Sunday, September 23, 2007

La Maison Suger



Here is a brief tour of my apartment at La Maison Suger. I have a kitchen, bedroom/living room/office, and bathroom with shower. The view from the window looks onto the rue Suger. The street is named for the Abbot Suger who was a very important 12th century clergyman and is regarded as a key patron of Gothic architecture, especially the use of stained glass. The church at Saint-Denis where the kings of France are buried (and were reburied after being dug up during the Revolution) is one of the earliest examples of stained glass in France and was begun by Suger himself.

I normally wouldn't show you the toilet, but it has come to play an important role in this blog. This building has wireless internet, something I've never had before in any apartment. That makes it easy to check email and to post entries onto this blog. But the signal is very weak in the main room where the desk is. After some trial and error and being told by the woman at the reception desk that I need to remember to have my window open to receive the signal, I realized that the wireless is strongest in the bathroom. So, in order to be on the internet, I either need to sit on the edge of the bathtub or, for greater comfort, sit on the toilet. So when you receive email from me or read this blog, you can picture me sitting in the bathroom with the computer on my lap typing away.

France has a very strange relationship with technology. Wireless is now everywhere in the city, even in many of the parks and most of the cafes. But somehow the idea that I need to have my apartment window open and sit on the toilet to use wireless internet is something that I can only see happening in France. The understanding of technology here only seems to go up to a certain point. Then it becomes this mysterious thing that no one can figure out.

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