A great way to start the weekend...

What a greatway to start the weekend. I just got my results online from Uni (University) and I passed my eighth (of 12) MBA exam and with a distinction to boot! It was a three hour exam I took in London. I had to fly across for one day on one of those cheap charter flights (Easyjet for European readers or ValueJet (?) for U.S. readers).

My Uni has reciprocal arrangements with other campuses in several countries around the world and I chose the U.K. as the closest and easiest (having worked there for several years I know the place and the how to get around like the back of my hand).

There were some tough questions - six short answer essays and three long answer essays and I did an absolute brain dump to get all that valuable info down on paper. As often happens you doubt what you wrote but I must be being way too hard on myself (but they say Virgo's are perfectionsists...)

On top of that great news, I've got all my work done and have even started to get ahead of the game. The filing is all done and my desk is as clean as a whistle. Hoo-ar!

So I'm off to relax and enjoy a well-earned break, but having said that I will temper that sentiment with a thought for some other folks... I read an online article appearing in TIME magazine today about troops stationed in Afghanistan and what the write so aptly termed 'what seems like the end of the world'. Having seen a little of their life in Iraq I can relate in my own small way to what the writer is conveying. These folks have to put up with being hot, dusty, stuck in basic accommodation, are often incredibly bored and on top of that have to go out and get shot at.

Whatever your personal opinion may or may not be about this situation, it shouldn't detract from the fact that a lot of these people are doing a sh*tty job at the very frontiers of civilisation with the thought that they are trying to make a difference for someone else andI take my hat off to that. I get to live and work in a beautiful and peaceful part of the world. I have it easy by comparison.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1535064,00.html?cnn=yes

Life in the chocolate Factory – bring a dictionary, in fact bring several!

Switzerland is a unique country in that it has not two languages but four. French, German, Italian and Romansch.

Swiss- German or Schweitzer Deutsch is the most widely spoken and largest grouping in Switzerland. It’s slightly different to normal High-German, and a lot more guttural. I listened to a half-dozen Swiss-Army reservists (like the National Guard) chatting on the train on the way to/from a training session and it was very ‘Achh, ach..ach’.. I thought they were getting ready to all hawk a lugey out the windows at times!

Politicians are usually fluent in several languages too – mostly French and German or German an Italian. Most even speak English as well which puts the rest of us in the shade! And they switch back and forth like turning on a light. Whoa!

The language barriers can be very clearly defined. I went to Fribourg in Central Switzerland a few months ago with a friend who was working on a start-up company and had asked me to create his budgets and finance plan etc. Fribourg is a lovely town that sits just on one side of the river ‘something or other’ and they speak French. Walk 15 metres across the bridge though and it’s nothing but Swiss-German. It’s that quick! All the road signs change, the menus, everything. It’s a trip!

The attitudes change too. The French and Italian sides are noticeably more laid back and liberal - 'life is for living' - whilst the German side is much more conservative and serious - 'we have rules for a reason' - it is like separate countries but they are all very proud of the 'Helvetic Confederation'. But the Swiss are all still very Swiss and it doesn’t pay to mess with a Swiss Policeman. But if you must, just do it in the French or Italian cantons – then you’ll only spend one night in jail – not the whole week!

Au Revoir, Guten Tag, Arrivaderci, Bye....

The usual suspects

It’s getting towards election time here in France and as an outside observer and long-time watcher of the country; it has been interesting to see what has been going on. One thing really stands out though – it’s the same old faces being repainted and repackaged and wheeled out yet again to the electorate. It’s like musical chairs – the same people just in different positions!

Here’s a quick thumbnail sketch of the political landscape.

The big battle at the moment is between Nicholas Sorkozy on the right and Ségolène Royal on the left for the Socialist party.

Sarkozy – wants to reform France from the roots up and get rid of the 35 hour week, liberalise markets and the labour laws and get the economy moving. Recently quoted on a U.S. trip as saying ‘it should not be a sin if people want to work harder'. Under the prior Socialist government, their solution to unemployment was not to create new jobs or stimulate the economy -just share the existing jobs around. They reasoned that if everyone was limited to 35 hours a week, then employers would have to employ more part and full timers to fill in the shortfall. Talk about the tail wagging the dog not to mention downright inefficient. Work 35-40 hours and you get whacked with tax. Work 40 hours plus and it gets really painful.

Ségolène Royal is, despite being a member of the Socialist party, one of the elite. Well off and educated at the Sorbonne. Also a graduate of E.N.A. (Ecole Nationale d’ Administration) whose graduates are nick-named 'Enarques'. It’s sort of like a Harvard for future business and government leaders - super bright people but ENA is very, very elitist. She’s what we call in Oz a ‘Champagne Socialist – talks a big game about helping ‘all those poor people‘ whilst being ferried from her luxury country retreat to her spiffy inner-city apartment in a chauffeur driven limo. Doing it tough eh Ségey? Having to buy domestic brand caviar instead these days to save a quid or two? Poor devil!

She’s been running despite not getting the backing of the old guard (which has p*ssed them off mightily), but her platform is basically nothing but vague, warm, fuzzy statements like ‘I want everyone to have choices and live the lives that they want to’. Well no sh*t Sherlock! Who doesn’t want that? But how ya gonna do it? Who’s gonna pay for it? What are the details? Nada…One half of her other platform seems to be ’Vote for me – I’m an attractive successful woman’. The other half of the platform is ‘Vote for me because well, I’m not a man’…Cool…

Jacques Chirac – in a similar situation to say second term U.S. Presidents in the last months of their mandates - considered a lame duck just treading water until he finishes. Has been tainted by endless campaign financing scandals going all the way back to when he was Mayor of Paris. Journalists and investigators could never nail him until recently it got so he couldn’t deny it any longer and just said ‘I’m the President - under the law I am immune from prosecution’. Probably followed by a Bart Simpson-esque look that said ‘So eat my shorts!’

The French people are fed up to the back teeth of seeing the same old faces and hearing the same old spin and are desperate for some positive leadership and new ideas, and yet curiously are very concerned about globalisation, market economies, job insecurity etc., and want protecting from change at the same time. This double-edged sword presents a bit of a conundrum for any party!

France has always had loads of very bright, talented and ambitious people. History is full of their scientific discoveries, philosophers and mathematicians. Today, it still has some of the best scientists, artists, designers, manufacturers and business-people in the world.

They just need to get a government that will let go of the park brake that’s been put on the nation…

Steve…

I guess like a lot of Australians I was just stunned to hear that Steve Irwin had died. It was all so sudden. I felt like I had lost a friend and all of a sudden I felt a long way from home.

He was over the top and with an accent you could cut with a knife, but you couldn’t help but like the guy and get caught up by his enthusiasm and interest for nature.

He joined us in our living rooms all across the country and we grew up with him -taking a fresh look at creatures and our island home that we had long since taken for granted. Like a lot of Aussie icons, he was a part of the national furniture. One of the family.

Our country has sometimes struggled with the cultural cringe - coming to turns with its identity after leaving the empire and then soon after overwhelmed by the tidal wave of emerging U.S. pop culture. But these people let us know it was OK to be just who we were – a nation of self-deprecating, friendly, laconic, occasionally a bit daggy, self-reliant people wanting to live quietly and peacefully in our little corner of the Pacific.

The list of his fellow icons includes many names known mainly to ourselves – like entertainer Ricky May, Shirl ‘the Curl’ of iconic 70’s band Skyhooks, Graham ‘Gra-Gra’ Kennedy, Ruth Cracknell of ‘Mother & son’ & continues back to Simpson and his Donkey at Gallipoli who died ferrying others to safety.

Our pantheon of heroes doesn’t worship Mammon’s disciples, nor those who win medals in flashy displays of glory, just ordinary men and women with a lot of courage who helped define a nation or who quietly helped others instead of themselves with a characteristic ‘she’ll be right’, and just ‘got on with the job’.

We lost Steve this week. I just hope we don’t ever lose what he and a lot of other great men and women stood for.

Advance Australia Fair…

Le Culture shock...

Boom. Boom.Boom. It’s 8:00pm and I‘ve got a throbbing headache which won’t go away. I’ve had it all afternoon. I turn off the apartment lights and decide to turn in and let nature fix it instead of taking any tablets.

8:30pm. I’ve tried relaxation, lying on my left side, my right side, imagining tranquil ocean waves, heck I’ve even tried picturing blissful images of Flipper cavorting in the big blue. Nada. Now I just feel like some stupid hippie with a migraine.

9:00pm. Boom. Boom. Boom. Nope it’s still there…Darn. Oh well, get up and get some aspirin – you’ve done your best. Aghhhh!! No aspirin! Rummage everywhere and not a single capsule to be found. OMG! Man my head hurts…

Get up and get dressed and decide to walk into the town and find somewhere that sells Neurofen or Tylenol but this is where the fun begins! Here in France/Switzerland everything is closed after 7:00pm. And I mean everything.

Ah-hah! Brainwave! The local hospital is only a few hundred metres away – they are bound to have an all-night chemist next door to the casualty department. They do in Oz and the U.K. So off I trudge. Boom. Boom.Boom. Ay carumba my head hurts…

Get to casualty and their pharmacy is closed. A night-security person tells me that they can open it, but only if they wake the owner and he must be accompanied by a local Gendarme. Yup, I sure do look like some wild-eyed, gun-toting deranged druggie. All I want is aspirin.

So trudge over in tunnel-visioned ‘douleur’ to casualty. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ ‘Ah non’. You must see someone first… ‘Fine, whatever..’

So I wait and wait…and wait. I look around. How come I’m the only person in here but they all manage to somehow ignore me and try (?) to look busy.

Someone finally comes over. ‘Can I have two aspirin please? I’m new in town, have a splitting headache and all the shops are closed’. Ah non’. ‘C’est pas permis’! ‘What’s your name and address?’ Ten minutes filling forms and showing my passport… ‘Wait in here’.

A half hour passes in some waiting room trying to read children’s books (all there was) to kill time and take my mind off the heavy-metal drum-solo going on in my head. Boom. Boom. Boom. At last - someone enters. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ I’m new in town, have a headache etc, etc.’ (I have the speech memorised by now.) ‘Ah non. C’est pas permis’. ‘Can I take your blood pressure?’ They call it pouls, which is pronounced ’poo’ in French. Even though my head hurts like heck I resist lots of ‘poo’ jokes that she probably won’t get anyway.

Nurse Cruella de Ville eventually discovers the blindlingly obvious – I’m healthy, sober and just have a really bad headache. ’I just want two aspirin…’ ‘Wait here’, and off she trots to studiously ignore some other patients.

Another half hour. ‘Is this worth it?’ Boom, boom, boom. ‘Yup! I’ve got this far…hang in there’.
Finally a female doctor comes. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ I’m new in town etc, etc.’ ‘Ah non’ ‘Cest pas ….’ etc, etc’. Sigh….

I explain to her that in every other Anglo-phone country in the world I could have gotten aspirin at the local shop, all-night chemist, the supermarket or even the local gas-station and been home by now. ‘Ah non. In France only pharmacists can dispense ‘medicine’’. Man this is exasperating. It’s just aspirin for Krissake! Not medical grade morphine.

Near 11:00 pm and she finally stops prodding and probing and asking questions and then suggests I get an appointment for a cat-scan of my head! Yikes! ‘A’ I can do without the mega-medical bill, ‘B’ I have a whopping headache now, not Tuesday next week at 9:15AM, and ‘C’ I don’t want some quack injecting me with a horse-needle full of that nausea-inducing low-level isotope they use to make your blood vessels light up like the 4th of July on the monitor! Been there and done that umpteen years ago as a kid for some unrelated matter and I’m in no hurry to do it again! Man, I spent twenty minutes in a claustrophobia inducing, coffin-like tube trying heroically to resist the overwhelming urge to hurl for all I was worth (brought on by the injection), all whilst being told to ‘hold perfectly still dear’.

A couple of minutes of convincing her its not a brain-tumour and just a simple bad headache and she finally relents and says she has them too and gives me some headache powders and a glass of water. BOOM. Boom.Boom. Boom. Aahhhh…..

Midnight I finally make it home and sleep the sleep of the pain-free and victorious.

Turns out that in Europe the Pharmacists guilds all got together some years ago and indulged in a bit of job–protection scheming and got the Government to make it law that only they could sell even the most basic stuff (‘Cough syrup is very, very dangerous you know - only we can be trusted’).

So my advice to anyone visiting Europe? Buy plenty of Tylenol before you get here. I now have several packets at the office, at home and in my travel kit. Like the American Express card – don’t leave home without it!

Life in the chocolate factory - Swiss Country Villages

Ever seen one of those westerns where there’s the ghost town and to give the viewers a sense of the emptiness and desolation, a tumble weed rolls lazily down through the main street? That is a Swiss village on a Sunday. Not a car to be seen. No kids playing soccer in the street or games in the park or throwing a stick for the dog to catch. Not even someone washing the family car (actually it is against the law to wash your car with the hose on a Sunday in Switzerland. Don’t ask …). Nothing. It’s silent. Empty.

What do they do? Where do they go? Are they all inside asleep or are they watching the TV in a marathon sitting?

It’s like those other films where the day after the neutron bomb has been dropped all the people are gone but the houses are still standing perfectly intact but eerily quiet.

It’s weird.

Life in the Chocolate factory – ‘Darn foreigners…’

Every morning when I take the tram from the border to Geneva, and then the bus to work, I read one or two of the local free commuter papers printed by and using articles from the main Swiss newspaper – ‘La Tribune de Genève.’

There are the usual round ups of day to day life but the Swiss have a peculiar local way of reporting very quaint pieces of news. In the U.K. or anywhere else, the stories are mostly about a lot more grittier problems and they will just tell you the facts, but here each story starts ‘An Italian non-resident banged into Madame. Le-Clerc at 9:00pm whilst walking home inebriated last night….’ or ‘A resident of Portuguese origin, had discussions last night concerning his shouting at 2:00 am whilst looking for his lost dog – when questioned by Police he later remembered the dog died last year.…’Yesterday a Czech man collided with a scooter…’

Fellow Swiss are not exempt from this approach either - other articles always quote ‘Fred Boggs (from Berne province) set fire to his neighbours barn in a fence dispute last night…’ or ‘Joe Bloe (from Ticino province) was charged after trying to defraud the insurance company for a new tractor to replace his WW2 era relic …’

There’s a feel that after centuries of isolation and neutrality there’s something deep within the Swiss psyche that manifests itself in their still being very wary of anyone outside their own neighbourhood, let alone the next Canton or country.

But if most of the problems are just Georges and Pierre getting plastered at the local tavern and making dicks of themselves, then I’ll read that news any day.