And the Winner is... (I)

Yes, its me* for knowing the song of Target's Christmas Commercial. I only learned about it when Mr.Mac brought me a parcel to the office:



Inside I discovered my prize, which was endowed by Michael:



I's a lovely card, totally wasted chewing gum and a notebook:

This notebook, featuring vintage cover images, is the ideal place to record your thoughts, notes, and ideas. The elastic band will secure all its contents and its compact size makes it easy to carry.

It's so good to be a winner.
* and Ms.Mac

Schwupp Di Wupp

The Swiss German vernacular has some unique and brilliant terms. Surprisingly, despite all claims that Swiss are rather slow, quite some synonyms for fast such as schlegelawegge*, beed Wääg seckle, tifig, gleitig, hantli, hütt no!, wie s Bisi-Wätter, subito or schwupp di wupp. To name a few.

The latest, schwupp di wupp, is mostly used when things disappear (almost) unnoticeable. E.g. by the hand of a magician. Since a couple of weeks, I'm the proud owner of a device called Schwupp Di Wupp:



Schwupp Di Wupp is used for recycling (a favorite Swiss pastime). A lot of people use boxes and the standard Swiss paper shopping bags, to collect recyclable items (example). They are very robust, but unfortunately have their limits. Schwupp Di Wupp is specially designed to hold those bags in form. When on of it is full, one can grab the handles and take is to the recycling station. Clean, easy, efficient and very schwupp di wupp. As we Swiss are.

* literally: bat at the head, meaning as fast as a bat could hit your head.

Best Of Spain

What is it that I especially like about Spain? No, it's not the delicious wines & cavas, not the pata negra ham (now also available in the US of A), not that women still sport themselves in frocks and skirts, not the touching movies by Pedro Almodóvar, not the wide varieties of tapas, it's the Spanish feeling for extraordinary colours. Just look at such simple thing as a detergent. Have you ever seen a more beautiful box of detergent?

Subbotnik

A Subbotnik was a day of (compulsory) volunteer work in the Soviet Union. Today, Toño had his version of it, by participating in the yearly office cleaning at his workplace on a Saturday. He even brought some trash home, which was piling up in his office:



Meanwhile, I did the grocery shopping with my brand spanking new bicycle basked. My bike dealer of trust had assured me that one can carry six bottles of wine with it without any problems.



The ride home was not the problem, but paying for the content of it. The shelf next to the cash desk's conveyer belt was a tiny bit to small for my flashy basket. While I was unloading, the basket fell topsy-turvy to the floor. The eggs and yogurts lay smashed all over the floor.

The cashier girl was a real blessing (last night I must have finished my prayers). She mobbed up my mess in no time let me even replace the goods without having to pay for smashed ones.

Perfectly Blended

I had my first experience with Blended Learning today. What a total horseshit.

It's a course about Project Management, which should turn me into a Certified Project Manager (I hope the certificate will be impressive and flashy).

Today, I had a look into the syllabus and the course material. It's a combination, class room training, sorry it's called attendance workshops, and e-learning and e-tutoring. We, the trainees, are supposed to chat with each other and the tutors every Monday morning. We are also supposed to discuss various topics in a forum. Bottom line: the usual boring stuff on how to do the things right decorated as a Christmas tree. Wraaaah!

All I've learned about projects in life is that the only thing that counts is to do the right thing with a vengeance. I haven't seen anything about this so far underneath the fancy wrapper.

If it has to be blended, I rather preferred an Antiquary 21 Year Old or a bottle of Mestizaje. They are definitely the right thing without making a needless fuss.

Promotion!

I've got a promotion. I'm now officially with all regalia a member of the pointy haired Middle Managment. All my energy will flow into being every employee's worst nightmare. I wasn't born mean and unscrupulous, but I work hard at it, and will succeed. My top priorities are the bottom line and looking good in front of my subordinates and superiors (not necessarily in that order). Of absolutely no concern to me will be the professional or personal well-being of my employees. I'm technologically challenged but I stay current on all the latest business trends, even though I rarely understands them. Nontheless, I promise to break the rules by not driving an Audi.

Mallorca

We just came back from Majorca. We had an excellent and relaxing time with some fine friends. We even met a smart new one from Moldavia. She told us that the island is very similar to the famous Crimea. So if you don't want to reside next to Claudia Schiffer or your charlady, there were alternatives.

By the way, the sea was very inviting. Although the jellyfishes and the 18C/64F water temperature asked for a rather brief encounter.

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.