It is all over now!

What a week of madness! I'm so glad everything is over now.

My presentation (soutenance) went very well. I got 17/20 on the report and I'm satisfied. Since my internship tutor couldn't come, I didn't get a grade for the professionalism. Too bad as I'm sure I will get a good one from him.

There was only one jury for the presentation, and we just discussed in a very relax atmosphere. At one point I was so fluent in French and spoke so fast that I shocked myself. :-) I participated for other classmates presentations and gosh, they got asked so many tricky questions! Mine went well as I present what he (the jury) wanted to know so for the remaining question and answer session, he has nothing left to ask. We just went over some of the culture difference in the corporate world.

During the night some classmates came over for a small celebration. It was so nice to see them again. I realized that I really miss them and they are certainly among the people that I would like to keep in touch.

Adieu my University!

Report sent, presentation on the way

I finally sent out the report yesterday. We worked on it until wee hour yesterday. Hubby had been amazingly patient. He basically took care of all the cooking, washing,plus translating and formatting my report. I didn't know he could be so versatile.

Had a rest tonight but tomorrow it will be tango all over again. I have to prepare the power point slide and present my report on Friday. By then, I will no longer be a student and I'm not eager to go back to a classroom anytime soon. Adieu my student life!

Working on the internship report

The deadline is Tuesday and I still have tons of stuffs to write. The hardest part is to write everything in French. Today, me, Fabien and my in laws were all working on it, with me being the commander and the rest taking orders from me. At one point it was so funny as there were three laptops and one desktop all being occupied for the same mission. Tasks were dedicated to:

Hubby for translation especially the part that reflexes my point of views;
MIL to ensure no grammatical errors in the report;
FIL to draw diagram for a recommended solution

That's the spirit of a family!

Addicted to machine tomato soup

There is a vending machine on each floor in my company. It offers variety of coffee and tea choices, but there is one that I have never seen anyone trying: the tomato soup.

One day during the coffee break, I asked why nobody is taking it, and one of the responses was that people who took it already dead. :-) I built up the courage to try it once, and since then I'm hooked! It taste so good, the machine even manages to spread some herbs on it. I can have one in the morning as breakfast and it warms up the stomach. Some colleagues felt weird that I take soup in the morning, as soup is not very present in some French families and certain people only take soup during winter.

While some colleagues got addicted to their coffee, I'm addicted to the tomato soup.

Well, I didn't try to be different on purpose. :-)

Missing lunch buddies

Two months into my internship, I have yet found a lunch buddy. You know, someone you eat with everyday. I got so used to lunch buddies that I felt so bad eating alone. Now I gradually getting it and actually enjoy eating alone.

My lunch buddies during University time.


I have never faced this kind of awkward situation before. First day into the job, my manager couldn't have lunch with me so I had to go buy my own lunch. One week into the job, nobody invited me to join them for lunch. I didn't know what was wrong, and was very glad to share some lunch moment once a week with a group of friends. But still, eating with co-workers is very different compared to eating with friends.

I waited a while to build up the courage to actually invite some interns to go for lunch. I got rejected over reasons: already had lunch appointment with friends, eat at home, skip lunch, prefer to eat alone ... I decided to bring my own food as I couldn't stand eating sandwich everyday (for me a sandwich is not a meal) and I certainly do not like to eat in a restaurant alone.

A typical French baguette sandwich: sometimes I have to chew so much that my mouth turn sore.


While eating in the company kitchen, I met some people who like me do not have lunch buddies. We got known to eat other and finally made a trip to a restaurant. It turned out ok but it was hard to make a second appointment. One of the them do not want to spend money in restaurant.

Why doesn't France have economy rice store or hawker center? They don't even have a food court!


Slowly these people disappear from the cafeteria, I was found alone again. I used the time to read French newspaper to catch up with some reading and jotted down some vocabularies. The routine got broken as I was making friends with some Indians, but they have gone back to Indian so I'm all by myself.

This week, out of no way, the girl sitting in front of me invited me and my manager to join her for lunch. It didn't work as I had lunch plan already. Still, it is a good start.

I discussed this phenomenon with some friends and I realized that not all French are like that. Hubby was invited over lunch since the first day, and he always eat with his lunch buddies. From my observation, some French enjoy their privacy. One of my managers told me that she enjoys having lunch at home as she can just sit in the patio overlooking her garden. They can effort to eat at home as it is tolerated to spend one and a half hours over lunch.

So now, I eat once or twice with friends during the week, and eat in the company kitchen for the remaining afternoons. I met some people in the kitchen and we struck some nice conversations. In summer, I will probably picnic in the park across the street overlooking a tranquil lake.

Enjoy lunch at the patio, the French really know how to enjoy their life.


Living in France always teaches me different ways of doing things. Eating alone and catching up with some reading, why not?

I got paid!

Yes! I got my first pay check today. Well my second if you count the one week muguet job.

Due to some technical issue, I only got paid now even though I started the internship at the end of March.

Just want to share with you the pay slip which has around 20 lines of items. Look at all those deduction from the salary.


We went to Barcelona to pre-celebrate this moment. :-) We started spending one month before seeing this extra income. Seriously, I don't know how I manage to live on hubby for so long. I strongly believe that a woman should have her own income at any moment. I hope I will always have some income from now on.

Street language in the office

It has been 6 weeks I'm in the French corporate world, and I'm just so disturbed by the street language using in the office. I don't know how long I could resist before I become one of them.

I'm not sure whether it applies to all the fields and in all offices, but the one I'm in, I keep hearing words equivalent to "fuck", "shit", "bitch", "slut", "holy cow"...something that my French professors prevented us from saying, but something that the French themselves employ in their daily life.

Maybe because I was mostly working with women or people were kind of polite, I hardly heard anyone around me saying all these. When people got angry at their work they will usually say "Gosh", "oh my God", "oh dear"... or "alamat" in Malay.

For a country who tries so hard to protect their language from the invasion of foreign languages, it is just too astonishing that they allow the street language permeating into the corporate world and slowly into schools. The president as well got caught saying bad words to his people. So who's next? Are we going to hear a judge saying "slut" in a court session? I really hope someone is doing something to "purify" this beautiful language.

Should I adapt a French name?

I'm not talking about last name.

It has been 4 weeks I started working, and there are only two coworkers who manage to call me by name. One of them is my manager. The rest, they would say excuse me before continuing with their business.

All because I have an Asian name which is not so common in France. Since they don't use batch and the door is broken, there is no visual object to display my first name. So, I brought a name tag with my full name to the company, still they couldn't recall, and was afraid of the wrong pronunciation I guess.

I got by in US by letting them call me Bee instead of Bee Ean. In my master class in France everyone managed to call me by Bee Ean after several weeks. I know it is very painful, but I have resisted to adapt a Christian name all along. Now, I'm seriously thinking about make everyone's life easy, by simply calling myself Jennifer, or Catherine or something like that.

What do you think? Any suggestion on name?

PS: We are heading to Brittany this weekend to meet with a bunch of cousins whom we have never met or only meeting them once. Great food on the way...

Daddy, she is looking

Have you guy made the mistake where you accidentally entered the toilet of the opposite sex?

I did. Once during camping, I was brushing my teeth and a little girl entered with his daddy. She starred at me, then said:"Daddy, she is looking!" And the response? "Let her look if she wants." Gosh I didn't know why the dad answered this way but I was not looking at him on purpose. As soon as I realized that I made a mistake, I quickly ran away. So embarrassed.

And today, I discovered I have been using the male toilet in the company for almost a month. I thought the company is having unisex toilets, even though it has a man head on the toilet door. One of the toilets has mirror so I thought it was meant for the ladies. Several times some male colleagues saw me entered and left the toilets but nobody says anything.

Well, apparently there are two more toilets with the woman head on the other side of the building. Nearly a month I was asking myself why there was no dustbin in the toilets, now I know, the men just don't have the same need as the women.

Being the minority

I'm the minority in the company.

Out of the 17 interns, 2 are women, including me.
Out of the 17 interns, 16 are developers, one is from management, that's me.
Out of the 17 interns, 16 are French, one is foreigner, that's me.

It is actually not fun being the minority. During the internship presentation today, I raised a question, repeated twice, and the manager couldn't understand me due to my accent. Luckily the others told him what I meant. Sad.

Car pooling to work

I have been carpooling to work for exactly two weeks now. Besides saving on petrol and share the driving task with others, I get to practice my French with these cool guys everyday.

There are 4 of us so I need to drive only once a week and twice every three weeks. When it was my turn to drive I got very nervous since I drive slower (the other three are guys) and don't want to make anyone arrives late at work. Luckily in this industry working hours are quite flexible. I mean your boss won't blame if you arrive 5 minutes late.

In the morning usually those who don't drive try to catch up with some sleep. The journey is about 1 hour 15 minutes. On the way back we usually chat all the ways home. It is such a good training as I found myself to be able to eloquently express an opinion and not afraid to be judged. Since they are on the same industry and in the middle of their professional life, I get to ask them questions that I don't dare to ask at work.

I have since driven twice and it seemed that they are not scared of my driving skills, so I think I passed my probation period with them. :-)

Day light saving time started

On the last Sunday of March, France and European Union switch on the day light saving time. This morning, while reaching 2am, my computer time actually went directly to 3am. It means that there is only 6 hours differences between France and Malaysia instead of 7 hours during the winter.

I'm glad I was with some friends who happened to tell me about the time changes. Since Monday I will start my internship, imagine arriving at 9am and realized that you are late as it was already 10am.