bad things happen when chris gets bored

god, isn't that the truth... haha. wow.

okay, so i feel kinda dumb, but what's done is done, so what the hell: i just cut my own hair. it's fairly clear to me that i didn't exactly do the best job ever, but we'll see how many people notice tomorrow at work. i still can't really believe i actually did it, but hey, like i said before, try most things once, right?

it also occurs to me that despite my complaining, perhaps my apartment is a little bit too nice, seeing as i can't seem to muster the impetus necessary for going outside today, even though it's phenomenally gorgeous out. i did sunbathe in the lounge chair on my balcony for an hour, and then did some reading out there as well, which was nice. i kinda wanted to convince somebody to come out and play with me (frisbee, volleyball, anything really), but noone seems to be answering their phones. clearly, the most reasonable explanation is that they're all out playing in the sun already, but that doesn't get me any closer to finding them...

tomorrow is the first of august; obviously, i realize, but the point is that it's the swiss national holiday. like the fourth of july (united states) or the fourteenth of july (france). anyway, there should be fireworks and the like. last year, jon was here, and we watched them from the balcony. hrm, maybe i can recruit some other people to come over. we'll see.

it's good to have friends

probably those of you reading this (i.e. a subset of my friends) will find it incredibly insensitive or offensive of me to say, but there are times when i'll just be walking down the street thinking, "wow, i have friends!" and it's still such a stupefying proposition to me that feel giddy because of it. i mean, when i think about it, i know i've always had friends, and some really rather great ones at that, but i don't think i ever quite got used to the idea, and it still amazes me somehow. believe it or not, in this case it's not even a self-deprecatory thing. okay, maybe at a subconscious level the sense of wonder i'm describing might stem from my low opinion of myself, but the sensation i'm talking about now is really a very good one.

anyway, all that being said, i felt that way walking home this evening, after spending most of the afternoon with danny (short for daniella, a german girl i know from one of my french classes last year). we randomly ran into each other in the city, and decided to hang around with each other for a while, and it was really fun. eventually we took a volleyball down to vidy where there are a bunch of beach courts set up, and even got a couple of other people to play against us. luckily, they weren't excellent players (they only beat us 21-10, instead of a total shutout, like it would have been with most of the other people we saw playing) so it was a nice match. they had enough blunders/screwups that i felt a little less bad about them having to play with me, who was constantly hitting the ball into the adjoining courts. but yeah, they were cool; their names were carlos and dehlia (no clue how to spell that). i think i like volleyball. maybe if i find a way to practice a bit, it will be a little less embarassing to go places like that and ask random people to play with me.

went all over the city this morning trying to find capacitors to replace the blown-up ones on my motherboard so my computer will work again. and of course i failed. i think i might have located two stores which, in principle, should have had what i needed, but naturally were closed on saturdays, or for the months of july and august, or something equally inconvenient. maybe monday, i guess.

i had also talked myself into buying a big swiss flag, because it was on sale, and i thought it would be cool. but of course, i went to the store where the ad was from, and asked about it, only to be told, "no, that's only for the *big* stores." aparently all the 'big' stores are outside the city limits, and require a car making a special trip, which i find to be utterly ridiculous. so, no flag for me. :(

oh, yeah, on the subject of ludicrously located stores; yesterday i finally got fed up with the fact that my office is bordering on unbearable (building made almost entirely of glass = huge fucking greenhouse), and made a field trip / pilgramage to the media markt to buy a fan. i did eventually make it there and back, but i'm coming to the conclusion that there just isn't a good, correct, or graceful way to make that trip. i got less 'lost' than the other times, but it's not close to anything (certainly not a bus stop), and the directions on their website for taking the bus to get there (where 'there' is about 1km from the store, even by their estimation) are partially imprecise, and partially just plain wrong. they didn't even give the name of the stop they were talking about; they said, "take the number 32 bus until you get to mcdonalds." which wouldn't have been so bad, except that the mcdonalds they were referring to isn't on the route of line 32, it's on line 35... color me exasperated. it turned into like a two hour ordeal by the time i got back. i'm trying to decide whether this is turning into a personal challenge (to go there without getting lost or wasting huge amounts of time, just once), or if i should just give in and resign myself to the fact that it simply can't be done. you know, like violating conservation of energy, or something along those lines.

while there, i also bought a little pair of battery operated speakers, since the night before we had another bbq on the lake, and celine was commenting that we really needed music. i offered her my ipod, but she said she thought that would be a little anti-social. i must be adapting to switzerland, at least a little, because despite the fact that they were nearly twice the price i think they should have been, i bought them anyway. which is not to say that it didn't pain me to do so, but a year ago, i really think i would have just left the store without them.

what pissed me off, though, is that even there, where i thought things might be more reasonable, the cheapest blank dvd+r were still over $1.50 each! and that's when you're buying a spindle of 25 of them (the spindles of 50 don't even exist here). i might have considered buying them even so, except that i noticed that these were only 4x!!! i can't handle this! at costco in june, i bought a spindle of 50 16x discs for $20. if i didn't know better, i'd say i should start importing them and selling them on the black market. ha. a black market for affordable computer supplies. that's hilarious. and it's sad because it's [mostly] true.

but yeah, my office is equipt with an expensive fan now, which probably just means that we won't have any more scorching weather (kinda like "it never rains when you bring the umbrella"), but quite frankly, so long as i'm not staring at the wall from 2:30-4:00 like a catatonic autistic because my brain has completely melted into a pool of jell-o like substance, i'm not sure that i really care.

i suppose i did wish for a little more excitement

last weekend was pretty action-packed.

friday night we went to geneva to celebrate katja's birthday in the park. strangely, nearly half the people there were somehow from the states, canada or great britan. it was a little odd, but a lot of fun. and it was the day after the full moon, and it reflected on the lake; very pretty.

we then stayed at antoine's parents's house for the night, and in the morning headed for montana. what i didn't think of until then was that from geneva, the best route to montana actually goes south of the lake. know what else is south of the lake? yep, you guessed it---france. guess who didn't bring his passport? anyway, they were all convinced that we wouldn't get stopped, so we went anyway, and either we got lucky or they were right, since we didn't get stopped. (which is actually a *very* good thing, seeing as georgette is from trinidad, and is not allowed to visit the EU, so she would have been even worse off than me.)

in sion, we met up with walter and a few others who would be joining us for the via ferrata.

short side-story: it wasn't until the previous day that i finally figured out who "walter" was, despite the fact that i had spent plenty of time talking to him at all the different events we go to. why? well, because when i originally asked him what his name was (months and months ago at daniel's thesis defense party), i was certain that he told me it was "voltaire" (say it with a swiss german accent, and then add lots of drunken background noise, and i think you'll understand). this revelation was simultaneously incredibly hilarious and embarrasing. what made matters worse though, was that i was dumb enough to tell markus about this, since i thought it was amusing. well, he thought it was amusing too---amusing enough to tell everybody else about as well. including walter himself. with the addition of a siren, some flashing lights, and a telescoping ladder, i'm quite certain i could have passed for a fire engine at that moment.

okay, so we grabbed the rest of the group and headed up the mountain to the starting point. now "via ferrata" is neat, because it's basically where there's a rock face that you would expect hardcore rock climbers to go up over several days, and they put metal bars and things into the rock, so that ordinary humans (like me, for instance) can climb up it with only moderate effort and risk. and you clip your harness into a steel cable that's running up the rock, so that just on the off chance that you do fall, you don't die (a nice plus, you know, that 'not-dying' thing).

at the top, we had lunch overlooking the valley, which was gorgeous, and then walked down the back side.

then, adding a few more people to the group (some other valaisians that grew up with antoine/jcz/jerome/gracien/walter/etc) we went paintballing. this was, of course, my first such experience, but it sounded like it could be fun, so i decided to give it a try. well, i stand by my stance of "try most things once," but there are some things for which once is more than enough. :) this was not my thing at all. (probably this comes as no surprise as all to anyone who knows me.) it was waaaaaay too realistic. a royal mind-fuck. i mean, i knew it was fake, and that i was surrounded by my friends, but all of the sensory input around me was war, danger, and inevitable death. it hardly required any physical exertion whatsoever, but i could hardly breathe, just because my body was fully convinced that i was going to die, and every part of it was utterly terrified. it was a very strange, visceral response. mentally, i really don't think i'm afraid of dying, but physically, my body turned itself into a nervous wreck totally beyond my control. we had three teams of five, two of which would be playing at a time. i played three rounds, and then passed my gun to someone from the off-team for my fourth. i just couldn't do it anymore---it wasn't fun, it was freaky. anyway, experience gained; lesson learned.

collecting even more people (must be up to like 25 by now) we went to pichus's house for a raclette. he lives up on the side of the valley, and has a stunning panorama off the balcony. amazing. the food was tasty too. you know, standard swiss faire; lots of cheese and no nutrients. hahaha.

somewhere in here it came to light that markus had neglected to mention to me that the ascent planned for sunday was going above the treeline and would undoubtedly require crampons, which of course i didn't have, since i wasn't expecting anything of the kind. i would have been more than happy to rent or buy them, but naturally, being in switzerland, such a thing is not a possibility on saturday evening or sunday morning... as it turned out, i hear the weather was pretty terrible anyway, so they told me i didn't miss out on much.

but that kinda fed into the next crazy turn in this messed up story; trying to find a place to stay the night. which would have been fine and easy under other circumstances, but with all the locals having already achieved their customary blissful state of inebriation, having a coherent conversation about logistical or organizational details is a recipe for disaster (as i learned). i thought we had discussed and arranged everything properly, and was told to jump in a car, which i thought was headed for gracien's house. instead, it showed up at a bar, and we stayed there for another two hours. then the details start to get fuzzy (from being dog tired; i had stopped drinking hours ago after about a grand total of 3 glasses of wine), but somehow i found myself standing back in pichus's driveway with pichus, yannick, and nicolas (yannick's friend from paris). just to recap, that makes one person with a house, and three people standing there looking some combination of lost and dumb. for whatever reason (he was still quite drunk), he thought it would be a bad idea to take us back into the house, so the four of us ended up in the separated barn, which they have recently converted into a music/recording studio (by the way, it was a really awesome setup, and i was very jealous). once there, more drinks were doled out, and we continued to "party" until about 5:30am, at which point someone finally determined that it would be acceptable for us to stay on the floor there in the studio (fine by me, i just needed sleep, anywhere).

about two and a half hours later, nicolas and i woke up (yannick was still basically dead to the world) and went out in search of a bakery to get something to eat. after wandering a bit, we came across a gentleman vacuuming his car, and asked him for directions. he looked at us strangely, but did tell us which direction to go in, and that there was a village about 300 metres down the path. aparently, "300 metres" in valais translates into about 2 kilometres in the real world. :) but we eventually located the bakery, bought a nice large tresse (braided egg bread), and climbed back up the hill to wake yannick, who by this time was slightly more civil. :)

while sitting by the side of the road, looking down over the valley and enjoying our breakfast mixed with the sounds of some kid with a rice rocket joyriding around a mountain somewhere in the valley (the echo made for an interesting dynamic), who should drive up but gracien (apparently he forgot his mobile phone the previous evening). this allowed us to follow him back to his house, where we reclaimed stephanie and georgette, and then piled into yannick's car and headed back to lausanne, where a nice long afternoon nap was to be necessary for me.

and, as if that wasn't enough excitement already, i got woken from my nap by a phone call from sandra, who was finally getting around to contacting me about the tandem arrangement we had discussed. so i really quick-like cleaned up the apartment and invited her over for dinner, where i helped her with her french, and tried to get her to help me a bit with my german. it took me a while to convince her that i am actually serious about learning german (why does no one ever believe me?), but eventually i got a few words out of her. we'll see how it goes next time.

clearly, after that, work this week has been somewhat of a nightmare on wheels (and it's not over yet), but i'm hanging in there, at least for the time being.

oh, and i don't know if i mentioned it before, but here at work we've been having problems with the capacitors on the motherboards of the dell computers spontaneously exploding and causing the computer to overheat and shutdown. those ones are under warranty, and dell has been sending people out to fix them, but yesterday, the same thing happened to my motherboard in my computer at home, which irritates the hell out of me, obviously. must be something in the cosmic background radiation here in switzerland... weird...

social networks in sketchy countries

okay, so maybe "sketchy" is a bit harsh, but it seemed less severe that using the tired and demeaning old "third world" descriptor.

anyway, my point is that i somehow got myself snookered into signing up for these ridiculous social spying things (orkut and friendster), and now i find myself being constantly spammed by creepy desperate brazilians (orkut), and equally creepy [probably more desperate] philipinos (friendster). what the hell is up with this? are things really still so bad there that they are actually actively trying to marry out of their country---to complete strangers? (and is there anyone out there desperate or dumb enough to actually do it for them?) or is it instead turning into one of those sickeningly infantile japanese card games where people go completely bonkers over collecting every single last one of them---only this time they're playing with real people. and quite frankly, i don't particularly like the idea of being collected.

i mean, the idea was kinda neat in the beginning, you use it as sort of an adaptive address book to keep track of people you might otherwise lose hold of. but seriously, people, if i've neither met you nor even ever heard of you or anyone you profess to know, there's really no chance that i'm going to want to be your friend just because you send me some dumbass braindead message like "u luuk kuul! i wants to be comm yuza FREND!!1!~" (cough, gag) am i just nuts, here? really, what the hell gives?

disclaimer: i am neither a racist nor even a patriot. i am merely a cynical luddite who treats the internet somewhat like a dark alley, and is therefore understandably suspicious of lurking creatures that one might meet there. (and rightfully so, i might add, if i do say so myself...)

no new digs after all

i think this diet might be amplifying my mood swings (i know, i didn't think it was possible either). right now i'm rather miffed because enno told me this afternoon that apparently sandra (his girlfriend) has decided to move to lausanne, and so he'll probably be looking for an apartment to share with her instead of me. of course, it all makes perfect sense, and it would be completely unreasonable for me to be upset, but i am more than a little disappointed. i guess i've probably always been inclined to be a little bit too jealous about my friends. it just sounded like it would have been really cool, and i was excited about it. not sure why it failed to set off the "too good to be true" alarm.

meanwhile, there are other interesting things afoot. ironically enough, the same sandra that's stealing my potential flatmate has agreed to a german tandem with me. so this could be amusing. we're supposed to start tomorrow night.

also, at the end-of-term pizza feed for the I&C school last thursday, i saw vincent again (random person i met at anne-elisabeth's birthday party months ago, and never saw again, nor had any way of contacting) and we talked for a bit. he said he might be interested in going on a hike sometime, and gave me one of his cards, so i know where to find him now. i've also been getting on pretty well with yannick, a biology phd student that comes to markus's "movienights" on occasion. he's pretty neat; i guess his mother is french and his father german, and he's lived significant portions of time in france, germany, and the states, which makes him yet another infuriating polyglot. :) whatever the case, he's currently on my list of favorite people for the simple reason that he told me about a yoga studio in lausanne (i'm always excited to meet people who don't think i'm a freak for liking yoga). and i went to a class there on saturday morning. it was expensive (god, was it expensive: chf25), but it was actually a really good class. and it definitely showed me that while you can practice on your own, it's not really possible to push yourself the same way that a real instructor can. wow. i'm almost ashamed of my performance, but that just fuels my resolve to get back into it. unfortunately, the studio will be closed for the month of august, while the proprietors (a cool guy from scotland and his swiss wife) go on vacation, but i'll try to see if i can find a couple of classes a week on their fall schedule that i can do when they start up again.

then yesterday i went running. i think i need new shoes. my feet start falling asleep after a while, which is somewhat unsettling. and i know that it's not that they are tied too tightly, because as soon as i stop and take a few ordinary steps walking, it goes away. i almost wonder if the "falling asleep" feeling is actually caused by a lack of oxygen rather than a lack of blood (since the former is a consequence of the latter). this might mean that my blood cells run out of oxygen giving it all to my leg muscles before they get to my feet... okay, clearly, i'm no doctor, nor do i play one on television, so this is all complete bullshit on my part. anyone who has a better idea of what's really going on is certainly encouraged to set me straight. please.

oh, and i bought cherries and raspberries over the weekend. they weren't cheap, but god, were they good. wow. i love fruit. that is all.

and regardless of whatever other transient side effects i may be experiencing, the diet really seems to be working. and even better than i had imagined at that. this morning i weighed in at a new low of 70kg (~154lbs). which doesn't sound like anything special, except that i started this whole deal on june 20th (a little less than a month ago) at 75kg... even if i back off a little bit, it's still looking totally reasonable for me to reach my goal of 60kg before christmastime. maybe i'm hoping for too much. maybe i'm setting myself up for disapppointment. but right now, i don't even really care---i'm excited, and armed with the simple mathematical feedback tools that i described before, i'm convinced that it's not only working, but should continue to work. i can't even remember the last time i felt this optimistic, or even this impatient. with all the buildup i'm giving it, i imagine that even if i do succeed in becoming thin, it will likely seem anti-climactic, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

the high price of humility

(or, "it's a good thing that the third time is a charm, especially when the first two are inequivocal disastrophes.")

yes, i feel stupid, and yes, this is pretty much a constant state of being for me.

last night markus had another movie night at his apartment, and i volunteered to come early and make pies. against my better judgement, i let him convince me that we should make several different kinds of pies. no good can come of this.

doing everything in parallel wasn't so bad (i'm surprised i was able to manage it at all), but the scheduling was way off. we made the filling and the meringue for the lemon one before the crust was ready, which meant that they were cold and fallen (respectively) by the time i assembled the pie. the end result was that the meringue was more elastic than usual, making it impossible to cut, and the filling separated, leaving a syrupy soup in the pie plate after cutting it.

i should have known something was horribly, horribly wrong when the filling for the key lime pie wasn't thickening like it was supposed to. i went ahead and put it in the shell anyway, and baked it. then, again, i should have seen the writing on the wall when the filling wasn't setting up in the oven; it was supposed to bake in 15 minutes, i left it in for nearly an hour before it seemed done. but no, even with these somewhat obvious telltale signs, i failed to see the problem until the very last moment, when i started slicing it, and tasted a little bit of the filling that stuck to the knife... what makes it worse is that i knew beforehand and even predicted that this might happen. i had substituted what i think was evaporated milk for sweetened-condensed milk, and forgot to sweeten it---there was no sugar at all in the pie. it was utterly terrifying. the taste was somewhere between plain yogurt and sour cream. i wanted to cry.

luckily, it's rather hard to fuck-up an apple pie, so the only thing wrong with that one was that it hadn't completely cooled by the time we cut it, so it leaked a bit, but no one is going to notice that.

so yeah, i got what was coming to me. i wanted to be a smartass and show off, and i collided head-on with the chrysler of karma. better luck next time, kids.