no alcohol here

my friend and i were at the supermarket yesterday, buying some last minute food for the dinner she was cooking for me. while she was getting vegetables, i said i'd get us something to drink. i went through every aisle but couldn't find wine anywhere. so i asked a guy who worked there. he looked at me like i was weird or something. he said: 'wine. that's alcohol.' my facial expression said it for me: yeesss....? 'we don't sell alcohol,' he added. ah. honestly, i'd never noticed. ever. in 6 years of being back. what kind of supermarket doesn't sell alcohol? i'm not even talking about the hard stuff here, just wine. or beer. now that i think about it, this explains a lot of things.

jet d'eau up close and personal

summer in Geneva

this is what it looks like on a bright summer's day. behold the famous 'water fountain', otherwise known as the 'jet d'eau' (more like water spring, cos let's face it, it's not actually a fountain, is it?)

holiday countdown

i thought the last week of work was going to drag on endlessly, but not so. surprisingly, Monday and Tuesday whizzed by, but i thought that Wednesday was definitely going to be slow, but still not. so there. 2 days of work left!

the gym

my gym subscription includes 2 appointments with a trainer - one at the beginning, to find out about my health, my goals and sort out a training plan for me, and one later on (between 3 to 6 months later) to see whether the plan works, whether it should change or just be tweaked. anyway, i'd put it off for over a month, cos i was more interested in getting my knees back in shape than finding out more. it's funny though, i've only had the plan for a week, and i already feel some changes, especially in the abs and back areas. it's good. i'm quite happy with that. my knees, on the other hand, don't feel quite as good, which is slightly worrying. i mean, there's nothing actually wrong, but the knee caps are starting to make some noise again (which they shouldn't - they should stay right there where the quads that i've been working on for bloody weeks are keeping them), which although painless, is annoying. and now i'm worried about the fact that i'll soon be on holidays for 2 weeks without a bike that can keep things the way they should be.

weather woes

ok, maybe the expression is a tad strong. it's just crazy that we can't get 'normal' weather. at the end of June we went from a measly 15°C to 25° in one day, then 34° the next. then we had about 3 weeks of that sunny and hot weather, which was great, but a tad overwhelming. i mean, 28° at night, every night, is not conducive to good sleep. then we finally had a 'normal' day at 25° after which it went cool (20° with rain is not warm after 3 weeks of 30°+). i'm wearing jeans and a sweater!

town hall meeting

as i am now on the French electoral roll (only for local and European elections), i knew i'd have to start finding out who was doing what in town, getting to know the local politicians and deciding who would be worth voting for. this was the second reason i went to the town hall meeting. the first was that they'd be voting on the new zoning, which i was against. i'd been getting information about it for a couple of months, thanks to people totally engaged in the fight. so off to the meeting i went.

i got a bit worried when i saw the agenda had 27 points. i know they only meet once a month, but still... luckily, the zoning was point 3, so i could always leave after that if it took too long. and boy did it! that issue was debated for a good one and a half hour. it was really interesting to see how things were being discussed and listen to the politicians' points of view, questions, arguments and rebuttals. most of the people who spoke seemed against the project, but that didn't stop it being voted in: 20 voices against 9. and it was a secret ballot, too, thanks to some quick thinking by one of the guys involved. but clearly, our cause didn't have a chance.

the day with dad

i think this is the first time it's happened in a very long time. i've actually had most of a day with my father while he was visiting. normally, he's around one or two days during the week, so i only see him for dinner. but, true to his word, he came alone and we had a fantastic day out. after lunch, we went to a museum that houses an impressive collection of first and original book editions, including an original Egyptian Book of the Dead (several thousands years old), some original Sumerian, Greek and other rare language papyrii, the first Gutenberg Bible, handwritten and illustrated versions of Homer's Illiad, Odyssey and various others. my father, being a rare book enthusiast, loved it. apparently, he'd wanted to visit the museum since he'd arrived in Geneva, 30 years earlier, but had never made it!

after that, we treated ourselves to an icre-cream in the park, where we chatted for about an hour before heading to a classical concert in one of the churches in the old town. that was also really good - especially when you consider it was free. i mean, one of the musicians was playing a Stradivarius! once home, i cooked us a nice Danish-like dinner, which we enjoyed on the balcony. a great day!

communication breakdown

a bit of family drama yesterday. just what i really didn't need. my father and his girlfriend were supposed to come for a half-day visit on Sunday, seen as they'd be in the area for something else. i wasn't very enthusiastic at having her here, but i thought i could grin and bear it. except that i got this email yesterday morning, asking if i could book them a hotel for 3, or would there be space in the flat? with horror, i realised her 8-year-old kid was coming too, and that i couldn't just pretend was ok. this is a very long story, but the gist of it is that my father doesn't really love this woman but would rather be with her than alone. unfortunately, knowing he doesn't actually love her makes me lose all interest in making an effort. i'm polite and all when i visit them, but i really don't want the kid on my territory. nor the mother, for that matter.

anyway, i ended up telling him not to come (with the whole background information, obviously). it was much easier that way. and as far as i was concerned, that was that. but apparently not. once i got home, rather late, i found my father's message on the phone asking me to call him. he explained he'd be coming - alone. again, this is all very long and complicated, so i won't go into it. what i wanted to say today was that we twice used exactly the same words but meant exactly the opposite! my argument for them not coming at all was that i'd be down there in 2 weeks anyway, so i could live without the half-day with my father. what he meant was seen as i'd be there in 2 weeks and i'd see them there anyway, what did an extra half-day matter? another thing i said (in reply to something completely irrelevant to the issue that he'd come up with) was that of course mother and daughter came together. by which i meant, if he's dating the mother, the daughter is obviously part of the picture not, as he meant, that she would obviously be coming with them (frankly, i think that dragging an 8-year-old 800 kms cross-country for a weekend is ridiculous).

anyway, he's come up with something completely ridiculous in terms of planning this, but i'll basically have him all to myself on Sunday - or so he says...

intensive course

it's been a long time since i last taught an intensive course. but just for 2 weeks, i get to teach these 3 people every day, three hours a day, and it's great! they're good students and so low that i can work on everything - they don't really have ingrained mistakes yet. perfect. and it's really a breath of fresh air!

would you shut up already?

so Spain won the world cup last night. and thus i discovered that there are lots of Spaniards living in my neighbourhood. i'd just gone to bed, only vaguely curious as to who might have won, when people started screaming for joy. i thought it'd last about half an hour or so. not so lucky. once the shouting was done, the honking cars started. all those people who'd gone into Geneva to watch the game on big screens came home, not all at once, but very nicely spaced out, so that there was noise until at least 2am. coupled with the heat (27°C in my bedroom - all windows open), i didn't sleep all that much last night...

gorgeous water

it's been so hot these last few days and i really wanted to go for a swim in the lake. i know how packed it gets so i hadn't been yet, but i decided that if i woke up early enough this morning, i'd go then and hope there wouldn't be too many people.

i got there just after 9.30 and there were already some people, but it was livable. i went straight into the water and it was gorgeous! perfect temperature to cool you down. after a bit of a swim, i had a lie down on one of the rafts, then back into the water again. once out, i realised how many people had arrived in the hour i'd been there, and it was getting way too noisy, so home i went. but i've decided i'm going to do this more in the coming weekends. i can always have a nap later in the day!

what do you say?

there are situations that i really HATE being in, especially at work, when i have to do or say things that i know will not be taken well but can't avoid. and today was one of those days.

following a problem between one of the teachers and her student, i'd asked her to provide me with a mini study plan for the following weeks. she sent me a summary of what they'd done. so i sent an email to clarify it was the next month i was waiting for. to which she sent me a simple 'day 1: lesson 1, day 2: lesson 2', which clearly wouldn't do. i can't send that to my client. so i sent her another email explaining (again) that we were expecting something more like a syllabus, as the one she'd shown me during our meeting, although it didn't have to be quite that detailed (i even sent her an example).

late this afternoon, i called up the teacher to find out how things were going, as i was supposed to send it in today. i was ready to give her more time if needed, although it couldn't possibly take her more than an hour to make, not even that. but she didn't see it like that. she couldn't believe i was asking her to do this. this was too much - i was really overstepping, she said. i was speechless. it's not like i was springing this on her. we'd discussed it. and i wasn't out of line, it was my job. but she was really upset. i tried to explain - calmly - that this was part of the service we offered the clients, but she wouldn't listen. she couldn't see why she had to do this and if that was how it was going to be, she might just as well quit. this was getting completely out of hand. this was going nowhere so i tried to calm her down - although frankly, i myself wasn't doing too well by then - said i'd stay in touch and hung up. i think she realised she'd gone a bit far but she clearly wouldn't let go.

it took me a good 20 minutes to recompose myself and another 2 unrelated phone calls to get back to normal. not a great afternoon.

lunch at the top of a hill

i was at the meeting point at 12 o'clock, when i got the message that the girls, who were cycling up from Geneva, would be half an hour late because of a puncture. no worries: the forest was there so i went for a very nice walk. once back, some of the other non-cycling participants had arrived. in the end, though, we waited another hour for the others to arrive. turned out some of them hadn't been prepared for just quite how steep that hill really was.

lunch was great and took us over two hours. with no electricity and no running water (but gas and a wood-oven), same of the food took a while to prepare! bur the setting was great with a nice view over the area and the lake and the company was good, too. once we were done, half of us even went to the little lake that was in town and went for a quick swim among the ducks. the water was lovely, refreshing after the scorching heat of the day.