Weblog title

Moving

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 09:39:00 -0600

... we finally bought a new domain and I am moving this blog to a new permanent location:

http://petrapress.isenberg.cc/

Please update your bookmarks and click the link above or wait a few more seconds to be automatically moved there.

Banking in France

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:12:00 -0600

Banking in France it turns out is even more cumbersome than in the US and Canada and more expensive, too (but that's another story). The only exception is that there is the possibility to transfer money between accounts of different banks without involving email or cheques. Theoretically anyways. Today we tried to transfer money to our own savings account (same bank - should be simple, right?). We had to do some other stuff, like change account options etc. so we went to the bank directly (mind you - this has to be YOUR bank, not some other branch). After arriving and telling our name etc. it turned out that to transfer money you can not simply tell the guy at the counter: "move x amount of money from checking to savings account". You have to fill out a paper first. For this paper you need to know the numbers of both accounts (like 10-15 digits each), fill in the sum in writing and letters, fill in the beneficiary (me!), sign and then hand it bank. So we did - cannot argue much with local customs, right? - then the guy at the counter took the paper, typed the numbers into the computer, stamped the paper, and filed it away. Hello? What version of a banking software do they work with? What I expect is: 1) I give my bank card, bank guy logs into my account 2) I say, transfer x to y, guy enters into computer 3) prints out a slip with all transaction details 4) I sign 5) system transfers the money - done! 6) I get receipt and am happy.

Hong Kong

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:49:00 -0600

Last week I spent in Hong Kong at a conference. As common with conferences you cannot dedicate a whole lot of time to sightseeing but we still did a bit. Compared to Taipei, the other big "Chinese" city I've been to Hong Kong was much more western-ly and people spoke English really quite well. I was surprised that the prices for electronics and other things were generally the same as in Europe. I was even told at the conference by some Chinese that they sometimes bring electronics back from the US because they are cheaper there. What a crazy world!
If you want to get an impression of the things I visited, go to my Picasa album:

Hong Kong for PacificVis 2011

Hiking in Capitol Reef

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:48:00 -0600

And while I'm posting pictures... here are some from our hike at Capitol Reef National Park after VisWeek 2010 which took place in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Check out the pictures, it was simply gorgeous there!

Capitol Reef National Park

Car Insurance

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 04:42:00 -0600

Just wanted to post that we are now back on the road and rolling with French license plates and a fancy new insurance sticker. Wohoo.
To celebrate the event, here are some pictures of December in France and Germany:

December 2010

Next Steps: Car Insurance

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:13:00 -0600

Since our visit to the prefecture we have talked to all the French car owners we know to learn about the insurance system here. All of them recommended one specific insurance company called MAIF which is specific for people employed by the government (have I mentioned that I am now a French government worker?). So I did the usual things and got a quote online. This pointed me to the next problem, the French use the bonus/malus system - which I think is also quite common in Germany. Yet, not so in the Netherlands, there our insurance didn't use this system so we were already expecting some difficulties to arise. So what did we have to do next? Obvious, no? We had to get a letter from our previous Dutch insurance stating that we didn't have an accident in the past three years so that we could get some percentage off our insurance and wouldn't have to pay like a beginner. Easier said that done! To get this letter we first had to cancel the insurance and to cancel the insurance you first have to unregister the car in the Netherlands. So off to a FR-NL-FR-NL-FR inter-country mail exchange: 1) send a letter to the Dutch car registration place to say "please unregister our car - but btw, we no longer have the registration documents because the French took them!". Fortunately this worked and a week or two later we had our written confirmation from NL that our car was now considered moved out of the country. 2) send the confirmation to the Dutch insurance company to ask for a statement for the follow-up European insurer (yeah, something like this exists!). We're still waiting on this letter.

In the meantime we asked a friend to help us call the insurance company to ask what we can do because we wanted to know how they could deal with foreign insurance statements and if we could get insured now and hand the certificates in later. We spent one hour on the phone with her (thanks Evelyne) and found a solutions called a provisional insurance. We took that and made it start the very same day in the hopes of being able to use the car again.
However, to use the car again you need a statement printed out that the car is currently provisionally insured and the insurance company was going to send that right away by email. The first day passed with no statement and I sent an email with some additional documents (job confirmation, past insurance from Germany) and a question to send the statement - still nothing. Right now I am wondering if it's the insurance company or some weird spam filter. I need to find out more (story to be continued)....

Carte Grise II - Contrôle Technique

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:30:00 -0600

Since our first steps towards obtaining French license plates two main things have happened:

1) Obtaining a certificate for a controle technique (=TÜV)
To get this technical inspection certificate (since our car is >4 years old) we contacted the local Mercedes Benz dealer to get some help. First attempt via online form (no answer, despite emailing in French), second attempt worked: a friend called for us to schedule an appointment. This phone call is slightly noteworthy since in proper French manner the first answer to the question of "do you do controle techniques"? was "non!" Well, since our friend (thanks Nadia!) is well versed in the French ways she did find out that they indeed do do the controle techniques and we got our appointment. We hooked up our bikes to the car, drove the car up to the dealer, explained what we wanted and biked to work as we were supposed to pick up the car in the late afternoon. Shortly before closing they called back and announce that all day long they were quite confused as to why we wanted to get a controle technique and that it really wasn't necessary for us. After explaining about our reasoning, they finally agreed that it may be worth doing but said they could no longer do it on that day, so we had to bike back up (a quite strenuous bike ride up a hill, I should add) and get the car and bring it back another day. Once we were there and already quite pissed it turned out that they couldn't do the controle technique (on top of not knowing why they should in the first place) because our car actually had a couple of problems that needed to be fixed or we wouldn't pass it - I guess now you are beginning to guess the informational derangements we are in quite frequently here. At least and to our appeasement they had found one person in the store who could write down the problem for us in English and we could make a somewhat informed decision about what to fix.
So the car had to go back in and a few hundred euros later we had our controle technique certificate. Almost there!

2) Visit to the Prefecture for getting the carte grise
We arrived 37 minutes after the prefecture openend and exactly 37 people were in front of us. 37!! I couldn't believe it. It then took two hours for these 37 people to be served. The time spent waiting was not super exciting, except for the yelling that went on with the guy at the welcome booth for a little while - unfortunately my French is too bad to understand what was going on. Floh guessed that the welcome dude didn't want to give the guy a number. Once it was our turn the weirdnesses started - and of course these are part of our inability to properly understand or speak French. We were super prepared, had all the documents but did not expect for the French lady to take our Dutch originals of the car registration document AND the EU conformity document which says that the car conforms to EU standards. This was quite annoying for insurance reasons and if we should ever want to register the car again in another country. Very annoying but all we could do was to say we want the stuff back which resulted in - but I need the originals, those are the rules. What can you do about that? Anyways, after then paying the car taxes (which required another visit to the welcome desk to get a new number for the "caisse") we received a perliminary carte grise. This we brought to the license plate printer place across the street and are now proud owners of French license plates and an unsure state of insurance. The car will stay in the garage until this is resolved (to be continued).

Medical Experiences

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:28:00 -0600

Moving to a new country is always a bit stressful because you have to figure a bunch of stuff out anew that you've totally internalized in your home country. One of those things is going to a doctor. It's different everywhere and every country has its own peculiarities. For example, Canadian women go to their family doctor yearly for regular cancer checkups, the Dutch only go to the specialist once every 5 years, and the German women once every 6 months (if I remember correctly).

Today I got my first intro to the family doctor system in France. It's again slightly different. The first thing I noticed is that the doctor did not have a nurse. First I was slightly suspicious about the quality of the doctor because I haven't seen that ever in Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, or the US. Doctors are supposed to have at least one nurse and also a lab on site. Well, in France it seems normal that the family doctor doesn't as I hear from my co-workers. An amazing thing was that I walked in with no appointment and was out of there within 30mins. Everywhere else I would have waited at least 1-2h - I think I was lucky. Since there was no lab on site for a blood test I next had to take the train to a lab (how annoying but similarities to Canada can be drawn - except for the train part), take a test and then I can go Wednesday to pick up the results. No idea what I am supposed to do with those yet but those are details. My new and shiny socialist health insurance covered almost everything except for 3EUR of my medication (no worries, I'm generally all ok). I have to get an additional insurance to get full coverage - that will be the next part to figure out.

Linkdump

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 20:00:00 -0600

http://www.chi2008.org/