the office - paris

So my client site is a company that produces and distributes paper.

That's right I work in an environment reconstructed by a comedy to parody the ridiculous mundaneness of office life.

Oh and the name of the manager in my office?

Wait for it...

Mickael.

en face du client

So they sat me in front smack dab in front of the client which means I have to concentrate on doing things like sitting properly. I seek refuge in the building's rooftop terrance:

montmartre art attack

So this weekend I finally had the chance to do some exploring in Paris. Armed with my newly acquired and a way too expensive lonely planet's paris city guide, I headed to Montmarte for a walking tour L.P. dubbed the "Montmarte Art Attack". Below are the highlights in picture form.



Moulin Rouge (starting point)



Van Gogh's house



Detour for two hours at a cafe overlooking Rue Thoroze



Passe-muraille statue



Cabaret au lapin agile



Eric Satie's house



Basilique du sacre coeur



Guy doing crazy soccer moves



Enjoying live music and the view



Bateau lavoir (housed Kees Van Dongen, Max Jacob, Amedeo Modigliani, and Picasso)

iTime Capsule

So it takes me about 45 minutes to get to work every day and it was suggested by my co workers that I should import french learning tools into my ipod. I thought this a great idea.

Nevermind that I had long ago lost the ipod/laptop connector nor did I have itunes installed on my laptop. Fortunately these things could be remedied and after waiting a week I egarly plugged my ipod into my laptop only to find a message that said something like "Sorry, your ipod is formatted for macs and is not compatible with windows. Would you like to reformat your ipod?"

I would have clicked "Yes" had there not been in parathesis afterwords, a message casually stating that formatting would effectively wipe my ipod of all data (Which makes me wonder: had I switched from a pc to a mac would I have gotten an alternative message like "Thank you for switching to a Mac. Don't worry, all your music is safe and sound. And here is 100 dollars).

Torn, my mind flashed to my old mac that was sitting back in the States basically on life support. There was a very good chance that if I lost the music on my ipod it would be lost forever.

Not like that was a bad thing mind you. The last time I was able to put anything on this ipod was in 2005, the year I left Japan. Everything on it is old and outdated, and kind of random. And since the music was downloaded from limewire the ipod is terribly organized due to all shorts of weird mispellings of song titles and artist names. The only good way to listen to it is to put it on random but then songs like B.I.N.G.O (as in, there was a farmer who had a dog - I used it one day in one of my classes in Japan) come on after Jay Z's Big Pimpin'.

It's a bit of a hot mess. And perhaps this was an opportunity to change that. To start over. With a click of a button I could effectively erase my "OC" phase or my secret penchant for Britney Spear's music (What? It's catchy!).

And most importantly I could learn French on the metro. If I clicked no however, that would be it. I didn't have access to any Macs so that would mean I would not be able to manipulate it in anyway. It would stay the same indefinitely.

New beginning or hold on to the past? It was a tough choice.

I clicked "No". In the end I couldn't do it. Erasing the ipod felt like I was erasing my memories.

The next day, as if the music knew it had been on the brink of oblivion earlier, great song after great song came on along with the memories attached to them. A Bob Dylan song downloaded by the "around the world by bike" guy when he crashed at my place after coming through Syberia. Music from my Japanese Yosakoi team. The Red Hot Chili Peppers song that was playing all over Thailand the first time I was there.

I may change my mind later but for now I think I made the right decision.

i saw la seine

So on the second day of my internship they sent me (rather unexpectedly) to my client site Antalis. Antalis is an international company that produces and distributes...drum roll please...

Paper!!!

Yes very exciting. Fortunately this view from my office window gets me through the day:

agenda

So I was given a planner as part of some "welcome to the company" goodies. Inside are helpful information such as useful telephone numbers, country codes, french holidays, and this:



I'm all set.

paris et moi

So I offically moved to Paris yesterday just in time to start my internship. Having problems sleeping in new beds I had hoped to move Saturday to have an extra night to adjust but things being the way that they are (and my luck being the way that it is) it didn't happen that way. I managed to get my stuff into the new place at like 10pm Sunday night and my attempt at sleep after that all but failed.

When I finally was so exhausted that I could sleep my alarm went off and I couldn't ignore it because getting to work by 9am meant I had to leave the apartment at 7:30 (to be safe). I also had to look somewhat decent (add one hour) and there I was, hauling my tired ass out of bed and into the shower at 6:30am.

Fortunately my first day of work consisted entirely of orientation which meant I didn't actually have to do work, I just had to sit there and passively listen to presenters. Unfortunately all of the presenters are HR. And HR personnel in France don't speak English.

An entire day of French on like no sleep and I didn't manage to get fired. I consider that a victory.