The notion of “three square meals a day” has been drummed into me since kindergarten, so I simply assumed it was something akin to a natural law.

Imagine my surprise, thus, when on page 112 of Oliver’s new book L’imagerie des petits gourmands there is a section called Quatre repas chaque jour — “four meals every day”.

There, in addition to breakfast, lunch and dinner (le petit déjeuner, le déjeuner and un grand repas avant d’aller se coucher), we find mention of le goûter which is described as le plus petit repas de la journée which “permits us to wait for dinner.”

Apparently for this meal it is better that we “choose a fruit or a piece of cheese rather than rich cakes or rich sugary candy.”

L’imagerie des petits gourmands is a wonderful book, offering a complete history of food, in words and pictures, along with detailed explanations of how things like wine, olive oil and bread are made. Oliver and I read it every night after dinner. It’s published by Groupe Fleures in Paris.

In the six or seven years that I’ve had mostly reliable high-speed Internet in my office, I’ve become habituated to the everpresence of the network. And in the year or two that WiFi has been available at Timothy’s the Formosa Tea House — my “when I’m not at work or home” places — it’s a rare hour that I’m outside of the warm embrace of the net.

In addition to the “you can never go home [from work]” challenges that this has presented, it’s also led me to forget how things used to be, when we dialed into the Internet over the phone, and paid (and paid dearly, at least in the beginning) by the minute.

Back then using the Internet was like visiting the town well: you wrote up your email, prepared your HTML files for upload, and then, in one big “as quick as possible” dial-up session, you did your business. Then you disconnected until the next time.

Much of the focus on high-speed DSL and cable Internet has been on the additional bandwidth it offers, and, with that, the ability to transfer large audio and video files, play almost-realtime game, and the like.

Here in the French hinterlands, however, I’m forced to remember that the other change brought on by broadband is that it allows for synchronous use of the Internet.

We no longer visit the well every day: we’ve installed indoor plumbing and have a near-endless supply of water at the ready whenever we need it.

My situation here takes me to an interesting alloy of the old and the new: when I drive up the road to borrow some WiFi, I’m plugging in to high-speed Internet access — indeed it’s often faster than at home.

So I can update my podcasts, download large data files, and generally use the Internet at speeds to which I’ve become accustomed.

But I’m only online as long as I’m at the well.

So I write all of my email in advance, come armed with a list of websites that I need to consult, and once I’m online I “surf the web” largely by downloading RSS feeds into a newsreader for later reading.

It’s amazing what this does for my productivity. Not only because I don’t have millions of websites to distract me from my work, but also because the focus required to plan for my daily WiFi assaults makes me think in much greater detail about what it is I’m working on, what I need to continue, who I need to hear back from, and so on.

I’m a strong believer in, and builder of, the synchronous web. Almost all of the programming I do these days consists of building applications that run inside a web browser, applications that assume — demand — that the person using them is online.

I find it interesting that two relatively recent (and closely related) phenomena — RSS and podcasting — enable, among many other things, effective use of the web without connectivity. By allowing for asynchronous access to information — grab now, use later — technologies like these make total connectivity far less important than I’m used to.

One of the other things I’ve noticed here in France is that my now temporarily-asynchronous working life is far more relaxed than I’m used to. Part of this I can credit to good wine and clean air; but in no small way my stress has melted away in direct proportion to the decrease in the various “you’ve got mail” bleeps and bloops and telephones ringing and server alarms going off.

In a sense I’ve gone back to using the Internet on my terms: when, where and how it suits me. I’ve discovered that perhaps “always on” isn’t such a good thing, especially when it means that I’m always on too.

This peace isn’t sustainable — at least I don’t think it is. I’ve got a team back at home listening for the bleeps and bloops in my stead, and a set of colleagues who are willing to put up with the peculiarities brought on by a little bit of asychronosity for this month. Eventually I’ll have to return to my synchronous life.

But it’s worth spending some disconnected time out here if only to realize how connected I’ve actually become.

The other thing I’ve discovered here is just how powerful my little computer is. Again because I’m used to building web-based applications, I tend to treat my workstation as simply a skin over the network, and I forget that inside my little Apple beats a fairly capable heart in its own right.

Because I just can’t stop working completely, I’ve set up a pretty reasonable facsimile of the Internet, or at least my little part of it, here on my laptop. I’m running MySQL on several million-record databases. I’m running the Apache webserver (handily built in to Mac OS X), and developing applications in PHP (also part of OS X).

And getting this all running was as simple as bulk download from the mother server before I left. As a result of all this, I’ve now got both Almanac.com and YankeeMagazine.com running locally.

With that, who needs the Internet?

Well, that was interesting…

Every week Johnny and I get together over the phone with our colleagues at Yankee to discuss the progress of our various projects.

We’re used to these conference calls bringing in assorted far flung: while the Yankee folks are clustered in rural Dublin, NH, often some of their team are traveling and dial in from places like Washington or Florida. And Johnny was in Vancouver until a year ago, so we were at least tri-coastal for several years.

Today, however, was the first time I’d participated in the conference call while sitting in the stone-walled attic of a medieval townhouse in the south of France.

Here’s how it worked.

Yankee called Johnny on our Peterborough, NH VoicePulse Connect voice-over-IP DID number, which routed the call over the Internet to our Asterisk server in Charlottetown. Once he received that call on his phone in the office, Johnny flipped the switchhook and dialed the number of my Orange mobile phone here in France, with the international call going out via VoicePulse Connect as well (at about 30 cents/minute).

I answered, Johnny flipped the switchhook again, and, le voila, we were all connected. Three countries, two continents, three telephony technologies.

At least on my end, the quality of the call was surprisingly good; I didn’t feel like Wolf Blitzer on the line from Iraq — there wasn’t an “overseas echo” or a perceptible delay (although there probably was a delay; it just wasn’t that noticeable in the rough and tumble of the conference call). I’ll have to wait for reports from Dublin and Charlottetown to see what I sounded like on their end.

This experimental month in France is about many things, one of which is testing the whole “I’m a digital worker and can work anywhere” thesis. So far, it seems to be working out okay. At least if you set aside having to stand in front of a tree to pick up my email.

More from the frontier as things develop…

Who ever knew that sunlight and proximity to large trees could play such a role in ones bloglife? As I type, I am in the village square — l’Esplanade — here in Gignac, the next largest village up the food chain from Aniane. Yesterday, while driving by, my trust WiFi-o-meter told me that there was free Internet to be had; I’ve returned today, with Oliver and Catherine, to track this down, as well as to check out the Gignac Public Library and the more exciting playground options.

Wandering around the square with my laptop open, I managed to locate a specific spot, in front of a large tree, which offered a sweet spot of low sunlight (and thus low glare on the laptop screen) and powerful enough WiFi. Five feet in any direction from this spot and the sun came streaming in or the WiFi went away. Again, not ergonomically optimum, but then again I didn’t have to drive into Montpellier either.

This morning we took a walk around greater Aniane: down rue de la Tour to the aqueduct, up around the old abbey, and back to the main road. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store to buy some soft goat cheese, some tomatoes, an avocado and some strawberries for lunch. Ah, and what a lunch it was. Our greatest fear now is that we will return home to Canada only to find that all of the food tastes like bland slime.

Our appreciation of la vie français continued today with an afternoon visit to Le Glacier, a coffee, crepe, and ice cream shop around the corner from our house. Oliver quickly polished off a chocolate ice cream cone, Catherine had a bitchin’ café au lait, and I had a cup of tea.

Personally it’s been a bizarre haul the last couple of days. I sort of feel like my body and mind have been in a stressful state of flux — I suppose this only makes sense, given the transitions of place, diet, pace, and so on. Without being overly romantic, it does sort of feel like a rapid deceleration into a magical world of smells, tastes and naps. That said, I find myself reaching for the non-existent TV clicker from habit and simultaneously having TV withdrawal pangs and stark realizations that I spend a lot of my time watching reruns of Seinfeld and Law & Order.

Lingually I’ve been doing not too bad, with the terrors of being caught in an intractable situation with no language skills gradually washing away as my confidence increases. What an obligation I feel now to Mme. Romeo, M. Lefrançoise and all of my other French professeurs over the years; who knew that their endless drills would ever pay off in the practical ability to order bread? My vocabulary is turning out to be reasonable; my grammar is very poor, but this is seldom an impediment. As Meg has been relating on her blog, there is rarely an instance where you can’t describe what you’re looking for by association: “that thing that is like a cookie, but not round, and covered with icing” and the like.

I sense the approach of Oliver and Catherine, fresh from their exploration of Gignac, to fetch me home. More later.

As I type this, I am sitting on a concrete post at the edge of an alley, just around the corner from the main square (it’s actually an “main egg,” but that’s another story) here in Montpellier, sucking free WiFi from someone named Avril (thanks, Avril!). The ergonomics of the situation are not fantastic, so I will be less longwinded than usual.

I have been quite a site here in Montpellier, walking around with my half-open iBook with MacStumbler running, listening for the telltale “bleep” that indicates a WEP-free WiFi access point. I found one about a half hour ago, but using it required standing on the sidewalk in front of a bus stop. Buses kept stopping. Very confusing for all of us.

We have moved in to our little house in Aniane, and it is all we could have hoped for an more. Every morning (well, all two mornings so far…) Oliver and I have gotten up and walked the two short blocks to the boulangerie and have ordered deux baguettes and trois croissants. It seems to have worked so far.

And everything they say about how great it is to have small bakery, grocery and other stores within easy walking distance has proved very true. This morning, I felt like an orange. So I walked around the corner and bought two.

The weather here is wonderfully springlike — 22 degrees C today, and very sunny. Nights are a little cooler, but not too much so.

Many more tales to tell when my Internet access is less precarious (virtually and physically).

Today’s the day we drive over the Millau Viaduct.

As we motored down the A10, then the A75, from Orléans to Clermont-Ferrand today, we stopped at every highway rest stop that had a playground (about one of every two, it seems). The playgrounds were each different from the other, and they were all inventive and lots of fun. Oddly, one of the rest stops incorporated a “forest spirits” theme, and had a long explanation of western Canadian native practice vis a vis trees.

While Oliver, of course, was in heaven, I think we’ve raised the vacation expectations bar quite high now, and we might be expected to visit 4 new playgrounds a day for the duration.

The other highlight of the day was a visit to the Orléans Médiathàque (see picture here), which is their central public library branch. It’s an architectural masterwork, complete with a massive children’s area, a “newspaper and magazine pod” that you enter as if entering a spaceship, and a bright, bright, bright orange stairway that would send Jodi reeling.

Actually, the real highlight of the day was encountering the “new washroom system” here at the Clermont-Ferrand Formule 1 hotel: as soon as you enter, the toilet pre-flushes and digital birds start to chirp. Then new-age music starts to play as you alight the toilet. Upon completion, there is a small automatic sink, which auto-sprays soap on your hands, then starts up water, and finishes with a powerful blast of hot air to dry them off. We might as well be in Japan.

We’re off to the Clermont-Ferrand market to get something for dinner…

I always forget how completely exhausting jet lag is. Or rather I forget how determined my body is to forge on despite all suggestions to the contrary. Nonetheless, we managed to have a successful first day here in France after a sleepless Air Canada flight from Montreal.

France is a surprisingly easy country to get into. Our biggest problem at customs a Charles De Gaulle Airport was that Oliver’s passport photo was taken at 9 months of age, so bears less resemblance to him than is normal. The customs agent actually came out of his booth and held the photo up to Oliver to confirm his proper identity. Fortunately, he bought it, and we were in. No questions asked. Literally.

I had read that the French don’t line up for things, and the airport certainly proved this to be true. However rather than the chaotic dog eat dog frenzy I imagined a lineless world to be, the line for customs was more like a gentle collective amble and was rather pleasant for its complete lack of frenzy.

From customs we collected our bags and made our way to the oddly-located car rental hall, in the basement several terminals over. Once there we easily found the phone at the Peugeot desk, and with 30 minutes we were proud owners of a Peugeot Partner, which is a sort of mini-van that bears most resemblance to the old Eagle Summit we used to drive. It’s a tiny vehicle on the outside, but has vast amounts of interior space — a full foot or more above my head in the driver’s seat.

Somehow, in my catatonic state, we managed to navigate our way to buy gas (diesel, actually, which is confusingly called gazole here), and then out into the Paris morning. Our directions south from the woman at Peugeot were excellent, and we made it to the A10 south towards Orleans without getting lost. Or at least not really lost. By 1:30 p.m. were here on the suburban edge of Orleans at the Formule 1 Hotel.

Formule 1 calls itself a “super budget hotel,” and at 27 euros for a clean room for 3, it certainly qualifies. Rooms are tiny, but not too tiny. A double bed on the bottom and a bunk bed on the top, a sink in one corner and a desk in the other, with TV above. Washrooms and showers are just down the hall, and work on some magic “clean themselves after every use” system, which appears to actually work.

Of course in our catatonia, any bed looked inviting, and after checking in — using a automated credit card kiosk at the front door — we were all fast asleep.

A couple of hours and an auto-shower later, we got back in the truck (Oliver refuses to let it be called a van or a car) and drove into the rainy downtown Orleans afternoon.

We found the (very pleasant and helpful) tourist office, walked around the old city, had a snack of Thai food at a take away place, and then settled in at a bizarre Catalan tapas bar outfitted with comfortable easy chairs, loud punk music, and a very child-friendly bar keep who gave Oliver a glow-in-the-dark bracelet.

We ordered “Catalan pizza,” which turned out to be creme fraiche, potatoes, ham and cheese on a huge piece of toast. Very filling and just what we needed. Halfway through our meal and very tattooed and pierced couple came in and sat down at the table just behind us. Oliver found them fascinating, and spend the rest of the meal staring at them.

Fed and rested, we walked back out into the rainy night, found our way back to the Formule 1 in the suburbs, and fell fast asleep.

As I type, it’s 7:00 a.m. The air is fresh, the rain has stopped, and it’s 10 degrees outside. Off we go…

And so off we go. Catherine, Oliver and I are headed to France for the next month. We leave in an hour, and so, as you might imagine, we’ve spent much of the last 24 hours mired in packing, locating plug adapters, answering email, paying bills, and taking care of most anything else that can’t be done without us.

We fly tonight to Paris via Montreal, pick up our Peugeot Partner and veer south to the village of Aniane, where we take possession on Saturday of a small house that will be home until May.

You can expect updates here as our temporarily relocated life continues as I’m able to stumble across WiFi.

Take care of North America for us.

Here are six things I learned at the barber this morning.

• It’s those damn seals that ate all the cod.
• Why hasn’t anyone blown up the Sea Shepherd yet?
• Pretty soon it will be the corporations running everything.
• A 1250 lb. cow only fetched only $180 yesterday.
• Sears has free parking; why would anyone shop downtown?
• There are no potatoes out in the ocean — what else are the seals supposed to eat?