Meet on a hot stone (and contest answer)

Sometimes, when you move somewhere, you end up having nothing particular to do on a Saturday night. I first learned this when I moved to Calgary: friends can be few and far between, and the fatigue of keeping on putting yourself out there, day in and day out, leaves you sometimes quite happy to just turn off, instead of partying your way into another Sudbury Saturday Night. The Swiss Miss is on the (cat-pee-scented) couch, lounging and smiling to herself and writing (I think), and I thought a quick trip to blogtown would be fun!

Today we went for a really neat bike ride, first to Sternen Oerlikon to pick up Miss' glasses, and then across the city to the Limmat river and a kul part of the riverbank we were told about by S. The Swiss Missus' glasses, by the by, look amazing now! In case you were not up to speed on the story, she bought new glasses in Toronto that were totally amazing except that they just didn't sit right on her face. After three tries at the store where they were bought, the Missus tried another store, where the (now-evidently incompetent) sales clerk ran then under hot and then cold water to bend and then set the plastic. Good in theory; bad if it "crazes" the coating on the lenses. You can all probably imagine what "crazing" does to your vision. The Missus didn't discover the crazyness till we got to Zurich, so a very friendly glasses man suggested she should send the lenses back to Toronto, get them replaced under warranty and sent back, and then he would fit the glasses properly for her. And damn, did he ever do a good job! Spectacle-lar!

Tomorrow we're going for a hike, as long as the weather holds up. Fingers crossed, and we'll report back of course! But for now, I thought the blogership might be interested to read the entry that I wrote last week for the "Keep in Touch" diary that is circulating in my MBA class from last year. It's an interesting idea: each week, two class members write a short missive about what is happening in their lives. Each person writes about twice a year, and everyone gets a running stream of updates as we all scatter to the four corners. Nerdy? Absolutely. But still cool. And incidentally, my title is buried somewhere in the entry below, for all you contestants out there.

So, here's my entry, for the record:

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The more things change, the more they stay the same

If you don’t want to run, you need to catch the 7:50 tram in order to make the 8:04 train. There is another train at 8:09 that is even faster, but I leave it as my backup, when things are running so smoothly in the morning. Things rarely run smoothly these days, but we are certainly running.

The first, and most important, news: L and I got engaged! New York city, on the Brooklyn Bridge, March 7, 7pm. L’s father said “thank god” and my mother simply replied “we wondered when this would happen?” Such a romantic bunch. We escaped to New York for a five-day vacation because we wanted to take a break from getting ready for the second piece of news: we moved to Switzerland. March 26, 8pm departure, YYZ -> ZRH, seats 5d and 6d (thank goodness for the free upgrade.) This, of course, was triggered by our third piece of news, that I started a job with [an unnamed company] in their procurement department on April 1. Specifically, I am a Sourcing Manager for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, in the European Contract Manufacturing section, with specific responsibilities in the Over-The-Counter portfolio. Yes, my title is “Sourcing Manager, EMEA, ECM, OTC”.

So now we live in Zurich, and I commute to Zug every day on the 8:04 train.... or perhaps the 8:09 if it’s been a slow morning. Right now I am on the 8:04, and I even have a seat! The commuter trains from Zurich to Zug are pretty busy but they are also quite fast: it is only 25 minutes to Zug, and my office is a 5 minute walk from the station. Speaking of which, I need to save this and shut down the computer now, because we have arrived, and it’s time to go to work. More from my KIT in a few hours....

... time passes ...

5:18pm: L phones me at work. Today was her first day of German lessons and she's excited, wants to tell me how it went and what she learned. Beyond language, she has also learned that there is a festival / parade in downtown Zurich today, culminating in the burning of a huge snowman at 6pm. If the snowman's head explodes quickly, it will be a good summer. (Patrick or Rodolphe: why are the Swiss so weird sometimes?) If I hurry I can catch the 5:29 train from Zug, which gets into Zurich Hauptbahnoff (main train station) at 5:51; I don't even have to run, and I make the train with 2 minutes to spare.

In Zurich, the trams are not running, and the streets are jammed with people. I spent 20 minutes navigating my way down the river to Bellevue, just in time to watch and listen to the snowman's head explode in a fiery and triumphant burst. Everyone cheers (and I do mean everyone... the streets are packed) and then I set about finding L and then finding a place to have a beer and an early dinner. Monday is a tough day for me at the best of times! It takes about 10 minutes to meet up, and we quickly find a table on an outdoor terrace in the square right near the apartment we will be moving into on June 1, at Rossligasse 3 in Zurich. L tries out her new German on me, and we are both feeling adventurous enough to order things on the menu that are complete guesses... oops! L's soup arrives with a whole egg yolk floating in it, and my asparagus pizza turns out to have a creamed-asparagus sauce instead of tomato sauce! Oh well, we are being adventurous at least.

It's now 8:30, and we're back in our temporary apartment, a decent one-bedroom flat not too far from downtown. Work is really picking up speed for me now: I received my supplier and project portfolios on Friday, and started transition planning with one of my colleagues today. Sounds like everyone will be very happy to share the work a little bit more (a lot more!) and there is too much that I don't yet know about contracts, negotiations, and the consumer healthcare industry. It is going to be a lot of work in the coming months to make this all go well, but so far I'm really happy with the decision to move to Zurich and take the job. This is a journey, not a destination, and I'm looking forward to the days ahead.