Episode 7 - Joe Turns 21! 🎂
Fencing in Paris, Microsoft Paint, and real paint with a 6-year-old French girl learning English
"People often think that something "far off" will make them happy. That moving to a new place or getting a different job or meeting someone new will change how they feel. But happiness will always be withheld if you believe it is somewhere else. The secret is to find happiness in the people and places that are close to you. See the beauty in the things that are nearby."
This week, I found myself really enjoying the beauty nearby. Stayed in Paris for the week and appreciated the beauty of the city and its people. Slower bike rides, more walks, and spending time with amazing friends.
Thank you all for joining today! It’s my privilege as always to have y’all on this adventure.
Monday 10/9/2023
Woke up around 10:30 am and then proceeded to have one of the most productive days ever. I did some schoolwork, completed 3 mandatory trainings (one for Sciences Po, one for my upcoming tutoring job, and the last one for UCLA), and polished up my resume and sent to over to Tatiana for her to check.
Honestly it would’ve made a lot more sense if she checked it before I applied to 3902375 internships. But hey, eet eez what eet eez.
Her reviews were super helpful.
In the afternoon, I headed over to southern Paris for my first-ever fencing class! Sciences Po teaches different sports classes, and I signed up for the fencing one in September! Today was the first lesson and it was super fun!
Turns out there are three kinds of fencing: foil, épée, and saber (sabre). Each one of them has a different sword type, scoring system, and has a different part of the body that you need to hit to score a point. Our class was for foil, meaning you mainly thrust the sword and can hit any part of the opponent’s body to score a point.
We learned had to stand in the en garde stance (basically your feet are perpendicular with each other, with your front one pointing at the opponent), hold the sword (foil), and lunge and thrust correctly. Next week, we’re donning our fancy fencing outfits and starting the fence with each other!
After fencing, I headed over to Sciences Po (it was right nearby) to meet up with Joe and study for a bit. Of course, he ate some of my emergency baguette. :(
Today, Joe made the distinct differentiation between a shithole and a place having “fuck all”. I thought they were the same thing. Boy, was I wrong!
A shithole is pretty much exactly as it sounds. A place having “fuck all” means there’s nothing to do. Crucially, a place can be a shithole but not have fuck-all (for example, (allegedly) Birmingham).
Clearly, this was the most important lesson of the day. I love Europeans. It will be so strange to be around all Americans (culturally) when I come back.
After studying a bit with Joe, I Velibed home, made a yummy dinner, cleaned my apartment, called Tatiana, and proceeded to read some papers I needed for my labor economics class.
Off to bed!
Tuesday 10/10
I packed my bag for school the night before, so it was super easy getting ready this morning. Getting up was another story.
The international trade discussion was wild today. The TA couldn’t find a whiteboard marker, so we threw it back to 2005 and used Microsoft Paint. Now that’s what I’m talking about!
Class was lovely.
I proceeded to do some work in the main cafeteria area of Sciences Po, and met my friend David from Toronto in the process. We chatted for a bit, then we saw the British girl (Amelia) from the weekend trip to Normandy / Brittany (David went on that trip as well). She was the one from Chelsea that I walked around the castle walls of Saint-Malo with.
It was absolutely crazy. Turns out she’s not British at all.
She’s from Vermont.
And completely fooled me with the accent. She’s half-British, half-French, speaks perfect French and was able to pull off a perfect British accent. Everything she said about London was a lie (including her knowing about Twickenham). She goes to an all-women’s college in western Massachusetts where straight people are a minority (I’m quoting her here).
I was so impressed. Her acting skills were world-class. I never suspected a thing!
She was super funny and quite the vibe. We’re getting a pint next Tuesday.
After she left for class, I reviewed some of my notes for my labor economics class, then headed off the the Tuileries Garden for a nice stroll. The trees are planted in such a perfect row. It looks nice, but isn’t the gorgeous raw nature that I so love!
Headed back to Sciences Po for my French class, where we learned about tenses of asking “we would like…”. As in “we would like”, “we wanted”, “we will want”, things like that. It’s crazy how many tenses there are. I don’t even think about them in Russian and English because of my fluency in them, but it’s quite challenging to learn them in a language that you’re not familiar with at all.
I’ve noticed that the French class is not very practical in teaching conversational French, and we are rather learning academic rather than practical French. I wish it were the other way around.
I talked to my classmate Mika after, called Joe, then went to a super fancy restaurant near Sciences Po. The UC study abroad program puts on some events throughout the year (such as the eclair-making workshop!), and they organized this fancy dinner for a couple of us students who are on exchange at Sciences Po.
Turns out it’s the oldest restaurant in Paris!
I talked to Lisa, Devin (a girl from Berkeley), and Brandon (Berkeley gay man) and it was such a lovely conversation. I was chatting with some others are different tables, but they were by far my favorite group of the night. We talked about life, California, growing up in Fresno (where Brandon is from), politics. You name it. Vibes were absolutely wonderful!
Lisa and I went for a short stroll back to her apartment and sat on her balcony for 30 minutes talking about our study abroad programs. We agreed that you need to live in a city for at least a month before you can truly start understanding its true nature. Its vibe. Its undercurrent. Its fabric of society. I would say I have a good grasp of Paris’ already.
Lisa and I walked over to a bar where the gang was, though the 15 euro drinks were so outrageously priced that I didn’t consider it for a second. I’ll have some water, please! Met a nice Irish girl that Joe knew, then headed home.
Wednesday 10/11
I remember watching an interview with Steve Jobs where he talked about an article he had read years ago. In it, the researchers looked at every known animal’s energy expenditure and ranked the animals based on efficiency, meaning how far the animal could travel from a calorie based on its body weight. They found a vulture was the most efficient, with humans being about a third from the top.
Then, the researchers looked at the efficiency of a human riding a bike, and it completely blew the vulture out of the water!
Jobs said that a computer is the exact same, but for your mind. Your mind is a powerful tool and the most complex machine in the known world, yet the computer allows you to harness those tools and make your mind even more useful. Writing this blog, doing schoolwork, etc. They are all powered by technology that lets me be super-efficient.
I love my Mac!
Today, Tatiana heard back from Bain (her final round was on Friday) and got the offer. Similarly, Simon recently got a great offer for SWE next summer. Basically, Simon and Tatiana both got great internships in their respective fields, and I’m super proud of them both.
However, I was feeling quite jealous and rather frustrated about my own internship hunt, as I have been significantly less successful this recruiting cycle.
But after considering the situation, I found that my mindset completely changed after I considered the Man’s Search for Meaning approach that I learned about over the weekend. I thought that I am so lucky to know and be the friends of such smart and talented people who are able to get such prestigious and high-paying jobs (Tatiana for consulting, Simon for SWE). I really am a lucky lad to know such great people and be able to call them my close friends :)
That revelation really cheered me up, and put me in a super good mood for the rest of the day.
I proceeded to prep for my first tutoring session of Eliana (tutoring her English!). I read the review materials and biked over to northern Paris on a blue (electric) bike.
Eliana had such a great time. Basically, my job is to babysit her in English for 5 hours, and it was a real test of my patience. 5 hours of watching a small child is no joke. Good thing my New Year’s Resolution was to be more patient.
She loves paper airplanes, Uno, drawing, and painting, and laughed so hard when we would throw the paper airplanes around! Her aunt was there as well (who’s from Chicago, how cool!) and she works for a luxury company in marketing. Very cool.
I’ve found that Uno is such a good game to teach English (or any language for that matter). Every time we put down a card, we say the number and color, great practice!
See if you can spot which of these masterpieces are mine, and which was painted by Eliana. It might be quite hard, just so you know:
After the 5 hours were up, I biked back home, made dinner, and FaceTimed Ariv. It had been too long!!
We chatted about UCLA things (and all the beautiful people that Ariv now notices lol) and brainstormed ideas to go to Hawaii for an extra week over spring break.
Wednesday means volleyball practice, so I got to the gym on time to warm up. We had a GREAT practice, I feel like I’m getting a lot better at passing and we all played very well. Even the coach was impressed!
I was yelled at a lot less and seem to be the defensive specialist for the team now. Our first game is next week!
Biked home, cleaned a bit, called Mama, then off to sleep!
Thursday 10/12
Really hard to get up today, but I made it to class eventually!!
French class was pretty brutal today and it was quite hard to focus. We learned about the genders of different countries, which changes the pronoun you use to describe that country. It still is quite strange that countries and nouns have genders. They do in Russian too, but I never think about it.
I randomly started talking about phone storage with my classmate, and he revealed he has 2 TB of storage full with Apple.
My other classmate, Mika, has 194 TB of storage used. I literally don’t know what takes up that much space. I was mind-blown. She literally has 1000x more stored files than me. That is like 10,000 movies. I have no idea what she is storing there.
Also, what school gives their students 500 TB of storage.
After studying for a bit, I met up with the Czech girl (Magdalena) I met a few weeks ago and we got lunch at a nearby cafe. It was AMAZING. We laughed so much and it was so interesting to learn about her culture.
For example.
We saw a man working on a chimney and Magdalena was SUPER excited. Apparently, people who work on chimneys are called chimney men (kominík in Czech) and they bring good luck. So naturally, we got some good luck.
The food was yummy, Magdalena ordered some potatoes because she really misses them from Prague. They were up to her standards. Her sandwich was not. I ate it, no worries!
I also learned that the Czech equivalent of “killing 2 birds with one stone” is “killing 2 flies with one swat.” That phrase makes the most sense, in my opinion. I doubt I could kill even one bird a stone.
Magdalena also mentioned how she always has some sort of “fuck-up” happening. Seems like we’re in the same boat, lol!
I got to trade class ON TIME today, which rarely happens. Today I really tried to focus in class and it was super interesting. We learned about trade policies, and it was the first class where there weren’t “voodoo-math” economic models and it was so fun. I asked a ton of questions and then got passed a note from a random bloke that said “PLEASE BE QUIET“ in all caps.
Damn, excuse me!
I didn’t care that much, though. I thought it was quite funny to be honest.
In history class, we learned about British and French economic alliances in the 1800s and it was actually quite interesting, especially when we talked about the Suez Canal being built. To simplify my note-taking, I coined the term “brinch” to mean “British and French” so that I don’t have to write out that entire phrase many times in my notes.
Later, my Italian classmate asked me for reputable American news organizations so that he could read interesting political news.
Looks like I’m now single-handedly representing American journalism.
Naturally, I recommended the New York Times (always a good bet), especially since we have a free subscription as Sciences Po students.
My corporate governance class was boring as usual. I’m honestly not sure why this class exists, I have yet to learn anything in that class. Even my classmate, who tries to pay attention attentively, says it doesn’t make any more sense when you pay attention. I spent most of the class writing my blog.
Went home after class, and I loved the bike riders. I love being part of the commuting mob of cyclists in Paris. It is the greatest thing ever!!
I made dinner quickly and chilled for about an hour. There was a beer pong tournament for exchange students that night at 9, but I was super tired and didn’t know anyone else going.
I forced myself to go to
Meet more people. Even though I have a great group of friends, who knows who I can meet at these events!
I am American and need to defend our honor in beer pong.
Going was the best decision ever! Everyone was super nice, I met a lot of great people, and it was a blast. My teammate was Johno, an Australian bloke studying law. He’s from Sydney, told me Tasmania is called “Taz”, and was an all-around amazing guy.
I also met a Japanese guy from Tokyo and practiced my Japanese introductions with him. He was super impressed!
Johno and I were eliminated from the tournament in the very first round against some French guys. They had a clutch final shot and celebrated like crazy when they won. Well played, well played.
Johno and I headed to the bar to get a pint, but we actually got a pitcher (3 pints) for the price of 2. We got a discount on the pitchers because we were there for the Sciences Po tournament. The bartender (Adam) was Czech, so I told him about the chimney man. He was so happy and grinned ear to ear.
Walked over to another bar a kilometer away to say hi to Joe and the gang. It was past midnight at this point, so it was officially Joe’s birthday! Drank a peach pint with him, then biked home and fell asleep around 2. Big day tomorrow for Joe’s 21st!!
Friday 10/13
Haven’t been this hungover in a while. A pitcher and a pint are not good for the Dennis economy, but eating my delicious yogurt and going for a walk made me feel a whole lot better!
I wrote my blog post for the previous weekend, then cleaned the fridge and headed to Sciences Po to meet up with Joe, Emma, and Gibs. I met up with them in a lovely cafe and proceeded to spend 39 minutes completing an expert sudoku. Gibs took 55 minutes.
The sudoku took forever to do. The 5-star difficulty sudokus that are in The Daily Bruin were complete pieces of the cake compared to the one in Joe’s sudoku book.
The cafe was absolutely lovely, and it was nice and relaxing to be there. Plus, it was Joe’s birthday!
For his birthday, Joe and I went on an absolutely amazing bike ride outside of Paris! I had been wanting to explore this trail for a while, and Joe’s birthday was the perfect occasion to go. We both got blue (electric) bikes, though Joe’s died pretty quickly because of poor bike choice. It being Joe’s birthday, I gave him my fully charged bike and proceeded to have the ride of my life on this dead-batteried electric bike.
The trail was gorgeous, I found a nice single track of mountain biking, and it reminded me of the Delta de Anza Regional Trail back in Antioch! At the turnaround point, Joe and I ate a delicious baguette with jam that I had brought as a surprise for him. I time-trialed back on the trail, absolutely conquering the climbs on my heavy, battery-dead bike.
It was a lovely ride!
When I came home, I met my groupmate for trade class on Zoom for our group presentation on Tuesday and packed for my upcoming London trip this weekend. I headed back over to Joe’s apartment for his birthday party and bought some birthday party decorations at a random French party store along the way. I got us all cone-shaped birthday hats, nice flag banners to hang up, and some neon pink Minnie-Mouse-looking ears for Joe that said “Happy Birthday!“.
It was such a great time!!
The party was absolutely amazing, with us having a nice charcuterie board, Anna making DELICIOUS guacamole, and a surprise guest appearance from Grace (also from my beloved Bristol)! Gibs and Annabel made ratatouille, and it was just like in the movie. Worthy of a pen drop from Anton Ego!
I remember my dad telling me that happiness and contentedness come from good relationships and who you’re with, not what you do or where you are. Sitting there in Joe’s dining room, with Anna, Joe, Lara, Grace, Emma, Annabel, Gibs, Harry, and Ben around the table, it was just pure contentedness. I love you all :)
Some more pictures from the week:
