37 - Human Resistance - Dax, Pontonx-sur-l'Adour

 Thursday, 11 January 2024

I made it into the office at 8AM today!  Turns out all I needed was to know that I had an important meeting at 8:30AM 🤣  What made this meeting so important?  It was a discussion with someone from HR (or RH in French though the meaning stays the same of "Resistance Humaine") about what options are on the table for extending my time at this facility.  Here's what I learned in a nutshell:

• The shortest duration of a work permit would be 3 months.
• To apply for one would take at least 3 weeks and it would require applying via an embassy in the US.

As we foresee actively needing me here in the next 3 weeks, leaving immediately to apply and then coming back ASAP isn't really on option.  So the plan is to stay till I have to leave (February 7, 2024), help start up what equipment is ready by that time (though we likely won't get all the wrinkles ironed out), and in the meantime we will explore applying when I reach the US to come back to France in spring.  My boss, being the cool guy that he is, let his boss know the plan and asked about the probability of spending at least a couple weeks in Geneva if we follow through with the permit 😎

So while it's unfortunate for the project that I have to leave in early February, having a firm date has helped to ground things.  Plus, it seems like there is a genuine interest in having me return even if it's a month later or so; so having a month to catch my breath in the US isn't the worst possible outcome.  It could be "à la prochaine" to the team here instead of "adieu".  

After work, I made my way to the local cinema of Pontonx-sur-l'Adour to see a movie a friend had recommended, "Voyage au Pôle Sud".  It was neat that the theater was cozy and quaint, the ticket was only 6€ and a giant candy bar was only 1€.  The theaters around here seem to operate differently from in the US, they seem to rotate films much more frequently even if the movies are new releases.  The film was recommended to me because there wasn't a whole lot of dialogue and some excellent cinematography of Patagonia and the Antarctic.  Unfortunately, I didn't quite catch everything from the narration but I got the gist: ocean, ice, wind, snow 😂.  The cameras used were really spectacular!  Maybe this is almost a tautology, but it was by far the most "French" documentary I've ever seen: mostly black and white, dramatic shots of wildlife or desolate landscape, a single guy occasionally walking through the shot in the background, a deep-voiced narrator saying short phrases...

The arena of Pontonx sur l'Adour, situated right next to the cinema and the town hall

Afterwards, I met up with the engineers from AIGP for dinner at El Meson.  They introduced me to another of their crew who is a ch'ti (pronounced Shh-tea) from the north of France.  I'd heard a little about the ch'tis over the NYE holiday: on the subject of American TV and the travesty that is Jersey Shore, we discussed other spinoffs and apparently there's now a reality show in France about the ch'tis and the Marseilles, two groups renowned for ...interesting speech mannerisms.  Hearing him play up his ch'ti accent really made things incomprehensible to me, so I guess that counts as the first time I've noticed an accent here in France!  

Stewed deer with chanterelles and pureed celery root

On the way home from dinner, I came across what looked like the St Paul Les Dax police conducting a security checkpoint.  I got pulled over because I had my fog lights on (so THAT's what that dashboard icon meant...).  The officers were pretty amused to have stumbled across a New Jersey driver's license and they were very accommodating for me, repeating slowly and clearly if I didn't understand right away.  They also let me go despite us all discovering that my car's registration was almost 6 months expired ("it's the rental company's fault, just be sure to make them aware").  So let's hope that's my only run-in with the gendarmerie this trip.

Friday, 12 January 2024

It feels like there's been a change at the office, with my departure looming the pressure is on (not that it wasn't on before) to get the equipment ship-shape enough to run at least a little by the end of January.  Of course, there's other things and factors at play but at least in my mind the 7 February deadline is acting as a semi-hard stop (chacun voit midi à sa porte)

I've still got a lot of work to do in terms of prepping test procedures and developing reaction plans but I had planned to visit another nearby site in the afternoon.  It was a short 1.5 hour site tour but an interesting one.  This particular plant processes a lot of rosin from it's solid form; coming from a plant that hardly uses solids at all, seeing all the equipment related to solids handling, conditioning, and packing was eye opening.  I laughed when my host was telling me about a machine for moving solid resin that had blades inside, he said that it had a guillotine for cutting slices and then did a quick aside of "we like our guillotines here in France 😉" 🤣

It's been a quiet Friday evening for me.  The day was cold, starting with scraping my car free of an ice layer but then contending with a persistent dog all day just hovering above freezing.  I've decided that many buildings in this area aren't well weatherproofed for the cold, my apartment is one example but I could really feel it at the office today: walking around the building was like swimming at the beach and encountering pockets of warm water (though it was much harder to make your own pockets of warm air without alerting the people around you).  My office seat is apparently just a little to the side of where the overhead climatisation let's out the hot air, so things were chilly at my seat but significantly warmer just a couple feet over.  

I tried dinner tonight at La Grande Brasserie de l'Atrium, which I guess is a dining location adjoined to the theater of Dax.  The place looks pretty ritzy on the inside and I was pleased with my food, but I could have sworn I could getting wafts of mothballs...  Anyhow, looks like a musical version of the Count of Monte Cristo is scheduled for next week, maybe I'll have the chance to see it?

A "Chic Choc"de ris d'agneau (lamb sweetbread plus prawns)

La Souris d'agneau: I'm not sure how the lamb feels about it but the dish certainly brought a smile to my face

Le Bastidon au chocolat (chocolate lava cake 😋)

It's weird: I arrived November 12, 2023 and now it's January 12, 2024.  Two months has absolutely flown by.  And now I only have about 4 weeks left (at least 4 for the immediate future).  Gotta keep my eye on the prize and mop up as much experience as I can (like my bread mopped up sauce at dinner tonight).