The 2nd month...

Date: Feb 10 1990

Guten Tag, eh!

So I've been here more than 5 weeks now. I've started learning German. I get up at 7am, walk for 1 minute to work, stick some tapes in some Exabyte drives and start up about 5 dumps, walk out of the building and jump on a tram to german class on the edge of town that starts at 8:30am. After incurring multiple wounds from the teacher at all the things I get wrong, I get out at 12:10, jump on a tram back to work, and if there's no emergencies, and go to lunch with my boss. Around 6 or 7 or 8pm I eat some supper, usually go back to work, remember my german homework around midnight and go to bed around midnight or 2am or so. The life is being sucked outta me.

Now that I've been here awhile, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live here forever. Maybe a year or two. Things I miss : 'Old South' non- concentrate orange juice, driving, beef and other good food, geeks like me that like to eat out at weird hours, North American sense of humor, my toys, big apartments, neat people that work at night.

The transportation system here is great, but I still would like to drive, although I wouldn't want to in Zürich.

Restaurants here are very different. The cheap places remind me of movies you see of Salvation Army places with the long tables crammed with bums, except here they cram you closer together and make you pay for the slop. In normal restaurants, imagine a place like McGuiness restaurant in Waterloo with the tables closer together, only lets say you walk in alone and one of those tables for four is occupied by a couple, they will sit you beside them at their table. (or if there were two of you also). So you really feel like you are intruding in their space. Forget about private conversations. They probably feel alot better when they figure out I don't understand a word they're saying. The selection of food is pretty limited.

Everyone either just walks into offices with closed doors, or knocks and immediately walks in. It still pisses me off. The only time someone knocked and didn't come in, I figured, 'must be a Canadian...'. i was right... Since our department is sorta considered a service department, scummy students barge in all the time. My boss and I are working on a idea of getting students consultants. The problem is, they dont know anything.

I still haven't done tourist stuff and seen real mountains. Hopefully soon.

So in Thai (the language in Thailand), it's different in how a man asks a woman where the toilet is, than it is if a woman asks a woman. Just in case you needed to know.
Everytime I hear something like 'Der Mann is gross', I keep thinking, 'why? is he picking his nose?'. Until I remember that 'gross' is 'big'. I like the street-name 'Umgebung'. Thats my kind of language.

I'm learning lots of stuff, german and computers, doing some hardware type stuff, playing, following ethernet cables around, etc...
yahoo.