First Ikea week-end over

March 2, 2008 - 2 Responses

Hey, just want to write a quick update after this very tiring day.

I finally got back from my place where I received my first furniture batch. I slept at David’s last night because as I don’t have a Canadian phone number yet, I gave David’s number to the delivery guys and they were supposed to call him between 7 and 9 this morning. They did and told me they were coming over between 10 AM and 2 PM… So I went to my empty place, waiting for more than two hours (thank god I had my laptop with me). The funny thing is that in my building the Intercom of each apartment is connected to a phone line. And because I don’t have any phone line yet, my Intercom doesn’t work !! That’s why I went with my laptop in the lobby room, sat on the floor next to an AC outlet and waited there, coding… The people looked at me in a weird way :)

View from the living room

Anyway, I received my furniture at around 12:45, and I started messing around with them. I quickly figured out I needed some screwdrivers to do the job, so after assembling what I could, I went for a quick walk on Mont-Royal to buy some.

Assembling everything wasn’t really hard, more exhausting, especially the bed and the little “comode”. It seems like the smaller the item, the more screws you have to put everywhere :)

Living room

I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the result, and I can’t wait to sleep in this big huge Queen size bed (213 cm x 169 cm). I wanted my furniture to be as much black as I could, first because it’s my favorite color, and second because the place is white, and really luminous. The sun is hitting directly in the living room, and the snow in the park gives some more light. So I wanted contrast, I’m gonna get some :)

Queen size bed

I’m still waiting for my big huge sofa but I think I’ll have to wait till next week-end. I also need to buy lots of “casual” stuff like a quilt (couette), pillows, sheets, towels… Don’t know yet if I’ll go to Ikea to get these, they might be a pain to bring back.

You can check the full gallery here (including a video of the view from the balcony) : http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100099

I also updated the Montreal gallery with a few pics: http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100083

Here’s one of the song I was listening to when working on the furniture, Keny Arkana - Je me barre, really nice lyrics, as usual with Keny. Don’t think that I’m sad or that I have any kind of criticism towards France, I just like that song :)

Categorised in Montreal, Music and My life

Live from the laundry room

March 1, 2008 - 2 Responses

Hahaha ! Guess what, I can get the Wifi signal of my apartment right from the laundry room, one floor under me ! That’s just sweet, I can blog while I’m waiting for the machines to stop spinning.

Anyway, I finally got the keys of my new place and I spent my Saturday afternoon at Ikea. Damn I wish I knew how to drive because not only Ikea is about 1 hour from my current place (using metro and bus) but I wish I could have rented a van to bring back my stuff. Imagine me, all by myself, buying a bed (Queen size youhouu !) with its matching matress, a “petite comode” (don’t know the English name), a big coffee table and a “TV table”, having to drive two carts to the checkout… And then dropping everything to the delivery guys (they should deliver everything tomorrow, which is really sweet because it’s Sunday). I also ordered a big fancy couch but this one will be delivered later, probably next weekend.

2200 $ total, taxes and delivery included. That’s fine by me :)
I still have MANY stuff to buy, even some more furniture. I’ll guess I’ll be going back to the swedish hell for the two or three next weekends :)
I also have to get a Canadian cell-phone number as well as Internet access in my new place. After that, time for the big flat screen HDTV ! Can’t wait to finally be home !

Ok the washing part is over, let’s move back up in my room to wait for the drying part.
Bye everyone !

— Edit from my bed to add today’s video. Here’s the new music video from Justice, DVNO. Just like their first single, D.A.N.C.E, this video truly kicks some serious ass…

Categorised in Montreal, Music and My life

Things will finally settle down soon

February 26, 2008 - 5 Responses

Hello boys and girls,

Montreal Winter
I know it’s been a while since I last wrote something there (it seems like every blog post I write starts pretty much like this), but I think I’m finally settling down in my new life over here.

Work is getting good, while still a bit fuzzy sometimes but trying my best to adapt and play the role I was given (Camera Programmer). There is still a LOT to do but I’m getting more efficient with the engine every day although the dashboard has been red since last Thursday (not my fault though, some weird linking error on X360, with the always helpful message “Internal Linker Error”…).

On the personal side, it’s getting along pretty nicely as well. I went to a party last Saturday. Very cool, there were people from around the world (Thailand, Japan, France, Quebec…).

Today was a big day somehow. Yesterday I finally received my French money on my Canadian bank account. That’s why I rushed during the lunch break to go and sign the lease for my new apartment ! It’s finally mine ! Or at least I’ll get the keys on Thursday. I will finally get to spend my next week-ends at Ikea, ordering furnitures and having difficulties to build them once at home :)

Sorry still no pictures/videos of the place, but I promise I’ll take some on Thursday when I’ll grab the keys.

Here’s one of my favorite tracks, which I discovered not so long ago although it was released last year. Etienne de Crecy - Punk, available on the Commercial EP 2.

Categorised in Montreal, Music, My life and Ubisoft

First week over

February 16, 2008 - 3 Responses

Hey there, here I am writing this blog post from my bed, slacking off after my first week as a Montrealer.

So what happened since my last post, something like 5 days ago ? Well, on Tuesday, just as planned, I met up in the morning with the lady from Royal Lepage Relocation, who drove me around in the city for various formalities like getting my NAS, my “Carte Soleil” from the RAMQ (the Quebec equivalent for our Carte Vitale) and opening a bank account at the RBC Banque Royale. She was very nice with me, explaining me lots of stuff.

Of course all this was done using my temporary address in my “appart-hotel” on René Lévesque and I will have to notify everyone when I finally get my own place. And about this, the lady also made me visit 4 or 5 apartments corresponding to what I had told her (location, budget…). A few of them where very cool but I had to make a choice quickly because they were either available right now or on March the 1st. By the end of the day, because Antoine invited me to his place on the Plateau, I decided to phone and try to re-visit one of them. I really liked the apartment in the building called “Le Neuville” located at the corner of Parc La Fontaine and Rachel.

Le Neuville

It’s a nice 3 1/2 on the 5th floor, very clean and nicely organized, and with an impressive view on the Parc La Fontaine through huge windows in both the living room and the bedroom. I initially saw it during the day and it was amazing. The Parc is all snow at the moment, and it’s gorgeous, it also gives a lot of light in the apartment :)

View from a similar appartment

And the best things about this place are the equipments and the price. This tower has a laundry room with lots of washers/dryers, a swimming pool and sauna and the price is 850$/month, including water, heating and electricity, and the apartment is already equipped with a fridge and a oven. So that’s pretty cheap (about 575 euros) and I liked it. I just couldn’t resist, even worse when the owner told me I’d better hurry because this very afternoon 5 peoples had already visited it. That’s why I came back, to make sure it was just like in my memories and decided this was going to be my new place ! I gave the guy the classic 100$ advance on the 1st month of rent and I now have to come back before March the 1st to sign the lease, and it will be mine. Only problem right now is, as I just arrived, I have no credit history, so they cannot really trust me, that’s why I will have to pay the 1st two months when signing the lease.

So my main concern right now, is to manage to transfer money from my French account to my newly created Canadian one. And it’s not that easy as they’re using different systems. But I phoned my French bank today and they told me that I could just email/fax them all the informations I could find and that they would take care of it. Gotta love this bank (Monabanq), they really are perfect, too bad I won’t be using them that much now.

Anyway, I will soon have my own place, and things are starting at work. I had a pretty calm week, only a few bugs to investigate/fix, just to browse and poke around in the engine, to get up and running quickly. But things should start for real on Monday, when I’ll have my first “Sprint”. I have no experience whatsoever with “Scrum” or nearly any “Agile” methodology. Can’t wait to discover it.

I also went out a lot this week. Actually, I don’t remember coming back home from work using the “normal” route. In fact, I don’t even know it ! I always went out after work this week. Being for dinner at Antoine’s, Poker night at Laurent’s, movie and drinks with Jean-Sebastien (by the way, don’t ever go and watch the movie “Jumper“, it’s crap), or drinks and chicha smoking with David. Busy week ! And tonight, party at David Baque’s place, it will also be cool indeed.

Quick word about the weather. I think I’m getting used to it. When you leave in the morning and it’s like -20, just equip yourself, and it will be just fine. Anyway, I’m still in the good mood of the “Hey look ! It seems like we are in a big sky resort ! That’s fun !” so I find the weather and snow mostly amusing. We’ll see how it goes in the next weeks or so. But it’s true that I can’t wait for seeing the Parc La Fontaine from my window during the summer, it’s gonna be awesome !

Well that’s all for today folks. Here’s the usual ending: link dropping and video embedding.

My future building: http://www.appartementsamontreal.com/neuville.html

More pics: http://www.appartementsamontreal.com/viewer/Neuvillegalleries/batiment/index.html

Montreal gallery updated: http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier/100083

Enjoy the video from Dragonforce - Through the Fire and Flames and the amazing close-ups on the hands during solos:

Categorised in Montreal, Movie, Music, My life and Ubisoft

First week-end and first day at work

February 11, 2008 - No Responses

Hello everyone, here’s a quick update on my whereabouts in Montreal during the last 3 days.

This week-end I tried to kill some time by walking around in my neighborhood. First on saturday afternoon, I went for a quick walk on Ste Catherine (as always). Just like this summer, the problem in my apartment is that the Internet jack on the wall is pretty far away from my bed, and as I really enjoy my laptop in bed, especially during the week-ends, I decided to take care of that issue for good. Instead of buying a very long ethernet cable (10 m) like this summer, I spent a bit more and bought the cheapest Wifi access point I could find and it’s working now perfectly. No more cable crossing the entire room :)

After that I met up online with my friend Jean-Sebastien, from my former team in Ubisoft Montreuil. He’s the globe-trotter of the team and is actually on a mission on Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction. We decided to meet on St Denis to grab some drinks and eat there. This is where I experienced my first snow fall here in Montreal ! This week-end the weather was nicer than I expected and the temperature was around 0 (hence the snow) and I didn’t even have to wear my big “doudoune” !

We went (totally randomly) in a very nice Shezhuan restaurant where we enjoyed a very nice meal. We chose the special menu where the chef decided what we were going to eat ! Very good and pretty cheap too (25$ the whole meal).

We then headed to a bar on Duluth I knew from this summer called “Le reservoir”. I really like this place. Cheap, good drinks, good french electro music. This summer I heard the whole Ed Rec Vol. 2 compilation there, and saturday some Kavinsky ! We had a really good time, and took a cab back home both a bit joyful from the drinks we had.

Kavinsky - Testarossa Autodrive

Sunday was the typical sunday. In bed till very late in the afternoon, checking some TV shows (Lost and Nip/Tuck this time) and I managed to watch the Africa Nations Cup Finals on TV5 (too bad Cameroon lost…). I then went outside to try to buy some food for the week but couldn’t really find a grocery store near my place so I went back to Ste Catherine again, entered Pharmaprix and brought some supplies back home. I then met with my friend Jerome (Matt’s older brother) and his wife on St Denis as they wanted to take me to “Juliette et chocolat“, a place where you can DRINK hot melted chocolate. Very enjoyable, check the link for more informations. They gave me a lot of advices about the life here since they’ve been living here since October (they actually arrived the day before I left).

On to my first day at work. I woke up early today as I was a bit stressed about not wanting to be late (as usual). I checked some weather websites to check the temperature and OH MY GOD. -12, -25 with the wind ! I took everything I got with me, wooly hat, gloves, scalf, big parka and headed outside. Well, I have to tell you, it’s no good to be a smoker by -25. I first tried to smoke taking off my right hand glove. I couldn’t stand the cold for more than 30 seconds and I had to switch constantly. I finally learned to smoke with my gloves on and it’s a lot better now !

I didn’t wait for the bus at all (lucky me !) but got super early at work (8:15). I was supposed to be here for 8:45 when the “newbie tour” was supposed to start. So I waited in the cafeteria with a nice orange juice and the morning paper :)

We (me and some other newcomers) then proceeded to the visit of the studio and as you know, it’s REALLY huge. 1900 employees at the moment, second biggest video game studio in the world. We were then briefed about the security policy, the internal websites and some administrative stuff. I then met Francois Ringuette, associate producer on my project, who introduced me to my new team. After that I started to configure my work station to try to be ready to work as quickly as possible. It’s a long process but well, you have to do it (can’t talk much, NDA…). I had lunch with Jean-Sebastien and Laurent in a very cool TexMex restaurant where I ate an excellent Burrito ! And at the end of the day (17:30) I went for a drink with David in my loved “Helm” bar. I really like this place, especially during the week, because it’s big, yet peaceful and relaxing. Nothing better than a Whisky-Coke in a nice bar after work :)

Tomorrow, I’ll meet with a girl working at Royal Lepage Relocation. She will pick me up directly at my place and will help me with all the paperwork and formalities (social security, bank…) and I think I will even visit some apartments too. That’s why I won’t be going back to work till wednesday. My lead is on holiday and I think my work station and development environment are already correctly set up anyway so it’s no big deal.

Oh by the way, I decided to scrap Flickr for my photos as it’s a pain in the ass to maintain both iPhoto on my laptop and Flickr. I gave the .Mac web galleries a shot and I really like it. So here are my galleries:

http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier

My photos of the flight: http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100069

My appart-hotel: http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100079

And some various pics from Montreal (I suggest you bookmark this one as I will update it regularly): http://gallery.mac.com/thomas.texier#100083

That’s all for today folks. That was a very long post isn’t it ?
hassnow

Categorised in Funny stuff, Montreal, Music, My life, Shaun White and Ubisoft

Cloverfield == impressive

February 8, 2008 - 2 Responses

Actually I found very good motivation. I checked my favorite cinema (Famous Players on Ste Catherine) to see what was on and saw Cloverfield at 7:35 PM. So I figured out I could just run there and grab a bite at the Tim Hortons inside.

So what about this very hyped movie, produced by J.J. Abrams, the now famous creator of the Lost TV show ?

Well, one word, impressive ! I will even say that it might be the most impressive movie I ever saw. I don’t want to say much more about it because I wouldn’t want to spoil but please if you ever want to watch this movie, make sure you watch it in a good theatre with a big-ass screen and loud sound. It really deserves it even if it’s still one more Hollywood blockbuster.

Here’s the first trailer, released a few months ago, which made the whole Internet wonder “WTF ?” :

Categorised in Montreal, Movie and My life

Hello Canada

February 8, 2008 - 3 Responses

I made it !

I finally arrived at my temporary place in Montreal after a long flight (7.5 hours) but not so much trouble with the customs/immigration. The appartement is nicer than the one I had this summer. The TV is (logically) in front of the bed, so it might be (a little) more useful this time.

I was surprised by the weather. It was almost sunny. Cold but dry and without any wind so it’s not that hard (I guess it’s still -10 though). I made a few useless pictures with my phone during the flight (my new camera’s battery needs a recharge) on which you can see some nice variations if you look at them in chronological order (taking off in Paris -> leaving the french coast -> entering UK -> entering Canada -> approaching Montreal -> Montreal from the cab). Anyway here is the Flickr photo set.

Ok folks, that’s all for today. I have to say I’m a bit hungry right now but I don’t know if I have enough energy/motivation to go out in the cold at night to grab a bite.

Enjoy the song I most enjoyed during the flight, Justice - Phantom Pt II (Boys Noize Remix):

Categorised in Montreal, Music and My life

Good bye France

February 8, 2008 - 6 Responses

Hi everyone!

Here I am at the airport, waiting for boarding, blogging from my phone. I just got out of the duty free shops where I did my usual perfume and cigarettes refill. I also bought a AC adaptor because I was unable to find mine at home. And since I’m going abroad for a (very) long time, I also bought a new digital camera. It’s the gorgeous Sony DSC T70, an awesome 8.1 mpixels compact camera so I can take nice pictures on the go with a better quality than with my iPhone.

I have to say that I’m totally freaking out right now and compulsive buying helps me get through this (as always). I’m in no way regretting my leaving but I’m just so scared of the new life and responsabilities waiting for me. It’s such a great opportunity. It’s hard to realize what I’m leaving here in France, family, friends, my casual life…

I’ll do a quick update when I finally get to my appartment. I’m sure the next nights and days will be the hardest, but I’m going to make it. Finally my dream come true, working at Ubisoft Montreal. I’ve worked so much for this happen during the last 2 years and finally here it is. Thanks to everyone who help me and supported me.

Much love to all my friends and relatives, especially my parents. See you soon in Caribous’ land.

Categorised in Montreal and My life

The day has come

February 6, 2008 - 2 Responses

Quick update.

I finally got my definitive date. I chose the Air France plane leaving friday at 13:15 from Roissy Charles de Gaulle and landing at 15:00 at Montreal Trudeau. I’m quickly writing this post from my father’s after a quick rush to his place for a final goodbye.

Categorised in My life

File -> New Life

February 6, 2008 - 2 Responses

Some might say that every 6 months or so, I create a new website/blog, and I have to admit it, it’s true.

But today is no normal day. In a few hours from now, I’ll finally be leaving Paris, flying across the Atlantic all the way to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I’ve been dreaming about this moment since my last year at EPITECH, when I was looking for an internship in the video game industry.
Ubisoft Montreal Building

After spending two years (including my internship) working at the Ubisoft HQ in Montreuil near Paris, I’m now leaving to join Ubisoft Montreal, the biggest Ubisoft studio and apparently the second biggest video game studio in the world (1700 employees at the moment).

Shaun White
This is a new life starting for me, on every level. I’ve already been twice to Montreal during my (short) career but these were only short missions (3 weeks working on Far Cry Vengeance, 2.5 months on Assassin’s Creed). This time I’m going away with an undetermined-length contract (CDI in french), and I will join the Shaun White Snowboard team till the release date (can’t say much right now as it’s still pretty secret).

I have to say I’m totally scared as it’s going to be my first time living all alone, with my own place and stuff. It will also feel very weird and sad to leave friends and family behind but well, I guess life goes on…

That’s why I created this blog. It’s hosted on wordpress.com as it’s simple and cheap, and it’s offering some nice features too (thank god it allows comment posting without registration). You can of course subscribe to the RSS feed if you want (I know I would :p)

I’d like to thank my friend and colleague Romz for allowing me to use his beautiful photo for the header of the site. You can find more of his work on his Flickr page.

And to inaugurate this blog the same way I did with my previous blog on virb.com, let’s create a new tradition and say that every new post will be concluded by a nice/stupid/funny internet video. So I hope we’ll keep in touch and that I will have enough motivation to update this blog on a somewhat regular basis. See you soon and enjoy the crazy japanese TV shows :

Categorised in Funny stuff, Montreal, My life, Shaun White and Ubisoft