Eyes

My eyes are getting worse and worse: went swimming this morning and was wondering why most women were sitting around topless until I realised I was looking at a group of men!

Southeast Asia - my plan

I've finally chosen and booked the first stages of my trip:
spend 2 nights in Bangkok - fly up to Hanoi - travel down to Saigon & Mekong Delta - mosey over to Cambodia - trek up through Laos - wander over to northern Thailand and travel down to Bangkok. Only another 46 days to go!

Rediscovered Paddy's this weekend (Irish Pub). Was fantastic, as usual. Even if I did make a complete fool of myself by asking the lead singer at the bar if the band was any good (hey, how could I know who he was?!). He was surprisingly nice about it though. Not like some of the other stuck up "god's-nightmare-to-women" howlers.

Free day

Jippee, all my customers decided to bail on me. So, tomorrow I have a whole day in which I can pursue my future.
Must admit though, that I am completely lost in the myriad of jobs, psychology and social work available.

The cook

Am pretending to cook for my not-yet better half and have so far succeeded in almost finishing a bottle of champagne (hey, well 2dl are for the sauce and you know how champagne can go bad.... if not drunk) and peeling some awfully small potatoes. Such a drag! But he's a meat and potatoes man.. gotta love 'em for what they are and not for what they eat!

Originally I was planning to tour Southeast Asia with Imaginative Traveler. But (unfortunately) they canceled the tour due to lack of participants. Soooo, after much ado (and not about nothing) I'm now off by myself for 4 months (May - August) ! Am really looking forward to it, despite missing the EURO 08 (football) in June.

Went to the career guidance office today to do some research and left them thoroughly confused! My gut feeling is telling me to focus on Psychology, yet there is such a HUGE focus on empirical research (statistics) that I'm quite put off.

Have to go and cook said meat now. hope he turns up soon, can't remember if he prefers it medium rare (like normal people) or well done (no comment).

Change is afoot:

My career advisor strongly suggested I look into the following areas (in no particular order) :

• social pedagogy
• psychology
• advertising
• psychotherapy

Apparently my personality, talents and inclinations is/are best suited for / will be most rewarded in the above areas.

We’ll see where life's wandering road will lead me!

Clumsy me

OMG, I dropped my laptop and now the bloody thing won't start! Not only is it the company laptop, but I was just about to plug it in & send off all my orders when I tripped & fell. Now everything has disappeared. AArggh!
I bet you the malingering device has decided to sulk because I didn't buy it a cute laptop case I saw yesterday. (You never know, electrical devices may have feelings after all!)

A new start

I quit my job last week!!!
Neither Marketing nor Geneva were quite my cup of tea and I decided that life is too short to harbor a silent hope that things will suddenly get better out of the blue. So voilà, I'm back in ZH at the moment replacing our sales rep (currently away on paternity leave for two months), hoping that I do not have to go down to Geneva again.

And no, before you start wondering, I do not have another job lined up. I really want a complete change and have enlisted the help of a career adviser to point me in the right direction. It's quite an adrenalin kick to just up and leave. Am looking forward to the adventure that will be my future!

Goodbye

Our colleague's wife was buried yesterday. Such a sad, sad story.
To be honest, this was the fist funeral that brought forth the pain I carried round in my chest when Carmen died. It's gone now, but I was so surprised by its presence and the fact that it could come back with such a vengeance.

But life does go on, so on a happier note:
I went to Engelberg last weekend with my old volleyball mates (+ partners) and we had great fun. To my surprise I really enjoyed skiing! (Haven't been for at least 10 years.) Not that I was any good, but M gave me some lessons and my body actually managed to remember the movements I was supposed to make... as well as the pain the next day!
They had an igloo bar / restaurant / hotel near our place and we went there for a nightcap. Was pretty spectacular besides being freezing cold!

Change

The last few months of the old year were tarnished by the sombre presence of death.
> My boyfriend's grandmother passed away, hit by a sudden stroke.
> A colleague's heavily pregnant wife was diagnosed with lung cancer. She passed away the day before yesterday. Thankfully the baby is fine (delivered by cesarean) and ready to go home soon.

I fell ill with a horrible virus just shortly before Christmas, but was up and about in time to scoff some stuffing! M & I spent the New Year in Hamburg. Strolling around, dancing to rock music at 7am at the fish market, enjoying the local delicacies (cake, not fish!) and shopping til we dropped!

Hey, that's mine!

A true case of survival of the fittest...


Found on flickr.com

Christmas

I am counting the days down to the Xmas holidays.... only 10 days to go...! Still haven't bought any presents yet - am so uninspired this year!

M & I are going to Hamburg for New Year. Will be great to get away from this slow moving country! It feels like I haven't traveled in ages! Which is true... last time was to Nice (great shopping, or rather I found one great shop in which I bought three pairs of shoes and a bag in 15 minutes flat!) with M and my parents.

Everyone seems to be leaving the country - I would almost say I feel left-behind! How silly is that? To make myself feel better I posted my CV on monster.co.uk... a bit of lip-service... when did fooling oneself become so easy?!

On a happier note, I finally found a volleyball club and a pilates instructor!

I'm getting to know my neighbors:
A few weeks ago, on a Monday morning (figures...) I shut the door to my flat on my way to work. Just as I turned away, I stopped short, reminding myself to lock the door. But then I realized that s***! my keys were still dangling in the lock... on the other side of the door! Luckily a nice neighbor happened to pass by and taking pity on me offered to help. He turned out to be a mechanic (no, not a locksmith, it was a Monday, remember?!) and managed to break open my door using pure force - and had quite a job of it too!

Poor guy, he must be ruing the day he met me: two days later I sent him a text message at midnight, asking if he had a spare mattress I could use! He not only replied (silly boy), but went down to his cellar and produced a fantastic mattress after 30 minutes of searching (which is still under my bed - don't blame him if he is avoiding me!) for my friend to stay over.

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.