Second day at INRIA (june 7th) (james with balazs)

This time we got up even earlier cuz James was meeting Balazs at 8am (so I was 20 mins early for my shuttle, but J seemed to appreciate the company). Today the diff-ce between a research institute and university as well as companies becomes more apparent. In fact, when I ask abt the schedule, Eric tells me "whatever, as long as work gets done, we're not a company", and when I ask about writing a internship report, he tells me "why? we're not a university".

The main differences that I notice (and tell James about in the evening) which are of course based on my knowledge of universities and companies are:
After a morning of administrative tasks (secretary finally in (she doesn't seem to work much), so i get a badge and a restaurant card and learn how to get my pay-cheque (EDIGE, a company working with international students and interns)), I get an email from Mme V that basically recommends we move that very day or early in the morning the next day (cuz after that she's going on vacation) because although the window at our studio will be repaired shortly, it'll mean workers coming at random times (yeek! no thanks, esp. not when James is gone to London!). She says she wont charge extra rent, so I get busy looking up the location of the new place, how I'd get to work from there, etc - because of the rush we can't take a look at the place before moving. The fact that she's calling it a house is _very_ suspicious: we haven't seen a single house in Paris yet! The picture Mme V sends is very pretty and green, but doesn't seem to have a house in it, hmm. Finally I decide I'd like to move cuz basically it can barely be worse than our current studio, and arrange it: verify that James approves, call Mme V, call the student living in the house, print out maps for the new house and EDIGE (learning to use the printer takes forever, sigh), etc. The move is scheduled for a scary time of 7am (we're getting up earlier and earlier!), and we have the evening to pack and clean our place.
In the afternoon, I poke around some more in the scripts, talk to Mila about her role, talk to Eric some more, basically trying to understand what I am to do and not getting very far. It's OK, it's only my second day.
At home, we pack at a pretty crazy speed (gosh, how did we accumulate so much stuff in a week?! but it's mainly groceries), and after discussing the suspiciousness of the "house" for a billionth time, take off at 10pm to go see it (at least from the outside, too late to call the student living there). We find it easily enough, and some guy even lets us into the "passage" ( "pereulok" in Russian, alley? in English), which is locked like buildings (front door w/ a code). The passage is very pretty indeed, but we don't see a single house! We see a lot of boutiques, and apartment buildings above them ... see pictures!