9 February - Time for a change (Day 22)

Just when I said I wanted to see the sun today, I couldn’t even see the sky this morning! It was bloody foggy. I stepped out of the building and wow, the campus was like on fire. Objects beyond 100m of sight were invisible. And I was so scared when crossing the road because I was afraid the driver couldn’t see me. Too bad I forgot to take my Pentax with me when I left the place. I already missed the snow one morning. Now I missed taking picture of the fog. Hope it comes back again tomorrow.

Jeremy wasn’t in the office today. I wondered was it because of the fog as he had to drive to work every morning. I spent the whole morning testing out my code again and again because I was going to show it to Anatole in the afternoon. It was lunch again and I thought I would go alone. But when I was outside the building, I met some IRISA colleagues and they asked me to join them. This time round, the group was much smaller, just me, Vincent, Matthieu, Nicholas and Jean-Marie. So with a smaller group, I got more involved in the conversation. Vincent is really a funny guy with long blonde hair and he talked the most with me as he was sitting just opposite.

They were asking how to pronounce my name properly and really found it hard to pronounce it. They asked if there is an English version and I told them “chee hian” is already in English. The Chinese version would be harder. They said try them and only Matthieu got it almost correct. And then they asked what does my name mean and I said “zhi” meant determination, and “xian” meant wisdom. So Vincent said he would give me a French name and they came out with Alexandre. I said I don’t mind, and they can call me Alex for short if they wanted to. In the end, Vincent dropped the idea because he thought it is a respect to address a person’s original name and said that he would definitely get my name correct. But in the next second, he asked how to pronounce my name again. I think only Mr. Giant in IRISA got it right the first time when I was introduced to the people here.

Then Vincent asked would I want to join them for soccer this Saturday. Yes! Of course! This would be a golden opportunity to forge bonding with the guys here! Please, please don’t rain on Saturday. I said I don’t really have the stamina to play full field as I played street soccer most of the time. Nicholas thought I said strip soccer. And we were all laughing madly. They would be playing at the campus at around 10am but will confirm with me on Friday. Hope this would be my activity every Saturday. And on Sunday I would go sight-seeing. Wow! Then the weekend would pass very fast. Yes this is perfect. On the way back, we chatted about movies, etc. It was the most enjoyable lunch I ever had since I was here. I didn’t get a chance to read the poem on the wall today because I only do that if I ate alone at that corner. If I am eating with friends, I would sit somewhere else. Hope I won’t have to read the poem often but I would make sure I get it memorized before I leave Rennes.

Matthieu also recommended that I should go to Saint Malo and Monte Saint Michel. I shall talk about these 2 places later. Anatole was already back but he was busy discussing something with someone else. I realized that whenever he returned from seminars or conferences, he would be quite busy here. So I took sometime to find out about St Malo. It is a fortress north of Rennes and is by the sea. The history of it I wasn’t too sure because the site I went to was in French. While I was reading, Anatole came in and asked how things were going. I told him about my personal life over the week before talking about work. One thing nice about here is, the boss doesn’t just come in and ask about the work. He wanted to know how I have been doing; am I coping well, etc. So I told him about my visits in Rennes and the soccer game this Saturday. He said too bad he won’t be around and said that he is actually quite a good soccer player. We would have a chance to play together definitely. And then I asked him about Saint Malo and Saint Michel. He said it takes about an hour train ride to reach one of these 2 places and they are really places not to be missed if you are in this part of France.

According to him, Saint Malo is a fortified city and you could walk around on the city walls. When you are there, you can almost feel that there are pirates there, and you are back in the medieval times. Saint Michel is a monastery or abbey or some building (can’t really remember) built on an island. But it is actually on top of a hill. I have seen picture of it also. So he said I should really take one sunny day to go there and remember to bring my coat because the wind is strong there. I also told him about the strike that I encountered last Saturday and he knew of that too. Then he told me about the leftist and rightist of the government, and the rightists are unhappy with the long working hours so they go on strike. He said he would discuss this in details during lunch tomorrow because it would take some time. Then he saw the demo of the code that I had done and was quite fascinated with the technique. He thought it was interesting and I was glad that my work was appreciated. I told him about my problems with the code and he gave me an idea how to solve it immediately on the spot. I really think he is very smart. Think twice as fast as me. So with his new idea, I would have something to work on next week because for the whole of next week, he won’t be around again. For my work here, in the end we are supposed to conduct an experiment on my simulation technique. He asked me to guess what the result would be in the end. I chose B and he chose A. And we made a bet. If the result turned out to be B, I get a treat to a French cuisine from him. But if the result were to be A, I would have to treat him a Chinese meal. We would know the answer in April then. As to what is A and B, that’s too technical for my journal here and probably I had already mentioned somewhere before.

Although I didn’t see the sun this morning, I hoped from today onwards, things would be better. I would not have to eat lunch alone; I would get to play soccer every Saturday; I would go sight-seeing every Sunday; my work would make good progress and complete on time. After looking at Jiehua’s pictures taken in Italy, I was really envious of him. All the pictures were so nice and he looked so happy. Mine really sucks. I think I have to stop all these self-pity, demoralizing shit thinking inside my brain. So from now on, hope there won’t be anymore sad entries to my journal. And in future pictures, I would try to including a smiley face of mine inside them like what hua did; taking shots of himself. I have definitely adapted better here since the day I came but this is still not enough. Even though I am alone, I should make myself happy.

I went back to hostel and watched “Billy Elliot”. It was an emotional British film about dancing and I somewhat had some feeling to the show because I used to be in RVDS. It was really a good and touching show but wasn’t fit enough to earn a paragraph in today’s entry. I just felt today could be a turning point for my stay here as I must try to be like Jiehua; enjoying himself in a foreign country. The thinking must change. Fun comes first followed by work.