Learning the World

I assure you, I am still alive. Now, more than ever.

2005-07-19T11:20:00.000+02:00

Four hours to freedom. The past weeks have been quite intense. As usual, exams were pretty lax. Then you add the project report. Then you add all the end of term party. Then you add a festival de la cité with free concerts everynight. Then you add all the saying goodbyes. It becomes intense.
But freedom is near. In 3 hours, I will do my final presentation of my semestre project that kept dragging on. Then I kiss EPFL goodbye and toss myself in the lake. And hard to believe, tomorrow night, I will be in ROME with Wangster!

I must say that I am sad to go, to not see all the good friends I have made here for who-knows-how-long, to not see the lake and mountains. Nevertheless, I have good friends to see back home and the ocean and the mountains to look forward to. An essay master piece of my reflection is in the works.

All these and many more to come as soon as I get home and then I can begin to ''backlog''. Meanwhile, I recommend reading Ori's blog, which is spectacularly updated with hours of reading material. Till next time!

I can see the light...

2005-06-14T19:50:00.000+02:00

Things are all piling up for the end of the semester, so I am afraid communication will continue to be as spot as it has been the last two weeks.

Quick summary: getting drunk with my group at 3pm after the presentation of a project (with one of us reaching 1.72%!!), flashing my ass during a ultimate party, screwing up my control lab test, and saw interference fringes for the first time in my life (I know, I am so square).

If you care to, ask me about the details with we meet in person, which will come only too soon...

You know when it is exam times when...

2005-06-06T16:20:00.000+02:00

This little thing has been a tradition for the past terms now. Of course I have to keep it up. So I borrowed my roommatê's laptop and got installing...
I guess I am a little out of practice. By 7am in the morning, the Russians were running my riflemen over with bombers and then it turns out they have 3 times the land mass as I do... Damn... Exam prep without all-nighter civ II is just a little weird all the same.

Congratz Sis

2005-06-03T13:13:00.000+02:00

Not always evident, but everybody's life goes on at a steady pace while I am wandering around on the other side of the world. Just last week, my sister had her convocation.

You look so good in the gown. Congraulation.

What the no means to me

2005-06-01T12:06:00.000+02:00

Over the past week, the thing that's making headline across Europe (even for the self-enclosed Swiss) is the NO to the EU constitution. The consequences is doubtlessly immense. This can mean many things for many people.
For me, as a poor student in Europe, the most direct will have to be the weakening Euro (dragging the Swiss Francs with it). I am not super rich, but this will get me an extra ice cream bar for my walks along the lake.

Pulling all-nighters à la Suisse

2005-05-27T12:45:00.000+02:00

Now that the term is finishing (3 weeks left of lectures), it is crunch time for project work. The group for my group project was extremely motivated and we arranged for a work-till-you-drop night. You can see how hard we are working:

Of course we had to have a fondue. Come on, this is Switzerland, nobody orders pizza for late night dinners. After good cheese and wine, we all downed a tall cup of coffee and sniffed up sugar packets, then we were back in business. The next break we took was coffee at 7:30 in the morning at the school pub. Intelligent conversation was not really possible at that point, but we did our best.

Gruyère, la crème de la crème of Switzerland

2005-05-25T11:06:00.000+02:00

Since coming to Switzerland, I have fell in love...with this certain cheese named Gruyère. This type of cheese is made from the fattest milk available from the region, and has a very distinct, yet subtle taste.
http://www.gruyere.com/
When the exchange people organized a tour, I signed up right away.
After a long train ride winding through the pre-Alps, our first stop was, of course, the cheese factory.

hmm...cheese (each of the wheel is 35kg)

Second stop for the day is the castle of Gruyère. The second most visited castle in Switzerland (after Chillon), the huge windows indicate that the castle was not so much built for defense, but more for the nice views it offers from the hill top.

After decades of neglect, the castle was bought and restored privately by a family from Geneva. The family made special effort to put art work all around the castle.

Not exactly true to history, but it was all very beautifully decorated.

For dinner, there was no question, we had to have a fondue. I was too busy stuffing my arteries to take pictures, but here is what we have for desert.

Another specialty of the region. It features the super-rich double cream of Gruyère (remember the fattest milk?) that you can pour on two pieces of meringue. The cream was almost solid. Mom, you don't have to worry about me being too thin anymore.

Balelec

2005-05-25T10:41:00.000+02:00

From a humble student party to the biggest party in Switzerland, Balelec had half the EPFL transformed into a party ground for more than 15,000 people.
On 5 different stages and 2 disco floors, dozens of live bands play throughout the night.

This one african group, Youssou N'Dour and the super etoiles Dakar, really knew how to rally the crowds.
Even more impressive is the professional firework show, that went on for half and hour at least.
Always, there are good party people.

When it was all said and done, the sun was just creeping up the horizon.

Definitely the biggest party in Switzerland.

visit to the Castle of Chillon

2005-05-19T14:17:00.000+02:00

Now that the weather is nicer, and time is running out, I can start on checking off the things I want to see in Switzerland.

The timing worked out and Vince can join me for one of them--the Castle of Chillon.

By far one of the most famous sights in the region, it is a well perserved medival castle on an island on the eastern tip of Lake Geneva. Even though there are evidence that Romans had built something on the island, most of the structure we saw was built in the 15 or 16th century.
The castle was very clearly a tourist hotspot as the entrance were crowded with Chinese tourists. We joined the crowd and made our way across the draw bridge.

It was really striking that the entire castle is open for visit. Very few things were locked. Even some of the secret passages were open for exploration.

I imagine it must have been a pretty sweet job guarding the casle, as you are paid to look at this view the whole day long.

Vince put it best, everything in Switzerland is just a little better, even the castles.

Magic in the air--Talampaya 2005

2005-05-17T14:19:00.000+02:00

Apologies for beign out for a while, I was busy clearing off work from my long weekend. The hard work paid off and I was free for a 3 day long frisbee party (with a tournament on the side). Talampaya is definitely one of the best ultimate tournaments in Europe. Organized by the Geneva Wizards, 32 teams from Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Ireland, Holland, German, Denmark... showed up. Aside from the on and off weather, the weekend was superb.
The highlight of the weekend is definitely the costume party. The theme this year is medival fantasy. Our team decided to rough it out and dress up as the Urakhai from lord of the rings. It is not so hard to imagine, just think about me with black skin, a sword, the white hand of Saruman, and a white mohawk!

There were talks of keeping our costumes to play the next day, but somebody had the bright idea to thin the paint with beer (no water was around...). The tent (and us) smelled awful the next day. We all ran into the shower as fast as we could.

the FORCE was with us

2005-05-09T14:26:00.000+02:00

Last weekend was our turn as a ultimate team to host a tournament: Force Lake 2005. Thanks to a lot of hard work from a few great people from our team, things came together really well...even the weather. Despite all the forecast last week saying that it would rain on Sunday, something happened and we had bright sunshine, no rain, no wind!
It was a hat tournament, meaning that people sign up as individuals and gets placed on a team on the day. We had a little Star Wars theme going (Force, get it?), so all the teams were named as star wars aliens.

There were a lot of unhappy people about being put on the jarjar team... I was the Wookies (i.e. Chewie). We even organised last minute costumes. (it reads ''I am a big huge ugly and hairy beast'')

Here is a team photo, check out all the hairy people.

At the end of the day, the Jedi got STOMPED by the Ewoks in the final. We lost a close game to end up in 4th place. In any case, everyone had fun, drunk beer, had a bbq and had fun. All around, It was a great success. Good work, team!

I am too hot for my shirt

2005-05-02T13:21:00.000+02:00

Summer is HERE!! Finally I can bust out my shorts and sandals!
The weather report posted 25deg on Sunday, but it felt a lot hotter when I played ultimate outside. Always enjoyable to have day where you can go shirts and skins. But I definitely felt myself running slower in the heat.
I have to acclimatize before the tournament we are hosting in Lausanne this coming Sunday.

worthwhile bleeding

2005-04-26T12:18:00.000+02:00

The freebies you get here in rich rich Switzerland is great. I gave blood today and walked out with a fully loaded ham sandwich, couple cups of free coke (I love free coke), and a whole chocolate bar! I will definitely try to give blood here one more time, but after I will have to settle for cookies and juice back in Canada.

As clean as you can get

2005-04-25T19:13:00.000+02:00

Some of you may have forgotten that I still have school here. It is not all bad. Take today for instance. I had a lab in a clean room (class 100). We did the whole nine yards with the body suit, the gloves, masks, boots...and the laser show and music like the intel commercials. All right, not the music and bad dancing. All the same, it was a very interesting experience to see clean room equipment and try out some microchip fabrication techniques.

Coup de l'est, Grenoble (Eastern France Tournie)

2005-04-25T13:48:00.000+02:00

Leading up to the weekend, the forecasts showed rain, rain and rain. That with the fact that we do not have a huge team this time (we had to borrow players from Geneva and Bern to make a full line), I braced myself for a long hard weekend. It turned out much better.
By the time we got into Grenoble on Saturday, we found ourselves under the Alps and a clear sky.

With only one sub our first game, we lost to the host team, Monkey Foo by one point. Then the Bernois arrived. Despite the Beeeeeeernois' reputation to be slow, these two players were all over the field. Our game came together very quickly and we won our next four games, placing us 1st after the round robin. We were faced with the shocking possibility that we can actually win...
That night, a big fat steak and some Belgium beer were just right after 4 1-hour long games. (Note to self: bring smaller notes than 50€ to France, our waiter ran out of change) By the time we got to the tournament party, the bar was already closing!! at 1230am on a Saturday night!! Desperate for beer, we drove downtown and did a pub crawl...between places that are either closed or full. These french sure does not know how to party. So we went home disappointed, consoling ourselves that we would have an edge over the drunk teams.
Sunday went on and it was too good to be true.

We won BOTH the tournament and the spirit award. First win of Lausanne EVER. We did have some help, so we wrote on the cups ''Fly High and Friends''. Heck, the tournament had such great people, we were all friends at the end.

Eat rice

2005-04-20T13:20:00.000+02:00

My suitemates and I ave been talking about this one for a long time, but never made the time for it. Until last night...

On the menu we have:
porc stir fried with cashew
Beijing Chicken with Green Onion
cauliflower dressed in cream
sweet and sour fish filets
green bean pudding for dessert

It was really about time my suitemates learn what it is like to be living with me. It was a pretty standard chinese feast. Standard for me, at least. This is the first time for all of them to have a homemade chinese meal. The whole setup is foreign to them, with the bowls and several plates of food.
During the meal, everyone was so concentrated. I would like to think it is the good food, but it is likely to be the chopsticks. In fact, my roommates loved the chopsticks so much, they would not stop eating and try to pick up little pieces of food. Then they had a race, a fight, and a duel. It was good fun.
The best part, since I did most of the cooking, I did not have to clean up at all. Ah...good old unit 24 memory...

Swiss German 101

2005-04-19T08:36:00.000+02:00

In case you are not aware, most of Switzerland (80%) speaks German, well, Swiss-German. Me, stuck on the French part, has never got much chance to see what life is like on the other side, until last weekend.
My suitemate Christain organized a huge birthday party back in his village, Reinach. When he invited me, I said yes right away. After a short train ride with a mini-crash course on Swiss-German, we ended up at our first stop: the village pub. This is THE place to be in the village, the only place really. The place was full of people and Christain knows all of them. Small village.
The next day, we started setting up for the party. Christain rented out a forest cabin in the neighbouring village, Beinwil. Apparently, every village has one of this, ready for all kinds of party.

Then the drinks came as well.

Christain even got his friend to bring in hardcore lighting and sound equipement. I was drooling over them all night.
The party had a exercise theme. Posters like these were put up for vodka drinking and small talk and airguitar...

As the party got started, I slowly come to the realization that I am one non-germanophone against a good 50. They were nice though, most speak either English or French. After the ''apero'', we settled down to see 15kg of sausage flame grilled and consumed.

Logically, birthday gifts were handed to birthday boy (in orange).

Christain then show everyone how he learned to drink vodka in Ukraine, ice cold with caramel surop, nuts and pears. He had the real vodka too. Smirnoff is really quite awful stuff. After a couple of those, the night became really short.

Look to home

2005-04-13T16:28:00.000+02:00

It is sad, but I am thinking about leaving already. It is not too far; there is only about 10 weeks in school and 2 weeks of exams. After that, it is time to go home. So far, the only thing set for sure is that I will fly back to Canada at the end of July. It is likely I will be in Vancouver throughout August. I look forward to being home and seeing everyone again.
Of course, I will continue to make the most of these last three months. So far, I can already say that this has been the best year of my life. First year comes close, but not close enough.

Me 1, PhD student 0

2005-04-13T16:16:00.000+02:00

The prof supervising my semester project (with all that fun optics) gave me a PhD thesis to look through as my project can be seen as an extension of the work.
Without getting into all the great physical details, the PhD posed an equation saying that (skip to next paragraph if not optics fan) depending on the polarization state of the two incident beams (s- or p-), the interference pattern will lose visibility. Now there is lots of references saying that mutual polarization better the two beam matters, but not the common polarization of the two beams.

This has tremendous implications, so much that I was surprised that no text book talks about it. Then I saw that he made a mistake using an approximation not correct for this problem (scalar approx. for a vectorial problem). So I spent 4 hours last night doing vector calculations until the axes started spiraling together. Now I just have to present it and convince the prof. Maybe it makes more sense in French.
To his credit, the rest of the thesis is majorly impressive. Just this one thing that tripped me up.

I am cured!

2005-04-11T17:37:00.000+02:00

I am happy to say that I lost at the Casino last night (nothing big though). My faith in statistics and math in general has been restored. In short, the world makes sense again.

It was fun to see other people play as well. The roulette is great fun to watch (though not to play). Everytime a number comes out, the dealer sweep hundreds of chips down on to a hole where all the chips gets sorted, and then he gives the few payouts. This one chinese guy must have had a thousand CHF of chips in front of him, and every time he would places stacks and stacks of chips on the table. He bets so much that he gets stacks of chips back everytime. But then, 15 minutes later, he left the table without very much. He got multiple free coke though.

Seeing Doubles

2005-04-10T17:36:00.000+02:00

I was in the bookshop the other day and saw someone looking at the numerical methods book I was using last term. Since that book is nothing but dead weight to me anymore, I decided to approach the guy and offer to sell him my book. We agreed to meet the next day.

So I met up with the guy and traded in my dead weigth for 20 CHF, everything was fine.
An hour later, the same guy came up and asked me if the book got sold. I was confused; I mean I swear I handed the book to him… Am I going crazy?
Then he explains that it is his brother that picked up the book, they were twins! Sometimes you get lucky and the twins have different hairstyle, not these guys. They must have fun making people question their sanity.

Finally, the ultimate outdoors

2005-04-07T11:51:00.000+02:00

Things have been a little quiet around here lately. Mostly reading up on optics so much that I can start to see the EM waves oscillating.
Thankfully, there is still ultimate twice a week.
We are finally playing outside again. We play right by the lake with the mountains on the other side. Sometimes I catch myself looking at the scenery more than playing. Just that damn wind though...

Luck streak, part III

2005-04-04T11:10:00.000+02:00

Damn, I think I am hooked. I went to the casino again last night. I am starting to recognize the ''regulars''. There is now a favorite machine I sit at. This is not healthy...

This time, I won another 18CHF, (How does this casino stay open??) though I did not get ANY free coke though (I was so thristy too). To make up for it, I grabbed a bunch of free cookies on the way out.
Now I am trying to convince myself that if I keep getting lucky at the Casino, I will just get bad luck elsewhere in my life, as we only get so much good luck. Hopefully this self-created fear will keep me flying straight for a while.

Luck streak, part II

2005-04-03T20:52:00.000+02:00

Ever since winning that 20CHF, I kept on thinking about the casino. Uh-oh...I think I am HOOKED. Knowing how I have a horribly addictive personality (some of you may know my history with Civ 2), I knew I had to go back and lose the 20 and bury the whole thing.
I went back to Montreux, and came out with 50CHF of spending money. How come it is so hard to lose at a Casino? This is not at all good for my addiction...

Jazzing it up

2005-04-03T20:44:00.000+02:00

A small town close by Lausanne, Cully, is hosting a jazz festival. My suitemate, Christain is big into these jazzy tunes, so I tagged along.
The whole town is into this festival (mind you there is less than 10,000 people in the town). I am guessing all the bars (and even a japanese restaurant) open their doors with live bands playing everything from blues-rock to jazz-fusion to old style barbershop jazz. Too bad Wangster is not around, he would have loved it. In any case, Montreux (yes the WORLD renoun Montreux jazz festival) is in July. Kevin, you cannot miss that one.

Luck streak

2005-04-01T20:19:00.000+02:00

After the recent events involving me ''winning the head price'' or ''having red run on the head (hon won don tou)'', I decided to try my luck at the big Casino at Montreux. I was not wrong.
After winning 74CHF net on my favorite game (now)--sega virtual horse racing. Unfortunately, the black jack table for 5CHF bets were full, and I did not have the capital to play the 10CHF tables. I did see a really good game where a guy splited, doubled, splited again, and doubled twice and winning all three games because the dealer busted.
So I took my free joy tokens (winnings) and roller-coastered down 10CHF on video poker, and 40CHF on Roulette. It was an experience like no other. In the end I still came out a winner. What's more, I got two free coke. hmm...coke

Ok friends and family, I do NOT live here

2005-03-31T20:11:00.000+02:00

For many of you who have visited Switzerland, chances are, you went to Lucerne, and some of you may have confused it with Lausanne (my sweet home in Europe). To settle it once and for all, I took a trip to Lucerne to take some photos.

If any of these photos looks familiar, you have got the wrong place.
That aside, Lucerne is a beautiful place, very much worth visiting. The old town wall overlooks the medival town and the lake. The two bridges are quite unique. I liked the Lion a lot too. It is a gift from the French because the Swiss mercenaries defended the French King with such bravery. (yes, swiss mercenaries, the best in the world at the time in fact. No, they were not always neutral peace-lovers)

Out of the snow and into the lake

2005-03-29T12:35:00.000+02:00

You gotta love Switzerland. 2 days after boarding, I am on the lake rowing away.
As it is the Easter vacation, my tandem partner, Chloé, (she teaches me French, I teach her English) invited me to her hometown, Vevey. A small quite place, but also the global HQ of Nestles, but more importantly, it is also right on the lake.
Chloé's father (M. Kessi) is a rowing/sailing pro, and he was kind enough to introduce me to the joys of rowing. Along with Chloé's half-sister, Jessica and her friend, we took a four person row boat.
Of course, M. Kessi was smart enough to run us through the basics in a pool.

To make sure we were listening, every instruction he give is accompanied by: ''if you don't do this, the boat will flip.'' I was all ears. The trick to it all is that all the rowers have to row together. I had it easy being the last person, as I get to set the pace for the others to follow. Jessica, who was smaller, had some trouble keeping as slow a pace as the rest of us (think of a pendulum). M. Kessi keep on reeling on her, and she keep on complaining. It was funning in any case. The boat were tip-topping when we started, but really when you put the padels flat on the water, the boat cannot flip.

At the end though, we were doing good and felt the traquillity of rowing on the calm Lake Geneva surrounded by the Alps. M. Kessi also invited me to come sailing when the weather gets warmer. I will surely take him up on that.

That's M. Kessi at the end of the boat (closest to the photo), followed by me, Chloé, a friend of Jessica and Jessica.

Good luck with Exams SYaniDE

2005-03-28T11:04:00.000+02:00

I just got an email today from Allen with all the photos from the SD362 showcase. Good job guys. I suppose that exams would follow now that the project is over. I wish y'all the best of luck.
Today marks the start of my week long Easter holidays. You guys must have no more lectures now... I guess it is the same thing.

Ending the season with a BANG

2005-03-28T10:40:00.000+02:00

As the ski season wraps up, I knew I had to go one last time. To make full circle, I went back to Verbier, where it all began.

You will notice that the big board is looking a lot better than last time. Though it is nonetheless the end of the season, so the snow was a little wet and heavy. My skier friends complained a lot. But as a boarder, I rather like it. It is like water surfing.
It was not planned, but I ended up going all out this last time. Aurora said it best, ''you are not a real snowboarder if you don't have a story to tell.'' Here is my story:

(version for girls at parties)
So there was a snow park in Verbier where people do tricks and stuff, and seeing how this is the last time I will be boarding for a long time, I decided to try it out. So I picked up a lot of speed and took off from a hump, gaining massive air time. Trying for a vertical flip, I had the speed to go through a 360 really quickly, except my body did not feel like stopping and I overturned. So *pouff*, I landed face first on the snow and then the snowboard came down--on my head. Needless to say, I lost some blood and felt a little light headed. But like a tough canadian, I boarded all the way down to the first aid station where they took me into town by skidoo to dress the wound. They had to cut off a big chuck of my hair just to get to the wound and put stitches on. The doctor assured me that I will not suffer brain damage and send me home on the next train.
(version for mom)
So there was a snow park in Verbier where people do tricks and stuff, and seeing how I am just a beginner, I stayed as far away as I could. Just nice and slowly going down the slope, I hit this one section where there were humps everywhere. Carefully and slowly, I went down...until my snowboard plunges into one of these humps and send me flying forward. I landed face first and my snowboard followed, scratching the back of my head. It was not until my friend saw a slight tint of red in the snow did I realise I was hurt. Totally conscious, we went to the closest first aid station and got the wound disinfected. The guy there even had trouble finding the wound... He then told me to board down bottom and go into town to get some stitches just in case. So we did, and the doctor had to cut off a bunch of hair just to make sure that the wound is visible enough for her to stitch up and that the stitches would be easily seen for removal later. It will heal up in a week or so.

You believe what you want to believe.

Professional trash removal service

2005-03-22T17:37:00.000+01:00

Some of you may know that my laptop broke down quite sometime ago and it has just been sitting in my room accumulating dust. Last friday, a kind person came into my room while I was out and ''took out the garbage''. When I came back, there was no more laptop.

Yes, even in Switzerland, people steal, and from poor students too.
We always left the door to the outside open, like everybody else here, that way people can visit each other easily. I guess I may have forgotten to lock my room door that one night, and nobody was home. So we had an uninvited guest. We have started locking all the doors since then.

In the end, I was lucky that the person only stole a laptop that did not work (my leatherman, belgium beer, and chocolate were safe), so I got the last laugh. I wonder how her/his face looked like when s/he found out all s/he took was trash.

Photos from weekend at Montpellier

2005-03-17T13:44:00.000+01:00

Great sand, light breeze, 16 degrees, sound of waves in the air, full-blast sun, what's missing?
Ultimate, but we had that covered.

There were 10 full teams of great fun loving people from Spain, UK, France and of course Switzerland.

Between game activities started with friendship circle in the sea (the water was actually absurdly cold...)

to full out skinny dipping after the last game. (sorry no pictures) That salty sea really made me feel all my hard layouts. I was burning all over from the little scratches from the sand.
Then we had a great party Saturday night. And what's a party without Achille's yellow duct tape.

The UK team challenged everyone to the ''three pint challenge'', apparently a disc can hold 3 pints of beer. Two people would have to suck up all that beer as fast as possible. The winners are, finishing in an amazing 14 seconds, Johan and Sabastian from our team, the Germans, we should have known.

After two more hard games on Sunday, it was time to just kick back and have a great Fondue on the beach.

Ok I won't have this much fun this weekend...

Long hucks on the beach

2005-03-14T13:56:00.000+01:00

Second week of march, 6 hours drive, 16 degress with full sunshine, 2 full days of ultimate, 50 meters from the Mediterrainean Sea, a kilometer of beaches on both sides...put it all together and you can come close to picturing my awesome weekend.

My first ever beach tournament, freaking awesome. A great bunch of fun-loving people coming from as far as the Spain and the UK. We lost all but the last game, but somewhere between the sand and sea and the sun I stopped carign. Pictures will come soon.

To be a regular student

2005-03-09T15:28:00.000+01:00

A little change has happened to my schedule since last term. This thing we call a term project here. Basically a URA that takes 12 hours a week. Suddenly it seems like I barely have time to play ultimate anymore (what the...). So this is how all regular students with the 8am to 6pm days must feel like. I will do my best that the blog don't suffer, but I make no promises.

Back for another go

2005-03-07T18:41:00.000+01:00

After running around until my feet blistered up for the last two weeks, I feel great being back in Lausanne. When I got off the train, I was overwhelmed by the sensation that I was home. Maybe I have had my fill with this travelling thing.

Details on the trip will come up fairly soon.

Dijon, the mustard captial of the world

2005-03-05T20:14:00.000+01:00

After spending the night in Compeigne with some of Kevin's friends, we took the train to Dijon.
On the whole, Dijon has a nice old town with a number of free museums. But really the only one that matters is the Mustard Museum.

As I am a huge fan of Dijon Mustard (the only mustard...), I had a lot of fun popping mustard seeds, smelling the sweet mustard oil (think wasabi smell), and learning all its history.
I downed some mustard and bread as soon as I got back to Lausanne that night.

The big white hype that is Paris

2005-03-02T13:53:00.000+01:00

A great deal of people tells me that you have to do Paris at least once in your ilfe. I did, and to be honest, I did not find it to be all that.
Of course there was the great architectures and famous sites. I will just let the pictures speak for themselves.

But I just find Paris to be a very flat giant city with too many people. The ''great'' view of Paris from Sacre-Coeur really shows nothing but flat skyline with houses as far out as your eyes can see.

The place never really feel very cozy. Everywhere, especially in the spider web of a subway system, there are people looking stressed and eager to get to the next stop. I was not a big fan of that.
In complete agreement to Wangster, the city itself was quite dirty itself (I guess that goes for anywhere compared to Switzerland) and there are signs of pauverty everywhere. A lady actually came on a subway and gave out this long discourse to ask for money. Where is the socialism in that?

I have decided that I simply do not like big cities.

All the same, a big gaint thank you to Kevin for playing host during my stay.

The Ypres Saliant

2005-03-01T14:55:00.000+01:00

A major battle site during the first world war, the Ypres Salient is thus named because it was a little town protruding from the front line of the Allies. Surrounded on three sides by the Germans and the focal points of multiple offensives, Ypres and surrounding areas is the resting place of hundred of thousands of soldiers, if not more. Here are the Flanders Fields made so famous by John McCrae.
This is what I saw entering into town.

Don't let the look of the town fool you, the town of Ypres was completely flattened by artillery fire during the first world war. All the buildings are afterwards rebuilt in the same style as before.
A famous monuement find in town is the Menin Gate. This stands on where the soldiers left town for the front. It has names engraved all around the walls to name the 54,896 british soldiers with no marked graves.

Poppies are found here all year round.

At the center of town, the old cloth house has been converted to the powerfully moving In Flanders Fields museum.

(Ypres is the first time Germans used gas attack on the Western Front)
A guided tour covered many of the major memorials.
This is a front dressing station, a bunker for dressing small wounds and a transfer point for victims of more serious injuries.

The memorial marking the field on which In Flanders Fields was written.

The ''Vancouver Corner'', the Canadian memorial.

After driving by too many cemeteries and mass graves, we arrive at Passchendaele ridge of the famous third battle of Ypres. Where the Tyne Cot Cemetery is now found.

Please note how far you can see from this small mount they call a ridge. This is where the German would have been standing with a machine gun while allied soldiers struggled through the fields (they started at about the horizon). To make matters worst, shelling and non-stop rain has reduced the whole field to a swamp. Such was the conditions soldiers had to face. It is said that for every step of that advance, 35 soldiers died for it.
Next stop was the Hill 62 museum, where trenches and pot holes were preserved for the pass 90 years.

By the end of the day, I was quite glad to go to Paris to see Wangster.
I will never forget this part of my trip.

Brugge, a pocket in which time stood still

2005-02-28T14:30:00.000+01:00

Brugge has to be the prettiest place I have even seen. It has a huge old town that seems to have been frozen in time since the middle ages. This must be how it is like to live in a Dinsey movie.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
This is the Markt, the core of the old town.

The belfry stands tall close by

More stunning beauties around town

There was also a chocolate museum, can anyone say no that that?

check out this 120kg monster of a chocolate egg

and what's a chocolate museum without live demo and tasting...

At this point, Ori and I had to split up to presue our individual destinations. I wished her the best of luck at the train station and chilled out a bit with another belge beer.
After nightfall, the town becomes very dark and not too many stores are open. I guess kindof like the world before electric lights.

Which was all as well, since I had to wake up at 5 for my early to Ypres, where I remembered...

The long march, aka self guided tour of Antwerp

2005-02-28T13:52:00.000+01:00

Ori and I were all set to go, to conquere the entired old Antwerp in a day. We bought one of these self-guided tour things and off we went.

It was on the whole rather disappointing. I guess it was bad timing for us, but a lot of the big sites are covered up in resaturation work and , with entries like (paraphased with extreme bias) ''at number 17 of this street stands a building from the 15th century (as oppose to the one beside it, from the 17th century), notice how it has a quite a nice gable* (looks kind of like that last one we saw...)'', a lot of the smaller sites fews like the guide maker was getting desperate. But in all cases, there were some cool sites.

(*gables are that upper part to the front of the house)

The center of town, an imposeing cathedrale with musical bells. (and notice the very fine example of a cross-step gable on the house in front)

A stone throw away is the town hall

and the guild halls

Then we hit the side streets

The right most house is from the 13th century, so it is in wood and has a very simple gable, compared to those newer buildings beside it.
The Steen, of course. I would like to point out the very well preserved step gables around the castle.

and my personal favorite, the butcher's guildhouse. The architech intentionally interlaced white and red bricks so the house looks like a fat cut of meat. Yumm...

I got tired of taking pictures of gables after a while.

Decided that we have not walked enough, we decided to walked through the pedestrian tunnel that takes us to the other side of the Scheldt river.

Going down chuggling wooden escelators, we arrived that one straight tunnel, 523m long. I don't mean to trigger any SD161 memories.

On the other side, we find ourselves already in the heart of suburbia. The view back towards the old town was awesome though.

Great food and drinks of Antwerp

2005-02-27T13:18:00.000+01:00

Sampling the local cuisine is one of my favorite parts to travelling. And I did exactly that.

I started with the famous Belgium Fries. (The Belge insist that they had invented it.)

Thicker and softer than the McD's, always re-fried on order to give that sizzling hot taste, usually served with a mayo-based sauce. I had the spicy Samurai sauce. Busido aside, I inhaled those fries.
Since the resto recommanded by Lonely Planet decided to go on vacation, we ended up at a turkish place, called Kumpir Eethuis. What a nice surprise. They were serving, for 5 euros, a potatoe the size a whole chicken covered with loads and loads of those heavenly mushroom and a cream and cheese sauce. Ori had a nice tender steak as well.

The next day, we had to do the mussel and fries thing. Completed with a glass of white wine on the side.

Beer was of course a big thing. With more than 300 brands to choose from, it is hard to pick and choose.

Basically, you have your drafts or white, and then you have the trappist beers. These trappist beers are usually darker and have very intense flavours. A couple of them even tasted like wine. Some of the bigger brands are Rochefort (10.5% alc.!), Grimbergen Tripel, Chimay Bruin (brown), Westmalle, and the list goes on.
There is also these Lambic. I tried a Kriek with Raspberry in it. It was like bad beer mixed with juice. The worst thing I have tasted in years. Girls may like it though.
It was so good that I decided to truck some home.

An extraordinary welcome to Antwerp

2005-02-26T20:19:00.000+01:00

As soon as we got off the train, I was completely stricken by the beautiful central station.

After a long track of 15 minutes (we do have our backpack on), we got to our hostel.

The place seems almost abandoned at first. Pushing open a creaking door, we find a poorly lit folk-cafe.

Turning towards the bar, we see a big man with long furled up hair and a greyish beard. ''Hello'' he said in his slow deep voice. I started to state my name and explain that we have a reservation. He replied slow and gently, putting up his hand, ''I know, I know.'' It was like in those horror movies where you check in but you don't check out. Ralph, our host, turned out to be a real nice guy; Ori has a photo of him, it will be posted as soon as I get my hands on it.
It turns out that the folk-café was hosting a folk music festival that night. A cinquet(?) of a bagpipe, a violin, an accordion, a clarinet and drums. What's more, a bunch of girls were there as well doing the folk dances. There seems to be a dance with every song. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Last impressions of Amsterdam

2005-02-24T20:06:00.000+01:00

Having finished our canal cruise, we both feel like we have seen all we wanted to see in Amsterdam.
We took it easy that afternoon. I once again went overboard in a supermarket and bought 2 kg of musli (they are twice as expensive in Suisse though...).

To conclude our trip, I stuffed out my chinese craving with a healthy dosage of all you can it. (no, we cannot clean them out this time, these guys are pros)

The next morning, taking the last bits of the wonderful dutch breakfast cake (or spiced bread as they are also called) they serve at the hostel, we rushed to the train station towards our next destination, Antwerp.

The real holland

2005-02-23T19:48:00.000+01:00

Exhausted (from) the touristic festivity of Amsterdam, I started thinking I was missing something about a trip in Holland.

That's what it is, windmills, and tulip.
We ended up at Koog Zaandijk, a small preserved village about a 20 minutes train ride from the capital. Great little place.

Despite the bad timing, the tulip thing worked out as well.

All right, maybe that was too contrived. The colourful clogs will have to make up for it.

We also spent half a day in Utrecht, another nice town of the Holland. More bikes and canals, of course.

Our day trip cuminated at the Oudean, where they feature their own home-brew beer. That went very well with our meal.

''Museums'' in Amsterdam

2005-02-23T19:36:00.000+01:00

aptly named, it was an experience indeed.

not to mention the ultimate tv-paradise-chair. A lazy boy and lifts itself while the screen lowers to cover your entire field of view. All it lacks is a beer holder.

Another moving museum is the Anne Frank house. It was the actual house that Anne Frank lived in hiding as she wrote her famous dairy. It was not as photogenic as the last one. I really enjoyed it as much as the experience, really...

First looks at Amsterdam

2005-02-22T19:17:00.000+01:00

Here are some of the things we saw in trying to dodge the thousands of bikes in Amsterdam: (in fact, many streets have dedicated bike lanes, which we ignorant tourists thought as really wide sidewalks. A couple of rude remarks by the locals set us straight.)

Wooden clogs

Coffeeshops (this are establishments that caters to cannabis users)

Canals

Beautiful canal houses with all kinds of gables

and of course the red light district, convientently located close to our hostel

I was quite stricken by the size of the chinatown in Amsterdam. Quality chinese stores and restaurants are easy to find.

life as a hobo

2005-02-21T19:02:00.000+01:00

Due to the poor alignment with cheap easyjet flights and train schedules, Ori and I had to spend the night at the Geneva airport.
There were about 10 of us around the airport, and everybody was twisting and turning trying to find a way to sleep. Kind of reminds me of the MIB scene with all the candidates trying to write in those egg chairs.
But as engineers in training, we quickly came up with ways to use the local resources.

Spending the night at the airport has its perks as well. For example, you get to be the first in line.

After a more pleasant nap in the plane, we find ourselves in the party haven of Amsterdam.

On the road again

2005-02-21T15:53:00.000+01:00

After exams, I have no excuse not to go somewhere. This trip will involve Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brugge, Ypres, Paris (Wangsterville) and Dijon. Will be back in Lausanne for school again on the 6th of March. I will be glad to tell you all about it then.

Movie time

2005-02-20T15:38:00.000+01:00

Some what surprising that my first movie here in a theater will be a French-subbed German film. Half a year ago, I would not have understood anything. But now is now, and I had a great time watching Der Untergang (The Downfall)

It was about the last two weeks of Hilter's life as Berlin gets surrounded by the Red Army. I puts some humanity to the madman. Superb and powerful. Definitely recommand it.

Keep fighting

2005-02-18T10:38:00.000+01:00

Let me tell ya...that oral exam was something else. I guess I have always like to work on the board and explain things, but now the prof is right there. I am still shaken from this whole new element. The way he tries to help you, the way he tries to break you. Good thing it was in English. I think I came out all right.
Anyhow, it's OVER. It is all over. No more exams for another 4 months. Play time.

Good luck for everyone else in exam/midterm season.

Check out the McSwisses

2005-02-17T14:06:00.000+01:00

I guess I should have known that McDonalds would do anything...

All the beauty and none of the mess

2005-02-15T15:40:00.000+01:00

For the past few days, the weather has been very kind. It would snow overnight so you would wake up to a gorgeous white landscape and still see huge flakes of snow tumbling down the sky. By noon time, it would warm up and the snow would melt by late afternoon so you don't slip and slide when students during exams period (me)actually get up and do stuff.

Ultimately No Studying

2005-02-14T17:44:00.000+01:00

Well, I cannot say no if the team is going to a ulti tourni, exams or no exams. This time, we go to Zuchwil (close to Bern apparently). Some of these small village has a lot of charm.
Apparently, most of the team did not share my enthuesiam and only 6 people showed up for the 5 on 5 tournament. Well, we got lots of playing time. Since it was only an hour and a half away, we went home for the night to get a good night sleep. Except I forgot my blanket (sleeping bag) in the van, so my night was quite cold.
The next day, one of the players lost his fight against the cold, so we were down to 5--no subs!!! This is when ultimate becomes work. 25 minutes of non-stop sprinting every game. After fighting hard the first game to get a 1 point victory, one of our more ''experienced'' players had his back act up on him. He was strong and kept playing hard, but the pain must have got to him when he kept missing his catches. Everyone else was slowing down too.
With 4.5 players, it was no real surprised that we ended up last in the tourni...
On a brighter note, the team got a toberone bar for the drive home. Time to gain back those calories. hmm...swiss chocolate...

Bring Chinese Culture to Switzerland

2005-02-10T13:17:00.000+01:00

Seeing how I have nothing better to do, (there is not classes as we are in exams period) I decided to introduce the happiness that is Chinese New Years to my suitemates. It starts with a few splashes of red.

All my suitemates showed a lot of interests about the fei-chun I put up. Best quote, ''Lamba is enter.'' I say again, chinese is the best language in the world.
For dinner, we wrapped dumplings (don't even get me started on how I got the dumpling skins). Ori and Christain certainly had a good time.

And here is me with the finished goods. Ultra pro...

I even found ton-yuen for dessert. My european suitemates were initially skeptical, but enjoyed it very much. We had a great time, and that is the happiness that is Chinese New Years.

Good health and Prosperity to all

2005-02-09T10:13:00.000+01:00

Best of luck in the Year of the Rooster! (wow, that means my sister is 24... she is old...) Happy celebrations as well.
I am hosting a dumpling feast tonight for celebrating. Ori and Kevin C. will be there as well as my suitemates. Pictures when I take them.

One down one to go

2005-02-08T20:19:00.000+01:00

As always, I think I passed my first exam here in Switzerland. I thought I could not finish at the 1 hour mark because my watch is always an hour ahead.
No more numerical methods!! I am already forgetting what the critera and the speed of convergence of the 2nd order Runge-Kunger methods for solving systems of differiential equations.
For the brave people back home, best of luck with the controls midterm, my controls final is not until June when we do the whole year's worth of material all at once. I feel your pain though.
All attention of Optics now, this will be my first oral exam. 30mins to prepare, 30mins to present. Good thing this one is in English.

FIFA Superstar

2005-02-07T13:22:00.000+01:00

What do you do when you find out that THE WORLD CUP is appearing at the local Olympic Museum? You stop studying and book it to the museum a-s-a-p.
What's more, I got to actually hold the cup and take a couple photos. It was not huge, but very solid; some of the smaller kids could barely hold on to it during the shot, and the workers there were always ready to pouce in to get the cup as soon as the photo is taken.

I feel kind of bad as I did not really earn the right to touch cup per se, but we have to go all out once in a while, especially for these once-in-a-lifetime things.

Need a jump

2005-02-04T16:26:00.000+01:00

My work habit never got back into shape since the winter break; I mean, what were they thinking making people remember stuff after a 2 week break?

In any case, I was lucky to have only two exams this exam period, so I am almost understressed. Hopefully, after much procratination, now with a project proposal to hand in on Monday and the numeric methods exam on Tuesday, I can get more motivated to get out of bed in the morning.

Training from hell...

2005-02-03T16:14:00.000+01:00

...that I thankfully missed. This wednesday past, I was late to training because my optics prof had to give a make-up lecture to finish all the material for the course. When I showed up, everybody was dead or dying. After 20 minutes of warm up, sprints, and push-ups, it was not too surprising. Being the fresh player, I thought I would dominate the field. That did not quite happe...as I was out of breath after the first point from giving blood the day before. (No good deed goes unpunished, eh?) Somehow or rather we keep playing and I flopped on the bed as soon as I got home.

Boarding weekend

2005-01-31T15:43:00.000+01:00

Being in Lausanne is awesome. Surrounded by mountains, there are at least 4 world class ski ressorts within a couple hours train. This time, we chose Portes du Soleil on the Swiss-French boarder, in fact, the station stretch into France, so there I have skied in France as well. It was an easy little day trip with Ori and Alex (a friend from the UK).
The weather was awesome: sunny, no clouds, not much wind. The snow was good too. Though parts of it has iced up in the sun, it made falling a lot less fun. My boarding abilities have came along quite well, I must say. I am able to pick up some speed and do some real carving...until I crash and burn in 30 seconds or so. The thing is that you really only fall when you lose control on the ice patches, and ice patches are hard. I was not sitting so comfortably by the end of the day.
In any case, the station had night skiing that night and so we get to stay up on the mountain to enjoy a nice sunset, and then of course some night skiing. Though it got cold very quickly when the sun went down.
Ori and I ended up having fondue at my place for dinner, with some horrible wine bought at the last minute. Fondue really warms you up from the inside and perfect after skiing. Couple thousand years of Swiss wisdom cannot be that far off.

finally caught up

2005-01-27T10:42:00.000+01:00

Sorry, it took a while, but my trip in the East has finally been documented. The last day in Salzburg will have pictures added when clubphoto starts behaving again.

Price wars

2005-01-27T09:08:00.000+01:00

Early last week, one of the bigger super market here, Coop, decided to launch a big ''guarantied prices'' campaigne with a number of items with everyday low price. The other chains, Migros and Denner, have responded in kind to keep their customers.
I guess for a long time, the swiss people have valued quality over affordability (the second never really in question), but things seems to have changed recently. For the thrifty students caught in the middle, I profit. The prices actually seem more or less ''normal'' now.
Time to stock up...

Lausanne is a beautiful place, but even better when everything is white

2005-01-24T15:20:00.000+01:00

This is the first time I have seen it snowed in the city. I know, being from Canada, it should be old news. But the something about everything covered in white in scenic Lausanne is something else.
I will see if I can put up a photo soon.
To top it all off, enough people showed up on Sunday that we can have a 3 on 3 ultimate game in the snow. Can you say...gratuitous layouts? (to my (many) non-ultimate-playing readers: this is when you dive for the disc on the soft snow just for fun or for a photo, without having a real need to do so)

Haircut x4

2005-01-21T10:57:00.000+01:00

Being the thrifty student that I am, I got my first haircut in Switzerland in the local hairstyling school (offering wash and cut at 18 CHF, when the average on the street is 35). I ended up getting 4, but I will start from the beginning.
I walked into this place and there must have been more than 30 students practicing (in both sense of the word). I felt a little out of place as all the other clients are old ladies (55+).
One lady came up and led me to an empty chair. I specified my desired length of hair and we began.
Another student came up and then the two of them started to talk about how they have their man's exams coming up soon and that she does not feel all that prepared. (uh-oh) She went around my head once and it ended being just a little long (first cut). She went around my head again (second) and then said she had to correct something, so she did (third). When she thought she was done, she asked an instructor over to ''correct her a bit''. The instructor promptly specified a few part and she went back in to do her ''corrections'' (fourth). By the end of it all, my hair was 3 or 4 cm shorter than I initially stated, though it really does not look bad.
It will take about 3 months before I really need a cut again, but I think I will go back again because it must be such a fun adventure everytime.

Ultimate General Meeting

2005-01-20T11:49:00.000+01:00

The best phrase of the evening must have been,
''Someday, we would laugh about fitting all the Ultimate players in Lausanne in the upstairs of a pizzeria.''
We were 30 strong. That's the good thing; we are growing.
This brings up the main discussions of the evening: there are too main people wanting to do different things and tensions are building up, namely those who play competitively, and those who play leisurely. From the heated discussion, it was evident a lot of things have been building up over the months and years.
To further complicate things, some people spoke in French and others in English, although everyone understands everything.
Nothing concrete has been put down, but discussion are starting and continuing. Apparently, I came at just the right time to witness this threshold stage of Lausanne ultimate. Hopefully everything works out and we keep on growing.

Long live Ultimate.

Flying Colours Indoor Ultimate Tournament

2005-01-17T14:53:00.000+01:00

Presenting the Flyhigh Lowsanne team

The first tournament of the year, Flying Colours takes place in Oberkirch, just outside of Luzern. The tournament seems like a result of all these teams aching to play in the dead of winter, even just a little bit. With one court in a gym (of a very good size though), the 12 teams have to rotate to play. The games only last 20 minutes and then the next game would be an hour or two later. I had to warm up from scratch before every game.
To further take away playing time, we had a team 15 strong with only 5 people allowed on the field. It works out that I get to play 2 points per game. Despite that, I managed to score a point this weekend.
An ulti tournie would not be an ulti tournie without a party. This one has a hippie theme.

Overnight, we stayed in a building of civil protection, really a bomb shelter. With walls of at least 30cm of solid concrete and solid steel doors just as thick, I felt save during the night.

Apparently the (paranoid) Swiss people have at least one of these in each community; some people even have private ones. In any case, the room is supposed to fit 35 or so people with the triple-decker beds on each side. Fortunately, only 2 of the 35 snores, though I was really too tired and/or smashed to care.

Back to Home Sweet (3rd) Home

2005-01-10T14:29:00.000+01:00

After more than two weeks of tracking though Eastern and Central Europe, I am finally back, alive and well. It was nice to see all my suitemates and say happy new year. It was nice to get some rest.
I would say that it was a trip of a life time, but then I know I still have two more big breaks later on (hehe...). Please bear with me until I can go through all my photos and find time to write up details about the trip. Unsorted (more than 400 photos) will be posted at club photo.

Quick summary:

Feeling rich in Budapest (those are 20000 Forint bills)

Joining large packs of tourists in Prague

Taking an easy stroll in Vienna

Watching the Sound of Music in real life in Salzburg

To top it all off, cleaning out a chinese buffet on our last meal.

Afterthought:
New places and new things has revealed new parts of myself. I enjoy very bit of the experiences. The trick now is to remain open-minded and travel as light as a cloud while carrying all that I have picked up along the way. Onward and Upward!

Salzburg Day 2

2005-01-08T10:23:00.000+01:00

Bright and early and on the bus we go.
First stop was the Schloss Mirabell, where parts of the do-re-mi song as filmed.

Then we saw the real house of the Von Trappe family. (ignorant me did not even know there was a real family)

The gazebo, of course

The back of the Von Trappe house in the movie (the front of the house in the film is actually 10 minutes down the street)

The convent where Maria studied

After that, we went off to the lakes and mountains region to enjoy the beautiful landscape of Salzburg.

We eventually made a stop in the church were the wedding in the movie take place. The church itself was not too big, but the cameras really had a way to stretch it out.
Our guide was really good. We talked about the film, the real Von Trappes, the Salzburgers. He had so much to say about all the topics and I got a sense of the local prespective. Incidentally, he only saw the movie once.

We then proceeded to a supermarket to load up on Mozart chocolate for cheap.
To wrap it all up, we ended up at a chinese all you can eat place. We were their worst nightmare. Three young people, who had had half a lunch, all well trained in the Chinese art of all-you-can-eating, and we ordered no drinks. We cleaned them out in no time, and their refill frequency slowly winded down to nil. It was very obvious that they did not want us there. But then, other people came in and they had to refill again. We got the last laugh on that one.

Salzburg day 1

2005-01-07T09:49:00.000+01:00

So this is Mozart's birth place, eh...
The landscape is certainly much more interesting than Vienna. Right away, you see the mountains that surrounds the town.

We spended the day walking leisurely around the old town, and then settled down in a Salzburger joint for dinner. The food is apparently quite close to bulverian food, just a mountain away. I had roast pork with dumpling.

That night, we enjoyed the daily showing of ''The Sound of Music'' at our hostel, as the movie was based and filmed in Salzburg. It was cool to say, ''I have seen that building, we were there this afternoon!'' So we decided to go all the way and take the sound of music tour early the next day.

Vienna day 4

2005-01-06T09:21:00.000+01:00

What the...everything is closed again...
''Happy Three Kings Day'' (slap, slap) Public holiday in most of Europe actually. You go back to work after new years for a few days and then chill again.
I guess that is what you get when you travel in holiday seasons.
Good thing museums are still open. We chose the arms and armor museum. The exhibits were extremely interesting as we saw one-in-the-world armors preserved from the middle ages, as well as really fancy armors made in the renaissance. One even had arms that looks like flowing cloth sleeves.

After all that waiting, we were finally seeing the Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), an opera by Mozart.

For you music buffs, details as to the cast and orchestra can be found
here.
The presentation was abstract and modern, the music was, of course, great. With all the colorful characters, everything had the magic of being larger than life. Some of those ladies gets really high.
The house was packed, we had such bad seats that we had to stand up the whole time to see. Fortunately for non-germans, they did had little displays with real time English translation.
One funny thing though: I guess Mozart did not write a big part for the trumpet players, they were sitting there dozing off practically the whole time.

Vienna Day 3

2005-01-05T17:52:00.000+01:00

After travelling a few days without my leatherman, I was so lost that I decided that I had to get a replacement. Seeing how Swiss army dominates the Swiss market, I tried my luck here, where I would also be eligible for no-tax shopping. Sure enough, I found myself the leatherman wave. In fact, I went for the new model because it has bigger blades, smaller screwdrivers and locking for the tools on the bottom as well. The leatherman is back in action!
We spent the afternoon in the House of the Seas. It was actually built from an old anti-aircraft tower.

We touched a snake and saw piranha feeding, as well as the 4 meter thick concrete walls of the tower.
Seeing all that fishes made us hungry, so we had a fast seafood dinner at Nordsee.

Vienna Day 2

2005-01-04T17:50:00.000+01:00

The morning we spent walking through the Royal Palace of the Austrian Emperors, the Schronbrunn. It felt very rich inside, except in the room of Franz Josef, the ruler of the prosperous Austria-Hungary Empire: he has a bed smaller than mine and everything is quite plain and brown, except for pictures of his families. Emperors are still human.
That night, OV were too tired to have dinner, so I stumbled into Ult-Osterreich to get myself some Wiener Schnitzel. What a find. It was a truly local pub. A group of middle age neighbourhood people hung out at the bar sipping beer. The waitress, likely owner, did not speaking English. After stumbling up what little German and pointing skills I had, the waitress herself went into the kitchen and prepared my meal (one man show). Without knowing Austrians, this is probably the closest I would get to home cooking.

Vienna Day 1

2005-01-03T17:44:00.000+01:00

Breakfast at 7 to 9 meant we have to get up earlier that usual, though the free liver pate and hot chocolate made it worthwhile.
Vienna is flat and very windy (even birds could not fly straight). The architecture all seemed the same; I guess this is what happens when a great empire that dominated Europe is suddenly shrunk down to a second-rate country.

Ori and Vince went up on the Wiener Riesenrad, which is a ferris wheel that won an award some time back. I stayed below and took pictures.

For lunch, we followed my lonely planet guide to the GolashMuseum (we certainly did not have enough of that stuff in Budapest and Prague). I had myself some roast pork with lentil sauce. The earthy lentil flavour was just too good for this Earth. Ori decided to try their unique chocolate golash. We ended up licking up all that sauce with a self-brought orange.
At the very center of town stands the St. Stephen’s Cathedral. We went down to the catacombs under the catherdral and saw basically piles of human bones (once in a lifetime, I guess). Some of the rooms have bones very well stacked up, hats off to the brave people who did that. After, we went up the south tower having 343 steps. As the guy was closing up the tower, I caught a good night shot of the city.

Since it was still 5ish, we decided to do the Haus der Musik, a new museum dedicated to the sound and music. I thought it would have been corny, but we ended up staying there for 4 hours. A section was dedicated to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the most renowned in Vienna and the world, with a home theatre showing of their performances. Another was on sound and human perception of sound, science world style. I really enjoy the room where they had the best 7.1 speakers set hooked up (when I win the lottery…). Another section was the brain opera (I think by MIT), where motion gets captured via capacitive sensors and displayed as sounds. Pretty cool stuff, though lacks a little coherence. The last is about the great composers of Austria, where I learned how wrong “Amadeus” is.
Long entry for a long day.

Prague day 5

2005-01-02T17:43:00.000+01:00

After a rushed checkout and storing our luggage at the train station (never again a suitcase), we tried our luck at the market again. Just our luck, it was not open on Sunday. We ended up going to a Carrefour (French equivalent of Walmart). We almost ended up missing our train because we forgot to weight our vegetables before going to the cashier. After some amazing teamwork and sweat and dropping a beer (50 cents good budvar!!), we made it with 5 minutes to spear.

So we say goodbye to Praha-ha-ha. The train ride was uneventful, except I smelled like a pig from all the running. Gently, we rolled into the capital of Austria, Vienna. Vince promptly stepped in with his awesome German to get us to the hostel, where we quickly cleaned up and slept.

Prague day 4

2005-01-01T15:24:00.000+01:00

Happy new year.
We were up and running at about 11, and the streets were all cleaned already. Very impressive.

During the day, we went up a steel tower on top of a hill to get a good view of this beautiful city.

We then waited for the 7pm firework and saw it this time. They even had the jelly fish ones where it goes up then down then up. I got a few good shots.

The show itself was very intense. It felt like the finale from the beginning. The show only lasted 15 minutes and then we saw a fire on the hill where the fireworks were shooting from. I wondered if something happened and then quickly forgot about it during the subsequent pub tour.
This tour guide was a lot of fun and told us a lot of beer history and traditions. Apparently a civil war was fought in Czech over beer.
Dinner (part of the tour) featured fried cheese and fries (and beer), a popular among czech students.

At our last stop, Ori and I got a shot of Absinthe each, with 70% alcohol by volume. It was fun that they had a whole process before taking it down: we had to dip a spoonful of sugar in the shot and then light up the spoon, wait for it to burn out (it took two long minutes with all that alcohol), mix and shot. It burned all the way down. Listerine may have felt better.
I think we eventually hit a club somewhere after, though I do have much recollection.

Prague day 3

2004-12-31T14:48:00.000+01:00

The long awaited for new year's eve is finally upon us.
We started the day with heading to a traditional czech market, think women street in HK with a kai see. Unfortunately, maybe because it was new year's, most everything was closed when we got there. All we could see was all the empty stands and how it would be a very busy place when things are open.
Eventually we found ourselves a supermarket where we bought some real budweiser (budvar), one of the best beers I have ever had. Along with the free champagne from our hostel, we were set for the night.
Considering this is as close to Russia as I plan to get, I went and hunted for a good Russian fur hat and ended up with two.
*sorry I don't yet have pictures of myself*
We then proceeded waited on a bridge for the 7pm fireworks that we later find out was to take place tomorrow. Doh! Not to worry though, people seemed to have bough plenty of fireworks on their own. The most spectacular showing was on the Wenceslas Square. Along the 700m long square, people were firing them off left, right and center. In fact, it was like a war zone with the loud bangs coming from all directions (some stupid people let off big ones close to the ground and also tossed fire crackers on the ground).
For midnight, we went back to the old town square, where a band was playing and a crowd had gathered. The countdown came and all three of us popped our free champagne and sprayed half the bottle, pour the other half. I got Vince right in the face.
I sprayed champagne on new year's in Prague...ah, it feels good to say that everytime.

When it was all over, I saw that my bags was wide open, though nothing was missing (I had all my money and passport in my money belt). Then I realized my leatherman was stolen. I guess I am still lucky, an Aussie we ran into lost his camera. I guess in a crowd like this, shit happens.

Prague day 2

2004-12-30T14:19:00.000+01:00

We decided to do an early day and went on the all-in-one 4 hour long walking tour. On the tour we learned Tom Cruise's favorite hotel in Prague, spots where the movie Armadeus was shot, how Hitler perserved the Jewish quarter of Prague for his museum of an extinct race, and how Czechoslovakia was happier together than apart. I am glad I took the tour and learned about the rich heritage of Prague and the Czech people (it is not just about beer and partying here).
Significant buildings:

the St. Vitus Cathedral, this one was built from the 14th century and completed 15 years or so ago.

the old university buildings, preserved from the 11th century, the oldest building of its kind in Eastern and Central Europe.
After the tour, we took the guide's recommendation and went to the communist museum, which was aptly placed on top of a McDou across from a Casino. I would have to say that the presentation was pretty flat though; we had to read display board after display board, though it was nonetheless interesting to see how little people know after 10 short years.
For dinner, we hunted out this place our guide recommended for traditional Czech food. I had myself a tall dark beer (Czech beer kicks ass), a thick potatoe soup with a fried potatoe pancake, and a roasted pork leg. It was a good feeling to be full becuase there is too much meat to eat, something rarely felt in Suisse.
*pictures will be added when I get my hands on Ori's*

Prague day 1

2004-12-29T21:23:00.000+01:00

After saying the final goodbye to Wangster, we hopped on a train that took us through the rolling farmlands Hungary, then Slovakia, and finally the Czech Republic. Gentally, we got to our next stop, Prague. Described as the 'crown-jewel of Eastern Europe', the city proved itself to have a lot of character.
Thanks to a fellow Waterloo exchanger, we got hooked up with Ritchie's hostel, situated in the heart of the old town. Beside the non-suitcase compatible narrow staircase, the hostel seemed quite new, despite its 18th century exterior look.
The old town has been established early in the 11th century, and over the years a lot of amazing buildings has been put up.

The Church of Our Lady before Tyn, notice the two towers are off sightly different sizes, thus named Adam and Eve (and notice the crazy crowd).

The powder gate which used to set the limit of the old town.
As well, an old fashion christmas market has been put up for christmas, where 35 Kc (2Cad) sauages and 25Kc (1.5Cad) bohemian hotdogs are widely available.
That night, we got suckered into watching a Mozart sampler, with music, opera and ballet. In hindsight, it was much too expensive and kind of silly as we will see an opera in Vienna. The theater had one amazing organ though, as well as marble everything like many other grand buildings.

Budapest day 5

2004-12-28T11:58:00.000+01:00

Our first stop of the day is the palvolgyi-barlang or the stalactite cave. Budapest is quite well known for the caves in and around the city. This one was apparently formed by a receding sea, leaving behind many interesting rock formation as well as seashell fossils. We had a guide (speaking Hungarian) to lead us down and around the cracks and slivers of the caves. They even played music in parts of the cave; the rock face allowed for very interesting acoustics.

For lunch, we ended up at Nagyi Palacsintazoja or Granny's Place. It is a pancake/crepe house recommended by my lonely planet travel guide. You know it is good when Kev is too busy eating for the picture. A first for me is the breaded deep fried crepe, crunchy on the outside, doughy on the inside.

We were so advanture bound that we also went to the labyriths beneath the castle. They decide to enhance the experience by keeping the place dark and giving us old lamps, while playing creepy music in the back. The actual use of the place was never explained to us, but I imagine you could throw pretty wide parties in there. I was the photographer for this part and you can see lots of black and white photos of the labyriths.
After affirming Kevin's choice of leaving early, we said our goodbyes and packed to get to our next stop.

Budapest day 4

2004-12-27T20:15:00.000+01:00

Finally things are opened. After waiting this long, I had to go experience the cheap Eastern Europe prices. The first place we went to is the City Market, where food and other culture specialties can be bought. I was very quick to get my hands on some Hungarian Salami. With a label of 62% fat, how can it be bad?
After some souvenir shopping, we went to a large modern mall to find that brand name goods are not any cheaper, to my slight disappointment.
We went back to the market for some autheutic Hungarian dishes back at the market.

Overall, the food is quite flavourful but slightly salty and not very veggie heavy. It was still good food though. (best part, everything together is less than 15CAD!)
Our stomach filled, we went to the St. Gellert bathhouse to take a real bath. Featuring first rate architecture (mosiac and sculpted columns), as well as thermal pools, steam bath (which smelled like it contains herbs), the 18 deg cold bath (when I first jumped in, I could barely breath), and finally a sauna.
Sweating in a steam bath was apparently such hard work that we had to find food again. Kevin insisted on a very mainland chinese fast food joint. 280 forint fried rice is good anyday.
To wrap up the evening, we enjoyed a hungarian folk dance show. It was a little tricky to find the theater and we ended up getting there late. All good though, because we got front row center seats as a result. The show was definitely unique with a lot of boot-slapping action. On top of that, I got to witness some true showmanship. During one of the music sequence, one of the player kept looking off stage, and then the whole orchestra started to smirk. It was fairly obivious that something was not right back stage and that the orchestra was improvising to cover. Nobody broke down though, and they played good music, what showmanship. To top it all off, the performers were having fun and it made the show that much better.

Budapest day 3

2004-12-26T20:01:00.000+01:00

Still nothing is opened because it is a Sunday. We ended up wandering through the citadel where apparently some heavy fighting took place during the second world war. Then we hit the Hero Square. The center piece of the square is the Victory Angel which stands at least 50m tall.

That evening, Kev and I got caught up over 280 forint (less than 2 CAD) beer in the bar under our hostel. As expected, I outdid him 2 to 1, well I only had 2 and we were not trying to get hammered anyways. It was good times nonetheless.

Budpest Day 2

2004-12-25T18:01:00.000+01:00

As helpful as the receptionist at the hostels were, there was nothing they can do about everything being closed on Christmas day. So I asked them how to say thank you ('Koszonom') in Hungarian and we were on our way.
The morning was spent in Pest, where we saw the St. Stephen Basilica, whose grandeur was breathtaking. I also enjoyed the mosaic in front of the Basilica.

After that, we moved on to the Parliament building where an outdoor ice rink was set up. Kevin was not impressed though (this is nothing compared to the canal in Ottawa). There, we sampled some local snacks and sipped a cup of hot wine. This hot wine is hot white wine with ginger, fruits and spices, much softer than the ones we get in Switzerland.
We then crossed over the Buda and went up to the castle hill to load up on Hilton toilet paper. Oh, the pearly white Fisherman’s Citadel was very pretty as well.

Budapest Day 1

2004-12-24T17:54:00.000+01:00

The first thing that struck me about Budapest is that all the buildings are very well decorated. Every corner, every pillar, every window frame have beautiful craving work.
It was such a beautiful city that I would have been happy just to walk around for the first couple days. In fact, that was what we had to do since everything is closed because it is Christmas. We could not even buy food.
But of course, there is always one group of people you can depend upon to be open 365 days a year—Chinese restaurants. And since we are in Hungary, they were offering quality food at Sunshine prices. We ended up eating like kings (with sea cucumbers no less). Who would have thought--Chinese food in Hungary?

The rest of the day was spent walking along the Danube River separating Buda and Pest. Check out the magnificent Royal Palace and the gorgeous Chain Bridge (That is the Castle Hill in the back), the principle landmarks of Budapest.

Since it is Christmas, the four of us exchanged presents and enjoy a bottle of Bordeaux imported by Wangster.

Winding up for the break

2004-12-22T13:38:00.000+01:00

Just think, two days from now I will be in Budapest, Hungary, the first stop of my Eastern Europe christmas grand tour. The tour will cover Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Salzburg. What's even cooler is that Ori, Vince and Kev will be my travelmates (although Kev only have time to see Budapest).
We have a few things lined up for the trip: see a hungarian folk dance show in Budapest and the renowned Magical Flute (opera by Mozart) in Vienna; shop like one must in cheap cheap Budapest; party it up in Prague for the new year.
As I will likely not have internet access, all the details, with pictures, will slowly trickle through in the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy new year, everyone.

House dinner 2 home-style raclette

2004-12-21T16:18:00.000+01:00

Everyone in my apartment decided to have a christmas dinner before everyone starts taking off, so we did. To keep the swiss tradition going, we had raclette. (hmm...melted cheese)
Unfortunately, Catherine pulled an all nighter the night before and was unable to stay up for dinner. Promptly, we kept her presence with us by eating her share.

The appliance you see in front of me is what ordinary families use for raclette, as oppose to the giant turning heaters at Verbier. In this homey version, everyone has a little black pan on which one can put a slice of cheese to melt. The little black pan is then placed under the heater grill and we wait for the magic to happen. One advantage to this method is that it is possible to heat other stuff as well as the cheese. Christian shared his family secret of putting rings of onions to roast with the cheese.
Two bottles of fine vaudrois white wine later, I was quite full. To finish the meal off, I threw together some peaches and cream for dessert. Sleep came very easily after that.

It started raining on Friday...

2004-12-20T14:12:00.000+01:00

It was the same shit, everything was wet, all the funky smells came out around town. However, this time, I was happy. I was happy because if it is raining down in Lausanne, it must be snowing like mad up on the mountains for my second snowboard weekend at Les Diablerets.

All the same, the same storm that brought the rain, brought a heck lot of wind. With winds howling at 90+km/h, the glacier (the nicest part of les Diablerets) was closed for the weekend. In fact, the whole mountain was basically shut down. After 30 minutes of intense confusion, we were finally told that we can go up to the single slope that is open.
The ski lift ride took a good 15 minutes, but the snow started looking really good on the top half of the mountain. It was all powder and dry. It was like a pillow everytime I fall down. A very nice change from last weekend. Though there were sections where the snow was so soft that you would just sink.
The first day, I got into the beginner snowboarder group and followed the lessons. It was kind of confusing at first to ''undo'' some of what I learned last weekend, since I just switch to goofy. I am sure the good snow had a lot to do with it; it was so much easier to control the baord. We went over all the basics again, building a very strong foundation.
After a hard day of exercise, the fire place at the chalet was so right. With a bowl of Bailey's and hot chocolate, I had a good time meeting new people and talking to people I have met before. Some of the people went all out with the partying because they thought that there would be no skiing the next day. (The snow was thing near the bottom of the mountain and was green and brown towards the end of the day).
The next morning, the first thing everybody noticed was the rain. Even as high up as 1500m, it was warm enough to rain. Some people ended up going to Yvenne-des-Bains for the thermal baths. I did not have a swimming suit, so I went up anyways.
On the top, conditions were great, besides the heavy snowfall and low visibility.

I had a great run coming down the mountain, though just the one for the day. Because snow turned into slush into rain as we head down, we had to take the tele-ski (t-bar) up from half way down. For the life of me I could not get up with the t-bar. The operator tried to show me how, but after falling a couple times and hitting my forehead, I was quite discouraged. Even with the instructor holding on to me, I still fell half way (although this halfway took a good 10 minutes). At that point I did not have it in me to try again, so I walked up the rest of the way. You would not know it coming down, but it was quite a hike. 20 minutes later, I was glad to be sitting down and decided that was it for the day. I still shudder everytime I think of that t-bar. *shudder*

Christmas dinner

2004-12-15T18:14:00.000+01:00

The exchange student association here organized a christmas dinner yesterday. Since we are in Switzerland, of course we had a raclette (see last post). With 4 raclette machine lined up, the smell of melting cheese filled the air. (hmmm..cheeeeeeseeee...)
Later in the night, Santa came by to distribute gifts for the gift exchange. Unfortunately, I was stuck in line getting food that I never got my present. I guess I can count my extra plate of melted cheese my present.
All in all, the atmosphere was good, with the music soft enough that you can still talk without raising your voice. I happened to learn that this girl from UK, Sara, may be in Vienna when we are in Vienna. What's more, she knows a local Viennian who is willing to show her around. I was pretty quick to ask for a hook up. It would be so cool to have someone who knows the city. (Note to self: call Sara when we get to Vienna...)
Although to be honest, I have to get through the snowboarding trip this weekend before I can get excited about the Eastern Europe grand tour. I am sorry, I will try to have less fun in the new year.

Snowboarding at Verbier

2004-12-13T14:15:00.000+01:00

Verbier, a ski resort with 4 valleys linked together, is one of the best in Switzerland, Europe and the world. With more than a hundred runs, there is something for everyone from extremists to beginners (me). Normally, anyways.
My ultimate team chose the perfect weekend to go. We were lucky enough to catch a sight rarely seen at this time of year.

The big board looks very distinct as well.

All the red x’s basically means that there is only two runs open at the top of the mountain (3200+ft). Well, we did not come this far to back out, so we went up anyway. Thankfully, the two runs opens are blue and red, so they are not impossible (though hard and icy all the same, with some fairly steep sections).

Incidentally, Ori was also in Verbier with a trip organized at the school. We did see each other a couple of times (the runs, though few, are quite lengthy), though we never managed to meet up. I am sure she enjoyed herself.

Big giant thank you’s for Patrick (below right) and Leonard (below left) who volunteered to take turns being my 1-on-1 snowboarding instructor.

Patrick was even nice enough to take videos and pictures for me (ask me for the videos when you see me). They were both really good teachers. A semi language barrier and many-a painful falls later, I was able to turn and carved enough to give the pics below:

Thanks again to Patrick, we got to stay at a room under a church for cheap. Since the place did not have showers for 20 people, we went to a swimming pool instead. Of course, we chose the one that had a Jacuzzi and a Sauna. It was too perfect for words. My ass stopped hurting in no time.

For dinner, we had a traditional Swiss Raclette.

In simple terms, we put a half a wheel of cheese under a heater and every so often we scoop off the melted part up top. The cheese is then eaten by itself, or with dry meat, potato and pickled vegetables. I think I am addicted to cheese now.

Thanks again to Patrick, we had air mattresses for everybody. I do not think I would be able to move on Sunday without it.

Towards the end of Sunday, I have learned enough to question if I am goofy (go down with right foot leading, opposite to normal). I have switched my bindings and I cannot wait to try it out next weekend.
My chair is getting too hard; I got to go lie down now.

dear camera, say hi to your little brother

2004-12-10T10:59:00.000+01:00

Seeing how Canon must be too busy to fix my camera, and time before Christmas is running out fast, I decided to screw it and get a new camera.
Of course it had to be a Canon A-series, the A75.
It is basically my old camera but twice as good, for a cheaper price at that.

So how I lucked out and stumbled into a store having their opening day celebration, everything is 11% off. I got the camera (268CHF), a 512 CF card (114CHF), and a bag and 4 AA 2300mAh batteries for 444CHF. Even though the exchange rate has been out of our favour lately 1CND = 1.06 CHF, the no tax added and 11% off totally tilt the balance.
For you, you can now expect to see my photo album updated regularly as well as see some pics on the blog. Speaking of which, I took some pics of my res and have uploaded it, (for the benefit of my mom mostly). Please refer to the club photo link.

I got my very own snowboard...

2004-12-07T16:49:00.000+01:00

Like they say, when in Suisse...
Actually just rented for a season though. The price just works out so much better, renting for a season is the same as 2 to 3 weeks. Plus, I feel a sense of possession (oh the power).
Also, today I opened a new bank account...at the post office! This may not sound so surprising considering that the post office is also in charge of bill payments and handles huge sums of money. In any case, they have really low monthly fees and have offers the POSTCARD, the most complete debit network in the country. As a result I will be closing my account with UBS (my old bank here) and lose my title as the owner of a Swiss bank account.

Early christmas magic

2004-12-06T14:41:00.000+01:00

Europeans seems to get very excited about Christmas very early on. In fact, most of downtown Lausanne is adorned with lights of all different colours already.
What's more, every little village have a christmas market, where artists and craftsmans have booths to showcase their hardwork.
This weekend past, I went to the biggest one around, at Montreux. (yes, the every same as the jazz festival.)

With more than 100 stands, the market took up the entire downtown area of Montreux. (it took a good hour to walk from one side to the other, with the crowds) As the day got darker and the lights starts coming on, Christmas filled the air.
There were a great number of very skilled craftspeople. Miniture houses, scuptures, decorated knifes, bookmarks, hand drawn christmas ornaments, and the list goes on. The center piece of the entire festival is a chrismas tree decorated entirely with cristal pieces of all different shapes, I would have taken a pic, but really no camera can do justice to the way all the pieces glissened in the lights.
And of course, no winter event is complete without Canadian representation. This was very capably done with a stand featuring quality snow-gear and a whole bear hide (with the head).

As I have no real need for pretty, useless stuff, I focused much more on the food. Swiss specialties were of course the backdrop to everything served.
I started the day with a foie gras taster plate. To be honest, I was not that impressed; it tasted like goose liver (which is what it is)...the same I have had in HK when I was a kid.
Once the sun went down, hot wine was just perfect. Becuase of the alcohol, the wine is steaming hot at a comfortable temperature of 70-80 deg C. It went down very easy as well, tasting very sweet with no bitter aftertaste.
Then I had a cup of wood-fire tea, adult style. (Translated, with a shot of rum) Aside from the fact that it has not tea taste, this one was very soothing with the rum and sweet honey-water.
For dinner, aside from the almost-cliché fondue and raclette (this one has the cheeze poured on the potato instead of dipping), there were a row of more traditional dishes lined up in huge woks: (the biggest must have been 1.5m in diameter!) Rabbit legs, sourcrout (ok this one is German), sausage with leeks, macoroni with good cheeze (no more KD for me), Rösti (grated potatoe with cheeze), and Tartiflette (potato, onion, bacon, cream and cheeze). I tried this last because in came in the biggest pan.
For dessert, I got a cinimonn apple. I was not sure how I would like cooked apples, but when it is steaming hot...
For those of you living with me when I come back, you will have the (mis)fortune of tasting my interpretation of the above dishes. Consider yourselves warned.

CERN, up close and personal

2004-12-03T13:06:00.000+01:00

What can I say, it was CERN afterall. Of course I had a good time.

Unlike last time I was there, we took the train then bus up to CERN. Out of the train station, we squeezed into this packed bus. The crowd gently petered out as the bus went through the Geneva suburbs. By the last couple stops, it was only the six of us. We were in the middle of nowhere; we were at CERN.

CERN seems very eager to educate the public. They even have a mini exhibition set up like science world or the science center. And of course there are the free guided tours.

When the tour started, we had questions if our tour guide, Klaus, was going to last the tour. He looked like he was 75 and had a limp when he walks. He was not very well practiced either as he struggled for a long time to get the laptop hooked up for the powerpoint intro. Of course not, Klaus was not some 2nd year tourism co-op student; he is a harden veteran who has been designing particle accelerator for 28 years! He really knew the detectors and the accelerators inside and out.
At every stop point, he would tell us what the technicians are doing, why the part in front of us is design in such and such a manner, how does it work. The largest machine in the world (the 27km circumference accelerator) suddenly becomes a thousand times more impressive when he said that all the magnetic coils are cooled down to 1.4K (0K is as cold as physically possible) to keep them superconducting and all the many layers of insulation to keep it cool. Without getting into all the technical details, these guys are the best engineers in the world.

What else can I say, it was CERN afterall. Of course I had a good time.

Thanksgiving aftermath

2004-11-29T14:16:00.000+01:00

The past weekend was very quiet. I was feeling tired all Friday because to the turkey (playing Sango until 4 in the morning has nothing to do with it), and I spend the whole weekend finishing the leftover brocoli salad.
After smashing my hand on Sunday on Optics homework, I find myself at monday again.

Instead of boring you with the details of my now routinish life, I will tell you things I have to look forward to.
This coming Wednesday, I will be joining the other Canadians to go to CERN. I know I was there before, but this time we get the guided tour, and it is CERN (TRIUMF x 50). I am excited.
The coming weekends will be snowboarding weekends. Dec 11 - 12 is the ski retreat with my ulti team at Verbier, one of the best ski places in Switzerland apparently. There are apparently a number of experts who can get me started. Then the weekend after will be at a smaller, but closer place; this trip is organized by the school and comes complete with lessons. After these two weekends, I will either be super-snowboarder or anti-snowboarder because of my purple ass, or somewhere in between. No worries, I have my medical insurance approved by the local authorities last week.
I keep asking myself why did I not do all this when I was back home...
Until next time...

Thanksgiving Dinner

2004-11-26T16:21:00.000+01:00

Last night, I experienced my first American Thanksgiving. It is apparently a really big deal for our neighbours down south. They were talking all about how everyone travels across the country to meet up and then start eating at 2pm, get stuffed, nap and eat again.
We were not that hardcore. We still had really good food though. It was a very well organized pot luck with a good selection of each course of the meal. Of course we had a turkey (bravo to Suzy who managed to find a whole Turkey in Europe). Other notable mentions are handmade Porogies, green bean casserole with almond, cornbread, and pumkin pie. I ended up bring my brocoli salad. And oh yes, wine, there was wine.
The group actually ended up, like most social functions here, highly international. It was a third Americans, a third Canadians, and the rest from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, UK... Everybody enjoyed it; who can say no to food? I think my highlight of the night is when the conversation somehow ended with the high suicide rate in Finland. Not really funny, but we were all good enough to laugh it off.

Zurich getting poorer

2004-11-25T17:56:00.000+01:00

Today, my Tandem partner showed me an article on how Zurich (the biggest Swiss city)is losing its prestiage and things are looking very bad for the city. I got kind of concerned.

Then they showed some figures:

The GDP per capita sits at ONLY 50,700 CHF,
and unemployment rate is up to as high as 4.7%.

Damn, this country is so rich...

Going to "Church"

2004-11-21T13:34:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I met this guy, Tom, in my residence. There was instant attraction because he is a Chinese-Swiss. Although it was kind of weird as he speaks Mandarin and French and I speak Cantonese and English. We eventually settled to broken English for communication. Very quickly, he told me all about how there is a Chinese gathering Sunday morning and asked me to come along. (oh, one of those…)
Since I am always up for new experiences (and I wanted to see how I would “stand up”), I said that I would join him today.
So I got up bright and (too) early and met up with him. We walked to his friend’s house for a ride to the place. This friend was a very nice gentlemen name Claude in his forties driving a BMW X5! Needless to say, I enjoy the ride very much while I got to converse a bit in Cantonese with Claude. (yes I can still speak it…)
It was not at all your regular kind of Sunday worship. It turns out that Claude and his brother are the owners of “Beijing Duck”, the fanciest Chinese restaurant in town. They are faithful enough to host the Sunday worship at his restaurant. The podium is actually a cloth covering a Styrofoam box on a table in front of the bar, and Claude’s brother played the guitar to accompany the hymns. It was not very big; altogether there were 25 to 30 people, of all different age groups. Nevertheless, I must say I would never have dream of seeing this many Chinese people gathered together in Switzerland.
The whole procedure had a very homey feel to it, which I liked a lot. One thing I really dislike about organized religions is how is lends itself to become an arena of bureaucratic power struggle. But this here is all about the worship and the faith that links this group together so strongly.
After the service, lunch was served. As a number of people involve are restaurateurs, there was very good food available. (Preserved sausage and chicken with rice and marinated duck wings…just like home…) I got to chat a bit. It was quite funny how when I said I am from Vancouver (West-CIDE), everyone responded with how they have relatives there and how the Chinese has taken over the city (no arguing that).
This one gentleman, knowing I am not exactly religious, gave me a very long discourse on Christianity. I am sure he just wants to share his happiness. Not to be disrespectful, but listening to him was very good critical thinking review. He went through the whole list of fallacies to make his case. I just listened attentively and admired how he talks about Christianity has changed his life for the better (and I trust him about that).
After the logic exercise, he put down the line: faith is not a thing of the mind and that no argument can establish faith; once you have faith and believe GOD’s reasoning, everything makes sense.
Call me arrogant, but I am not ready to give up my critical thinking; it being so core to my self-image. Now how can say “no” politely…

Changing diets

2004-11-20T13:32:00.000+01:00

I know I am a broad-stroke kind of guy, and my mom requested details. As a result, I decided to tell you a little about how my diet has changed slightly since I got here. (rest assure, Chinese food still gets made)

Things I no longer buy:

Japanese instant noodle
Bagels (just not a European thing?)
Fresh mushroom (at 12 CHF/kg (6$/lb), it is truly the “food of gods”)
Walmart econo-cookies
Skimmed milk
Eggs by the dozens
Miracle whip

Things I started buying:

Viet instant noodle (what student can live without instant noodle)
Gourmet bread (like those of garlic bread, not pre-sliced)
Canned/pickled mushrooms (for us lowly commoners)
Classy swiss chocolate or chocolate coated cookies
2.7% “partially” skimmed milk
Eggs by the 10’s (whose bright idea?)
Dijonaise (mayo and Dijon mix) in a tube!
Gruyere cheese (not the “holey” swiss cheese, but a local cheese with a very rich yet subtle flavour)

You know your body wants you to sleep when...

2004-11-19T11:52:00.000+01:00

School has picked up quite a bit and sleep time is beginning to become very valuable. In fact, just today I skipped a tutorial this morning (I love being in school). I could not help it. My body wants to keep me in bed so badly that it was showing the most entertaining dreams ever, better than any movie I have seen.

This one in particular was just too good to miss. It started with the making of the tv show "futurama". In this one scene, Fry and Leela were shrunk to baby-size and put into a room with a big group of babies. Naturally, the making of would include...a big group of babies with motion capture sensors on them.
Somehow or rather, the place suddenly became a sumo-wrestling arena and a number of baby vs. baby sumo matches were shown. They could not even stand up properly, let alone charge at each other, but they were so cute and looked so keen.
The babies were slowly replaced with teenage sumo-wrestler, offering a few good matches.
Next up were HK movie stars/singers (??). It was very satisfying to see Leon Lai get beaten up by Alan Tam. (sorry Hen, Leslie did not show up)

So...all you dreams interpreter, what is behind all this baby sumo action??

comments and suggestions

2004-11-17T14:52:00.000+01:00

Gently and quietly the one month date past by. (and what a month!) Accordingly, I have blog for just that long.

For the 5 people who read this, I would like some feedback so I can serve you best with my blogging time.
Two things first: 1. no, the green is not going. 2. Pictures will have to wait until the Canon guys get it right.

Otherwise, I am up for all comments. Would you like to read more about places I go to, or things that I do travelling, or people I meet, or little everyday things? I know personally I have been very lacking in names of landmark/attractions, surely requests will be accommodated whenever possible.

I am finally legal!

2004-11-16T16:32:00.000+01:00

Oh I was legal to drink long time ago. I now have a proper student resident permit from Switzerland for my stay here. It costed my 215CHF in total including my student visa. That's apparently how much people have to pay to live here. Kind of makes to wonder why the country is so rich...