Reprieve from CBWU (Cold Barf Warmed Up)

Date: Jul 1 1990

I spent a fabulous two weeks in North America two weeks ago. One week in Waterloo/Sauble-Beach and one week in Anaheim at the USENIX conference. I ate hamburgs and hamburgs and hamburgs. After getting used to a half year of eating CBWU (Cold Barf Warmed Up), I have found my tolerance of sugar, salt and booze have changed a lot. I ate one dessert - cheese-pie at McGuiness in Waterloo. It almost killed me. And while the sugar wasted me, I found it really salty. I have heard people in the past complain about their salty cheesecake there and always thought they were nuts. I had a milk-shake in Anaheim and was comatose for an hour or two in the back of a car. And two margaritas started making me feel sick.

Two things really struck me when I was in North America. One was the ridiculously low prices that I had forgotten. The other was how amazingly nice everyone was. Now I understand when I hear the Swiss return from North-America and rave about how nice everyone was. If I've been gone five months and it surprised me, imagine someone that's lived here all their life.

Some recent discoveries have made life more bearable here. I found a 'Spaghetti Factory' open till 2am Mon-Fri and 4am on Sat (There's a fine after 11pm). I found a great place on the Zurich Sea for just lying about (only a 2 sFr fine for getting near the water), an English book store with only a 50% markup, and a reasonably priced Music store with a decent CD selection. (I don't think there are any fines there, but then the smart door smashed my head in when I walked out without buying anything)

Yesterday I saw 3 Ferraris. Today I saw weird white folks trying to dance to Rap music, and I saw many mutant white pigeons. I'm eating at McDonalds a lot again. We get neat storms here. Everybody hates them. I love em. We get about one a day.

Ed Chrzanowski and his brother dropped by for a couple of days. We went on a quest for food together and hunted down and ate an ostrich. (That's a bird, not a rich man from Osterreich (Austria)). Hamburg here costs 14 sFr ($12) a kilo. I forget what it is in America.

Switzerland does have donuts. They don't have holes and are called Berliner's. (You've probably heard that Kennedy when in Germany said 'Ich bin ein Berliner' and lots of people laughed since he said 'I am a jelly donut') I asked my German teacher how do you know when the person means a jelly donut or a man from Berlin. I guess its supposed to be obvious. Once I was confused when a girl in my class said 'Mein Mann isst Fleisch' and I'm trying to figure out whether she really meant 'My Man is meat'. Anyway, 'isst' and 'ist' sounded the same to me and 'isst' means eats. So much for your German lesson.

There a huge numbers of tourists around. You hear English all over the place. I got some speakers for my office now for my Diskman. Life is much better.

I had something important to say when I started this letter and I've been rambling while trying to remember it, and I can't. So instead, 'Be excellent to each other'