Settling In and Breaking Out on a Saturday Night

After 3 days I feel somewhat settled although my sleep has been disturbed each night - not sure if that is the remnants of the cold I caught in Vancouver, the time change, or both. Anyway, no problems, we are so busy there is no time to think about being tired.

On the first evening my friend went to meet his parents so I just grabbed some take-out from a bakery. On Thursday we found a cool walking street with restaurants and sat around and talked and ate and drank and people-watched. Awesome. Civilized. That is the operative word here.

Last night both team members wanted to stay later than me at the office, I was dead at 7 PM and they also wanted to hit the town, so I went back to the same place alone and sat around for a while and ate and guzzled some more wine. Lovely.

Here is the sequel to my video in Aguas Calientes Peru tee hee


Sunday June 8, 2008

Hangover Edition, Hope this Makes Sense

I enjoy translating expressions back and forth, then using them to everyone's confusion. For example, a hangover in French is called a "guele de bois" which transliterates to "a wooden head" which of course means nothing to anyone unless they already know French. Anyway, that's where I am now at 0830 on a Sunday morning. We had a great time last night!

Firstly, I would like to introduce my teammates: Corinne Gaschet from our customer Smurfit Kappa. Corinne is a Euro regional Project Manager who is located in Paris. Late 30's, career girl type, works hard, plays hard, offers to iron stranger's shirts. Fantastic person, really has her heart in all this. Then there is Brandon Verwolf, who coincidentally is also based in the US, he and I are the only remote employees in the US, he lives in Dallas. He is married with a couple of kids, he's 34, but his brain is about 75 years old. Sharp cookie.

These situations are really tricky, kind of like Survivor or something like that. You're thrown in with a couple of people you don't know, many miles from home with nobody to wipe your nose, crazy deadlines, long hours, a lot of pressure.

What we are doing is translating this huge software application that does everything for a corrugated packaging plant into French in time for a demo for our customers, Smurfit Kappa France, next Wednesday and Thursday. Impossible, but we're trying. In parallel, I am preparing my sales pitch in French for Tuesday when we hope to seal the deal. We are hoping to get some sort of a green light so we can move forward this summer and start installing in their 47 plants in France. We also have a more detailed 3 day demo scheduled for Bordeaux June 24-26 which will be entirely in French, so by then we have to have everything perfect. We will, no problem.

I could not have ended up luckier with the teammates that fate has thrust upon me!! These two people are fantastic and fun to work with and fun to go out with. I can't believe they were able to drag me out and make me stay out until 2 a.m. Can't remember the last time I made it past midnight to tell you the truth!

I worked until about 4, then abandoned ship. I went back to the hotel and tried to find a studio apartment for the 10 days after my colleague and bosses go home and before Bordeaux, but to no avail. They worked until 7, then we met up and went on a long forced march down the Champs Elysees all the way to the Louvre, then crossed over into St. Germain des Pres into the Latin Quarter.

It was ROCKING on a Saturday night. Wall to wall people and every second door in the place is a restaurant or bar of sorts.

We found a place with outdoor seating at a strategic corner and while they were preparing our table, Corinne spotted the Host from a restaurant across the street doing a mime for us about how sad he was that we were frequenting his neighbor's place. It was hilarious and we immediately agreed to jump ship, much to the disgust of the Host from the other place. People are incredibly sociable, everything requires a conversation. I know why, they don't spend their lives looking at the TV the way we do. Anyway, they traded unkind words across the street for quite a while about the situation. We had worked up a powerful thirst with all that walking, so we guzzled beer and poured over the menu. We had the usual awesome dinner, no surprise there. Brandon is tracking the number of excellent meals: We are up to 8 out of 8 now even though the filet mignon de porc was a tad tough.

Then we went wandering around a bit and found a jazz club but the entry was like 22 dollars, so I balked and we found a piano bar and camped out there. It was run by the Russian mafia, you could tell by their insincere friendly veneer. Scary. Things have changed on that front quite a bit, lots of Eastern European influence around.

So we drank and listened and kept discreetly changing the music on the computer when the singer was on break. Son of a gun if it suddenly wasn't about 2 a.m., thought, OK, time to go home. So we staggered around the warren of little streets until we got back to the Seine and Corinne got us a taxi and I showered and crashed.

Today I would like to prep some stuff for Tuesday and take them to La Defense, that 25 storey edifice made in the style of a huge cardboard box open at each end. It is both French and unique, nobody could come up with such a monstrosity. I have always loved it.