A Fresh Start (up)

After giving you news of my great week, here is the video of my place, since a lot of friends asked for it

Tell me what you think (only if you think that it is the most amazing one-bedroom ever seen and if you love my purple wall)!

I had a great week, this kind of week that makes you feel more and more at the right place. So, in bulk:

-  The season 2 of Greek started on ABC Family, and this was really the highlight of my week… Ok, I’m kidding (not so much actually).

-  I also passed the written test of the driving exam, so now I need to pass the behind-the-wheel test and I’ll be done with Vietnamese driving instructors hitting me when I do something wrong and braking violently while screaming in an incomprehensible language

-  I also tried driving a go-cart for the first time in my life, as part of a corporate team building event, and it was very fun, even if of course I was the last one of the race, which most of you would have totally expected from me . Pictures are here.

-  I had brunch in SF on Saturday at Perry’s, a very American place, with Guillaume, a very nice French expat, who gave me great advice on how to settle down efficiently here. It was great to finally have an occasion to meet people outside work colleagues, thanks Guillaume!

-  Following Guillaume’s advice, I visited San Juan Bautista today, a small city lost in the mountains, where Vertigo from Hitchcock has been shot. As you can see in the picture, you can find there, apart from a beautiful Mission to visit, buildings reminding westerns, except that Harley Davidson have replaced horses! All the pictures here.

-  I bought a BBQ, so now I start feeling really American

No pictures for the moment, first because I didn’t have the time, and second because my new place is not completely finished yet… So I’ll post a video as soon as I’ll have received everything, which might take up to two weeks

This week-end is one of those that I’ll remember for a long time. Ok, there was the not-so great moment where you realize that, by having moved to the US, you really can’t call your parents and dozens of friends to help you out with your moving! But it was almost better, because we felt that for once we were managing to do something great all by ourselves: renting a huge truck (or should I say a US-size truck), picking up all the furniture from Ikea and other stores, loading the truck, then unloading it in an hour because we had to bring it back to the rental agency, building all the Ikea furniture (who said it was easy???), painting a wall in purple (otherwise it wouldn’t have been my apartment)… Well, we did all that in a day, and today we bought some additional decorative stuff (and clothes, but that wasn’t the original plan )… And the result is that my place looks GREAT! I really feel that I made the right choice in living here (yes Seb, I know you’re surprised, I’m still optimistic ) because I really have a great apartment, with a nice balcony where I’ll organize plenty of barbecues, a great pool and fitness center in the residence (where I’ll never go but I’m just happy to know it’s here ), in a really nice area, with lots of restaurants, convenience stores, banks, coffee shops and even a pet store! We went eating to an Italian restaurant 1 minute away from the apartment, and I finally felt “OK, this is really what I wanted, things are going to start now”.

After this pseudo life-changing moment, let’s move on to funnier things: 1) the guy who owns the pizza restaurant in my street used to own a cafe close to my company, and told me what my CEO uses to have for breakfast and I really don’t know how to use this info to climb the career ladder ; 2) we took a cab today to go shopping, and suddenly I realized that what I was hearing in the cab was… Patricia Kaas, a famous French singer! The cab driver had a CD called “Paris for life” gathering all the best of French music! I understood that she spoke a bit of French after having said to my boyfriend “this cab is so kitsch, the leopard fur around the wheel is way too much!”…Damn, home country is never that far away

This week-end really made me realize how inspired I have been when I chose to live in California. Whereas my friends and family were complaining about the freezing weather in France, I spent my Saturday afternoon… swimming in a delightful pool, under palm trees and an amazing sun (pictures here)! Today, we had a great brunch at Seb’s place in Palo Alto, and then drove to Half Moon Bay, a beautiful beach (pictures here), where I realized that I will probably never take a bath in the Pacific Ocean: it is absolutely freezing! I feel that I’m really bad in terms of integration with American people: I stick with French people because it is so easier to interact with them, without the fear of making inappropriate jokes or confronting an obvious cultural difference (and I realize that there are many!)… But I’ll definitely need to meet American people, because that was the main point of living here!

This week I took the first steps to become a real person here: I applied for a Social Security Number (2hrs wait, a dumb guy misspelling my name, I love US administration) and I got some info about getting a driving license… I know that getting some info is not enough ( ) so I will -probably!- take my first lesson this week: inhabitants of San Jose, stay home!!!

After last week-end and all this rain, I was a bit down but… it was before this week-end, and the beautiful sun all around the Valley!

It didn’t start as nicely though I remember when I was a kid, I was dreaming about the day on which I would finally buy my own furniture for my own apartment. During my student life, I bought only some basic stuff, but not “the” sofa, “the bed”… So yesterday was supposed to be a Big Day. To get this quick, it definitely wasn’t as rosy: I had the “love at first sight” for a sofa that was in fact available … in 14 weeks, so of course I started sulking and finding everything else ugly… Then we went to Ikea, which is an absolute nightmare: how comes this company is so successful??? Of course it’s cheap, but it’s a whole mess to find the stuff you want! If somebody had told me “give me 50 bucks and I will help you find all your stuff and you’ll just have to pay for it” I would have paid for it in the blink of an eye! End of the story: after two hours we managed to put everything on our cart to realize just before paying for it that Ikea can’t deliver at my place in two weeks, and that I need to come back 3 days before my desired delivery date!!! So we put everything back, I was sulking even more, becoming a real pain in the a**, when we finally found our sofa in Palo Alto (see picture)! An entire day just to buy a sofa, I know that’s a hell of a record But at least now I know where to find almost everything I need!

Fortunately, the evening was way cooler than the afternoon: we joined Seb and Anthea (that I met during my internship at eBay in France) in Palo Alto, drove to SF, had a drink with eBay France marketing team (here for a summit), then joined Nicolas and had a excellent dinner at EOS… I missed that so much: good food, great people, cool atmosphere, great city with real people…

Today, back to SF… The weather was simply awesome (despite what Nicolas’ iPhone seemed to indicate ;-)), I started to remember L.A. and the feeling of the sun caressing the skin… We went around Dolores Park, where you can find the sexiest guys on the planet, shirtless, but… obviously gay, sorry ladies, this is SF! We went from Guerrero St to Mission, and the atmosphere was very different from one street to the other: SF seems to be composed of really different neighborhoods with different atmospheres but sometimes really close to each other…. In Mission, we ate an ice cream in the middle of tattooed guys, homeless people, prostitutes, and gypsies playing guitar… Quite a surrealistic place, it was really interesting to observe people that are so different from me… That’s what I love in SF: difference is not just tolerated but encouraged, and you get to discover the most colorful things that mankind has to offer… OK, I will stop being poetic, a lot of people told me that I’m boring when I start like that

All that just to say that I’m not happy to be back to San Jose, but I’ll be way happier when I’ll have my own place with my nice sofa