2009 - The Year of Stability

I struggled a bit with what to call this year. We had:

• 2006 - The Year of Adventure - As I set out from Canada on my Eurotrip, culminating with my 5 months internship in Denmark.
• 2007 - The Year of Knowledge - As I started my amazing 8 month job for Soloy in Seattle and then moved to France to start my Masters.
• 2008 - The Year of Commitment - Not only were more and more of my friends back home making the commitment of marriage, I made the commitment to stay here in France at least three more years for this PhD.

So that brings us to 2009; what could I call the year 2009? Finally the word hit me, stability. Why stability? Well because 2009 was, for the first time in a long time, a stable year.

For starters, 2009 brought me a stable full time job for the entire year! I started at Airbus with my job/PhD in Feburary of 2009. And with this brought money, finally money! After 7 years of being a poor student, I finally am bringing home "l'argent", how sweet it is.

2009 also was a year without moving. After leaving Canada in 2006 i've been all over the map. Traveling, then 4 months in Denmark, then back to Canada for a month, then to Olympia for 8 months then to France to the student dorms, then to my apartment here in Toulouse. Then back to Canada again for 2 months while I waited on the work contracts to get finalized. But now, I'm stable. I'm in Toulouse. I have an incredible apartment. I got incredible lucky to find a great roommate on the first try at the beginning of 2009 and most of all...I'm just really comfortable in Toulouse. It has truly become my home. I love the city, I love the job, I have a great group of friends here, 2009 was the year that Toulouse, France became home.

So, that's where the Year of Stability label came from. So...what actually happened in 2009.

I came back to Toulouse in early January, eager to finally start my new job with Airbus. I also had to find a new roommate after my old roommate Vladimir got a job back in Barcelona. I was a little apprehensive, because finding a roommate just seems it can be really hit and miss. You just never know what your going to get. But I got lucky and Ignacio was one of the first guys to respond to my roommate request, and right upon meeting him, it seemed things were good. So he moved in at the end of January.

February came and the paperwork was finally finalized and work started. So what is my work. As many know I'm doing a PhD, but not really a PhD in the traditional sense because I'm doing the PhD with Airbus. That is, with the company, it's an industrial PhD. The best part is, I'm just like any other employee, meaning I receive my salary, benefits, vacation exactly like any other worker..so in that sense it's a job. But the work I'm doing for Airbus is in the research department, and as such I'll be writing a PhD thesis in two more years time... so in that sense it's a PhD.

Starting a PhD is never easy. Basically the first three months my job entailed "read all of this" in order to get a fundamental foothold into the subject. I did have some distractions, in helping trouble shoot another project that was going on, but the majority of the time was spent reading. Unfortunately the middle part of the year, had me feeling a bit frustrated at work. I felt I had done enough reading and was ready to move on, unfortunately there was just too many other things going on at Airbus. As such, my tutor at Airbus was simply swamped trying to finish off another project, as well as his wife having their second baby, in addition with the usual slowdown at Airbus during summer due to everyone in France being on vacation. So here comes September, and I really felt that 8 months of my PhD had slipped away without any real forward movement.

But Jerome my tutor is really a great guy. So we had a great conversation in September, finally he was a bit less swamped at work and we had some planning meetings along with my other tutors from the laboratory and university. And since then it has really taken off. There is a focus in my work, and a real plan forward. I guess what excites me the most about this job is the potential impact of my research. I really am excited about working on something that can make a difference in the safety of all aircraft. I can't get into details on the blog, but I'm working on aircraft take-off and landings on contaminated runways (i.e. snow, ice, standing water etc..) and this is the leading type of aircraft accident. 25% of aircraft accidents are the airplane running of the end of the runway. So to be working on a real world problem and trying to come up with a solution, it's really what drives me at work.

So that is 2009 from a work prospective, how about outside of work.

Well one of the advantages (and one of the reasons I chose to stay in France) is the vacation time, so that I can continue to travel and explore the world! And that I did! 2009 brought a record number of kilometers flown with over 60,000km's!!

Logan's Flights 2009

In Miles 37,654

In Kilometer 60,598

Earth Circumnavigation 1.51 x

Distance to the Moon 0.158 x

Distance to the Sun 0.0004 x

All 30

Domestic 2

Intra-Continental 17

Intercontinental 6

Other flights 5

So we had our annual "Go East" trip in May, and this year we chose to go to Romania which was incredible.

Then in June I visited my good buddy Manuel in Brussels, Belgium where he was doing an internship.

I had Paris in July where I met up with my old Hungarian roommate Baly, afterwards he came to Toulouse and we hung out here for a week.

Jasmin came to visit me in August and we took a road trip inside France to Dax for the Feria.

September came my "official" summer vacation. Myself and two friends from work, Antonello and Adrien spent 15 days exploring Oman in the Middle East.

October was my first 'business' trip as I flew from Toulouse to Bristol to present at the Airbus PhD day where I won the prize of "Best Poster Presentation". And October also brought us a random Halloween trip to Dublin simply because Halloween is awesome and France doesn't really celebrate it. Therefore we had to go somewhere!

December was the craziest month of travel with Leslie's wedding in Mexico during the first week. So I crossed the Atlantic, went to the wedding, flew back across the Atlantic, went to work for 12 days, then flew back to Canada for Christmas! Too much time spent in an airplane in December that's for sure.

And voila...2009 simply flew right by!

I'm now officially 1/3 of the way done my PhD. I'm enjoying life in Toulouse, we go skiing on the weekends in the winter, we go out to the bars for a drink during the week, go to quiz night (where we consistently finish in the top 3) or jam-okee night or play poker, or play football (soccer).

I finally found some soccer teams to play on. Since i'm still 'officially' a student I'm playing on the university team. I also found a regular men's league team to play on, in addition the inter-Airbus leagues runs from February to May where "Team Peformance" made it to the quarter finals. Ummm what else. We had a great camping trip that I organized for 12 of us in May. We did some hiking and mountain climbing. Summer brought many a trip to the beach since we are only 150km's from the Mediterranean.

I guess the other big thing in 2009 was my French. I started 2009 still very low in my French level. I could obviously speak a bunch of words but I still wasn't very fluent, and too slow. 2009 was a huge improvement. My daily working life at Airbus is in French, in that the majority of my conversations with c0-workers and meetings and emails are in French. And so my learning came much faster. I wouldn't say i'm 100% fluent at this point (i'm not really comfortable giving presentation in French, and French emails still take me twice as long to write) but i'm conversationally fluent. I don't have to think about what to say the majority of the time. So that makes a huge different in living here, because language was the single biggest frustration I had living here in France.

Overall, I would say it was just a great year. It's great to be stable and comfortable in all aspects of life. It's a good feeling.

So here's hoping 2010 just continues that trend!

Logan's Thanksgiving in France

For my Canadian readers: I know i'm two months late

For my American readers: I know i'm one week early.

I wanted to celebrate the Canadian Thanksgiving, but it happened just after I returned from Oman (side note: Pictures and a full write-up are coming!! Soon I hope) so it was just too much to organize too soon.

So I figured, being half American, allowed me to celebrate the American Thanksgiving.

Find a Turkey was NOT easy!! They just don't sell whole turkey here in France. So I had to go to the butcher, who looked at me with incredulous eyes as I asked for "une dinde entier" . But finally they said they could "probably" order one from a farm.

I wanted to invite many more people, but was limited both by space in my little apartment and by the size of the turkey. So we were 11 people from all over this world.

One Portugese
One Brazilian
One Vietmanese
One Columbian
One Thailandaise
One Lebanese / Canadian
Two Spanish
Two French
and me

So I split up some of the cooking duties.

Myself with the help of Bruno cooked the Turkey, made the stuffing, gravy and a green bean casserole.

Julien made super Mashed Potatoes

Roy cooked a yam casserole

Gift made Ceasar Salad

Rosa made pumpkin pies

Thien-Phu brought us a special Vietmanese dessert.

Esteban brought the dinner rolls

All in all I'd say the dinner turned out great!!! Not bad for my first hosted Thanksgiving!

Here are the pictures :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/logan.jones/200911Thanksgiving#

Happpy Birthday to me

I'm not actually writing this from Oman. I wrote it before and chose the post-post option.

September 21st 2005 - Iron Horse Club, Edmonton Alberta

September 21st 2006 - Student House, Aalborg, Denmark

September 21st 2007 - Toulouse, France

September 21st 2008 - Oktoberfest, Munich Germany

September 21st 2009 - Somewhere in Oman!

It seems I'm developing a habit of being somewhere new on my birthday :)

Ohhhhh man Logan is off to OMAN

Well the "big" vacation of the year has arrived. Myself and two friends are off to Oman!!! (don't worry if you just said "where!?!?" I did too when it was first proposed.

It's on the Arabian Peninsula along with the United Arab Emirates aka Dubai, Yeman, Saudi Arabia.

I'm going with two friends. Antonello who is Italian and Adrien who is French. The country is supposed to be really beautiful. With beaches, mountains, ancient cities, and of course desert.

It's a very very safe, secure country. No worries there. Very modern and tourist friendly, but one of the reasons we chose to go there is it's still hasn't become "overblown" with tourists. So we should still be able to get a real feel for the country, people, culture.

Anyways I have to run to work now. Hopefully my bag is packed.

I don't know the internet access I'll have over there. But I signed up for twitter which will allow me to add posts from my cell phone. So just follow the little box that is on the top of this page.

Back in two weeks!

Jasmin's Visit and the Feria de Dax

About one month I was exchanging emails with Jasmin and she asked if I was going to attend Oktoberfest in Munich again this year. Unfortunately the answer was no....as I will be taking 2 weeks of vacation somewhere else (secret haha) during the same time. However, I told her that I had already visited her 3 times here in Europe and she had yet to come and visit me. Well that settled it. Within a week she had bought her ticket to come and visit me for 4 days between Thurs and Sunday.

So she arrived on Thursday and after picking her up at the Airport I had to go back to work. So I circled all the things to see in Toulouse on the map and let her wander :)

Friday I decided it would be a good night to have dinner at my house. So I invited a bunch of friends and finally we were 14 people all eating Mexican fajitas, tacos and enchiladas. And Jasmin got to meet my posse here in Toulouse haha.

Saturday!!!! And the start of our crazy weekend. In all we were 7 people, two Canadians (yep, I met another Canadian here in Toulouse), one German (Jasmin of course), two Italians, one French and one Columbian. We got up nice and early to take to the road with our two cars (I rented a car for the weekend). Luckily for us we were going in the opposite of direction then the rest of Toulouse. The radio kept informing us of the huge traffic jams going between Toulouse and the Mediterranean coast whereas we were heading to the Atlantic coast. Around 11am we arrived in the beautiful city of Biarritz in the Basque Country of France. We spent all the day, swimming, lounging and sleeping on the beach. The water was gorgeous and calm.

View Larger Map

Around 8pm we started the short drive to the town of Dax. The first 50km to Dax only took the normal 40mins....however the last 5km into Dax took nearly one hour!!. Why you ask? Well first I have to explain why were going to Dax in the first place......

This weekend was the Feria de Dax/Fête de Dax. Many of you have probably heard of Pampalona and the running of the bulls non? Well in fact many many of the cities here in the South West of France and North West of Spain doing something similar (just not on the same scale as Pampalona). Basically each city sets aside a week or so (in the case of Dax it was Wed-Sun) and they celebrate the city. Parties, Theatres, Bands, Concerts, no running of the bulls but a similar thing called Course Landaise. And as well they did the Corrida (Bull Fight) on Friday. But we missed all this, we simply went for the Saturday night party.

So back to why it took us one hour to go the last 5km.....because the normally quaint town of 5000 people swells to over 100,000 or more for the Feria de Dax. So there was a mass of cars entering the city trying to find somewhere/anywhere to park. And park anywhere they did. On both sides of the road, on meridians, on sidewalks, on bridges, in ditches. Unbelievable!!!

Finally...after parking the car and re-finding the other carload of friends we started the celebration. And well....other than try to explain it to you...i'll let the pictures do the talking. Suffice to say it was a ton of fun. One big street party!!! (more commentary after the pictures...so keep on scrolling)



We danced and partied until around 6am the re-found our car and slept in the car.....for all of 3.5hr...or until the sun baked us out of the car. At that point we cleaned up, and started the drive back to Toulouse to finish the weekend.

Overall it was just one big awesome time!! But for me the most incredible part was just that...everyone was having fun. Everyone was nice and friendly, dancing in groups. I didn't see fights, didn't see broken windows or cars tipped over. Just good friendly fun.

I was back at work on Monday re-telling the stories of the weekend to my co-workers. And of course they laughing that "I actually went to the Feria" As for them...it's nothing new..and if anything they avoid the big crazy party. But I was explaining to them how cool it was that it was so friendly and calm.

Of course..that's not to say there is never any trouble. And as the one pictures suggests there is definitely some clean up to be done. But overall, obviously if they continue it every year it means that what little trouble there is, doesn't outweigh the positive.

And I was explaining to my co-workers how this just doesn't exist in Canada....or more to the point...it can't exist. We just need to look at recent examples like the Oilers Stanley Cup playoffs, Calgary Stanley Cup Playoffs, Canada Day riot etc... It just seems that you can't get massive amounts of people drinking and partying together in the streets without significant damage being done. And i've been trying to figure out why. Obviously, like anything it's not that everyone goes crazy...it's that a small number go crazy and ruin it for everyone. But the fact remains that these "small number" are there and that large concentrations of people, alcohol and city streets simply aren't allowed in Canada. Of course my co-workers joked with me that this must mean the the French are just 'more civilized' than us Canadians haha

But I wonder if it's just because it not a habit it Canada. Here in Europe things like this are common, they happen all the time. These big street parties and paryting in the streets. And because it's so normal...nobody takes exception. It's just another occurrence. It's happening now, it will happen again, probably next week if you want to look for it. Whereas in Canada these events are not the norm..in fact they are the opposite. They are rare. And so the times that they do seem to pass, it's something new and crazy and exciting and you better take advantage of it (and unfortunately for that 'small number' of people, taking advantage of it means drinking yourself silly and then 'breaking shit').

Ok..i'm not going to rant any more...people probably stopped reading when they saw the perty pictures. But it's a shame that these kind of events can't happen in Canada. They really are a lot of fun. Either way, it was a great great weekend with my Big Little German sister.