Falling in Love

Six months into my internship, finally I am starting to fall in love with Paris.
Last few months it was the wet and muddy winter which made me wonder why people like Paris so much :)
Since the beginning of spring, we have Sun frequently and Paris is much warmer and beautiful now. The conditions are perfects for picnics and walks.

With people coming to streets and cafes pouring with people sitting outside and enjoying, all of a sudden Paris looks like a totally different city. It is full of life and spirit. The more you walk in streets, the more you will like.

There are also quite a few really beautiful parks randomly scattered around in Paris. These parks are now filled with flowers and smell of life :).

With these changes and some more changes I am going to tell you later, I think my second half of the stay in Paris will be more interesting and happening. At least I hope it would be.

Last week, Jiri (A truly a great guy from Czech Republic) finished his internship and returned to his country marking and end to an Era – “The Jiri Era”. All of us who used to hangout with this crazy guy will definitely miss him very badly.

Even though the people we got closed to start leaving, last few weeks some more very cool interns came and joined our gang. A set of completely different individuals from each other (as always :)), looking forward to have a blast of a time in Paris.

With the change in the nature and with new friends joining us, I feel my internship experience going to have a new beginning with more and more interesting things to expect in the future.

Last but not least, this is the New Year Season back in Sri Lanka. If you ever want to go there, this will be a great period to experience an extremely rich 2500 year old culture.

Wish you all a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Power of "A Thousand Splendid Suns"

I have read many emotional sad novels but I never felt anything close to what I felt when reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns”. To give you an idea, few times I had to stop reading the book take a breath focus on something else and then go back to reading.

The book is so powerful such that I could not bare the never ending suffering of the two main characters of the book “Mariam” and “Laila”.

Khaled Hosseini, the author is trying to give us an idea, what it is like to be born in Afganisthan (when Islamic extremists rule the country) as a woman and also get caught in a war.

His perfectly matched words, his ability to put human feelings into words kept my heart crying right throughout the book. Characters started living inside me and I was expecting something to smile about each time when I turned to the next page.

It made me think, if it was this difficult for me to read their life experience, how hard it might be for those who actually go through it.

This book made me ashamed of what I had and have in my life when many other “Mariam”s and “Laila”s are there somewhere on earth.

Another powerful aspect of the book is it gives us a tremendous idea about how much pain a woman can bare. How much my mother would have tolerated all these years and how much my girl friend is tolerating since I’m thousands of miles away from her.

Almost everyday here in Paris, I see Muslim women in streets and I think, she could be another “Mariam” or another “Laila”. The world we are living is so unfair and each of us has the responsibility to make it a better place.

“A Thousand Splendid Suns”, I would recommend for everyone as a must read, to open your eyes and see the dark side of this world.

My First Euro Trip :)

It all began on Friday evening around 7pm when me and 4 other friends of mine left to Brussels in a car. Our plan was to spend Friday night in Brussels and go to Maastricht on Saturday and travel around Brussels on Sunday. It was only on the way to Brussels I got to know that we will be going to an AIESEC conference Party on Friday night.

 

After spending about 1 hour just to get out of Paris, it took 2.5 more hours to reach Brussels. Thanks to our good friends in Brussels we managed to arrange 3 AIESEC intern flats to accommodate us for Friday and Saturday nights.

 

After putting our stuff in these 3 places we directly went to the party. This party was again a reminder for me “how small AIESEC world is”. In this night alone, I met 4 people I met in Egypt 2 years ago including my CC mate Carissa.

 

Though it was not a great party we stayed there till almost 4 am. Then we went to the city center and had a kebab at 5 am (:D) before heading back to our places.

 

Though it was a tough night, we managed to wake up around 11 get ready and reach Maastricht around 2.

First thing that caught my eye in this great city was its calmness and the river which bisects the city. On one side of the city, you can find the historical pat with a Small Castle and a church and many many small statues all over the place. The main square in the City center is a perfect place just to sit and relax which influenced us to get into a restaurant and have our lunch.

Luckily the restaurant we selected happened to a very good one with no other customers :). The sea food sandwich I had there was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had. I will remember that sandwich when ever I hear about Maastricht.  

 

After this great lunch we continued our walk around this amazing city. All the streets were so calm and relaxing even though they were filled with all different types of elegant shops.  All of us really felt like we were in middle of a long holiday and did not want to return to Paris.

The Maastricht adventure continued till the dinner pumping us with new energy to our stressful and fast lives in Paris. All famous cities in this world have become crowded and stressful with full of tourists. This city was a reminder for me, there are many more great cities around the globe that can inspire us more than so called “Great” famous cities.  

 

Since we were all tired from traveling and partying, we went to bed around 1 am on Sunday.

On Sunday we went around Brussels. To be honest, there is nothing much to see there. Only thing that caught my attention was the Atomium. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium). After going around the city for 2 hours we were heading to Brugge, a city located about 1 hour away from Brussels. Brugge was another beautiful city but filled with tourists. One restaurant we went, had menus in 10 different languages giving us an idea how many tourists visit this place.

 

Brugge is a much more beautiful city compared to Brussels.  Its a simple small city with attractive quite streets.

 

This city was the final destination of our “AWESOME” weekend adventure. I should thank Jiri for arranging everything in the trip and especially David for driving us all the way. I’m Looking forward for the next road trip yet to be decided, where to ?

Understanding “The French”

3 months into my internship, undoubtedly the biggest challenge so far was, understanding French people and French culture.

French did manage to completely shake the mindset I had about all Europeans in general.

All throughout pass 3 months I faced a number of situations and sow many things that I could not understand or explain. The bad thing was, there was nobody for me to explain since almost all my friends are also foreigners who are in the same situations as me.

But the solution came at the beginning of the New Year in an unexpected way. I went to the virgin store thinking of buying a book to read since I was really bore during my Christmas and New Year vacation. I went to “Best Sellers” section and found this book called “Almost French”. Though I knew the book by name, I did not have any idea about the content of the book. I quickly went through some pages and it did not take much time to realize that this book will give me answers to a lot of questions.

Since then (of course I bought the book ) my way of looking at what I see in day to day life has changed dramatically. The book is about an Australian girl who is starting a new life in Paris and slowly overcoming the challenges faced in this new country and culture. This is a real story where the author is the girl her self – Sarah Turnbull.

Therefore I can easily find many similarities between her initial experiences and the experience I am going through now. The book tries to give explanations to French behavior and traditions.

I am almost at the end of the book and it has helped me immensely to see this beautiful city in a completely different perspective and in a more culturally sensitive manner.

If not for this book, I would have tired to understand “The French” all through out the internship without much success.

Hats off to you Sarah Turnbull. A must read for everyone who will start a new life in Paris

When was the last time u did something for the first time

Heading for this post is a very popular AIESEC question. For me, the answer was last weekend when i went Ice skating with my friends. Though i had seen in TV i had no idea of how to do it.

Since it was a sunday we had to wait in a long queue to get inside. Then we got the skating boots and went to the skating field (I dnt knw how its called :D).
My legs were shaking at the begining coz there were many crazy ppl doing all those tricks they know inside the skating field eventhough it was a public place.

I started skating (well rather it was walking on ice) with my shaking legs. The only principle i knew was i had to put my weight in my legs. But it wasnt that easy to concentrate on principles when i went inside the field.
The skating field was a battle field with all those crazy gangster type of ppl trying to show off with their talents.
As a reasult fo these scary tricks, one person got injured and was bleeding all over the face. This only helped my legs to shake a bit more faster :D
But anyway, i continued to skate (to walk on ice again) despite all those things. It did not take me a long time to realize that im not improving at all.
So i decided to move to the kids feild to practice. After about 15 mins in the kids field, i started skating. It was really fun to do skating with small kids of about 5-6 years old and their parents were all around the field:D. I also felt like a small kid and and brough back memories from the pre school :D

Even thoguh i was not good at it, i enjoyed it. Ice skating followed by a short walk in Champs-Elysees brought yet another exciting weekend to an end.

A Weekend full of fun

This weekend was really fun.
It began Friday evening by visiting louvre alone. In one way, it was cool to be alone so i had the time to enjoy and read everything quietly and calmly. It was also a good oppurtunity to discover new things in louvre and to take some great pictures. spent about 2 hours in louvre and headed back home. Even though it was Friday, i went to bed early for a much needed sleep for quite some days.

On saturday, i woke up around 10.30am and did some saturdday stuff. (Cleaning the home, laundry etc...). Then i called dAnca and got to know that she is doing some siting with her friends from Lativa. I went to Montmartre expecting to meet ppl there. The funny thing was, we did not plan an exact time or a place to meet up and both me and Anca did not have much credit left in our phones.

But suprisingly enough, when i was reaching Sacre Care, my friends were coming out from there. It was such a coincidence that we met raondomely in a small road in a crowded and a huge place like Montmartre.
It was the beging of one of the best saturday adventures so far. We went to mouline rouge, Notre Dam, louvre and Champs Elysees respectively. The final destination for the one day tour was non other than the Iffel tower. The day was full of fun and some interesting randome discussions about religions etc...After that, i went home to get ready for the birthday party of Antonnet.

It was about 11.30 pm when we reached the party and the party was going on at its best.
I really enjoyed dancing mainly because it was a while since we had good music in a party.
Around 2 am ppl start leaving the party and i had on idea how to reach home because last metro was already gone. I also did not know where to take the night bus and the bus number. But finally, me and Miha, went to antonnet place. I stayed their till 5.30 am and took the metro home.

Had a good sleep till about 12.30 noon. I left home around 2.30pm to visit the sri lankan neighbourhood to buy some goods and to explore the neighbourhood a bit more.
The small supermarket i went was a one owned by a sri lankan and i was speaking in sinhala when i was buying stuff.
Its such a cool experiance to visit a sri lankan shop and to buy the things that we have it in Sri Lanka.
After that, i returned home and slept again for about 1.30 hours.


That was my week end very briefly,
More postings as i get time

Paris So Far...

Well, Time for me to write some words abut the past 7 weeks in Paris.

The best part so far has been the Intern community in Paris. There are altogether about 35 or more interns in Pairs. It is of course a wonderful experience to meet so many ppl from different backgrounds.
Every Tuesday there is a "Tuesdays Drink" for all of us to meet and chat. Apart from that, during the weekends small groups of interns have their own agendas and i was part of one or more of them each weekend. This weekend i went to Munmathra for a walk and visited Sacre Couer church with Anca and Jeremy (2 interns from Romania and US). After that we went to one of the interns flats for the dinner and watched some movies.

The most difficult this so far has been searching for accommodation. First week i stayed in another interns place (Jiri). It was so nice of him to offer his place for us, otherwise we would have ended up in most probably a hostel.
Then one of the Sri Lankan friends have here found a place for me and Israel (My Mexican room mate from the very beginning). The place is owned by a Sri Lankan who is living here for more than 18 years.
Since then we are living here although we keep looking for a place for our selves. One other main challenge i ma having is learning french. Even though i do not need much french for work, in day to day life, its almost compulsory. I am planing to start classes in february and till then, have to learn the basics somehow.

I also visited some place so far. The best for me so far in Fountain Blue castle situated in Melune ,outside Paris.

Last but not least, about my work...
My office is situated in the suburbs of Paris. Its a beautiful place surrounded by corn fields and small houses placed here and there. The worst thing is i have to travel about 2 and half hours back and forth for work. My work is going well. I get the chance to see all new technologies in the communication industry well before they enter the market. There are another 2 interns working with me, one form Algeria and one from China. (The are not from AIESEC). All the french ppl in the team are really nice and helpful.
I am really surprised by the responsibilities given for the interns here in Alcatel. They do not worry to give us big things to do even though we are interns.

Its getting colder day by day. I experienced snow for the first time in my life yesterday even though it was not that much.
As days pass by, my life is getting more and more interesting. I keep meeting great ppl and some of them have become close friends already.

This is just a summary of last 7 weeks. I will do more frequent postings in the future,