Swine Flu returns from Vacation

So it seems that concerns about Swine Flu has breached the Atlantic.
When I looked on Sunday, there was a reported case in the South-West region, near Bordeaux, but nothing confirmed nearby. But it seems like that could be changing.

Yesterday, a lady in my office came back from a canceled appointment with her Dr. As it turns out, her Dr was under quarantine for possible infection. Earlier that week, a patient had come into the office that had previously been traveling in Mexico on Vacation. He was feeling under the weather, so he did his due diligence by getting checked out. His Dr did her work, and called it into the larger medical body in France (whatever the French CDC would be) resulting in both Dr and Patient being put in quarantine for 15 days!

There's still no word on whether either of these people (or that person in Bordeaux) actually have anything wrong with them, but it's interesting to note how seriously it's being taken here.

Bier, Bitte.

The trip to Germany was short, but rad.
One of the most pleasant parts about the Country is that they have price controls on Beer, in much the same way France controls the price of bread. Which is good, because, as it turns out, the only words I know how to say in German are 'Bier, bitte' and 'Danke!' Both are of limited use around the office, but invaluable in the restaurants of the tiny town I stayed in.

In general, the trip was a whirlwind introduction to a lot of people and places, and marks the real beginning of integration talks between our two companies. Wish me luck, it's going to be an interesting summer.

For those that are interested, there are some pics up on our photo site.

5 Years of Awesomeness

Last Friday Sarah and I celebrated 5 years of Awesomeness together. (Prior to getting married, we were both independently awesome.)



To celebrate -- Eurodisney!

From Disneyland!

There should be more to this, but I'm sleepy and should probably go to bed. I think Sarah's still riding the sugar high, so she'll probably be good for stories for the next few days.

[Edit: Fixed a typo.]

Taking the Train to Deutschland

This morning I'm taking the train East, to Germany. Including an 8 hour haul from Edmonton to Vancouver through the Rockies, this is the second time in my life I've travelled by train. This trip takes about 1/3 the time though, thanks to the high speed TGV line that runs through Western Europe.

In the few minutes that I've been on the train, I've been convinced that this is vastly superior to air travel. There is no line to pass security, no border authentication, and no wait to get on board. I showed up 25 minutes before departure and the guy at the gate told me I was here too early and that I should take a coffee and come back in 10. Awesome. That said, the train left very promptly at 6:58 as the ticket noted, so I don't think I'd push my luck.

The seats are huge and get comfier by ticket price. The lowest class seats are slightly more spaced out than a Greyhound. As you move up in category you get desks, tables or even a private room (which seems to be reserved for Children to yell in and has been, blissfully, sound proofed).

The scenery on this trip is a refreshing change from the grey, grey and grey that I'm used to looking at in paris. Mostly it's grassy hills but there's also a lot of trees and huge fields of yellow, flowering plants (does anyone know what this might be?). It reminds me an awful lot of Rural Ontario.

Wherever I just passed is a tiny town of maybe 100 single story houses with brick or thatched roofs. A river, (which is really just a creek with high aspirations) runs through the centre of town, dividing rolling fields of golden flowers on the West bank from grassy pastures dotted with hungry cows and sheep on the Eastern side. Above the rows of houses stands a single church with a three story steeple, and grassy green hills as far as I can see, to the North.

[Update] I think that we just stopped in the city of Lorraine, which would make sense because I am pretty sure that it's a primary-agriculture region of eastern France.

I would love to share picture of all of this, but unfortunately the pocket camera I brought with me does not have a 300 km/h mode. Most of the pictures come out as a blurry mess. Sarah and I have talked about taking a trip out this way to Alsace, maybe we will bring the beefier camera then so that we can snap some pics of the scenery.

Human Resource Refactoring Redux

Some time ago I commented that my company was planning  job cuts. Since then, a few people have asked around to see if we've been affected so I figured I should probably update the situation here as well.

I'm happy to say that up to this point we are not greatly impacted by the changes.

That said, it could still change. Specifics of the job changes haven't been rolled out here in full force just yet. Getting things done in France is unbelievably time consuming. Here's an example of why:

In my office we have, what is essentially, a Union. The Union has a legal right to express an opinion on any job change (lay offs, promotions, title changes, new manager, etc) before the change is expressed to the employees. The Union doesn't have much power to impact the result of the change, but they do vigorously excercise their right to an opinion. Recently, they've been going through an election of sorts so the job discussions have been tabled until the new group is elected. This means that talks will start around the beginning of June. However, if talks take longer than 5 weeks, it will be July, and people will go on Holidays. No discussions can really happen during the summer, so they will be put off until September. Sooo... I will probably hear the result of the January announcement around October.

Results outside of France have been trickling in, and there has been some indirect impact, to be sure. However, I still have a desk, a chair, a computer and, most importantly, a paycheque. I'm happy with what I've got.

[Note: Comments disabled on this post. Please feel free to email me any comments.]

Unlimited Movies

While at the Canadian Meetup a few nights ago, someone introduced me to the UGC card. UGC is a theatre chain in France, similar to the Odeon or Galaxy chains in North America. With this card, you can see as many movies as you like in a UGC Theatre for 19 euro a month, or for two people for 35.

This is such an awesome idea!
I wish that this existed for the theatres back in Canada. I most definitely would have picked this up.

Booking a Ticket to HQ

I just booked a train ticket to one of our foreign offices. The process was fast, but confusing. At one point I got the impression that I had paid for everything, but gotten nothing. So I called a to confirm if I had a ticket.

The lady at the other end said "Hello. Yes. You have a non-changeable ticket; would you like to change it?"

Truth be told, I wasn't totally happy with the ticket, so I said yes.
She said "You cannot." I'm pretty sure I'd played this game before while trying to get my internet fixed.

"OK then, no, I would not like to change the ticket."

She seemed happy with this answer. "That is good." She said, "Now, we need you to confirm that this ticket is the one you want."

"What if I say no?" I asked, sensing that I was close to falling into a French bureaucracy trap. This is a very dangerous thing indeed.

"You cannot, the ticket is already booked, you just need to agree that it is the one that you want so that you can have the ticket."

"So then I have to agree? I cannot disagree?"

"That is correct."

"OK, so I agree. But out of curiosity, why do you have to ask me if you already know the answer."

"We have to ask so that we can issue the ticket." She answered; appending a funny noise that hinted of 'Duh.'

Oh, of course. Yes, I have definitely been here before. Fortunately, with experience comes the knowledge that this doesn't have to make sense any more. With a 'Oui' and a 'Merci' I had a ticket. Maybe it's not the one that I wanted, but C'est la vie.

New Tech at our place.

Sarah recently picked up an iPhone.
Related to this, she also set up a twitter account. (For those unfamiliar with twitter.)
  
There are many great apps for a device that lets you be connected to the internet at all times. So far, I think the one that is getting the most usage, however, is the LolCats application. As I type this, sarah is lying in bed checking out the cats.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Canadian Meetup Night

Tonight was the monthly meeting for the Paris Expat Canadian meetup group. We'd been meaning to go to the group for a while now, but this was the first time that we've actually been able to make it out (for some reason, they have a penchant for selecting nights on which some other awesome thing is happening). I'd been to meetup.com groups before in Vancouver, and while they were always at least a little interesting, they tended to be greater amounts of disappointing.

Brian, a friend of ours from Vancouver who is also in Paris now, made the observation that my prior groups were all interest based and tended to be the sort of interest (Software Development, Board Games, Nerdy Website, etc.) that made no guarantee of social skill. This meetup, however, was very much social based, and made no serious claims of involving Canadians at all. Also, this was at a pub. All in all, I think that it's fair to say that this went much better than the last Vancouver Software Developer meetup group I was at, where I was actually started out of the room by the tinfoil hat brigade of Greater Vancouver. It was very weird.

One of the highlights of the evening was shaking hands with a face that I already recognized from his website. When we started looking at moving to Paris, I did some web research and came up with the Truffles for Breakfast blog, "in which two dreamers simplify their lives and move to Paris." The blog described the work that a couple from San Francisco had to go through to move their lives to Paris about a year before we did, and was a fantastic resource for us as we looked to make a very similar move.

I read a lot about Joe and Morgen's life before meeting Joe this evening, so I knew a lot of his background coming in, and probably knew about him better than I know about many of the people I hang out with here on a weekly basis. That said, I still didn't actually know the person at all, which is a very different thing entirely. This is a weird side effect of the internet. A lot of the social networking and blog type stuff that's out there is wonderful as long as you:
  [a] Know the person that you are reading about in Real Life.
  [b] Will never meet the person you are reading about.
I still haven't figured out how to breach the third case (Knew them online before meeting them in Real Life) with any sort of social grace. It's only happened to me twice now, but both times it's very awkward.

Me: "Hi, I'm Dave, from Vancouver. This is Sarah, my wife. Sarah, this is Joe, he's a technology writer from San Francisco that moved here two years ago with his wife and cat."
Joe: "Hi I'm...  have we met?"
Me: "Nope. But I read your blog!"

OK, so maybe that wasn't quite how it was, but definitely creepy feeling nonetheless.

In any case, he, and the rest of the people we met with tonight, all turned out to be interesting and not the least bit socially inept (I'm looking at you, VanDEV!). This is definitely going to be recurring theme for our stay in Paris.

[Edited for Spelling on 4/17/2009.]