This must seem a bit over the top by now. Well, it does for me, too, and I have the benefit of knowing how it happened. Three visits to Paris in 13 months and change.

To recap:

In August of last year, both of us were “between jobs” — an expression I’ve never liked but at least carries with it the suggestion that another job is up ahead. Somewhere. That unemployment is just the greasy burger between the wholesome sesame-seed buns of gainful employ. As opposed to the end of a working career.

Trip No. 1, August-September 2009. We came over after having decided we could sit in Paris and not work for hardly more money than it cost to sit in Long Beach and not work. Two of our friends who live here were going to be gone for five weeks, and we could stay at one place and then the other and not pay for lodging. Which reduced the cost of five weeks in Paris to plane fare and food. That is, it cut the cost by about 75 percent, if you figure on spending $100 a night on lodging.

I am a huge fan of Long Beach, California, but its economy is dead as King Tut. I was sitting in it, and I knew it. And I was fairly confident that nothing on the employment front was going to be happening anywhere in the area. Not in August of 2009. So Paris. Sure. It had been a few years, anyway.

What we were tapping into, but had not yet fully grasped … is that one of the key components of a job search after, say, six months of nothing much going on … is a change of scenery.

Get Out of Town. Visit a relative. Drop in on a college friend. Get yourself to a different city-county-state-country. Just Move. Think of it as fishing the other side of a big lake after months without a bite in the same old spot. Hey, try a different stretch of the shoreline.

When you get to the new environment, if you believe you could possibly live there, just keep an open mind to employment. Accept invitations to lunch or dinner. Invite people over. Just chat. You don’t start a conversation with, “Hey, any jobs open here?” But over the course of hours and days and a dozen meals … it will just come up. Somebody who knows someone who knows about something that just came open. And you never know when it will happen, but my sense is that it often (always?) does. But you need to move to find it.

So it was that we met a friend of a friend during a “key-handover” meeting at one of the apartments. She was working as a professor in Abu Dhabi and told us that a former colleague of ours was working there, too, at the new local newspaper, and that they might be hiring … and our five weeks in Paris turned into a year (almost, so far) at The National in Abu Dhabi. A life-changing event that never would have happened had we still been hunkered down in SoCal. (Plus, we have more than two weeks with my sister and brother in law, who came over to join us.)

Trip No. 2, August 2010: Paris is popular in Abu Dhabi and UAE. Just as it is in most of the world. Lots of airlines fly between Paris and the UAE. Six. Eight. It’s a competitive route. Plus, it’s about 6.5 (nonstop) flying hours to Paris from Abu Dhabi, rather than the 11 or so from Los Angeles. It’s closer and, thus, cheaper.

Given that a reasonable person takes all of his or her vacation from the UAE during the six months of summer … and seeks a place where the climate is more temperate … that pointed us away from India, North Africa, Lebanon, Greece, Turkey … and farther north. Like, say, Paris.

Plus, my two daughters each achieved a personal milestone this year. One was graduating from UC San Diego, the other was hitting a key birthday, so we decided to turn a trip to Paris into a celebration, and the four of us were here for a bit more than two weeks in August. It was great to see Britt and Drew. We had a wonderful time with them, and they made it more fun, too.

Trip No. 3, October 2010: We got back to work, and the company was reminding people about using all vacation/lieu time before the end of the year. It’s not quite a “use or lose it” policy, but close to it. And we had some time left. So, back to “where do we go and what do we do?”

First, we settled on October as the time to take vacation. Because November and December are very busy months for sports at The National; it’s pretty much “all hands on deck.” A Formula One race, the Fifa Club World Cup, pro tennis and golf about to make their annual visits, plus the usual soccer stuff. Busy. Also, October can be quite warm, still, and November and December range from OK to idyllic, in the UAE. So you don’t want to be gone then, do you?

We considered a staycation. But the UAE is not really the kind of place where you want to burn vacation. It isn’t. I’m not saying anything revolutionary here. It is a small country, and you can visit almost anywhere and see the key parts of it on a given weekend. So we started looking further afield.

We considered Istanbul. Airfare not bad, hotels not shocking, nice reviews from co-workers. Quite a bit to do. But for a week or 10 days? Hmm, our colleagues said. Maybe not that long.

Meantime, Leah was talking to a former colleague who was considering buying a small place in the south of France. Where property is still amazingly cheap, especially by Abu Dhabi/Paris standards.

While we were in Paris, in August, Leah had done a fairly comprehensive study of Paris property, focusing on the most affordable neighborhoods, no matter how sketchy or declasse’ they might seem. And we discovered that we could not afford to buy in this city. Not even 300 square feet on the edge of town.

But the south? Might be do-able. Pay for the cliche pied-a-terre down in the sunny south, and rent it or perhaps someday live in it. Looking at it as an investment in a world where banks are paying, what, 1 percent interest on savings? And where stocks have never seemed less appealing?

So, we checked around, and one of our friends is going to be gone from her Paris apartment for nearly all of October, and she will let us stay at her place in the 17th. That gives us a no-cost base. And while we are here we can take the TGV down to the south and blow through a dozen “yes, they really are that cheap” little properties in quiet little towns, and see if we want to buy.

So, we are here to see people, to relax, to chill out (highs in the 60s), to see Leah’s parents (coming over in bit more than a week, which is excellent, because they are great travel companions) — and go look at the south of France, which I know almost nothing about.

(The entirety of my personal experience, south of Lyon: A 1998 World Cup semifinal in Marseille — Holland-vs.-Brazil — and a 1998 World Cup round of 16 match in Montpellier — Germany and Mexico. That’s it. Both times, in before kickoff, out on the last train the same night.)

So that is why we are here. Again. It may seem decadent, but it’s not. Trip 1 got us jobs and time with my sister and her husband; trip 2 gave us two weeks with Drew and Britt; trip 3 is about real estate and Leah’s parents.  And on two of those trips, lodging cost us almost nothing.

And it’s Paris. Doesn’t really need an explanation, does it.