The Landlord

Well, after a great deal of stress, aggravation and numerous catch 22's that no one felt was worth while telling us about in advance, we finally have a house.  It seems that luck was with us as we not only have a house, but we have a great landlord on top of that.  Though for a few moments today, it didn't look so certain.

Among many lucky breaks we've had along the way, our new landlord is one of them.  As we traveled to the new place today to do the entrance inspection and sign the papers my fears were confirmed.  The chequebook that our new bank sent us, the entirely foreign and unusual chequebook that I was carrying with me to sign rent over to the new landlord, was in fact not a chequebook at all.  It was in reality a book of deposit slips to be used at the bank.  the bank had failed to send any cheques, but our lack of French failed to identify this lapse.  This was going to put a massive wrinkle in taking possession of our new, nearly perfect apartment.

It has been my previous experience that landlords like to be paid for the use of their property.  Paid upfront and in full.  Showing up with empty hands and pockets bare was entirely embarrassing and incredibly stressful. I didn't want to lose this apartment.  It has everything we need, and it's big enough to accommodate our things when they arrive.  Better still, we can afford it.  Or, we could if we had a way to pay for it.

Upon arrival we met with the landlord out front of the building and our wonderful relocation agent Sophie calmly explains we have no cheques to provide.  Of course, the conversation happens in French as we follow in tow on the way to the parkade to see our parking spot.  It is here that I expect the meeting to come to an abrupt end, and the large, grumpy looking landlord to walk away.  Sophie finishes explaining the situation and he merely shrugs, motions towards the stairwell as he proceeds down while replying to Sophie in French.  I am stunned and relieved that things haven't gone catastrophically wrong at this point, and he seems unphased by the news.

He shows us how to open the parkade door, points out the parking spot and mentions how the exit gate works.  No mention of the fact that Sophie effectively told him we cannot pay him today, or provide any guarantees to the property he would be handing over to us.

Oh, did I forget to mention we also did not have the rental insurance secured either, as our bank is closed on mondays?   The legally required insurance.   Yup, on the surface of it we were perhaps the LAST possible people that he should be interested in signing the apartment over to.  An accountant looking over a ledger of the positives and negatives of this deal would have canned it on sight.  But like I said, our new landlord is one of our very lucky breaks.

The entrance inspection continues, and smoothly I might add.  Sophie and our landlord, Monsieur Delannoy, move from room to room, gathering electrical meter numbers, noting the inventory and contents and generally proceeding like this was perfectly normal.   I may not know a lot about the French, or anything at all to be honest, but I know that this is not normal.

It seems however that Mr. Delannoy has taken a liking to us.  I suspect that at some point in his life he has lived overseas, and as a result knows how challenging it can be to get setup.  During our initial interview over the weekend, upon learning that we had recently moved here and spoke only English, our landlord began speaking English with us and shook off his otherwise gruff and imposing exterior.  He and he wife chatted in French and he related that they knew a friend, that lived only a few blocks from the building, who taught middle school and spoke English.  They suggested that she might be able to help us with our French and would introduce us.   At the time I should have taken that as a signal that we had already been accepted, but I was nervous and didn't pick up on it.  I was just happy he spoke English.

Flash forward to this afternoon, the entrance inspection over and a pile of papers for us to sign being passed back and forth to all parties.  We wrap up the signature process and Mr. Delannoy begins handing us a new stack of papers, one by one.  I am at first confused, as I thought we'd finished the paperwork.  Turns out these were not more papers to sign, but rather a small gift instead.

The first paper was a map of the local area he had printed off.  He had marked where our house was on this map.  The second was a transit system map which he had also printed off.  On this he had already looked up how to get to my office from the new apartment using the transit trip planning system.  The rest of the papers were various bus and train schedules and routes, on each of which he explained which stop was nearest the house and where to get off.

It was there and then that I realized that our new landlord didn't just pick us to rent the place, but actually liked us, and cared enough to make sure we knew how to get by in our new surroundings.  I've never had a landlord that cared any further than the money that comes in each month.  Up to this point we had told him we could even pay him on the day of signing.  This was overwhelming, as it's tough being in a country alone, and he I think he knew just how tough from experience.

As it turns out, Mr. Delannoy would prefer that payments be made by automatic bank transfer on the 3rd of each month, instead of by cheque, and that he was willing to trust us to provide proof of insurance soon.  It's hard for me to accept that he is so trusting and blatantly kind,  but at this point I am not in a position to question the nature of a new friend.

We have a few more days to sort everything out, which is welcome breathing room.  In the end, this new landlord is a gift, and it would have been impossible to manage any of this without his kindness and understanding.  For all the frustrations and run-arounds we've had in the last year trying to get here, it's incredibly heartening to find a decent, caring person along the way.

Expatriated

Officially I became an expatriate the moment I landed here, but it is only now that it's really sinking in I suppose.  This may be in part due to the fact that we now officially have a house here in this country, and we must begin to make it home.  Though I think that is only a small part of it.

In truth I suspect that it stems from the fact that I have come across the threshold of the longest point I have ever been outside of Canada.  Apart from various vacations, a week here or two weeks there, I have never lived outside of my home country.   This is something that, while on the surface is scary, is infinitely exciting to me.  Life in Vancouver had become mundane, and my career stagnant, but here everything is new again.

We sign the papers for our new place tomorrow, and begin the difficult duty of completing simple tasks; purchasing a bed and small household items.   To be honest, we aren't even sure where to shop for these things.  It takes a great deal of effort simply to learn the basics here.  At some point these sorts of challenges will be second nature, and even the language barrier will begin to fade.

And just as we begin to settle in, in the same span that I have been here, a mere 3 weeks, I will leave again.  I've been asked to take over editorial responsibilities for a US based studio within the company.  This is one of the many exciting aspects of my work that I look forward to.

Essentially I will be traveling to this studio and acting as a direct representative of HQ.  My job will be to make things work, solve some tough problems and help the studio meet some serious goals.  I am no longer working on a small scale, with responsibilities limited to the course of a project or a mechanical problem.  I am now a corporate troubleshooter, hired to work on problems spanning an entire studio or the corporate issues as a whole.  This excites me.

This trip, while "live fire", will thankfully not be solo.  In this case I will be traveling with my manager.  He will be making the introductions, showing me the ropes and generally acting as training wheels.  While I know I can handle designer-related logistics and challenges, I am thankful to have the company of the Editorial Lead for this one, and I expect, much like living here, the trip will be packed full of challenges that in time will become second nature, but today they are more certainly a serious hurdle.

But this is what I signed up for, and I am loving that it is already everything that I had hoped for and more.  Too often is expectation the eradicator of reasonable outcomes.

Note: French Toast

As it turns out (and most already knew this), I have an incredible wife, whom today made me French toast on my lunch break. 

My recent visit to "Breakfast In America", a small American style diner revealed me that French toast, much like French fries, is not in fact French in its origin.  A quick glance at the menu revealed the French subtitle to this tasty treat to read "pain perdu a l'amercaine". 

Now my french may only rival that of an infant, but even I can decode that they weren't claiming ownership over the dish.  Rather, as a little research would have it, the meal is attributed first to the Romans. 

So there you have it.  Now, back to "work" (I am currently playing Alpha Protocol as part of a research project").

Au revoir!  ;)

The Sleep Revolution

I have been in Paris for a week now, in a tiny little hotel room with a fold out couch for a bed.  It's not an incredibly comfortable foldout bed, but you wouldn't come to that conclusion if you'd looked at the hours I've been logging on it this week.

Over the past 15 years, and more intensely the last 7 or 8, I have had chronic insomnia.  Or that is to say I thought I had insomnia.  What I know for sure is that over that time I have averaged 5 - 6 hours of sleep a night.  I was the type that would lie awake in bed for hours trying to get to sleep each night with little luck.  That all changed when I moved East.  Now I have trouble staying up late, even if I wanted to.   It's all I can do to stay awake once it get's dark out. 

For those who know me well, you know that I am a notorious night hawk, rigidly so.  Years of trying to change my sleeping pattern yielded no results and mountains of frustration and exhaustion.  So what happened?  Well, that's a good question.

A number of events happened in close succession after I left Canadian soil to cause this radical change in my sleep schedule.  The most obvious of which was the jet lag, and the exhaustion that comes along with any serious duration of travel.  This knocked me flat on my ass for the first couple days, leaving me sleeping for 14 hours a night.

I expected the hearty helpings of sleep to pass quickly once I had shifted into the new timezone's schedule, but this is where the rest of the previously mentioned "events" took their toll:

• I haven't had a sip of caffeine since I arrived.  Not a drop of cola, not an ounce of tea. And stranger still, no desire to resume the habit.
• I am without distraction.  I have left behind all of the things that would normally keep me from bed.  No movies, no TV (at least in a language I can understand) and an internet connection too slow to stream anything.
• I have no work stress to think about.  Work is amazing and wonderful, but it has yet to present me with a pile of worries and problems.  

When you put all of these things together it is a potent sedative in the later hours of the evening.  Combined that with a warm meal and bang, I am out like a light by 10pm (and that's stretching it, last night I could have been sound asleep by 9).

I expect this will change a little over the coming weeks and months.  Work will eventually become stressful, and I will travel as a part of my work, almost necessitating some form of caffeine intake along the way.  that said, I've tasted the good life and I an not going to let it go without a fight!

Viva le sleeping!

The House Hunt

Today we stretched out legs and our boarders and traipsed all over town looking for possible places to live for the next year (at the very least).  While not all of our efforts bore fruit we did find a couple promising places, each with upsides and downsides.

The first of the day was the biggest we saw, being around 530 sq ft, but it was a little dingy and didn't have any charm.  The other one though, which is much smaller (maybe 410 sq ft,) is really nice, and overlooks a monastery, but it on the 5th floor with no lift.  Both places are a little outside of Paris proper, but the second one it in a great little place with an incredible covered market to buy all our fresh from the farm food in each day.

The view overlooking the monastery.

We put our names down for both, with the second of them being our first choice (for obvious  reasons).  Unfortunately that place already had another person express interest in it, so I'm not sure how that gets resolved.  Maybe it's first come first serve, maybe it's based on merit, perhaps there is a gladiatorial death match?  I dunno.  Either one will be fine, and each have their upsides.  I don't suspect that we will know anything until mid next week.

Unfortunately, despite having a reasonably productive house hunt, it was decidedly exhausting. Changing between car, metro and bus through out the day proved educational, but it also meant a great deal of walking.  Upon arriving back at our hotel it seemed best to take a nap.  I set my alarm for 1 hour, but rather annoyingly turned it off in my sleep without even flinching.  So we ended up sleeping for 4 hours before realizing my error, and were forced to get up to go to the grocery store to buy dinner before it closed (or go hungry for the night).

Now, as I'm sure you are aware, 4 hours is a shitty period of sleep.  It's long enough to get some deep sleep, but only just.  Waking up around the four hour mark is torture, and took me the better part of an hour to really get out of bed, and I still don't feel well for my trouble.   So, while we have food for dinner, I am in no mood to eat it right now.   Oh irony, always the douche-bag.

Paris: Lights, Love and Dog Sh*t

Paris has been referred to as many things over the ages; The city of light, love, art, romance, dreams and many other high-minded ideals that a city should strive to become.  However the one thing that not many people will tell you is that it is also the city of dog shit.  Seriously.

Now I haven't been here long, and granted, I'm not wandering around the upper crust places, but there is unusual amounts of shit on the street.  Now when I say 'unusual' I mean it in the sense that a mid-western farmer might while commenting on the volume of wind during tornado season.  There is a LOT of shit.

Back in Canada I supposed I had unconsciously become accustomed to not having to watch where I walked all that closely, and this is coming from a man who lived in the most narcotic saturated, needle infested part of the country for five years. 

In Vancouver's Downtown East Side, where I lived quite happily for over five years, there is a wee drug problem, and where there are drugs used needles on the street are soon to follow.  However, in Vancouver there are also people who wander the streets cleaning up these needles (yet i never saw one of them clean up any crap).  Yet there isn't a poo-epidemic there, canine or otherwise (and for those of you who've ben to the downtown east side, you know it isn't the sweetest smelling some days).

Yet here I am, in arguably one of the world's most metropolitan cities and I must keep an ever vigilant eye earthward, which is quite difficult when even the most mundane buildings here drip of character and history.

So my advice to you, potential Paris visitor, is this;  Stay on your toes while admiring the millions of sights to see and always take your shoes off when entering someone's home, because even the most eagle-eyed park stroller will eventually slip up.

Day 1: The Qwerty Challenge

It is the morning of my first day, I am in the office and working hard to get a handle on things and overcome the various language based challenges that are part of everyday life when working in an office with a language foreign.

The first, and most important, is that I learned to use a computer on a QWERTY keyboard.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with what this means, take a look at the top line of letters on your keyboard, starting with the "Q" key, and you will find the letters ordered to spell "QWERTY". 

Most people in North America are entirely unaware that there are any other types of keyboard, with other layouts.  It is only the more tech-literate people that understand that the world is filled with a wide range of curious keyboards, varying based on language and geographical location.

Now I'd given this some thought beforehand and made sure to pack a North American keyboard.  Sadly, I had only given in a little thought and packed said keyboard in with all our other belongings, which as I write this still sit in a storage locker in the heart of Vancouver.  Lack of planning for the fail.  :(

So, for those of your nestled under your favorite QWERTY keyboard I have this to say to you:  Treasure your keyboard!  Love it like a small child, protect it as you would your life savings and cherish it as you do the very language you speak!

Enjoy each time you type a number and do not have to hold the Shift key to do so.  Revel in your ability to enter passwords with complete confidence that what you thing your typing is what is actually hidden under each security asterisk.  Love your ability to cheat and look at the keyboard ANY TIME YOU FEEL LIKE IT!

Check, Check and Double check.

Now, I've moved before.  I've packed up my belongings into various boxes and other such containers and relocated them to a new home.  This is nothing new to me, however it's typically been moves measured in kilometers and international lines crossed.

Yes, this is this inaugural post for my soon to become infamous written log my exploits in France.

Some people would be a lot more freaked out about moving internationally, especially when the 'international' includes an ocean crossing.  My flight leaves in roughly 41 hours, but I'm not terribly worried about it. I have never been scared of this move, this entire uprooting of my life and setting it down in a country where I do not speak a single word of the language doesn't worry me one bit.  I caught the wanderlust a few years ago as I wandered Morocco and I never looked back.

Of course, by this point I've had nearly a year to acclimatize to the idea, so that certainly helps take the edge off of any jitters I might have had.

To explain, I should first bring you up to speed on a few things.  I am moving for work, to change my career path and undertake a radically new and exciting role that until recently I had never even knew existed.  Though the whole thing started roughly 1 year previous.

I was interviewed by Ubisoft for an internal trainer position.  This in and of itself isn't a shocking departure from my previous experience, I've taught for years as a side job to my main Game Design Career.  It was during the 2010 Olympic  games that I was taken from my previous city of residence to interview with the executives at Ubisoft in Paris for said trainer position.  As of this writing it has been 11 months since these interviews took place.

In the end, I was not chosen for the position instructing with Ubisoft, but I was offered a much better position as part of their editorial department.  Ever since I have been struggling with paperwork, red tape and general confusion in my attempts to become a Parisian.

In only a couple days all of these problems will be behind me. My amazing wife and I will board a plane and find ourselves in the deep end of French culture.  I am excited and exhausted all at the same time.

So keep your eyes peeled, as I expect there will be numerous shenanigans, gaffs, blunders and eureka moments, and I will want to jot them all down so as to remind myself I am not going crazy!

Catch you on the French side.  ;)