🙋‍♂️😊 Interview with Billa 🚗🏄‍♂️

Good afternoon to everyone here ! So as to answer to this nice Yue : well my beloved Judith is still on Penpal but she is not very active and she is only looking for Italian and Latin speaking Penpal members and I thank very much Penpal and the persons who built this App and gave me the opportunity to meet such a lovely person for me !

I used to have a tourism visa when I lived in San Franscisco down town and in Half Moon Bay ( San Francisco Bay Area 19 kms south down town ) and I used to be welcomed by family and locals there and well I used to study and work a little bit and I made also a lot of tourism and bodyboarding in the same time ( I even bought a Morey Boogie mach 10 10 Mike Stewart bodyboard that I still have ! )

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Merci beaucoup François @Billa!! 🙏🙏 That you found your wife Judith on PPG is maybe one of the most romantic things EVER on PPG!!! I also know of one other PPG couple! 🥰🥰❤️ But now I am super curious because I think maybe there are more!! 😊😊😊 In any case you and Judith are PROOF that sometimes it can really work online ❤️ even if it does not happen often. That is very romantic and super nice i think!! 🙂

"Sunday Funday" - Pierre-Louis Costes à Hossegor (Landes) | Surf-Report / Surf Report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIW8wwy2fNU

"Sunday Funday" - Pierre-Louis Costes à Hossegor (Landes) | Surf-Report / Surf Report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIW8wwy2fNU

Wowww that goes super fast!! Are you not very afraid of sharks?? 🦈🦈 Because there are sharks in America in the oceans even if it happens not often but sometimes still they can attack you!! I think i would NOTTT be comfortable bc they will just look up and only see the surfboard as a dinner plate and you on it as food!! 😳😳

And do you do bodyboarding also in France? 🏄🏄‍♀️🏄‍♂️🌞🌞

@Billa very nice intervieuw

Wowww that goes super fast!! Are you not very afraid of sharks?? 🦈🦈 Because there are sharks in America in the oceans even if it happens not often but sometimes still they can attack you!! I think i would NOTTT be comfortable bc they will just look up and only see the surfboard as a dinner plate and you on it as food!! 😳😳

And do you do bodyboarding also in France? 🏄🏄‍♀️🏄‍♂️🌞🌞

Good night Yue ! Well, I never met or saw any shark when I was bodyboarding in Central California : there are big white sharks there and they can come close from the shore but surfers and swimmers are not their favorite food which ist not the case of seals and sea lions which are very present there, so the main security rule you absolutely have to follow if you don t want to be mistaken by those fishes ist not surfing or swimming close from their favorite food even if seals can be very lovely to get seen at close range

Anyway, I m practising my favorite hobby in France on the Atlantic Coast which is one of the Meccas of Surfing in Europe and there are some sharks there but they are not dangerous for most of them and they live very deep in the ocean ( 200 meters ) : I only heard about an attack against a fisherman ten years ago who used to be biten by a mako shark on one of his hands and in december 2013 a 2 50m mako shark used to be found on the shore of the beach of Cap de l homy in Landes county

Good night Yue ! Well, I never met or saw any shark when I was bodyboarding in Central California : there are big white sharks there and they can come close from the shore but surfers and swimmers are not their favorite food which ist not the case of seals and sea lions which are very present there, so the main security rule you absolutely have to follow if you don t want to be mistaken by those fishes ist not surfing or swimming close from their favorite food even if seals can be very lovely to get seen at close range

Anyway, I m practising my favorite hobby in France on the Atlantic Coast which is one of the Meccas of Surfing in Europe and there are some sharks there but they are not dangerous for most of them and they live very deep in the ocean ( 200 meters ) : I only heard about an attack against a fisherman ten years ago who used to be biten by a mako shark on one of his hands and in december 2013 a 2 50m mako shark used to be found on the shore of the beach of Cap de l homy in Landes county

Big white sharks?? 😬😬😳😳 I think they can hear in the water in California my heart beating faster when I am still in The Netherlands and only THINK of sharks!!!! ❤️❤️🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈 I have not a bigger fear than sharks and also speaking for a group but it is not the same fear!!!

Even if they dont go to you often i think it is still super brave that you go in the water. 💪🏄🦈

PS: I will make the questions for Part 2 of the interview before dinner! 😃 And if anybody else has a question for François you can of course post it below!! ⬇️⬇️

PART II

6: What kind of food and drinks do you like? And where was the most special place where you ever had dinner?

Well, concerning my tastes for food and drinks, I like very much french cooking and I m very lucky to still have a mother who likes cooking for giving pleasure to his son ! I also like very much chinese cooking that I find very diverse and fine and at last, I love the way the basques cook fish. More generally, I m very curious about foreign cooking specially when I m travelling. About drinks, I m a wine lover and I like drinking french as german and spanish wines and I m not very keen on strong alcohols excepted Whisky and polish wodka ( I find the one with hazelnut from Soplica mar really tasty ! )

Well so as to try to answer to all your questions which can be sometimes very private, I would say first that each time I come back to the part of Germany where my beloved Judith lives, we like very much having dinner in a local wine pub and restaurant called Weinstube Uebel which sits on the South german wine road ( Suddeutsche Weinstrasse ) in the Boschingen s village : in this place, you can eat all local dishes and drink all local wines and you can meet local people speaking local german Dialekt and when there are no free tables in this place, clients are always very glad to welcome you on their own table so as to talk and exchange with you !

7: It says on your profile that you have a son. Is he a lot like you or super different? What kind of things do you like to do together (for example in the weekend)? And are you already a granddad? 🙂

Concerning my son Axel, well he will be 21 on the second of next may ' s month but unfortunately , I did not see him again since the beginning of 2023 ! Concerning the way he looks and behaves, he s really a mixing of his both parents and I really hope that he will know the same happiness that I used to know being a father when he was born !

8: What books do you normally like to read? And which 3 books that you read were the most beautiful and best of all?

Concerning my reading tastes, well I always liked very much history, politics, archeology, art, religious and economics books. Concerning the 3 most beautiful and best of all books I've ever read, I would say the holy bible, the Coran and the one thousand nights fairy tales.

9: If the President of France asks you for advice and you can mention two things that he must change. What do you choose?

If President Macron asked me for advice, I would ask him to do 2 things for my country : first reducing the number of rules which regulate and sometimes poison every day life and last making work again all the worst criminals in my country in our overseas colonies like Guyana and Mayotte.

10: Do you have a nice memory from your time with your grandparents or parents that you would like to share?

Concerning my grandparents, I have a very few memories from them because I was very young when they died and concerning my parents, my father already gone and I m caring of my very old mum at the moment for her last days.

Thank you very much François for answering the questions of Part II of the interview!!! You SURVIVED already the first half of the interview!! 😛 😛 Later I will try to find nice pictures that are about your answers above. If anybody has questions or wants to comment in the meantime, you can share it below!! ⬇️⬇️

Merci beaucoup!!! 🙏🙏🌈🌈🥰🥰🥰

These pictures belong to Part II of the interview. I did not discuss first with François @Billa but i googled some of the answers and hope that they can give an image of the answers!! 🙂

Soplica Mar Hazelnut:

Suddeutsche Weinstrasse:

Guyana and Mayotte are French islands:

I was there 2009 through 2011 so I'm sure it was quite different from 1993. And today being 2025 it's changed even more. I like it then but I definitely wouldn't want to settle there. It's become a dumpster of a city where drug addicts wandering the streets like zombies and city officials refuse to do anything about it, thus worsening the situation even more. They have completely destroyed the city, what a shame.

Good night Etienne ! How are you ? Well, even in 1993, it made a very long time since San Francisco was no more the city of the hippies sung by Otis Redding , Scott Mackenzie and Maxime Leforestier : just after my arrival at the airport, my cousin was driving me in the Business District in his old VW Beetle Cabrio of 1979 made in Mexico when in the surroundings of the famous pyramid building of the Bank of America, we suddenly heard many machine gun shots very close from us. My cousin stopped driving and 5 minutes later an army of cops came to us like in Blues Brothers movie and we learnt a few time later that a client of an insurance company had just shot 17 people of this society with an

Ar 15 semi automatic machine gun because it broke his contract !

Merci beaucoup again @Billa for your nice answers in Part II of the interview!! I have 2 questions for François and Etienne:

1️⃣ If you could choose again to spend a year or longer in another country when you were in San Francisco, would you choose it again so you would not miss it? Or would you choose another place?

2️⃣ Were you afraid or nervous to spend a LONGG time in another country and not knowing it yet? I think it would be very nice for example in university but it would also be scary a little bit because it is different being alone in your own country or super far away in a country that you dont know.

Thank you very much if you want to answer my questions!!! 🙏🙏

PART II

6: What kind of food and drinks do you like? And where was the most special place where you ever had dinner?

Well, concerning my tastes for food and drinks, I like very much french cooking and I m very lucky to still have a mother who likes cooking for giving pleasure to his son ! I also like very much chinese cooking that I find very diverse and fine and at last, I love the way the basques cook fish. More generally, I m very curious about foreign cooking specially when I m travelling. About drinks, I m a wine lover and I like drinking french as german and spanish wines and I m not very keen on strong alcohols excepted Whisky and polish wodka ( I find the one with hazelnut from Soplica mar really tasty ! )

Well so as to try to answer to all your questions which can be sometimes very private, I would say first that each time I come back to the part of Germany where my beloved Judith lives, we like very much having dinner in a local wine pub and restaurant called Weinstube Uebel which sits on the South german wine road ( Suddeutsche Weinstrasse ) in the Boschingen s village : in this place, you can eat all local dishes and drink all local wines and you can meet local people speaking local german Dialekt and when there are no free tables in this place, clients are always very glad to welcome you on their own table so as to talk and exchange with you !

7: It says on your profile that you have a son. Is he a lot like you or super different? What kind of things do you like to do together (for example in the weekend)? And are you already a granddad? 🙂

Concerning my son Axel, well he will be 21 on the second of next may ' s month but unfortunately , I did not see him again since the beginning of 2023 ! Concerning the way he looks and behaves, he s really a mixing of his both parents and I really hope that he will know the same happiness that I used to know being a father when he was born !

8: What books do you normally like to read? And which 3 books that you read were the most beautiful and best of all?

Concerning my reading tastes, well I always liked very much history, politics, archeology, art, religious and economics books. Concerning the 3 most beautiful and best of all books I've ever read, I would say the holy bible, the Coran and the one thousand nights fairy tales.

9: If the President of France asks you for advice and you can mention two things that he must change. What do you choose?

If President Macron asked me for advice, I would ask him to do 2 things for my country : first reducing the number of rules which regulate and sometimes poison every day life and last making work again all the worst criminals in my country in our overseas colonies like Guyana and Mayotte.

10: Do you have a nice memory from your time with your grandparents or parents that you would like to share?

Concerning my grandparents, I have a very few memories from them because I was very young when they died and concerning my parents, my father already gone and I m caring of my very old mum at the moment for her last days.

Thank you very much François for answering the questions of Part II of the interview!!! You SURVIVED already the first half of the interview!! 😛 😛 Later I will try to find nice pictures that are about your answers above. If anybody has questions or wants to comment in the meantime, you can share it below!! ⬇️⬇️

Merci beaucoup!!! 🙏🙏🌈🌈🥰🥰🥰

Nice to read about you @Billa

Good morning Yueh ! How are you ?.Well, if it is not too late for giving an answer to a so charming young lady, I would say that I would stay where I was because Etienne was really right when he said that California and mote specially Central California is one of the most beautiful and lovely place on this planet !

I m a very independent person and I m used to managing myself wherever I go and travel by trying to speak local language and living and eating like locals ( it is less expensive ! 😀)

Bye Yue ! Have a nice sunday ! François 😘

Merci beaucoup François for your nice answer!!! 😊😊 I looked on google because of what you and @Etienne said about Central California and it looks really beautiful. I thought it would be the most about San Francisco and LA and Hollywood but the nature is super beautiful. And there are also small towns at the beach and i saw for example this in English on google: https://www.worldatlas.com/cities/11-most-charming-central-california-coast-towns.html

I will make questions for Part III of the interview and if anybody has a question for François or would like to post a comment you can do it below!! ⬇️⬇️

PART III

11: Which song and which band do you think that EVERYBODY on PPG should hear? And have you been to concerts often?

Well if I had to advise to Ppg community to listen just one song, I would choose " riders on the storm " from the Doors and for the band, I would choose AC DC ( that's their final last tour this year ).

The Doors - Riders On The Storm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1hn1pF-ilQ

AC/DC - Thunderstruck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM

Unfortunately I was unable to go often to concerts.

12: What do you think was better in the past in France and what is better now?

Well, I would say that there were less guns and Kalachnikov machine guns in the streets, less drug business also and at last less problems with religion and by the way, people were more tolerant with each other.

So what is better now in France compared to yesterday ? Well, I would say that my country became a very digitalised one which is a very good thing because thanks to that we are sparing much time at work or for everyday life tasks and I also recently noticed the very fast growing level of electric car plug in in France.

13: If you win 1 million Euros as a prize: what will you do with it? Will that change your life? And if you have to donate 20% to a charity, which would you choose?

Well, I would certainly invest most of it in sparing and house renovations and the rest would be given to make gifts to my family and charity associations. In fact, such a money would not change my life a lot and if I had to give 20% of this loot to a charity association, I would give them to the Restos du coeur association, a french charity one which collects food for poor people in my country.

14: If you have to give a guest class on a high school and you can teach ANYTHING what would you choose? And what kind of subjects did you like the most at school and which the least?

I always dreamt to teach history at high school as @diogenes_cask did but unfortunately I was unable to fulfill my dream as he did ! When I was a student , I loved history and foreign languages but I used to be in real trouble with mathematics and physics!

15: Which life lesson do you think is important to give as tip to others? Did others teach you that lesson or did you find it out yourself?

My own personal life experiment and my job learnt me to accept other people as they are and not as I would like them to be !

Thank you very much François for the answers above!!! I hope that you did not mind answering everything because i know it is a lot of work!! 😛 😛 But it is a super nice way to know you this way. 🙂 Later I will add nice pictures about the answers above. If anybody else has questions or wants to comment in the meantime, you can share it below!! ⬇️⬇️

Merci beaucoup!!! 🌸🙏🙏🌈🌼🌼🌸

I looked for nice pictures online about the anserws of François @Billa and I found these (I hope i got everything right)!! 😛

Music:

Restos du coeur association:

And here you can read more about the charity (I only found things in French online): https://www.restosducoeur.org and https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Restaurants_du_Cœur

PART IV

16: Can your work be very stressful? How do you deal with stress? Do you have good tips if somebody feels stressed a lot?

My job is very stressful and I m under the pressure all the time : pressure from the clients who can be sometimes very rude and agressive at the present time ( more specially when you talk about money with them ) and with my direction for the selling results and the clients quality inquiries after delivering. I must say that such a pressure and stress can be often very hard to face with and I really often have to work on myself so as to control my mind , words and face expressions with clients and with direction executives for not getting exploded myself. I think everyone has to find his own method so as to manage with such a high stress and I will not give any advice to anyone on this topic !

17: If you can have ONE YEAR free from work: what would you like to do in that year?

If I could have one year free from work, I would like to do many things during such a long time : spending more time with my beloved Judith even if she is working hard too , doing home reparations and housework and at last starting my own endless summer bodyboarding by looking for the best world s waves !

18: Do you like art? And if so: which is your favourite museum in the world that you visited or still want to visit? And what kind of art do you like the most?

I like art and think art can be expressed on many different ways. My favourite museum is the Louvres one : this place is really the world s biggest and I think I need at least 3 days so as to be able to visit everything there ! I like to see how civilisations developped themselves along the time in their monuments architecture or by their daily life view.

19: If you can have dinner with a famous person (it can be a person alive or from history): who would you choose and why?

If I could have a dinner with a famous person, I would immediately choose and without any hesitation french president Macron : I m not à great fan of this political character even if I used to vote for him for his first election in 2017 but I m really impressed by such a mastermind in mass people political manipulation.

( I mean he seems to be the most hated politician in my country but he used to be elected in 2017 by 65% of the voters and reelected again by 58% of the same people and since 2022, he has no more absolute majority to french parliament but he s still leading my country and still succeeding in doing us whatever he wants to ! ).

20: Which question did i forget to ask you and would you like to answer anyway? 😛 Can people ask questions to you in the future in this forum?

In my opinion, you asked me a very huge diversity of questions and I don t see any other topic at the moment and of course Penpal Community can ask me all the questions they want !

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for this interview François!!! 🙏🙏😊😇 I am really happy that i could do that and that you took a lot of time for it. 🙂 Later i will add some pictures about your answers that i think are maybe nice to add.

And if anybody wants to write a comment or leave a question you can do that below!! ⬇️⬇️

These pictures of the Louvre are nice to add about what François said above: