French

My French skills were the cause of much hilarity this afternoon:

A colleague called to say that she was experiencing light bleeding during pregnancy and that she needs some time off. As my boss happened to walk into the room at that point, I passed her the phone with the remark "elle a le sang qui coule". I didn't understand why she suddenly went white, snatched the phone and shot out of the room.
I looked over at my French "room-mate" colleague, who had caught the whole situation and was killing herself laughing. She explained between gasps that I had painted a near death scenario ! Literally translated I had said: "her blood is flowing / she is loosing (a lot of) blood!"

Wonder if that mix up will get me some free French lessons!

Halloween

I know for a fact that Dracula (or all vampires for that matter) were prone to lisping!

My dear father

We celebrated Mum's birthday at the Cantina Don Camillo yesterday. Dad seemed to be hard of hearing. Our favorites were:

Dad: " I would like a tea - with water!"

Dad (to the waitress): "Your English is very good."
Waitress: "Thank you, my mother is American. "
Dad: "What, your mother is German?!"

Audrey and Jack Bauer

Here a hilarious comment about Audrey and Jack Bauer:
Audrey looks just like Skeletor, the baddie from He-Man!

Love is agony

I have been in the state of agony for the last few days. I am in love. In love with a pair of shoes!

On the fateful day (last Friday), I was strolling home around midnight, absentmindedly glancing at the well-lit shop windows. When suddenly, my gaze was caught by a pair of expertly crafted black high-heels. It was love at first sight! I shot over and pressed my nose against the glass, drinking in every single little detail. Then, my eyes fell upon the price tag. My insides churned. “They are so expensive! No!!! Wait, I am a fully fledged business woman now, I can afford them", I thought happily. Yet I must be growing older, because I was surprised to find that a black monster had begun to rear its head. Roaring for me to be sensible and all that crap. I found it imposing some kind of masochistic ban on those shoes, which goes so far, as to me denying myself the pleasure of even IMAGINING THE POSSIBILITY that one day they could be mine. It is driving me insane! Day after day the shoes innocently flirt with the glances of predatory shoppers. Giving me anxiety attacks, that when one day the beast is finally silent (I am already hatching a cunning plan to kill it while it sleeps) they won't have my size!

Spider-pig

The Simpsons movie did not live up to its trailer.
I recommend renting the DVD.

Pré Fêtes de Genève

I managed to survive the initiation to the pré fêtes of Geneva...
3 3dl champagne sangrias (champagne, peach syrup and fruit drowned in vodka)
1 apple shot
1 big squirt out of the deerskin pouch (very sweet & extremely potent!)
1 huge whiskey red bull (I neither like whiskey, nor red bull! but was so far gone at that point that I didn't notice WHAT I was drinking. Had only eaten half a green salad.)
1 caipirinha
all in 4,5 hours.

The next day I was greeted to a chorus of "my god you look so yellow!!!"
Must have been the champagne.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

A definite must-read!

The only critique I can muster is:
What modern parent in their right mind would bequeath their child with the name "Albus"?
Even if it is after the legendary wizerd Dumbledore...
Personally I prefer the name Dumbledore over Albus. Far nicer! (Albus reminds me of the bird "albatross"!)

Motivation

I am in serious need of a long holiday. My motivation has dropped to below zero and I have to force myself out of bed in the morning – on limb at a time. I need a change!!!!

“Harry Potter and the deathly hallows” is coming out on Saturday, so at least that’s something. But wait, he’ll certainly die, so after this weekend I will be in full mourning… hope it’s not too hot out… black does attract the heat!

I am at home in my flat in Geneva at the moment. Pissed off, because I had to wait for men…. should be a woman’s prerogative!!! The heating is playing up (like I’d notice in summer!) so they were sent by to check, change and cause chaos. After an hour they succeeded in creating a leak in one of the radiators and tiptoed off without me noticing. Great! So I had to call them AGAIN and they came huffing and puffing and are now sorting out this “little problem” as they called it. (Everything is “little” here. You could be a 3m tall basketball player and they would still refer to everything you eat, wear and do as “little”! Weird their terms of endearment: going round “belittling” everything and everyone!)

M. will start his new job in August. So that’s him happy. Didn’t have to look for long (2 weeks) but was moaning as if he had been out of work for a year! Men….!

We got a new boss at work. The one on maternity leave decided to leave permanently, so voilà, an opening came up for someone moving back to Geneva from Austria… and she happened to have experience on the brand…. fate!

Everyone is happy and my co-worker has calmed down with her exploits, so we’re a fully functional team for now.

Graduation

M graduated yesterday (uni, law, cum laude). Congrats! We've been out celebrating ever since we knew he passed...
Welcome to the working word. You surely won't be just another fish in the sea of job-hunters for long!

Speaking of fish: in Malta we were (or rather, I was) attacked by a shoal of fish. At first I thought the tiny, black nibblers were rather cute, until their jaws opened and they revealed their true carnivorous nature.
M refused to be impressed and keeps on insisting that a 2cm long fish does not bite.... men!

After a few days, we decided that Malta's charms were too dry and barren to hold us. So we booked a day-tour of Sicily / Mt Etna.
The crossing only took 90 minutes on a high speed catamaran. After visiting the quaint little town of Taormina, we headed up to Mt Etna and marvelled at the destruction lava can cause.

Off to Malta

M and I are off to Malta next Sunday. But this time we ran into obstacles before we even left the country!We booked the trip on the spur of a moment late Monday night. Unfortunately we got the dates mixed up. Which now means that we have 7 flights for a one week trip! I am never ever booking online without my agenda at hand. Never ever again!

Paris in May

Paris, the city of love has captivated me again.
I spent a whole week in the lovely city of Paris, roaming the streets at night (during the day I was kept busy with a training module), drinking in glimpses of the Sacre Coeur, the Tour Eiffel and the Jardin de Tuileries.

The trip back home was horrendous though. 20 minutes into what was supposed to be a five hour train journey, the engine conked out! This forced us to wait for FOUR hours in the stifling heat of the wagons until the replacement finally arrived. Luckily the guy sitting next to me turned out to be chatty and what was more, quite interesting too!
But even though the driver tried to make up for lost time, we arrived at the second-last stop at 3 am (instead of 11pm). As the Swiss train station had already closed down for the night (that was adding insult to injury!), we spent the last two hours of this journey-from-hell in a coach. Exhausted, legs swollen to twice their size (had such a shock! this had never happened to me before), I arrived home at five in the morning after an eleven hour journey.
However, I can’t even say that I will never take a train out of Paris again – last time I flew out of Paris and there was a strike, so I could hardly get to the airport. Paris obviously doesn’t want to let me leave, once I’m there!

May 1st

It's beautiful weather outside and it's a HOLIDAY! :-)

2 + 6 = 8

I nearly forgot to commemorate another year... I turned 26 on April 4th.
Thanks for the Birthday wishes everyone!

Always interested in destiny, I wonder, what does my Personal Year hold in store for me?
4 + 4 = 8
2 + 0+ 0 + 7 = 9
8 + 9 = 17 = 1 + 7 = 8

Personal Year 8. . . . Attainment and capital gains
This is a number 8 personal year for you. This is your power year, a period when you can make important strides in you life. Coming after a very slow and introspective period (the personal year 7), you may start feeling some stirrings of ambitions. This is a year of big decisions and major achievements. Activity is your keynote now, and you will find yourself very much involved and occupied. Opportunities for advancement and recognition for past and current work is likely to come about during this year. You have things going for you so long as you take advantage and act. It is easy for you to branch out and expand in a businesslike manner. If you are at all inclined, this is the time to exude self-confidence and authority, because others will tend to be receptive to your leadership and control. Your power and status potential is at a peak of the nine years personal epicycle that concludes at the end of the next year.(Source: astrology-numerology.com)

Doesn't sound half bad, now, does it?

24 & Ishiguro

I've done it again... spent many hours with my eyes glued to my laptop, riveted by the one and only... Jack Bauer. Sad, really. Or would be if I cared. Right now all I can think about is when and where I can continue watching season five. Luckily tomorrow is a holiday.

Between 24 and sleeping I managed to sneek in some good old-fashioned reading time. Kazuo Ishiguro captured me with Never let me go and The remains of the day. Both books fascinating, the former gruesomely so.

Home & Geneva

One of the good things about being ill (flu - nothing serious), is the fact that all my weekend retreats (family, boyfriend, friends) have wireless internet access. It is such a joy to be able to read my private mail again!

After an eight weeks stint in Morges, I now finally own a key to a flat (well, room would be more accurate) in Geneva! Now summer can come and I’m ready… with the beautiful waters of the Lac Léman in walking distance and a street full of shops open 24/7… all seems quite promising!

Arosa

Had a girlie weekend last week up in Arosa... yet again.
We partied all night and well into the day. Which obviously meant that we didn't manage to sandwich much snowboarding in between the drinking and dancing..
Managed to dance the night away with some random guy... a fantastic leader, I was sooo impressed!

Over

There. As of today, I am officially no longer a sales rep.
Funnily enough, I have a strange feeling about giving up the freedom of driving around, visiting clients. It was nice being my own boss (sort of, at least.) Do I miss it already?
Or is it just my sentimental side is coming to the fore? Whatever this feeling is, it is definitely being intensified by the fact that I have to give up my car! (sniff)

New toy

I have a new toy: the ipod nano 8 GB.
It's black, cute and (most importantly) has the ability to reduce the boredom of a 3 hour train journey to an absolute minimum.

Toe

On a whim, a few friends and I decided to go up a mountain for a bit of snowy fun. So yesterday saw us zooming up the 351 corners to reach Arosa. After having rented our sledges, up we went to the Weisshorn with the gondola.

We decided to do a bit of après-ski (or avant-sledge in our case) first, for a bit of Dutch courage.
The girls became highly animated and introduced me to weird drinks such as "Gsichtli" (meaning "face"; made out of peppermint tea with peach schnapps) and "Holderio" (elderflower tea with some kind of fruit schnapps) - both AWFUL! I stuck to my mulled wine (thank you very much!) and we happily sipped and slurped, enjoying the sun. Until we suddenly realised, that the sun had practically set and we had better get our butts down the slope pronto!
Grabbing our sledges we first didn't manage to open the lock and our cries of dismay send many suspicious glances in our direction. Eventually the lock sprung open and we set off down the sledge run. Faster and faster we flew, past dark trees and straggling pedestrians (who jumped to the side in a hurry). Then, a sharp corner and a weird sensation overtook me: I was flying! Straight for a tree! I managed to twist to the side and bumped myself roughly but avoided a head on collision, which would undoubtedly have been more painful for me than for the tree.
Always a trooper (or thanks to the alcohol dulling the pain) I got back on the angel of doom (= sledge) and got down without further mishap. At home I discovered that my toe had turned a nice shade of black and yellow. Luckily that was all the damage. But I cannot walk for two days, which means that nor can I finish my moving. What a drag.