Busy week in Paris

I just though it was time for my first post since I moved to Paris.

Right now I’m in Paris for helping some high school friend finishing his new awesome website so that it could be released during August. It’s a great new concept, using a lot of original ideas, I personally think it should work out for him and his project; and I hope he won’t forget me when he becomes a bazzillionaire thanks to the hard work I put in his project!

I arrived on the 3rd of June by train … it only took me 11 hours and a sleepless night in an uncomfortable night-wagon. Then I had to carry my 70kg+ luggages around the subways of Paris to reach my “workplace”, which is a nice apartment in the west of Paris near the Business District of Paris (La Défence). We started to work right away, but it was more a big briefing about what needed to be done rather than a proper working day. At 18h30 I left my “boss” and headed to my mom’s friend’s apartment.
After a 20 minutes Bus ride I arrived in Colombes, a reaaaaaaaally peaceful suburb of Paris. I lost my way a little, but, eventually, I found someone to ask for directions. Once arrived at my new home I installed myself and then was invited by my “landlord” to a nice little restaurant, more a “crêperie” than a restaurant.
At the end of the day I was exhausted.

The rest of my week would have been a normal “metro-boulot-dodo”, if it wasn’t for an unfortunate event that occurred to my “landlord”’s son, which happen to be a dear friend of mine too.The pour fellow had a bike accident on my arrival day, nothing serious, but enough to prevent him from bending his knees for a few days. The guy, let us call him Mr.J for this post’s purposes, happen to be a carpenter. Mr.J had a roof to build near Paris, not too far from my current location, and was searching for some help so that he wouldn’t finish his work late and miss the beginning of his next building site. I proposed myself : “You know, I think my boss wouldn’t mind me taking a day off to help you out (he really didn’t mind, my boss is the best)”.
Of course, that was before I discovered it was about destroying and building a roof. I’m afraid of highs. In the end I spent all of Thursday as Carpenter! That was really fun! Building something huge and material, is like the missing part of my computer-geek life. I usually spend my need to build things into my cooking, but building a roof is like … Dude! I can build a house! Sweet!
Result : I was tired, dirty, with a few bruise and richer, by a 60€ (75$) … which is IMHO a lot for only 1 work day.
The following Friday, was a normal working day.

I spent Friday night and most of yesterday with my cousins that live in Paris. I planned to go see them only on Saturday, but unfortunately my whole cooking equipment is composed by only one (crappy) coffee machine for now, in fact my apartment is beautiful but completely empty. I was kind of forced to go eat at their house on Friday night, and sleep there. My haunt was quite pleased to have me and see me after so long. And the food was great ^^.
Yesterday I went to eat some Yakiniku with them at a Korean Restaurant near “La République” in Downtown Paris. This actually was my first trip to the center of Paris since I arrived. There, I met some of their friend that invited me to go jog with them this morning, in fact I’m preparing to leave and meet them now. I learned something nice : SOJU is the next best thing after SAKE and SHOCHU … Koreans are cool people too, you know.

I will receive some cooking equipment sometime next week, but I’ll have to find ways to feed myself without ruining my budget. My mom will ship me my two coffee machines (Moka and Cucuma). And she’s doing a great job at translating my dad’s income’s formulary from Italian to French, so that I can send them to the CROUS in Strasbourg. Thanks mom!

Here is a few pictures from my apartment. L@ter!

My crappy coffee machine