Some vids for the weekend (updated)

Sorry for the long delay in posting new entries here. Besides the fact that it has been a little crazy at work, I can't actually find the motivation to write in my blog anymore. I know there's still a lot of you (haha, how pretentious) who want to know my whereabouts here in the land of expensive so I'll try to push myself to write something, even though its really crappy.

Scanning by my blog entries, I kinda noticed that I haven't actually updated you guys of my new luxurious "castle". Yes, at least I am no longer the guy who sleeps in a sofa and at long last, after more than 3 weeks, I was able to pull out all of my stuffs from my luggage. Also, if some of you may remember, I bought a bunch of Canadian maple syrup to give-away as my welcome gifts aka 'Canadian bribes' for my superiors or <> as they call it here . Well, oh well I changed my mind and felt that they do not deserve such gifts as they don't really care about my well-being here... They did not even realized that it is also their fault that's why I was not able to find a room for myself. And besides, they already earn a minimum of Fr. 6,000 which they get as net pay as well as they don't pay any taxes. And all these are being splurged in their latest ski holiday in Chamonix or Klosters, their cognac-tasting exploits, purchasing the newest Rado model and of course, their never-ending ILO office fashion shows. I even saw our British secretary in her attention-grabbing attire yesterday, being adorned by the latest peacock attire in Geneva's haut couture scene. So in other words, my bunch of Canadian maple syrup is rotting in my luggages. Who will be the lucky ones who will have them??? Stay tuned!

Ok, yeah I haven't been focussing on my topic that needs to be discussed here. So going back, I actually moved to my new place in the beginning of February. I just realized that it is already March and why did it take such a long time to inform you this? I don't know, I don't feel like motivated talking about my very 'posh and diplomatic living quarters.' Ok, so I moved into a place outside the Geneva city proper called Grand Lancy. The place is actually just right outside the second to the last tram stop and is 5 minutes walk to the nearest Migros (aka Safeway, I haven't seen a store as big as Superstore here). It takes me two bus transfers and 40-55 minutes of precious time to get into the office... It's fun though as I get to listen to tram musicians and of course people-watch on the fashion show happening on tram everyday.

My neighbours are an interesting bunch of people as well. Living in a 'foyer', I kinda thought that the place will be alloted for students and interns who are short of funds to find a place to stay in Geneva's sky-rocketing rent prices. I was wrong! I was surprised to see that both of my neighbours are retired folks, one carrying crutches and the other one could well be considered a 'chimney' with his tar-stained teeth and the amount of cigarrettes he is smoking per day. Even though I am allergic to cigarette smoke as I have rhinitis, I still prefer the guy on my left as I can't really understand the guy on my right. I tried greeting him once (with the best of my French abilities) but to no success at all! And he tried complaining to me that my door makes a lot of noise banging. I said (in English) that it is not my fault as the wind is strong blowing my door causing it to bang but all I got was a frown. Next day, my landlord talked to me and this really pissed me off! Sometimes there's actually a lot of things happening in this country that I do not understand.

Anyhow, lets continue with the tour of my castle. Of course my place would not be a place without a bed.

Sorry for the crap, got no time to clean as I have transformed into a busy working professional nowadays


And heres the view outside the window




And the kitchen that is shared by 25 residents

I would really like to post pictures of the unguarded fridge that we have but luck hasn't been kind on me as my camers ran out of battery. Aww!

After taking these photographs, I went to Migros to had my groceries. Migros is the Swiss counterpart of Safeway in Canada. Shopping in Migros is somewhat a linguistic challenge for me as I really feel handicapped by my lack of French language ability. So what I did is that whenever I go to Migros, you would see me with my half-a-kilo French-English dictionary. At the end of the day, I was still frustrated as I was not able to find what I was looking for such as a an extra shower towel, hotcake mix, and graham crackers. If somebody has a Canadian pancake mix, could you please send me the French entry on the label? And by any chance if you have graham crackers, send the french name to me as well (via comment box, email etc.).

Shopping for my groceries in Migros, I was actually tempted to taste the Thai culinary offering by one of its staff. They are offering free tastes of their product, tried it and it turned out to be delicious. Succumbing to such marketing ploy, I relented and finally agreed to buy the Fr. 20 Thai curry ingredient set.

Walking from Migros to my place only takes like 5-10 minutes. I actually like it more walking from my place to the grocery store than coming back from it. Why? Because I need to carry a load of grocery stuff. Sometimes I am considering having my wheel-operated luggage with me but people might think that its weird that you are going to a grocery store with your international luggages with you.

So I tried my luck with the Thai curry thing. Cooking itself is another linguistic nightmare in itself. Besides the fact that its the first time for me to cook Thai curry, the product instructions only come in this country's 3 official languages - Deutsch, francais and italiano..... imagine your one hand wet chopping the vegetables with your eyes trying to read the instruction in french and your other hand flipping through the pages of my half-a-kilo dictionary! Stressful indeed!

Besides that fuzz, I was able to finally have the final product with me. Since I don't buy pork, beef, or chicken here as they are crazily expensive, I tried combining my vegetarian Thai curry with a humble 2 -piece vienna sausage and a piece of chinese springroll, which aparently is the only mainstream Asian food available in Migros. The end result.... I promise I'll do better with English instructions...

Later that day, I went somewhere downtown to have my second Genevoise haircut. Haircuts here are really crazy and they are worth a fortune. A haircut in a middle-class non-highend salon costs 45 CHF (approx. $ 44 CAD) but as I soon find out from my intensive research, you could actually have one for a meagre Fr. 15 (by meagre I mean by Swiss standards). However, by doing so, you agree to be a guinea pig of those hairstyling students as they try to perfect their craft in Geneva's Ecole superieur de coiffure. I have had my haircut here before and willing to try my luck again. Fortunately, she was also the one who did the haircut to me but unfortunately, she cannot remember me anymore. And again, its another linguistic nightmare for me as I felt it akward to bring my half-a-kilo French-English dictionary.

My Second Geneva Haircut

She accidentally murdered my hair! Now I look like a chipmuck. I actually hesitated going to the interns party later that night because first I don't feel comfortable with my crappy hairstyle, next is that I find it a little bit intimidating interacting with the American rich kids who always talk about their upcoming trip to Klosters and their ostentatious binge-drinking sprees. Finally, I relented and instead decided to go than to lock myself inside my room, roll my eyeballs over the ceiling and be misserably depressed.

US Ping-pong party game

Inters from Quebec, Ireland, Germany, and Ottawa


Two American interns

Irish girl singing Brazilian song in the American Party

The promise

I promised that I'll be posting some pics and videos for today but that ain't going to happen unfortunately. Because of some unknown reason, perhaps port blocking, I am not able to post pictures and files directly from my computer to this blog. What I do is have some sort of tunneling where I log on to my machine in Winnipeg, upload my files there (which takes eons!) and then upload it to this website. And since I need to be at the station tomorrow morning at 7am, I need to go to bed this time. And with that, I postpone the posting for tomorrow perhaps with pictures from our trip.

Sorry, mario! stay tuned tomorrow.

additional Lucern pictures

I've posted some additional pictures from Lucern. They could be found here.

Weekend

Because of budgetary constraints, I decided to skip my trip to the Swiss alps for the weekend. As a substitute, I decided to have my feet in Geneva and explore the city and what it can offer.

Together with my Nordic friend Alf, I started the Saturday with a stroll along Lake Geneva (Lac Leman for the Genevoise) to see Geneva's famous Jet d'eau. Wikipedia gives an interesting articule for Geneva's jet d'eau or water jet:

Five-hundred litres of water per second are jetted to an altitude of 140 metres by two groups of pumps, operating on 2,400-V electricity with a total power of 1,000 kW. The water leaves the nozzle at a speed of 200 km/h. When it is in operation, at any given moment there are about 7,000 litres of water in the air.

The first Jet d'Eau was installed in 1886 a little bit further downstream from its present location. It was used as a safety valve for a hydro power generator and could reach a height of about 30 metres. In 1891, its aesthetic value was recognised and it was moved to its present location to celebrate the Federal Gymnastics Festival and the 600th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation, on which occasion it was illuminated for the first time. Its maximum height was about 90 metres. The present Jet d'Eau was installed in 1994.

Geneva's jet d'eau

Enjoying by the fountain

After visiting jet d'eau, we decided to go get a ride by Geneva's lake boats which is nicely included in the city's public transportation system. That means I don't need to pay the Fr 3 fee as it is included in my Fr 45 monthly student pass! It was just a short ride crossing the lake though taking only about 4 minutes...

Inside Geneva's lake ferry overlooking the lake with the Swiss flag

You can actually have a view of the United Nation's Palais de Nations building as well as my workplace (the big building from behind) and the French riviera on the other side of Lake Geneva.

We then continued our walk into Geneva's international district. Here , you will find the international headquarters of the International Federation of the Red Cross:

Walking through the Geneva diplomatic quarter, it is surprising to see that the district maintains a mini-zoo:

Peacock on the loose

and some deers?

This afternoon, we went to a park in Geneva to meet some interns and have some brunch at a glitzy Geneva restaurant.

While waiting for the other inters, we decided to play chess in the park. Outdoor boardgame is a popular pasttime of the people here. You can see a lot of people in the park playing chess or chequers. Take note of what I am wearing, just a piece of sports jacket on a February. It is spring in Geneva with mercury rising to 10 celsius this afternoon!

Off we go to the restaurant. In there, I ordered the following:

The cheapest jus de pomme which costs CHF 4.95 (approx. $ 4.85 CAD)

and the cheapest dessert available, a demi-glass granola and fruits with mint in yoghurt for CHF 9.50

The Swiss romandes eat their boiled eggs differently as they have their special apparatus that makes it even fancier...

If the Japanese have brushes for their tea, the Swiss-romandes have something different:

And finally, here are some impressions of Geneva on a Sunday on our way back:

This scene actually looks more Zurich to me than Geneva...

And finally, I took the chance to have a picture of myself in one of Geneva's impressive buildings:

To end this entry, I share with you a video I took of a Brazilian and an Irish intern performing the traditional Brazilian martial art of capoeira.

Bon weekend de Genève!

Salary rant

I don't actually want to talk about personal money matters here on my blog but recent circumstances have been forcing me so. You see, I haven't had my salary yet from my internship. Its already mid-February and I haven't got my payment yet for January. And just I arrived today, my landlord talked to me demanding that I pay my February rent which I thought needs to be only paid postdatedly. And since I haven't paid it on-time, he would levy a Fr. 40 charge besides my rent. How's that for the start of your week?

I have been following things up with the ILO payroll department since the beginning of February. And I have already talked to the head of the payroll. All I got was a 15-minute explanation that they are doing all that is necessary to have my payment disbursed. Again and again and again and again for 15 minutes that they are doing everything they can to have my payments disbursed. Ten minutes later, I went down to the coffee shop to grab some tea and I saw the guy there chatting with 3 fellow employees. Yes, they are doing their everything to have my payments disbursed.

It hasn't been really smooth sailing for me here. I kinda sensed from the start that everything would not go as well as planned. As you may know, I started applying for a Geneva internship way back May last year. I got an email from them last June informally confirming their interest in getting me as an intern. However, no contract was issued until 8th December. I sent them up to 16 emails just to push their ass around to work on my contract and it took them like 6 months to have it issued. And yes, because of that, I didn't had the time to scout for the cheapest flight and more importantly, ended up being homeless with the crazy Geneva housing market.

Then I arrived. I immediately submitted all the required details such as banking information to have my payments disbursed. I also promptly submitted all the documents to obtain my immigration card which will be necessary to apply for permits to travel to schengen countries. That was way back a month ago but up until now, no document has been issued to me thus far.

Mind you, I am quite dissilussioned with my organization. They say that they work for the betterment of the working conditions but if they could not even do their work, how could you believe their cause. And these people get paid big time, with entry level salaries at Fr. 5,000 (roughly CAD $4999) and they do not even pay taxes. They get a lots of money and vacation time as well (every week, I can always hear them talk about their planned escapade to the Mediterranean, Klosters, Ibiza you name it). And the coffee room is full all the time as you see fashion models with their Fr 2,000 suits and coats parading their Fr 5,000 rado watches lounging in the coffe shop. When you look from afar, you have high regard and esteem for international organization. But looking closer, its just another unefficient government office.

I have been polite to them explaining my problem and predicament. But my patience is running out. And my landlord hasn't been understanding as well, berating me and even saying that 'its my problem of figuring it out for myself.' In other words, he doesn't care and what all he needs is the money. Maybe I should be more pushy and assertive to them and fight it all out? Probably the best thing to do is to yell to them to actually show them how frustrated I am with the way they are treating me. Once is ok but twice, thrice, or the fourth time around, its a different story.

gimme my salary!

just give my fair share please!!!!

I need my salary

just give my fair share please!!!!

Bern and Lausanne, two great Swiss cities

This weekend, to escape intense work and tremendous ennui, I decided to embark on a solitary journey for a treatment of Switzerland's linguistic diversity. Thanks to Switzerland's highly-developed train system, I was able to travel to French-speaking Laussane and German-speaking Swiss capital of Berne last Sunday.

Here is Lausanne station. I already arrived almost midday as the trip has been hastily planned.

First impressions of Lausanne - pretty much like Geneva but a lot cleaner!

Strolling by the city, I saw a bookshop catering to vintage magazines and novels which at first thought was for teenagers and kids... wait until I got to see the display on the left....

Hmm, maybe I was wrong then. The Swiss sure do know how to have a good combination - vintage novels and and.... :)

As always, I am soo impressed with the Swiss transportation system. Buses in Lausanne are a little bit different as they come with two separate cars and run on electricity.

I walked a little bit off town and saw a park. Unfortunately, the weather did not seem to co-operate as it was raining cats and dogs... 5 minutes later comes the sunshine, then 3 mins comes rain...

Further into the city is Lac Leman where at this time of the year, nobody is swimming... Lots of joggers though.

Manna from heaven???? I wish!!! (or better yet Swiss francs from heaven with this country's uncomprehensively high prices)

I don't want to post gross pictures here but I can't really help posting this one. It just stirs my curiosity. I saw this one on the shower-room/washroom 'WC' as they call it here and it actually reminds me of the squat-type toilet in Japan... Every minute or so, the flush is triggered automatically...

The mountains on the back and the ever-clean Swiss landscape.... Lovely isn't it?

I saw this one on my stroll in the city... I posted this picture because I really thought that with the growing secularism in Switzerland and in Europe, religion practice has already been dying... I have been asked for quite a couple of times of my religion which I always answer as 'Catholic.' However, people who ask me always have a follow-up question wheter I am 'practicing' or 'non-practicing' which I haven't experienced before.

Lausanne is the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee. Right outside the station (gare), you will right away notice it.

Some Lausanne city-sights... Impressive indeed!

At this part of my stroll, my stomach was already grumbling and is waiting to be fed with lunch. I went to the town plaza in search of something affordable to eat... Here's what I saw..

I miss North garden!

Now, it's time to move on to another city.... back to the train again:

I love Swiss trains... They're the best mode of travel in Switzerland... They are prompt, efficient and affordable.

Looking by my train window....

You're jealous eh?

At about half past three (as my British seatmate would have told it), I arrived in the German-speaking city of Bern, Switzerland's capital city.

Bern's train station. Somebody actually told me (and confirmed by Lonely Planet) that the station is infamous for its drug problem and 'anarchic' people... I didn't seem to notice that when I was there. The station was awesome, high-tech and the most modern Swiss train station I have seen thus far.

Some impressions:

Strolling by the city, I get to pass by a watch store. Switzerland is famous for manufacturing and marketing its top-of-the-line luxury watches. With my humongously high intern salary, I can really afford to buy say all of them!!!!!

I went further to stroll and enjoy Bern's cityscape. Unfortunately, the weather is very unco-operative. Fortunately, I got my Philippine-made umbrella (costs only US$ 2!) and am really proud of it!!!! Here are additional impressions.

And here's Switzerland's central bank, where all the decisions about the over-valued Swiss franc are made.

Unfortunately, I was not able to see the Swiss Parliament as the building is currently full of scafoldings for its renovation. I am greeted by signs in German, French and Italian that tours would be available only come summer, 2008.

The day went by fast and I could not really control my stomach's urge to eat. I was deciding wheter to purchase McDonalds (the most affordable by Swiss standard) or have something different. Well, since we are travelling and I haven't been able to eat asian food for quite some time, lets try something new. Why not eat some chinese food tonight? Back in Canada, chinese food is the most affordable and plentiful meal when it comes to an empty stomach... Why not give it a try in Bern station?

Well, I was definitely wrong... For CHF 15 (CAD 14.05), you'll get half a serving Chinese food... It could have been better if they would have more rice. As I have been walking for almost half a day, I was looking for something that would fill my stomach... Lesson learnt.. Chinese cuisine is a luxury in Switzerland probably because of the enchantment it brings.... Perhaps I would go stick it out with Uncle Ronald next time around!

Despite that, it has been an excellent day for a hastily planned day... I arrived back in Geneva 10:30 and achieved my mission of having an excursion for under CHF 45... Stop for next week.... Basel and the bilingual town of Bielle??? Goal: under CHF 75... achievable???? Dunno! Stay tuned!