I would just like to say that the milk department in Swiss grocery stores is fantastically difficult to navigate. There are such fine distinctions between different kinds of milk products!

Of course, there is milk (and some other mystifying item which looks like milk and is in the same container as milk but is called milk-drink), and yogurt, and kefir, and cottage cheese, and cream cheese. And then, naturally, about 4000 different kinds of other cheese: mostly in bricks, some in slices. Cheese has a whole bunch of fine distinctions that I won't even go into. Rege're all relatively used to that. But then there is this whole *other* section of things called quark. Quark is, as far as I can tell, the same thing as sour cream, but somehow thicker/heavier. Then there is a section, located slightly elsewhere, that is *entirely* filled with rahm (cream). There is doppel-rahm and halb-rahm and sauer halb-rahm and swiss-rahm and weight-watchers rahm and creme fraiche and a whole lot of other things i forgot already.

Next time I go I shall bring a pencil and write them all down, for my amusement.

I am about to make a cheesecake, in honor of my sister's coming, that contains no cheese and no flour. It is entirely composed of swiss milk products that seem not to exist in other places. I spent 30 minutes in the milk department trying to find them. Confused...

The AMAZING mrtee has done it again: he found online the milk foamer I was looking for! And it is cheap! Annoyingly, the shipping costs almost as much as the device, so I will give it a few more tries -- I'm going to go to IKEA here in person and ask them -- before I order it. But the important thing is, it EXISTS!! And you can even make whipped cream with it ahahahahahahah.

This baby continues to assert its personality. When I wear clothes that are too tight (as my pants are unfortunately fast becoming) it deliberately kicks me until I loosen said clothes. Every time. Then it stops. So now I wander around the house with my pants unbuttoned, in order to keep the little person happy.

My little sister is arriving tomorrow! Then a few days later, Mum and my brother arrive too, and we set off for London for a week since my brother is graduating from the London School of Economics. We'll meet up with my older sister there. And then for two weeks all of us go back to Switzerland to hang out. It will be fun, if stressful: I just hope everyone will get along and not fight. Family reunions! We haven't had one in probably 6 years or more.

Ok. People coming over for dinner tonight so i must go buy some food to cook...

I did not post at all last week, being too busy and entertained. So I will give highlights list-style, so that I don't get too behind :-P

1) Baby does well. Went for first *official* ultrasound last Tuesday. He is only 17 weeks, not 18 like he is supposed to be for this ultrasound, but she said everything looked perfect. He has his arms, legs, etc. This ultrasound was *much* high quality: you could see his different organs inside him, all his bones, and even the different parts of his brain! Crazy. Listened to his heartbeat which is strong and fast and interrupted often by a strange swishing noise which is him kicking. On the screen he was waving his arms and legs all around. He is small: only in the 5th percentile of size, but then that is an 18 week old chart, not a 17. We could see his lips: he doesn't have a cleft palate. I now have a couple pictures of his face in profile. It's still too early to see if he is a boy or a girl: they said they will likely be able to tell next month. Zaubi is convinced he is a girl. It was funny, at one point the ultrasound lady turned the ultrasound probe thing so I could see a full-back shot: all his back bones and the shape of the skin/muscle around them. it was just for a moment, but it just looked so familiar to me, that shape, and then I realized, it is because Zaubi's back looks exactly the same. He is skinny so you can see exactly how his back bones are, and baby seems to have inherited the same shape. Very funny.

He keeps socking me with his tiny feet (or is he using his hands?). Perhaps he/she is an upcoming martial artist. It's pretty nuts, considering that he is still tiny and I have only gained 3 kilos. How can such a tiny person kick so hard? That is a good sign, right?

2) Last Wednesday Zaubi's work had a field trip and we all went down to somewhere near Schwyz and did a ropes course. it was awesome! There is an entire hilltop covered with a forest, and they have built lots of platforms in the trees, with zip lines between them, and other things to climb upon between them. So you get a climbing harness which has two biners and a pulley thing attached to it, and get yourself high up in a tree, and then just leap about in the treetops dozens to hundreds of feet above the forest floor. you can go really fast on the zip lines or do other hard things like climb between two trees on a wobbly rope bridge, or there was one where there were a bunch of piackaxes hanging vertically, and you had to climb from one to the other (very difficult). or the same thing but with hanging tires. It was fantastic fun. Then we went to the house of Zaubi's boss (he lives all the way out there) and had a delicious barbecue with the most shockingly tasty food you can imagine. I ate til food was almost coming out of my ears. Everything, bar none, was absolutely top-notch. Sooooo good.

3) We took a mini-break this weekend and went to the Jazz festival in Ascona, a town in the southernmost (Italian) part of Switzerland. The foliage there is quite different: it is almost Mediterranean, and there are even palm trees! Something I would never dream that Switzerland has. It was quite hot: the weather was beautiful. It was the last weekend of the festival, but it was still good. We wandered from bar to restaurant and listened to a lot of good jazz. Spent Saturday night in a charming hotel in Locarno with very high ceilings, then listened to more jazz on Sunday. Also rented a little motorboat, drove out to the middle of the lake there (enormous lake) and went swimming. it was altogether fun and relaxing and enjoyable: good since Zaubi has been working so hard lately. And it was so great to just be able to wander about this charming old-fashioned town -- it was all narrow cobbled alleyways and beautiful architechture and palm trees and sunshine and warm scented breezes -- and listen to constant jazz and eat tons of gelato.

4) My German class is interesting. There are about 8 people in it, all women, and not a *single* one comes from the same country, and not a single one (aside from me) comes from an English speaking country! They are from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Thailand, Japan, Russia, and Serbia. So everybody's dictionary goes from German to a different language :-P quite funny, really. There is still too much grammar for my taste (they don't offer pure conversation classes at my level) but I think it is still useful. Certainly better than doing nothing.

5) My little sister arrives, for a month and a half, this Saturday! And a few days later the rest of the family arrives for a couple of weeks too. I'm looking forward to it...

For well over two years now I have been searching for an impossibly elusive beast: a hand-held milk foamer.

Now I know, of course, that you can get those hand-held electric milk foamers for about $12. I've had more than one, but despite assiduous internet research and concentrated effort I've never mastered the art of making foam with them that isn't of the soap-bubble variety.

Of course, I could splurge and buy an entire coffee/espresso machine complete with proper steam foamer attached, but not only are my coffee-drinking habits too meagre to merit the expense, it just seems like a rather massive thing to buy and have sitting around in the kitchen.

Somewhat over two years ago, I visited my friend A. in Munich. Her husband had a device which absolutely captivated me: a hand-held mechanical milk foamer thing. It was completely simple: plastic or metal I don't know. You heated up a pan of milk, stuck the device into it, pumped it a bunch of times, and voila! a beautiful perfect foam. Small. Simple. Easy to clean. Perfect.

I have been looking for such a thing since then. I asked A. where he got it and she said "I don't know... IKEA maybe?" I trolled IKEA to no avail. I went to no end of shops in Australia: I have been to no end of shops here in Zürich, from department stores to specialized coffee/kitchen shops. No one has ever heard of such a thing, let alone stocks it.

In lieu of that, for my birthday a few weeks ago Zaubi bought me a Nespresso Aeroccino Plus. It is a pretty cool thing, though I still feel far too expensive. The foam it makes is pretty good, it is completely silent and does its thing fast. My only beefs with it are: it doesn't make *enough* milk (I am a milk junkie that likes huge mugs of milk!) and it seems a bit inconsistent with results. One milk we bought simply didn't work at all. Also, if you use it twice in quick succession the second cup never turns out so well.

I heard tell that if you have a French Press you can just heat milk on the stove, pour it in the French Press and use the coffee plunger as a pump to make foam. I've got to give it a try...

I found this picture terribly amusing...

After the whole Swiss administrative annoyance experience, Zaubi took the day off on Friday and we took the train to my "Heimatort"(place of origin), Amriswil. Went to the civil office there and successfully obtained, not only my "Heimatschien" (official stamped piece of paper giving information about my birth, parents, marriage, and place of origin) but also my "Familienausweis" (certificate of family/idenfication) which is a longer document(s) giving again information about my parentage, place of origin, marriage, and also Mike's parentage.

Because I was a good girl and sent the consulate in NYC official copies of my marriage certificate and Mike's birth certificate after my marriage, all the information was right there and we got all the documents in the space of about 10 minutes. No problems. The people there were very nice too. They have an entire fire-proof safe full of these giant ancient tomes containing all borth and marriage information of the citizens of Amriswil! very interesting.

Afterwards we went for a hike in some nearby woods -- there are mini-forests all over the place, and they all have specific planned out running/walking trails, often with interesting wooden objects every so many metres that you use to exercise on. This forest was fantastic. It had things to climb on, things to jump over, pullup bars, balance beams, situp things, and best of all, rings -- that you can swing on and go upside down on -- at random intervals along the trail. Lots of fun! 

Yesterday we took a brief hike in the forest near our flat -- there is likewise at the top a big field with lots of barbeque pits and more interesting wooden things to play on. Sort of combination children's playground/exercise arena. I just love how absolutely everything is made of logs and there are benches everywhere to sit and relax on. It was really nice.

Today also turned out to be a beautiful day so after church we did something I've been wanting to do since last year when we were here and saw people doing it -- went swimming in the Limmat. The Limmat is one of the rivers that goes right through Zurich: it flows out from the Zürichsee and is pretty fast-moving. There is one part of it that is a bit seperated from the rest, and they make this part entirely for swimmers. It is delightful. They have set up a whole  bunch of things for the swimmers - not only are there buildings where you can go to change clothes, store your things in lockers, shower, and use the toilet, as well as places set up to get sausages and beers and snacks, there are platforms built that have all these wooden deck chairs on them, and big sun umbrellas, and these wooden bed things that even have mattresses on them so you can lie there in comfort and snooze in the sun. And there are ladders all along the river sides so you can climb in and out wherever you want. 

Best of all? It is all FREE! The big lockers cost 3CHF/day to rent, but the small lockers (for valuables) cost nothing, and the deck chairs/beds are free to whomever grabs them first. It is great. So you store all your stuff and then jump into the Limmat and let the river carry you downstream until you feel like getting out. Then you get out, hike upstream, and do it all over again. There is even a bridge you can jump off of for fun, if you feel like it. 

I like it.

Well, as of today we have been here in Zürich now for 2 weeks. They have passed quickly, for sure.

It's funny, I'm not working, now, at least not officially, and yet I find myself terribly busy regardless! I have tried to lose no time in finding things with which to occupy myself (perhaps because I was so afraid of rattling around the house and being bored and alone!).

So we have found a church that seems pretty good -- International Protestant Church of Zürich. Of course, it is the logical choice, being an English speaking church, non-denominational Protestant, and conveniently located, but it also seems that the sermons are pretty good. We've heard two of them now. Also, they hand you a Bible as soon as you walk in the door and that is one of my litmus tests for churches. Because if the sermons aren't biblical-based enough such that you want your Bible in hand while you are listening, then what on earth is the point?

Likewise, we have found a band to play with. I was disappointed that there don't seem to be many big bands in Zürich at all -- this is, apparently, because Zürich is more of an Electronica town than a Jazz town. I'm told that if you want jazz, you should go to Lucerne or Bern (or was it Basel?). We found one band online but they were, alas, full. But then we found another, and they said we could just come along to check it out, so last week we tried to go but got thoroughly lost (and disgruntled) in some frustratingly empty/industrial part of Zürich -- never made it there. Hoo boy were we both grumpy after that experience. This week we found it though, and it was really good. The people were extremely friendly and welcoming, quite contrary to all the mean Swiss people I have been meeting -- shopkeepers and the like, who roll their eyes at me constantly when I try to talk. Anyway, although most of these guys speak pretty good English, they still spoke German and I got in some practice. They were patient with me. We went out for drinks with them afterwards and then another tenor sax gave us a lift all the way home. Altogether a really good experience and I am happy that they seem happy to have us.

Over drinks the people sitting near me were mostly speaking high German and I found I could understand about 50% of it. Of course, the Swiss-German is still totally incomprehensible, though I find that even after only one rehearsal I now kind of understand what the numbers are. It is interesting. They make all the numbers one syllable: zwanzig -> zwansk, fünfzig -> fünfsk, and so forth. And all the 'au' sound go to a 'oo' sound, e.g. 'Posaune' (trombone) is pronounced 'Posoone'.   Interesting. 

I also signed up for a German course at the Migros Klubschule. Funny, because Migros is actually a supermarket, but they also have a school, and it is supposed to be a pretty good place to get language lessons. So now I am spending 3 hours twice per week until mid-October -- Mon and Wed afternoons -- in this class. I am very disappointed that it is almost all grammer with very little speaking, but I'm hoping to gain benefit from it regardless. 

And I spent some time on a Zürich forum and have found someone to do a English-German exchange with. We are going to meet at an Australian (ha ha!) bar this Wednesday evening and speak first English for an hour (for her: her English is very advanced) and then  German for an hour for me. Hopefully we will get along well and this will be rewrading for us both. I'm really amused at the idea of coming all the way to Zürich to meet up in an Australian bar called The Outback, though. 

Also found a nice looking hospital. There is a "Frauenklinik" attached to it which is part of the hospital but seems kind of almost like a birthing centre, though I'm not great at reading the website. My first appointment there is this Tuesday afternoon, and they will also be doing my 18 week ultrasound then, though I will only be 17 weeks. I'm looking forward to it (the ultrasound) but also of course as ever am scared & nervous. I hope that the baby is well and healthy... I haven't been feeling too great this week. 

In my spare time I've been cooking lots of yummy things (if only my stomach weren't always in such a strange state) and doing some coding work on a friend's website. I am about 75% done with it, which is good. i'm awfully sick of coding. I haven't done any contracting for work yet, but I must start that tomorrow, as they have just given me a fairly long list of stuff to do, which seems to be getting longer every couple days. 

The sun goes down at 10PM here. It takes some getting used to!

 The word "thousand"is pronounced, in German, like so: "tausend" 

In Swizzadeutsch it is pronounced ""doozik". 

I am never going to learn this language!

 These Swiss people really take their administrative duties to the extreme. 

Went yesterday to the "Kreisbüro" because it is required that Zaubi, being a foreign resident, registers himself within two weeks of arrival. We didn't think it would be a big deal: he is fully sponsered and has a work visa, and I am a Swiss and so no worries, right? But it turned into some kind of big ordeal.

We talked to them for about half an hour and everything kept getting more and more complex. It turns out not only does Zaubi have to register, I do too, and not only that, I must return to my "Heimatschein" (Place of Origin) in order to do so! It all sounds very Joseph & Mary Biblical. Returning to one's Place of Origin in order to register for the census, er, that is, register to live in Zürich. Moreover, I am supposed to have a little booklet thing that I get updated/stamped *every time* I move anywhere, and that is what I must travel to Amriswil to obtain. Moreover, I am supposed to have (another? or the same?) little booklet that indicates I am married. My own Brookline, MA marriage certificate is not good enough, even though that is where I was married!

I thought I had been so good. For years now, every single time I do ANYTHING: that is, move, get married, whatever, I write dutifully to the Swiss Consulate and inform them of my status/location. And every time they write a little email back indicating that my details have been updated. But I never received a little booklet of any sort.

Zaubi also must go dig up some other papers and then return and pay 120 CHF (!!!) in order to complete his registration.

Oh, did I mentino, the other day when I was messing with my new impossible to use Swiss bank card, I managed to get it blocked by putting in the password too many times? Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. 

Interesting things of note:

1) There seems to be no open container law here. As such, people regularly walk around drinking, and I'm not talking just with a beer can in their hand, which would be normal. I'm talking walking around taking swigs out of a 1.5 litre bottle of vodka. More amusing, was I saw one guy sitting on a bench at the bus stop having his own private party: not only had he already emptied one bottle of wine and was halfway through another, he was actually drinking out of a wine glass. Not the bottle, not a plastic cup. A bone fide glass wine glass. He had it all set out on the bench and everything and was quietly pouring himself glass after glass and drinking it down like he was in a retaurant. Heh.

2) There are no fat people here. Sure, plenty of the older men etc. have a bit of a belly, but as for fatness? None. Moreover, there are no hobbling old people either. Virtually all of the old people, white-haired and wrinkled as they are, are trim, straight and well-clad (though there does seem to be an interesting tendancy for older women to have elegantly done hair, makeup, and clothes paired with a solid pair of hiking boots).

3) A can of beer that is one and a half times the size of a normal can of beer, costs 60 Rappen (that is, 55 US cents). That is cheaper than water.

4) The public transit is awesome. Awesome. I can't even verbalize it. It is awesome. No matter where you are, there is always a tram or bus going to within 3 blocks of where you want to go, and it always comes within 5 minutes. Awesome.

5) You are only allowed to throw out your trash in special marked "Züri-Säckes" which cost about $2/bag. And if you put a bag in the bin which is *not* a Züri-Sack, they will open your trash and go through it until they figure out who you are so they can punish you! Gah!

6) Today we picked 1 kilo of cherries off the tree that is in the yard of our flat. 1kg free, perfect, ripe cherries! Yum yum yum.

7) Ah yes, I am 31 now. And I still feel like I'm 12.

I now have a Swiss bank account. Does that make me Jason Bourne?

In seriousness, these guys don't mess around. Logging onto e-banking is an ordeal.

Each card/person has an associated:
- User id
- Efinance id
- Card id
- Card number
- Efinance pin code
- ATM pin code (am trying to work out if this is different to the Efinance pin code)

To log onto online banking, you enter in your User id, Efinance id, and Efinance pin into a website form. That page brings you to a page where it shows you some automatically generated number. You then dig out a little plastic device the bank gave you, insert your bank card into it, enter in the number from the website, enter in your ATM pin (different, apparently, to Efinance pin), and then the plastic device gives you another automatically generated number, which you then type into the website, in order to finish logging on!

I haven't been able to make it work yet. I am assuming it is because there are two seperate pin codes, and I haven't received the ATM pin code yet. Or perhaps I have to use the card at an ATM and change the pin, before I can use it for online banking? Gah. I wonder how many failures I get before it locks me out...

Gah! I've barely been here 3 days yet and I've already broken a cardinal house rule!

Apparently every day from 12-1:30pm is siesta time (you wouldn't think a cold country like Switzerland would need it, but there you go). You are not allowed to do anything, that is, specifically, beat carpets, play radios, *musical instruments*, etc. during this time.

Today I practiced my sax for the first time. I started directly at 12pm and stopped when it was close to 1.

I thought no one was home and it would be the best time!!  After a while I heard some thumping upstairs so i thoujght someone was cleaning. maybe they were actually telling me to shut up...?

There are a lot of rules on this House Rules sheet!

My German speaking/listening achievments of the day are as follows:
1. Told woman on bus (in 4 words or less) that the stop she wanted was not the current, but the next one, when she asked
2. Asked grumpy saleslady what to call a kitchen timer, and where to find one
3. Asked another grumpy saleslady where to find a thing to hold napkins
4. Asked yet another grumpy saleslady if I was allowed to carry my items up to the next floor of the shop, or if I had to pay first
5. Asked nice drugstore lady if she had any (fill in the blank) and if I could have two bottles

The Swiss are so grumpy! Even when I smile nicely and asked my question humbly, they roll their eyes at me and and sigh and refuse to speak any slower. 

Tomorrow night we're going to have a trial play with a big band. I'm looking forward to it, but also a bit nervous...

Why is it, that when you go to a new country/city, the tour guides *always* assume that you want to see all the museums?

I find museums incomparably dull. 

I have discovered how to make umlauts! Mwahahah üüüüüüüüü öäëï  look I can even make umlaut over a t! ẗ

The water pressure here is absolutely fantastic. There is in fact no shower here, just the super bathtub, and a kind of hand-held shower thing so you can kneel in the bathtub and take a shower, as it were. but the showerhead is more of a weapon than a shower head. When you turn it on, it writhes like a snake and takes considerable power to keep a grip on it, and woe to you and your bathroom if you let it slip out of your grasp! It takes a tough person to apply that kind of water pressue to naked skin. 

It is a beautiful day. I should stop sitting at this computer and go out and do soemthing interesting. 

Today, day 3 of our time in Zurich (how do you make an umlaut on this keyboard??), has not really been a stellar day. 

First, Zaubi woke me up at 5AM, becuase he was awake, because he was recently in Australia. However, I was recently in the States so I was dead tired! 

Then I started feeling depressed about being fat. Now I don't think I'm actually much larger than I have been my whole life, but, well, the baby is definitely getting bigger and I feel fat.

Then I was trying to look up language schools but Firefox was completely sucking. Why is FF such a memory hog??? of late, Facebook and LJ both crash my computer entirely and so did a bunch of the language school sites. 

Zaubi went to work at his new lab in the morning and I went to the Zentrumbibliothek to sign up for a library card. I am trying really hard to practice speaking German but I simply suck. And trying to understand what they say back is nigh impossible. It's bad enough when it is normal German but these Swiss are incomprehensible. Spent over an hour in the library signing up and then finding my way to the English books which are buried in the basement, in no comprehensible order, in something like stacks. 

Then went to investigate a couple of language schools. The first one seemed a bit offended that I had turned up without an appointment and they told me to come back and take a placement exam on Thursday afternoon. The second one had me take a placement exam on the spot and then told me that my grammer was very good but my speaking was terrible. Well, tell me something I don't know! The guy there lectured me sternly on the importance of speaking to *everyone*, not being shy, watching television, practicing with my husband (I kept saying "I've only been here two days so far!!" but he ignored me) -- anyway, i can come back and sit in on a class if I so desire. he said there was too much of a skew between my speaking and my grammar but he didn't want to put me in the beginner class as that would be a waste. Altogether, I liked his firm, no-nonesense attitude, despite the fact that he was lecturing me.

Then met Zaubi and went to see if we could find a music store that could give us info about community bands -- no luck. We found a massively huge 9and expensive) music store, but they drew a complete blank about community bands. How can that be? Aren't they music people?

Then went to the supermarket and ordered a lamb kidney by mistake. it looked EXACTLY like a steak. Ugh. Thank goodness Zaubi noticed before I actually bought it. 

it is near impossible to Google anything, because I dont' know the proper German words to Google, and then I can't understand much of what it says afterwards anyway. Everything here is taking about 10 times as long.

Altogether I am rather discouraged. I am a total failure with speaking and even worse with understanding, though i really have tried today. I am still completely exhausted from jet lag: Zaubi is sick and keeps juicily coughing up phlegm in a way calculated to make me heave. (I know that isn't very sympathetic of me, but honestly.)

At least, though, I have partially redeemed myself by baking a delicious Heidelbeertarte (that is, blueberry tart). At least, it smells ridiculously good. Yesterday I bought a German cooking book in the Zurich Hauptbahnhof and I intend to use it well!

And Zaubi may have discovered a band or two for us to join, after some extensive Googling.  

And at least the Swiss, even those in Zurich who mostly speak decent English, do not have a habit of automatically answering in English when you are sucking at asking them things in German. That would make it really hard to practice. I do find myself wishing they would speak a bit slower, though. And stop the gargling/rolling/hacking thing. 

Despite today not being very good, I can already tell I'm not going to want to leave here come February...

So here we are in Zurich. I need to learn to make umlauts on this keyboard.

Moved into the flat. It is smaller than I thought for a 4-person flat (there weren't any 2-3 person flats available) and the furniture is stunningly ugly (something I've never understood about the Swiss, with their beautiful country, gardens, and houses, their clever fingers, is how they have such abominably bad taste in furniture).

But anyway, it is a nice flat, and brilliantly light, and has a beautiful garden out the back, and is in a peaceful place about 5km from the absolute center of Zurich. It is fully furnished with everything down to linens and laundry powder EXCEPT, bizarrely enough, for silverware! There are pots and pans, no end of plates, cups, cooking utensils and the like, but neither hide nor hair of normal spoon, fork or knife can be found.

The weather is beautiful and very hot. I'd like to go swimming in the Limmat sometime soon... we passed by today and it looked deliciously cool and green. It's odd to have left Australia, where summer had gone and "winter" was just falling, and now be back at the beginning of summer again.

Poor Zaubi is sick (swine flu!!!???) and in bed -- his jetlag is going to be a lot worse than mine, since I mainly adjusteed while I was in Boston. And tomorrow he has to go to his new work, at least for a part, too!

I am looking forward to discovering this interesting city...

I am so ready to move on.

It's been good and all, but the things which weren't good, definitely have coloured the rest of it.

I'm absolutely tired out.

Leaving for Zurich in 15 hours. It will be good to have the distraction of a new adventure.

The problem with going back to see long-lost friends is that then you have to say goodbye to them all over again.

I'm really sad right now. I have had such a good time seeing everyone, but it simply renews the feeling of loss, since I'm leaving again in just two days. It is really hard to leave everyone, but some in particular are a veritable stab to the heart.

And who knows when I will return to America.

Yet I would never want to live in Boston again.

Ugh, ugh. Sometimes I find it so incredibly difficult to be myself.

So it has been interesting being back in Boston.

The weather here, for starters, is quite disappointing. It is supposed to be summer: usually June is the most beautiful month, but it's cold! And drizzling! Brisbane is almost full winter now, and Boston almost full summer, and yet in Brisbane it is WARMER and NICER than it is here. Bah!

I haven't been able to eat nearly as many things as I desired to, simply because I have no appetite. it's quite frustrating really. I've made it to Boston Market and Pu Pu Hot Pot and Punjabi Dhaba and have gone out to breakfast *4* times of the 6 days I've been here, but I simply haven't been able to do anything justice.

( Read more... )

Well here I am back in Boston. The flights were relatively uneventful - Qantas was good as ever, since they actually FEED you, even though the seats are extremely tiny, and I was sitting between a very larrge dude on one side, and a very skinny New Age old woman on the other, who did strange hand-waving incantations over both her body and her food at regular intervals, and also meditatead on a regular basis. But she took up very little room.

American Airlines was about as I remember it, what with the fantastically uncomfortable seats and no service. The seats are larger but somehow designed to maximize back discomfort - whose back is shaped like that?!

Had to pick up and recheck baggage in LAX - I had forgotten what a paragon of inefficiency American security is. I stood for an hour in a line of only about 20 people waiting to go through security. i do not understand it. I've been spoiled by Australia, I tell you. In Australia - things actually WORK.

flight was delayed at JFK for an hour but it was no big deal. JFK is infinitely more comfortable to chill out at than LAX, and besides it gave me the chance to get a chocolate croissant at Au Bon Pain :-P

But on the bright side, I did not have my sax confiscated at all! I carried it onto the flights to LAX and JFK bold as brass with no issues, though I did use some stealth moves involving a very large sweatshirt and some clever sideways walking :o) I had to relinquish it on the shuttle between NYC and Boston as the in-cabin space is simply not enough on these 36-seater planes, but they carried it into the plane in front of my eyes and handed it to me as I got off so it was no problem.

So - here I am! It's all truly strange, to be back here again, but I will post again later...

Goodbye, Brisbane.

Goodbye!

Of course, I'll be back in 8 months... and by then I probably won't want to leave Zurich either! ;-)

Now to see if I will be able to get my sax as carry-on without having to literally run away from the scary plane people like last time...