A Fresh Start (up)

I hate Mondays… I know, who doesn’t? This is a problem with no solution, because I hate Mondays when I had a bad week-end (I feel that I shouldn’t go back to work without having fun before) but also when I had a great week-end (I feel that… well, it should be longer!). I can’t imagine what it would be if I didn’t like my job

Anyway, this week-end was a really good one: Remy and I went to Carmel-by-the-Sea, one of the most romantic places I’ve ever seen… Well, most of you know that sea and sunset are enough for me . We also slept in Clint Eastwood’s ranch… well, without Clint Eastwood, obviously! On Sunday, after driving through the beautiful natural reserve “17-mile drive”, we went to Monterrey, and I was a bit disappointed by the aquarium, which is supposed to be the best in the world, but I loved seeing big colorful jellies… All the pictures of the week end are here.

Anyway, the conclusion of this week-end on the coast is that I want to have a beach house, do yoga every Sunday morning after drinking fresh orange juice, and then going running on the beach… OK, you all understood that it wasn’t going to happen: so far, my traditional Sundays look more like 1) eating a lot of Nutella instead of drinking orange juice 2) watching lots of episodes of “The West Wing” lying on my sofa instead of running on the beach or practicing yoga… For sure, they won’t feature my life in “Lifestyle Magazine”

  I’m exhausted after a long trip back from Tahoe (I’m still sick in cars!) so the article will be short and very factual. We spent the 3-day 4th of July week-end in Lake Tahoe with Seb and Audrey, and it was really cool and relaxing: lying on the beach under a perfect sun, watching beautiful fireworks on the lake, eating in a delicious restaurant with lake-view… is more or less how I’d like to spend all my week-ends … This is what I really love about California: 4 hours away from San Jose you can discover this beautiful lake with all the water-related activities, whereas it is a very popular ski resort during winter… This country never stops to amaze me, you really can’t become cynical when you live in this country… Pictures are here!

I’m just back from our team building event in San Diego, and it was really awesome! Nothing like the cheap stuff that most companies do, but actual fun!

On Monday we went sailing in the San Diego bay, and it was my first time: I was really good with the steering wheel, I’m definitely the daughter of a fisherman . Then we had dinner at an awesome restaurant and finally drank a lot in a karaoke bar…

Today we went to the San Diego zoo (not the one I went to the last time I visited San Diego, but the “Wild Animal Park”, which is a large park / breeding facility) and we went to a safari where we could feed some giraffes! Of course I loved it: most of you know how excited I get when there is a combination of animals and picture spots

All the pictures of my team and the giraffes are here. I definitely want to live on the beach someday; San Diego is pretty awesome for the “surfer style”…

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!

Remy had a conference in Chicago this week so I went with him for the week end. This city is simply awesome! It is a rare example of what my ideal city would look like: there are pieces of art everywhere! All my pictures are here.

First of all, we decided to be fancy and booked the Sheraton for 2 nights: and I remember the time when I said that I was a really simple person…! Truth is, I really enjoyed the sweet sheets and pillows, and the room service of the Sheraton… It feels good not to be a student anymore

In a nutshell, we took the architectural boat tour which describes the most amazing buildings I’ve ever seen, then we took a walk in Millennium Park and saw the great Cloud Gate and we spent at least half an hour watching ourselves in this bean-shaped mirror. If you don’t know what the Cloud Gate looks like, you should better check my pictures, otherwise there is no way to explain what it is

In the evening we went to Shula’s steakhouse, and for a carnivore like I am, Chicago is a real paradise! Then we headed to Kingston Mines, the most famous blues club in Chicago, and one of the bands was great: J.W. Williams & the Chi-Town Hustlers are really worth listening to.

On Sunday we went shopping on Magnificent Mile: and entire mile of great stores, isn’t it supposed to be called heaven? Then we went’ to Gino’s East to try the famous deep dish Chicago-style pizza: 6cm of toppings!! Finally we went to the Chicago Museum of Contemporary art: even if the Koons exhibition only starts in two weeks (I was so frustrated!!), we got the chance to see some amazing pieces, including a big shell in which you can lie down!

Going back to work after a week end like this is kind of tough, especially since I’m all alone in a big empty apartment … And you guys, what are you up to these days?

I spent most of the day in the middle of my paint tubes, brushes and canvas: the result is this piece of junk on the left but I felt so good! It was as if I had what I liked the most in my “old” life back

Apart from that, back to my French week. We had dinner on Tuesday with David and Veronique, two great French expats living in San Jose… It was really cool to share our thoughts about the life and people here, and they had some really great stories (most expats have, but they really know how to tell them ).

On Thursday I went to a dinner gathering HEC alumni on the West Coast. Amazing people there, and it is always reassuring to see that even if, having just finished school, I have the impression that business careers are really “standardized”, it is not always the case, especially among HEC expats. There was in particular an entrepreneur advisor who took the time to tell me how he got there, and I would simply love having a job like that in a couple of years.

Yesterday we went to the Open Studios gathering 160 artists, and I had a real love at first sight with Sunn Yo: her paintings make you calm and serene, her portraits are just astonishing, the colors great, the technique perfect… Anyway, after that we joined the French gang (Cécile and Karim her boyfriend, who is American but speaks a perfect French, Audrey and Guillaume) to a great Moroccan restaurant called Aziza and had a delicious pastilla to share. Yes, I know I’m supposed to integrate a little bit better, but it’s not my fault if I keep on meeting great French people

A dinner with friends on a Saturday night and painting on Sunday, I feel as if I was still in Paris! Oh, I forgot about the difference in climate

It all started with me having my licence…and ended up with me buying this car (on the picture)!

OK, let’s do that chronologically (I don’t even have time to get creative while giving you some news!). On Tuesday evening we had dinner in SF with Thibault and Anne-Laure who were starting their tour of California: wow, that was so great to see some friends, and listening to them arguing about the next steps of their trip felt like home, and more exactly poker parties in Paris!

After a crazy week at work, on Friday night we went celebrating Jenni’s move from our team to the Motors team (this girl really helped me getting settled at work, this is so bad she’s leaving), in a great French restaurant called Foreign Cinema. God, I missed foie gras so much!! Pictures are here.

On Saturday, Audrey, Cecile and I attended a Fashion show organized by the Academy of Arts to recruit new students (pictures here)… It was absolutely great, exactly as we see them on TV, except that the models are even skinnier in reality… To sympathize with them, we went eating chocolate pudding just after :-). And then we went to the SF MOMA, I think I could spend my life there… This afternoon, and in particular seeing those prospective students at the Academy, made me realize that, since I decided what I wanted to do so early, I am not really aware of all the other type of careers and lives people have outside of the business world. I’m not saying that I imagine myself as a fashion designer (even if my mother would have preferred that!), but I would love to meet people with more diverse backgrounds… Speaking of which, on Saturday night Nicolas invited us to meet Thomas, his partner, who just joined him in the US: a true artist, graphic designer and photograph. If you want to check a great photoblog, Thomas’ one will definitely be worth your time. After eating with them and Seb around Castro St, we went to a pub in the same street… and I was the only girl, surrounded by guys who were obviously more interested in Rémy than myself… I’m definitely in SF!

And today… Rémy went checking some cars this morning and came back with a big smile: “I found it, we just have to sign the papers”! 200 hundred signatures later, I found myself writing a check of $11,000, on the verge on falling from my chair, imagining that the next time that I will check my bank account there will be a huge difference… In these kind of moments, you just want to be a kid again and have Mom&Dad (this is almost a brand) take care of everything, so I called them and they scared the hell out of me: “have you checked that the engine is clear? what about the brakes? how can you be sure that it wasn’t involved in any accident?”… Anyway, I bought a really nice Toyota Yaris, that I’m going to pick up probably tomorrow since I need to get an insurance first. What do you think? I find its “face” (no, I’m not crazy, I know that it won’t speak to me like Disney’s ones) really cute

To relax after this stressful choice, we went to… Alcatraz (I know, a spa would have probably been a better choice)! We chose the evening tour, and it was awesome, first of all for the view on the City, but also because you really get to see what you have in mind: the alignment of microscopic cells, the ways prisoners took to escape, the cells of famous prisoners… and you can’t of course miss the entire story of Al Capone… Eh, you know I love Mafia stories! Pictures are here.

After a nice work and a nice apartment, I start to have nice friends and a nice car. This expatriation is going well, right?

I had an interesting week, the kind of week when you feel that your brain has been working more than usual.

I attended a great conference by Dan Roam about visual thinking as part of the eBay Speaker Series. I wrote an article about it on Tech IT Easy, and it felt good to blog about interesting topics, and not just about what’s happening in my life. I realized that I made the right choice to put my personal articles here and the articles with a little bit more meat on TIE. It allows me to experiment two of the advantages of blogging (staying in touch with friends without writing a common email to everyone and generating great conversations on interesting topics) on different and appropriate platforms without mixing readerships. Whereas before I had a large overlap between my TIE readers and this blog’s readers, now it is not the case anymore even if I encourage my dear friends who read this blog to also read tech topics on TIE, so that they won’t make this strange and annoyed face anymore when I’ll speak about my job with them

Apart from that, I went to a conference on Friday night about New Media Artists and the Law, which will probably help me a lot to definitely finish my thesis. I might write something on TIE about it too (yes, I try to be back in the game!)

This week-end was a little bit less intellectual: OK, I acknowledge that I went to see “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” at the cinema, and even if I’m sure that this movie can go directly to the “crappy” category for most people, I actually laughed a lot And it motivated me to go to Hawaii, so I might take so holidays and go there for Thanksgiving (yes, I am making plans well in advance!)

And finally today, I attended the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown with Seb, Audrey and Cecile (pictures here): too many people of course, but really nice parade, plenty of colors, and plenty of French people (don’t ask me why!). Then we looked for cold places since it was freezing in SF and landed in a really nice café, managed by French people of course, guess you can’t avoid them ;-)  Nice people and hot chocolate: I definitely start liking it here!

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