L'Ile Maurice

No, dont get too excited. I'm not travelling to L'ile Maurice. Not yet, atleast.... For the ignorant, "L'ile Maurice" is french for "Mauritius" !

The reason for this post - I'm surprised at the number of people who ask me if i'm from Mauritius !!

It all started back in November 2007, during this trip to the Netherlands. We all remember how i was stopped and frisked by the police in Paris Nord, which eventually led to missing the connecting train to Grenoble. What i did not mention in the post was the stupidity of this french cop who stared at my residence permit (which clearly stated my nationality as "indian") and still asked me "Vous etes de l'Ile Maurice, monsieur?"

6 months later, in April this year, i was back in Bangalore and on Commercial Street with some french colleagues. Obviously, i was taking every given opportunity to practice my french, and our conversation was overheard by some random customer in a saree shop where my colleague was deciding what to buy for his wife back in France... next thing i know, the guy walks up to me and says "Vous parlez francais, vous etes mauricien?"

And now i'm back in France, and in the past 2 weeks i have been asked thrice if i'm from "L'ile Maurice". This includes the security guard at HEC, one french classmate and a staff member of the MBA program. An american classmate thought i was indian by origin, but born in france...

Of course, i can assume that this confusion is an indicator of my level of french, but that wont be too modest. But it's funny i should be perceived as a Mauritian in this place. We had a session on "stereotypes" last week, trying to teach us that at a certain point our cultural/national identity stops and our personality begins, and each of us draws this line at a different point. I guess you dont meet too many indians who speak french !!

Integration Weekend

After 5 parties in 8 days (and all the integration possible), my class headed out to Normandy on saturday (13th) morning for a weekend of "integration".

Agenda : Outdoor activities, picnic, party, Mont St.Michel, food etc...

We were about 120 of us, had 2 buses and 2 cars and drove for about 4 hours from Paris to get to Caen by around noon. Had a nice lunch in Mercure hotel before heading out for some "Accrobranche", which is basically a mixture of climbing trees, zip lining and the assorted monkey tricks one can think of on a tree... it was a good reminder of how unfit a bunch of late-20 year old's can be, and we came away mostly vowing to do more sport and stay fit (yeah right, i see that happening, no time to eat lunch at noon out here !)

What followed was nice picnic, over some wine and snacks, mostly discussing history, politics and culture among our new found friends. This part was really amazing, simply because of the sheer diversity of my class at HEC !

We drove back to Saint-Lo, chilled for a while, ate dinner and then off we went to party at a nightclub that had been reserved for us ! The party went on until really late (or early next morning), and people got back to the hotel at 4 a.m. on sunday morning !

8 a.m. generated some of the most comic scenes outside the Mercure hotel at Saint-Lo. People with hangovers, some tired, others sleeping on the steps, some with bad stomachs and others just unable to speak ! And off we went to visit St.Malo, which is a historic fortified town in Normandy... When we got to beach, there were some random jokes being made about how we all looked like terminally ill patients who were brought to the beach to fulfil their last wishes. I dont think some of my friends appreciated that...

But the beach had a good breeze, and that did us some good. People felt a lot better while we were getting onto the bus to head to Mont St.Michel. We had a huge lunch before heading to the real abbey, and once there, we were met by a dignified lady who was to be our guide. Honestly, i have never seen a guide speak so passionately as she did, and she even made tons of jokes in between and kept us interested throughout our visit of the magnificent and historic monastery.

Everyone slept on the way back to Paris, especially since we caught the sunday evening traffic. We made it back to campus by midnight, and crashed !

This morning we had a seminar at 8:30, and people were still walking in at 9:15....

HEC - First Impressions

I had been waiting for 4th September for an unbelievably long time, and time had almost crawled to a standstill. I left Grenoble at 4:30 am and took the train to Paris. After a hurried walk to Gare d'Austerlitz, an automatic ticket machine that wouldn't accept my debit card, a turnstile that wouldn't let my suitcase through, and a 1-hour train ride, i finally made it to Jouy-en-Josas !

Allow me to go off on a tangent here for a moment. I once abused Shashwat for living in Angouleme. It wasn't his fault. He was just there. Angouleme just happened to be so "in the middle of nowhere" that i took it upon myself to poke fun at him. Dude, honestly, you can now go ahead and insult me. Jouy is 10 times smaller, has 7000 people, 3 main streets, 1 supermarket and really is "le trou du cul du monde" !

More importantly, HEC is located there, and i took a short bus ride (thank god for that, HEC is on a hill) to campus and went about my paperwork and check-in etc...

The more interesting aspect was meeting my new classmates, many of whom i had exchanged emails/messages with since the admissions. Meeting them and all the others was very very interesting (you will see why a litte later)...

The first party was the same evening, and what followed were 3 others in as many days, all weekend ! However, things did get a bit more serious today. We had a solid first day of orientation, along with a conference in the evening. Tomorrow starts with a French evaluation test, followed by French oral interviews.

Coming back to my classmates... To mention some of the backgrounds :

A French "gendarme"
A Canadian who was working in Panama
An Indian merchant navy captain
A "Quebecoise" who isnt really a Quebecoise
A Georgian woman entrepreneur
A Russian software engineer (who sat across the Georgian at lunch one day, but no gunfire was heard...)
A Portugeuse guy who wants to go to Goa !
A Greek electrical engineer with whom i discussed MV cables !
A Japanese automobile engineer (there's a cliche) who knew that Toyota has a plant in Bangalore
A German lawyer with a great sense of humour (he even said "ich bin ein Hamburger")
A Chinese guy who never worked in China !

I have a session on "Cultural Stereotypes" on wednesday. I'll keep you posted...

So Far, So Good...

It's been a week already !
It was great seeing all my wonderful friends, catching up, walking those same streets again. I stepped into Grenoble and felt right at home. It didnt even feel like i had been away for 6 months !

Tomorrow morning i take the TGV to Paris, to start my new life at HEC. I'm a bit anxious, as to how it will turn out. But then it's part of the deal, and i'm sure i'll cope with the feeling once i get to school tomorrow, get my studio, meet my new classmates etc.

Oh, and i tried to change the address of my blog. Apparently blogger allows you to do that (good thing!), but unfortunately someone already took "lifeinparis" (bad thing!). So i guess i'll just have to keep writing at the same address, and ignore the fact that i no longer live in Grenoble !

I'll put up some pictures in my next post. Maybe of the HEC campus, my studio and the French Summer !