Friday, June 29, 2007

Ground Hog Day


Perth is a nice city but there was one thing about it that started to drive me crazy after living there for so many years - the weather! Every night at 7pm the forecaster would repeat exactly the same phrases over and over. “Tomorrow will be sunny and fine and 24 degrees”. (Celcius of course). Week in, month out, year after year after year.


Now a little sunshine is nice, but man I really started to feel like Bill Murray living Groundhog Day over and over and over there. “What’s tomorrow gonna be like?” “Hmmm, same as frickin yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that..”


That’s what I like about living here in Europe and amongst the high mountains especially. We get awesome thunder and lighting storms; we get beautiful spring days with white fluffy clouds; nice cold winters with enough snow to go skiing but not so much that your drive-to-work vehicle has to be a snowplough! There are spring sun showers and autumn downpours, but spread between enough sunshine and lovely days to make it all wonderful. Basically, we have weather...


When I was a little tacker growing up I read all these kids books that were mostly from northern hemisphere publishers. About when the autumn wind would blow and it was time to put on rain coats and scarves and galoshes and tramp in the puddles. Winter was the time to make snowmen and snowballs and then drink hot chocolate at home after a walk through the forest listening to the Robin Red Breast in the snowflake covered trees. And spring was a time to watch the trees and flowers come to life again and see the birds start to sing. Something that isn't as obvious in Perth where the unique flora and fauna is mostly perennial.

Each day here is a postcard and a surprise and much like Monet in the French countrysidepainting haystacks in the ever changing light, the same beautiful vista here can have a hundred different visages depending on the time of year.

I just love it and when no one's looking...I jump in the puddles!

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Can I stop please Sir? My brain is full!


Well, as some of you know I have just come back from an exam in London for the 9th (of 12) of my MBA units.

Man I studied so much preparing for this exam and would end a nine or ten hour day at the office and then start the evening shift - hunched over my finance books and going through to ten or eleven at night or until my eyes went blurry - whichever came first!

Although I was starting to get cabin fever there after a while, I really enjoyed the unit as with maths based subjects once you understand the concepts behind the formulae, you just plug the numbers in the right slots and crunch it through. Sweet.

The exam was in the morning so I got to spend the afternoon visiting some buddies from my old contract position at News Limited near Tower Bridge in London and then caught the evening flight back to Geneva from Gatwick (there was one helluva queue for security screeeing but that's another story).

I finished the exam with 20-25 minutes to spare and thought I'd missed a question, but nope, I must've just been well up on the unit and zipped through it. Cool!

So hopefully another one in the bag and getting closer to the finish line. I always liked the feeling when you get to the very last exam (as I did for my Diploma of Business or my Degree in Business) - that feeling that when those three hours and five minutes reading are up - that's it. Finito! As part -time students everyone compares how many units they've done/got to do, and it's a nice feeling to say 'that's it'.

Only trouble is - with all this free time now in between semesters - what do i do with myself?!

Monday, June 04, 2007

Happy Anniversary...


Well, it has been a year since I first started working here.


A lot of folks tell me 'Oh, you are sooo lucky to be working in Geneva..' etc. And indeed I am - it is a lovely city in a beautiful region of France/ Switzerland. But boy were the first few months fun and games!


I got a phone call confirming the job and giving me just four days to pack up my whole life in London and start a whole new one in Switzerland. I arrived off the plane with one suitcase and a laptop and that was it.


The arcane renting laws in France and Switzerland had this Kafka-esque quality to them - to rent an apartment you need to have your EU frontalier working permit, but to get your frontalier permit you need an address and hence an apartment. But you also need to prove that you are from a border region by showing that you have telephone/electricity bills etc., but how can you get those if you don't have an apartment. And round and round it went - for a longggg time.


Eventually after many migraines and lots of to-ing and fro-ing between the town-hall and the office and the rental people, I got my work permit complete with photo that showed my amusement at the situation (or rather the lack of it!)


The days were long as I had to catch a bus to the border, then take the tram to the city, then catch another bus to the office. At night repeat the whole process only backwards. Each (ten hour) day had another three hours of commuting added to it so I would start at 5:00am and collapse into my cot somewhere around 10:00pm for some sleep ready to start the next day. Needless to say I looked forward to weekends with great enthusiasm!


But as the weeks went by I slowly got organised and got the phone connected, gas switched on, bought furniture, a TV/DVD, a washing machine ( no more cold, late night rainy trips in winter shlepping to the Laundromat), and eventually a car. Each purchase was a tiny victory - especially since it was all done in a foreign language.


Each successive purchase made life soooo much easier - especially the car which gave me freedom, and I have never appreciated the little things as much as I do now. One of the major lessons in life that I learned from my time in Iraq was how little stuff you actually need. Nowadays the car trip is just ten minutes through the back roads instead of the hour and a half long dog-leg through the city on the public transport.


I have finally achieved a very long held dream of working in Europe and have even conducted an entire audit of one of the companies subsidiaries (including written correspondence) with the Paris auditor completely in French so my language skills must be doing alright…


Of course, my supervisors are nowhere near as good to work for as my boss in Iraq or London - that I really do miss - and there are times when I could cheerfully put a needle in my current bosses voodoo dolls. One of these days I’d love to have paid off my houses, be working for myself and have a sailboat to take friends on and go fishing and diving off. But for now I have ticked off one of those major personal goals, am making a good quid, and am set up comfortably enough to enjoy weekend drives through lush mountainous countryside on sunny days filled with singing birds and get to delve into the treasure trove that is Europe.


Happy anniversary…