A Fresh Start (up)

Just a quick post: I’m flying back to France tomorrow for a week, to present my thesis (on Thursday)  and attend my graduation ceremony (on Friday). I can’t wait to see you again guys

Quick summary of the past week: a lot of work, a nice dinner with Nicolas and Thomas in San Francisco yesterday,  and a day in Santa Cruz with Audrey and Guillaume today. A beautiful beach (as you can see), a nice lunch around 4pm, and the visit of the “mystery spot”, a really weird place in the forest where gravitational rules are not respected, you can see it all here! Yes, we seem very stupid not standing perpendicular to the floor . Other event of the week: Remy participated to the show on BFM radio called “L’Atelier Numerique” to speak about his job; I’ll post the podcast here when it’ll be available! Yes, we will all be famous for 15 minutes of our life

See you in Paris!

Bad, bad week: a bad flu after my Yosemite trip, some tight deadlines at work, not many hours of sleep, and the confirmation that I won’t get my visa this year. Yes, dear friends, I’ll be back to Paris in February 2009! I hope that, like Nico says, “brunches with friends and lots and lots of boat trips” will compensate the fact that I really didn’t want to see the Eiffel Tower again so soon. Speaking of Paris, I’ll be there next week for my graduation: it is weird because I feel so out of touch with all this school thing, but on the other hand I feel really nostalgic that this part of my life is over. I’ll share the pictures with the nice square hat soon!

A part from that, the week wasn’t all bad: I had dinner with Seb and Valentine (from the French office) on Thursday and it was really cool, like a real French dinner in a French restaurant with a lot of talking before, between and after the meals… Seb saw that I was on the verge of getting completely crazy with the flu + the workload, so he saved me from a major nervous breakdown by inviting me that evening

Fortunately this week-end was pretty cool: Audrey turned 25 and invited some friends to a nice restaurant in SF (see picture), so I met some cool people (French, of course, can’t help it!) and then we went to a club (French, of course!) where I met an HEC from my promotion that I was supposed to meet in the weeks to come, but I guess the French community is a small world!

For this 3-day week-end, we had planned to go to Yosemite National Park, since all the guides mention that it is THE best week-end to visit Yosemite. We had planned to go boating on Bass Lake, to rent a canoë on the Merced River… I had packed all my bathing suits and light dresses, and we were ready to go!

We arrived at our hotel at night, after miles of sinuous roads: I think I had already turned green an hour before our arrival. I will never regret enough to have eaten this Burger King burger before leaving

When we got out of the car, we realized quickly that the light dresses would be absolutely useless: there was still snow everywhere! We got into the room to discover that, of course, there was to heating, which was definitely a problem since I only had a nightie to sleep! We also discovered the 20 warnings about bears: apparently 37 cars have been destroyed this month in Yosemite by starving bears! I started thinking “why the hell did I decide to come here? Wasn’t Vegas attractive enough???”

But things can always get worse: when we woke up on Saturday, it was the remake of The Great Flood, and of course, the hotel manager told us that the weather would be the same for 3 days! She even advised to go visit the Yosemite museum, displaying pictures of Yosemite: if this is what I wanted to do, I would have used Google Images, dammit!

Since I am a really stubborn person, I decided to try to see at least the most famous spots, in order not to be obliged to come back! The intensity of the rain was decreasing a bit, so we managed to see Maripose Grove of Giant Sequoias, the Bridaveil and Yosemite Falls, El Capitan… and the picture you can see is a proof that we made it! What can’t be seen in the picture is that, just after taking it, we ran like crazy to the car because we were freezing, and then spent the night watching Gilmore Girls

On Sunday morning it was getting even worse so we left without any regret, except the one of having missed the opportunity of a 3-day week-end! I am so not a “nature” kind of girl!

Sorry guys, my blog was down for an entire day, but thanks to Rémy’s genius hands, everything is back to normal now.

Since the past week has been everything but interesting, I thought I would pass on the traditional weekly update, but Seb started complaining that without any article, he couldn’t know what I had done this week. Since the answer is nothing, here I am, writing about nothing. I’m wondering how long I can continue that; after all, I went to a business school, that shouldn’t be a problem

So, to sum up nothing, I had a pretty uninteresting week, waiting for Rémy to come back from Chicago, and then spending the week-end working. Work is getting tougher, but also more motivating. I also called a few friends; I think I will never get over the fact that I miss you guys! But I might end up not missing you for long: whereas Remy got a receipt saying that he got accepted at the H1B visa lottery, I still haven’t received anything, which is not a good sign. So I might end up going back to France, whether I (and you ) want it or not!

Apart from this (still) not interesting topic, I registered for the continuing studies program in Stanford, and I will be taking a class of… acting this summer! I can see all of you think “oh my god, she really wants to end up in Hollywood!”

What else? Still a lot of nothing to talk about… Oh yes, I am getting more and more obsessed with the idea of going into the hospitality industry sooner or later, and started devouring some books on the topic. It’s weird, I feel like once you have started in a sector, it is really difficult to go into something radically different later on… Now I start understanding people going into consulting! Those who know me well know that I’ve been talking about managing a hotel for a long time, and now I feel that I really need to do it, at least some day … So who wants to buy an Inn with me? I already have a partner (Manue, if you read me ) but except if she has been hiding her fortune for many years, I doubt that we will have enough money to do that now and alone … Hopefully, my grand father always told me that passion is more important than money to achieve your dreams, and, stupid as I am, I still believe him!

Ok, enough “nothing” for today! Just in case you stumble upon this blog looking for interesting content, insights about tech and entrepreneurship, I remind you that this blog is now for friends and family, or people interested in expatriation (or interested in “nothing”!) but that I still continue to publish more interesting things (it’s not hard!) on Tech it Easy. My latest pieces include an interview of Alain Romang on how museums can benefit from the Internet, and a book review of The One Minute Entrepreneur from Ken Blanchard. Enjoy (or not) !

Hopefully, I will have cooler things to say after Memorial day week end in Yosemite!