One year yodel

I was having a bad day today. Nothing serious. Just grey skies. The weight of an up-coming birthday. A friend's recent break-up making me feel both sorry for her and for myself (because I really am that selfish). And a one-season-old pair of Kate Spade suede boots having to go in the trash because of a nasty tear. All this on my one-year-in-Switzerland anniversary.

So I bought a couple books (for the small price of half a kidney) and that made me feel better. I would have also bought a couple pairs of shoes but I can't afford it and, besides, it's Sunday so all the shops are closed (except, thank god, the book store at the train station).

Happy Switzerversary to me.

Occupy this

I could talk about the rugby. I could tell you about the 50-something lady in a tailored suit cheering for France at the top of her lungs in an Irish pub at 10am. I could. But if you watched the game, you'll know there is nothing to gloat about. Go Wales, I say.

Anyhoo, instead I will tell you about my walk away from the Irish pub towards the restaurant where I was meeting INSEADers for lunch. A walk in below-freezing temperatures (I think it's already Christmas in Switzerland, those damn cuckoo clocks must be fast). A walk that took me past the banking square in the banking capital of the banking nation of the world.

Where I found this.

Granted, the tourists and media probably outnumbered the protesters 2 to 1. And even with the add-ons that only made a total of about 50 people. And apparently I was the only one who spotted the irony of me walking around an "Occupy" protest taking pictures with my Blackberry. But well done, Switzerland, for somehow coming up with a left wing out of nowhere. I honestly didn't think you had it in you.

Of course, 5 minutes later the world was back to normal and I was having lunch surrounded by Credit Suisse bankers who were very much unfazed. Looks like the Bentleys are safe, for now.

Grunt

You already know that I don't do New Year's resolutions. No, not me, I couldn't possibly do anything like anyone else.

So this year, I took some resolutions in May.  Because I can. Seriously. Are you going to stop me? There, I didn't think so.

So anyway, first up on my May resolutions list, lose weight.  This involves some huffing, puffing, and sweating, the details of which I have generously decided to leave out of this post. But it also involves Weight Watchers in all its point-counting, meeting-attending, public-weighing glory.

It has probably not escaped your attention that I live in Switzerland.  Not only that, but I live in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.  So named because no one actually speaks German there.  Nay, instead they speak Schweizerdeutsch, which in German would be pronounced Shwizer-Doitch, but which in S-D is pronounced Shweetser-Dootch.  And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Needless to say, I understand next to nothing of this beautiful, phlegm-producing language. I know it has a lot of eeee, ooooo, and leeeee sounds, and that anything purporting to be a 'g' or a 'k' is delivered with a vicious scraping of the respiratory tract, but that's about as far as it goes.

Which means that every week I have the privilege of being weighed in public, handed a list of Swiss-sounding foods I'm unable to identify but now know the point-value of, and listening to strangers cough up a lung for thirty minutes.

An original, and hopefully effective diet technique. It certainly is making food sound pretty scary.

The lucky cow

There are some stories from childhood that stay with you forever.  You don't know why these particular stories stuck and not the countless others your obliging parents read to you, but they did.  For me, there's the one about the robin and Jesus (Selma Lagerloff) and there's the one about the cow and her glasses.

Dear lucky readers, you are in for a treat.

Once upon a time, there was a cow.  The cow was wonderful in many ways but let's face it, she was an astonishingly picky eater.  And stubborn.  And this otherwise lovable cow decided she could only eat four-leaf clovers.

Trouble was, there weren't a lot of four-leaf clovers in the field where she lived, and so she slowly began to starve.  (Gosh, this was a children's story?!)  Her friends the duck, the goat and the rabbit (OK, I don't really remember what species her friends were, but just go with it) tried to convince her that she needed to eat the regular old grass and stop being such a drama queen but she stuck to her guns and just kept on looking for those four-leaf clovers.

So one day, her friends come up with an ingenious plan.  They convince our heroine, the cow, that there are actually lots of four-leaf clovers in her field but that she actually hasn't been able to see them because she forgot to get a check-up at the optician.  Fortunately, they've already picked out some glasses for her which should do the trick.  And lo and behold, the glasses are perfect!  There are four-leaf clovers everywhere!  The cow can't believe she has been so blind this whole time!

Little does she know, of course, that the four-leaf clovers she now sees have in fact been painted on her glasses by her friends.

The end.

This is a story about perspective.  And friendship.  And the importance of regular medical examination and fashionable corrective eyewear.

And it's a story about Miss Res.  And Switzerland.  And just diving in and having a grand old time because, well, this is my field for now and I don't want to go hungry.

Printemps

The temperature has finally edged above 5°C and the city's gone mad.

All over town the restaurants and bars have dragged chairs and tables out onto the sidewalk.  They've thrown some sheepskin on them and, lo and behold, made a killing.  Apparently, all you need in Switzerland is a good sheepskin and you might as well be in Jamaica.

Even more surprising, along the lake the boat and bath houses have opened.  Loungers are set up by the water, and I actually spotted a group of crazies pulling on diving gear.

People.  We're still in the single digits here.  Is this all entirely reasonable?

Then again, the heatwave mass hysteria is rather contagious.  I pulled on the sportswear this morning (sans hat, scarf, gloves, fleece or anything - just the bright pink top courtesy of HH) and ran for an hour along the lake.  Then I had a sit-down in the sunshine on my balcony with some ice tea.

Hmmm...

I think I might start liking Switzerland in springtime!

The Past Imperfect Re-Kindled

This afternoon I saw a demonstration in Switzerland.  Hundreds of people blocking up the streets and waving signs, and one man singing (badly) a rather humorous song, or at least I assume it was humorous based on the giggles of the passers-by.  Although Swiss-German always sounds quite amusing to me anyway.

Leaving the demonstrators behind, I wandered onto the main drag of the city, the one where all the fancy watches and the LV handbags go to feel casual.  And there was a woman begging for money on the sidewalk.

I was so surprised I almost tripped over her.

It was like someone had sent me a tiny chunk of the outside world right into my Swiss antibacterial bubble.

Speaking of the bubble, it's been a challenge lately.  Turns out CoolCo Sub is so very cool that everyone wants a piece of it.  And they're suing us to get it.  Which is when everyone turns around to me and says "wait a sec, you're a litigator, right?" at which point I somehow become responsible for everyone keeping their jobs.  Fantabulous.  Especially when my Nemesis sticks his nose in it and starts trashing my work like the angry little man he is.  And I've already failed in my mission to save everyone's job since we had to fire someone two weeks ago.  I'm not going to go into that any further except to say it was incredibly unpleasant.

It was right in the middle of all this medieval madness that I received the following email from the agent who had asked to see my full manuscript:

"Dear Res,
Loved the first few chapters, girl.  But then, not so much.  So I will now crush your hopes and dreams and suggest you go read One Day so you can see what real authors do.
Toodle-doo,
Cruella"

So there it is.  I could keep going.  I could re-write.  Again.  I could send out to more agents.  And I could keep waiting.

Part of me wants to do that.  Part of me wants to wait for the chance to open up a brown cardboard package with the first ever copy of my book, a book I could slide into my bookshelf and smile at my name written on the side.

But the other part won. 

And so, following my Facebook friends' advice, I am publishing my novel on Amazon's Kindle.  It will be coming out very soon, so watch this space.

In the meantime, maybe I should buy a Kindle?

Red Cross

So I went to a Swiss doctor for the first time yesterday because I was having another one of those episodes where my body falls apart as it's own special way of telling me to stop working on those slides because really, who cares if the font is all the same size and perfectly aligned.

Anyway, the nice Swiss doctor lady huffed and puffed and drew some blood and told me I had a Blut Entzündung.  I nodded and said thank you but obviously I had no idea what that meant so I went home and looked it up, and the only translation I could find was sepsis, but I figure that can't be right because otherwise I'd probably be dead by now.  My guess is she was feeling a bit dramatic when she woke up this morning and decided to spice things up.  Who can blame her, really.  It must be so boring seeing rich Swiss people with the sniffles and telling them that yes, it's just a cold, so once in a while I guess you start feeling a bit Puck-ish and you diagnose them with something ghastly and preferably fatal. 

Must be even more fun when the patient's a sniffling foreigner who's pretending to speak German but really she has no idea what you're talking about.

Ah, yes.  Swiss humour.  Gets me every time.

Commandments

There are a lot of rules in Switzerland.  Rules about where you can park your car.  Rules about what kind of tires your parked car should be wearing.  Rules about where you can cross the road and when and under what circumstances.  Rules about what days you can take out your garbage.  And which type of garbage bag they should be in.  Rules about doing your washing (not on Sundays).  And lots of other rules that I haven't figured out yet and will therefore be fined heavily for in order to teach me a lesson.

So it makes sense that there should be rules in the trams as well.

Don't smoke.
Don't be poor.
Don't play the guitar.
Don't saw the seats.
Don't put your feet up.

Wait a sec, what was that last one?

Don't put your feet up.

No, not that one, the one before it.

Don't saw the seats.

Right.  Of course.  You certainly wouldn't want anyone to be doing that in the tram.  It would get messy.  And there would be less places to sit if half the seats were sawn off, now wouldn't there?

And don't be poor?  Well, that doesn't apply just to the tram, that's a general leitmotiv of life here in the land of cheese, chocolate, Rolexes and secret bank accounts.

Although strangely, if there was one thing you could actually afford on a budget in Switzerland, it would be public transportation....

Stranded in der Schweiz

Hmmm, time to update the blog, must find fascinating things to say, juicy morsels of Swiss-ness with which to entertain my friends who worry (rightly, I fear) that much like Alice I have disappeared down the rabbit hole... Must not let on that life is in fact about as exciting as an overcooked turnip and that, despite all the coolness associated with the job at CoolCo Sub, at the end of the day I live in Switzerland, and I don't know anybody, and it snows all the time and things are therefore toe-numbingly DULL.

But, let's work with what we've got and see how we go.

So, first off, I found an apartment.  I share it with the only person I know in the city, another ex-INSEADer, who travels all the time and whom I therefore never see.  Except for this past weekend, which was spent together building IKEA furniture in an intense flatmate bonding experience.

The apartment is perfect, large, bright, centrally located, and right next door to a brothel.  That's the Swiss for you.  You get slapped about if you don't tie up your cardboard for recycling on the right day, but there's nothing wrong with men lining the sidewalk to ogle half-naked women prancing about behind a window (and me, mostly clothed and prancing about in my living room - hence the urgent purchase of curtains).

So that's the living situation.  The work situation I'm starting to get a handle on, which is a good thing since I have two new recruits starting next month.  I figure, in this my first role as "the boss", it's best that I have some idea of what I'm doing before I start telling them what they're supposed to do.  I'm not quite there yet, and half hoping for a Christmas revelation.  Either that or some elaborate bluff à la Ocean's 11.

As for the social situation, well, folks, let's face it, it's rather dire.

So far, all of my extra-curricular activities have fallen under one of the following categories:

1) Work outings.  Nothing wrong with that, of course, but there are ten of us at CoolCo Sub so at some point I will have to expand my social circle somewhat.  Besides, I can't shake the feeling that the nine others view me, "the Lawyer", with more than an ounce of suspicion.  It's a good thing I'm getting backup.

2) Time spent with the Boy.  As friends.  Because I'm a masochist.

3) Attempts at making friends at expat events.  Where I don't know anyone.  Where I drink too much (very expensive) wine to hide how nervous I am.  Where everyone is male.  And desperate for female company.  And just about ready to keel over as soon as I mention CoolCo.  And subsequently interested only in my breasts and the latest CoolCo media frenzy, not necessarily in that order, neither topic holding any kind of particular fascination for me.

So, not much of a social life really.  Which means I should at least be exercising but of course I've been too busy building flatpack bookshelves and drowning my frustrations in Swiss chocolate to actually join a gym.

Sigh.

Thank goodness for Christmas and the long drive home to Paris.

Sunday Reds

I know I haven't been good.

It mostly has to do with the absence of the internet in my hotel.  I could get a connection in my room, but then I would have to fork over the second home, a couple Harry Winstons and the private jet to be able to afford it.  Or I could go down to the hotel's business centre.  And by business centre I mean that one computer that sits in the hallway next to the lobby, the one with the funky Swiss German keyboard (not Qwerty, not Azerty, but Qwertz).

Which is where I'm sitting now, mostly out of guilt and because the cleaning lady is in my room.  Where I should be packing.  Where I want to be curled up in a ball crying.  But never mind.  Instead I'm here, talking to you.

I am so fed up.  Fed up with spending every night alone in a hotel room.  Fed up with scanning the same eight items on the room service menu wondering what I'm in the mood for (and after five weeks, the answer is 'nothing').  Fed up with having no one to talk to who's known me for ore than five minutes.  Fed up with the cold.  With the fog.  With my expanding waistline.  With those dozen extra wrinkles that have cropped up ahead of my 33rd birthday.  With not having anyone to go to the movies with.  With being single and friendless in a city where I don't understand the language or the culture or the obsession with brightly painted hard-boiled eggs.

The highlight of horridness: last night.  I receive a pity invite to a party from a friend of a friend whom I'd never met.  I'm a little nervous about it but desperate to talk to somebody, anybody, espsecially after a day spent surrounded by couples and babies at IKEA, trying to lift my body weight in flat packs.  So I get all dressed up.  Makeup on.  Take two trams across town in below-freezing temperatures.  Find the building.  Ring the buzzer.  Wait.  Ring again.  Third time's not a charm.  Neither is fourth.  After ten minutes, a lady walks into the building.  I try to explain that I'm attempting to go to a party but the buzzer isn't working.  She refuses to let me in.  I give it another five rings.  Nothing happens.  I take the two trams back home.  I spend Saturday night the same way I have spent all nights.  In my pajamas, with room service, watching TV.

Which I guess means things can only go up from here, right?

First stop, a new appartment.  Tomorrow.

Still no internet, though.

You Belong to Me

People often ask me how I come up with ideas for my blog, how long it takes me to write a post, whether there's any kind of hidden message (there isn't), is there a method in the madness (nope), etc.

While occasionally I do actually have an "idea" - usually dreamt up in the middle of the night, while sitting on a metro (or now, a tram), or when I'm actually supposed to be working - most often I just sit down because it's time to write and whatever comes out, comes out.

This is one of those.

I'm in Paris this weekend.  Back home.  Curled up on the sofa while the deluge does its thing outside.  God, I missed home.  My apartment.  My furniture.  My books.  My painting of Alina.  My little Nescafé and Kellog's muesli ritual in front of the TV (so much better than the real stuff I get in the hotel back in der Schweiz).  My loud, crazy, dirty street.  My friends.  My family.

All the things that are mine.  In Switzerland, nothing belongs to me yet.

Except the job.  The job is definitely My Job.  It helps that no one else has ever had this job before.  That no one knows exactly what the job is.  The job is whatever I decide it will be.  And so it is very much Mine.  And I love it.  Not just because of the hours, or the colleagues, or the overlapping of languages, or the man-magnet effect of saying I work for CoolCo Sub.

Mostly, I love it because I can create my own little world.  And my boss trusts me.  If I say I need something to happen, it happens.  I never realized how empowering it is just to be trusted.  I feel like I can do anything, achieve anything, go anywhere.  It's an incredible feeling and one that, in my experience, is all too rare in the workplace.  Don't worry, I'm not going to go all Leadership Seminar on you, but still, think about it.

So I have My Job.  Finally.  Although I still wonder how exactly I got here.  Litigation, consulting, novel-writing and now...  Strangely, it all feels rather fated somehow.  Dr B thinks it all has something to do with The Boy, who apparently wasn't simply put on this earth to break my heart over and over again, but also to edge me a little closer to this new life at CoolCo Sub, this new life where I feel confident and capable and ready to conquer the world.

If that's true, I suppose thanks are in order.

Still, couldn't My Job have been in Paris instead?

Spartacus Helveticus

One week in Switzerland.  I came.  I saw.  I froze my little French behind off.  I conquered.

Here's what you missed.

Monday:  Wake up at stupid o'clock.  Squeeze into suit.  Remark that I was thinner back in my BM days.  Get driven to work by my new boss at CoolCo Sub.  Take possession of my office (shared) and my computer (with unmanageable Swiss keyboard).  At 9am, take coffee break with 8 of the 10 employees of CoolCo Sub (2 are on holiday).  Learn that 9am coffee break is a daily thing.  Feel happy.  After day spent in training, am told work finishes at 6pm.  Refuse to believe them.  At 6.15, am last person in office and get kicked out by cleaning lady.  Feel confused.  Treck across town by tram to visit apartment.  Am one of at least fifty applicants.  Panic and go back to hotel.  Get second agent rejection.  Miss home.  Feel sad.

Tuesday:  Wake up at stupid o'clock.  Still grey and freezing cold in Helvetica.  CoolCo Sub still cool.  After 9am coffee break, am introduced to one-hour lunch break in the kitchen.  People cook.  I'm impressed.  I microwave something.  Do some more training.  After work, go to town centre and join German conversation group in bar.  All hell breaks loose when I tell them (in German, natürlich) that I work for CoolCo Sub.  Think this is a cool party trick.  Can't wait for my business cards to come in.

Wednesday:  Don't go to work this morning.  Instead, go register as Swiss resident.  It takes fifteen minutes and Swiss civil servant lady is the nicest person I've ever met.  Am tempted to give her a hug.  Then open Swiss bank account.  Feel like rich and famous person until banker asks me if I want to put money on my account and I realize I don't have any.  Still, manage the whole morning in German so feel pretty pleased with myself.

Thursday:  Wake up at stupid o'clock.  Finally, sun is shining.  Sky is clear and I realize there are snowy Alps outside window.  Gives me ski cravings.  No training at work today, actually have to do work.  Suddenly dawns on me no one has had my job before so no one knows what my "work" is.  Make up some stuff.  It goes down well.  Feel relieved.  Have afterwork drinks at very bohemian, un-Swiss place. 

Friday:  Feel very tired after one whole week of waking up at stupid o'clock.  Wonder if I will ever get used to this waking up in the morning thing after a year of author's life.  Top it off with three-hour long meeting with finance-types.  Hold my own, though.  Go to bed at 9.30pm on a Friday night instead of joining colleague for a party.  Feel sheepish.

Saturday:  Have a lie-in, followed by gigantic hotel breakfast.  Treck across town to see another apartment that is really too expensive.  Buy water boiler so I can make tea at hotel.  Have nice cup of tea while blogging.  Feel pretty OK about first week.

Swiss Post One

First impressions, stream-of-consciousness style.

My Twingo made it all the way in one piece and looks adorable parked between the Bentleys and Jags.  The travel stickers on the back are a particularly nice touch.  The man at the border was friendly when welcoming me into his country.  Switzerland is grey and wet and freezing cold this time of year.  But the forest behind the hotel is perfect to run in. Although my ears did almost fall off.  There is no bathrobe in my room, which defeats the entire purpose of hotel stays.  Food is good, though pricey.  I dare to dream that one day all hotels will provide free internet.  My new country of residence requires me to go through extensive administrative torture, all in the first week, and I have no idea when I will actually manage to go to the office.  Fitting an entire life's worth of belongings inside a single hotel bedroom (seriously, a single) is harder that solving world hunger.  Switzerland has this "glocal" website for expats which looks like it will do wonders for my social life (I hope).  My German skills have so far managed to get me through the day without intense embarrassment or imminent danger.  But I'm dying for some English TV channels (CSI in German is only half comprehensible).

Oh, and I got rejected by my first agent.  Although I suppose Switzerland is not to blame for that.

Never mind, at least now I have some serious aspiring novelist street cred.

Next Chapter

This is it.

Bags are packed (almost).  Twingo ready to go (hopefully).  I even have a new work email address all set up (gasp).  It's time to go.

Paris and Parisians, this is goodbye for now.  Next time you hear from me, little Res will be a little Swiss Miss.

Bisous.

My Life in a List

If you're a procrastinator like me, chances are you make lists.  Long ones, short ones, on the back of envelopes, in pretty lined notepads, lists you add to, lists you cross off, lists you forget, lists that breed more lists.

And when you're in the middle of finishing a novel, starting a new job and moving to Switzerland, the list-making gets so out of control you can't seem to find time to do anything else.

I've done less than half of the things I wrote down, but more than half of the things I didn't.  Which I guess makes it just about alright.

Things I have done:

• Run 20k, miraculously sparing my knee but now waddling like a duck from the sore muscles;
• Sent manuscripts to a total of 13 agents, bursting into tears over sealed envelopes ;
• Spent a long weekend of Parisian sunshine with the Hottie;
• Enjoyed champagne at the terrace of the Georges like a spoiled tourist;
• Painted my toenails dark blue on a whim;
• Read through over 450 INSEAD CVs, and others, to find "my team";
• Bullshitted my way through conference calls and email chains for a job I haven't started yet;
• Watched The Sound of Music again for the first time since I was eight.

Things I haven't:

• Packed my things for the drive to Switzerland;
• Found an apartment;
• Gotten Swiss health insurance;
• Resigned myself to the harsh reality of my imminent departure.