Glory Days

Friday was a very busy day for me. It was decided on Wednesday that I would accompany my boss, Jane, and colleagues, Gwen and Geert, to the Gaz de France LNG offices in Paris for the day on Friday. Jane went super early and Gwen was coming from Brussels, so Geert and I left the St. Pancras train station in London on the EuroStar at 6:30. Amazing how two hours later you're no longer in London, but in Paris. The city does look different - a lot more wrought-iron balconies. I don't know how to describe it, but Paris looks "French" and London looks like London.

The train ride was fine, at least for the time I was awake! We got to GdF's offices a bit early, so we just waited in a conference room - all the conference rooms there seemed to be named after artists, such as Turner, Kandinsky, Munch, etc.

The meetings were to continue discussion on the upcoming merger of GdF-Suez and to talk more about our individual LNG portfolios, potential synergies, and any other business school buzz word you can think of.

Lunch was the usual two hours long and started with the most interesting appetizer I've ever seen. It was a rectangular plate w/ three small indented squares on it. On the outside two were egg shells w/ only the tops cut off. In the middle square was a sea urchin, filled with some of the egg and something else. Then I think it was the sea urchin or maybe a pate of some sort in the eggs. It was delicious, and I'm glad I didn't know what I was eating! The chocolate-pistachio-cherry mousse/pudding dessert was great.

But, the big news for Friday was that Jane and her daughter, Joe and I all went to the Bruce Springsteen concert at the Arsenal Emirates stadium!!! We had standing tickets on the field. Very very cool. He played for 3 hours straight! The songs he played were popular, more obscure, old and new - a good mix. Jane is a huge fan and I think knows every single word to his songs.

And, today, while I would've rather slept in, I got up and got the keys for my apartment! It is officially mine now! The movers will deliver my stuff this Thursday, so by this weekend I'll be unpacked and in my own space.