Gimme the good stuff baby....

Hello All.

Sorry I haven’t written much lately but I’ve had a really bad cold last week. I felt like someone who had gone five rounds with Muhammad Ali. I'm usually very healthy, but about every 12-18 months I fall victim to the odd bug going around the office like most folks.

Last Monday I took the day off work and just lay on the sofa in the apartment feeling blah. The rest of the week I dragged myself in to work but, unlike the Energizer Bunny, I only had just enough battery power to get me through to about 5:00 pm. Then I would head for home and have a really early night - ready to do mortal combat with some Venezuelan finance statements again the next day (it’s all in Bolivars so you have to convert the telephone-number long balances back to USD before it starts to make sense!). It was a longgg week!

I went to the Pharmacist here in France and you have to be firm with them about what you want. Tell a French pharmacist what's wrong with you and if you're not careful he/she'll have you loaded down to the gunnels with stuff by the time you leave the store! They certainly believe in tackling whatever ails you from all fronts!!

It's just like when I was a kid and we would go to the annual Royal Agricultural Show (sort of like the State Fair) and all the manufacturers would hand out 'Show Bags' of (back then) free produce to promote their wares. We would walk away with bags and bags of chocolates, biscuits, plastic boomerangs - everything!

Last year I went in just to get some decongestant for a 'flu and came away with nasal sprays, throat lozenges, sinus pills for daytime, for afternoon, for evening and even some weird stuff I was supposed to gargle (half of it is still sitting in the bathroom cabinet untouched).

U.K. medication is pretty watery. When I worked in London, I had a really bad winter cold one year and was so super-congested it felt like I couldn't get a single molecule of O2 into me. Back in Oz a couple o' Sudafed woulda hit that sucker outta the park, but this U.K. stuff didn't even make a dent. I went back to the girl and said 'You gotta give me some industrial-strength stuff here luv - this just isn't cuttin' the mustard', and she told me that was the strongest stuff they had! I don't know what they do with Aussie medicine - must test it on horses I reckon. But by gum it works!

So back on deck ... and just in time for the first snowfall of the season. Whoo-hoo!

The Burb's

I've been here for a year and a half now...going on two and a half if you count all the trips I made here whilst I was still working in London and 'commuting' on a lot of weekends to my 'second' home.

This area is so beautiful with the Alps, lakes, the Jura mountains, beautiful cities and culture and history going back before even the Romans. There are times I can't believe I am really here.

Italy is two hours away down the expressway, as is Germany. All of Europes major capitals are less than a mornings travel away by either the extensive high-speed rail or the numerous cheap flights.

And so I finally bit the bullet and bought myself an apartment. Having my friend Krissy there was certainly a great moral support that day as I nervously put my John Hancock on what was to be the first of many documents that will eventually make me a French apartment owner. Geneva is mere ten minutes away and the border to Switzerland is half that. It is a brand new complex and completion/move in date is Q3/08.

I have dreamed about something like this for ages and in fact got really close to having a second property (in the south of France) once before, when I was working as a Finance Analyst in London and we were earning ridiculous amounts of those mighty Pounds in the heady days before 9/11 came, the economy stumbled and we (along with contractor rates and property plans) fell back to earth.

But patience and dogged persistence paid off and here I am, looking forward to getting somewhere of my own where I can bang a nail in a wall and hang my pictures. It has been as the Beatles once sang, 'A Long and Winding road', but what a bloody interesting one!

Now all I need is someone to share it with... I wonder if Michelle Pfeiffer is still single...?