Darcy's Paris Blog

Smoking at work and meeting my second friend here

Work was uneventful except for a 3-hour meeting called by the outgoing branch marketing manager (Philippe) to clarify my goals and activities with his direct reports. Nothing too notable, except that: #1 -- we halted the meeting once, and maybe twice, for Philippe to go have a smoke break; #2 -- partway through the meeting he had to step out again for his medical visit. Basically some hack doctor pulls up in a van, you strip down, he checks you out, and he stamps a piece of paper that says you're legal to work. Weird. (I just trust everyone here when they said he's a hack -- they said he never actually finds anything.) Plus -- Philippe didn't go down by himself -- another NI guy went down went with him -- which isn't too surprising if the dates are set by the system, not by you -- but still not the type of closeness I think you need with work colleagues. Ah, the joys of socialized medicine.

After work I headed into town to meet Averill, an American I met on an expat website. Turns out he thought I was a guy,based on my name, until we met. I'm used to that in Europe, but not from an American. Oh, well. We headed for this Italian place recommended to him by colleagues, and as it turns out, it's next door to this great little hotel on the Left Bank, the Hotel des Fleuries. It was pretty relaxing to meet up with another American -- felt less like of a struggle. Averill's also over for a few months from the Bay area -- but he's lived in Europe (Amsterdam) before for 3 years, and he was trying to put the hard sell on why I should consider sticking around. We'll see about that...

Also, some blog houskeeping. #1 -- these updates will get a lot more succinct now that I'm pretty much settled and less is new every time. I just couldn't be brief in the first few days -- sorry for slogging you through. #2 -- there won't be new posts every day. I don't subscribe to that "blog every day, even for a little bit" thing. I'll update it when I have news, but when I do, I'll predate it for when the news actually happened. Otherwise this'll get pretty boring for all of us...

posted by Darcy @ 10:25 PM