A Fresh Start (up)

After months of preparation, stress, excitement and anxiety, I’m finally in L.A.! How to describe the first day of a new life? I must be born under a good star as everything went fine: in only one day, I checked into a beautiful studio, I visited UCLA and completed all the administrative tasks, I got my UCLA student card, I bought the traditional UCLA sweatshirt, I bought a US mobile phone, I opened a bank account, I found a Whole Food to buy some… food of course, and I even had time to make my first podcast at UCLA…

As I don’t want to convert this blog into a personal one (and it’s hard at the moment as I really want to share the experience of my expatriation), I will try to connect my experiences with some more interesting topics. For example, in this podcast, I explain the connection between UCLA and the Internet. The result is awful (horrible French accent, horrible face, awful quality, and I don’t understand why I move my head in all directions like that, that’s unbearable…) but I really want to make this blog more alive by adding podcasts, so hopefully it’ll get better with time ;-)

If you want to follow this expatriation step by step, you can see my Flickr pictures here and my Twitter feed here.

Everything is packed. My apartment is amazingly empty: all my souvenirs were on sale on eBay, and I was happy to leave them in the hands of passionate eBayers. But they remain souvenirs, and it’s hard to let go. Big Departure is tomorrow, and I still cannot imagine that I am leaving France definitely, if ever “definitely” makes any sense at 21.

No place to crash in Paris anymore. I am leaving good friends behind. Expatriation is less easy than I thought: the name of this blog now totally makes sense!

What seems to be nothing for some people (moving to the US to study and work is not such a big deal !) is huge for people who have grown up in my place. Actually, my native city is a very special place where people think that moving to Paris is an exodus, that Americans are just burger-eaters and great movies makers, and that UCLA is a brand of very cool sweatshirts. Some probably even think that America only exists on TV, and that I’m moving to LA just to play in a soap opera. 

But what is most ridiculous in a moment like that is that I can’t help having this little song in my head, from Phantom planet, “California”, which also happen to be the soundtrack of the stupid soap opera “the OC” (but I must acknowledge that I watched all the episodes!). You can listen it here if you want to feel the spirit!

I really hope to have an Internet access available right away to keep you posted with the details of my arrival !

As a “want to be” entrepreneur, I felt quite guilty not to decide to create (again!) a company after my studies. But sometimes working for a company at a junior level is not such a bad choice, especially if the company helps you initiate projects.  Guy Kawasaki’s book The Art of Start confirms that intrapreneurship is possible: “A large number of aspiring entrepreneurs currently work for big companies. Like all entrepreneurs, they dream of creating innovative products or services and wonder if this can be done internally. The answer is yes.”

As I will study intrapreneurship at UCLA (if I finally get the courses I chose, which is everything but sure!), I would be interested in gathering great examples of intrapreneurship (being successes of failures), so did you experience any? How does your company foster intrapreneurship?

I mentionned at the beginning of my blogging experience that this blog was going to be launched in September 2007, when I will leave France for the US. In fact, my first purpose was to write a blog about both the great moments and the difficulties of expatriation. But my passion for the Internet, entrepreneurship and innovation was too strong and I decided to launch this blog before leaving our wonderful country.

Anyways, lots of visitors of this blog have sent me messages telling me that they would be interested in reading more on this expatriation on this blog. It is quite understandable: as this blog was until now (and will probably continue to be) really Internet centric, my readers are in many cases passionate about this sector. And it is really hard to be passionate about the Internet without having a great interest in what is happening in the US, and how a Frenchie can manage to be integrated there.

So I just want to tell you that I’m leaving to the US on Sep. 18th to study entrepreneurship for one term at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), as an exchange student from the PIM program. This term at UCLA will replace my last year at HEC Paris, and I will graduate in June 2008. But I reassure you, I won’t convert this blog into a story of my life, first of all because it is really not that interesting, and secondly because if you want more basic news about what’s happening to me you can follow me on Twitter here.

I can speak more serenely about this departure now, because almost everything is arranged, but I can tell you that expatriation really IS a big deal.

During these past months, I’ve had to:

• go through awful administrative processes to get my student visa
• find an apartment online (I love rent.com!) and book it without even being sure that the woman I sent my money to really is the property manager of a great condo (of course I checked everything I could, but how can you be sure when you are miles away?). I must add that I had tough requirements: short term stay, fully furnished, close to UCLA, not too expensive, with the possibility of having an Internet access, and if possible a fitness center (me, demanding? )
• try (not done already!) to install an Internet access in my future apartment to have it when I arrive
• figure out that there is a sexual offender in the street of my US address thanks to vison20/20, amazing site generating violent reactions (I definitely can’t stop writing about net topics)
• find an insurance to cover me in the US
• start selling all the furniture of my French apartment
• resiliate all the utilities contracts
• get used to the fact that UCLA is a HUGE university and try to identify the halls I must go to when I arrive
• leave my beloved Mac for another computer, buy Windows Vista and Office 2007 because they are the only ones compatible with UCLA systems
• select the courses I want to follow while knowing that exchange students NEVER get the courses they selected
• start being stressed (I’m really in advance on this one!)

So if you have any questions about the preparations fro an expatriation, do not hesitate to ask; otherwise, more to come after Sep. 18th ! Wish me good luck!

This blog is going to be launched in September 2007, please come back at this time !

To know the topic of the blog, please read “About this blog and myself”, and add this blog to your feeds to be informed as soon as my adventure in the US get started!

See you soon.