My first week in Paris has been so tiring. Unfortunately, I am even more sleep deprived than my previous blog posts, but I’ll sleep in later. Like maybe in three weeks or so. I’ve seen a lot of places in the different districts, which led me to appreciate the district that we are staying in a lot more. Paris is honestly a lot calmer than I thought. I kind of expected a vibe similar to New York City but with more French people. It’s kind of like that, but only in really touristy and busy areas. My favorite memories here are walking around shops and markets, seeing the Eiffel Tower light up and sparkle, and going to Disneyland Paris.
Our team, Team Slim Shady, is on the struggle bus right now. We still don’t have a clear idea about what design we will move forward with prototyping and we actually have to discuss that right after I finish this post. We realized that people with limited mobility have it much harder for so many things that we don’t really consider. Our client, Yousra, has to just not go out or find some cover if it starts raining. Yesterday, my teammates saw a woman climbing up stairs with just her upper body because there were no accessibility solutions in the train station. As a team, we don’t really have much technical knowledge or experience, but our problem is pretty mechanically complicated. Yousra, our client, is a power wheelchair user with limited range of motion, grip strength, and fine motor control in her fingers. We have to make a sunshade that covers her head and shoulder area, which she can open and close by herself and remove during the day if she would like. The difficulty lies in customizing the shade and making it fit her personal capabilities. If we manage to come up with a solution and working prototype, I think it would be really awesome and it would be perfect timing as the Olympics are approaching.
Personally, I don’t have too much experience with mechanical design or problems, but as I know the basics of CADing, I will likely be learning more as we try to design a mechanism for Yousra to place and remove the sunshade. I really enjoy discussing with my teammates about different aspects of the problem, as there’s always something I missed that they noticed. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing and thinking, and we will come to a decision today so that we can focus on prototyping tomorrow. Already, I’m kind of freaking out because I am bad at time management when it comes to projects of any kind, and we are already behind the other teams. We will definitely figure it out and it will be fine, but I really hope we can get the sunshade to work.
Highlight of the week and the reason why I am exhausted at this moment is the day trip to London I took with Justine and Jaden. We did so much in one day. And also did handstands on both sides of the world. We laughed and talked so much in a gay pub after we went around, losing track of time. We had to hurry to the airport to get back in time, only for our flight to be delayed.
Those visiting Paris in the future, try to do at least some research. I didn’t really do much before coming here and I’ve probably missed a lot of cool places to check out. I’m the kind of guy to not care about destinations or schedules too much and just go wherever, but in a group of people that feels exactly the same way…let’s just say not much is done or a lot is done at the last minute. It’s a lot of fun, but also very exhausting.
