) the kids wanted to watch Star Wars and I popped in one of those extra DVDs that talk about the creation of Star Wars, concept to completion etc. I was so hooked on the making of it and the challenge of keeping the story line intact over a 20year period, that I decided to give it a try. Also, it will help me understand all the crazy phrases that my kids use around me. Like “may the force be with you” or something about stormtroopers or Yoda.

I watched Episodes 4 5 and 6 in that order over the same weekend and got hooked. I even went and brought Episodes 1 and 2 paying $$ to local Target store. This goes so against my philosophies of spending money that I almost had to check my pulse.

In all Star Wars has given me more opportunities for dialogues with my kids as well as appreciating the HACK that has gone in to create the series.

May the force be with all of us..

A while back, I wrote about a good book titled Innovation Happens Elsewhere. I am happy to report [via Ted] that the book is available online. Open Source rocks!