7 Days Before I Put LA in My Rear View

This is part of a series of articles about the final days of preparing for moving to France and what happens when you get here, and those articles are part of a promotional series launching our new book, 29 Days to France, a book that all the writers wish they had had before we started our French adventures. It’s now available for preorder, and those preorders come with a free 15-minute Q&A personal session about your French immigration plans. Click here to learn more.

This is Vince’s final in a trilogy of articles counting down his move to France from Los Angeles. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here.

A professional film set requires a period before the actual shooting called pre-production. Prep for short, it involves not only the glamorous departments like camera or costumes to be primed for the demands of the film shoot, but equally, the mundane tasks like organizing payroll and the on-set office supplies.

As a 1st Assistant Director, my prep starts with breaking down the script by scenes and their associated departmental elements and parsing them out for all the allotted shoot days. I present a rough plan in a company-wide meeting, after which I continue to revise the plan, gathering as much information through departmental meetings…all working toward an ideal plan of attack.

I also analyze contingencies, as there will always be surprises, for instance when the shark didn’t work in Jaws or when Tarantino deviates from the script with a sudden idea not scheduled for work that day.

The secret to successful film production — content value notwithstanding — is good prep. Being prepared for 85% of the possible scenarios of that shoot is good prep for me.

A week before principal photography, prep exponentially accelerates. The screws get tighter. The work days start earlier. They become even longer. People’s true colors surface as pressure to make the creatives happy begins to build.

There’s a lot of hurry up and wait for new information to come in, but in between, there are intermittent smoke-break-sized moments of calm. It never feels totally tranquil, because taking your foot off the gas exposes you to moments in which something falls through the cracks. When I am distracted by my personal issues I’m more susceptible to sloppy decision-making.

Prepping Paris

I was approaching the move like prepping a film. Gathering information, making a plan, gathering different information, listening to the specialists about various aspects of the move, being surprised by new discoveries and bad intel, dealing with incompetence but also the serendipity of having nice people help me along — also being distracted by my own personal life — causing me to make questionable decisions at times. It was madness. Some of it in my own head.

A French Dress Rehearsal in Hollywood

Of course, as I do, I put yet even more on my plate and that sets me back even further, timewise. In the first week of November, at Paris minus 14 days, I shoehorned a week-long French Film Festival called COLCOA (City of Lights — City of Angels) held at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) headquarters. I had too much on my plate, bien sûr, but French films, French film community, French people for a whole week? I surmised that investing time for COLCOA might very well give me the head-start for Paris that would make Phase 2 a little easier. Besides, DGA headquarters was the epicenter of my long film career. At the very least, it deserved a proper farewell.

I saw a few French films such as Eiffel, ate some fromage with Sancerre and of course, had some café allongé and beignets. I even tried out my French with Nicolas Maury (Hervé on the Netflix comedy Dix Pour Cent, called Call My Agent in America) who was at COLCOA for a movie he directed. I asked him a question in French about his directing approach and he was kind enough to suffer through my French, but sensing he was in a bit of a rush, I panicked and reverted to English…but in a French accent. With my good friend Antoine as a guide to things French, COLCOA was absolutely the perfect full-dress Paris rehearsal — a perfect way to say goodbye to Hollywood and bonjour to Paris in the building that has been in my professional life for over two decades.

P-6: One Week Left Before My Flight to Paris

It was now seven days before Paris Day: P-Day. That made today P-6 (six working days left to prep). I was feeling on edge as I typically do in the last week of prep on any show, except in this show, I didn’t have a team. I had my cat Maddey, my French friends overseas, and expats on Facebook casually passing on advice.

The following big-ticket items remained on the board:

shoving my entire life in five boxes
storing, selling, giving, or throwing away what didn’t make the cut for Paris
getting Maddey’s USDA certificate and prepping her for the twelve-hour flight
continuing my L.A. Goodbye Tour
reconciling domestic accounts.

Simultaneously, I was still maintaining my normal life: writing projects, creative coaching sessions with clients, and training for future tennis tournaments. Overstretched on multiple fronts, I was struggling to keep all the plates spinning on my fingers while wrestling with the emotions of leaving my hometown, the anxiety of moving to a new one, and the grief of both losing my mom earlier this year and breaking up with Sarah who was, just three months prior, the other half of our to-be-determined Paris dream. As such, I was losing control over all the systems that were orchestrating and executing my Paris move.

It wasn’t a type of control in wanting everything my way or seeking elusive perfection. At my college gymnastics meets, I fell off the pommel horse a lot, so I am not one who is accustomed to any notion of perfection. But I am accustomed to pursuing high standards. I orchestrated the McDreamy car crash in Grey’s Anatomy. I was a tank platoon leader managing four M1-A1 tanks and sixteen men. I threw a double-back somersault with a full-twist on-the-floor exercise event. In fact, what I was feeling was less about control and more about the conscientiousness needed to maximize my odds of a successful fresh start.

I have big dreams for myself in Paris and unfortunately, I’m not Emily in Paris where it all goes swimmingly. As a man with a Filipino upbringing, I’m not quite the typical American in Paris, n’est-ce pas? I was bracing to face many hardships.

Jumping right into the poorly-built program I mentioned in my piece being 90 days out was a result of not being in control. If I had been in control, I would’ve seen the hundreds of complaints about the owner of this program who was such a polarizing figure that an entire Facebook group was created from the cascade of people who left her page. Her Facebook page was called Americans in France. The breakaway group was called Americans in France: The Open and Kind Group. How could I have missed this blatant clue? In my right mind, I would’ve have seen that train wreck a mile away and instead found TAIP and other non-scammy resources much earlier in the planning process, resources that show a genuine exuberance and passion for helping Americans settle in France. Instead, I dumped a chunk of money I could have used for essentials I needed to flourish in one of the more expensive cities in the world. I got sloppy.

I couldn’t — cannot — afford to be sloppy. With so many moving pieces to manage for a successful life in Paris, a few potential situations relative to scarcity can bite me in the butt and have me back on a plane to the States if I don’t ground myself and take better control of my chessboard.

It wasn’t until now, seven days before Paris, that I was starting to get more locked in. I was well aware I’d only be crossing the finish line for Phase 1. Once I’d get to Paris, Phase 2 would commence and be more intense than Phase 1.

Phase 2 had been lurking in the back of my mind; after all, Paris wasn’t a vacation. I was going to live there, which meant mundane tasks such as validating my visa in France, registering my coaching business in the French system, establishing a bank account, acquiring a carte vitale (for health insurance), getting a French phone number, and perhaps most importantly, generating revenue — getting my coaching business back up and running with my American clients. Just as important for my well-being, I would need to get back to a regular tennis training schedule.

I was probably struggling through a post-project depression after running on adrenaline (and fumes) to obtain my profession libérale visa a few weeks ago. That entire ordeal was intense.

I was still raw from unpredictable emotions triggered by who knows what. I’d be driving on the 405 Freeway, for example, listening to a song lyric like guard your innocence from hallucination, and I’d lose it, driving in the fast lane at 75 mph, tears gushing down my face, because I was cathartically relieved that Paris was finally in my sights, or I’d be missing Sarah, or I was pondering the complexity of my relationship with my mom and her final six months. After fifteen minutes of a good cry, I’d wipe my eyes like nothing happened.

I knew I needed a long break to recharge but at P-6, just like in last week of prep to make a movie, I was burning the candle at both ends to keep up.

Getting Maddey Ready for Paris

For weeks I was jarred awake by nightmares in which my cat Maddey wasn’t being allowed into France by a nonplussed Inspector Clouseau-like customs officer. Another nightmare entailed Maddey slipping out of my grasp while carrying her through the metal detector, zipping toward the far end of the terminal, and disappearing, which causes me to miss my flight, as if it was the last one ever for Paris.

Early Tuesday morning, I took Maddey to the veterinarian to begin the health certificate process. Thanks to heads-up advice from an expat named Jena, I saved invaluable time, which I needed because only three business days remained for the USDA to receive the certificate from the vet, endorse it, then send me the physical copy. As I would not be able to get Maddey on the plane without it, I was nervous. I called and e-mailed the L.A. office multiple times in the next two days to obtain updates, to no avail.

Packing My Life in Five Boxes

I started weeks ago by casually making piles of things I was bringing to Paris but reducing my life to five containers felt so daunting that I kept putting it off. Because I didn’t want to manage too many pieces of luggage at the airports on both ends AND look after Maddey, I paid $450 for a shipping service called Send My Bag to pick up and ship 3 16x16x16 boxes. I stayed up until 4:00 AM to finish packing the boxes in time for their pickup the next morning.

I had read stories about how Send My Bag might not show up on the arranged pick-up day (I planned for this scenario by allowing a buffer of a few days) or that the boxes might get held up at customs for reasons like packing too many items with lithium batteries (TSA only permitted one), or getting stopped over prescription bottles (forbidden), or tearing or breaking in transit, or getting delivered at the wrong place. “Just follow the instructions to the T, and it will be fine,” an expat on Facebook told me.

Even so, I also learned that Send My Bag was just the middleman. FedEx, who had recently traumatized me in delivering my visa, was actually picking up my boxes. I went into crisis prevention mode, only sleeping four hours that night to visualize possible not-so-ideal scenarios and devising more contingency plans. As such, I didn’t pack anything in the boxes that I’d need to access within seven days after my arrival.

P-5

Sleep-deprived, I put the boxes outside the gate of my townhouse (the gate phone didn’t work) with a big sign for FedEx to call me because I wanted to make sure I handed the driver the paperwork as per the instructions. The driver didn’t call; he just took the boxes and went on his way. If I hadn’t left out the boxes, the driver would have reported that I wasn’t available for pickup. As in the case of my visa, FedEx was up to no good once again and yet again, I had to stay ahead of them.

My beloved U2 books, favorite spatula, 1988 Dodger jersey, microphone, ten pairs of shoes, blender, and label maker were heading to Paris which genuinely meant that the move was truly happening.

Later that day, Sarah texted me. I hadn’t heard from her for months, but she broke radio silence because she felt weird about not saying goodbye. It was a sweet text, and, another reminder that Paris was becoming real. I pleaded for one last in-person goodbye, but she didn’t respond. I was a wreck.

P-4

Sarah sent me a video on the Marco Polo app telling me that a sixty-second video was the best she could do. Experiencing her face and voice brought me to tears. I sent back a long Marco Polo, pleading to see her. She told me she had worked hard to get over me and it would be a massive setback to see me in person. She reinstated her radio silence.

I shut down for a couple of hours, until I was jarred out of my stupor, having just remembered that Maddey’s certificate still hadn’t yet arrived with only one more business day remaining to receive it before my flight.

I called the main USDA office in Sacramento, expecting more indifference. To my surprise, someone picked up. After patiently listening to a five-minute plea, desperate for the certificate before my flight on Tuesday, she said to me, “Are you Vince?”

“YES!” I said.

“I’m filling it out right now. It’ll go out to FedEx today and you should be getting it by Monday.” A sighed a deep exhale of relief, but still, Monday was cutting it too close — I was flying out Tuesday morning. The next most important document besides my visa would be arriving on the last possible day with my favorite shipping company, Federal Express? It was an exercise in extreme patience.

I went to tennis practice later for a bit of release but as it was my last day at Silva Tennis Academy with my young teammates, I cried as I said goodbye to them. Training with them for the past year, I rediscovered the passion to go for big dreams again the way a teenager goes for dreams, and now that this special time was over, I continued to cry the entire forty-minute drive home.

That night, with all the mishigas of the last few days, I went on a bit of a bender. Beaucoup sake and gin and tonics were consumed deep into the night. Part release, part celebration of my last days in America.

P-3

At a tennis match the next morning, I received a text:

“Hey man, I have your wallet. It was in the gutter and I saw it as I was getting in the Uber.”

This was the sort of thing that I was afraid of — getting derailed by the small stuff. I was grateful — and quite lucky — for the kindness of strangers.

P-2

I threw a Celebration of Life gathering in which friends from various parts of my life came to see me off; solid proof that one should have their Celebration of Life when alive, not at their funeral.

P-1

Monday was the last day before my flight. I waited outside the gated fence at 9 am for the FedEx driver with Ruthie, my childhood pal, hours I actually needed to finish packing my suitcases; but I was not going to let FedEx screw things up. By 11:30 am, the driver arrived with Maddey’s endorsed certificate, and voila, I had everything I needed for Paris. I could finally let my guard down a bit.

That night, I took Maddey to the actual airline terminal for her final rehearsal and asked the information desk clerk where the nearest pet rest area was located; he hadn’t a clue it existed. I anticipated that. Searching for the rest area on the actual travel day for her to do her business just hours before we hopped on the plane would’ve thrown things off track. This is what scouts and rehearsals are for: minimizing surprises.

I took Maddey out of her carrier and cradled her in my arms to see how she might react. This was a full-dress rehearsal — she was wearing the harness and leash just like she would on the day. She didn’t squirm, didn’t seem on edge. She was calm, quiet, and pensive and so was I. We were 100% ready for Paris.

Prep was officially over. P-Day was upon us in less than ten hours. I didn’t get to tie all my loose ends, but overall, it was a good prep. I achieved about 85% on my checklist. Maddey and I were both sad we didn’t say goodbye to Sarah in person, but I had a feeling that the door wasn’t closed forever.

I took my last Los Angeles hours to spend time with my 95-year-old grandma. We sat in relative silence. She can’t speak English. I can’t speak Filipino. Reflecting on her life, I was sad for her. She had never had any romantic love since I had known her and she had been acrimonious with my mom — her daughter — up until mom suffered her stroke. Grandma didn’t get to say goodbye to her, same as me. I never really got to know my grandma and I wanted to ask questions about her. But there was no more time. I hugged her tightly and told her I loved her. She knew those words. I sighed. I accepted that I might never see her again.

Paris Day

A friend told me, “You can come back. It’s not like you’re leaving forever.”

Anything’s possible. I don’t see myself coming back to the States for a long, long time. Paris is the grand experiment for me to stay on my authentic path and pursue the big audacious dreams of expressing my authentic voice toward something meaningful. Paris is going to be my home now and its joie de vivre is the butterfly moment I vowed to experience more often since I tried to die. If I cultivate the right support community and don’t get in my own way, my Paris story could be everything I want it to be.

Photo of my garage fifteen days before having to ship my life in five boxes.

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30 Days Out: “Are You Excited About Paris Yet?”

Posted by Vince Duqué

You can find Vince’s first article in this series, when he was three months out from a move, here.

“Are you excited about Paris yet?”

It’s an innocent enough question.

I’m pacing around my room while on the phone with my friend Anne: “Nope. Not excited one bit. Paris isn’t real until the visa is real,” I deadpan. It is October 7, and I think I’m unofficially five weeks out from my Paris move. I’m still not fully confident I’m actually going to Paris, actually. I haven’t heard news about my visa since I submitted the application back two weeks ago.

I hope Anne didn’t take my answer as a snarky one. 52-year-old me was trying to be like water and quell the anxiety generated last week by my inner child — the eight-year-old version of me — who had been having a series of micro-meltdowns, worried that my visa application was anything but “foolproof,” even though I bleeping spent 1,900 € to make it so. I was still a bit raw from my mom’s passing and the end of my relationship with Sarah, as well as all the purging and the anticipation of all the major changes.

“It’s going to happen,” she assures me. I say nothing. I know she means well. “Why do you think you’ll have an issue?” she asks. I tell her what happened at my visa application appointment.

Flashback to September 27, the visa appointment at the VFS office.

The young clerk at the VFS office (the third-party company designated to pre-process the applications on their way to the French Consulate in Washington D.C) reviews my application and notes that it is incomplete but that she’d send the application anyway, as-is. “Wait, why are you writing that?” I plead.

“It says here on the checklist that since you are starting a business you need these documents, and you don’t have them.”

“I’m not starting a conventional business in Paris,” I say, “so, I don’t need a copy of a commercial lease agreement or proof of a credit balance from an account.” She takes a few moments to process this, but I can tell by her fidgeting that this situation is deviating from her script. This was probably above her pay grade to solve problems any more than a drive-thru clerk taking orders at a fast-food joint where you can’t have it your way. I give her a curious look that means, “Surely, you’ve dealt with other Profession Libérale visa applications in the past.”

“Since you don’t have the paperwork — even if you say you don’t need them — I can’t cross this off the checklist on the computer, so it won’t show that the application is complete,” she says. “So for me to send the application, I need to write a note.”

I want to pull the good ol’ American I’d like to speak to your supervisor, please, but I don’t want the VFS office to spit in my soup and sabotage my chances for approval. I bite my tongue instead, and tell eight-year-old me, “we’re going to have to trust the process.”

“But I walked out of the office with a massive knot in my stomach, ” I told Anne.

“It’s gonna be great,” she reassures me. I roll my eyes, when I notice an email that just popped up in my inbox, entitled: MISSING DOCUMENTS. It’s from the French Consulate.

“I gotta go.” I hang up the phone. My stomach is in knots again.

I close my eyes, take three deep breaths to keep me from going nuclear, and then open the e-mail.

Please provide the following documents in order to complete processing for your visa application:

– Your last 3 months’ bank statements showing your full name and enough funds to pay for your trip and expenses

– Proof of income related to your business activity in France (letter containing draft work contract with remuneration indicated)

– A housing lease or your host’s property deed

Please carefully read the following instructions on how to respond to this email:

– Please scan these documents directly back to this e-mail address in the next 7 days. Send them all in one email.

– Do not send the documents you already provided at your VFS appointment. We have already reviewed those and have deemed them to be insufficient or inadequate. If you send the same documents again, your visa will likely be denied.

– Only send your documents once and please refrain from writing to inquire if we received your documents. Too many e-mails received disrupt the organization of the visa department and result in longer processing times for applications.

Imagining being spoken by a French bureaucrat, I read the e-mail trying not to be annoyed by the surface politeness disguising the indifference, rigidity, vagueness, and trickiness, all of which French bureaucracy was infamous for. Too late.

“Nooooo!” I scream up to the sky. “I paid two grand for a service to deal with this! And now I have seven days to get the right docs!”

I’m livid. I leave the house for some air. I passed by my 95-year-old grandma in the living room reminding myself that I had yet to tell her I was leaving for Paris.

Why was I so incensed? Before I submitted the application back in September, I scheduled a one-hour consultation call with Franceformation to review my application, but in the actual call, she didn’t review or comment on any of the other parts of my visa application except for the business plan. The entire reason I paid her the exorbitant fee sight unseen was for her allegedly expert eyes to ensure my entire application was foolproof from top to bottom, not just the business plan. I emailed her a message expressing my concern. This was her response:

“Your supporting documents are fine. Your business plan needs some serious work if you would like it to be accepted in a visa application. I would strongly advise against submitting it without taking into account many of the recommendations I made on our call. Please note that the guarantee included with your package is that I would help you revise and review your visa application again if it does not get approved the first time (this has never happened to any of my clients who followed the Complete French Business Incubator process). If you do not take into account any of my recommendations prior to submitting your application, I will not be providing additional feedback if it is rejected.”

As you can see by the Consulate’s e-mail above, they approved my business plan, which to be clear, I revised on the astute suggestions of expats from Facebook and other friends with expert knowledge, NOT incorporating any of Franceformation’s notes, which were similar in tone and expertise to the kind of advice my father gave me as a 13-year-old regarding how to throw a fastball, having only read a library book called The Official Little League Way to Play Baseball and watched baseball on TV but had never actually played baseball, because well, they didn’t have baseball in the Philippines when he was a kid.

Note that Franceformation stated my “supporting documents are fine,” yet based on the Consulate’s email of my MISSING DOCUMENTS, my supporting documents were clearly NOT fine. Even if she was willing to provide additional feedback, based on every single interaction I had with her, odds were quite high that she was not going to put the work into my documents besides insisting that her advice was correct, which she was/is infamous for doing on her Facebook group, where, whenever comments go off script, they get deleted.

Thanks to the generosity and experiences of the expats on the Facebook group pages and the TAIP Facebook community, I was able to decipher the Consulate’s requests. My landlord didn’t have immediate access to the property deed, so I sent copies of her electric bill and property tax documentation instead. As far as proof of income, I whipped up contracts with my current clients.

Because I wasn’t confident they would get the stamp of approval, however, until my visa was in my hand, my brain simply would not commit to expending concentrated energy on the move. Even being only five weeks out, I put off my Paris to-do list and allocated most of my time either continuing my Goodbye L.A. tour or being a Dodger fan watching every inning of their playoff games either on TV or watching games at Dodger Stadium until they finally lost in the National League Championship Series, which I secretly hoped would happen, because Dodger baseball alone ate up at least sixty hours. I spent sixty hours training tennis at Silva Tennis Academy as well.

Every day, I’d spend hours checking my email and social media accounts for signs of my ex-girlfriend Sarah, hoping that she’d get in touch with me to see each other before leaving for Paris. It was horribly co-dependent of me, but that’s what it was.

Live music ate up another sixty hours, because with all the deaths, Covid, and purging that had happened this year, live music was my religion. In addition to a series of local acts at the Hotel Café, I saw Pearl Jam and the Lumineers a few weeks ago and saw Wilco twice in October. The lyrics from “Shot in the Arm,” Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm, and What you once were isn’t what you want to be anymore… totally encapsulated why I was moving to Paris. I played that song every day on repeat as I waited for my visa…

Two Weeks Later, the Biggest E-mail of My Life

The consulate sent me an e-mail merely notifying me that a FedEx package was on its way to me. They didn’t indicate whether my application was approved.

No matter. The most important FedEx package of my life containing the prospects for my future is due to arrive in my lap in less than three hours. I’ve cleared my entire schedule for the day to be home to sign for the package. After a couple of hours go by, I receive a text that FedEx tried to deliver the package, but I was not home, and they would attempt a second delivery the following day. Actually, I am home, but they didn’t bother to call. I want to scream.

What occurs next is a series of tragically comedic events in which I talk to three different customer service representatives for over five cumulative hours — all outsourced to call centers in other countries merely reading a script — to directly manage the delivery. I don’t trust their delivery process. The next morning, I drive fifteen miles to the FedEx facility.

Finally, the moment of truth is in my hand. It is anti-climactic, really, this nondescript FedEx envelope that held the promise of the rest of my life. I rip open the envelope. There’s nothing inside except my original passport. I brace myself for rejection and get ready to tell my inner child a narrative that the Universe is telling us it isn’t yet our time for Paris, then get my assistant director part of my brain to get past the disappointment quickly in order to plan for potential scenarios. I open the passport…and there it is, my profession libérale visa. I break into tears of relief and joy. It’s happening. I’m finally going to Paris. I am officially thirty days out.

I call Anne back. “Okay, now I’m excited.” “But just a little,” I added.

After I got my visa, urgency was everything. I booked my flight for November 16, four weeks from that moment. I secured a place for my cat Maddey on the plane. I confirmed my Airbnb reservations. I reviewed the procedures to obtain Maddey’s health certificate. I finally took the new suitcase I bought months ago out of the shipping box and laid it out with my two other suitcases.

Twenty days before my November 16th flight, my grandma was in the kitchen eating a Filipino dish of cow liver and rice when I finally told her I was moving to Paris. “Huh? Where are you going?” she asked in her shrill, Filipina from the poor province-laden accent. Her hearing was severely diminished, and she was too stubborn to wear a hearing aid.

“Paris,” I said.

“Where?”

“Paris.”

“Where?”

“France.”

“Frince?”

“France.”

“Frunce?”

“FRANCE.”

“Oh. France. That’s far.”

“Yes it is.”

“How long you going?”

“I’m not sure. A long time, probably.”

“Three months?”

“Probably longer.”

“Oh, so you don’t stay here anymore?”

“No, grandma.”

She started laughing. “Oh, maybe you stay there for a year!” More laughing. I wasn’t sure why she found all of this funny, but I said, “Yes, grandma, for a year.” And with that, she went back to the TV and started flipping channels. In retrospect, I don’t think she knew how to process the news that I was leaving. She was incapable of processing with nuance. At least outwardly.

After my mom’s stroke this year and enduring the trauma of not being given the chance to reconcile my relationship with her, I moved in with my grandma as a sentimental gesture to connect and say farewell after I was forced to leave the home Sarah and I made together. Grandma is 95 years old, and she just isn’t moving well anymore. We have cousins and aunts who will look after her, but I’m the grandchild of two closest to her. My sister lives two hours south in San Diego but she has her hands full. Besides, my grandma doesn’t trust my sister after the way she handled the responsibility as the executor of the power of attorney over my mom’s affairs. I feel horrible that I’m leaving grandma for Paris, but every day I’m here, I’m losing more of my sanity, and I simply need to leave if I’m going to stay alive. Not kidding. I gave her a hug, she hugged me back, and as my emotions started to stir and make me feel raw again, I disappeared into the garage with my nose back to the grindstone and turned on a little Wilco to get me through a tedious night of deciding what was going to make it into the five pieces of luggage that would be my Paris life.

Photo: A day in South Pasadena where everything was fine, and then a moment came when I felt like maybe Paris wasn’t in the cards.

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90 Days Out From Leaving Los Angeles for Paris

Posted by Vince Duqué

This is part of a series of articles about the final days of preparing for moving to France and what happens when you get here. This is the first of two promotional series launching our new book, 29 Days to France, a book that all the writers wish they had had before we started our French adventures. It’s now available for preorder, and those preorders come with a free 15-minute Q&A personal session about your French immigration plans. Click here to learn more.

Vince was someone I met first as a visa consulting client who has come to be a friend and now, writer for TAIP. You will find he takes our blog in a more personal direction than we may have previously gone here, and I think that’s a good thing, and a sign of more to come, not just from Vince, but from all of us. -SH

I’d been considering a move from Los Angeles to Paris since Autumn 2016, but through the years, I got sidetracked by one thing or another. Still, it was a fifty-plus year odyssey, all somehow interconnected to finally get to this point…

The Origin Story

I was born in Flushing, New York, in 1969. My heritage is Filipino but for years, I regarded that as a technicality that burdened my existence. I was the stereotypical red, white, and blue American kid, engrossed in girls, sports, video games, movies, and American pop music. I even went to West Point for college for an intense immersion into historic American leadership and subsequently served in the Army for a short stint, until I settled into Hollywood as an assistant director, running film sets, overseeing the logistical planning and execution of making movies and TV series.

Meritocracy was my religion. I was deeply convinced that passion and dedication would result in the realization of my American dreams as advertised; that my brown skin and ethnicity would be non-factors.

All my life, while I had glimpses into accomplishing my dreams — what I affectionately called chasing greatness — I’d find a way to sabotage those dreams, whether it was by pushing the rules of the system, chasing love, not completing personal projects, alienating people by pushing them too hard, or perhaps, innocently making an impish comment at the wrong time for a cheap laugh.

Especially compared to my contemporaries, I felt like a failure. Was my own brain and growing up Filipino the hindrance to myself?

Since I was ten, whether through friends, sports coaches, therapists, psychiatrists, or life/career coaches, I looked to outside sources for support to fill the gaps in my manhood whether it be gathering knowledge, repairing my behavioral flaws, or improving my emotional intelligence.

My family didn’t nurture me. My dad was more interested in horse racing and not feeling emasculated while my mother and sister were more inclined to let Jesus take the wheel than solve complex problems or learn the intricacies of the human condition.

In 2012 I felt I was headed on a path of mediocrity. I plummeted into depression. Rather than have anyone be sucked down into my darkness, it was easier for all parties concerned that I isolate myself to fight my fight, which included breaking up with my fiancée Julia in April 2016. I often thought of suiciding to relieve the pain — for me and my loved ones.

Katia, an old friend from Paris who was vacationing in L.A. with her family, invited me over their Malibu Airbnb for an evening soirée. I was still in my own mental quarantine, but I dragged myself out because anything can happen when Katia is involved. We were drinking a nice Bordeaux when she casually mentioned, “My Paris apartment is opening up in July. Might you know anyone interested in a short-term or long-term rental?”

“Who among my friends might be interested, able, and daring enough to live in Paris for three months?” I pondered. Then, my eyes got big….and on a whim, I said:

“I’ll take it.”

Ici c’est Paris

From July through September 2016, I lived on the east side of Paris, in the 20th Arrondissement, surrounded by an eclectic culture of hipster Parisiens and immigrants from various North African countries, including Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. American tourists weren’t generally coming to the 20ème, so I became a local quite quickly. I spoke French as much as possible, forcing myself not to be subconscious about making mistakes.

By the kindness of existing friends and strangers who became close friends, I experienced a bonafide joie de vivre — a pure joy for life — in all of Paris’ distinct neighborhoods.

Dikran, a Lebanese-Armenian immigrant who spoke five languages, walked me all over Madeleine through Strasbourg Saint-Denis. Andrea and I darted through the streets of Montmartre down to Opéra on his scooter. Alex led me deep into the rabbit holes of the Pigalle nightlife. I picnicked with Nico and Solène at Jardin du Luxembourg, where everywhere in the garden, I saw pockets of genuine community. I played tennis with Thomas in the terre battue of the courts in Montreuil. At Closerie des Lilas, I enjoyed some Sancerre with Hemingway’s ghost where he told me, “Take the time to fall into whatever cracks and crevices happen in front of you and see how it changes your work.” The Cinémathèque Française in Bercy rekindled my love for French cinema, inspiring me to seek artists interested in making daring and genuinely personal kind of stuff, not the types seeking fame or Hollywood significance, like I was surrounded by in Los Angeles. I even directed a short film about love in Paris as an experiment to express my authentic voice.

I acquired a love for getting lost. As someone whose life’s work relied on efficiency and execution, taking the wrong path steered me to discover little gems such as the gorgeous doors in Le Marais or the intimate bar Le Lapis in the 2ème.

I learned the essence of c’est la vie. It was not, how we Americans view this cliché: “Welp, that’s life, I guess I have to suck it up,” shrugging our shoulders to tolerate the misery, but rather, “This is life. Even walking up seven flights of stairs every day is part of it,” with the point punctuated by inhaling a cigarette and a sip of wine.

As music is my church, in two subsequent 2018 Paris trips for concerts by U2, Arcade Fire, and Ben Harper, I was captivated by the Parisiens’ love for music, an energy that vibrated higher than at L.A. concerts.

After my initial 2016 trip, L.A. was exponentially becoming less my close-knit hometown, mutating more into an unrecognizable sprawl of people elbowing each other to snatch higher stations in life; confused with what to do, what to wear, where to be, how to be, and who to know. All of it was a monolith of noise. I yearned for the soul of Paris. Permanently.

Moving to another continent, however, felt intimidating. How does an American even legally immigrate to France? What could I do for work? Could I get a bank account without being fluent in French? Could I play tennis in the winter? What about my cat Maddey? Daunted, I returned to my regularly scheduled programming until answers emerged. The years flew by.

A few notable events shaped my path between Paris 2016 and August 2021: I suffered a two-hour mini-stroke in 2017; I discovered my true personality (INFJ) from the Myers-Briggs test; I worked on a few more meaningless TV shows, one of which prompted me, a day before my 50th birthday, to attempt suicide. (I wasn’t successful.) Upon the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, I came to the realization as a Filipino-American, that I had been drinking the kool-aid of the American Dream my whole life. A sublime butterfly moment in Costa Rica (which I’ll talk about in a future article) jolted me into making the resolution to move to Paris by the end of 2020.

Plot Twists in a Time of Love and Covid

But when February 2020 began, a long-forgotten crush named Sarah found me and we quickly fell in love. Paris took a back seat again, because while she loved the idea of moving to Paris with me, she had never traveled outside of the United States; knowing how tough Paris could be for an American, I thought we’d start with Sarah’s first Paris trip to see how they would get along.

Then we went into lockdown. Paris was canceled indefinitely. Not all was lost, however; the global pause allowed me to develop my coaching practice, Stay on Your Path, which became the solution to making money in Paris. I spent all of 2020 beta-testing my program while Sarah and I waited for the pandemic to subside.

Meanwhile, I intended to reconcile my estranged relationship with my 75-year-old mom but in January of 2021, a massive stroke got to her before I did. She was immediately rendered unresponsive, and I painfully watched her lie in bed for months, barely human, until her passing in July. I was deeply traumatized by how things ended between us, that for much of 2021, I was not my best self.

In April 2021, Sarah broke up with me. I precipitated the situation with some asinine behavior, but in connecting those dots with other selective dots about our relationship on a global level (not incorporating dots that were integral to my narrative), she was done. I reacted with venom, spurred by my abandonment issues, which were already triggered in full tilt by mom’s stroke.

It was a tumultuous first half of 2021…but this unfortunate series of events became the catalyst that reignited my Paris dream into reality. I started to draft a plan…

Paris, I Am Finally Coming

Fully aware that any Paris flat would be a third smaller than a two-car parking garage, I planned to compress my 52-year-old life into five medium-sized boxes. But out of five decades worth of stuff — books, files, photos, memorabilia, a massive comic book collection, DVDs, CDs, clothes, and such — what would make the cut?

I hired an organizer to help me purge. I held yard sales and online sales which were part revenue-generating, part pop-up museum, part exorcism, part wake, and celebration of life. The stories behind every item unpredictably triggered me and cathartically so.

An acquaintance named Jimmy showed up at one of the yard sales and introduced me to a book called Foolproof Visas, serendipitously facilitating the next tangible step in my Paris move.

Francemortified

I assumed from old wives’ tales and past experiences dealing with French bureaucracy that getting my French visa would be out-of-reach complicated. Cajoled by Foolproof Visas and the marketing campaign about the author’s online course called Franceformation, and also assured that her approach to prepare my application was virtually guaranteed, (no way was I staying in America for another three to six months to re-start the process), in June, I signed up on the spot and sent her 1900 €.

I found her program courses crude and confusing. Seeking clarification was difficult to come by. I’d soon discover that there were many before me who had similar experiences.

Lacking confidence in her intel’s accuracy, I had to fight through my disdain for doing mundane research and forced myself to obsessively peruse the internet as well as post questions on the Facebook expat pages; these were all things that I had wanted to avoid by purchasing her program. An expat named Virginia led me to TAIP, where the blog entries not only proved incredibly valuable, but the information was FREE.

In July, I made the leap and secured a visa appointment to submit my paperwork for a profession libérale visa. I wanted a September 24 appointment, but December 7th was the only date available, so, all logistics considered, I earmarked the end of January 2022 for my flight to Paris, which was six months out.

Forced into action, I set out to pursue the myriad of required documents. I spent hours writing a business plan for my coaching practice complete with modest projections and a SWOT analysis. I sought proof that I had potential sources of income in France. I obtained a background check from the FBI to verify my clean record. I obtained travel insurance. The whole process was anxiety-inducing.

Not only was I paranoid that I was handling it all wrong, I was also nursing a broken heart, and having already postponed my dream for a year and a half, six more months rotting in L.A. felt like an eternity.

I was, in fact, still emotionally and mentally unsettled about leaving. I was reluctant to release myself from secure (and hard-earned) opportunities of the present in exchange for vague (and uncertain) opportunities of the future, particularly as a fifty-two-year-old, brown-skinned Filipino-American male plunging long-term into a new culture with its own rules and language. Money was a serious concern in particular, having weaned myself from the film business to focus on my fledgling coaching practice.

To add to my endless checklist, I also needed to get my cat Maddey to Paris. An EU-compliant chip and a current rabies certificate were required as part of the USDA requirements of Maddey’s health certificate, the validity of which was tied to a ten-day window within my actual flight, the date of which was tied to the approval of my visa, the date of which was tied to both my appointment and to the whims of the French Consulate.

I started doing mock run-throughs with Maddey in my car to prepare her for a long twenty-hour day in her carrier and her first-ever plane flight.

With six months to go, I started my Goodbye L.A. Tour, meeting old friends while simultaneously paying homage to my favorite L.A. haunts while introducing them to my French homie Antoine, a Parisien who recently moved to Los Angeles from Paris (via Shanghai). Antoine would rapid-fire French at me, giving me moments of oh merde, it’s serious now.

I crammed in as much French as possible, anxious that I wasn’t acquiring French fast enough to be capable of deftly handling the French administration upon arrival. I read L’Equipe and Slate.fr articles; I’d listen to a podcast called Little Talk in Slow French and watched Dix Pour Cent episodes in French subtitles to refine my listening and pronunciation skills.

A month after booking my initial appointment, I checked the VFS site again to see if more dates were available, and voila, September 24 was possible!

It was time to batten down the hatches. Instead of four months, I now had only a month to assemble all my documents before my visa appointment, and, assuming my visa would be approved, only two more months to tie every single loose end before my new life – my authentic path – would finally begin. I was already feeling quite raw, and now, an emotionally and logistically tumultuous period loomed ahead as Paris was becoming very real.

Photo was of me and my mother on Mother’s Day 2021.