Monday, November 29, 2004

Untitled

Today for our biomed class there was a subsitute teacher. He was special. The moment I walked in to the class room I really didn't believe my eyes. His face was completely deformed. It seemed like someone hacked it up with a knife and put acid on it. When he started moving, I was even more shocked to see that his hands were deformed as well. No fingers, just two ends. On his right hand it had some kind of device attached to it so he can hold a chalk. It was really scary at first sight to be honest.

At the end of the lectures I offered help to him unscrew the connection between the projector and the laptop. I honestly didn't know how he did it himself in the beginning. You probably know there are two screws that are really close to the plug on the connector, I can't imagining tightening those screws with two deforemed hands...amazing.


I just feel that there are people that are facing much more serious inconveniences than I do, and yet they are still doing what they really wanted to do. It just makes my logistic problems seem insignificant.

It does motivates me in a positive way though, I must say.

Saturday, November 27, 2004

administration...

once again the administration is just piling up.

Now what I need, Work Permit, notify CECS about the placement, clear up the tuition problem...

I am still waiting to get my stupid stay permit... "Titre de sejour"

oh boy...

Friday, November 26, 2004

A whole lot of craziness

Alright, where shall I start. Good news and bad news.

Good news, I got the job at INSERM. The interview was pretty crazy, with 4 people. It was entirely in French. I guess I did alright, after the 1 h 30min interview my superviser Jean-Francois Vibert told me I got the job on the spot, and I signed the papers afterwards. The projects will be some multi-agent work on simulation of epidimic diseases (Kayley I think it's up in your domain). The pay is almost nothing comparing to what we get in Canada (540 euros a month), but it's about the average here in France. Students at interships are not meant to make money here.

So I will be working in Paris for the next 6 month starting from Feb 2005. I will probably still live here in Compiegne though, since it's impossible of finding a cheap place in Paris anyways. Plus I will be living with ppls that I am already familiar with.

Bad news. I got charged for tuition again for the upcoming winter 2005 school term in UW. I don't know why that it seems I can never get an straight answer from anyone. I mean I anticipated this problem back in Canada before I left and ppls at Registar's office told me I will only be charged for tuition once, in the Fall, even Cindy Howe (exchange coordinator) said so. If I have to pay for this, my coop money wouldn't cover it at all!

Well, if they make me pay for it, I will just have to apply all sorts of financial supports. But I would rather not to pay for it, cuz it doesn't really make sense to do coop to pay off the tuition for the classes that I am not even attending.

Anyone has suggestions on who can I talk to? or any one had similar experiences? Thanks.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

"You can explain it in English if you want..."

So I am back from my two interviews in Paris. Interesting day.

The first one was with Qualimucho, a start up company making applications for cell phones. It was in an apartment building, 10 ppls at max.

The director of the company was quite nice to offer me a cup of coffee before we started. Everything was alright, but only for about 15mins. After I started to explain the technical stuff that I did in the past he started to sense that my french was becoming more of "Franglais", he said " You can explain it in English if you want." I was a bit shocked that he was extremely fluent, but right there I was also a bit disappointed to realize that it's true my technical french doesn't really cut the mark. After that he didn't say much. He's the type of interviewer that doesn't show any big emotions at all. Well, from my past experience, it usually doesn't lead to good results.

The second one was with a consulting firm SCET, they do financial, logsitical consultings. The job is to design some web tools for the consultants. The interviewer was a really nice senior consultant, not technical. So we just chatted for about an hour and he told me I was the first one that he interviewed and he will let me know in two weeks.


Well, first, I definitely need work on my French. While my vocab is ok for daily activities and school work, it's definitely lacking quite a bit for the work environment. Second, let's say a fluke happens and I get these jobs, do I really should take them? After all, I think I will learn more French in school taking formal classes...

One shall see...

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Quick update...

Alright, I am still alive.

Thanks for all the encouragements! I am trying to keep myself busy so that I don't think about the past.

However I think sometimes I have this habit of am overbooking myself. Here are some of the things coming up on my calender.

Next week there will be two mid terms on monday, and two job interviews on tuesday in Paris, one interview on Friday. The job opportunity is for the next term here in France.

The two on tuesday:

One company is with a telecom company who makes applications for cell phones, Qualimucho (Sounds like some kinda of nacho chip company to me ) the other one is with a consulting company SCET.

The one on friday:

This is the one that I really wanted with INSERM "Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale". Developping a simulator of epidemic dieases in C.

How I think of it that it will be a great learning experience even if I don't get any of them. In that case I would stay for another term to do the Control course so I don't have to make it up in UW, and take the highest level French course, and may be even Spanish.

Mad prep for the interviews !

Whatelse is new?

I have also signed up with other five french friends to do this management competition "TRUST" set up by "Danone", that's right the yogourt company. It's like OEC but for managements. The objective is to act as the directors of a consulting company and propose a three year plan to Danone to expand its business. The national competition is this Jan 8 2005, and if we make to the international finals this april 2005 in Paris, we will be competing with ppls from all over the world, such as UK, Italy, Spain, China, Mexico etc...Should be exciting.

They still have to do a initial team selection for each school, hope we will get selected!

Friday, November 12, 2004

Exams...

You might wonder why I haven't updated regularly in a while. The answer is: "Exams"
Like Rohit said, this blog might be giving people the wrong impression that I am chilling my tail off every single day :) Schools are rather busy with labs, lectures and tutorials to attend.

I am just trying to show you guys the fun side as much as I can, that's all.

P.S. Christmas is coming and I miss you all.. :( This feeling is kicking in more and more now. I even miss the old days that were spent doing projects in E2.

One thing that exchange has made me realize the importance of what I have at home. I don't know what is the cure for this feeling of nostalgia, only time can tell I guess.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Germany

After saying goodbye to Richard and Ori in Switerland, I spent the whole day on the train travelling from Switzerland to Germany to see Vince. He's studying in the city of Braunschweig.

We had lunch at the university cafe. I also happened to bump into Martin who's from Braunschweig originally but is currently study at Compiegne, my school in France for a double-diploma Mech Eng degree. The two days of stay was relaxing and enjoyable.

See the photos here

After Braunschweig, my last stop was Berlin. Vince was nice enough to take me there and show me around. It's truly a lively city but at the same time wearing the scars of it's history. From times to time you can see the buildings with bullet holes on them. In the centre of the town, there is the remaining of a chuch which was bombed during WW2. Monuments of rememberance of the war are everywhere.

Alright...enough of the heavy stuff...

When we first arrived at the city we went to the natural history museum where they had the tallest dinosaur skeleton in the world. We spent the morning there.

The modern section of Berlin is very well built. How can one not visit the car showcases when u are in Berlin? Me and Vince visted MINI, Audi, VolksWagon..

and this car here, Bugatti... is just mind blowing... I remember seeing it on a poster long time ago, but never expect to see it with my own eyes!

Beauty!

Vince also took me to the Sony center, a shopping district of the town and we had authentic german roasted and boiled pork elbows...ah...

yummy!

:D....

We also listened to a concert by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Oh boy, just the concert hall was impressive enough. We were so under dressed though... Everyone else was in suits or nightgowns, while we were in jeans and running shoes :P

The concert was just a new level of enjoyment. Even sitting away from the orchestra you can feel the power in the music. Each note is carefully articulated to express the emotion of the music. The level of concentration of the musicans were just enormous.

The next day we went to the Jewish Museum. Some shocking exibits, and powerful arctitecture.

Photos of Berlin

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I think in the future I would like to take my parents to here sometimes. A city rich of history. I think they will enjoy that!

Switzerland

The two days we've spent in Geneva and the two days in Lausanne were a blast.

First impression of the country is that it's clean. Especially in Geneva that you can see from the pictures the water of the lake is CRYSTAL clean! Even though Geneva is such a touristic city but everyone is responsible of not littering around. In comparison to Paris, Geneva is about at least 5 times more clean! The city was built besides the lake Leman, and also surrounded by the Aples. The scenery is just breath taking, I couldn't resist but to take couple of panoramic photos.

Geneva Panoramic


Jet D'Eau

Lausanne is a great city as well. It too situates besides a lake. The two days I've spent at Richard's place were very fun. Thanks Richard and his housemate for accomodating me!

Pictures are worth thousand words :) , here are the albums:

Geneva

Lausanne

I am back...

Long time no update. Things have been quite busy for the past two weeks. Just to recap: During the last week of Octobre I paied a visit to Switzerland and Germany to see other SYDE exchangers. During the week long trip I visited four cities, Geneva and Lausanne in Switzerland and Braunschweig and Berlin in Germany. It was a nice break from school and also it was a good chance to travel a bit before it gets cold.