after waking up shortly after 8:00, i take a shower, pack my stuff, settle my account with the reception and go for a slow breakfast. outside the sun is shining brightly over the mediterranean sea and creating poodles of glare. as i’m just about ready to leave and go for a bit of fresh air and sunshine (after all this is the cote d’azure), mike pops up at my table and asks whether we’d like to hitch a ride with the IBM booth managers (emma & caroline) to nice airport — which we gladly do.

once again i’m glad that i don’t have to drive: just finding your way is a major challenge and the taxi driver threads his way through countless twisty little streets before we finally reach the toll road to nice and the airport — where we arrive preposterously early: check-in for our flight to zurich is not commencing until 11:20, so we have a full hour to kill: time for another coffee & coke. i start my long delayed project of re-engineering this web log, get sidetracked by a bout of WLAN scanning (can’t even remember why i started that one, but aside from the WLAN offering from airport nice cote d’azure, i find an interestin ad-hoc WLAN named “101” that pops up and disappears when a group of policemen patrol by…), and end up trying to fix my /etc/dhclient.conf file to prevent dhclient from running amok all the time.

after we have checked in at 11:20 and have gone through security, mike and i do some duty free shopping (1l bottle of dalwhinnie is just EUR 38.30, not bad) and then advance to the waiting lounge for our flight to zurich — which is supposed to start boarding around 13:00…