Tags
Communications Glitch, food porn, Gerry, iMessage, iOS, John Dory, Marais, Métropolitan, meals, Metropolitan Restaurant, Open Café, Paris, Saint-Pierre, text message
Yet another “expected surprise” was a lightning visit by my friend Gerry, who had stayed with me for a week in 2012. He was traveling for work, and Monday evening was the only time he had free. I proposed an apéro at the inevitable Open Café, followed by dinner at the nearby Métropolitan restaurant, which Jaime and I had enjoyed last year. After a communications SNAFU (see below) we got together for a quick beer, then strolled over to the restaurant.
The staff at Métropolitan have a touch of “we’re the best” hauteur, though with a twinkle in the eye. But everything else was delightful — greeting, service, atmosphere, food, wine, other patrons. The meal wasn’t cheap (about 65 euros each all in) but I consider it good value for money.
Mot du jour: « Saint-Pierre », John Dory (a fish).
For Apple Techies Only. Here are the technical details of the communications glitch that Gerry and I encountered. Apple tries to send texts between iPhones as iMessages when there’s a data connection, dropping to a normal text message when data isn’t available. So far, so good; this can save a few cents when one or both of you have to pay for text messages. I had also configured my iPad to receive iMessages, so I could see and respond to them when I was using the iPad without having to go find my mobile phone. This is normally fine, since iMessages show up on both iPhone and iPad. I got in trouble, however, when I tried to fix my inability to get text messages through to Gordon. I hypothesized that he had phone coverage but not data so I turned off iMessages on my phone to force it to send regular texts. This didn’t solve the problem with Gordon, since it turned out that he had neither phone nor data coverage outside the U.S. But it caused a problem with Gerry, who had both. The issue arose on the rare occasions when my phone had voice/text coverage but didn’t have data coverage. My iPad, however, always had data coverage from the apartment’s WiFi network. Gerry’s texts were getting sent as iMessages, and were appearing on the iPad at home, but were not appearing on my phone.