Internship

As you may know, I am not at Mountain View for holidays. I am here for my 6 month internship. I work in a 3D-software company named DAZ productions. More precisely, I work on development of the new version of CARRARA, a powerful 3D software (I have to make publicity). DAZ is not a very big company but the department of R&D of CARRARA is very small. The company is not located in California, only our team is at Mountain View. They are 5 residents and me.
My boss, Charles (I know, I don't know why I always chose an internship where my boss is named like me, it is so annoying), is a french X like me. He has worked in the US for 10 years and CARRARA is his "baby". He is very nice even he is a little bit stressed. The new software should be released by now but his bosses seem not to be so happy with the actual state of the product. So ambient in the office is sometimes a little tight.
However, I like what I do. I had to fix the bugs our beta-testers have found. It is very fun. The hugest problem is it is not so easy. I do not really know the software and how it has been coded so it is often very difficult to find the problem and fix it. Otherwise, I was not used to do debug. It is not the kind of things we learned at school. Still, work is very interesting even if I made many extra hours to try being at the level (all the more Charles count on us to release the product quickly).
The other guys at work are nice too. Arnaud is French too and has worked with Charles since the birth of CARRARA. Craig and Eric are American. Shalesh is Indian. There also Pierre who is French and work at home in France. As you may guess, I don't speak English so much. Most of time, I speak with Charles or Arnaud because they are the most able to answer my questions. I don't speak so much with the others. It is clear that my English difficulties do not easy the situation. There was also another intern when I arrived at DAZ, Mathieu. He is French too. He went a month after I started. I am a little sad that we could not spend more time together. He was very cool.
If you want to see what I am working on, you can have a look on the web site of DAZ. However. I add some pictures to show you why we work so hard.

Mansini Mansion

As I said before, I finally managed to get a room 5 days after my arrival in the United States. I live in a Big House near Mountain View Downtown. I live with 5 roommates, 1 girl, Tonia and 4 boys, Alen, Steve, Brien and Frank. Everybody are very sympathetic but Alen, Steve and Tonia are very "cool". Everybody are between 30 and 40. I am the youngest.
The house is a pretty big house. Everyone have their own bathroom except Brien and I. We have the smallest rooms but the rooms are pretty big. As you can see on the pictures, style is very original. The house has been build in the 50's and I think it has never changed since. It is a mix of many things because everyone left their personal touch. There is a huge basement where, I am sure, we could do amazing party. The outside is very great to have dinner. The garden is not very well looked after but there are lots of fruit-trees. The roof is also a big terrace so we can stay there and admire the sunset.
The life in the Mansini Mansion, as they call it, is very great. My neighbour like to listen music loudly but it is good music so... I found some furniture in the basement and the garage belonging old roommate or actual roommate who has not enough place. We can not imagine how much things we can find in this house. I am not so bad set up. I have a big kitchen to cook with all necessary equipment, a washing machine and a dryer, good Internet access, and I am very close to my job. People are very kind and sometimes, we have dinner together with other friends. I think I will like my live here.

Looking for a Room

When I finally arrived in my motel I had booked for two nights the day before my departure, my primary mission was to find a room. I wanted to live with roommates to have easily contacts with other people. It was not so easy because my motel was not so close to the place where I was looking for my room and, contrary to it can be thought, it is not so easy to have Internet access in the silicon valley. In fact, if you have a laptop with wifi, you can have an access everywhere because Google and yahoo give provide a free wifi access in the area. Furthermore, most of cafe and restaurant provide also free wifi access. However, if you have no computer, it is impossible. I manage to find a place where there was a computer but the access was very expensive and the place was far from where I was. I discovered little later than there was free Internet access at the library of Mountain View. However, the access was limited to 15 min for visitors and of course, there is always an old library ladies to tell you that you have to leave the computer even if there is nobody who was waiting. Luckily, I quickly found the place where I live now.
In fact, when I visited it the first time, I was not so confident. The house was big, there were 5 people, all between 30 and 40, American people. Even if the guy I met was very kind, there was another guy who was interested in the room and as I was not very comfortable with my English, I thought the other guy will have the room. Finally, since the guy was not in a hurry and a bigger room (and more expensive) will have been free and I insisted a little, the room was mine and the other guy moved in in the other room two weeks later.
I just want to add that during me research, I met very kind people. First, Alan, one of my actual roommate and the guy I met when I visited the house, lend me his bike for four days just after we have met to help me to find my room. The other guy, Brien, help me too by giving me all the adresses of the place he had already visited. I made also a interesting rencontre with a woman who wanted to share her fabricated home. She was taking care of dogs and so the house was full of dogs. She was very sympathic and we talk for one hour about everything and it was very interesting. I thing that if I had not be here, I would have move in there.

The Flight

My flight to the US was not my best remember. I missed my connection to San Francisco at London (it was a little my fault because I did not run so much) and so I had to take another flight. "Luckily", I took a flight to Los Angeles half a hour after which was faster than my flight to San Francisco. So I arrived at L.A. not too late and I could take a flight to San Jose (nearer of Mountain View and cheaper than San Francisco). Unluckily, I lost my luggage on the way because they had not had enough time to put my bag in the plane to L.A. It was not so bad because I felt more free to move from motel to motel to find my room. The bad surprise was that I got back my luggage more than 2 weeks after and without my external hard drive that I had unconsciously put in it. I hope I will be refund because even with my double insurance, it is not easy to contact them with 9 hours of jetlag.

My First Post

Hello everyone,

How are you doing?
Good?
Good!
Me, I feel great.

Welcome to my blog.
I will try to tell you about my journey in the US.
As you may now, I am actually in Mountain View, in the Bay Area of San Francisco, to do an internship in DAZ PRODUCTIONS. DAZ is a software firm where I work on the programing of the new version of CARRARA, 3D development software. I am staying here for less than 6 months and I will be back in France for Christmas.
I hope you will enjoy the trip.

Big hug.

Charles