My Starbucks' quote of the month:

Our lives are inspired by the dreams we have from the earliest stages of our youth. When you combine passion and hard work, then success is always possible. While no road is ever straight, dedication and persistence will always lead you to your dreams.

Notre vie est inspirée par les rêves qui nous habitent dès la petite enfance. Lorsque l'on joint la passion à l'effort, le succès est toujours possible. Bien que le chemin à suivre ne soit jamais une simple ligne droite, la détermination et la persévérance mènent toujours à la réalisation de ses rêves.

-- Arte Moreno, businessman/homme d'affaires

Perhaps someone could teach me the difference in pronunciation? It's rather confusing to differentiate by ear, without any context. Nonetheless, Hamilton is Canada's steeltown and has everything you would expect from it too.

First of all, the population is humongous and makes the city a vibrant area of the greater Toronto. With over half a million inhabitants, one renowned university and home of the Montreal Canadians' farm team; Hamilton has to be one of the best steeltown in the world. Plus, you're only hours to Quebec and minutes to the United States.

Hamilton is also divided by an escarpment, something between a mountain and a hill. The escarpment gives a spectacular view on the city at night and early in the morning. Fog, smog and the rest don't give a clean view otherwise. One day, I wanted to photograph Hamilton's skyline from the escarpment. As I drove along the winding road on edge of the big hill, I could not find the right spot to stop and take a picture. I finally drove further inland, in hopes of finding a greener and wider open area with a small hill. And I did! Unfortunately, it was a dump site.

The best thing I've seen so far in Hamilton has to be the taxis. I'm not sure if there is only one taxi company in the city or if they adopted a law like in New York to have all vehicules the same color, but they certainly chose the right car model. I'm not a car expert, nor do I like cars in general, but having taxis with a frame similar to the one of a police car is an excellent idea. Maybe it was not meant to be like this and that used police cars are just cheaper to buy than other cars, but it certainly makes me think twice before pushing the gas pedal too far.

Perhaps that is why most drivers here go exactly at the speed limit. Or perhaps they just want to be conservative on gas. With rising cost of petrol, a steeltown makes no exception for gas prices, and that's definitively not a steal.

On Monday, Canada was celebrating Thanksgiving Day. In company of a few coworkers, we instead celebrated Oktoberfest in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. It was a rather big event for the town, I was impressed! They had good German-like food and bier, plus all the folk music and dance that you would expect from the bavarian tradition. For many different reasons, I look forward to go back to Germany.. and home too.

March till October. That's the time it took me to write the first real entry after creating this blog. Suddenly, I have a flashback from a Family Guy episode where a procrastination meeting is postponed.. However, procrastination is not the reason for the lack of blog words. After my curiosity for blogs and slowly picking up interest along the way, my desire to write my own just reached the point to transform the desire into action.

By being away from my family & friends most of the time now, this might just do the job to fill-in the gaps when I don't know what to do. Basic design questions are still unanswered and the biggest one is certainly about the language: should I write in French or in English? I guess I'm off with English for now but maybe I should just express myself in the language that comes with inspiration.

Since this is my firt post, wouldn't it be a good thing to resume where I'm at in my life? Sometimes, things change so quickly it's hard to follow.

2004
Last year of university, last year in the beautiful Quebec City. Spring comes and with it my latest diploma, a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. Summer being right around the corner, it's time to head off to Europe for an amazing 9 weeks of backpacking! A gift from me to me to underline my 4 years of engineering studies. Still today, I'm grateful to my dad to have started what I hope will become a tradition in our family - merci encore Papa.



Back in Canada, winter is not too far away and I'm not sure what to do with my life anymore: head for a master's in biomedical engineering or hunt for a job? I finally end up looking seriously at both options at the same time. After several weeks, things are finally in motion and I accept my firt position within Siemens. With my work visa in hand, I head off to the US for an international internship with Siemens Medical Solutions in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

2005
Life is good. I'm having a wonderful time with people from all over the world, as if my backpacking trip never ended. From lunches at the China Grill to some disturbing chinese fire drill at red lights, pic-nics at Valley Forge park to volleyball games in Manayunk.. I'm having a blast. This time, when Spring comes around it does not bring a diploma but a wonderful permanent position within the company I love more and more every day. The internship ends, time to say see-you-later to many good friends and head towards my new home: Atlanta.

From International Intern for the Test Automation group within Siemens Medical Solutions, I became a Systems Engineer for the Process Solutions Division at Siemens Energy & Automation. After a few weeks of training, I'm back in my home country for a process automation commissioning project at the Dofasco plant in Hamilton, Ontario. Leaving everything behind in Atlanta, I'm now in Canada on a short-term delegation.

I'm still quite amazed by what happened in the past year. Lying down on my bed (Ikea is unfortunately out of stock for the desk I want), I wonder what will happen in the years to come.

At this pace, the outlook is very promising.