continental drift

i dream of germans

2011-11-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

Or Germanic people.

I think it's rather funny that after moving away from Switzerland over three years ago, I still had this dream last night that reveals my subconscious impression of the Germanic approach to laws and law enforcement.

I dreamed that Boyfriend and I had rented a large, white Econoline van (no idea why) and were driving around in a small European town. We got pulled over by the police, who turned out to be German-speaking. Based on the accent, I'm guessing that we were somewhere in Austria. He was not pleased about something, and was speaking very quickly, and I struggled to understand what he was saying.

In the mean time, Boyfriend wandered off and started shopping for shoes.

The police called our car rental agency, who quickly sent a man out. The rental agent and the police officer then proceeded to disassemble the cover and cap for the gas tank, still yelling at me in German.

Boyfriend continued shopping for shoes. (What does this say about what my subconscious thinks about Boyfriend?)

I finally figured out what the policeman and the rental agent were upset about. Apparently, for this particular van in Austria, you could only drive it with the gas cap and lid open. The cap and lid were reserved for high-speed situations. And they decided to enforce it by taking the car apart to prevent us from driving with it closed any more. They even handed me all the parts afterwards. I am pretty sure the rental agency was then going to charge us for damage done to the car (by the agent, mind you), and the cop was probably going to write us a ticket for driving with the gas cap on.

Yes, this was something that my dreaming mind made up, but the fact that it didn't seem strange at all shows you how odd some of the rules are in Germanic countries and how scrupulously they enforce them.

And yes, I have been giving Boyfriend grief about his shoe shopping during the crisis.

lax

2011-09-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

It has probably been over 20 years since the last time I was in L.A., and it was not the place I remembered, probably due in large part to the fact that my earlier visits were with family, and revolved around hanging out at my uncle's house and going on long road trips in the minivan to various national parks.

That is not what L.A. is like. At all.

We flew into Long Beach instead of LAX, which was an amusing mistake. Long Beach is basically a small trailer park with runways. The airport employees don't seem to be aware that they are working at the airport, which can be problematic when you're trying to check a bag or get through security.

From what we could tell at the hotel and when we went out in the city, L.A. is kind of like Vegas, but with no gambling and more plastic surgery. We saw a girl in thigh high boots who apparently decided that the height of her boots negated the need for pants. We saw a middle-aged gentleman in a sequined shirt who has had so much done to his face that we were afraid it would fall off at any moment. We saw enough SUVs to use up all the oil in Kuwait.

On the other hand, we also saw dolphins and whales swimming around right next to our hotel. That was pretty awesome.

Oh, and they also hired a falconer and his falcons to keep the seagulls away. Only in L.A. could a dude with a leather glove and a bird find full-time employment at a fancy resort.

buy the way

2011-09-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love doing when visiting foreign countries is to go to the local mall and the local grocery store to see what odd products they have to offer their customers.

I am quite sure that foreign visitors to the U.S. enjoy doing the same thing.

An American friend who lives in Switzerland was in town for a couple of days a few weeks ago, and we went on the requisite "stock up on things that are cheaper or only available in America" trip to the mall, Target, and Safeway. I took a few pictures of some of the great things you can buy in our wonderful country.

Double Stuf Oreos weren't fattening enough, so they now make Triple Double Oreos, which have three cookies and two layers of Double Stuf creme.

In case you wanted to wash your hair with placenta shampoo, but were afraid your hair would be dry afterwards, have no fear, there is also placenta conditioner.

Available at Target.

Old Spice comes in "Matterhorn" and "Swagger."

How can you possibly choose??

I had no idea Axe was so popular that it now requires multiple scents.

(Does anyone actually use Axe?)

Maybe the people who shop here use Axe.

For all your armor needs, Armor-Geddon occupies an entire store in the mall.

best and brightest

2011-06-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

Oh, Silicon Valley, you have an endless supply of interesting (read: weird) people.

Today, I was driving home from work, and even though it was almost 7 p.m., it was still almost 90 degrees outside. I looked over and saw a guy in the bike lane, also going home from work. He was carrying the laptop backpack that every person at my company has, so I knew that he was One of Us. Kudos to anyone who is willing to bike to and from work in this heat, but super kudos to this guy, who was doing it on a unicycle.

esl

2011-06-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things about having international friends (other than the interesting perspectives and cultural exchange, etc., etc., etc.) is the hilarious little quirks of language that emerge in conversation. I will be the first to admit that their English is far better than any foreign language that I speak, and that I have been known to make my own embarrassing comments in both English and other languages.

OK, disclaimers aside, one of the funniest moments from our trip to Zurich happened when we went out to dinner with a group of people, and at the end, a few of them were trying to open little individual bottles of kirsch. The bottles proved to be very difficult to open, and the guys were pulling and pulling at the corks, trying to get them out.

Our German friend finally suggested, "Just wank it! Wank it off!"

(Mostly unrelated note: there is a town in Switzerland called Wankdorf. "Dorf" in Switzerland is the equivalent of "town" in English.)

hair hat

2011-05-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

Not to be confused with "hat hair" or "hat head," this styled wig, which I've dubbed a "hair hat," is inexplicably featured in an exhibit at the Ballenberg Swiss open air museum, which is supposedly dedicated to traditional Swiss culture (something like Williamsburg in the States). For context, most of the other exhibits were about things like water wheels, yodeling, and farm animals. The card notes that this amazing hairstyle is from circa 2003.

losing my religion

2011-04-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

I've never been a religious person, and so the only holidays I can really keep track of are those that fall on the same day every year, like Christmas. Easter is a vague concept that floats around somewhere in the spring time and can only be pinpointed with a Google search. I had a better grasp of it when I was in high school, but that's because my high school was Catholic, and when I was living in Switzerland, but that's because I got time off for Easter (most of the official Swiss holidays are Christian ones: Easter, the Ascension, and Whit Monday being three examples of Swiss holidays that fall sometime in the first half of the year). Because they impacted my vacation schedule, I kept very close track of them, and because I knew they were national holidays, I also expected and accepted that everything would be closed on those days.

Coming back to the States, where we skew towards non-religious holidays, like Martin Luther King Day or Presidents' Day or the Fourth of July, Easter again became an amorphous floating holiday with no relevance to my schedule, especially since I no longer bother going to stores, for the most part, because online shopping is so much better for people like me (read: lazy people who don't want to put on pants to go buy things).

For some reason, however, today I decided to go to the brick-and-mortar stores at the Stanford Mall to browse around. Malls are modern altars to capitalism and consumerism and all the other -isms that we take so seriously in the New World. People congregate in malls the way they once did in churches. Imagine my surprise, then when I arrived at the mall, and it was closed. Everything was closed. Even Neiman Marcus, the ultimate shrine to secular consumption, was closed. For Easter.

This is the worst of both worlds -- a religious holiday that doesn't give me any extra days off, but which nonetheless closes down all of the stores. Pick a side, America -- if you're going to close down shop for religious holidays, then give me extra time off. If you're not going to observe religious holidays, then make everything else run on a normal schedule.

(On a side note, Jesus, why don't you want me to go shopping? It's good for the economy, helps keep unemployment in check, which helps the poor -- I doubt Jesus would be opposed to a little bit of retail therapy for the greater good.)

meeting chicks

2011-04-22T17:50:00.001-07:00

We were up in San Francisco last weekend at a coffee shop in Noe Valley, and one of the customers had a small chicken perched on her arm.

A chicken.

I asked her about the chicken, and she said it was the class pet for a kindergarten class. When I was little, our class pet was a guinea pig.

Only in California would a chicken be a class pet and spend weekends at a coffee shop.

travel style

2011-04-22T17:23:00.001-07:00

It's interesting how my goals and style of travel have changed over the years, partly from changes in perspective and interests, and partly from changes in income and free time.

Student days (lots of time and no money): budget travel, fitting in as many "traditional" sights as possible per trip while minimizing transit, food, and hotel costs.

Expat days (some time and some money in a location convenient for travel): frequent travel, fitting in as many trips as possible while minimizing transit and hotel costs, seeing some traditional sights and some quirky sights, and splurging on specific interests, like food and diving.

These days (insufficient time and sufficient funds in a location inconvenient for travel): infrequent travel to far-flung destinations, splurging on hotels, food, airfare, and diving, and spending more time being lazy than seeing sights (unless they have quirky appeal).

quote

2011-01-30T23:33:00.000-08:00

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page." -- St. Augustine.

random question

2010-12-08T18:07:00.000-08:00

Does the Bay Area have a disproportionately large (or stupid) skunk population? I smell them on a fairly regular basis when driving around, which leads me to one of two conclusions: either (1) California has more than its fair share of skunks, or (2) California's skunks are slower/dumber/more prone to suicide than skunks who live elsewhere. I am pretty sure I've smelled more skunks here in two years than I had in the previous 30 years.

california hitchcock

2010-10-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about living in the suburbs of California is that I can have an entire house with lots of windows, where every room is directly under the roof, with lots of skylights to let in the Californian sun or to let me hear the winter rains.

The downside is that something about this roof seems to attract a flock of birds, whose main traits are that they are loud, unintelligent, and enjoy early mornings.

They gather on the roof of my house at 7 or 8 in the morning, sometimes two or three at a time, but sometimes (like this morning) in a flock of ten or twenty. They thud onto the roof, hop around, squawk loudly at each other, and then proceed to peck viciously at anything and nothing. In this picture, you can see three of them pecking at a rather nondescript piece of wood. Others were frantically tapping on shingles or panes of glass. On another occasion, two of them squabbled loudly over a Bic lighter that they had found and somehow managed to drop onto the roof.

Waving at them in a threatening manner does nothing. Tapping back at them with a pole does nothing. Holding my dog up so that they can see him through the glass (in case he's more frightening than I am) does nothing. They continue scrabbling, jumping, cawing, and tapping until, on some unknown cue about ten or fifteen minutes later, they all take off and go elsewhere.

It's like the Hitchcock flick, except that the birds just try to annoy you to death. I've never seen such dumb birds before, and I don't know if it's because I haven't met many birds, or if it's because Californian birds are just like that.

jet blues

2010-10-12T19:23:00.000-07:00

We flew out to New York for a wedding last weekend, and because it was a short trip with a lot of travel time, we decided to fly JetBlue (which was already more expensive than the other airlines), since they have an option to pay extra for roomier seats, which we thought would help us deal with the red eye on the way there, and the early morning flight to get right back to work on the way back. More money = more space = more sleep, right? I wasn't completely convinced, but my boyfriend was quite firm that it would be worth an extra $200 per person.

It may have been worth it for my boyfriend, but on our flight from JFK back to SFO (which is an hour longer than the flight from SFO to JFK, if I may just point that out), I was seated next to a supremely obese man who took up four inches of my expensive seat, and I spent every minute of those six hours fuming about those four inches and that extra $200.

Mr. Too-Big-to-Fit-in-Seat-5E on the Monday morning JetBlue flight from JFK to SFO, you owe me $200 and six hours of sleep. Also, you owe me a mind wipe to get the feeling of you squishing and rubbing on me for six hours out of my head.

individual states may vary

2010-08-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

In the next two weeks, I'll be taking trips to the two parts of the U.S. that are arguably the most different from the rest of the country: this weekend, I'm going to a bachelorette party in Vegas, and next week, my boyfriend and I will be spending a week in Hawaii. Both of these are slight reprises of trips I've taken within the last year: my boyfriend and I went to Hawaii last October (and stayed at the same hotel and dove with the same dive shop), and we also took a road trip to Vegas in December.

I've only ever attended one bachelorette party (most of my female friends are inclined to more sedate girls' night celebrations), and I've definitely never been to one in Vegas. I am somewhat curious as to what I will come up with in terms of "sassy clubbing gear," since it's been years since I've aspired to any sort of clubbing (much less sassy clubbing in Vegas), and I am somewhat wary of the possibility that there may be male strippers. Although it would probably be hysterically funny, I can't imagine that there would be anything remotely sexy about a beefy man in a "sassy" policeman's costume, waving his nether regions in your face and expecting you to shove dollar bills down his pants. I'm definitely looking forward to catching up with my friend, who is the bride, but if an oiled-up fireman in a thong comes at me, I may have to dive behind a couch so as not to hurt his feelings with uncontrollable laughter.

I can't decide if this weekend will qualify as an "Only in America" experience or an "Only in Vegas" experience.

fourth of july

2010-07-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Fourth of July, the most American of holidays -- it's so important that we get a long weekend off for it, which I spent...

...going to Switzerland. It just so happened that there was a huge party in Zurich that weekend, so there were carnival rides and fireworks, and the celebration was probably bigger than whatever I would have ended up participating in had I stayed in the States to celebrate.

You know it's a party when they have flags everywhere:

And not only carnival rides...

...and pony rides (who needs a normal carousel when you can make one out of real ponies??)...

...and man-powered tram rides...

...but also camel rides:

And you can't really call it a good party unless there's a scary corn stand:

And just for good measure, to make sure that people don't go too wild, the ticket inspectors were out in full force (there are nine in this picture at one tram stop alone, and there were three more that I couldn't get in the shot):

This is Zurich's way of saying: "Have fun, just make sure you have a valid tram ticket while doing so."

overkilt

2010-06-20T22:35:00.001-07:00

Just to show that the man in the previous post was not a unique fluke, here is a guy we spotted a few weeks ago at a cafe. Note the white socks, black boots, ponytail, skirt, and sheepdog (which has bows on its head, though they may be hard to see in this picture).

Welcome to my strange little world.

license to kilt

2010-05-31T20:08:00.000-07:00

What is it about California that makes men think that wearing skirts is a good fashion choice? Is it the hippie culture? The high concentration of software engineers? The weather?

I'm not against men wearing skirts, if done properly. I admit that there is something appealing about a hunky Scotsman in full regalia, but that is a far cry from the skirt-wearing men of Silicon Valley.

Take, for instance, the man in this picture, taken in the wild today on a trip to Whole Foods:

He is wearing a wrinkly skirt with a sweaty Indiana Jones hat, a Hawaiian shirt, black socks, and brown sandals. He is shopping for oral hygiene products. And that woman is making the same look of awe and trepidation that I was probably making as I snuck the picture.

Why, California? Why?

cheap and cheerful

2010-05-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

America, do you realize how fortunate you are that food here is so cheap?? I went out to a sushi restaurant for dinner last night, and the total tab, including a generous tip, was $308, which might sound like a hefty bill, until I add in the fact that there were fourteen of us there, so that we each paid $22 to gorge ourselves to the point of bursting on rolls of every kind: soft shell crab, salmon, yellowtail, lobster, spicy tuna, you name it, we had it, and all with top-grade fresh fish. In Zurich, that much money would probably get you second-rate sushi for four people.

The night before, my boyfriend and I went and got three live lobsters steamed for take-out, and the total was $37. We ate nothing else for dinner, just lobster and butter, and there was food left over, so really, $30 was probably enough for the two of us to over-stuff ourselves on lobster.

That's just ridiculous. In a good way.

long distance

2010-05-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

You know what's kind of weird about living in California? You can fly for hours and hours east or west, and still be in the same country. Or you can drive all day, and still only make it as far as Vegas.

a different kind of blog

2010-04-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

I've decided to try to record random (and not-so-random) acts of kindness that the universe chooses to do to me. Let's see how this works, since I've never been a "glass half full" kind of person, mostly because I don't like water.

check, please

2010-04-08T18:33:00.001-07:00

I was never a big fan of checks. They seemed so random and insecure. I often lost track of my checkbook in my apartment, which was annoying enough, but the thought of losing a checkbook out in the real world is worse. Losing a checkbook is worse than losing a credit card, because it's much harder to cancel the lost checks to make sure that someone doesn't run around using it to pay for things, and it's worse than losing cash, because there is no fixed value of the money you might lose.

Once I moved to Switzerland, I rarely used checks, since everything there is done with online transfers. I had a few checks left for my American account, and used them for random American bills that wouldn't take online bill pay. When I moved back to the States, I used my last two checks to pay my first month's rent and security deposit on my apartment. I didn't bother ordering new ones, because I pay all of my bills online, and I set up a recurring transfer and payment for my rent.

Well, now I'm moving, and the new landlord wanted my first month's rent and security deposit right away. No credit card, no online transfers, no PayPal. And I don't own a checkbook. I had to go to the bank and get a certified check cut there. I actually had to look up the bank online to find out where it was, because I never go to the bank. It all felt so primitive.

Seriously, America? Why are you still using checks??? Get over the check thing, already, and move into the 21st century.

(For the record, when anyone I know needs to pay me money, I actually tell them that I don't accept checks, because who has the time to go to the bank to deposit them? Cash, wire, or PayPal only, please.)

in a california minute

2010-03-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

I had a total Bay Area moment yesterday when I went to the grocery store. I was walking out of the store carrying my groceries (in a reusable bag that I had brought myself, obviously), and saw a dad carrying his kid towards the store. The kid was at that age where he's just starting to talk and learn words for things. I always thought that the words you teach kids at that age are practical things like milk, bed, mommy, daddy, yes, and no, and then you might move on to fun things like doggie, kitty, truck, or car.

Nope. As the dad walked walked slowly past my car, he was saying, "Look, it's a Prius. Can you say Prius? Priiii-usss. Prius. Can you say Prius? Prius!"

just in time for tax season

2010-03-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

I love my friend Wendy's blog about moron tax. I pay tons of moron tax myself, which unfortunately doesn't count towards the stuff that the IRS wants, and this week, she has posted an account of one of my moron tax payments.

hair-brained

2010-03-15T14:31:00.000-07:00

When I was young, I suffered from bad hair, both forced upon me by my mother, who didn't see the point in paying for a haircut when we had many pairs of functional scissors at home, and brought upon myself, when I was going through my years of curly hair envy.

Since then, I've always second-guessed and third-guessed my hair options, and have mistrusted any haircut that was too close to home. In college, I didn't get haircuts in Cambridge, but instead went into downtown Boston to get my hair cut by junior stylists in salons that seemed posh from a student perspective. In law school, I refused to get haircuts near my apartment, and made pilgrimages down to the West Village to get my hair cut by a Japanese man in tight jeans, whose English comprehension skills were questionable, but whose haircutting skills were solid. In both cities, my haircuts were accessible by public transportation.

In Zurich, I tried to stick to that guideline, but after two unpleasant experiences, one in which the salon charged an exorbitant (read: typical Swiss) amount for a so-so haircut, and another in which the stylist gave me a terrible mullet (read: typical Swiss haircut), I declared a moratorium on local haircuts, and spent the rest of my time scheduling my haircuts to coincide with my travel plans. In four years, I rarely went to the same hair stylist, but got random haircuts of varying success in Helsinki (where the stylist asked me how I got my dark hair color to look so natural), Paris (where the stylist did not speak any English, and I realized that my hair-related French was quite limited), San Francisco, and New York, among other places.

You'd think that I would be able to settle down and get a steady stylist again, now that I'm living near a major city that speaks my native language, but my hair-brain thinks otherwise. I'm about two months overdue for a haircut, but am not so excited by the two people I've tried here, both of whom were very reasonably priced and gave perfectly acceptable haircuts (it's not hard to cut long, straight hair in a decent manner) -- I think my hair just has wanderlust.

True to form, or at least the form of recent years, I've booked a hair appointment to coincide with an upcoming trip to New York. We'll see how it turns out, or if my hair will demand another excursion to somewhere newer and more exciting.

date line

2010-03-09T22:13:00.000-08:00

My friends and I took a sixteen day trip to Yap and Palau (with layovers in Honolulu and Guam) that involved a total of seven flights, six hotel rooms, and three time zones (other than my own).

All that schlepping around paid off. We got lots of sun to cure our winter blues. We went diving and saw so many sharks, mantas, and Technicolor fish that it put Animal Planet documentaries to shame. And I don't care how much you go hiking and camping -- you haven't seen stars until you've sat on a dock or a darkened boat in the middle of the ocean off of a private island in a remote corner of Palau (which is already a pretty remote place). Ridiculously fantastic.

The trip back took almost a whole day door to door, spread out over three flights with some layover time, but we crossed the International Date Line, which meant that despite traveling for almost a day (and feeling like we had traveled for about three days), when we landed in San Francisco, it was less than two hours later on the same day as when we took off.

Trippy.

flood warning

2010-01-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

I already thought it was odd that people here water their lawns until they are muddy bogs, but I thought that perhaps it was just an extreme overprotective measure taken to defend lawns against the perpetual Californian drought.

Apparently not.

It has been raining on and off almost every day for the past two weeks, sometimes torrentially, and enough so that even the pelicans have had enough, which is more rain than I've seen since moving here. Even so, the lawn watering continues. The other night, I took my dog out for what I thought was a well-timed walk, just as the rain let up. As we went to the back of my building, there was no water coming from above, but the sprinklers turned on, spraying him from below.

Really? Really?? The last two weeks of rain weren't enough for the grass? The big mud slicks (lawns, whatever) need more water?

been there, done that

2010-01-06T22:25:00.000-08:00

We drove to and from Vegas, a total of 1,109 miles.

Being in Vegas was like being on a human safari. Who are these people, these people who bleach their big hair and wear rhinestones and hooker boots, who wheel their strollers full of squalling children through crowds of scantily-clad cocktail waitresses and boozy gamblers at midnight in a smoke-filled casino? Who are these people who budget only 70 minutes to get through a four course (plus amuse-bouches and petits fours) dinner at a Michelin two-star restaurant, including the time it takes to get seated, order, and pay the bill? Who are these people who spend ten minutes poring over their tab at an upscale bar and still do the math wrong? Who, when asked by their dinner companions what truffles are, respond, "They are really expensive, and pigs dig them out of the dirt"? These are the people who go to the Bodies exhibition, an attraction that you would think would have more appeal for a slightly more learned and scientifically-oriented crowd, and yet they fill the guest book with comments from "Annoymis" (we assume they meant "Anonymous") about how the dissected cadavers are proof that man did not create man, but God created man (did anyone ever argue that we were created by humans?), and who fill two pages with non sequiturs about gymnastics (there was nothing in the exhibit about gymnastics).

These are also the people who, according to the billboards and publicity we saw, voted Carrot Top "Entertainer of the Year" and "Comedian of the Year." He plays in the same hotel as "Menopause: The Musical."

As I said, Vegas is a strange, strange place full of strange, strange people. Only in America would you find a place like Vegas, and so much of Vegas makes you think, "Only in Vegas..."

The drive to and from Vegas was long, but punctuated with some notable sights. Although we didn't make it to see the largest can of fruit cocktail, the biggest building shaped like a bulldozer, the Cowboy Museum and Library (which has what may be the world's largest collection of branding irons), we did make it to see:

The world's biggest shoe, which was surrounded by what appeared to be the world's largest concentration of check cashing shops, bail bond operations, and liquor stores. We didn't stay long.

The world's tallest thermometer -- that was a bonus that we spotted on the road. We also saw exits for Zzyzx Road and Twenty Mule Team Road. And there was a town called Boron. Small things become exciting after nine hours on the road.

The world's biggest Swedish coffeepot didn't seem all that Swedish, although there were Swedish-themed bars and gift shops nearby, in a town that is vaguely Swedish-ish, so we think that it just wanted to fit in. We barely made it in time to see the world's largest box of raisins before it got dark. There are no raisins in it anymore. So it's really just the world's biggest raisin box now. It's at the headquarters of Sun-Maid. There was a gift shop. It sold raisins, but it also sold things like penguin decorations and scented candles. I'm not sure if they thought there was some kind of raisin-kitsch synergy that they would be tapping into in their gift shop. It didn't work on us, but maybe there's a big raisins-and-doodads market out there, and if so, it would have to be another case of "Only in America."

oh, the places we'll go

2009-12-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

Last year around this time, I went on a little road trip around Northern California, and saw things that made me think, "Only in America..." A museum dedicated to hand fans, an alley covered in gum, a "castle" made out of junk.

This year, we had more ambitious plans, and were hoping to go to Rangiroa for some diving, but alas, it was not meant to be.

We are making more modest plans to take a road trip to Las Vegas (which is an "Only in America" kind of place by itself), with some stops along the way.

Some of the things we might see (all of which are in California, by the way):

The world's biggest shoe
The world's biggest Swedish coffeepot (I like that it's narrowed down to a particular kind of coffeepot)
The world's biggest box of raisins
The world's biggest can of fruit cocktail
The world's biggest building that looks like a bulldozer
The Cowboy Memorial and Library

My parents went to Costa Rica, and my sister is in Mexico, but we all know that my holiday plans are the ones everyone will be jealous of, right?

Happy holidays, and may the last days of your year be safe, healthy, and filled with large boxes of raisins.

fa la la la la

2009-12-11T16:36:00.000-08:00

I haven't been Christmas shopping in a brick-and-mortar store in the States for at least six years. This year and last year, I was living in the States, but my extreme dislike of annoying crowds and my paralyzing laziness add up to me doing almost all of my Christmas shopping on Amazon, and now that I live in the suburbs, I don't really wander into random stores the way I used to when I was living in New York or Boston. For the four years prior to that, I was living outside of the country, and did my shopping online or in Switzerland (and yes, if I bought it in Switzerland, I schlepped it all back in my luggage).

I think that my lack of in-store shopping is the reason that I really haven't heard Christmas carols in years. They pop into my head now and then, but I haven't been immersed in, bombarded with, and assaulted by Muzak, pop, or classical renditions of all those classic and not-so-classic hallmarks of the holiday season.

So much the better. Thinking back, it seems like the only three songs I ever heard while out and about in November and December were "Jingle Bell Rock," "Jingle Bells," and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree."

Upon further reflection, however, this makes no sense at all. Do you realize just how many Christmas carols and Christmas songs there are? I've been annoying my boyfriend like crazy by singing as many as I can remember, as they come to me, and off the top of my head (and this is after at least six years of not hearing them, so there must be even more that I'm forgetting), these are the songs I can think of:

Jingle Bells
Jingle Bell Rock
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
O Holy Night
Silent Night
Away in a Manger (American version)
Away in a Manger (British version -- yes there are two entirely different tunes for the same set of lyrics; this is true for several carols that I know of, and probably many more that I don't, and the first time I found out about it, it was like I had suddenly discovered a parallel universe that I had thought was the same as mine, but was only very similar, with strange but subtle differences, like Christmas carols with the same words but different melodies, and sweaters, apartments, and elevators that are called jumpers, flats, and lifts)
O Little Town of Bethlehem (American version)
O Little Town of Bethlehem (British version)
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (American version)
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear (British version)
Deck the Halls
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Little Drummer Boy
Frosty the Snowman
The Christmas Song ("Chestnuts roasting...")
I'll Be Home for Christmas
Blue Christmas
O Come All Ye Faithful
Angels We Have Heard on High
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Twelve Days of Christmas
Good King Wenceslas
The First Noel
Carol of the Bells ("Hark how the bells...")
Ding Dong Merrily on High
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
Do You Hear What I Hear
O Christmas Tree
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Christmas is Coming ("Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...")
Silver Bells
Let It Snow
Here Comes Santa Claus
What Child Is This
Here We Come A-Wassailing

So that's well over 30 songs that I was able to come up with off the top of my head at least six years after hearing them. So why do stores only ever play three of them?? Or have they gotten better about this? If they played more songs and got rid of some of the crowds, I would perhaps do less of my shopping online, but I'm guessing that it's still the same...

careful what you wish for

2009-11-30T21:36:00.000-08:00

After living in New York, where no student apartment is big enough to hold a washer and dryer, and Zurich, where you're lucky if your laundry day isn't scheduled a year in advance, I was very excited to move into an apartment with what I thought was the Holy Grail of real estate -- "W/D in unit."

It is convenient, except that my washer sounds like it is violently assaulting my dryer every time it goes into spin cycle. Repeatedly. For long periods of time. My dog is so scared of it that he won't eat when the washer is in spin cycle, and my dog would probably eat during Armageddon.

I also can't do laundry when anyone comes over to hang out, because it gets kind of uncomfortable, sort of in the same way that watching a rental movie with your parents when the main characters start making out is uncomfortable. All awkwarded up, and nowhere to go.

I really hope that my downstairs neighbors, who complain when we play Rock Band with the volume pretty low, know to blame it on my crazy washing machine.

a year and a half later

2009-10-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

So it's been almost a year and a half since I posted this and this. I've had a garbage disposal in my kitchen sink for that entire time, and I use it, I do, but I am still highly suspicious of it.

For a while, I thought this suspicion was something to work on and get rid of, but upon further reflection, I realized that I think I will always be suspicious of garbage disposals, the same way I would be suspicious if they started building wood chippers, chainsaws, or rabid pit bulls into sinks.

Yes, it might be a quick way to get rid of food waste, but that doesn't mean that I won't get a little nervous each time I turn it on and it devours food scraps while making that hideous noise, or worry that it will mysteriously activate and eat my hand when I have to reach into the blackness and gingerly fish around for a rogue spoon that has disappeared into its maw.

indian summer, california style

2009-09-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

It's late September, and the weather forecast for tomorrow says high of 99 F (37 C). I love the warm, sunny weather we get here, it's probably my favorite thing about California, but that's a bit extreme, especially for September.

The weather seems confused this month.

It rained last week. Water fell from the sky. I hadn't seen rain in months, and was so dumbfounded that it didn't even occur to me that I could stay dry by getting an umbrella. I just walked through the rain and wondered why it was raining in September.

It only took me a year of living here to forget about the five years in Boston, four years in New York, and four years in Zurich (a combined thirteen years, not to mention the nine years in Delaware before that, plus the seven years in Houston and Denver in my earliest, mostly unremembered years), when rain could come at any time of year.

the perfect life

2009-08-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

If I could cut-and-paste my life into the perfect patchwork existence, I would take the pieces as follows:

The responsibilities (or lack thereof) of Denver and Houston (oh, to be four years old again)
The real estate prices (or just prices in general) and tax-free shopping of Delaware
The winter snowstorms and unlimited sleep schedule (ah, college...) of Cambridge
The food, bars, culture, convenience, energy, randomness, stores, people (I love New Yorkers), population density (I like the cozy anonymity of crowds), and 24-hour availability of public transportation of New York
The public transportation (the infrastructure, not the hours), cleanliness, stress-free lifestyle, travel opportunities, dog-friendliness, gummy candy, cheese, chocolate, and walking-distance proximity to friends of Zurich
The job, weather, fresh produce, and proximity to family of Mountain View

typical bay area experience

2009-08-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Comcast,

My rate went up, and I called to cancel -- I would never pay $110 a month for something I could get for half the price somewhere else. I was offered a new rate. The new rate is higher than the old rate, but low enough to make me too lazy to switch.

I am getting the same services for a higher price. My bill, however, is higher than either price, because it was pro-rated according to the unacceptable $110 rate. I asked the supremely unhelpful Carolina (employee #0531) and her equally unhelpful, ruder supervisor Randy (#0641) to change the statement amount or to give me a credit on the next statement to make up for the difference. They unhelpfully noted that the amount is higher because it's prorated. I KNOW, BUT IT'S PRORATED ACCORDING TO AN UNACCEPTABLE RATE THAT I TRIED TO CANCEL.

I am getting the same service.

When the rate went up to $110, I tried to cancel.

I was offered a new rate.

For this bill, I should pay the old rate or the new rate, NOT the rate that would have made me cancel. "It's pro-rated" makes no difference. If I won't pay $110 per month, why would I pay the same amount on a daily basis?

You claim to be Comcastic. What does that mean? Have Randy and Carolina ever made anyone feel Comcastic? I'm guessing no. I suppose they were more memorable than other CSRs, because they were so unhelpful. Is that what Comcastic means? Memorably unhelpful?

In the past, I have written glowing emails and letters to companies whose products and service I loved. Comcast is not one of them. It's pretty astounding how many disgruntled customers you have. Please add me to the list, unless you have a better idea.

mountain view wins on this one

2009-07-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

I've recently become a big fan of the Mountain View farmer's market, which is open every Sunday, all year, only two blocks from my apartment. The downside is that it is only open until 1 p.m., which requires that I wake up and leave the house in time to get there before it closes (which, if you know me, is not that easy). I complained about this a little bit until I remembered that the stores aren't even open on Sundays in Zurich, and that the farmer's market in New York was not within walking distance of my apartment.

One thing I like about the farmer's market is that you can sample most of the produce before you buy it. It's all local stuff, and probably picked only a few hours before you taste it. I'm a big fan of "try before you buy."

The other thing I like is the produce itself. It's all delicious, because it's all in season, and all picked only once it's ripe. They have everything -- lettuce for my BLTs, fresh eggs, blueberries, cheese, bread, pretty much anything that is currently ripe in northern California is laid out on tables, ready to be chosen, taken home, and eaten. The white peaches are amazing, and somehow impossibly sweeter than canned peaches. The strawberries are enticingly red and shiny.

But two things in particular make me love the Mountain View farmer's market more than any old market or supermarket.

Pluots and heirloom tomatoes. Sun-ripened, juicy, and delicious enough to warrant less sleep on Sunday morning.

Sorry, Zurich, you may have my favorite airport, excellent lake access, and the most efficient public transportation system, but you never gave me pluots. New York, I miss your convenient delivery services and infinite possibilities, but heirloom tomatoes never appeared on my doorstep or at a museum or bar while I was there. Do you have any idea what you're missing out on? Maybe it's best if you don't, because it would be pretty hard to know about such things and live without them.

happy belated fourth of july

2009-07-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

I think that some things are more American than apple pie or baseball. Apple pie and baseball can be replicated pretty well when you're abroad. For the pie, just make some crust, add apples and spices, bake, and you've got your slice of America, ready to eat. Baseball -- just bring a bat, ball, and glove, and find other people willing to play a game that only matters in America, the Caribbean, and Japan.

BLTs, on the other hand, are nearly impossible to recreate properly outside of the States. For one thing, American bacon is very different from the stuff they call bacon elsewhere. And some parts of the world don't even have anything that they call bacon. For another, no one has quite the right kind of sliced white bread. I'm not saying that sliced bread is the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread, but it's just different. The sliced bread you can buy abroad is just... wrong, somehow. Not the right texture or taste, I can't explain it, but it's wrong. As for non-sliced bread, a French baguette or a Swiss Zopf are both lovely, and in many ways superior to plain, sliced, pre-packaged white bread, but not for a proper BLT.*

Same goes for hamburgers. No one outside of the States -- person or restaurant --seems to be able to make a proper burger. The buns are wrong, the meat doesn't taste quite right, and it just doesn't work the same way. It baffled and frustrated me while I was away, but now that I'm back, I don't eat them that much, and when I do, it's sometimes in a different form, like the Luther burger.

Now that I think about it, peanut butter and jelly is hard to get right outside of the U.S., as well. There's the bread thing, and then there's the fact that peanut butter is a very American product (it can be hard to find a good substitute brand once you're abroad), and even if you find good peanut butter (or import it in your luggage), not a lot of places have that clear, wobbly grape jelly that is used in 90% of PB&J (and doesn't really have any other use at all).

Deli sandwiches? The rest of the world has excellent meats and cheeses, but they aren't really sold in sandwich format. Pre-made sandwiches in Switzerland usually consist of a roll, butter, a slice of pickle, and a few slices of salami. Where's the tomato? Where's the lettuce? Where's the cheese? Basically, where's the sandwich part of the sandwich?

So on a scale of 1 to American, I'd say that sandwiches rank much higher than apple pie or baseball.

* (I rediscovered BLTs a few months ago and have been eating them almost obsessively since then. I've settled on farmer's market heirloom tomatoes, Trader Joe's buttermilk bread, red lettuce, and Trader Joe's bacon as the best combination. Plus mayo, and if you're feeling unconventional, ketchup and a fried egg. Heaven and a heart attack, both at once.)

two questions, california

2009-07-02T15:51:00.001-07:00

First question: If there's a drought (and there always seems to be a drought), why does everyone insist on watering the grass until it turns into a muddy swamp? I know that you don't want your treasured green patch to dry up and die, but do you want it to drown, instead?

Second question: Why must you build your parking lots and roads to always have a ditch that is so (im)perfectly designed that it is nearly impossible not to scrape the bottom of your car when you leave the parking lot? Is the ditch there to catch the runoff from your drowning lawns?

sad truth

2009-06-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

Before leaving New York in 2004 at the age of 25, I had only been to 20 countries, including the one I was born in. That's an average of 0.8 new countries per year. Not bad, but not that impressive, either.

In just under four years spent living in Zurich, I took 56 international trips to 34 countries, 27 of which I had never been to before moving to Switzerland. I'm not even counting the dozens of day trips I took within Switzerland during my time there. That's an average of 6.75 new countries and fourteen international trips per year, which is quite respectable.

In the thirteen months that I've been back, I've only managed to make three international trips, all of which were to countries I've already visited in the past. That's a completely unimpressive average of zero new countries and three international trips per year. As for domestic travel, there hasn't been much of that, either. Lots of weekends spent 45 minutes away up in San Francisco, but otherwise, just a few weekend road trips around northern California and a few days spent in New York.

It's great living near family in a warm and sunny place, but my passport and frequent flyer account feel rather neglected.

Maybe it's time to start planning a trip to Chad or Belarus...

not my kind of bandwagon

2009-06-23T17:24:00.000-07:00

Things that are popular that I just can't seem to get into:

Goat cheese (it tastes the way goats smell)
Blonde hair (unless it's natural)
Really big handbags
Having kids
SUVs
The Great Outdoors (exceptions made for picnics and dive trips)
Cats
Going to the gym
LinkedIn (I'm on it, but don't see the point)
Uncomfortable shoes
Mexican food (I don't like wraps, beans, overly spicy food, or flavored rice)
Coldplay
Skinny jeans
The revival of 80's fashion
Twitter (it's like Facebook, but without the interesting parts)

share the wealth

2009-06-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Not content to look silly in just one measly corner of the internet, I started making embarrassing comments on my friend Wendy's blog. That wasn't enough, and so I contributed an actual post, to make sure that as many people as possible would read of my self-imposed moron tax. If you're looking to tell the world about your own moron tax, she is eagerly awaiting (and dying to post) your stories.

idiom idiot

2009-06-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

One thing that I really used to take for granted was being able to speak English as quickly as I wanted to, with slang or puns or idioms, and knowing that it would be understood, as long as the people I was talking to were roughly in the same age group as I was.

Living abroad for four years made me appreciate both how much English is spoken around the world, such that you have a very good chance of being able to converse with random citizens of other countries, and also how much more English is spoken by native speakers, such that you need to remember to speak more slowly and simply to minimize the misunderstandings that might crop up with non-native speakers. You don't realize how strange and complicated the language is, and how much it is constantly changing, until you find yourself trying to explain the meaning of certain turns of phrase. Eventually, you just try to speak basic textbook English, to make it easier for the people who are nice enough to spare you the pain of struggling along in their native tongue.

And then you come back to the States.

I came back, and was excited to be able to speak at will, to hear and use words with many syllables and hard-to-define meanings. I soon realized that in four years of trying to learn German and speak simplified English, parts of my English-speaking brain had gotten a little bit rusty. Even now, a year later, I sometimes find myself searching for a word, fumbling around in a dusty corner of my brain, thinking, "I know there's a word for that, now where did I leave it?"

And idioms. Idioms have proven to be just as tricky as words that had been put away for safekeeping.

Note to self: Having a "wandering eye" and having a "lazy eye" are two very different things, and one should avoid saying that someone has the former, when they actually have the latter.

greatest hits

2009-05-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

Got back from an action-packed trip to New York, Zurich, and Spain on Monday, and can compare them all side by side and back to back.

So, in overly simplified terms, very short lists of what I loved best at each place this time around.

New York: I love that people are out doing things at all hours on all days. Impromptu brunches, random drinks, afternoon shopping, there is always something going on, and there are always people doing whatever it is that they're doing. I love that as long as I'm not too far downtown, I can navigate without help. I love that you can walk or take the subway just about anywhere, or if you're feeling lazy and extravagant, you can take a cab.

Zurich: I love that people live and work on a predictably relaxed schedule. I love that everything is so ridiculously organized and efficient. I love that when it's sunny and warm, you can walk to the lake, and it's one of the prettiest city-accessible places I've ever been. I love that there are funny old traditions that include things like accordion music and yodeling that people of all ages embrace, especially when it's open mike night at a campy local bar.

Spain: I love that some Spanish ham is worth traveling to eat. I love that in the north, they speak Basque, one of the least useful languages in the world, in terms of number of people who speak it, and relevance to other languages, but you can get by if you know French or Spanish. I love that they have ridiculously good food for $3 (in bars) or $300 (in Michelin 3-star restaurants). I love that there is a cathedral that focuses on a 14th century miracle that involved chickens, and showcases two live chickens in their own special altar-display.

Mountain View: I love that at this time of year, it's sunny and warm every day, and the jasmine is in full bloom everywhere you go. I love not living out of a suitcase. I love having a job that is fun to come back to after vacation. I love seeing how excited my dog is to have me back.

my jetlagging lifestyle

2009-05-12T07:51:00.001-07:00

I'm spending a few days in New York en route to Zurich, where I will spend a few days en route to Spain, where I will spend a week before turning it all around and doing it in reverse, but with less down time at each pit stop.

I've been walking through my days here doing my best impression of a non-brain-eating zombie. I admire the people in New York who dress up and stay out late on random nights of the week, daytime schedules be damned -- I used to be one of them, on occasion, but I can no longer convince myself to give up sleep in favor of shoes that pinch my feet. If New York is the city that never sleeps, I've become the person that never quite wakes up.

Ever since finishing high school, I've needed more sleep than your average bear in order to retain my ability to put together complete sentences and not walk into walls. In lean times, I average eight or nine hours a night, and make up for it on weekends. In times when sleep is plentiful, I've been known to sleep eighteen hours out of every 24 hour period. In college, I considered it to be an all-nighter when I stayed up late writing a paper, and only got six hours of sleep. I grew an inch the year after I graduated from college, when I was sleeping twelve to fourteen hours every night, probably because my body didn't have to fight much gravity, since I was sleeping so much.

Despite this personal elevated need for an unreasonable amount of sleep, I am a lawyer (how do lawyers work those hours?), and I miss New York (how do New Yorkers live those hours?).

I left SFO on Friday night, and I still haven't recovered. I'm not sure whether to blame it on jetlag (even though I've had 3.5 days to get over a three hour time difference) or lack of sleep (even though I've been sleeping about seven hours a night, which is perfectly reasonable for most people).

I leave today for Zurich, and I'm bracing myself for an even more brutal round of jetlagged sleep deprivation. Oh, the sacrifices we make for travel, friends, and fun...

granola with extra fruit

2009-04-29T22:31:00.000-07:00

California is called the Golden State, but it would rather be called the Green State. There may very well be more vegans than Republicans in the Bay Area, and people say "organic produce" and "locally grown" as if they were holy words. I admit that I have some green tendencies -- I bring my own bags to the grocery store, and I drive a Prius, but I draw the line well short of growing my own vegetables to feed to the chickens I'm raising in my backyard in order to be 100% sure that they produce organic, cruelty-free eggs. (Yes, people actually do that. It's commendable but insane, especially if the people have jobs and kids. Who has time to tend to chickens?)

I've met many people who are at various crunchy stages on the granola continuum (see chicken owners, above), but I met my first completely, ridiculously over-the-top one recently. Oddly enough, she is originally from Texas, not a state I really associate with crunchy granola types.

Over dinner, this self-proclaimed "free spirit" informed us that:

(1) She and her husband still "co-sleep" with their two kids (ages 7 and 10) in one bed.

(2) She is a recent subscriber to the "raw food" movement, and will be getting her very own food dehydrator soon.

(3) She only gives her children raw milk, because heating the milk during pasteurization kills all the good stuff (presumably she meant something other than dangerous bacteria), leaving nothing but "cow pus." (Is "cow pus" more nutritious if it hasn't been heated? If she thinks milk is basically just pus, why drink it at all, heated or unheated?)

She spouted a lot more entertaining fruitcake dogma that I won't go into. What I love, though, and what she doesn't know, is that her husband secretly gorges himself on chicken wings and pizza when he's at work. I don't blame him, if the food he gets at home is not only raw, but dehydrated. Yum.

too late

2009-04-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

This came too late for me. I suffered through a lot of transatlantic flights sitting next to wheezing rhino behemoths who couldn't keep their massive bulk out of my seat. No amount of passive-aggressive elbows and lowered armrests can save you from The Fat Travelers Who Refuse To Acknowledge That They Can't Fit Into One Seat And Then Give You Dirty Looks For Trying To Use All Of The Seat That You, The Reasonably-Sized Person, Paid For, But Which They Think They're Entitled To Encroach Upon Because They Can't Resist Hostess Cupcakes.

Maybe this will end their reign of terror. Although I'm not sure that the airlines will actually enforce it, since there were similar policies already in place, which I always hoped would be used, but never were, at least not when they could have rescued me from on-board hippo-wrestling.

Next, they should let passengers of below-average weight bring more luggage. Seriously. It's only fair.

And don't even get me started on babies and young children. Do you remember when there used to be smoking on planes, and there was a smoking section and a non-smoking section? Yeah, they need to do that with babies and kids now. Put them in their own soundproof cabin, and everyone will be happier, except the parents, perhaps.

a few of my favorite things

2009-04-15T17:48:00.000-07:00

When people ask me for recommendations in Zurich, this is what I tell them.

achoo

2009-04-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

I never thought I had seasonal allergies, having made it through 30 years of seasons without issue. Apparently, however, I am allergic to Mountain View in late March. March has passed, as have my allergies, but now the mystery remains: what is in the air in Mountain View in March that isn't in the air anywhere else that I've lived at any time of year?

My only other allergies that I know of are cats, rabbits, large quantities of dust, and Sulfa drugs. Maybe someone tossed all of those into a wood chipper and sprayed it all over town, but just for a few weeks, until it got old?

relativity

2009-04-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

It's all relative.

The typical desk job in the States starts you off with two weeks of vacation per year, plus some standard company holidays. You gradually work your way up until a trillion years later, when you get four or even five weeks off per year.

Law firms start associates off with four weeks per year, plus firm holidays, but it's all for show. No one really takes all four weeks off, and chances are pretty good that you'll end up working on a fair number of the holidays and weekends, as well.

Then I left New York firm life for Swiss NGO life. When I first learned that I would get five weeks off, plus about two weeks of Swiss holidays, I couldn't imagine how I would use that much vacation up each year. Weekends and holidays? They were mine, as well. The first year I was there, I ended up with a few days left over, but after that, I used up all of my vacation days, and by the end of my time as an expat, I was finding it difficult to stretch my days off to fit my travels. My friends and I wondered, "How did we ever get by on less than seven weeks off per year?"

And then I moved back to the States. I get three weeks off, plus twelve company holidays, for over five weeks off total, which is quite generous by American standards, but still not quite the same as the Swiss seven. I worried that I would find it difficult to adjust back to the American way. As it turns out, I've been back in the States for over ten months, and have only taken two vacation days. In fact, by the time I hit my one year move-a-versary, I'll only have taken seven out of my fifteen vacation days. How things change...

On the other hand, that number is quite deceptive, because I'll also have spent thirteen days working from our offices in London, Zurich, and New York (to avoid taking vacation time while traveling), taken all twelve of the company holidays, and spent several days at company or department off-sites (wine blending, eating, doing pub trivia, skiing, going to the beach, and so on).

I'm not really sure which system works better for me yet, but at least I can say that, contrary to expectations, I don't feel vacation-deprived.

spring is when...

2009-03-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

...the temperatures start regularly hitting 70 degrees most days, and we get more sunny days than cloudy days, and fewer rainy days than in winter. OK, I can understand that, that makes sense. Apparently, however, it is also when some of the trees grow new leaves or burst into bloom, and others let their leaves turn red and fall to the ground. Couldn't they come to some sort of consensus on proper arboreal seasonal behavior? The six month perfect summer is only a month away. Schizophrenic as the climate is, I have no complaints. Just mystified confusion.

what is this madness of which you speak?

2009-03-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was at work and I walked up to my manager and another coworker as they were engrossed in conversation. My manager turned to me and asked if I had filled out a bracket.

It was the beginning of the day, we were about to go into a meeting, and I had no idea what he was talking about, and was momentarily concerned that I had overlooked some work-related thing that I was supposed to have filled out.

My confusion must have been very apparent on my face, as he then said, "March Madness? ...Basketball? ...College basketball? ...The championship? ...Are you filling out a bracket for the office pool?"

Oh!! Much relieved, I said that I had not, and did not plan on filling one out, due to my (very obvious) total lack of knowledge and interest when it comes to sports.

I was better able to seem less ignorant in Europe, where the only sport that anyone ever talks about is soccer. In the States, however, there is always something going on -- football, basketball, baseball, hockey -- and they overlap, so a non-sports person can never be sure what kind of game people are referring to watching "the game," and someone who is completely uninformed about sports (like me) is clueless about what kind of playoffs are going on at any given time.

Sigh.

At least it wasn't some work-related thing that I had forgotten to do.

rage, rage against the dying of the light

2009-03-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

One of the random benefits of living in the States is that Daylight Saving Time starts two weeks earlier and ends one week later than it does in Europe, so we get three more weeks of light lasting later in the evening. This makes an even bigger difference when you take into consideration the relative likelihood of sunny days in California versus Switzerland.

Perhaps in Switzerland, where people wake up at ungodly hours to get to work by 9, 8, or even (gasp!) 7 in the morning (and where clouds often obscure any direct sunlight), it makes the morning commute darker for a while, but here, where people wake up a bit later (and the sun is more likely to shine cloud-free), it just means that the sun is around for more actual waking hours. Sweet.

wintergreen

2009-03-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

I've lived in a few different places before moving to California -- Denver, Houston, Delaware, Cambridge, New York, and Zurich -- and they are all very different places, but one thing that they have in common is the way the seasons work.

In the spring, the grass starts growing and the trees start budding and growing leaves. In the summer, everything is green. In the fall, things turn colors, then turn brown and die. In the winter, the world just waits for spring to come back again.

Not here. Here, the seasons are all backwards, inside out, and upside down. Confused. In the summer, the grass is brown and yellow, fried to a crisp in the dry sun, but the trees are green. In the fall, nothing changes. In the winter, some of the trees get with the program and shed their leaves, but the grass gets confused by the sudden appearance of rain and turns green, and the flowers come out.

I'm not sure what will happen in spring. Probably something weird. Spring is probably when the marshmallow bushes grow Peeps, which are then picked by hippie elves and sent to drugstores around the country.

not so flexible

2009-03-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to use up more of my 2008 flex dollars, I went to the eye doctor to get new contacts. I wear contacts maybe once or twice a month these days, but it's good to have them for scuba diving and for days when I want to wear sunglasses. We went through the whole rigmarole of eye tests, ordering various brands of lenses, trying them out, and having followup visits. We finally settled on a brand, and I went to pay for them.

Apparently, if your eyes are bad enough, and your vision plan is good enough, the checkups, fittings, and lenses are all free, because they are a medical necessity. So the good news is that I got free contacts. The bad news is that my eyes are really bad, and I still have to use up my flex account.

To make matters worse, I found out that the handy dandy debit card that they issue for the flex account, and which I've been using to avoid having to submit expense reports, has been drawing from my 2009 flex account. So a bunch of my hard-spent expenses haven't even gone towards my goal of using up my old flex dollars.

In a last fit of desperation, I bought a bunch of random things from drugstore.com, like super duper first aid kits for home and car, and will go get prescription sunglasses. And if that doesn't work, then I guess I was never meant to use those flex dollars.

college days

2009-02-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

Going back even further, before Zurich and New York, I spent five years in Cambridge.

Five things I miss about Cambridge:

(1) The lobster stand in Faneuil Hall, where twelve bucks got you a lobster, a soda, and corn on the cob.

(2) Snowball fights.

(3) Living within walking distance of all of my friends.

(4) The Lomo de Buey a las Frutas at Dali in Somerville -- I have repeatedly tried to reverse engineer this dish, but have never managed it so far.

(5) Hot chocolate at L. A. Burdick's.

canines

2009-02-19T11:38:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about living in Switzerland was that my dog Fiver could go almost anywhere I was allowed to go. Fiver went to work, he went to bars, he went on trains and trams, he stayed in hotels. He went to restaurants, and in some restaurants, the waitstaff would bring him special treats or dog food, so that he wouldn't be left out of the dining experience. I loved it almost as much as he did.

The U.S. is not quite as dog-friendly as Switzerland is, but I was lucky enough to get a job with a company that allows dogs at work. Fiver stays home when I go to bars and restaurants, however, and I have to sneak him into most hotels and hope he stays quiet. Public transportation isn't an issue, since I live in the suburbs, and he just rides in my Prius wherever we go.

Today, however, I found one pocket of America that is more dog-friendly than Switzerland. I went to the dentist to get a filling repaired. My dentist usually keeps one of her dogs in the back of the office. She knows I have a dog, so she told me to bring him in, and Fiver sat in my lap the entire time I was in the dentist's chair, and he alternated between zoning out and watching the proceedings with great interest. My dentist said that her dog often naps on patients' laps while they are getting work done, and that it calms them down.

So I may not be able to take my dog out to eat anymore, but he can come hang out at the dentist's any time.

flex those dollars

2009-02-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

During my very brief stint at a law firm in New York, we paid less than $100 a month for our insurance premiums, and the rest was covered by the firm. We had the option to put pre-tax dollars into a flex spending account, to be used on any non-covered medical or dental costs. Pretty standard stuff. I don't remember how much I put away, but I remember that it was pretty accurate -- I was able to basically predict how much I would need to pay out-of-pocket, and set it aside in my flex account.

Then I moved to Switzerland. We paid our insurance premiums totally out-of-pocket, and it was about $200 a month, but to be honest, the insurance was pretty irrelevant. It didn't cover dental work or vision costs at all, so if you went to the dentist and had a filling done or if you had to get new glasses, you paid for it yourself, and as much as people complain about how expensive dentists and eye doctors are in the States, they are far worse in Switzerland. And the annual deductible was high enough to make the stated co-pays pretty irrelevant. Unless you spent more than $3000 a year on doctor's bills and prescriptions, it was all out-of-pocket. (Of course, there was an option to pay a much higher premium to bring the deductible down, but it didn't seem worth it if you were fairly healthy).

I moved back to the States, and my employer now covers 100% of my insurance premiums, and my co-pays are pretty minimal. I have dental insurance and a vision plan (a company full of nerds needs a good vision plan), and I can once again set money aside in a flex account. I made my election for 2008 when I showed up in May, and then in November, I had to make my election for 2009. The 2008 money needs to be used up by the middle of March 2009. Yay for using pre-tax money on my expenses, right?

The problem is this: I made my elections before I started doing any relevant spending, and I forgot that I have no overall deductible, and my co-pays are so low that it's very hard to actually spend all of my flex money. I set money aside as if I were still living in Switzerland, paying for everything out-of-pocket, and now my pockets are too full.

I think I will have to get laser eye surgery to use it up.

Say what you want about American health care, but if you're lucky enough to have health insurance here, then your out-of-pocket medical expenses are much cheaper than what you get elsewhere.

And so far, unlike in Switzerland, I haven't had to pay $200 out-of-pocket for an ultrasound that determined that there was poop in my intestines. Thanks, that was the most expensive piece of useless information I've ever been forced to pay for.

i still heart new york

2009-01-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

It has been almost five years since I left New York, and I still miss something about New York every week, if not every day. One of the things about moving every few years is that you accumulate a longer list of things to miss from all the places you've been.

Ten random things I miss about New York:

(1) FreshDirect.com

(2) My doorman

(3) All-night diners

(4) Skyscrapers

(5) Sunday walks through Central Park to the Met

(6) Easy navigation

(7) Unbeatable restaurant and bar scene

(8) Quirky shops and boutiques

(9) New Yorkers

(10) Same-day book delivery from Barnes & Noble

rat on a cat on a dog

2009-01-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

I was walking around in San Francisco yesterday, and my friend and I did a double take, because there was a man walking a dog, and on the dog was a cat, and on the cat was a rat. It was like a modern-day version of the Brementown musicians, or something. The dog was walking along quite normally, and the rat and cat were perched on top as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

We immediately whipped out our BlackBerrys to do some on-the-spot Googling, and it turns out that the dog-cat-rat-man is something of a (crack-smoking) San Francisco institution, and he makes upwards of $100 a day from random admirers and passersby.

only in america

2009-01-05T18:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!

A friend and I took a little road trip around Northern California last week, and in between wine tastings and crab eatings, we explored some of the lesser-known sights of the Bay Area and environs.

Only in America would there be an alley covered in people's discarded, chewed gum, and only in America would it be well-known enough that people (including us) will make a point of stopping by to take pictures of it. We bought a pack of gum, chewed two pieces, and left our mark.

Only in America would some nutjob try to build a castle (which we went to see) to rival a nearby, better-known castle (which we didn't go see), using nothing but junk.

Only in America would some weird lady (who probably has a lot of cats) start a museum dedicated to hand fans, which takes up one small room.

Sorry if you miss my old habit of posting pictures -- I really ought to start a Flickr or Picasa for this, but instead, I just post all of my pictures on Facebook. Find me there, if we know each other, and if not, you'll just have to imagine my American adventures... If it's any consolation, I take very few pictures these days -- I took eight pictures during the road trip, and they all involved used gum.

there ain't nothing like...

2008-12-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

...green mint chocolate chip ice cream

...being able to buy everything online

...being able to buy everything on sale online

...sunny, relatively warm December days

...freshly steamed lobster, $8/pound, even on the West Coast

...driving almost 400 miles on 8 gallons of gas (yay, Prius!)

Happy Holidays!!

then and now

2008-11-25T04:02:00.001-08:00

Six months after moving from Zurich to California, I'm back in Zurich for a week, visiting friends and checking out my old stomping grounds. Most people flock back to the States for Thanksgiving, where turkeys, yams, and canned pumpkin are plentiful. Not me. I stopped by Safeway to pick up marshmallows, canned yams, French onions, a turkey brining bag, and cream of mushroom soup, none of which are easy to come by in Switzerland, and crammed them into my suitcase in preparation for my first visit back.

Eighteen hours and two flights after waking up to go to the airport in San Francisco, I stepped off the plane in Zurich. First thought -- wow, it's cold here. I had been complaining that it was only getting up to about 65 degrees in Mountain View, and going down to the 40's at night. In Zurich, they warned us to be careful not to slip on the ice as we deplaned. Ice?! ICE?!?! Really? OK. I remember this stuff. I can get used to it again.

Wait, ice means that it's so cold that things freeze. So cold that I have to wear more clothes. So instead of wearing a t-shirt and light jacket, I have to wear a long-sleeved shirt, sweater, fleece, ski jacket, hat, and gloves. Oh, and that means I can't type on my BlackBerry as I walk around outside, because the gloves get in the way. Part of moving back to the States and working as a lawyer is that I have become wholly addicted to my BlackBerry. This is going to be a tough week, choosing between having adequate circulation in my fingers and feeding my addiction to constant connectivity.

Walking through the Zurich airport was simultaneously strange and familiar. I've been in the Zurich airport more than I've been in any other airport in the world, and it almost felt like I was just coming back from another of my innumerable weekend trips around Europe, except for the fact that I had to wait for a checked bag full of canned goods. The announcements in German, the unbelievably clean bathrooms, the Swiss-accented English, the piped-in soundtrack of yodeling and cows on the airport shuttle -- all of these things that I hadn't thought about but felt so strangely normal reminded me that I was indeed in Switzerland again.

The entire time that I was in Switzerland, I made occasional trips back to the States, during which I would madly stock up on whatever things I was missing in Switzerland. This time, it's going to be the other way around. I'll be eating things that are rare in the States -- good fondue, a certain kind of salad, and perhaps some sausage. I'll go buy large quantities of chocolate to take back as gifts, but maybe eat before they can be given, and I'll consider smuggling some cheese, as well. If I can find some funky sneakers that I like, I'll bring those, too -- there is space in my luggage now that the yams and onions are gone.

It's strange to visit my old life and realize it's not mine anymore.

roller coaster

2008-11-24T07:54:00.000-08:00

I live and work in Mountain View, about 45 minutes south of San Francisco. Mountain View tends to be flat -- you can look down the road and see all of the traffic lights for blocks and blocks ahead of you. Every couple of weeks, I make the pilgrimage up to the city to see friends and hang out with my sister and her family, and it's like a journey to uncharted territory.

San Francisco is hilly. Like, roller coaster hilly. Forget about trying to see the traffic lights five blocks ahead, you might not even be able to see the next traffic light. Getting your car up the hill to the next intersection is an agonizing approximation of the uphill part of a rollercoaster. Adjacent neighborhoods can be on sunny hilltops or fog-filled valleys. A simple drive across town involves so many quick changes in altitude that your ears pop multiple times going up and down all the hills between point A and point B. I'm not kidding. So weird.

uh oh

2008-09-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

I check the weather forecast every day. Force of habit, I suppose. And every day, it comes up the same - warm and sunny. Granted, sometimes it only goes up to 75, and every once in a while, it breaks 90, but usually it's somewhere around 80 and sunny.

Except for this morning, the forecast said that this Friday, there is a 30 percent chance of rain. This is the first time I've seen the rain icon since moving here. I almost didn't recognize it.

Not that 30 percent is that high. And not that I'll be here to see if it does rain - I'll be in London for five days, enduring colder (and probably rainier) weather than they will be having here.

But winter is coming, as evidenced by that 30 percent chance of future rain...

now entering mordor

2008-09-23T16:48:00.001-07:00

I live in Mountain View, which is about 45 minutes south of San Francisco. In any normal place, two places that are a 45 minute drive apart would share a similar climate. Not here.

I've been living here for four months now, and it has been warm and sunny every day. It rained once, for about five minutes, and there have been days when I have seen clouds. Otherwise, it's like the movie Groundhog Day - every day is exactly the same - except that in Groundhog Day, the weather was always cold and snowy, and here, it's been warm and sunny. I'm not complaining, I love it, it's just a bit disconcerting.

Every week or two, I drive up to the city to see my sister and friends. I toss my dog and a change of clothes into my car, as well as a fleece and a jacket for later. On the drive up, I wear a t-shirt and sunglasses, and turn the air conditioning on - sitting in a sunny car can get warm. About 30 minutes into the drive, right around where I pass the airport, however, I usually start feeling a little bit like Frodo, leaving the Shire behind for dark and dangerous territory. Driving in a sun-drenched car under blue skies, I can look ahead and see ominous clouds and heavy fog looming ahead. In the space of five seconds, I drive from perfect sun into misty darkness, and it feels like I'm entering Mordor.

Most weekends, by the time I get to my sister's place, the sun no longer exists, even at 2 in the afternoon. I hop out of the car and scramble to put on my extra layers as quickly as possible before the chill sets in. Fiver refuses to do his business, because he's too busy shivering.

Strange place, the Bay Area...

happy lungs

2008-09-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

Some coworkers and I decided to go play some pub trivia after work yesterday, and I stopped by my apartment before heading out to the pub. While I was in my apartment, I was debating between a sweatshirt and a jacket, and found myself mentally weighing which one would absorb less smoke, and which one was already dirty (and would therefore require washing, anyways, regardless of the smoke). Then I started dreading coming home with my hair reeking of smoke and I wondered if it was really worth going out at all.

And then I remembered...!!

California, unlike Switzerland, is wonderfully smoke-free!!

I spent nearly three hours in a pub full of people, and didn't smell a single cigarette while I was there. Bliss.

five more things

2008-09-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

Five more things I miss about Zurich:

1) Good chocolate and cheese

2) Summer street festivals

3) Uniform cell phone network coverage

4) Having everything in walking distance

5) The outdoor women's swimming pool-slash-bar

Five more things I love about the Bay Area:

1) Readily available Lactaid and dill pickles

2) Proximity to the ocean (and therefore diving)

3) Testing pre-release stuff at work

4) Unlimited cell minutes and free local calls

5) Air-conditioned office buildings

ten things

2008-08-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

Ten things I miss about Zurich:

1) My people

2) Best. Public Transportation. Ever.

3) Can you say five weeks of vacation per year?

4) Dozens of countries within a two hour flight

5) Dog-friendly restaurants

6) Grilling by the lake

7) Leaving for the airport an hour before a flight

8) Clean streets

9) Assigned seating in movie theaters

10) My gummy candy store

Ten things I love about the Bay Area:

1) Being near my sister for the first time in 18 years

2) Ethnic food

3) Shopping on evenings and weekends

4) Cheap haircuts that aren't mullets

5) Cheap everything

6) Movies without intermission or subtitles

7) Being fluent in the local language

8) Not being mistaken for a mail-order bride

9) Sun. All day. Every day.

10) Coolest. Company. Ever.

stranger in a strange(r) land

2008-08-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

A little over four years ago, I moved to Zurich without ever having been there. I had been to Switzerland once during college, but that was to sing a concert in Geneva, which is in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is vastly different from Zurich. Being a brave (or naive) 25-year-old, I just picked up and moved from Manhattan to Zurich, less than three months after first hearing about the job. I didn't really think about how big of an adjustment it would be, leaving my friends and life behind for a new job in a new city in a new country full of people I didn't know. Duh. It was a bit of a shock - everything from laundry schedules to store opening hours to local dialect to restaurant prices left me feeling like I had landed on some alien planet in a parallel universe.

It all worked out in the end - what started as a random "Hm, let's see what happens if I move to Switzerland" experiment turned into one of the best decisions I've ever made. Leaving my life in Zurich was one of the hardest things I've done, but I left older and wiser. Or so I thought.

As it turns out, only one of those was true. I am now 30, so I'm definitely older, but I'm not sure that I'm any wiser.

Somehow, I thought that coming back to the States would be an easy homecoming, of sorts. Moving back wouldn't be the big adjustment that moving to Europe had been, I reasoned, because I'm American and I'm moving back to America. Turns out that I should have said that I'm an East Coaster moving to California. Californians are nearly as alien and unfathomable to me as the Swiss. Preliminary observations reveal a marked penchant for yoga and bicycles.

These aliens seem quite at home in a place that is quite foreign to me. For the first time in thirteen years, I'm living in the suburbs, and I have to drive everywhere, instead of just hopping on a tram (Zurich), the subway (New York), or the T (Boston). I have no idea what to do with my substantial collection of heavy coats and umbrellas. After four years of bringing my dog everywhere except for grocery stores, I suddenly have to leave him at home when I'm going to a restaurant (as opposed to Zurich, where he would sometimes get better service from the waitstaff than I would). I am somewhat discombobulated by the lack of marching bands and church bells.

I think it will take longer than anticipated to get used to this place.

land of the free (or deeply discounted)

2008-08-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

One of the things that was most shocking about Switzerland was how they find a way to charge for everything. Nothing is free in Switzerland, and nothing is cheap, either.

On the flip side of that, coming back to the States has been a continuous stream of surprisingly cheap (or free) experiences. I still have my Citibank accounts from before I moved to Switzerland, and regularly transferred money from Switzerland to the US so that I could pay credit card bills and send money towards my student loans. It was easier than trying to do those things from my Swiss accounts, and besides, there weren't any monthly fees on my US accounts, so why close them?

Now that I'm back, I have a bit of a dilemma - do I keep my Swiss accounts open? On one hand, it's convenient to have them there so that I can transfer money to the tax authorities once my final taxes are calculated. Also, if I closed them, I wouldn't be able to open new Swiss accounts as a non-resident unless I could give them at least $50,000 as an opening deposit. On the other hand, there is no such thing as free banking in Switzerland - every month that my accounts there remain open, the bank takes its cut, and doesn't even give me any interest. It's a great racket they have going on there.

In contrast, I opened another random bank account after getting back here, with a bank I never intend to use, simply because it's free, and the bank offers its customers good car loans and other nifty services. All for free, with a $50 minimum balance. So to recap - the minimum balance is 1/1000th that of a Swiss bank, they pay interest, there are no monthly fees, and they provide lots of free services and cheap loans. I have no idea how they make any money. I would have said that maybe American banks are less profitable and less stable, but it isn't like Credit Suisse and UBS have been having a stellar time of it these days, either.

It isn't just services like banking that are especially cheap - the shopping is ridiculous. I went to Target a few weeks ago, and spent an hour wandering around trying to figure out what, out of the endless aisles of random cheap stuff, to put in my cart. I have never spent much time in stores like Target, since I lived in big cities since leaving home, and big cities aren't really Target country (indeed, I have never set foot inside a Walmart, and hope I never do), so I was completely bowled over by how much stuff there is, and how little they charge for it. Do people really buy all of it? What do they do with it? How do they decide they need it? How do they get it home? Where do they have room for all of it? In the end, I bought a cartload of storage containers and bathmats, paid a measly $180, and called it a day.

Have I mentioned how cheap the food is? I haven't gone out to eat that much since getting back, since the food is free at work, but when I have gone out, the total per person is usually below $30, including appetizers and drinks. That's just absurd, after spending four years in a place where the entrees alone at a mediocre restaurant can run about $40.

But cheap is still more expensive than free. Everything you have heard about Google food is true. It is all free. It is all good. It ruins your appetite for restaurant food, because why go to a restaurant and pay $20, if you can get better food for free, without even leaving the comfort of your office building? I was afraid I would gain a lot of weight after starting work at Google. Everyone talks about the Google Fifteen - the weight you gain in the first few months at Google - and I am food-lazy, meaning that when confronted with the prospect of having to go to the store, buy groceries, bring them home, prepare a meal, eat it, and then clean up, my tendency is to skip the whole process and watch TV, instead.

I was worried that without a laziness barrier to over-eating, I would become a big, fat, "Midwest tourist" version of myself. I became even more nervous when confronted with such menu options as bubble tea, oysters, foie gras, Kobe beef sliders with Gruyere cheese, lobster risotto, and made-to-order sushi. So I exercised portion control (usually with success), and compensated for large lunches with small dinners (also free). Add on some stress and weekend food laziness, and the net result so far has been that I've lost maybe five pounds. So for me, I guess it's the Google Negative Five, and my pants don't fit right anymore. D'oh.

Does this mean that I got a free diet, too? I wonder how much such a diet would cost in Switzerland...

unidentified driving object

2008-07-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

So I took two cars out for a test drive last night - the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius, and apparently, cars are now turning into spaceships. I have only ever really driven a '97 Toyota Camry, and it's a car. I don't know if the trend now is towards making everyone feel like a Jetson, or if it's just the hybrids that feel like that, but I definitely felt like an alien as I drove the Civic Hybrid and the Prius. Not in a good or bad way. It was just different from what I expect when I get behind the wheel of a car.

I liked both of them, but the Prius has a three-month waiting list! It's cheaper, more fuel efficient, more versatile, with more space in the back, but that's only once you get it. So now I'm having a bit of a dilemma. Which spaceship should I drive?

In related news, I finally got my California driver license - in the end, I only had to take a written test (much to my relief, since I never learned how to parallel park, and would surely have failed for that alone). I've moved out of temp housing into more permanent accommodations. And my first two paychecks landed safely in my bank account. So bit by bit, I am becoming a bona fide resident of California, which basically makes me an alien, right?

one stop shopping

2008-06-16T21:40:00.001-07:00

I don't think I can overemphasize how different grocery stores are in the US and Europe. I really thought that coming back to American grocery stores would feel normal, but I guess I got so used to the grocery stores in Switzerland that the American ones have become a foreign experience for me.

Several revelations I have had at Safeway so far:

1) Grocery shopping is much different when you go with a car. Instead of having to choose the smallest, lightest, most essential items that you can carry home, you just toss everything you can see into the cart, then haul it out to the car. Then you get home and wonder why you bought half of it.

2) Grocery bags are free in the States, but not guilt-free. The problem is two-fold: first, you buy a carload of groceries, instead of a personload. Second, you then get free plastic bags for a carload of groceries, which makes you feel that much guiltier than when you buy paper bags for a personload of groceries. My reusable grocery bags will be coming soon, but until then, I'm consoling myself with the thought that I'll reuse the plastic bags to pick up after my dog.

3) Who needs ATMs when the cashier at the grocery store lets you charge more on your card so that you can get cash back?

4) Who needs cashiers, however, when you can go through the self-service checkout?

5) Who needs post offices when you can buy your stamps at the grocery store?

On the other hand, having everything in one place can be very overwhelming, to the point of being counter-productive. It doesn't really occur to me to ask for stamps or cash when checking out, because I'm still reeling from trying to pick out one cartload of groceries from the 20-odd massive aisles. Most of the time, I end up buying about three random things, then losing courage and leaving the store, only remembering too late that I had intended to buy specific items on a grocery list.

the weather is wetter in zurich

2008-06-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

I am a bit disconcerted, because it hasn't rained since I moved here almost three weeks ago, and the weather forecast for Mountain View for the rest of the week is all the same - sunny, high in the 80s (around 30, for those who think in metric), low in the 50s (around 13 in Celsius). When I first got here, it was cooler than I expected (for some reason, I thought that California would be very warm, but it gets pretty nippy at night - never go without a fleece, even in the summertime, because once the sun goes down, it gets cold). But cold or hot, there still hasn't been any rain. I commented on the lack of rain to a coworker, and she said, "Oh, it'll rain in September, probably."

Um, it's June right now. How can it not really rain for three months? Zurich is similar to New York (and much of the East Coast, for that matter), in that the weather changes from day to day, or even from hour to hour. It wasn't unusual to have a hot sunny day and a cold rainy day, back to back. In fact, the weather in Zurich is so fickle that it will often be both rainy and sunny at once. I've grown so used to weather that has a multiple personality disorder that I can't fathom the idea of having the same weather every day for weeks in a row.

Weird.

As nice as it sounds to have warm, sunny weather all the time, I've also been warned that when it rains, it can decide to rain for weeks at a time, as well. Ick.

take two

2008-06-08T23:53:00.000-07:00

Note to self: Notes to self apparently are useless. I got scared by another sneaky garbage disposal light switch, this time when I was viewing an apartment with my agent and the owner present. I nearly jumped out of my skin and then had to explain that I had forgotten about garbage disposals.

Also, I may have been a little bit stinky, because Fiver puked on my leg while we were driving around, and while it wasn't visible, it smelled like puke.

Anyone know of a landlord looking for a stinky tenant who is scared of garbage disposals?

i shouldn't be surprised, but i am

2008-06-02T20:23:00.001-07:00

Note to self: Just because you lived in apartments and dorms where light switches did nothing but turn lights on and off for the past thirteen years doesn't mean that they can't do other things. Like turn on a garbage disposal. Which then scares the bejesus out of you because (1) you haven't heard a garbage disposal in thirteen years, (2) you forgot garbage disposals even existed, and (3) it was late at night and it was dark in the kitchen, and you just wanted to turn the light on to get a snack, but instead, GRBKFKMGXMK!!!!

Beware the garbage disposal.

Also, beware the cookie thieves! I went to the grocery store yesterday (yes, on a Sunday - this is the second Sunday in a row that I've gone and bought something at a store that wasn't located in a train station, and I'm still immensely pleased) and as I walked down the cookie aisle, lo and behold, I saw that the Cookie Gods, during my four year hiatus from the States, had seen fit to bless us lowly cookie eaters with Cool Mint Creme Double Stuf Oreos.

Yum.

I bought a package, not for me, but to send to friends back in Switzerland - I am trying to eat relatively healthily, to compensate for the fact that I'm getting free food at work, and the fact that I don't exercise. I got the cookies back to my apartment and found out that in my absence, the Cookie Gods had also invented resealable packaging, and that someone had opened the package, eaten about 1/4 of the Oreos, and resealed it.

D'oh.

Maybe the Cookie Gods had foreseen my intention to send the cookies to Switzerland, and didn't want it to happen, and so they made sure that I bought a package that I wouldn't send. Sorry, Switzerland, you're just not ready for the awesomeness of Cool Mint Creme Double Stuf Oreos with resealable packaging.

I intended to either throw the cookies away (for fear that they may have been tainted) or take them back to Safeway (to exchange for a virgin package), but I ended up eating some of them. So far, no poison, so I'll hope for the best for the rest of the package.

yellow-tinted glasses

2008-05-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

OK, so I know that I complained that Switzerland (and Europe in general) weren't diverse enough, after living in New York and going to school in Cambridge, but San Francisco is at the other extreme. I find myself staring at all of the Asian people as if I had never seen an Asian person before (except for in the mirror every morning). At work, most of my group is Asian, which would seem more normal if we were programmers, but we're all lawyers! I guess there are just so many Asian people in the area, and they have to work somewhere, so why not with me?

The other weird thing is that there are Asian people doing things that I'm not used to seeing Asian people do. I grew up in Delaware, where the Asian population is a small minority, but they are all there for highly skilled professional positions - they are engineers at DuPont or researchers at one of the pharmaceutical companies. Their kids all get straight A's and want to go to Harvard or Yale. Then at Harvard, well, all of the Asian people go to Harvard. Duh. In New York, the Asian people I met were my classmates at Columbia, or lawyers at my firm, or they were the doctor or banker colleagues of my doctor and banker friends.

Zurich was a big shift in perspective - instead of seeing only highly educated, successful Asians, I saw mostly souvenir brides - underprivileged, undereducated women who married Swiss guys who for some reason or other weren't able to get the domestic product. Oh, and then there were the restaurant workers (every place needs random Asian people working in random quasi-Chinese restaurants) and the "exotic dancers."

So I'm used to seeing Asian people at the top and bottom of the ladder, but in San Francisco, there are just so many of them (us?) that they (we?) take up space on the entire ladder. There are Asians who drive buses and deliver the mail. There are Asian receptionists and cafeteria workers. There are Asian policemen and security guards. It's so odd. I mean, obviously in Asia, Asians do those things, because otherwise there would be countries made up of nothing but doctors, lawyers, waiters, and prostitutes, but I'm just not used to Asians who have emigrated and end up doing really mundane things.

And they're doing them everywhere. All over the place. Where are all the white people hiding??

P.S. I bought pants and found my way to the office. So not only did I make it to work the first day, I even did so while wearing pants. Woot!

pants crisis vs. driving crisis

2008-05-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

It has come to this. Which is more important - my need for pants, or my general aversion to driving? I think I'm going to drive to the mall to look for pants. (Yes, shopping! On a Sunday!! Take that, Switzerland!!!) I haven't driven to a mall in at least five, if not ten years.

It's not just my rusty driving skills that makes me hesitant to drive to the mall. It is also my COMPLETE LACK OF A SENSE OF DIRECTION. Seriously. I can get lost going to the bathroom. In fact, I have gotten lost going to the bathroom. The rental car has GPS, but I am not sure that even that can rescue me from my own inability to navigate anywhere I haven't been to at least five or fifty times.

Speaking of which, I think that tomorrow, I will probably drive to work a few times so that I won't get lost on my first day Tuesday.

How embarrassing would that be, to have to call your office on the first day of work and tell them, "I know my temp housing is only ten miles away, but I'm hopelessly lost. And, um, I'm not wearing any pants."

next stop, new life

2008-05-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

New life, new blog - I've just moved to San Francisco from Zurich, and figured that it wouldn't make sense to post on my Zurich page anymore. So here we are.

I'd forgotten how overwhelming the States can be. Moving from New York to Switzerland, I was a bit stunned at how few choices there were and how the system quickly funneled you into your little niche. I was never afraid of slipping between the cracks, because there weren't any cracks to slip through. Coming to the States is a much bigger and more chaotic process. Cracks abound. I'm not sure yet if I'm in a crack or on safe ground, but will just hope everything works out.

After living in Cambridge for five years, New York for four years, and Zurich for four years (all are cities with good public transportation), I had mostly forgotten how to drive a car. In the last five years, I had driven a car once. For about eight minutes. My driving skills were even rustier than my Chinese-speaking skills. And then I moved here, and although San Francisco itself is do-able using public transportation, my office is about an hour from San Francisco. I can either live near work, in which case I'd definitely need a car, or I can live in the city, but spend two or three hours every day on the shuttle bus to work. I can't decide which is more frightening - sitting on a bus for three hours a day, or terrorizing unsuspecting Californians from behind the wheel of a car.

In any case, my temporary housing is near work, so I have to rent a car, at least for the time being. With that in mind, my mom and I did some practice driving yesterday, and I don't think anyone was hurt. It's just like I remembered it - a big video game, but without any instructions on how to get points, level up, or find the big boss.

I spent the last four years in Zurich missing American grocery stores. The size. The selection. The price. The layout. The produce quality. In the meantime, I got used to Swiss grocery stores, which are small and offer about two choices for each product that they actually decide to carry. So when I went to the grocery store yesterday, I was completely overwhelmed, flabbergasted, stumped, and confounded. How many different types of laundry detergent can there possibly be? There are like ten brands, and each of them has so many options - organic, hypoallergenic, natural, dye-free, scent-free, extra-strong, color guard, black. And each option has three sizes! Don't even get me started on the confusion that ensued when I entered the cereal aisle and the shampoo aisle. I'm still recovering.

Moving was a bit of a hectic process. I gave up my apartment before actually moving, so I boxed up and labeled all of my things and left them in a friend's basement storage area until the movers came. They showed up and started opening boxes and asking what was in them - for insurance and customs purposes, they need to be able to say that they saw and packaged the goods themselves. They were Serbian, and I'm me, and the language we had most in common was German, which resulted in interesting exchanges. "What here?" "Um... neoprene suit for dive. Automatic lung. Little things for dive." Pause. Then he would write the German word for linens or laundry on the box. Dive gear, clothes, shoes, bags, knickknacks, they all became linens or laundry. At the end of the session, they gave me a "detailed, itemized inventory" of my goods, automatically translated into English, and of the 34 items on the list, half of them were simply labeled "Linens." And then there is the mysterious "Bucket," which was apparently "Packed by owner." I don't own a bucket, so I'm looking forward to receiving my bucket and finding out why it was worthy of being called something other than linens.

After my goods were boxed up and taken away, I got an email from a woman at the moving company asking me to pick a box or two to switch from the air shipment to the surface shipment, due to weight restrictions. She sent me a copy of the inventory to help me pick which things to switch from air to surface. Um... linens, linens, linens, linens, or bucket? I have no idea what's in those boxes, and which ones are more essential than others.

Speaking of essential, I seem to be missing a rather essential item. Pants. Yes, pants. Work starts Tuesday. I will be able to wear jeans to work, but I don't want to show up in jeans on the first day. First impressions, you know the deal. So I have jeans (nope), shorts (nope), a miniskirt (definitely not), a few low-cut dresses (uh, no), and several skirts (which would be great, except that the shoes I could wear with them are in a box labeled linens somewhere between here and Zurich). I do have one pair of pants with me, but they're a little loose and tend to fall down, which I don't think is any better than wearing jeans, first impression-wise.

Do you think they'll notice if I don't wear pants? Maybe that's one crack I don't want to slip through.