Gerrup outta that

It's been a while again since my last post, so here's a rundown of what happened, or at least what I remember happened.
First of all, I had Edo visit me here in Paris for a week, it was nice. I was a terrible host though, I was really sick (almost pneumonia) so I stayed in bed for days and couldn't show him around Paris. I even forgot about my birthday until my folks phoned and congratulated me. LOL.
Not being able to organize any party, my friends showed up in my room suddenly and we had some fun, but kept it mellow. It was nice to see they remembered even if I didn't;-)
What else...yeah we had to present our work to the CEO of EDS Consulting on Wednesday. I admit I was very nervous, presenting in French for the first time. In the end it went rather well, i.e. we weren't the worst:-) No, I have to give some credit to our group, we did a good job.
Edo was leaving that day, so after presenting I went to meet up with him in the Tuileries, walked around a bit, and went to his friend's flat near Montparnasse to pick up his luggage before leaving. Things turned out differently though, I saw Edo off and then stayed with his friends in the flat. We ended up drinking Ricard and having a dinner, and in the end I slept there.
Came morning, I helped clean a little, put on my suit that I was wearing all the day before, and headed back to the campus.
My friends found it quite amusing to se me walk into the canteen, after not having seen me for a day, in my suit and my briefcase, with the tired look on my face;-)
Did some work in the afternoon, and then it was time for the infamous Thursday party. It was a good one, Pepa (a CEMS guy who studied in Dublin last semester) visited, great guy, had a lot of fun.
Friday morning we presented our "project" for the Network Economy class, which did not go too well, I have to make the presentation more coherent before submitting it...But the effort was there;-)
Evening was celebration time again, as it was Eamons birthday (he's the Irish guy who we crashed at before going to Dublin). It took place in a small bar in the 11th arrondisement. It was absolutely packed, and we loved it! It was incredibly refreshing not to see the same old HEC faces at a party. The thing about the bars and clubs in Paris is that they have a lot more bouncers, and they make their presence felt. The bouncer in this tiny bar threw out 3 or 4 people while we were there, for such things as bringing a can of beer inside etc. Funny thing is, the guy who got thrown out tried to fight back (he was thin, almost transparent) and kicked the bouncer, resulting in having his face smeared on the sidewalk. I mean, how dumb can u get, picking a fight with someone who's biceps is thicker tah your leg?
Anyway, Alex, his girlfriend, and two other friends came from Holland at around 2:30 am, picked us up, and after some searching we got our bearings right and drove to the campus.
Saturday was work day. Alex and his friends went to Paris to do the tourist. I stayed and pretended to work, but it was soo nice out, warm and sunny, that I didn't get much done. Instead, I went to the campus lake to watch a horse-jumping competition, a very chic event indeed.
In the evening we went to Paris again, and I've seen it like never before. It was warm and people were everywhere, having drinks and enjoying themselves, music everywhere, just a great atmosphere. We ended up going to the Bastille area, which I've never been to before and which is absolutely amazing at night. Bars everywhere!, I mean everywhere!, lights and colors, music and happy people all around, nobody stressed out. It's probably time to define we, I've noticed I haven't been doing a good job at describing this crucial variable. We on the 3rd June meant: Tom, Eamon, Taylor, Richard (all Irish or British), Mallory (an American girl doing an internship at a law firm here, earning copious amounts of money), Tomas (Czech guy here at HEC) and his girlfriend, Vasek (architecture student in Paris), Pepa, Stepan (VSE CEMS guy studying in Belgium now), Sonia and Christoph (French and German CEMS).
After some bar hopping (about 5 hours of it), we decide to take a taxi to Eamons and crash there, and this is when a surreal thing happened. We flagged a taxi, it stopped, and we were explaining where we wanted to be dropped off, when this black guy with a white girl jumps into the taxi and basically tells us to piss off. We objected, it was our taxi and was hard to find one there, the taxi driver objected, and this is when the most ridiculous threat I ever heard was uttered. He(the black guy) said, in an angry voice, that he was gonna call the cops because this is an act of racism. Flabbergasted, we stared in amazement, didn't know whether to laugh or what, when Mallory said he was full of shit and told him to get out of the car. He got even more aggressive, "You're saying my people are shit, you say my brothers are shit????!!", he gets out of the car and tries to come on to Mallory, a girl for chrissake!!! What a loser. He starts threatening us, a group of 5 much taller guys. At this point I just started laughing in his face and we let him go, even if the taxidriver didn't want him. He just repeated his racist argument, poor bastard. It was like from some Hollywood comedy where a black guy blames everything on everyone else being racist...;-) Long story short, we came to Eamons place, talked for some time, and took the first train back to Paris. Unfortunately we fell asleep on it, got off a couple of stations later, so we ended up missing breakfast at HEC.
Today I'm staying here, Alex and co. are in Paris sightseeing, coming back later in the evening. I need to prepare for a painful class tomorrow, very boring and obvious stuff described in an unnecessarily complicated terms...

That's about it I guess. This next week is crucial, I have 2 exams and have to present to all the managers of EDS on Wednesday.