May 24th, 2009 by Anitale
The best thing about arriving somewhere in the middle of the night is the wonderful surprise you have the next morning when you first open your eyes.
So, this is the view we have lying in our bed.
What a lovely place. Blue water, snow on the top of the mountains, blooming trees and some beautiful blue birds that I've never seen before.
I really love lake tahoe in winter and summer.
May 8th, 2009 by Anitale
Tea time for me means Mariage Freres.
And Mariage Freres means Paris and its beautiful Mariage Freres stores. Something that I definitely miss here in San Francisco.
May 1st, 2009 by Anitale
Here are some thoughts on customer care, triggered by a bad experience that happened to me.
Customer care includes technical support, several kind of inquiries, shipping statuses, billing, feedback and much more. Customer care can literally make or break your business. Of course, the type of customer care your Website offers depends on the product or service you sell. Satisfy and help the customer before and after the sale/service and you will attract new customers to your website, and keep them coming back for more.
So, that leads me to…
…that bad experience I had with Eurostar. Couldn’t buy my ticket online because one of the address lines didn’t accept my address or any other address. Without address no ticket. And you know, if you don’t buy your ticket way in advance you can pay 5 times the price.
So I decided to call the Customer Care: A robot told me, that the number is no longer valid and gave me another one. The other number does not work at all.
There is that option to send an email. But you know how that ends. You will get an answer when the cheapest ticket is no longer available.
Since I am a twitter user I twitted a big HELP! No reaction. I thought a big company like Eurostar would perhaps track their name. But it seems that I am wrong.
And I kind of understand why they don’t track their name.
There is only one train going from Paris to London. That means there is no competitor. Flying is not an option. It would take so much longer and is more expensive.
Lucky Eurostar!
But what if there would be a competitor?
What if my tweets would have an influence on my followers and their followers?
What if all these people would turn to the competitor?
Customer Care means they should care about what people say.
Every company holds a statistic about incoming complaints. But most of the time people do not complain that way.
They complain on their blog, twitter, in their online community. That’s how they spread their discontent.
And so many companies can’t afford to destroy their brand’s reputation.
To make it short, I would have liked to get feedback and help. Lucky Eurostar! No competitor and I have very few followers on twitter.
I had to buy my ticket on my old Eurostar account. That means my billing address (that I couldn’t change) is my old address in Paris and I had to pay the ticket in Euro. Which means I’ll have to pay a percentage on my Visa card purchase.
April 30th, 2009 by Anitale
What is a community?
Am I part of one community or am I part of several communities?
Is a network a community? Are my friends my community?
Is it important to be recognized as a member of a community? And why?
My first step in a social network was my subscription to orkut.com. That was so many years ago that I cannot remember when exactly that was.
My first blog I wrote in winter 2002/2003 to document my New Zealand trip.
Over the years I subscribed to hundreds of social platforms. Global, national and local, private, leisure, professional, photo, blog, discussion, video, forum and groups. Did I forget something?
Whatever is important (or even not important) to me I can share it online in my social network, in my community. Sharing is easy. Most of my networks are connected to each other. It must be easy and quick.
I know, I did not answer my questions above. I think I have no wise answer.
I think I am part of several online communities. Big ones and small ones and micro communities within a big community. Sometimes I am more active and sometimes less. I noticed that a community becomes my network when I stay active.
The word “friends” need to be redefined. Or we need a new word for “real-they-care-about-me-friends”.
So, are my friends my community? Probably.
And yes it is important to be recognized as a member of a community as long as I share and contribute, I need feedback. I need to know that people care about what I share. It can be positive or negative, but I wouldn’t share if I didn’t seek for recognition.
April 11th, 2009 by Anitale
…most of the time. And I love my Chemex coffeemaker.
Does coffee taste better in a design coffee maker? Yes, it does. Because the pleasure preparing the coffee already releases all the happy chemicals in my body and drinking this coffee makes the chemicals last.
April 8th, 2009 by Anitale
It’s been a while that we were looking for “the” coffee table.
We had several tables in mind. I really like the Gae Aulenti glass table. But very expensive and needs daily cleaning.
I also love the Eames Elliptical Table. It should be an authentic one. But we never really looked for one. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was just my fantasy but not his.
What we had in mind was a factory cart. We saw it first at Anthropologie. Yes, they do sell furniture. Really old furniture. But so expensive. Abusively expensive.
But there is Alameda Flee Market. A great flee market. Miles and miles of beautiful furniture and old stuff and ONE factory cart, less then half the price of what we’ve seen at Anthropologie.
And there it is; industrial and old and I love it.
April 3rd, 2009 by Anitale
After hours and hours painting tiny circles I eventually came to an end.
I could have bought a painting but at this size it’s difficult to find something affordable and I would have disrespected my motto: “Do it yourself.”
April 2nd, 2009 by Anitale
No in fact it’s more an evening dolce.
March 28th, 2009 by Anitale
Diamond Heights in San Francisco somewhere on a stairway is this snake enjoying the sun… or just waiting for us. I don’t know. I have no idea if this snake is dangerous or not. I just thought let’s take a picture as close as possible. I’ve never seen a snake outside a zoo or animal store. Oh not true. I had this neighbor in Munich who actually walked his snake in our neighborhood. It was a boa. 2 or 3 meters long. He fed it with small rabbits. Wondering if his boa is still alive. And also wondering if it’s allowed to have a boa at home. 20 years ago nobody cared.
March 27th, 2009 by Anitale
I have no garden and no balcony but I have a lot of windows with windowsills. Wide enough to put plants on.
Last year I bought so many beautiful flowers but the joy did not last; they died within 3 days. Too much wind and sun and apparently the wrong flowers for this kind of condition.
This time I read carefully every single plant characteristics.
Hopefully they survive. I’m confident. But I must admit I already made a cactus die.
March 23rd, 2009 by Anitale
I don’t see that many school buses. But when I saw this one this morning I had to take a picture.
No sleeping kids inside? I had to check it. Yes, bus is actually empty.
Wondering how many times that happened before they came up with this funny solution.
March 16th, 2009 by Anitale
Taking the bus in San Francisco is easy. There is a bus stop at every intersection. All you need is 1.50$ and time.
Sometimes you can spend 20 minutes waiting at a bus stop. You check the http://www.nextbus.com page every minute, you move with the sun to the edge of the sidewalk, you think about hot coffee. You get cold, because there is always somehow an icy wind when you wait at a bus stop.
But when you finally made it onto the bus it’s pure pleasure.
Uphill, downhill and beautiful views of the city.
March 15th, 2009 by Anitale
A few weeks ago I got my piano tuned.
After 8 long years without playing I got so obsessed. I played night and day… until my neighbors knocked on the door. Very nice neighbors.
But anyway, either I stop playing at inappropriate time ranges or I move my piano to the other end of the apartment where it would face a concrete wall and no longer these ridiculous thin plaster walls. I never understood why plaster walls are used to separate two apartments. The bathroom from the laundry room - okay, but not two rooms where intimacy is on the top of the list. I can hear my neighbor cough when I lay in my bed. Not cool.
I moved the piano.
I’m still obsessed and play night and day. BUT most of the time with the celeste pedal. I don’t want to bother my neighbors with practicing. And all I do is practicing. I’m getting better but it will take time.
March 13th, 2009 by Anitale
while waiting for the bus which passes only every 20 minutes.
March 12th, 2009 by Anitale
I don’t know how many slippers I’ve already worn dead. Most of the time they travel with me. I don’t wear them every day but having slippers makes me feel home.
March 6th, 2009 by Anitale
I’ve never been involved in any fundraising before Avon.
AvonWalk for Breast Cancer means raising at least $1800 and walking 39 miles (63km) in two days.
It’s not the 39 miles that scares me. It’s more the fundraising part.
Asking people to donate is not easy.
I made a video and put in on Youtube and seesmic and Twitter and I hoped with that it will take off like a rocket.
But the truth is, this video does not really help. I’m not sure people watch it until the end. Because sometimes I get emails like… “How can I get more information?” “Why are you doing this?” “Where can I donate?”
I thought I made this clear in the video. Perhaps I didn’t.
But I know I am not a producer and my video editing goes as far as iMovie does.
And who is interested in watching a video about cancer and worse giving money for cancer?
I do the AvonWalk because I want people without health insurance to be able to get an early detection. Everybody knows this is the best chance to survive.
WIRED MAGAZINE published a very interesting article in January about the importance of early detection. http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-01/ff_cancer
You should read it.
If you want to encourage me with words, your comments are welcome, if you want to encourage me with your donation (even 1$ is an encouragement) you can do this on my AvonWalkPage.
If you want to encourage me with a video, you can videoreply on Youtube or seesmic .
In any case I will report from time to time about my success or failure with my different approaches.
March 5th, 2009 by Anitale
Now that I live in the US I feel like I should write in English.
I could continue writing in French but I think the possibility that an American understands French is smaller than a French understands English.
I could also write in German. After all I write down my thoughts and I still think in German… I think… in fact I don’t know. Perhaps I think more often in French, but I know I count in German.
Sometimes thoughts just pour out in one particular language. It’s natural.
For example I can’t talk about my passion picture framing in another language than French. For the simple reason that I learnt everything about it in French.
So I will just let it flow.
March 4th, 2009 by Anitale
Over the last few months I was unable to post pictures on my blog and I couldn’t figure out why.
So I just stopped posting.
It’s easy to stop posting when you have all the other tools like Facebook, twitter and Flickr. You keep your friends up to date every hour.
But right now I need more. I MOVED to San Francisco. I have so many things to say. I need to organize again my thoughts. Twitter is a chaos of micro thoughts and Facebook became a birthday reminder and Flickr, honestly, I use Flickr to stock my pictures. I trust them. I have several discs that already died with my whole life on it. (By the way I’m wondering how many discs I need to keep my files and life save) Like I said I had this picture problem on my blog and I lost all the photos I’ve ever posted. So I started filling my Flickr account. I definitely will continue doing it… you never know.
But I need to keep telling my story around a picture. And my blog is the right place for it.
So this picture shows my kitchen.
November 4th, 2008 by Anitale
Mes amis ont eu raison.
J’ai déjà oublié comment j’étais physiquement et mentalement épuisé.
Le déménagement était un cauchemar. Ils ont mit 16 heures. Un déménagement avec deux camions cassés. Le premier ils ont carrément échangé et pour le deuxième ils ont appelé un gars qui pouvait le remettre en marche.
L’appart était vide et j’ai dormi deux nuits par terre. Deux jours et deux nuits horrible. J’étais incapable de faire abstractions des choses, de relaxer, de relativiser. Entre nettoyer l’appart, l’état de lieu, les dernières choses administrative et le transport de mes matous. Horrible! La dernière soirée j’ai essayé de décompressé avec mes amis autour d’un dîner. Et j’ai effectivement décompressé… un peu.
Ca fait un mois que je vis à San Francisco, 2 semaines que je fais du yoga et pilates, 10 jours que je ne fume plus, 3 jours qu’il pleut à San Francisco et 10 minutes que je consacre du temps à mon blog.
Ma vie quotidienne et mes aventures méritent d’avoir une place sur ce blog.
Surtout maintenant. Le stresse est parti et je vis une vie sans attendre un visa. Je vis ma vie avec mon visa.
Je vis plus zen. Je vie une vie agréable. Je me repose et je me ressource. Je découvre et j’apprend. Je me trompe et je me reprend. J’observe et j’imite. Je reste moi et je change quand même.
Une vie à l’étranger est une leçon. J’ai eu ma leçon en France et maintenant je l’aurai aux Etats-Unis.
J’ai peur d’une chose et c’est que je ne vais pas comprendre que je vis ici. Ca sonne bizarre. Mais après presque 8 ans à Paris je n’avais toujours pas compris que je vis à Paris. C’est inexplicable. Est-ce une conscience ou un sentiment? J’en sais rien.
Maintenant je vis à San Francisco. Je vis à San Francisco. Oui, exacte, je le sais.
