02.26.2008
Day Ten:
Dinner with the Team

First off, let me saw that I don’t really have any pictures from today, so if you want to stop reading, well go ahead! Haha…that’s my disclaimer, and I’m sticking to it.

Today was a fairly hard day at work. The project I’m working on isn’t very developed in the whole process of things yet, so it’s a struggle to get things done. The internet connection is very slow when I’m in the dungeon and the Torrance servers are a long ways away at this point. But overall the project is going ok aside from having complete chaos everyday, but what else is new? We all seem to work better in crisis mode, so that’s probably how it will be in the end anyways, regardless of how much work we do up front. The days are becoming a bit longer here, which is kinda cramping my sight seeing, but hey, I’m here to do work, so work has to come first.

However, the program manager (PM) had it in his heart to take us out for dinner. I say that kind of sarcastically because most program managers are fairly cheap, at least in the past, but at Moog everyone is pretty good about it. However, it turns out that he made reservations back at the same restaurant were I had the duck before, La Braisière, and it was excellent again.

This time, instead of the salad with goat cheese, I had ‘salade aux aiguillettes de canard.’ Since I know you don’t know French, nor do you care to, it’s basically a duck salad with fairly big pieces of duck breast (I think, it might have been the heart, but I’m not sure), but either way, it was super good. Normally, I would be freaked out about what I just ate, but I think I’m over it. It was good either way, and if it was heart, then good for me!

The second course was also duck, but it was prepared a little differently than what. It is called ‘brochette de magret de canard de Roquefort’ and it was basically the duck breast on a skewer with onions and some vegetables with a really nice Roquefort cheese sauce on the side. As always, there was some potatoes and lettuce on the side. It was really good, in fact, it might have been better than just the breast that I had.

For dessert I had crème brulèe and it was outstanding. It wasn’t super crusty like they normally are, it was just a little crusted and the crème was nice and cold. It was really awesome, probably one of the best I’ve ever had.

So overall, the dinner was very nice. I sat next to the PM and got to know him a bit (this is the real reason I didn't take any pics actually, as I didn't want to be the schmuck American who lacks classy, because we all know I am a classy guy, lol). He seems like a good guy, very well dressed, and very knowledgeable in the industry. We shall see how good he is when the program comes down to crunch time, but so far he seems like a nice guy. I think that it’s important to get to know these guys, because in the end, they will fight for you if they believe in you. And as I find more and more in this industry, its not always about what you know, but very much about who you know.

Anyways….now that I have gone on forever about this freaking restaurant, I should at least post the website so you can check it out for yourself if you are so inclined, however I warn you that the music is very annoying, so I would turn the sound down:

Click here for La Braisiere.

Oooh…I almost forgot to say that I drove there tonight, thus keeping the drunk EA guy out of the driver’s seat, and I didn’t get lost at all. In fact, I got there no problem, except I took a shortcut in the ‘bus lane’ on a street or two, but its really hard to tell they are bus lanes, especially when you can’t read French. Hahaha…..anyway….that was my story for the night.

Sorry there aren’t any pictures!