Christophe Delbos
Taiwan Alumni 2008
Current Location: France
My Family
I was married in 2005. My wife is Hungarian. She is currently studying a Ph-D in Marketing. It is rather challenging for her with our little baby boy demanding our attention and with a little girl arriving soon in end July. Our son, Maxence, is “made in Taiwan” and is two this year.
We are living in a nice house owned by my father which we are finishing to build. Painting walls, planting lawn and flowers, building fences are no longer a novelty for me. From my home, which is built on top of a hill, I have a view of the entire city and the surroundings, with fantastic sunsets.
I can say that my hometown is a perfect place to enjoy a quite and peaceful life but is not a good place for any alumni to find a job, unless they are working in the agricultural fields, which might actually become a hit with the world going green. Maybe in a few years time, there will be more job opportunities in the countryside for bio industry than in the large and industrial cities. I will let you know if it becomes so and will personally head-hunt and recruit all HSE EE alumni.
My Current Job
After my job as a military consultant in Taiwan, I went back to France in September 2007. I was assigned a job at the operational test and evaluation centre for the French air force, located in the south west part of France, in the town named Mont de Marsan.
It was a coincidence that the base is positioned only 85 kilometres away from my hometown. I decided to live in my hometown as it was only an hour away. It was also convenient to have my parents close to me to help look after 2 months old baby boy.
So after 20 years of living away from home, I am finally back. I don’t know for how long I’ll stay here as I plan to retire from the air force and move on to be a career either with an airliner company or an aeronautical company. My initial plan was to retire end 2008 which proved to be quite challenging with the global financial crisis. This made opportunities to find a good job in the aviation field very slim.
Well, I cannot complain as I have an interesting job – testing the new systems implemented on the Mirage 2000 and I am still enjoying a high quality of life. I am still flying and am looking to pursue a Ph-D about flight safety and cross-cultural issues. So if you come across a good instructor on such topics or about any companies that have pilots from many different nationalities (such as Singapore Airlines), feel free to let me know.
Mont de Marsan
The town I work in is situated in the middle of the largest forest in Europe. It is a very flat region that was once a swamp and was dried up during the French second empire in the 1850th. It was planted with pine tree to dry the land and to stop the problems of infectious diseases like malaria. It is now the main region in France for the production of wood, especially pine wood.
Based in this town is one of the largest air force bases in France, home of more than 3,000 military workers. The base is hosting a big chunk of the experts of the French air force working on subject ranging from the development of surface to air missiles to the testing of the new Dassault Rafale fighter, including also computer network safety, flight simulator development and testing, operational aeronautical medicine research, and a lot of other topics.
Nérac
As to my hometown, Nérac, it is a little town or almost a village in Asian standards, consisting of 7,000 inhabitants. It is a lovely and charming town surrounded by hills partly covered by forest and partly by cereals fields. The town dates back from the fourth century when the Romans settled here and created a village. It was however during the 16th century that the town was at its peak. The castle of the town was the place where the king of France, Henry the fourth, lived in during his childhood years. During that time, Nérac was a very famous place in France. France was then divided in two parts with the north part belonging to the catholic faith and the south west belonging to the protestant faith. The future king was confronted at a very young age to the struggle for power of two different parts of Christianity.
When in Nérac, he tried to reconcile the two religions with the help of the queen mother Catherine of Medicis (who had a very controversial role nevertheless). Some important peace treaties were signed in Nérac. For that matter, Catherine of Médicis, created “l’escadron Volant”, the flying squadron. This “squadron” was composed of pretty and friendly women who were tasked to provide the negotiators of both sides with relaxing moments so that they enter the negotiation in a better mood. It seemed that it worked pretty well as reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants was achieved, though painfully, during that era.
The town is now quite touristy, thanks to a large cultural inheritance with most of the downtown looking as it was centuries ago, with the river bank lovely decorated and full of restaurants and with a 2 km long park along the river in the centre of the city that date from the king’s time. It is also a harbour for those who rent boats to travel along the different rivers of the region. We also benefit from a pleasant climate, with warm (but not too hot) summers and mild winters. The Bordeaux wine area is only an hour away, not too close to drink everyday (fortunately for my liver), but not too far to be able to enjoy a good bottle of wine time to time. The visit of the wine cellars is a must if you come to the region. The Atlantic Ocean is also not too far (1½ hour away) for you to enjoy some surfing. In the winter, you can go skiing in the Pyrenees (2 hours drive). Most folks from Asia will be surprised by the emptiness (in terms of population) of the region or even several other places in France.
So if anyone should be tempted to come to my part of the world after reading this, I will be pleased to offer my services as a guide. My house can certainly host some guests. Just let me know, it will be my pleasure to introduce my culture to my fellow alumni!