ten things

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."