Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
I need to pee like a....hamster
No photos today - I have yet to download them from the camera. I was in Italy last week for a few days for what turned out to be an interesting meditation on us not having cell phones yet (and really being better of with getting some), pasta and gelato, and finding the perfect Hiroshige Japanese woodblock print exhibit in Rome. I have a whole 4 pages of handwritten "blog" from that trip because not only did I not bring a cell phone, I didn't bring a computer, and didn't have an alarm clock. I'm even still waiting to get a new watch battery, so going to the vending machine three floors down for a midnight juice also provided me with the only sense of what time it was. Luckily, a few people were gracious enough to agree to use all of their advanced technologies to wake themselves up and then knock on my door to help me get up.
The point of all this is, of course, that I don't miss breakfast nowadays. First talk, first talk session, coffee break...I can miss some of those for a nap (and did). But breakfast is a completely different matter. It may only have been white bread, yoghurt and coffee, but the coffee and steamed milk came in their own pitchers, so I actually got to have my 2 tablespoons of coffee with lots of milk each morning. Glorious.
The other point of this, which comes back to the title of this post is that while a hamster's bladder may not be anywhere near the capacity (and thus literary heft when used in that sentence) as a racehorse's, I expect that if a hamster were to drink a lot of liquid in one sitting, he or she would really have to pee at some point. Even if the volume wasn't a lot, boy would it still call for some action. I have the bladder of a hamster now.
I also, after the trip to Italy (for conference and then day out in Rome), have a new pair of sandals, some Japanese woodblock print postcards, a Wallpaper Rome guide and a new alarm clock from the airport. The clock is robin egg blue and really happy-looking. Now if only I knew where to buy batteries....
The point of all this is, of course, that I don't miss breakfast nowadays. First talk, first talk session, coffee break...I can miss some of those for a nap (and did). But breakfast is a completely different matter. It may only have been white bread, yoghurt and coffee, but the coffee and steamed milk came in their own pitchers, so I actually got to have my 2 tablespoons of coffee with lots of milk each morning. Glorious.
The other point of this, which comes back to the title of this post is that while a hamster's bladder may not be anywhere near the capacity (and thus literary heft when used in that sentence) as a racehorse's, I expect that if a hamster were to drink a lot of liquid in one sitting, he or she would really have to pee at some point. Even if the volume wasn't a lot, boy would it still call for some action. I have the bladder of a hamster now.
I also, after the trip to Italy (for conference and then day out in Rome), have a new pair of sandals, some Japanese woodblock print postcards, a Wallpaper Rome guide and a new alarm clock from the airport. The clock is robin egg blue and really happy-looking. Now if only I knew where to buy batteries....
Friday, June 19, 2009
The wochende!
Ah, Friday. The apartment is a mess, the dog is a bit smelly, but I finished my first round of German classes, did well on the first test, the dog is still alive, and even got some ear drops for whatever has been bothering her right ear inside. Interesting, they give you medication here first for some things (apparently also for pets), and then tell you to come back if it hasn't cleared up in a week. I've heard that people prescriptions are the same.
We have a dinner invitation across the hallway tonight, so on top of getting home and getting the dog walked in the rain, I can now just relax a bit. I don't even have to cook! What a treat. Then again, so is the rain, really. After 13 years in Tucson, rainy days are still kind of novel, and since it is summer rain, it is only 60 degrees here, so not really cold.
All the responses I got from people on Facebook who I asked about how they dealt with the birth/arrival of their first child (and how their maternity/paternity leave worked) have been great. They span the range of all-up-to-the-mom, to stay-at-home-dad. One couple spent 3 months home when they adopted their daughter. Another couple had a nanny after 6 weeks because mom was in medical residency and dad was working on tenure. What most people did have in common in their answers was that if we ask people to come help us right after the birth, we should ask only people who know (and are okay with the fact that) they are coming to help cook, clean, shop for food, etc. That we are not inviting people to come on holiday - we won't have time or energy to show them around. Heck, according to another friend, I won't even have time to handle the basic shower/food/bathroom sometimes. So that is something else to start thinking about.
But for now, we're nowhere close to a birth, it is Friday afternoon, and I'm home with a dog curled up on the bed. This is nice.
We have a dinner invitation across the hallway tonight, so on top of getting home and getting the dog walked in the rain, I can now just relax a bit. I don't even have to cook! What a treat. Then again, so is the rain, really. After 13 years in Tucson, rainy days are still kind of novel, and since it is summer rain, it is only 60 degrees here, so not really cold.
All the responses I got from people on Facebook who I asked about how they dealt with the birth/arrival of their first child (and how their maternity/paternity leave worked) have been great. They span the range of all-up-to-the-mom, to stay-at-home-dad. One couple spent 3 months home when they adopted their daughter. Another couple had a nanny after 6 weeks because mom was in medical residency and dad was working on tenure. What most people did have in common in their answers was that if we ask people to come help us right after the birth, we should ask only people who know (and are okay with the fact that) they are coming to help cook, clean, shop for food, etc. That we are not inviting people to come on holiday - we won't have time or energy to show them around. Heck, according to another friend, I won't even have time to handle the basic shower/food/bathroom sometimes. So that is something else to start thinking about.
But for now, we're nowhere close to a birth, it is Friday afternoon, and I'm home with a dog curled up on the bed. This is nice.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
iPhone days
I've realized that there are two kinds of days I have here: iPhone days and cheap-post-office-pay-as-you-go-phone days. For a while now, the days have been switching between the two kinds on a daily or every other day basis.
Cheap-post-office...-phone days are the days when I'm tired, we're all having a rough time here settling in and even wanting to be here. They're days like when the pupper was still having bowel issues, I was getting ready to start German class and M had to come home early to help me take care of the dog even though he'd just made the decision to stay a bit longer to go to the gym at work. Those are the days when I think "we need cell phones, but if I get one for 40 or 50 CHF (same as US$ right now), and use a pre-payed plan, then when we decide we quit and are moving back to the US, it won't be such a painful monetary loss. It is my way of planning to cut our losses because obviously things are so hard here that we're leaving soon.
And then there are iPhone days. There are fewer of those so far, but they're the good days, when I'm walking the dog, we're all in a pretty calm state of mind, the weather it great, and I think how soon I want to get an iPhone so I can have a camera with me. I see all of these things in the neighborhood to take photos of, and I assume that this will be a longer term relationship with Zurich.
That said, I'm not sure (M asked me this when I told him about this scheme) how we're going to actually decide which phones to buy. Ha. We'll see.
Cheap-post-office...-phone days are the days when I'm tired, we're all having a rough time here settling in and even wanting to be here. They're days like when the pupper was still having bowel issues, I was getting ready to start German class and M had to come home early to help me take care of the dog even though he'd just made the decision to stay a bit longer to go to the gym at work. Those are the days when I think "we need cell phones, but if I get one for 40 or 50 CHF (same as US$ right now), and use a pre-payed plan, then when we decide we quit and are moving back to the US, it won't be such a painful monetary loss. It is my way of planning to cut our losses because obviously things are so hard here that we're leaving soon.
And then there are iPhone days. There are fewer of those so far, but they're the good days, when I'm walking the dog, we're all in a pretty calm state of mind, the weather it great, and I think how soon I want to get an iPhone so I can have a camera with me. I see all of these things in the neighborhood to take photos of, and I assume that this will be a longer term relationship with Zurich.
That said, I'm not sure (M asked me this when I told him about this scheme) how we're going to actually decide which phones to buy. Ha. We'll see.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
What pregnant women get at the duty free
The writing on the bag is backwards because my webcamera did that. This is all I have for today - fruit juice sweetened gummy candies and noodles. The candy is a "value pack" (which just means huge amount) that I bought at the duty-free in Copenhagen airport a few weekends ago. The gummies help get me through times when my blood sugar feels low, and they're hopefully not as bad as straight up gummi bears. Like today, I had a handful of them at the end of German class, 3 hours after starting, when the apple and nuts I ate during break didn't quite tide me over to the end. And I have only found them here in Switzerland in mini-packs, like Halloween candy - a bag with 10 small bags with 7 gummies each. I need bulk, people. So that was a good purchase at the airport. Otherwise, there was booze (nope), perfume (even more nope), and chocolate (hey wait). Swiss chocolate (oh right, never mind).And then the noodles. I haven't had ramen noodles in probably 10 years, but they were recently featured on a BBC show about people who overeat, overdrink, overeverything. The guy they were featuring was nicknamed "Noodles" because he ate (in addition to meals, and nighttime McDonald's) some strange, godzilla version of ramen. In flavors like "chicken curry", and I don't know, "swedish buffet" probably. Anyway, he ate 6-8 of them a day. Wow. One of them was enough salt to tide me over until tomorrow. And mine was veggie flavor, with an egg mixed in for protein. I don't anticipate being called noodles anytime soon, though. I think I can handle about 2 of those per week, maximum.
Oh, and I've started intensive German classes. We'll see if I survive. Three hours a day, 5 times/week. So far, not so bad. Lots of speaking, listening, writing. The teacher uses a lot of games, which actually makes class not so boring. And we get a break. And wouldn't you know it, the first day I walk in and we're all introducing ourselves and where we're from, there are the 5 of us students: from US, from Spain, from Portugal, from Russia, and from....Lithuania. So although none of us speak very good German, I find myself in a room with 3 other languages I speak. Crazy.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
There will be no photos today
The dog doesn't feel well. She got into (at the very least) one crunchy twig and a bunch of honeydew chunks at the park yesterday. The melon was on purpose, "how bad can it be for her?" I thought. The twig I knew could make her throw up. And she had some stinky gas last night, probably from the dog treats from the sitter.
Yes.
Well.
3am the explosive everything started. Both sides, poor thing. An while she is very good at telling us "um, guys, yeah, I need to go out. How about now? No, really, now," she tends to aim for sheets, her bed, and our area rugs as if they were grass. So when we hear something going on in the dark of night, we usually bolt upright, turn on lights and get into defense position.
It is also a bad idea, I learned a few hours later when I took her out again (M had the first shift), to let a dog in this state drink down a big bowl of water. So much for instant hydration. Oops.
So I stayed up for an hour, in case she needed more help, and wound up posting a few messages on the science education site in the middle of a conversation about the cultural basis (or influence of) for science. Same old discussions about science = just the evidence, while pseudoscience (like creationism) = not just the evidence. Same "did to!" "did not!" , 5th grade level of refuting pseudoscience. Can't we get to a more subtle discussion at some point?
I mean of course science is subjective - people do it. How could it not depend on language and concepts and beliefs? It isn't something you can get rid of to find some objective science, based on "just the evidence." The Evidence doesn't come pre-labeled so that you just need to pick it up, turn it over and see if there is "FACT" stamped on the bottom. Researchers and scientists decide (sometimes by consensus, sometimes by a big name individual saying it it so) when some information becomes a fact. The Bruno and Latour book, Laboratory Life, from K's class last semester was dense, but provided an interesting view on this.
For me this means that what is science vs. what is not is a much more subtle question than what usually gets discussed. I feel like the whole thing degenerates to vehemently defending things like evolution with some faulty arguments. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in creationism, but I also don't like feeling as if there is no room for me to learn what is shaky or questionable about evolution because all my energy is spent on "no, I don't think Adam and Eve could have been the only two people at the start because we would have died off long ago due to inbreeding."
Scientific inquiry is not straightforward; it is messy. Scientists know this, at least they speak as if they do behind closed doors, in each others' company, where we complain about the difficulty of interpretting computer models, about personal influence in swaying a research community down some line of inquiry, and about how valuable creativity is in students. Wait a minute, where is the value of thinking completely outside the box (and maybe even outside the evidence), and being creative, listed in the scientific method?
In front of a class of highschool kids, or politicians, or at a public lecture, more often we preach "the scientific method": certainty, exactness, testing, falsification. Another good reference is work by Gilbert and Mulkay on humor in science and on the distinct ways of speaking that scientists use with each other (much more contingent) versus with the public (much more absolute and certain).
And that, that was how I kept myself awake this morning waiting to see how the dog would feel. She seems to be better now. Completely pooped....ha ha, I hadn't intended that pun, but it is very appropriate for the day. And I do hope she is completely pooped out finally.
There is rice on the stove. At lunch time I'll go to the store for some chicken breast to boil up, and by this evening, crunchy kibble will be replaced by bland and totally yummy chicken. Hmm, maybe she gets herself sick to bring on the good food?
Yes.
Well.
3am the explosive everything started. Both sides, poor thing. An while she is very good at telling us "um, guys, yeah, I need to go out. How about now? No, really, now," she tends to aim for sheets, her bed, and our area rugs as if they were grass. So when we hear something going on in the dark of night, we usually bolt upright, turn on lights and get into defense position.
It is also a bad idea, I learned a few hours later when I took her out again (M had the first shift), to let a dog in this state drink down a big bowl of water. So much for instant hydration. Oops.
So I stayed up for an hour, in case she needed more help, and wound up posting a few messages on the science education site in the middle of a conversation about the cultural basis (or influence of) for science. Same old discussions about science = just the evidence, while pseudoscience (like creationism) = not just the evidence. Same "did to!" "did not!" , 5th grade level of refuting pseudoscience. Can't we get to a more subtle discussion at some point?
I mean of course science is subjective - people do it. How could it not depend on language and concepts and beliefs? It isn't something you can get rid of to find some objective science, based on "just the evidence." The Evidence doesn't come pre-labeled so that you just need to pick it up, turn it over and see if there is "FACT" stamped on the bottom. Researchers and scientists decide (sometimes by consensus, sometimes by a big name individual saying it it so) when some information becomes a fact. The Bruno and Latour book, Laboratory Life, from K's class last semester was dense, but provided an interesting view on this.
For me this means that what is science vs. what is not is a much more subtle question than what usually gets discussed. I feel like the whole thing degenerates to vehemently defending things like evolution with some faulty arguments. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in creationism, but I also don't like feeling as if there is no room for me to learn what is shaky or questionable about evolution because all my energy is spent on "no, I don't think Adam and Eve could have been the only two people at the start because we would have died off long ago due to inbreeding."
Scientific inquiry is not straightforward; it is messy. Scientists know this, at least they speak as if they do behind closed doors, in each others' company, where we complain about the difficulty of interpretting computer models, about personal influence in swaying a research community down some line of inquiry, and about how valuable creativity is in students. Wait a minute, where is the value of thinking completely outside the box (and maybe even outside the evidence), and being creative, listed in the scientific method?
In front of a class of highschool kids, or politicians, or at a public lecture, more often we preach "the scientific method": certainty, exactness, testing, falsification. Another good reference is work by Gilbert and Mulkay on humor in science and on the distinct ways of speaking that scientists use with each other (much more contingent) versus with the public (much more absolute and certain).
And that, that was how I kept myself awake this morning waiting to see how the dog would feel. She seems to be better now. Completely pooped....ha ha, I hadn't intended that pun, but it is very appropriate for the day. And I do hope she is completely pooped out finally.
There is rice on the stove. At lunch time I'll go to the store for some chicken breast to boil up, and by this evening, crunchy kibble will be replaced by bland and totally yummy chicken. Hmm, maybe she gets herself sick to bring on the good food?
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Laundry - 1; Me - 0
There are lots of beautiful, picture-perfect moments here in Zurich. Like the riverfront at 9pm on a spring night. It is a magical place at those times, and I can't believe we actually moved here to live.
And then there is laundry time.
Laundry time is a completely different part of life here. It is instituted to bring pain and frustration into my life. I don't think it existed before we arrived, since it seems so perfectly suited to making me upset.
We have to sign up for laundry times since there is only one washer and one dryer for 6 apartments here. Usually we are late doing this and get left with 4-8pm on Saturdays. Great. That is what I dreamed I'd be doing on Saturday afternoons in Europe....washing underpants and towels.
But even that would be fine if the process itself wasn't so much slower than in the US. You have
to remember to bring your circuit card with to "turn on" the electricity in the laundry room. Then, you have to remember (as I did not do yesterday) to turn on the water to the machine or you'll waste (as I did yesterday) a whole hour of your time with an unwashed first load. And finally, did you notice I said "an hour" there in that last sentence? Yes, a load of warm water wash takes 1hr. 04 min. If you have whites that need a hot wash, we're talking 1 hr. 30 min. But wait, now that things are washed, they need to by dried. And the dryer comes with a range of options in addition to "totally dry":
"almost dry"
"mostly dry"
"kind of dry"
"kind of wet"
"mostly wet"
and
"I just made some noises and heated your wet clothes for an hour, but they're no less wet than when you put them in here. Have a great day, though!"
I've never even attempted "totally dry" but it would probably take some 2 hours. Seriously. Because "kind of wet" takes maybe 1 hr.
For a country with such advanced transportation and great produce, this one just completely confuses me. So, you readers who have a washer and dryer in your own home or apartment, next
time you go down there to do a full load (wash and completely dry) in some 45 min., take an extra minute to thank your machines. And while you're at it, give a little affectionate pat to the water pipes which are permanently "on" - for my sake.
And then there is laundry time.
Laundry time is a completely different part of life here. It is instituted to bring pain and frustration into my life. I don't think it existed before we arrived, since it seems so perfectly suited to making me upset.
We have to sign up for laundry times since there is only one washer and one dryer for 6 apartments here. Usually we are late doing this and get left with 4-8pm on Saturdays. Great. That is what I dreamed I'd be doing on Saturday afternoons in Europe....washing underpants and towels.
But even that would be fine if the process itself wasn't so much slower than in the US. You have
to remember to bring your circuit card with to "turn on" the electricity in the laundry room. Then, you have to remember (as I did not do yesterday) to turn on the water to the machine or you'll waste (as I did yesterday) a whole hour of your time with an unwashed first load. And finally, did you notice I said "an hour" there in that last sentence? Yes, a load of warm water wash takes 1hr. 04 min. If you have whites that need a hot wash, we're talking 1 hr. 30 min. But wait, now that things are washed, they need to by dried. And the dryer comes with a range of options in addition to "totally dry":
"almost dry"
"mostly dry"
"kind of dry"
"kind of wet"
"mostly wet"
and
"I just made some noises and heated your wet clothes for an hour, but they're no less wet than when you put them in here. Have a great day, though!"
I've never even attempted "totally dry" but it would probably take some 2 hours. Seriously. Because "kind of wet" takes maybe 1 hr.
For a country with such advanced transportation and great produce, this one just completely confuses me. So, you readers who have a washer and dryer in your own home or apartment, next
time you go down there to do a full load (wash and completely dry) in some 45 min., take an extra minute to thank your machines. And while you're at it, give a little affectionate pat to the water pipes which are permanently "on" - for my sake.
Monday, June 1, 2009
The sensory deprivation chamb....uh, bathroom
Our bathroom is white. White floor tile, white wall tile, white tub, white sink, white toilet, white windows, white shower curtain, white towels. Oh, and look there, a white laundry hamper.The green trash can and various shampoos and creams that we just couldn't find in all-white containers are the only reprieve from the all white room.
On cloudy, cold days it is a pretty depressing place to hang out. Makes you want to bring in a book, not to read, just to have another color around. But on sunny or warm days, when the rest of the apartment (and let's face it, the rest of europe) is colorful enough, it is kind of a nice place to hang out for a bit. Very mediatitive. Calming. Numbing.
what did i come in here for? oh whatever....
what time is it? hmmm, does it really matter....
i wonder why swiss strawberries are that good....
i wonder if the universe will continue to expand forever....
It is like a sensory deprivation chamber, and if you're in need of deep thoughts, it is the place to be. If, on the other hand, you're jetlagged, or a bit down, maybe you can just hold it until you're at the train station public restrooms....
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