We have internet!!

Christmas is saved! We have internet!!
Today the UPS guy appeared with our internet/phone/cable/tivo box, and this afternoon it started the blink of joy.
In theory, we have another phone number. However, I don't really know what it is. We are on skype though, and will be using it to call home on Christmas day.

We've already been using it to keep in touch with Nick while he's in NV. When we were at the hotel we gave it a shot, but it came out looking like this:


The new connection is at least one order of magnitude faster than the old connection, and Nick now looks like a person. He has eyes, and a nose and everything.

The true meaning of Object Oriented Programming

I started this morning by trying to not shoot espresso out my nose.

from Irf
to Dave
date Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 4:40 AM
subject dave dave dave dave dave!

guess what i just learned

object oriented programming (OOP) in french is Programmation Orientée Objet (POO)

OOP = POO!

If only I'd had these word of wisdom during University. I would have happily lost 2 points on a test if I could have used this as the answer to 'Define OOP'.

The Same, but Different.

Since moving here a month ago, we've made many discoveries about France and how it differs from Canada.

Toilet Paper: I haven't seen the varieties we get back home with regards to ply, as in 2-ply, 4-ply, super double rolls that are 4-ply but also more somehow? Instead the French decided to vary their toilet paper based on scent and colour. There's ocean-scented marine blue (very mild), mandarin-scented orange (ooh the bathroom smells like oranges!), vanilla creme, strawberry pink, etc. Seeing as vanilla is always available even when everything else is sold out, I will take this unintentional hint from the French that the vanilla is somehow bad and take a pass on buying it.

Water: the tap water here sucks. It fails to quench thirst. Kippy lets us know how she feels by knocking over her water glass every chance she gets, then crying loudly. We finally decided to do as everyone else does and buy bottled water (much to my vancouver-bred chagrin). First, this is obviously what you are supposed to do because it is stupid cheap. Like, 6 2L bottles is 1 euro. Secondly, there are a ton of varieties here. I always go with the cheapest because well, I'm cheap when it comes to water.

Starbucks: I know it's tacky and I said I wouldn't do it, but I was curious. It's so different and has so much promise! The food items are amazing! Mouthwatering cakes, fancy sandwiches with foie gras, and caramel waffles! There were no Egg Nog lattes or Peppermint Mochas, but instead there was a Creme Brulee latte and a Mocha Praline...uh..mocha. Yum! Dave was just happy he could finally order coffee the way he wanted. Except....it wasn't yum. And Dave's coffee was horrible. And it was so expensive! The talls here for the fancy drinks start at 4.50 euro. That's like 6.50 cdn dollars for a tall latte! I ordered the Mocha Praline and it was so bland and tasteless! Dave said his coffee was like lunch room coffee, from a machine. But way worse. So, while everything looks nice and the menu sounds wonderful, it was just super disappointing. Sigh.

Indian and Mexican cuisine: It looks the same, smells the same, but has none of the flavour. Are they afraid of spice here? Yes. We went to an Indian restaurant, craving some butter chicken (or, butter poulet as the translation goes), and while the cheese filled naan was really tasty, the rice and dishes were missing so much. It was as though 17 of the 21 spices involved in each dish had been removed. Also, it was really bizarre to order in French. For the Mexican dish, we bought an El Paso Burrito kit, and thought, yessss - they have this back home, it'll be the same thing. No. No it will not. The "spice" was a blaaaaand sauce mix, and of course, there's no cheddar cheese, only shredded emmental, the guacamole had a boiled egg in it. What. But, the flour tortillas were really good so....?

But bread. Oh Golly. It is heaven. As are the pastries. Mmm and macarons. Ok, gotta go!

I'm Bored.

As of Thursday we will have been here one month.

I have only talked to Dave.

I need some friends here.

The lease is signed.

We signed our lease on the new place this past Friday. It is an incredibly formal process compared to back home. Especially the walk-through part. There were seven of us required for the walkthrough, and the detail was intense (we counted the number of spots on the floor in the entrance way). Once it was all said and done though, the end was the same: We have a new place to call home.

One huge surprise though came the morning before the lease signing when the agent called us to tell us how much to cut the cheque for. Including the agency fees, the cost of the walkthrough, the deposit, a half months rent (actually 17/31 days rent, they counted it out by days) and, of course, taxes, our total bill was 5372 euro and change, or $9000 CDN. My union (Note: Not my company) will be reimbursing me for a good portion of the cost, but we still had to fork out up front. It's definitely an uncomfortable sum to come as a surprise.

Our facebook profiles have been updated with our new address; feel free to drop us an email as well if need be. We take possession of the place tomorrow, but I think that we will be a little slower to actually move in. Like home, the place is just a place with no utilities. Unlike home, the utilities will take 10-21 days to set up!! Power will come soonish, but what good is power if you don't have internet, phone or cable?

Actually, I really am super excited about the internet in the new place. France is wired for crazy fast high speed, and for crazy cheap. (They just have long wait times to get things set up.) For 30 euro a month, or $45 CDN, we are getting a 28 Mbps line (back home it was 6), 70 channels for TV, a Voip phone that is good for calling any where I could want, a Tivo and a web/file server. It's pretty awesome. The only regret I have is that we are about 2 blocks outside of the Fiber zone (100 Mbps), which comes at no additional cost over a regular connection.

We're crossing our fingers that things will be all set up for the Holidays. If it doesn't work out though, know that we will be sending you all nice thoughts on Christmas morning instead of the more traditional phone call, or video conference.

We have a place to live!!!

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The hunt continues

So we looked at five places yesterday, all of which were great. Both Sarah and I were pleasantly surprised by the moving agent. We had heard a lot of negative things, and had grown to expect the worst, but I think the only problem she had was that she did her job too well, making it difficult for us to choose only one place.

A quick synopsis of each place follows.

The first was about a block from my office, which isn't necessarily a great thing. My office is in a tech park, and is a lot like the more boring parts of yaletown and most of Burnaby. There are lots of businesses, but no space to really live. The metro is nearby though and provides easy access to downtown. It's also like yaletown in that it's only a few blocks from more 'homey' places, but it's not the same as living there. The space itself was nice - 37 m sq and modern. Everything had recently been refinished: marble bathroom, hard wood flooring, new shelving and bed, designer kitchen, etc. It actually was a pretty nice place, and I think would have been OK except for the location.

Second on the list was something a little more haute couture. We went down to the 8th, and took a drive down the Champs Elysees. About half way down we pulled off to the right and stopped. We were maybe 20 m from the famous shopping street. I'm pretty sure I saw Sarah looking for a pen to sign the contract at that point. The apartment itself was a ground floor (strange - usually this is reserved for shop space) 'mezzanine' (Loft). Again, newly renovated, but clearly in an older building. It came well furnished, had super high ceilings (except for the bedroom), and decent storage. The huge up here (aside from the location) was a large kitchen, full stove and dishwasher. We disagree on the quality of the view; I think I look more for mountains and monuments; Sarah was totally happy with Shoe-Store-Window view. This was Fashionista Paris. The other downside is that it's not very close to stuff to live, unless one can feast on Fendi, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel.

The next place we saw was towards the north of the 17th. By comparison to the previous two places, this apartment was huge! It was 47 m sq, and used to be a three bedroom that was converted into a one bedroom by tearing down the walls to make a large, long living room. It was an older building and showed it's age well with the thick brown crossbeams lining the ceiling. Some of the other apartments I've seen actually added styrofoam crossbeams to simulate this same look. The bathroom wasn't awesome and 'stove' translated to 'toaster oven' when we actually got there. The best part of this place was defintely the size. The worst was the bathroom and kitchen.

Place four was located near Bastille, and was actually facing a small harbor off of the Seine. This place had so much character it was overwhelming. The front door opened into a stairwell that was less than two shoulder widths wide, and spiraled straight up. The apartment alternated living and shared space up the staircase. I counted as we walked: Washing machine, apartment, Washing machine, apartment, toilet, living room... huh? At some point we had entered into the rental unit without noticing. It was top floor, and included the stair well as part of the property. The building itself was maybe 10 or 12 feet deep, but quite wide. It was a water front, corner lot, roof level flat, and from the bedroom you could see a km to the shining golden statue on the top of Bastille, and a huge distance along the Seine as well. I think that the only other place I've seen like this was in Newfoundland, so the best way I think I can describe this is as a Fisherman's Penthouse suite. The place was definitely 'cozy', but it did have a tremendous amount of storage for all things big and small, and the view was about as good as you're going to find. Also, the flat was super cool. The downsides here were the super tiny staircase and that there was a curtain instead of a door in the Water Closet.

The last place we went to was in the 7th, which I think is a student district. This place was in, without a doubt, the best location that we had seen so far. It was on top of a bank and a bakery, across from a coffee shop, and on the same block was a chocolatier, meat vendor, supermarket, vet, Irish pub, gourmet goods shop, etc, etc. The streets were tiny and full of life. This was the other side of Paris - the tiny shops and cafe's that you hear about in tourist shops where Hemmingway or Dali would come to think and socialize. At the top of the stairs to the fifth floor flat was a large window that perfectly framed the Eifel Tower. Opening the door we were both struck immediately by the yellowness. Each 1/4" plywood wall was painted, from floor to ceiling, post-it note yellow. The place was also, essentially, unfurnished, despite what the ad said. It had a mattress in the bedroom, a crappy table w/ two chairs (49$ from Ikea back home) in the kitchen, a broken tv stand, and a weird couch thing. The W.C.T. also suffered from an overly aggressive spring, I think if I dropped the cat from 18 inches up, she'd be launched into the perfectly yellow roof. The layout of the place was OK, and the neighborhood was incredible. But, there was something funny that each of us noticed that we couldn't quite put our finger on. I think that it was the cheap construction and hideous colour, but the other two ladies sensed something more. We asked if the furniture could be removed and if we could rent it unfurnished, but the guy said something to the effect of 'I have a line of people at my office that want this place; you take it as is or I take someone else.'

To close the day we shared a coffee with the lady from the Agency and picked our top three places. No word yet on whether we will be accepted to any of them, but we have our fingers crossed.

Looking for a place

The first task on our immigrant checklist is to find a new place to hang our hats. Most everything else that we want to do actually requires a physical address. A bank account, cell phone, bus pass, work permit, health care coverage, Doctor, Dentist, etc, etc, etc. all require a mailing address.

Basically, without a somewhere you cannot be a someone. I think that this is because France is very paper based. If you want stuff done, there is probably a letter to write, or a form to mail. If you don't have a return address, the whole thing falls apart.

We were originally promised a guide to help us find a place here. The only problem is that they are really very expensive. They charge 16% of the yearly rent in order to sign a contract on a new place. Rather than ponying up this hefty fee we tried to make a go of it on our own.

Some co-workers back home gave us a few hints of where we should look. Craigslist isn't as common here as back home, but there are other places, like the PAP (person to person classifieds), FUSAC (France, USA, Connection), and housing search websites like seloger. The lists are quite good, and our poor mastery of the language didn't actually block us at all (contrary to the advice the moving company gave us). Most people spoke English, or at least understood poorly spoken French, well enough to book an appointment.

We put in an offer on three places.

The first, was actually very large by Parisian standards. 51 square metres, or 550 square feet. It was a one bedroom with eat-in kitchen that overlooked a green courtyard, had bike storage, and a decent collection of antique furniture. It was super warm, super quiet, and the landlord spoke great English. It had its down sides too: it was a little pricey (1350 euro), and the antique furniture was paired ikea furniture. We actually came very close to signing a lease on this place, the killer for us though was that the landlord was leaving all of their stuff behind. The shelves were full of books, knick knacks from their travels, their wedding china, etc. Also, they expected that we wouldn't re-arrange their furniture or re-decorate. In the end, it became obvious that it wasn't going to work, so we took a pass.

The second place we offered on, though never heard back from, was very near to where we are staying now. It was actually about 30 m from the Moulin Rouge, and the biggest strip of strip clubs that I've ever seen. Not that this makes it a seedy neighborhood mind, you, this is just how Paris is organized. Businesses of one type tend to stay together, so seeing a block of strip clubs is no more strange than seeing a block of shoe stores, guitar shops, or DJ equipment. We've even found a block of nothing but model train stores.

This place was the epitome of 'cute French apartment.' It was smaller than I would have liked, 37 m square, but this turned out to actually not be as small as I thought. I think that we could have lived in a space this size comfortably. However, the stopping points here (aside from no call back) were the lack of an oven, and that the entrance to the bathroom was in the bedroom. This didn't really work for me.

The most recent place we saw this past Saturday. The neighborhood appeared dead when we arrived, but apparently it was because we were in a Jewish district, and things aren't open on Saturdays. The other surprise we had was when the current tenant greeted us at the door. Nice guy; no pants.

The place was actually an American style apartment. Which means that it was quite spacious, had lots of storage, and a huge beautiful kitchen. I love that kitchen. Sarah loves the huge closet (maybe twice what we had in Van). The apartment had recently been renovated and was actually very nice. The downside here is that it's in a less than ideal location. It's far from work, and would take three trains to get to where I wanted to be. Still only 25 minute of commuting, but more of it will be moving, and less of it sitting. Also, the neighborhood is one of the places that people kept looking at and saying "Don't live here." The rent here was better, 1150 euro. If it were in any other part of the city, I would have snapped it up with no question. We still have it on the back burner.

Today we will meet with the moving agency for the first time to see what they have. We will have an address by the end of this week as long as I keep my fingers crossed.