My Workplace

I started work on September 1. My office is on the seventh floor of a modern building in the southern end of the 16th arrondissement. The commute is simple: a 20 second walk to the Liege metro station, two stations south to the 9th line, 15 stations southwest to Porte de St-Cloud station, and then a 10 minute walk to OECD's Delta Annex. While the trial run took only 25 minutes, this was done after rush hour. During rush hour, the subways are often full (and even above capacity by North American standards) and so you have to wait two-three minutes for the next train, or the train after, to get a spot. Trains are also slower at each station due to longer unloading/loading times. Total trip time during rush hour is more like 40 minutes.



Commute from the northeast part of the 8th arrondissement to the southeast part of the 16th arrondissement.

All offices are stand-alone rooms, with division heads (i.e. a director) and section heads (i.e. a manager) having their own office. Rooms appear to be shared between two senior analysts, three intermediate analysts, or four intermediate and junior analysts, although I did see one larger room fitting 20 people (more like a Workspace 2.0 setup). I share my office with a very friendly Dutch statistician named Jorrit (pronounced YOR-it). The great feature about the Delta Annex is that all rooms have a window, either facing outside (the ones facing east and south having a view of the Seine) or facing inside to a well lit interior courtyard. Another great feature is that their coffee shop sells baguette-style sandwiches for under 4 Euros! (Hey, I need something similar to Subway.)

My desk, with a good old Nortel phone for my land line.

View of my office facing inward from the window.

View of my office facing outward from the door.

The inner courtyard at the Delta Annex. There is a glass ceiling above and a bank of glass elevators on the left.

My office has a small area that juts out from the rest of building, almost like a solarium.
This provides a view of the Seine (sorry about the glare from the window).

I am in the Statistics Directorate, working with primarily statisticians and a few economists. Everyone is very friendly and professional. While everyone comes from a different OECD member country, most everyone follows Paris working hours: arrive between 9am-10am, take a long lunch, but then work until 6pm-7pm. This is similar to my hours at TBS anyway (except for the long lunch).

I've been touring a few other landmarks in Paris and am also planning my first trip to Germany. Updates to follow!