A Fresh Start (up)

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 am finally not a desperate case! It started really badly though: I arrived 45 min late because my instructor refuses to buy a GPS, and the examinator I got started by saying “oh, you’re from France? I hate France, people are so mean and rude there!”… It turned out that the guy was delighted to see me smile, since he thought that it might be the sign that “new generations are probably France’s last hope”… The guy was actually really nice, and I couldn’t really disagree with what he was saying: I did leave France for a reason! He ended up the conversation by asking me if Carla Bruni was smart, and I was… speechless! So now I’m going to buy a car… without knowing a single thing about cars! Any advice? I want to keep it under $10,000 (used) and ideally be able to resell it.

Well, this week is completely crazy at work, so I’m going to bed now, but just for info I posted an article about the New Media Arts conference on Tech IT Easy here, and an article about a great conference I attended today by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, about customer satisfaction, here.

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!

  After my worst day ever, a work colleague told me “you’re lucky, because it means that you will have great moments in the days to come, to balance good and bad in the universe”… and apparently he was right! I had one really great week end

On Saturday we went to visit Berkeley and UC Berkeley, and even if the university is not as nice as UCLA (OK, I’m so biased, but if you want to compare pictures are here!), I loved the famous hippie atmosphere. I have never seen so many billboards for so different causes: “Save Tibet”, “Stop Beijin’s Olympic torch and hold the torch of human rights”, “Vote for Obama”, “Save Darfour”…

On Saturday night, we went to the opening of Taste 2008 art exhibition: when you combine art and food (my 2 passions!) you get something really interesting, like paintings of delirious ice creams…and you can check it out here!

Finally, today we went to the San Francisco Chocolate Salon and even if it was a bit too crowded (who is able to resist the power of chocolate?!), I had the opportunity to taste some amazing chocolates, like the “banana froster”… yummy!!! Pictures are here, but you better not be hungry before checking them

The first steps of this expatriation are finally going fine, and I’m delighted by all the great things happening in the Valley; there are too many things to do every week end! The only expectable problem is just that… I miss my friends: I got most of you on the phone this week end and sometimes I feel that I would be more “useful” in France, that I wouldn’t have all the time the impression of missing some important moments of your lives… But I know that, should I have stayed, things would have been the same since you are all going to explore the world soon

I should have stayed in bed this morning. Being awfully sick and taking a day off would have been better than that. This morning, on our way to take the bus, we met a really nice drug addict who didn’t want to let us pass; Remy asked the guy really nicely “can you please let us go?” and in exchange, received a punch in the shoulder and in the back. Who said San Jose was the safest city in the US? I’m amazed how quick my brain is in this kind of situation: I pushed the guy away from Remy, and we just ran as fast as we could! Then I called 911; the cop didn’t seem at all impressed by what I was telling and asked me “did you see the guy punching other people? Did he have a gun?”. Since my answer was NO to the 2 questions, she told me nicely “we’ll keep you posted”, meaning “as if we moved our ass for a guy without a gun…”

That wasn’t the end of the bad day, no no no, it would have been too easy! I took my driving test today, of course, as you might guess by the title of this post, I failed, and my driving instructor told me that I chose the worst DMV to take the test, the worst time (lunch time) and that I had the meanest examiner! She told me to turn left, and I couldn’t go on the left lane because there were too many cars, so I stayed on the middle lane to go straight and simply said “sorry, I couldn’t go to the left lane, so where do I go next?” and she replied “if you are asking questions it means that you should learn how to drive before taking the test, now the test is over, go back to the DMV”… Really nice lady, isn’t she?

Hopefully, work was here to entertain me a bit today: with the Yahoo-Google-AOL-Microsoft-Myspace entanglement and all the rumors going around the Valley about this (these) deal(s), it is definitely fun to work in the strategic department of a big Internet company at the moment!

Yes, I did receive my California ID (and by the way I have way too much hair on it) but even if it makes me feel a bit more integrated, I still have a sword of Damocles hanging over me: we submitted our H1B visas applications last week, but the quotas (65 000/year) have already been reached, which means that applications will be picked up randomly. Apart from the obvious absurdity of this quota which prevents Silicon Valley from hiring all the talented people it would need to face the recession, I find the situation a bit crazy: it’s been now 2 years that we are planning to live here (not to say my whole life!), we’ve been through so much pressure to try to find jobs at the same time, to get our J1 visas, to settle down… and now that we have everything in place, that we both start really enjoying our work, we are told that our future depends on a… lottery!

The other suspense of the week: will I get my license?? It is way less dramatic than the visa issue, for sure! I will take the test tomorrow, and I can say that it will be a miracle if I pass: during my last lesson, I cut some yellow lines, I accelerated during a turn, I forgot to stop at a stop sign…. Nothing promising

Apart from all that:

• We went to see a hockey game last week (pictures here): I loved the atmosphere, but I didn’t know that it was absolutely normal to let players fight during the game, so I was completely astonished to see those guys punching each other in the face while the audience was waiting for…free pizza!
• I had my housewarming party on Friday, with work colleagues (pictures here), and I realize that my Sicilian origins haven’t disappeared: I can make 3 additional housewarming parties only with the leftovers! At least we used the BBQ
• While I was having a drink with a friend in SF on Saturday, a HEC student was passing by and recognized me, at the exact moment when I was saying “it is hard to meet young French people in the Valley”… I guess she proved me wrong!
• I went to a mass on Sunday, and no wonder why US churches are full and French ones empty… It wasn’t a fancy mass at all, but it was in a latino area and people of all ages seemed totally absorbed by their faith…It is somehow reassuring to see so much hope in the eyes of so many different people. Besides it is really interesting to analyze the relationship that Americans have with religion: it can be sometimes really scary and sometimes really inspiring, even if the line is often difficult to draw. And I definitely love gospel music

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