Day Three already! The realization dawned on us, as we headed for breakfast this morning. It promised to be splendid day indeed, and we weren’t disappointed, although in hindsight, we could’ve really taken advantage of this day – beach and sports wise. The worst part about morning is the time between somnolence and the time when we ‘breathe’ in our coffee. And indeed, after the adventures of the previous night, sitting with the group from Darmstadt (or is it Dortmund), and drinking ourselves silly there, the somnolence this morning just refused to let us be! Tis funny what a wee bit of tipsy will encourage one to say, as I kept telling the Namesake that it would be a good idea for him to go and revive talks with a certain person from EST! Needless to say, this morning I had retracted that suggestion. Bah!

The talks in the morning dealt mainly with Metadata, and Contexts, both very interesting topics for the namesake. I took extra pains to follow, but got distracted, just putting the final touches to my presentation for the Kennisnet. The cluster got together after lunch (which was an inedible affair, as always!), and it indeed felt as if we were trudging along this day, without the embedded enthusiasm that was the hallmark of the first few days. I almost fell asleep during the cluster meeting, as we argued and debated over what is LD. We finally got a good concept map going by the end of the day.

Disaster has struck though. It seems or is rather confirmed that the Kennisnet meeting has been shelved. So much has depended on the Kennisnet arranging the participation of practitioners and non-experts, of prime importance for the requirements and gap analysis phases of my project. But that has fallen through and we don’t have the people necessary for our team of practitioners as of now. It was a crushing realization, to know that we got so close to a resonance meeting, but no cigar. Well Nico our contact there has asked for some more time till Friday to arrange for participants. But we are now thinking (after the talk with Francis on Skype) whether it would not be a better idea to postpone till after my hols in the US.

Back to the Summer School and the Namesake and I conducted our second consecutive cluster meeting, a pity though that just the two of us showed up. It seemed as if things would pick up during the activity time, as I signed in our names for the ‘Drama Improvement’ workgroup. But as always ours were the only two names there. Bleh!

After dinner though (which consisted of a piece of bread and a lone piece of cauliflower-boiled), we gathered in the hall, as that is the only place where we have a working Internet connexion. Seriously, what is it with the French cuisine and the Vegetarian way of life? It is almost a sin to be a vegetarian in France. Not that the food for non-veggies is a gourmet affair here either. Ugh. Really.

We all were surfin’ them Net here, when Lauri decided to host a pantomime contest, and asked for a show of hands for who all would participate. Ralf Klamma raised his, and started on his way out… and Lauri was like “are you participating? You raised your hand and you are leaving now”, and Ralf replied “But we are German ja, when someone asks us to raise our hand, we raise our hand, ja”

the namesake and I looked at each other and literally fell on the floor laughing at the laissez way in which Ralf cracked the joke! We could not stop even after we got back to our room, just seems as if we were the only two to get the joke, and actually found it HIL-arious!

Oh ye, jocularity! Love you we do!

Pictures from Fréjus ja! Mine I shall be upping on my website here, and here’s the link to pix from others (including the namesake) LINK CLICKY ME FOR FLICKY