A Fresh Start (up)

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

After spending a week discovering all the new aspects of my new job, from the fitness center to the high level strategic issues, the challenge of this week-end was to find a permanent place to live. I had spent hours and hours online trying to select the best choices, to avoid spending too much time visiting places all around. And the first one was the good one! So I’ll be moving to Avalon on The Alameda, a nice residence with pool, spa and fitness center, on March 15th. This property has plenty of advantages: it is located close to a Caltrain station, so it is very convenient to go to Frisco whenever I want, close to work, and close to a lot of shops and restaurants, and even a car rental company. The apartment in itself is really nice as you can see on the picture, especially since I have the right to make improvements, like painting the walls. It is one bedroom and 735 sq. ft. apartment, with a dining room separated from the living room, and even a separated desk to install a computer station for example. The floor plan and even a virtual tour can be found here.

So now the next step for the week-end to come will be to find some furniture, painting and paintbrushes. Here is where I need your help: except Ikea, does any of you know great places to buy modern but not too expensive furniture? And the address of a Do-It-Yourself so that I can find everything I need to hang my paintings and paint some walls?

After a lot of hesitation, I think that I am going to try to get my driving license… Those who know me well must already think that plenty of fun stories will appear on this blog, since everybody has incessantly repeated me that I would be the worst driver ever, but I’m sure I can do that without killing anybody… At least I’ll try

Apart from that, the weather is really bad, I’m definitely not in L.A. anymore! So I am spending my week-end catching up with the episodes I missed of my favorites series, even if there are not a lot of them due to the scenarists’ strike… Hopefully I’ll be able to go to San Francisco next week end!

First day of a real job, this is something to mark with a white stone

I am so happy I made the choice of joining this company: all the new employee orientation was about belief in people’s honesty, ambition of changing the world when you come at work everyday, personal development, innovation, intrapreneurship… instead of the traditional review of benefits that you would have in any other company. It was… inspirational, and so American! My team is great, my mission is great, but I won’t detail that here, sorry

At lunch (where of course I had a French salad!), I ran into another expat I got to know in the French office, and whose blog has helped so much when I got to go through all the expatriation stuff! For a minute I got this great impression “I know someone here, a friendly face!!!”: Seb, I’m sure you didn’t realize how happy you made me!

I have asked my team about my dilemma with apartments… they all say that I should live in SF… if only I could find a decent apartment there! I think I’m going to stick to my first idea of staying in San Jose, except that I’ll have to find something close to work, with easy access to Caltrain (the only way to go to SF without a car!), and with shops around… because even if the apartment I live in currently is amazingly nice, I miss civilization when I look through the window and only see fields! It reminds me of Jouy-en-Josas; those who lived there will understand my misery

I’ll keep you posted on my apartment hunting guys!

Hi there! As promised, I am going to tell you more about my first steps as an expatriate… I landed yesterday in San Francisco, and, after a cab ride that cost me $100 (glups, this was a good start) I arrived in my temporary apartment found by my company in San Jose. What a good surprise when I discovered that it is an amazing place, with all the outside (spa, pool, volleyball court, barbecues…) and inside (dishwasher, washer/dryer, mixer, and even the special pizza knife!) amenities you can imagine… Besides it is well located close to a “tram” station that will drive me directly to my workplace.

The only problem: I had no idea that San Jose was such a huge city and I won’t find everything I need close to my place! In Miami and L.A., I got the chance to live in some really lively areas with plenty of stores, but now I realize that it is not possible everywhere in the US and that my residence is simply in the middle of nowhere!

So today we rented a car (but were obliged to go by train and bus to the airport to find a rental company!) to get the “survival kit”: a wifi router, a printer, and things to eat! Who said that the wifi router isn’t part of a traditional survival kit???

After buying basic things at Walmart (first time I went there, after so many case studies about Walmart when I was in HEC!!!), I decided that I missed Whole Foods way too much so we went to Palo Alto to find one… and we bought things to eat for at least a month!

And to make the most of having rented a car, we made a stop at Stanford University… and the pictures (even if I didn’t have my good camera) speak for themselves!

So here are the pictures of my residence and apartment, and of Stanford Uni!

This is it: I’m leaving L.A. on Sunday! It is of course a good occasion to step back and think about the results of this exchange and what has surprised me in general.

Having already been a B-school student, I thought that this Exchange would be valuable mostly for the international experience rather than for the content itself. But, apart from the obvious things (discovering life in a US university, having the occasion of meeting people with very different backgrounds due to the “aggregator” role of universities…) I have really enjoyed spending a term in an MBA program because:

• The courses are much more practical than in Masters program: for example, when dealing with innovation, professors don’t say basic things like “you have to hire creative people” but on the contrary explain all the stages of an innovation program and the different tools to foster innovation based on real companies’ experience because their audience has already dealt with practical problems and want practical solutions.
• The courses are much more interactive: all the students have on average 5 years of professional experience, so it’s usual that they have already been confronted to some situations that we talk about in class and can bring their experience to the discussion.
• People are not here only to enjoy parties and get drunk like in B-school: they have paid a lot to be there and want to make the most of it. Therefore they are really open to networking, and are most of the time delighted when you ask them questions. I have had particularly interesting discussions with people having worked previously in the Internet sector (Yahoo!, AOL, Google…) in senior positions, which is a unique opportunity to understand the career development in this sector. I was afraid that this difference in terms of professional experience would prevent me from being really integrated, but it wasn’t the case: American people really admire Europeans having learned English and ready to bring their knowledge to a US university, so they welcome any insight. I must anyway acknowledge that my year of internship has been really useful in this context, at least to better understand some particular management problems that can’t be considered from an empirical point of view (like resistance to changes, that I have experimented during my internships).
• I have gained a lot of knowledge about the corporate environment in general thanks to a lot (and I mean A LOT) of case studies. Having to read 2 entrepreneurs’ stories every week plus having a guest speaker every 2 weeks gives a better understanding of entrepreneurship than some PowerPoint slides saying “you have to be able to take risks”. Same thing in my course “Technology Management”: I didn’t know anything about the hardware or biotech industry, and now I understand what are the big challenges, and how to compare the different tech industries. Even in the Internet one, I got a more managerial and broader view to analyze the sector. MBA students have most of the time (like in most jobs) been focused on details and come there to get the whole picture on what they’ve done and where they’re going.
• This exchange has also had an unexpected effect. I have been having fun during 3 months  with people that I could have met during recruiting processes, in suit and ties, asking me “what do you think that the company should do if competitor X enters the market with a price lower by 28%? how will the operating margin be affected?”… It has allowed me to clearly acknowledge that after 5 years of professional experience, these people know a lot more than I do, but that it doesn’t mean that I don’t have a chance to impress them by showing some maturity and an organized reasoning, because I have shown during group meetings that I was up to the task.

And I will finish this post with  a quote that I will remember forever mentioned by my Entrepreneurship professor:

“Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

So simply let your music play!

It’s always difficult to speak about my expatriation, to communicate what surprises me, what I like and dislike about it on an ongoing basis on this blog, because it would generate really short articles about some silly things. Twitter would be the ideal way to do that but as most of my friends are not geeks, I know that I don’t reach the people I want with this medium. So I decided to make regular updates gathering all the news and practical details of my expatriation, my opinions and feelings about it. It is particularly important for me since I use expats’ blogs a lot, to discover great things to do, to understand some cultural aspects, or simply to know how to get my Internet access repaired in this country! So, in bulk:

• I love studying in the US, because I realized I really lacked some concrete experience about the fields I am studying. I get to listen to business angels, VCs, entrepreneurs, corporate entrepreneurs, innovation directors… and I simply love it, because I put a face on these functions and I mitigate my thoughts and stereotypes.
• L.A. has plenty of advantages (amazing weather, both great cultural and night life, great entertainment, lovely areas…) but a big drawback: it’s huge. As my budget didn’t allow me to rent a car for 3 months, I am obliged to plan days in advance what I want to do, because you can’t simply wake up one morning and go to downtown, because you have to remember that it is at least 1hr30min bus drive to go there. I have no impression of “knowing” L.A. as I can’t do multiple things in the same day, so I can’t manage to “connect” the different places I go to. Fortunately my neighborhood is one of the nicest (Westwood, between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills ;-))
• Today is Halloween, and it’s a big deal here, but it has been celebrated everywhere for a week now (you can see my costume of devil here)… Originally I thought that Halloween was supposed to be scary, but it is in fact the equivalent of Mardi Gras… And most women (at least in L.A.) preferred the sexy costume than the scary one!
• I kept the best part for the end: I just accepted an offer to work as a Business Analyst for the Marketplaces Strategy team of eBay in San Jose, California (headquarters), and I will start working there in January. Obviously I’m delighted, especially since I enjoyed my internship at eBay France, but also because it’s a great opportunity to discover the challenging environment of Silicon Valley, and to work with the best people of the sector, all sharing the same amazing corporate culture. I would have so many great things to say about eBay (the core values, the amazing portfolio, the great challenges to face, the vision, the campus…ok I stop now) but I have decided that it will be the only time I will speak about it. There are a lot of legal aspects involved when blogging about the company you’re working for, and the limit between what you can say or not is often really vague. I will of course share my knowledge of the Internet sector and what I will learn by interacting with bloggers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, but I won’t say a word anymore about eBay itself.
• My boyfriend also has to find some work in Silicon Valley, so if you know a company needing a top notch software engineer and having no problem in sponsoring visas, please let me know, that’d be great!
• I will move to Silicon Valley in January, and have to find a place to live: I’m hesitating between living in San Jose to be close to eBay or finding a nicer area… If you have any advice then do no not hesitate! I think I will try to rent a place for one month to give me time to find my “ideal apartment”.

That’s it, I will keep you posted about the many practical things I will have to overcome to settle down

As a part of my investigation on the differences between the real American culture and the one we see in teenage dramas, I thought that had to post a note about a tradition closely linked with college life: Greek Life. This post is inspired by an article of the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s newspaper.

According to this article, all the clichés we have about fraternities and sororities, such as hazing and alcohol abuse, are mainly exaggerated, at least at UCLA. About hazing, a member of a fraternity affirms that all Greek organizations at UCLA abide by the university’s policy against hazing, their organization’s national hazing policies, and the California State Law. He also adds that “not only do not we haze because it’s not allowed, but also we don’t find it conducive to the morals we stand for.” Concerning the fact that members are supposed to party all the time, this having a bad impact on their grades, he recalls that all the sororities and fraternities have a higher GPA average than the university’s all male and all female GPA average. He thinks that this is due - among other things - to the possibility to be tutored by other members.

More objectively, concerning the recruiting process, it differs for each organization. The 11 sororities have a common recruiting process starting on “Zero Week”: after having registered online, all the candidates attend a mandatory orientation session, then visit the 11 houses on the first two days of recruitment, and, as each day progresses, narrow down their choices. Each day, they are called back to a fewer number of houses. By the end of the process (called “bid night”), they end up having up to two choices. Concerning fraternities, the recruiting differ widely from one another but they all say that they are looking for “diversity and maturity”, whatever these words might mean.

At UCLA, 13% of the student body is currently involved in the Greek System, which is comprised of over 62 organizations.

I don’t want to talk here about religion, I just want to talk about faith. From what I saw this week end in San Francisco (and I really don’t know if I can generalize, as SF is such a special place!), American people have a really demonstrative way of showing their faith. And surprisingly, I loved it.

On Sunday morning I went to Glide Memorial Church, as advised by my travel guide (I’m still such a tourist!), to attend a gospel celebration. But what I found there was a communion of really happy people, only linked to each others by their “faith”, even if they really don’t seem to have the same definition of that. After some amazing gospel songs, a lady in a beautiful and sexy suit (no idea who she was) started to speak next to the reverend about the values of Glide Memorial Church: absolutely everyone is accepted (religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity), as God loves everyone unconditionally. In France, this may sound as a marketing speech, but in SF, when I looked at the crowd gathered there, I promise that it was a concrete proof of what she said: homeless people, traditional American families, people from all nationalities and all ages…. Then a gay man started to speak about the future workshops of the church: “how to be happy as a gay or a lesbian” and spoke about the “management of the difference” in today’s world. It was really good to see that there is such an acceptance, even if I’m sure that I won’t find the same kind of church in the Midwest… So, even if at the beginning I thought that this kind of faith is a bit weird as, in my education, basically if you are Muslim you don’t pray the same God as if you are Christian, I rapidly realized that if faith is aimed at making people happy (even if I don’t agree with that definition), then Glide Memorial Church has probably understood the key message. I sang hand in hand with diverse people, I was hugged many times by people I didn’t know anything about, and at the end I felt like these people had found some kind of comfort in this place, and it made me happy to.

By the way, for all my friends who read that and are getting worried because I’m usually so cynical, don’t worry, Glide Memorial Church is not a cult, or at least I suppose it isn’t since it is mentioned in my travel guide!

I managed to record an extract from one of the gospel song ( I know that I’m an incorrigible gospel fan…), so just enjoy this really short podcast!