Substitutional Satisfaction?

At the bottom of an article on free will, I saw the most provocative add in years (click to enlarge):



The tag lines reads: Sex is only a substitutional satisfaction.

By the way, Toño and I will be on the island of Majorca until January 3, 2007. Happy New Year!

To All Of You

I send my wishes for love, passion and eternal grooviness to all of you.



Hasn't Toño put up the most beautiful Christmas tree there is?

Clear Sky Demanded

This is my last night in India before I'll red-eye back to Switzerland into the arms of my deriously beloved Toño. We will have a bunch of guests for lunch on Saturday, thus there must be no delays at all!

It's an old tradition among some friends of ours to meet early morning on the last shopping day before Christmas in a big mall. To shop? No, far too tedious. They are there to watch people shopping. Cheep first class entertainment and it includes a free lunch.

I'm a night person and mind getting up too early. Hence, I invite them over for lunch. Everyone is happy and everyone has a good time among friends, before we join our families for the other traditional Christmas celebrations.

And here, as a farewell to India, the title song of Salaam E Ishq - A Tribute to Love, a Bollywood movie that will be released in due course:

Tree Surprise

While I'm sitting here in sunny Bangalore, my deriously beloved Toño is setting up the Christmas tree. Everything is still very hush-hush. Nevertheless, there are some knowns. This is my intelligence collection based on usually well-informed sources:

• It's the real McCoy - that is, a fir tree.
  
• It will be enlightened by real candles.
• It is 1.8 m / 5.9 feet tall.
• The basic colour scheme of the panoply is blue and bordeaux (due to the lack of orange material).
• There will be a mouth-blown vitreous star on the top.
• It will be our first Christmas tree.

How I'm supposed to sleep until Saturday, when I will get back to my Toño and get a view of the beauty?

A Sunday Off Work

Saturday is a working day in India, however, Sunday isn't. So today was our day off work. Nevertheless, our client commanded one of their engineers and a driver to take care of our entrainment. They took their task very serious and we got a twelve hour all-included tour.

We started at the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Chandra Temple. Maybe not the most appropriate choice on an Advent Sunday. But it was an opportunity to experience Divine Cuisine. As a divine lover, Krishna is shown playing the flute, surrounded by adoring females. Here is our guiding engineer (centre) with a flute, the adoring females were as usual a bit late:



Then it was time for some museums. First we stayed close to our trade and went to a technological museum...



.. followed by one that had something to do with culture or art:



After we had satisfied our spiritual and knowledge needs, we went for the more basic stuff by switching to extended shopping. This was again a success. I managed to get a Skolnik for a mere $7 (Amazon sells this book for $153.13).

The day ended at a Parsi restaurant, kind of my first encounter to that coulture. By the way, did you know that Freddie Mercury was a Parsi?

This was an excellent Sunday. The only thing I really missed was looking into the eyes of my deriously beloved Toño.

Scab!

What is wrong on this picture?



Yes exactly, this is a bloody scab! Today here in India, the autorickshaw drivers are on strike because they oppose the hike in fine amount.

Although I try to leave my former union, I'm no blackleg and stayed in the hotel. The company I work for here in Bangalore is on strike too, since there is a lack of hike in their workers' wages.

Laid-back Passage to India

My trip to India was almost as eventless as Forster's novel. Nevertheless, there were two things, preventing this:

• Reading Douglas Coupland's article on Morrissey as recommended by Reluctant Nomad.
• Being upgraded to First Class. Especially the scallops were delicious.

Yes, I was humming Campari Soda, the song by Taxi about a time when flying was still somethings unique and exciting.

Temperature

I've told it earlier. In February, Toño and I will travel to Siberia. I just had a look at the actual readings:



However tomorrow, I'll have first to embark to Bangalore in India which has an inviting 82°F / 28°C, Nevertheless, it will feel much colder than that without Toño.

Ban Organic

A couple of weeks ago, we were talked into buying organic lube. Don't use it! I burns like fire in the Gary Glitter.

I'm not a big fan of this organic thing anyway. I consider it pure dupery. A way to get more of my hard earned money out of my pocket. There are more sensible approaches, which try to find a balance of biological, technical and chemical methods.

However, The Economist brought in its latest edition a new argument: organic food destroys the environment!:

Organic food, which is grown without man-made pesticides and fertilisers, is generally assumed to be more environmentally friendly than conventional intensive farming, which is heavily reliant on chemical inputs. But it all depends what you mean by "environmentally friendly". Farming is inherently bad for the environment: since humans took it up around 11,000 years ago, the result has been deforestation on a massive scale. But following the "green revolution" of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertiliser has tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and compost in place of fertiliser, are far less intensive. So producing the world's current agricultural output organically would require several times as much land as is currently cultivated. There wouldn't be much room left for the rainforest.

Not Frequently Enough

Travelling is part of my job. It's nice to go to places. But believe me, it wears off quite fast. Especially when I rather prefered to rest in the arms of my deriously beloved Toño. Nevertheless, there are some benefits attached to it that are supposed to ease the pain a little bit, such as collecting miles.

I'm not collecting miles to actually use them (far too tedious) - I'm doing it for the privileges. E.g. you get faster lanes, preference for upgrades and you can get pissed in lounges for free even when you've got only coach class tickets. I bet, you can see my point.

One of the schemes I'm in is Miles & More. Right now I'm at Frequent Traveller status. To reach the next level (Senator), I have to collect 25265 further miles until the end of this year. If I sum all the miles I'll get for the five flights, for which I'm scheduled until then, I will collected 22957. In other words: I'm short of mere 2308 miles! Life supposed to be fair.

By the way, I'm not going to God's Country anymore. Mr.Mac will do that for me. I'm heading back to India and will then spend some days on Mallorca - Yeah, this is finally a trip together with Toño again!. And here is In God's Country by U2 especially for Mr.Mac:

Ornamenting

I will not go that far as to call my residence flamboyant, however, I can't deny that my apartment was never before in a more Christmas like outfit. Last year, my former flatmate Tigresa started to brake the tradition that Christmas is something that happens outside. Now, with Advent starting and much support by my deriously beloved Toño, the place started a metamorphosis which is far from completed:

Moi l'Amazonaute

Newsletters are an ambiguous affair. Most of them they try to delude me into buying stuff I don't really desire nor need. Especially Amazon's relation of what I bought and what I might buy are sometimes rather obscure. Nevertheless, I always like the mailings of Amazon France, because they address me with Cher Amazonaute. It there a more extraordinarily adventurous yet cosmopolitan way to address somebody?

Cookie Bitching 2006

Yes, it's the same procedure as every year. I'm the Christmas cookie bitch of my family and I've fulfilled my duty again (with big support from my deriously beloved Toño). This is me while bitching:



And this is what I was bitching about:

Cinnamon Stars
The most tedious of all. They are sticky. Cutting them out is very close to Zazen. The trick to get them really white, is to use almonds that where peeled before they were grounded.



Chocolate Stars
According to a recipe that was created by my mother.



Nut Heaps
This recipe goes back to my grand-grandmother.



Dead Man's Legs
My godfather's favourites



Chräbeli (Scratches)
Only correct with tiny little "feet".



The season's thing can come now. We're ready. Bring in the big snow.

Kill Broadleaf Dock

I grew up on farm. Once I told Toño that I wasted spent a significant part of my precious youth there shooting Broadleaf Dock. I did my best to explain the tedious procedure to him, but I failed completely. Last weekend, when we dropped by at my clan's residence, I took Toño into shed to show him the Broadleaf Dock Gun, I'd used to kill this rampant weed.



The Broadleaf Dock Gun consists of a bottle of herbicide, a barrel and a trigger. Hunting Broadleaf Dock requires roaming the fields for hours. If you detect a Broadleaf Dock, hold the barrel straight into the heart of the plant and pull the trigger 2 to 3 times, to release some herbicide granulate. With the next rain, the herbicide will be absorbed by the plant's roots and inhibit the cellulose synthesis, which subsequently, will lead to the death of the Broadleaf Dock.

This procedure burned deep traces into my subconscious. When ever a Broadleaf Dock comes into my field of view, my brain raises an alarm and my index finger starts to bend. It also severely affected my moral frame set. I regard farmers, who do not consequently annihilate Broadleaf Dock, only slightly higher than child molesters.

Retail Therapy

On my path to full recovery, I've also dedicated some time to retail therapy. After shopping groceries at Migros and booze at Denner we went downtown for the more serious part of the therapy. Here are the sections we went through:



Undies are essential for well being. Toño demanded a tight fit. We chose baby blue, royal blue, sliver, lemon and purple.



You can never have enough hats, gloves and shoes, as Patsy said in Absolutely Fabulous. In addition, although in Switzerland the thermometer went up to 22°C/72°F, we still belief in winter and bought cap & gloves.



My lube of choice was only available in cruising size packages. In my preferred size, the product was replaced by an organic version that passed an environmental test with best marks. From now on we will shag even more in full harmony with nature.



With Christmas only a month away, a visit at Scharzenbach was unavoidable. We got dates from Tunisia (for my Dad), figs from Izmir (for my Mom), tea from Morocco (for Toño), grapes from Malaga (for me), almonds in all variants, and grounded walnuts and hazelnuts (for the cookies).



Finally in Christmas mood we went for a traditionally wood carved Josef, Maria and Baby Jesus from Brienz, and a mouth-blown tree-top star from Hergiswil.



Everything came to an end with a fat baroque angel made of concrete and a bottle of Calvados. Cheers to my recovery.

Slick Treadly Flat

This afternoon I was supposed to give a workshop on motivation. But ironically, I just could not motivate myself to go for it and I had to cancel.

The last month was just too demanding. I'm dragging an only half cured gastric flu around, and I'm totally exhausted. Yesterday, I even went to bed at 10pm. Imaging me, getting pre-midnight sleep.

So this weekend is totally dedicated to recovery. I just started with a bit of retail therapy by ordering a Recycled Slick Tread Tyre Belt from howies^®:



It's absolutely useless, nevertheless I reckon, it perfectly matches me right now.

Fatwa on Unia

I'm not a hater. It's a waste of energy and time I could spend with Toño. However, sometimes I just can't turn the other cheek and have to go Old Testament. This is the case with Unia, my not so former trade union.

I've sent Unia a letter of retirement, because they gave the impression that they were more than happy when I and my colleagues will loose our jobs (background), which is not quite correlating with my reasons to be a member of a trade union.

Whatever reasons I have, getting rid of them is far more difficult than I'd ever expected. Membership with Unia is an adherence contract of the worst kind. As I've been informed that according to the fine print, the notice period can last up to 548 days. Apart from gutlessly neglecting their duties, Unia are also shamelessly impudent. Totally ironic, if it were not related to my job and my money, which is both at stake in this case (I'm Swiss after all).

Unia do not try to protect the jobs in Switzerland's defence industry, nonetheless they have no problem whatsoever to take my hard earned money which is funded to 100% by international weapon trade.

Until I received their response, I was only disappointed due to their cowardice, but now I officially hate them. Beware Unia! Beware those hypocrites!

Thrilled By No Frills

I travel a lot, but really, so far I've never used one of those No Frills carriers. That is, until today, when I flew to a meeting to northern Germany and back with Air Berlin. They are known for preferring to hire Polish hair dressers, because they are punctual and disciplined.

Not a bad business practice at all. It did the job on the two flights I was on. Those ladies know how to deliver a proper service with charm and a upright backbone. I will be thrilled to be their guest again.

Up The Gravity Well

Today, reading Neuromancer, while being driven to work in Bangalore, while listening to Bollywood tunes over the radio, while my mind was actually making love with Toño.



When we arrived at the premises, my colleague claimed that there are only girl schools on our way to work (he's a breeder). We have been here far too long. On Saturday evening we are going to leave. It's about time.

So let's relax to a bit of Bollywood - with Bole Chudiyan to precise:



Not yet enough? Here is the Who Let The Dogs Out Mix!

Elevate My Car

Hinduism is a complex religion. I understand hardly anything of it and I'm not even trying to go into it here. Nevertheless, one of the most popular clichés is that - as a side-effect of the path of meditation - the true believer is able to elevate things and let it hover through space.

Yes, I'm only conjecturing when I say that this car dealer has a highly talented yogi among his staff:

Bougainvilleas

There is nothing that makes me think even more of my deriously beloved Toño than to look at a Bougainvillea. Luckily, its the first thing I see across the street when I leave hotel in the morning. Here are only some of those I saw today:





And this was a 120 m long arcade of Bougainvilleas in various colours:

Safari

Here in India, we are on a six days working week and for once, I've decided to give business a complete miss one the seventh. It helped that Mr. Ellamathy wanted to show us a bit around.

In the morning, he picked us up in one of these Hindustan Ambassadors.



I just love to get driven around in one of those. Looking at the traffic here, it's kind of a relief to be protected by Ganesha idol on the dash board.



Our aim was the Bannerghatta National Park, where we went on a jungle safari. It was not one of those things on an elephant in a khaki suit with a .465 Holland and Holland India Royal rifle. No, we were in a fenced bus. Nevertheless, we could see quite a lot of wild animals.



This is a bear. He was utterly unimpressed and behaved like one of those Indian cows, which can stand in the middle of the heaviest traffic and are as calm as if they were be on a meadow in the highlands. Nevertheless, I was very please to see my brothers in name*

The tigers were even more relaxed.





At least the white fellow paraded a bit for us.



The pack of lions definitely made us feels like in the Jungle Book**.





Mogwli was nowhere to be seen. However, I saw felidae and bears, which is somehow like the names that my deriously beloved Toño and I like to refer to each other.

We rounded our trip up by paying the zoo a visit. They had loads of snakes. Definitely not my cup of tea.



However, the chicks in the cobra pit gave us an inspiration and we headed for lunch.

* My given name is Urs, which is derived from the Latin word for bear.
** I know, it was a pack of wolves...

A Friday Night on Earth

Yesterday, while I could enjoy the vegetarian delights of Southern India*...



...my swimming buddies had a dinner party at my place.



Thanks to the unbridled evolution of technology, we can at least share the pictures.

* See, me, a lefty, eating with his right hand! Call me cultural competent.

Multi-Core On The Pillion

Bangalore sees itself as India's IT hub*. Computers are driving this town - and driven too.



*Hyderabad claims the same.

Practicing Patience

An association we have with India are the Hindu ascetics performing feats of endurance. Last Friday evening, I could practice too in emphasizing calmness, self-control, and the willingness or ability to tolerate delay.

We were invited to an important business dinner at the Hotel Windsor Manor here in Bengalooru*. We are staying at the Meridian, which is not far away from the Windsor Manor. We ordered our driver to pick us up 15 minutes prior to the dinner. It was heavily raining, traffic was dense and the driver did barely understand English (or at least my interpretation of it). Things turned soon from bad to worse and we reached the Windsor Manor with 40 minutes delay - that is, it took us 55 minutes to get there. After the dinner we decided to return to our hotel by foot. It took 7 minutes.

However, sometimes forbearance is amply rewarded. The dinner place was spectacular and the quests at the table were charming and witty.



Talking about India and its culture - Thanks to British trade relations with India and then nearly two centuries of British rule, several hundred Hindi words have come into the English language, including familiar ones like guru (1800), bungalow (1676), veranda (1711), jungle (1776), juggernaut (1841), loot (1788), thug (1810), shampoo (1762) and pajamas (1800). However, patience is of Latin origin.

* On November 1, Karnataka's state chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy announced that the name of India's silicon hub Bangalore will be changed to Bengalooru from January 2007.

Practicing Patience

An association we have with India are the Hindu ascetics performing feats of endurance. Last Friday evening, I could practice too in emphasizing calmness, self-control, and the willingness or ability to tolerate delay.

We were invited to an important business dinner at the Hotel Windsor Manor here in Bengalooru*. We are staying at the Meridian, which is not far away from the Windsor Manor. We ordered our driver to pick us up 15 minutes prior to the dinner. It was heavily raining, traffic was dense and the driver did barely understand English (or at least my interpretation of it). Things turned soon from bad to worse and we reached the Windsor Manor with 40 minutes delay - that is, it took us 55 minutes to get there. After the dinner we decided to return to our hotel by foot. It took 7 minutes.

However, sometimes forbearance is amply rewarded. The dinner place was spectacular and the quests at the table were charming and witty.



Talking about India and its culture - Thanks to British trade relations with India and then nearly two centuries of British rule, several hundred Hindi words have come into the English language, including familiar ones like guru (1800), bungalow (1676), veranda (1711), jungle (1776), juggernaut (1841), loot (1788), thug (1810), shampoo (1762) and pajamas (1800). However, patience is of Latin origin.

* On November 1, Karnataka's state chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy announced that the name of India's silicon hub Bangalore will be changed to Bengalooru from January 2007.

Indian Blogging

I've arrived in India. On my way, we had free internet on the plane. Bugger, I left my WLAN card in the checked-in luggage. So you were spared the post of me about how it is to blog on 33000 feet.

Another surprise was that the blogspot URL is still banned in India. Now I've again to read your witty writing via the pkblogs proxy.

• ms.mac's meanderings


• mr.mac's go crazy


• Expatraveler


• Boys Are Ugly But So Cute


• The World According to ROB Damnit


• Michael's WhatsABoyToDo

Cádiz

Last week's business trip went to Cádiz in Spain, the oldest existing city in western Europe (founded c. 1100 B.C. by Phoenicians). The weather was absolutely nasty. Cars were hit by falling palm trees and heavy rain forced us to stay inside.

Nevertheless, we went for dinner to the exquisite Ventorrillo del Chato, the oldest existing restaurant in Cádiz (founded 1780). We could escape the usual Spanish courses (delicious but always the same) by going for the eight course degustation chef's sampling menu. Definitely the best decision of the entire trip.



Tomorrow, I will embark to Bangalore in India.for almost three weeks. I miss Toño already.

Added later: There was a "no smoking area" sign on every table in the restaurant. When a couple asked for a smoking table, the waiter went to a table and took the sign away. Solved.

Forced To Be Boring

I'm no saint*. I work in the defence industry and I am member of a trade union. Actually, I was. I had to give my notice to Unia, my union.

In Switzerland a group is collecting signatures for an initiative to prohibit the export of weapons from Switzerland. If this come through, I will be off the pay roll. My union was (so far) not openly supporting the initiative, but they don't try to hide their sympathies at all.

A union that is trying to make me redundant is not quite correlating with my reasons to be in a union. You understand that I had to go.

Since today, I'm a not so proud member of the Employees Switzerland. It's not the hippest club to be with, but they rejected the initiative from the first minute. I'm now officially boring.



* although I once rejected an offer to work for a bank (of course for ethical reasons)

Beware of Chinese Cinnamon

Thanks to the Swiss Sunday press we know that we've escaped death only within a hair's breadth. A food scandal is threatening Swiss children. Especially condemnable is that the poison is hiding in popular Christmas cookies - i.e. in the very popular cinnamon stars. Big producers such as Nestlé are according to the Sonntags Zeitung using cheap cassia cinnamon (from China!) instead of the True or Ceylon Cinnamon (read about the differences). The cheap Chinese cassia contains much more of a substance called Coumarin which is toxic! Hence the outrage.

We can reassure you that we only use pure Ceylon Cinnamon from the poshest spice shop in town:



Our cookies are home-made and can be trusted.

Lucky Bad Predictor

An collegue of mine is the software engineer who programs our predictors. They are used to predict the motion and behaviour characteristics of missiles - that is, projectiles, bombs, rockets, guided missiles, name it. The calculations of the predictors are used to direct guns in order to take out the dangerous thing before it hurts our clients. This collegue made a very bad prediction as I found out this week.

He was on sick leave for a couple of weeks. When I saw him again, I though he'd lost some weight. Nosy as I aim, I asked him and he replied: No, I'm just wearing the old trousers. I though I would gain weight and bought baggier models. But I didn't and now I back with the old ones. Lucky bastard.

giveawine.com to me

Yesterday, a new web-service was launched called giveawine.com. Finally something really useful on this thing called internet. Why? Because you can send me some wine!


Let me explain. I know there are many people out there desperate to send me some really good wine. But to do this is very tedious. Wine has to be packed and handled with extreme care and customs is just a nightmare.

giveawine.com helps by cooperating with local wine shops. You enter the country and the recipient's place of residence and you get the wines on stock at that place. Select one or more, fill out a greeting card, pay and off goes the present without any hassle.

So far (i.e. since yesterday), this service is available for Switzerland. It's supposed to go international quite soon. But that is no problem for me, because I live in Switzerland! Just ask for the shipping details via gomad.ch@gmail.com.

Aroused

We just came back from George Michael's 25Live show in Zürich. There is not much to say but that it was absolutely amazing. Toño, Tina and I loved it more than we deserved to - and we deserve a lot, I might add.

Here a bit of George Michael for all of you:

The Day of the Quinces

The quinces are finally ripe. My mother called on Saturday morning, giving me the word. Well, we rushed to my clan's residence and got what we needed - that is, loads of quinces.



Ancient Romans used the flowers and fruit of the quince tree for everything from perfume to honey. We will not measure ourselves with that great culture and humbly restricted us to soup and marmalade*.



For both you have first to rub off the pubescence with a dry cloth. If you want to make soup you better peal and de core the fruits. For marmalade you better don't. However both worked so well, we started to experiment, such as creating quince and boskoop marmalade.



If you never had the luck to taste quinces then indulge yourself in a glass of Gewürztraminer or Johannisberger . Their spicy bouquet is full of aromas of ripe quinces.

* Trivia alert: The original marmalades were made from quince - the Portuguese word marmelada means "quince jam".