Archive for taxi
back to Paris [#2]
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel with tags E15 highway, graffitis, Paris suburbs, tags, taxi on May 19, 2013 by xi'an
clouds
Posted in pictures, Travel, University life with tags airport, clouds, Montpellier, plane trip, rain, taxi on November 1, 2011 by xi'an
Merci taxi!
Posted in Mountains, R, Statistics, Travel with tags ABC, beanie, EMILE, Montpellier, North Face, taxi on February 9, 2011 by xi'an
I am in Montpellier today for a general meeting of our EMILE ANR grant bi-yearly meeting, discussing ABC model choice and new applications of simulation methods in population genetics, including an upgrade of DIYABC into the 2.0 version. (The above is a picture comparing “true” Bayes factors with ABC versions, commented in my Zürich talk last Saturday.) In the taxi from the airport, I chatted with the Yugoslavian driver who seemed to enjoy very much the city and drove me to the CBGP in a record time, but I forgot my favourite North Face beanie in the car… Tonight at the airport, I had the pleasant surprise to find my hat waiting for me at the taxi stand! Merci, taxi!
Taxi soap…
Posted in Kids, Travel with tags cellphone, Philadelphia, taxi on October 27, 2010 by xi'anHeard in a taxicab this morning (the cab driver is the one talking):
– …
– How comes you spent all the money on her?! You’re an idiot, an idiot!
– …
– No, money is hard to come by and I didn’t send this money for you to spend 10,000 rupees on a car! 3,000 is the maximum, 4,000 is the maximum, 5,000 is the maximum, are you out of your mind or something?! Now you do not have any money left. When are you ever going to listen to me?!
– …
– No, it is not ok. What do you mean, it’s ok?! Is she going to spend 12,000 on you now? You’re such an idiot, Siddharth. How are you going to get a living?!
– …
– Let me tell you, she does not deserve you spending any of this money on her. If she was worth it, I would be ok, I would support you, but she is not worth it… Next time you decide on this kind of spending, I want to be there to face her. I want to tell her she is not worth it.
(At this point I left the taxicab as we were stuck in a jam and the shouting driver was simply getting too annoying!)
Washington snapshots [day 4]
Posted in Travel with tags Dukem, ethiopian food, Guinness, taxi on August 5, 2009 by xi'anIt is most often a fairly interesting experience to take a taxi in the US, at least in cities, because one almost invariably meets taxi-drivers with incredible stories from all over the World. I remember the Somali taxi-driver that took me to the airport in Philadelphia, telling me of a trip back to Somalia with his sons where they had been so shocked by the poverty there that they left all their spare clothes and shoes when they came back. Here in Washington many taxi-drivers are from Ethiopia and they have interesting stories as well. They tipped us on the good Ethiopian restaurants around and we ended up eating at Dukem, in Washington’s “Little Ethiopia”, where I liked very much the spicy—too spicy for the rest of the party—food served on thick pancakes called injera that reminded me of the saracen wheat pancakes of Brittany. The taxi back was from Nigeria, instead, and after talking about his trip to Ireland, the taxi-driver told us that Nigeria was still brewing the original Guinness, according to the “true” recipe. Which brought us back to Statistics via “Student” Gosset’s employer…
