looks like i'm really moving ! in 2 weeks...
excited i am

So i went to Alameda to get trained on new products one of our supplier is making, and how to service them.

The class was followed by 12 guys : me, an Australian, a Japanese, 2 Koreans, 2 Mexicans, and some Americans.

Now i don't really like clichés but... well i let you judge
The only people to wear suits were the asians
the 2 mexicans wore big jackets and too much hair gel
the australian guy was thin, grey hair in a pony tail, and wore a short sleeves jungle green shirt
all of the american were big. (not to say they were fat)
There were a french guy from the hosting company, and he and I were the only ones getting bold.
the korean guys spoke approx. zero english, but surprisingly enough, the japanese guy made understandable sentences (that is, if you could wait untill the end of the sentence)

i was in fact the only non native english speaker to understand fully english.

I ended up speaking spannish with the mexicans, then japanese, french, and english. that's a lot in one day.

Everybody was cool and we had a god laugh with the american guys, especially during lunches.

One of the best part : Australian guy making some joke about how useless are the one dollar bills, then proudly showing australian money saying "see guys ? this is a 2 dollar coin"
Automatic response from american guy : "yeah but you can't snort cocain out of that"


About america now... i didn't see a lot of places, i only had one free day, but i'm pretty sure the only places where i saw proper fresh food was in chinese and japanese groceries.
Otherwise near my hotel we had burger king, jack in the box, taco bell, mc donnalds, subway, some donut place, and weinerschnitzel (the fuck is that name ?)

so yeah, i ended up eating at a japanese restaurant twice ;)

Oh, and writing the actual value of a dime on the coins would be a good idea too ;)

a few things about the trip :
- lol bay bridge closure
- SF feels a lot like Kobe (or maybe it's kobe that feels like SF)
- 3 days is fucking short
- actually heard someone say "yikes"
- carpet in subway ? good luck for cleaning that huge puddle of puke the morning after halloween...

Kumiko talks when she sleeps.
Most of the time it's in japanese and i don't get half of it but this night, out of nowhere, she suddenly said in a reproachfull voice

"You're not a super Sayan"

wel... sorry.

loosy organisation is also an american trademark ? i thought we were champions... well, we still are, but honorable mention goes to our supplier whom i'm visiting in november in San Francisco

It started rather bad for me in fact : when i booked for the plane tickets tuesday, i was too quick because i had a lot of things on my mind (had to visit a customer the afternoon plus all the moving and buying a flat thing). So i made a mistake, and basically on my way back i had a comuting (? good word ?)  at chicago of only 36 minutes.
And the next plane to paris was the day after, so if i missed it, i had to satay one more night at chicago.
Which, considering a certain person lives there atm, is not a bad thing at all itself, but that still means losing a day of work.
Anyway, i discovered that after the flight was confirmed, so that sucked.

Then, the next day, our american suplier informs us that... "oh btw, the training is one week earlier, i hope that's not a problem for you ?" What ?? we already booked the plane stupid ! Soooo, i had to cancell the plane i'd booked the day before, byebye the 36 minutes run at chicago !

So now i re booked the good dates, and i was carefull to take enough time at the transfers. I leave paris the 28th of october, change at Chicago (hi Hana !) and arive at SF that day.
Then i leave SF the 1st of november, change at Chicago (bye Hana !) and arrive at Paris the 2nd.
My free ady at SanFrancisco is the 31th


Which means : i'll be in SF for halloween... how is it actually in the USA ? i mean, here it's just a pseudo pale copy of the original, some kids do the trick or treats thing, some mock spiderwebs in the shops.. that's all. How is the real thing ?

So yeah, it looks like i'm going to san francisco for good.

The 5th and 6th of november i'lll be working, and the 7th which is a saturday i'm free, and i leave the sunday 8th.

the plane ticket is half cheaper than if i left the saturday... really half ! (500 euros instead os 1000)
So, i stay one more night at the hotel but it's still cheaper so i have a free day at the bay, cool !


btw, which are good companies and which are bad ? US airlines ? delta ? AA ? Continental ?
I'll have to transfer too, i wanted to transfer at Chicago just to say "i've been in ur city Hana haha" but it's faster by JFK... so i don't know. maybe i'll still do it ^_^

How far (long) is LA from SF ?

So kumiko and I found a flat !
cool thing is : we can afford it
not cool thing is : i guess we cant afford anything else for the next 5 years ><

seriously, i'm going to take a loan to buy it, for 20 years, and i can't afford a loan to pay the totality, so we had to gather all the money we could from our different bank acounts. One of them is a citybank account in japan, and it's COMPLICATED to get the money here. basically, it'll take 3 to 5 weeks. (due to the fact that Kumiko forgot her web password and that we moved last year and all, and the japanese bureaucratie isn't helping)
Well, we have to gather 47000 euros, and we just have them, but then we have almost nothing to pay the remaining rent (untill december), my transportation card, and all the different taxes.

Speaking of taxes, i went today to the tax building of my town to get some stuff done so i can hve some free money from the bank (not going to go in details) BUT i found out they calculated something wrong (or so i suspect) and i'll have to pay more taxes than expected next November... Cool thing is, i can't complain before actually paying (french system), so i'll have to pay the extra tax, then verify their calculation, and complain if they're wrong, and some months after get the extra money back if thy are indeed wrong.

I've never really been into money things, but lately i have to chack and calculate and verify a lot of figures, and it's tiring. I hope things will go ok and we can get the flat ! cause it's really nice. (despite it being a fourth flour without elevator)

Oh, another thing : we may not have enough money to pay movers, so we'll do the moving ourself... but we hve heavy pieces of furnitues, and the new building has no elevator, so i don't know. Not to mention, i'm the countrary of strong.

aaaaaand.... i may have to go to San Fransisco for work 2 days in November !! Which is cool ! But !!
November will be the time where i have the less money. And for work, i'll have to pay things there and the company will pay me back when i get home. I don't know if i'll have enough money on my bank account >_<
that, and i have to check if my passport is accepted in paranoia-land.

" je vais la mettre en diffusion la photto de ta chatte sale pute, je vais la diffuser sur internet salope "

I've discovered those "literal version" things on youtube and i'm a fan. Here are my favorites ;)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILhJs8BLcTQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL6_t-cdgLI

[edited for embeding issues]

We recently bought a scrabble, because Kumiko is a fan, as it makes her learn new words and spelling and stuff.

And she keeps beating me ! How is that possible, i'm super good at scrabble ! And this even is not her first language !

she beated me today with more than 50 points ahead. Huh.

i had a cupboard full of piles of all my CDS, so i finally decided today to buy a propper CD shelf. I've just spent hours arranging them on the shelf, but i have so many that all of hem didn't fit and i had to let some in the cupboard.

but.

when i look in the cupboard, there semes to be as many CDs inside as before !... why ?? >_<

i have too many CDs.

And i know someone who has just twice as much as me (most of them being japanese old bands, if you see what i mean)

I wrote this song for the new band, it's in english, do you see anything wrong in it ? (grammar, vocab, etc)
thank you~~

( Iron fist / leather glove )

We had an accident with a scooter today. We're fine. The scooter guy too. the scooter, not.

( good bye scooter... )

So i opened my banck account like 9 years ago (only ?) and every months i get those fidelity points and i finally decided to use them at their online store, so i chose an iPod shuffle and i recieved it today for freez.

That thing is cool. It's the small 1Go version, still better than my old 256 Mo mp3 player.  plus it's on USB rechargeable batteries, not classic batteries like the old one.

only drawback : iTunes. I do not tune. (oh, and no display, but eh)

btw, in french we have 2 words for batteries and... well batteries. How do you make the difference in english ? (between batteries and batteries obviously^^) Sounds inconvenient.

300 jokes are old, this one still cracks me up everytime

HAY FEVER BITCHES !

so i was cooking tonight, and while i was waiting for everything to burn i was thinking about... stuff.

( the stuff )

( Some videos i found )

On the 5th channel in France, everyday, there's a medical program hosted by a real Doctor, Michel Cymes.
He often tells jokes and silly things when the subject are too serious and he has a rather cynical humour that I like.

this is what he looks like :



looks familiar ?
I guess a lot of people told him that he looked a bit like Greg House, and that he kinda had the same sense of humour, because since 2 months now he looks like this :

 

Today i was watching and they were talking about memories and people who can't make the difference between a real memory and a memory based on what someone has told you, and he said something like
"i'm having that theese days cause i can't remember if i've really played Dr House or not"
And that made me laugh.

So, i went to Kobe...

... and THIS happened !  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDKjXP8rsx4

but that's ok, because just 10 minutes before, THIS had happened : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vquRsKMQzqo