Happy New Year!! Hope you are safe, healthy, happy, and recovered from whatever festivities you participated in. My trip to San Francisco was short but sweet. I hung out with the fam, including my two-and-a-half year old nephew Kazu (a.k.a. the Kaz or the Kazinator) and my five-month old niece Mika (a.k.a. Mikatroid, Mikacheeks, or Mikachu), my sister and her husband, and my parents. Saw some extended family, including my 99-year-old grandfather. And I ate most of the things I wanted to eat while I was there, including Fruit Rollups, Chinese pork roast, sushi, and tapas, but realized (much to my chagrin) that I didn’t have green mint chocolate chip ice cream, and since most countries are less open to radioactively-colored foods, it will have to wait until my next trip back. Artificial flavoring is also less prevalent here, so I stocked up on 80 packets of instant oatmeal.
Although I brought very little with me to the States and half-emptied my single bag once I got there, since I brought gifts, on the way back my suitcase was full, as was an additional duffel bag. Presents, a new computer, and two trips to the drug store will do that. Shampoo, toothpaste, contact solution, oatmeal, mouthwash, Tylenol, hydrocortisone, Robitussin, hair elastics, beef jerky, I got ‘em all!! My muscles have almost forgiven me for making them carry it all back.
One gift that I got, I left in the States. On purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, five years ago, the gods of television gave us Tivo, which allowed us to record programs and watch them at our leisure, skipping commercials and pausing live TV. At that time, I proclaimed it the greatest thing to happen to television since color and cable. 2005 brought us Slingbox, which I now solemnly declare to be the best thing to happen to television since Tivo, at least for expats. Using Slingbox, I can now watch whatever is on TV in San Francisco on my computer in Zurich. TV here is in Swiss German, and I don’t even get TV in my apartment, so this is the equivalent of going from the pre-wheel stages of transportation to intergalactic tourism. It’s good to know that there are brilliant minds creating essential things to better the human condition.
I arrived in Zurich the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. After a nap, a friend come over (everyone else was still scattered around the world), and we had champagne, watched DVDs, and listened to the pouring rain. A little before midnight, we went out on my roof terrace to watch the fireworks. The bells had been going off intermittently in anticipation of the New Year, but at midnight, they went ballistic. My friend and I had been expecting some sort of collective shout or song, the Swiss equivalent of “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!” and “For Auld Lang Syne,” but no such thing. There was some screaming, but out of the super-conformist and organized Swiss, I expected more in the way of group coordination. The public fireworks, instead of going off in a midnight frenzy, were sparsely meted out over 45 minutes, so that every couple of minutes, there would be a few fireworks, not the orgiastic display you’d expect. I think they would have been better off using all of them in 10 minutes, instead of spreading them so thinly over 45 minutes.
Not to worry. Private citizens set off their own fireworks to compensate. From my terrace, we could see people on rooftops setting off rockets. To our surprise, however, there were also people inside their apartments setting off fireworks. Inside. I’m not talking about sparklers or snakes, or other super-safe pseudo-fireworks. These were Roman candles, big tubes that spout a huge fountain of sparks and exploding stars, that you are supposed to set on the ground, light, and step back ten feet. It seemed as safe as taking an industrial blowtorch, turning it on, and setting it down on the carpet next to the curtains. Especially since the Swiss aren’t big into fire extinguishers or fire escapes. We did hear a few sirens during the night; maybe they were responding to indoor fireworks-related conflagrations. In any case, my apartment stayed fire-free. Here’s hoping yours did, too.
Although I brought very little with me to the States and half-emptied my single bag once I got there, since I brought gifts, on the way back my suitcase was full, as was an additional duffel bag. Presents, a new computer, and two trips to the drug store will do that. Shampoo, toothpaste, contact solution, oatmeal, mouthwash, Tylenol, hydrocortisone, Robitussin, hair elastics, beef jerky, I got ‘em all!! My muscles have almost forgiven me for making them carry it all back.
One gift that I got, I left in the States. On purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, five years ago, the gods of television gave us Tivo, which allowed us to record programs and watch them at our leisure, skipping commercials and pausing live TV. At that time, I proclaimed it the greatest thing to happen to television since color and cable. 2005 brought us Slingbox, which I now solemnly declare to be the best thing to happen to television since Tivo, at least for expats. Using Slingbox, I can now watch whatever is on TV in San Francisco on my computer in Zurich. TV here is in Swiss German, and I don’t even get TV in my apartment, so this is the equivalent of going from the pre-wheel stages of transportation to intergalactic tourism. It’s good to know that there are brilliant minds creating essential things to better the human condition.
I arrived in Zurich the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. After a nap, a friend come over (everyone else was still scattered around the world), and we had champagne, watched DVDs, and listened to the pouring rain. A little before midnight, we went out on my roof terrace to watch the fireworks. The bells had been going off intermittently in anticipation of the New Year, but at midnight, they went ballistic. My friend and I had been expecting some sort of collective shout or song, the Swiss equivalent of “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!” and “For Auld Lang Syne,” but no such thing. There was some screaming, but out of the super-conformist and organized Swiss, I expected more in the way of group coordination. The public fireworks, instead of going off in a midnight frenzy, were sparsely meted out over 45 minutes, so that every couple of minutes, there would be a few fireworks, not the orgiastic display you’d expect. I think they would have been better off using all of them in 10 minutes, instead of spreading them so thinly over 45 minutes.
Not to worry. Private citizens set off their own fireworks to compensate. From my terrace, we could see people on rooftops setting off rockets. To our surprise, however, there were also people inside their apartments setting off fireworks. Inside. I’m not talking about sparklers or snakes, or other super-safe pseudo-fireworks. These were Roman candles, big tubes that spout a huge fountain of sparks and exploding stars, that you are supposed to set on the ground, light, and step back ten feet. It seemed as safe as taking an industrial blowtorch, turning it on, and setting it down on the carpet next to the curtains. Especially since the Swiss aren’t big into fire extinguishers or fire escapes. We did hear a few sirens during the night; maybe they were responding to indoor fireworks-related conflagrations. In any case, my apartment stayed fire-free. Here’s hoping yours did, too.
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