GenevaLunch blogs

Try to guess the meaning

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 20:47:51 +0100

Try to guess the meaning
Originally uploaded by travalicando.

This is surely the most puzzling "road" sign I've ever seen. Be humble? Beware low-flying aircraft? Beware the bends; you're in a deep tunnel? Daily exercise is good for you? This is one of a series of great photos travelicando has done at Cern, where he is one of the hundreds of workers who come from abroad to contribute to the projects there. One of these appears in the GenevaLunch Flickr collection (check out the gallery).

She's been dead a week, but she still seems unlucky to me

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:19:56 +0100

Much as I love my children - I hope they are listening - there are some things you eventually want to be too old to do, and having children at age 100 is one of them. National Geographic just sent an e-mail with a photo of this old gal of a pregnant fish. They know that I and many other subscribers love to stack our copies of the magazine without actually reading it, so we probably all missed the death of this female shortraker rockfish last week. They seemed to think the startling fact was that she was 100 years old.

A time for hope

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:46:39 +0100

The hope of pushing yourself high into the sky: rewarded at last.

A couple days ago I noticed the visiting father of a neighbor who is from Northern Ireland. I had no idea what side of that political fence he was on, but I congratulated him on the breakthrough in Irish politics. I said I hoped this was really peace, at last. "Oh, I think it is. We think this time it really is," he said firmly.

This is that rare week in a year of news when all of a sudden hope seems to outweigh despair on the grand scale: pockets of despair are certainly easy enough to find if you're looking. I have to thank the Irish Times for reminding me that Easter is the season of hope and this is one year when the label seems to fit.

What the work conditions survey doesn't show

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:14:17 +0100

Switzerland has its head in the sand when it comes to work, and it is high time to look up and shake the sand out of our eyes. I have just published an article on GL about how well Switzerland comes out on a European survey of work conditions that includes 31 countries. Clearly, things could be worse, and for some people it is - the boss from hell or crazy hours. For the most part, though, the picture looks pretty good, with 91% of workers saying they are satisfied or very satisfied with work conditions. So far, so good, I think.

Who dyed Lake Geneva red?

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:13:38 +0100

There is an old tradition in Switzerland that newspapers, radio and TV play April Fools jokes. Like most jokes, they're pretty funny if you're not in the firing line.

WRG ran a nice lineup this morning of the stories the local media did Sunday, for 1 April. Among them were a story on Swiss milk being turned to laitenol (milking the climate change trend, I'd say) and Swiss wives being invited to "Desperate Housewives," who would probably have to clean up their act (oh, that old Swiss cleanliness routine!).

I wasn't aware of this media trickery my first year in Switzerland and I was convinced by colleagues at Time magazine that a story in one of the top newspapers about the Saleve in Geneva being destroyed, or something similar, was true. I was a little fuzzy on what and where that cliff was anyway - I lived in Etoy, down the lake. They conned me into phoning the staid, humorless Swiss editor to ask for details and a local contact. He's still around and I've never had the nerve to speak to the man since - he clearly thought I was a fool. He's strongly anti-American, so I probably confirmed his prejudices.

A wall of purple in Duillier

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:01:57 +0100

I am suprised there aren't any accidents when folk drive by this wall in Duillier.

It's a traffic stopper.

The purple flowers are in their full glory at the moment clinging to the wall alongside the road that winds up through the village.

I guess they won't be there for much longer, so go see them and enjoy - but best park the car first.

The perfect business lunch

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:01:20 +0100

Yesterday I had a nearly perfect business lunch at L'Esplanade in Aubonne, Vaud (details at end). The auberge communale, or village restaurant, reopened in February after renovations by its award-winning young chef, Guillaume Trouillet. He won out over 25 other candidates 5 April 2006 when the commune awarded a new contract for the auberge.

The only flaw yesterday was eating at noon, which meant I had to return to my computer screen.

I've had a lot of business lunches over the years, in several cities and countries. Some were great and some were awful, and most were in between, which I suspect is par for the course. I've avoided them when I had too much to do, resisted prodding from a business development assistant who felt I should live my life in restaurants, loved them when I was doing travel writing and I could linger and call it part of the job.

News of the world: The Rhine.

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:36:11 +0100

- (c) by Alexander Finger (af (at) syd.de): .mw.

Uhps, this has little to do with Geneva, nor with Lunch. But still, I thought, it is a good example of how the web does indeed make a difference to our daily lives these days.

There are some news in the world I heard first off flickr of. By looking at streams and seeing images of recent events popping up, suddenly.

In this case it was .mw, Martin Willms, who took this romantic shot of a container landing on the rhine.

A ship missed the turn and dropped part of its load in the most german of the german rivers. And flickr users (called flickrites) were faster and better than the media, of course. All for frrrrreee :-)

Google rant: Ungeachtet der Höhe Ihres Budgets, huh?

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:36:27 +0100

Google finally got my goat. I'm tired, tired, tired of having things on my computer suddenly appear in German because someone at Google has not studied Google Earth, or any atlas, enough to know that German is not Switzerland's national language. Paypal, I hope you are listening because you have the same ridiculous problem: you insist I say where I live before I can continue with your forms but once I do, you decide I want to talk to you in German, which I don't.

Switzerland = German is an equation that doesn't work in nearly half of this country. I want my Google language to be English and I live in a French-speaking area.

University life: Flash mob pillow fights

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 09:00:03 +0100

Vancouver, Canada - I was in a flash mob pillow fight Saturday, organized on the Internet. A mob of almost a thousand turned up at exactly 3pm at the Vancouver art gallery, suddenly pulled out pillows as the clock hit 3 and had a HUGE pillow fight. Lasted for 15 minutes and then everyone disappeared. It was ABSOLUTLY awesome, traffic slowed down incredibly to watch and it was on the news.

Same thing happened last year on the same date but on a smaller scale. There's a flash mob water fight happening - somewhere, sometime. And it's spreading around the world.

Networking for real

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 08:08:30 +0100

Once you move to a new country, the networking really starts

This week I thought I had found the secret of successful, easy networking when a friend kindly invited me to join LinkedIn (I realise I’m a latecomer to the LinkedIn party).

I immediately liked it: one of the things I’ve found most difficult since moving to a new country and joining the precarious ranks of the self-employed is learning to network. I am not a natural at introducing myself to strangers, business cards in hand and heart in mouth.

Best thing I've seen today

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:30:16 +0100

It was windy and chilly enough in the Valais today for wool caps, despite the sunshine. Plants are bravely facing temperatures around zero at night and appear less harmed than I expected after a week of cold. But a speck of bright red caught my eye this afternoon and cheered me enormously: two ladybugs working on a spring family. I leaned down to photograph them, thinking they were too preoccupied or stiff from the cold to notice my lens, but they quickly scurried off together to a cozy little spot at the base of the wooden swing, down in the grass.

It was a weathery kind of day

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:41:45 +0000

(Images can be seen larger on flickr)

Storms and sunshine fight over Lake Geneva. From Féchy's hills, looking down on Rolle, with Geneva in the distance.

Wednesday was a weathery kind of day, of the sort that changes completely every five minutes and reminds you that Lake Geneva is never boring. It was snowing in Founex while the sun beamed down on Féchy and Geneva. In the time it took to drive from the vineyards near Aubonne to St. Prex, 10 minutes, the skies turned black. The wind whipped up and the lake shifted from a startling green to dark, inky tones. Meanwhile, over in France, the Alps were toasting in the sunshine and Evian was shivering as it watched St. Prex.

Help is around the corner for those travelling with the elderly

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:36:05 +0000

For those of you with elderly parents, who might want to take Granny and Grandad with them on holiday, Switzerland has an excellent network of socio-medical services.

In our case, we had my 87-year old English-speaking mother for ten days with us in the city in Geneva. She lives in Aigle, Vaud. Not surprisingly Mom has some ailments that require daily nursing care. What did surprise us was the quality of care the different health centres provided. Their collaboration was perfectly coordinated.

These days my mother's travels tend to be limited to places within Switzerland. But, whether you're coming from elsewhere to Switzerland or from within the country, the service remains the same providing you've done the homework.

Exasis

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 06:38:17 +0000

exasis
Originally uploaded by phitar. View it large in flickr

This shot from the Motor Show in Geneva last week must be my favourite - the photos from the company that makes it, Swiss Rinspeed, are nice, but this shot by Geneva's excellent Philippe Tarbouriech, whose work recently appeared on the cover of a major Unicef report, is special. Brightness, ingenuity, the appeal of mechanical parts and more: it's all there. If there is anything that will make me brave the crowds and go to the show next year, this is it.