I'm not sure whether I've raved over the wonders of Google, the omnicscient, omnipresent cybermonolith. I usually associate those three dysphemisms with evil corporations like Microsoft and recent member to the club, Apple, yet my enthusiasm towards Google remains unchanged. Why? They provide great services to everyone for free. I sit here on the precipice of a new adventure, and decide that it's time to break the six months of silence and update my blog again. One blog to cover six months of busy-body me-life. Since the advent of Google Calendar however, the daunting task of book-keeping is now mere dictation. Scroll back to June and start typing. Emails are likewise retrievable. Yes sir, I like it. I like it a lot.

June 2009:
I started my new job at BSI AG. I'm still doing (some) java development, but that's about the only similarity with my old job. To encapsulate it, our team develops the software running behind Swiss Post counters, but that's about as encapsulated as it gets. There are more than twenty people on the project and more different, intertwined technologies than you can shake a stick at. Programming languages alone include Centura, C++, Scout (an in-house language/tool), and a lot of PL/SQL, but once you factor in the plethora of hardware devices the Post use to read barcodes, scan payment slips, print receipts, weigh parcels etc. which our software speaks to, and the whole data management which collects and balances data from over 3000 Post Offices across Switzerland, you begin to form an idea of the complexity of the project. Yes, technically it's very demanding which is great for me. An additional challenge is that the company is German speaking - spoken and written. Team meetings, emails, documentation, and customer contact is all in German. One can only assume I've learned a thing or two. To make it simple, work is challenging, but it's also rewarding and I like that.

Moni and I visited our friend Steffi in Freiburg (Germany) in early June. We only stayed for the weekend, but it was a really nice trip. The city of Freiburg is surprisingly beautiful, with its cobblestoned inner city and little streams running along all the gutters. There was a party at Steffi's one night, we saw the weekend market, and went for a walk up around in the hills. The cuisine there is good - and the beer also. :)

Work, jamming, Kung-Fu and Dnd as usual.

Two groups of couchsurfers stayed in June.

July 2009:
Dentist appointment! Well it was fine. I've been keeping those little fellas in line like my life depended on it. Moni can't believe how much dental crap I have in my bathroom. Electric brushes, regular tooth paste, high fluoride tooth paste, fluoride gel, mouth washes, dental floss, and inter-dental brushes (various diameters). And what's even more absurd? I use it all - well most of it. If you don't know why, I can only say you haven't been following my blog for that long.

Had a barbecue with the old work guys + our support team. Was cool, complete with fire, food, beer, throwing a football around, and fishing it out of the lake. Yahoo.

Two couchsurfer groups. A 1st generation American girl with Pakistani parents came to stay, and was interesting to talk to. Two German-speaking Belgium friends rented a car, drove south to Locarno (Italian-speaking Switzerland) and bungy jumped off the Verzasca Dam (think Pierce Brosnan in 007). Did I come too at the last minute? Hell yeah!

I was sent on a four-day powerspeech course by my work. Quite impressive considering I'd only been there a month. It was focused on public speaking and oratory skills. Recommended for anyone (hell, we're all software engineers!).

Work, jamming, Kung-Fu and Dnd as usual.

August 2009:
Interesting developments on the couchsurfing front. There were two American girls who had previously stayed with me, and were returning via Zurich airport. They, Moni Andy (an English chap I've come to be good chums with here in Zurich) and I gathered some armaments and went to the Werdinsel (Werd Island, which is just downstream from a hydro-plant on the Limmat). We lit a fire, ate some gooood meat from it, and played guitar. Great fun - but that's not the great part yet.

The great part is that Max and Rowena came and visited me here in Zurich. I met them twice at the airport (the first time their flight from Canada had been cancelled and they couldn't get the message to me until I was already on my way), and they crashed over at my flat for a spell. Max did a slide-show presentation of his climbing/sailing/adventuring days for a group of friends who were interested. They went up to Kleine Scheidegg with Max's old boss-plus-family from Fox Glacier (from whom I also acquired my excellent Scarpa tramping boots). Moni and I camped in my tent at Interlaken and met them there. Next day we went up the Jungfraujoch train which zig-zags inside the Eiger mountain to the train station built onto the saddle between Eiger and Jungfraujoch, at a headache-inducing 3,454m altitude. We went for a walk together, ate the heaviest cheese dish I've ever had, and eventually returned to the hotel on Kleine Scheidegg. Moni had a bout of altitude sickness and was KO for several hours.

Rowena the Abominable	Wild Empathy
Mönchsjochhütte	Stepping into the light
Kleine Scheidegg	Swissy Swissness
Jungfraujoch Station

There was also my grandparent's 65th wedding anniversary. The whole family reunited and had a grand old shin-digg in Fulenbach.

Eventually Max and Rowena continued their travels to Budapest, Japan and then home. It was great to see them after such a long time.

Andy split up with his girl, which was a bit sad. She's Swiss, and thusly his reason for coming to Switzerland, so it was foreseeable that he might return to England or move on to . Fortunately for us he's sticking it out. He can get by in German, has some good friends, some work, and has now a flat to boot.

Otherwise? Work, jamming, Kung-Fu and Dnd as usual.

September 2009:
Little of note. Just work, jamming, Kung-Fu and Dnd. As usual. I did arrange for a cleaner once a fortnight though, and after having some back problems signed up for regular deep-tissue massages. Life is good.

October 2009:
Couchsurfing alarm goes off again! Marissa came to stay. What a week. Within my regular schedule I managed to fit in the last camp fire for 2009 (marshmallows, cooked vegetables, and dodgy dripping chocolate banana splits), a walk up to Uetliberg, a session of guitar-and-pizza with Andy, and drinks in El Local (hell I was tired by then). She tagged along to a jam session, a dnd session, and went nuts (understatement) on the public transport with a all-zone pass I would never have used. I've had my share of couchsurfers Marissa was definitely the most fun (again, understatement).

November 2009:

• Dentist appointment - all clear.
• Jurgen visited from Austria - went to the wine ships at the lake, and sampled wines. Drunk for 20 franks. Bargain.
• Blood donation - did I mention I have O- blood. Gives me a self-inflated sense of importance. Not rare, but special in the way that O-'s can only receive O- blood.
• Kung Fu grading - I have reached another level of ass-whooping enlightenment. Yee ha.

I got all inspired at DnD and, with Andy's help, built a scythe-wielding war machine out of recycled stuff I had lying around the flat - beer cans, egg cartons, toilet roll, and bamboo skewers. The prototype's power source is a vacuum cleaner, but the real thing needs a Permanency (Gust of Wind) to be cast inside the turbine chamber. Haven't figured out brakes or any crap like that out yet, but who needs it.

Behold, the Blade of Doom!




December 2009:

• BSI Zurich office opening - made a desert and brought a chair. Chocolate mouse was popular, beanbag was not.
• Haircut and dinner at Roger and Sandra's.
• 24th Christmas dinner with Moni's family, like last year.
• 25th Christmas lunch in Fulenbach with my family.
• As I write this, the clock ticks down to my trip to Sri Lanka for Marissa and Sagar's wedding. I'm freakin' amped man. Just one sleep and then I'm on the plane. Still gotta pack though... might play some games first.

Stay tuned for my adventures in Sri Lanka. :)

(And just to end with a touch of irony, did I ever mention how crappy the integration between Google's Blogger and Picasa are? Uploading images should be easy an automated. It's not, and thumbnails are only generated if you upload them manually with the web-interface. Grr@Google.)

My last official day of work was on Tuesday 22/05/2009 (although I was there unofficially on Wednesday till lunchtime, but never mind). I had the 'official' Abscheids Apero (formal farewell drinks) on the roof of the building and invited as many of the UBS folks I could remember the names of. I had luck with the weather, as it was the first really sunny day in around two weeks. Around twenty people came along drink a beer and to say Tchus. Thomas had done some leg work and organised an Amazon gift voucher worth 210€, which surprised me a bit. I suppose I've got some reading to do. All in all, it was a good way to bow out.
The following two weeks posed a problem for me however. I had holidays until my new job started on 02/06/2009, and I had no idea what to do. I decided to go cycling, as one does. I used the next few days to gather the necessary items for my trip. I bought a bike rack, some bike pants (which look like normal shorts, but are still padded), a bike shirt, a tent and a bed roll. I borrowed Moni's saddle bags, and was more or less set. There are a bunch of national bike routes running through Switzerland, and I chose the Lakes Route, which takes you from Montreaux in Lake Geneva through to Interlaken, Meiringen, Luzern, Zug, breifly into Lichtenstein, and ends in Rorschach at the edge of Lake Constance. The map of the route can bee seen here.
On Friday afternoon I loaded my bike onto the train and took it to Lausanne. I remembered that Adrian, an american postgrad who plays DnD with us, lived there and asked him if I could crash at his place. He set me up on the futon and I was set. On Saturday morning I did some last minute shopping and cycled along the lake towards Vevey, arriving just in time for breakfast of crepes and birchermuesli.

Breakfast in Vevey

After breakfast, it was time to do the first real bit of cycling. There was one nagging problem, however. I couldn't find the bloody route marker which pointed in the direction of Bulle. Most of the time they are pretty obvious, but in Vevey I lost the trail and couldn't find it again. So I just followed the street signs in the direction of Bulle. After ascending for some time I asked a local who gave me detailed instructions in French. I continued on in the wrong direction for a bit and then spotted a map of the area. Oops... I was on the wrong side of the valley. But no problem, I'll just go a bit further up and scoot across that bridge over there. I'll be right as rain.

Bugger

Ah huh. The plot thickens. Just in case your wondering, the big orange sign mean "Detour" is actually pointing back down the hill from whence I came. It's not so clear in the picture, however they'd actually stripped the seal off the road making it really impossible to cross. James Bond could have done it I think, but he would use a porsche or a harley; not a heavily laden mountain bike. There are limits. And it would just look stupid, besides. The additional grain of salt in the wound is that there was a route marker here helpfully instructing me to cross the bridge and I'd be on my way.
I did find another bridge spanning the valley a bit lower down. The second picture depicts the same bridge but from a, er, slightly different angle. You can get a feel for just how far off target I was. So being finally on the right road I endeavoured to start actually making some forward progress. The route followed the main road for a distance, going up up up. It was hard work, and when the route took a left turn and started following a charming country trail it got even harder. I am willing to admit I got off and pushed. Nevertheless I felt like I was making progress. I was doing a cycle tour!
As I neared the top of one particular rise, something particularly unexpected happened. This is best illustrated in the following picture.

Oh, Bugger Me	Camping back in Vevey

Yes, bugger me indeed. My pedal bent at first, and then snapped off completely. Yippedydoodaa. What's there to do except stop, eat some fruit, fiddle with it to realise you can't fix it, and then get back on the bike and continue. Going down hill was fine, and along the straight was maneageable. Pedalling with the left foot was impractical but I could at least push it down far enough to bring the right pedal back into position for another thrust. Up hill meant pushing.
In fact I wasn't that far from the next town, Chatel St. Denis, pronounced all Frenchy like "Schah-tell Soh Te-nee". (I've never grasped French pronounciation, but I can be sure that no matter how I try it'll be wrong.) From there I commandeered some help from a group of young local guys. One of them spoke some English, and tried to help me out by taking me to the hardware store to see if they could fix it. Alas, in vain. But I was able to load my bike onto a bus and take it back to Vevey, where the pedals were replaced for CHF25. Sweet. I swam in the lake, took a shower, and biked around town a bit.

Breakfast, Chatel St. Denis	Back on the road again

I rose with the sun on Sunday morning, packed up the camp, and took the bus back to Chatel St. Denis (like hell I was biking there). I had breakfast in a local cafe, saddled up, and rode out of town like the cowboy I was.

The next few photos should be watched with Steffenwolf's "Born to be Wild" playing in the background. Enjoy.


Sunday was a hullova long day. I biked from Chatel St. Denis to Bulle, to Gstaad, and eventually konked out in Zweisimmen. I did around 80km that day. If you consider that very little of that was flat, that I was carrying my snail shell around with me, and that I'm not really a cyclist, that's really a hullova long way. But the weather was perfect, and the scenery magnificent. The route is usually well marked, and whenever possible it leads you away from the main road into side streets and down country trails. Despite the fact that there is almost always an Autobahn within a kilometer of you, it still feels like riding along in the country.

Camping ground, Zweisimmen	Laundry day

I camped, showered, washed my clothes, and said "to hell with it" and went for a three course meal at a local restaurant. My camping spot cost CHF20 for the night, and the meal CHF50. Life's all about priorities, right?

Tuesday was a cruise from Zweisimmen down to Spiez and then to Interlaken. My knee was complaining a bit, and despite my awesome padded bike shorts my nether regions were in dire condition. I loaded my bike back onto the train, and went home.

First glimpses of Lake Thun

So... where was I? Oh, yes. I remember now.

November 2008:
Things returned mostly to normal. Hosted a few couchsurfers, jammed a bit, dnd'd a bit, worked a bit. Kind of a bitsy month.

December 2008:
Ah yes, December. There was the iLogs winter event to speak of. Same deal as every year (every year being third time running). Arrive Thursday evening, get completely shit-faced until around 4am, stumble to the hotel and rise early Friday morning completely unable to function (or even look half-way functional), ignore a few hours of blabbering and company goals and wait for morning tea. This year it was chicken. I don't remember what the project presentations were about, but I remember that morning tea was chicken. It was good, too though last year's pizza was much better for recovering from a hangover. Then there's a few hours where you can go back to the hotel and sleep for a bit, followed by bowling and then the main event in the brewery across the road. We ate, we drank, we got drunk, we had deep philosophical conversations to the background of blaring music which would be forgoten the next day. There were speeches. There was dancing. There were many feeble attempts on the brewer's daughter/barstaff. Glasses were broken. Vomit of unknown origin was discreetly deposited behind the buffet and just as discreetly cleaned up by the aforementioned daughter. Drunken workmates were found asleep on the toilet, pants around ankles and unresponsive to door-knocking, speech, shaking, toilet-flushing or having water poured over their heads. Yes it was, as I shall put it, the fulfillment of the Austrian dream.

New years 2008 was spent in a small region in switzerland called Obersaxen. Some friends of Alex and Claudia had rented a batch and wanted some more people to fill the remaining spaces, so we answered the call. We were there all told for three days (two nights, over new years eve). The whole place was covered in snow, so ski lifts were operating. It was the first time during the whole winter that I'd actually made it to the snow (as opposed to vise versa, which was the case for most of the winter). I didn't really have the drive to go skiing though, so I joined Moni and walked around the tracks in the area. We hired a sled for a stretch and experienced the dangers of sledding first hand. Great fun. The rest of the time was spent eating and playing games. Bang! was quite cool if you ever get a chance, and there was this weird german one called Killer Bunny or something where you try to grow rabbits and kill off your opponents. It made no sense, as the winner was more ore less determined randomly based on which cards you picked up, and the main part of the game was more of a mildly entertaining distraction. I got in some penguin-style belly-sliding goodness too. Great fun.

And that's 2008.

January 2009:
Another 'bitsy' month. A bit of this and that. Highlight was having wisdom tooth pulled. It was voluntary/preventative, and I only have one of them. Took a full ten minutes of twisting and wrenching, but it was nothing like my previous ordeal, and it came out clean. I got to keep the tooth too. :) That reminds me, the dentist who did my root canal sent me another bill last month for another 50 franks. I have no idea what for, but I paid it just to shut him up. It had a lot of little details on the bill like "First 5 minutes" and "Last 5 minutes"... I guess he must have forgotten those on the original quote, huh?

Febuary 2009:
I have announced my resignation. Yes, I've had enough. Januray and Feburary were entirely dominated by support. Bugfixing if we were lucky. Unfortunately providing third-level technical support for an application that nobody from our firm had ever had anything to do with, it didn't rate very high on my 'impressed' score. I spoke to my boss about my work dissatisfaction, but nothing was (able to be) changed. My incessant complaining about my work situation had evidently bothered Alex enough to mention that his work was hiring. I updated my resume (with the gracious help and encouragement of Moni) and sent it in. It took around a week to complete the two job interviews, and had a confirmed job around the first week of Feburary. I relayed the news to my boss, got him to sign under the dotted line, and it was all done. The new job starts in June.

March 2009:
Bitsy. Everything and nothing. A lot of dnd it seems. One of our Changeling gamers Zahid announced his departure and threw an 'Abscheids Apero' (farewell party). Was cool.

April 2009:
Spring! As soon as the weather started showing signs of becoming warmer, everything exploded into spring mode. Even I was jumping around like a spring lamb. That winter had been the longest, coldest, unrelenting, depressing winter I've ever experienced. The snow seems to have started in October, and just didn't melt. Well it melted enough to become ice and then refreeze. And if it actually started to disappear, new snow would replace it just in time to destroy the hope that had begun to grow in your heart. No I did not like that winter. Right now I am sitting on my balcony with the shade cloth deployed, and liking it very much. I check how my basil and parsley seedlings are going every morning, and have just noticed that my lilly is sprouting again. Hooray for spring!

The great part I have noticed about changing jobs, is it gives you the reason to blow all your holidays. The only hard part is deciding what to do with it all. Well for a start, Moni and I went to Barcelona for a week. I'd been adamant that I wanted to try couchsurfing, however I was blind to the fact that it was easter weekend, and also that Barcelona is a popular destination over easter. That meant I had no chance for couchsurfing, so we arrived in BCN with no accomodation booked and spent most of the first day looking for a place to stay. We did find a place in the end, but it was out in the suburbs and it had rained on us.

The next morning we headed into the centre and found ourselves a youth hostel until after the easter rush. We checked out some restaurants (one was bloody fantastic, I have to say), ate a lot of tapas, bought some t-shirts, and visited the regular tourist stops one might expect to avoid if one lived there. My experiences there lead me to believe that Barcelona has two main cultural inspirations. Soccer, and a fellow named Antoni Gaudí. Soccer is a well known sport where two teams of gentlemen attempt to put the same ball into well guarded nets, using only their feet. Fantastic stuff. Gaudí was an architect who designed a lot of stuff in Barcelona, and finished some of it. His masterpeice was Sagrada Familia, a church which is still being built. They're still building it because it has to be built using donated money, which they don't have much of. As tourists they let us donate 11 euros each to go in and see what they'd finished so far. We thought we would go to the roof, and were helpfully informed once we were inside that you have to donate a further 2 euro to take the lift. That, and that using the stairs is just plain illegal. I staged an altitude strike right then and there.

On Tuesday night we had our first success with couchsurfing, and a couple volunteered to host us. I was astonished at how much effort they put into us, and a little embarrassed. Normally I do something with my guests like cook a meal or go for a beer, but Miquel and Eva really took us under their wings and showed us around. We had lunch together at a restaurant in the country somewhere, then we were driven to the hills and we went for a walk. On Wednesday evening we went to the beach, and were driven around 100km north to Girona for dinner. It is also old with a castle-like inner city, but is out of the way of tourists so has retained its charm. At points, Barcelona felt like an amusement park in comparison.


Thursday we bid our farewells and took the train into Barcelona. We had lunch in a park in a sunshower. Moni did a rushed fly-by of some of the shops along a street called Diagonal (because it is), and we headed the airport, spread our wings and flew home.

...continued from last post.

September, 2008:
The first thing which happened is that everyone came back from holiday and my working hours were suddenly reduced to normal. I was able to offload a lot of work to others, and well... sort of went on holiday for a bit at work. I guess you could say my motivation wasn't quite all there. I'd lost my muse, as it were. This phase lasted for most of September, and I whittled the month away trying to relax a bit, spending time with Moni, going home early now and then, and not caring about work too much.

The highlight of the month was my two ex-flatmates Sean and Tanya coming to visit for almost a week. Since we were flatting together they started going out, then were engaged, and now are moving to London for a stint. We spent a bit of time together, discussed the good old days, had dinner at Moni's, and went to see the fog at Interlaken. It was good to see those guys again. Sean wrote me a while back and posted pictures of his stay at my place on his blog.

October, 2008:
A lot happened in October. I graded in Kung Fu to the 3rd grade. Moni was interested to see where I get all my bruises, so she came along and watched.
Went bowling with some guys from work, and Sefi, our competent team leader at work. Was actually really cool, despite that my bowling is beyond salvation.
Went with Thomas, Jürgen, and another five random Austrians to Dublin for five days. Everyone thinks that when you go to Dublin that you do nothing else than drink. Well they're right. Mostly. During the daytime we went out to Howth on the peninsula outside Dublin and walked around, took a tour around Dublin, visited a grisly historic prison, and finally the Guiness brewery of course. Evenings were spent mostly around Temple Bar, and downing glass after glass of black Guiness goodness. Actually, since then I haven't drunk a single Guiness. Can't think why.

By day...	...by night.

Monday: Get back from Dublin.
Tuesday: work + Changeling (roleplaying).
Wednesday: work + Echoes of Heaven (my game, Dnd).
Thursday: work + Jam Session.
Friday: work + Rollout
Saturday: Fly to Rome.

Yup, a restful week of work to help me relax, and then off to Rome with Moni. I'd hoped to try Couchsurfing as a guest rather than a host, however Rome's rather popular and nobody had space for us. We did get a tip from someone that his Aunt was starting a B&B, and was taking people for 50 Euro/room/night. No problems! So we stayed with a nice Italian woman who didn't speak a word of English, but was a great host. Moni's broken Italian saved me utterly, as I had only my electronic translator which painstakingly spits words out one at a time. A good friend of Moni's made an 'insiders' map to Rome for us. It had the main attractions, plus some insider tips, good restaurants, ice-cream bars, etc. that we ought to check out. And check out we did. We missed the Cistine Chapel and maybe one or two other things, but I think we got everything else. The Colosseum, the Forum Romanum, the Caesar's palace, the Vatican, the statues, the ruins, the old buildings... heaps and heaps and heaps of history packed into one buzzing city. We took tours, walked a lot, stopped at restaurants, and took a lot of photos. We got caught in monsoon rain one evening which soaked us completely (despite our feeble umbrellas) and flooded the streets. We eventually found refuge in a great little bar we found. (A branch had fallen off a tree and landed on a car outside the bar.) Afterwards we went to a nice little restaurant. There was a power outage, so it was a romantic dinner-by-emergency-lighting. Nice ambience.

Markets	Palatino
The Colosseum!

Other things that impressed me were the streets. The driving is completely chaotic, and any open space is per default a parking space provided it doesn't block trafic (this includes intersection corners, pedestrian crossings, and adjascent to other paralell-parked cars). To cross the street on a pedestrian crossing you must a) make eye contact with the driver, b) boldly step onto the road, thereby stating your superiority, and c) be ready to jump the hell out of the way in case there is any contest of wills. It's really like that. We went everywhere by subway, and the thing that is most different in Rome vs Zürich is that in Rome nobody waits for the passengers to get out before others start pushing in. It's just a scrum of bodies pushing past each other, either trying to escape onto the platform, or a desperate push to get to that one free seat before the little old lady over there gets it. I think I'm just spoiled.

The ruins.
The Aqueduct	Fontane de Trevi.
St. Peter's basilica	St. Peter's square (Vatican city).

Yes, we saw a lot in Rome. When we left it was still raining heavily, though it was quite hot (around 20 degrees, and I had to change my t-shirt). The mother of all thunder storms was happening as we took off, with lightning crashes every ten seconds or so. It dissipated once we got above the clouds, but arriving in Zürich we saw that it was zero degrees and snowing. "Welcome home", said Zürich.

We went back to Europa park before the end of the month, too. There were far too many people there to really enjoy it, but it was the Halloween special and well... it was okay. After that trip though I was thoroughly buggered, and ready to take a weekend off.