Swiss Life

Can you open my safe?

2006-04-23T22:55:00.000+02:00

Can
You Open My Safe?

1st
Number:

Age of the youngest boy I nanny for

2nd
Number:

Number of Canadian Provinces I\\\'ve visited

3rd
Number:

Number of serious boyfriends I\\\'ve had

Make
Your Own Safe - Click Here

How Abnormal Are you?

2006-04-01T01:30:00.000+02:00

Inspired by Tammiodo. I thought I would be waaaay more abnormal than this. Like Ginger Kids, (www.gingerkids.org) I have no soul. I absolutely refute that I have ever been bitten by a ginger though.

You Are 20% Abnormal

You are at medium risk for being a psychopath. It is somewhat likely that you have no soul.
You are at medium risk for having a borderline personality. It is somewhat likely that you are a chaotic mess.
You are at low risk for having a narcissistic personality. It is unlikely that you are in love with your own reflection.
You are at low risk for having a social phobia. It is unlikely that you feel most comfortable in your mom's basement.
You are at low risk for obsessive compulsive disorder. It is unlikely that you are addicted to hand sanitizer.

How Abnormal Are You?

Bandages 2.5

2006-03-29T20:04:00.000+02:00

One word sums it up really- WHY?! Why would I get totally wrecked to the point of not remembering and inducing heinous injuries to myself on Friday night? Cause the Bandages kids were in town of course. After being off the sauce for the past few months, I was far from prepared for the alcoholic devastation about to be wreaked upon me with the arrival to Geneva of Pauly Poon Hands, Turves and Ashcroft. Let the games begin.

Friday
The kids rocked into town on Friday afternoon, and it was straight off to the nearest bottle shop to stock up on provisions that we hoped would last us all weekend. Half hour later, and we were considerably lighter in the pocket, but the proud possessors of a keg, a six pack, a bottle of JD, a bottle of Trojka (taken as it is cheaper than both vodka and wodka) and shite loads of mixers. We were on our way to the happy place. In fact, it took no time whatsoever to reach the happy place, speed through it and make our way towards total debauchery. In fact, we were on our way to this state by the time my family got home...not sure they were greatly impressed with our suggestion of a game of baseball, but my little boys loved it at any rate. After the family departed, the real business started with a showing of the full length, oscar nominated Bandages 1 tour DVD. Needed lots more alcohol to cope with this, as it's fair to say I'm a target in this video. Luckily, Pauly was happy to provide me with alcomohol, and I didn't actually realise that he was serving me vodka, Johnny walker, lemonade and diet coke until the third one...sword. The stock pile that we had hoped would last us all weekend was gone in under 2 hours, and the tour made it's way north to Nyon, where I was attending a birthday party and the poon hunters were being escorted to a bar by my friend Jill. The party was being held in the house of Nicola, and it's the home of the infamous vodka shots night. Let's just say this night was no different, and by the time I left the party to rejoin the poon hunters, I was sporting a massive bruise under my arm from my armpit to my mid arm bit that has three large cuts through it. Apparently I fell over not once but twice in the toilet, and landed on the toilet roll dispenser. It's a thing of beauty. Meanwhile, the poon hunters were checking out the local hunting grounds. Luckily for Ashcroft, he didn't have too far for his poon fix, a fact that provided much hilarity for the rest of us for the duration of the bandages tour. Some very hazy and indistinct memories later, and the tour is in a cab on the way back home. Quite a normal cab ride, except for the fact that none of us could agree on whether the cab driver was male or female, and were discussing this at the tops of our lungs not realising that the poor bitch/bastard actually spoke English. Ooops. Bandages 2.5 stumbled through the door at a respectable 3am to crash out and dream of the white gold to come the next day, except Ashcroft who was otherwise engaged. Chalk one up for the poon hunters.

Saturday
After promises that we would be on the road by 7:30am, Bandages 2.5 struggled out of bed at 9am a lot the worse for wear, except for Ashcroft who had a sort of morning after glow about himself. Bloody poon hunters forced me to drive them to Verbier when clearly a morning lying about on the couch feeling sorry for myself would have been a far better activity, but none the less, only two and a half hours late, we were on the road to Verbier. Entire drive to the resort revolved around making fun of Ashcroft, and several winning tunes were coined. Quality stuff. Made it to Verbier and forked the necessary 55chf for a sodding 4 hour lift pass, and it was at this point that the fun really began. An unnamed tour member decided as we entered the gondola that the time was right to ralph, and covered their mouth but not really in time. As we were still in the lift station and in danger of being booted from the resort, the tour member then had to swallow what had just come up. Good times. It stayed down until after exiting the gondola, but made a reappearance on the ski lift to the top. At this point, the Big White phone was brought into play, and the team member did a Richie, throwing their guts up onto the piste below. Class, all class. It was shortly after this that I decided to head back to the car and nana nap for the rest of the afternoon, right after failing to see Ashcrost sitting on the piste and skiing over him. The boys had a fantastic rest of afternoon, and returned to the car vowing to visit Verbier again soon. Then all three proceeded to crash out and leave me to drive the 2.5 hours home with only my own thoughts for company- needless to say a very lonely drive ;) Saturday night was all about catching up on lost sleep, so all members of the Bandages 2.5 team were tucked up in bed nice and early, except for Ashcroft- again!
Sunday
Sunday dawned, beautiful, bright, sunny and WARM...which was good if you've been living in the perpetual winter gloom of Geneva for the past six months but not so good if you are heading to the slopes for the day. Ah well. But off we went anyway, to Villars my absolute favourite resort, hands down, ever. It's awesome. What was not awesome was the quality of the snow, with 15 degrees on mountain temperatures, it was like skiing through a slurpee, but the quality company more than made up for it. Call of the day would have to have gone to Pauly "If I was on your tongue, I'd be coming" to poor unsuspecting Charlotte!
After a great days skiing, Bandages 2.5 headed back to Geneva and into Pickwick's pub for a wind down session, nice and gentle like.

Monday
Monday was a bit of a whitewash, as I was going to take the poon hunters to one of the local resorts that are only 10 minutes away, but owing to the high temperatures they had all closed for the season. Not a problem though, as could not wake any of them up. Bandages 2.5 had conquered the poon hunters, who woke up in good time for me to take them to the airport and bid them farewell...at least until next weekend when I'm heading to London.

All in all, a tops tours and many laughs and memorable quotes that will stay with us for years...I'm still singing the ginga songs and have to restrain myself from singing them to Jill!

Things that should help you survive in Geneva

2006-03-14T21:55:00.000+01:00

Well, over the past few days I've had a lot of time to contemplate Swiss life, and make some choices about my future here (but that's for another time). For all the people out there who may be considering making Switzerland their home in the near future, here are some hot tips to make the transition just that much easier:

The Swiss
A nation of people who seem to cherish privacy and quiet. Nothing wrong with that, it just strikes me as odd that if you live in an apartment block and feel the need for a little nocturnal wee-wee, you are not allowed to flush your toilet after 10pm in case of the noise disturbing the neighbours. The 10pm rule pretty much sums up all noise really- like Australia, you seem to be able to make a reasonable amount of noise up till 10pm, but neighbours are within their rights to call the police within a minute after this time if they feel you are being noisy. I know, I was present in an apartment having a lazy night in with four friends when at 10:05pm our door was knocked on by the local constabulary. To put things in perspective, we were not playing music, we were not screaming and laughing, just 5 mates sitting round. Never fear, the ever resourceful Swiss cantonal governments have also come up with a way around this problem- if only one night per year. Each household is allocated one "noisy night" permit per year, where they are allowed to make noise after 10pm if in possession of this once per year permit. That way, if the pesky neighbours ring up to complain at 10:03pm, the police can tell them that the household is in possession of a noisy permit. *rolls eyes*

Driving
Here's what I've found to be useful when driving in Switzerland:
a) If someone annoys you on the motorway, it's important to let them know. It's appropriate to do this by speeding up until you are within 4 feet of their rear bumper and then switching your lights to high beam.
b) If you are driving in the outside/left lane on the motorway, and the motorist in front of you is not going fast enough for your liking, speed up until you are within 4 feet of their rear bumper and then put your left indicator on. It is especially important to do this if there is no space in the right lane for them to merge into at that particular moment in time.
c) Don't indicate, it just tends to confuse other motorists.
d) If you are on a side street and want to merge onto a main road, no need to wait around for a pesky break in traffic! If you are in a large 4 wheel drive and the car coming towards you is a VW Polo or equivalent, you are much bigger than they are so just drive straight out in front of them. If there is an accident, well, your car is huge and should sustain minimal damage.
e) If you are driving home from the ski fields on a Sunday and a motorist in front of you has lost his ski rack, scattering assorted skis and snowboards all over the highway and blocking traffic for miles, under no circumstances should you exit your vehicle to assist. Instead, you should sit in your car and then scream curse words at any other motorists/the owner of the ski rack who attempt to clear up the wreckage.

The above guide is a useful starting point to living in Switzerland. Don't get me wrong, I love this country it's just a little bit skewif of every other country I've ever lived in.

Just another lazy Sunday

2006-03-05T19:55:00.000+01:00

For once on a Sunday, I actually did something today. Had originally scheduled a quick rollerblade around the Lake with Michelle, but when I woke up and saw the foot of snow that had fallen overnight, that idea was very quickly nixed. Me on rollerblades is a funny sight at the best of times, but with that much snow and ice around there was no way it was happening. Luckily, I had already arranged a brunch in Geneva with a few old friends and some new ones, so Charlotte came to pick me up and off we went. I had originally arranged the brunch basically to help Charlotte meet some new people, and I think it went off really well. There were 11 of us, all from the Geneva Online website, and all of them keen to numb the pain of their Saturday night excesses by filling up on the fantastic brunch that Faim? specialises in. I was keen to numb another sort of pain, the pain of receiving a 120chf parking ticket last night in Geneva, in a place that I ALWAYS park in. Bastards. But back to Faim?. Niels, the owner and also a member of GOL was not having the best of days and kind of mucked up our service a little, not that we noticed or cared, as we always go there and always will, but he must have been feeling bad as to make amends, 2 free bottles of champagne came winging it's way to us. Yummmmmmm. Honestly, no better start to Sunday.
On the way home, Charlotte and I decided on the spur of the moment that we would stop in at the Geneva MotorShow, and wow what a way to daydream Sunday away. I was already leaning towards buying a Rav4 when I get home, but I got to sit in the sports concept version and I looked like a rockstar even if I do say so myself. They are hot! Already have visions of weekend drives to the coast in it at home! There was also a bizarre car by Nissan where the part where people sit in rotates around so you never have to reverse...strange. Millions of dollars worth of cars, some hot some not so much. Ah well...will have my Rav4 to dream about.
Another great part of the day is that my brother rang me this morning. By his own admission, he was half pissed already, but it's always so great to hear from him, and his good news is that yesterday he finished the second to last part of his wedding celebrant course. He had to perform a mock ceremony and have it filmed. The twist to his was that his brief was to perform the ceremony for a 19 year old male and a 32 year old bride (who has an 8 year old child) because she was dying and wanted to make it easier for her husband to adopt the child...oh yeah, and the wedding had a gothic theme. From all accounts, my bro and his friends had fun recreating this. Having trouble with the concept of my brother as a marriage celebrant, but seeing is believing and it will probably take 2 more years as only so many people are allowed marriage licences per year.

Bonjour from Geneva, Switzerland.

2006-03-05T10:14:00.000+01:00

I landed in Geneva approximately 6 months ago from Australia, by route of British Columbia, Canada. Until arriving, Switzerland was a country I had had my closest encounter with by reading "Heidi" at the age of 7, so I was naively expecting a country with nothing but big mountains and mountain goats. Not so my friends, not so. Upon arriving in Geneva, I was greeted by one of the most international cities in the world, a city where the native Swiss only make up approximately 55% of the population, and you are just as likely to hear Swahili being spoken on a street corner as you are the city's official language, French. I came to Geneva with the purpose of learning to speak French, but in this city it's almost easier not to. It seems that most people speak English around here, and seem to resent it if you try your meager French skills out on them. For example, I can regularly go into any shop, practicing what it is I would like to ask for over and over in my head, deliver my line with confidence and receive a withering glare and the words "oh, you speak Eeeengleesh" back at me. Well, yes, but damn it I'm making an effort! Can't you at least try also? But I digress. Currently, my French learning is going very badly. I started off in a debutant class in Divonne-Les-Bains, France with the French teacher from hell. One particular lesson stands out in mind, when she for some reason decided it was pick on me day, and started to ask me how I said words like "moooo" "miaow" etc etc etc. Turns out this was so she could point out to the rest of the class how horrible Australians sounded when they spoke, and that the only reason she could understand me when I spoke French was because she speaks English. Kind of makes me not want to try, you know what I mean?! So, to cut a long story short here, the most overused phrase in my vocabulary is now "Parlez-vous Anglais?" and the answer is just about always yes. I know, I'm such a chicken! Last night whilst babysitting, I did find a book called "The Rude Girl's Guide to French" and it seemed much more up my alley- at last I will be able to pepper my French vocabulary with all of the insults and curse words that drip so easily of my tongue in English.