Happy Days

If you live in Melbourne, you know all about it. Until about three years ago I lived on the Sandringham Line, and even though in theory there were times it would have been quicker for me to catch the train from Elsternwick Station, it rarely worked out that way, especially when I was heading to classes at Melbourne Uni. Invariably scheduled services would simply disappear, replaced by some glorified filthy sardine can packed with pissed-off commuters and running about 25 minutes late. Of course, I could have taken the tram, but it would have been faster to walk to Carlton.

This sort of thing never happens here. And I want to know why. I don't even live in Melbourne anymore but I STILL want to know why. Why is it so hard to get a decent rail service working in Melbourne? Why do I have to insist to Denis when we go to Melbourne that it's probably faster for us to sit in a traffic jam on Punt Rd than to have taken the tram from St Kilda. Probably. It depends. Because it changes from day to day. Being at your tram or train stop at 7.45am without fail doesn't guarantee that you'll arrive at work or school or just in town at any predictable time, unlike in Switzerland.

I laugh about the newspapers here and their lack of 'big' stories, but then I have to stop and realise that the front page of the Age online seems to devote itself almost exclusively to detailing the latest Connex/Myki/tram fuck-ups. If I have to look on the bright side, Melbourne's near-useless transport network was the impetus behind my going to get my driving licence all over again (after a gap of 12 years), and then buying my first car, just so I could get to work (about 5km away) in under an hour. So, thanks. I guess, from me and the environment.

Brrrrrrrrr

It's absolutely freezing here today. The wind is up, the clouds are out and after a brief foray into the local market I've decided to stay put until it passes (perhaps another five months or so).

On my way back up the hill, hugging a giant papaya (carbon neutral or not, I can't get by without the odd dose of tropical fruit), I was asked to donate money to a cause that sends temporary shelter to those in need, with a gas stove included and some basic furnishings. Given how this winter's started, I definitely agreed that now was no time for people to be living rough (not that there's any good time to be living rough) and asked which countries these shelters were going to. One of them was England. Has it come to this?

Then the guy collecting donations asked me if I wanted a tea or coffee, or perhaps a glass a hot wine? What, no hot chocolate?

The Best Revenge...

The building we live in has a small foyer that gets the make-over treatment on a regular basis, thanks to the kids who live here and various holidays and festivals (Easter, Halloween). This last weekend, a little working bee was established by some parents to create the annual Christmas Nativity Scene, and this year's is a pearler. Baby Jesus? Check. Three Wise Men? You betcha. Cattle lowing? Of course. Gold minaret and a woman in full chador? Why yes! These last two items may be about 700 years too early, but no one ever stipulated that our annual Christmas extravaganza had to be historically accurate.

There's been a lot of talk here and in the media abroad about Switzerland's recent vote to ban the construction of minarets, and I think this is the best response (see pic) to the situation. Generally, I like my political protest on the subtle side. Kind of like an art installation, but with little chocolates given away.

We had three friends visiting us over the weekend, all the way from Oz and the UK, and it certainly made us all smile (and think). The idea that the well-mannered nippers who reside in our apartment block would deliberately flout Swiss law and construct a minaret is just too cool for school. No need for ugly protests, angry slogans, online rants or effigy burning.

I can't wait to see what they'll do next Easter!

Best Job

I’ve been freelance since 2001, so in a way, every job since then is a new one for me, although really, the work I do is generally a continuation on a very familiar theme. Since 2001 I’ve written travel guides and freelance articles about travel, covered international sporting events for official news services and edited everything from textbooks to marketing proposals. Before that, I was a full-time editor and before that I worked in a bookshop.

When I did full-time travel writing I heard the line ‘but that’s my dream job!
a lot. And for a good while, it was my dream job too. But when I think about the job where I was consistently happiest -- and I mean ‘can’t wait to get there and see what happens today’ happy -- it was my job as the Sunday casual sales assistant at Lesley McKay’s Bookshop in Woollahra, Sydney.

Why? Well, it kind of killed multiple birds with one stone. I got to basically work alone (I was the only staff member for Sundays), yet still have plenty of contact with interesting people. I got to force my taste on innocent members of the public, who often trusted my advice about one of life’s biggest decisions (ie, what to read next). I got to flick through fabulous coffee table books that I had no intention of buying at my leisure and also all the photo sections in various biographies and autobiographies, because that’s what biographies are for, right? I got to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme as much as I wanted to -- is there a lovelier piece of music to hear when you’re pottering around a quiet place on your own and its raining outside and you’re waiting on a coffee to be brought to you from the café across the courtyard? And I got to borrow books to read, as though I worked in a really high-class private library. If I bought them, then the discount was reason enough to just keep showing up every week.

It’s been over 11 years since I left that job (I quit because I got a full-time job with Lonely Planet and moved to Melbourne) but I still entertain nostalgic fantasies that that I could jump right back into that gig, dusting cloth and New York Review of Books at the ready and act like nothing had changed. No Amazon, no parallel importation of books, no GST, no Kindles. Just me and the books, plus a few loyal customers.

What about you? Is there a job from your past that you’d happily go back to?

Table Talk

The Swiss love going to dinner parties. I have never had to sit through so many in such a short space of time (less than three years). Back in the old country, I remember that most dinner parties that I went to consisted of getting as sloshed as possible (minimum one bottle of wine per person, no need to say cheers to anyone) and then talking about real estate, sex, drunken scandals, gifted children (if anyone had decided to invite parents), dietary restrictions and ridiculous workplace demands ('Bet I can work longer unpaid hours than you!').

Here though, it's a different story. For a start you have to show up on time and then kiss everyone three times on the cheek (EXHAUSTING, I tell you -- Denis once invited 13 people over to eat and I needed a lie down and some antibiotics before we even got round to the nibbles). What's more, you don't really get to medicate your social anxiety like you do in Australia. For a dinner party of about six people, you'd be pushing it to get through three bottles of wine. And you don't just crack open a bottle and start pouring, you have to wait till everyone's ready, then you have to look in everyone's eyes and say 'Santé!' ('To your health!'). And then it's all about polite conversation, meaning no thinly veiled insults, no passive-aggressive observations about decor, no sarcastic interjections, no slagging off the ones who couldn't make it or had to leave early and no stories about vomiting or loss of bowel control. Jesus wept.

When I first got here and everyone made a big effort to make me feel at home (sadly, they didn't know that they would need to import things such as Melbourne Bitter, day-long brunches and soy flat whites in order to do that) I would sit at tables for hours on end and not have a clue what anyone was talking about (thanks to my then-non-existent French). So I would basically eat more than everyone else (an impressive cheese gut within three months) and then inevitably drink more than everyone else, making myself all but useless when someone would eventually try to include me in the conversation and instigate an English-language chat. Anyone who says they enjoy the first year of living in a foreign place and learning a foreign language is a dirty liar.

Anyway, now I can understand what everyone's talking about at the table (unless they come from Valais) and I STILL am stumped for how they manage to talk so much without ever resorting to these tried-and-true Aussie dinner party staples:

1. what they earn or what other people earn
2. their mortage (two-thirds of people rent, often for their ENTIRE lives -- no wonder weekend newspapers are so thin and real-estate agent jokes non-existent)
3. private schools (so exxy they're beyond even Swiss budgets -- there's one half-way between here and Geneva that will set you back a tidy AUD$100,000 or so a year -- ski season included -- so everyone just concentrates on public education and making sure it's actually half-decent. Mad I tell you!)
4. lactose intolerance, or FASCINATING dietary restrictions in general
5. Ford v Holden
6. Religion
7. Politics
8. Donna Hay and her sausagey fingers
9. the parlous state of the Australian Film Industry/publishing scene/journalism/public service/healthcare
10. reality TV alpha-male bogans

Sigh...

Any news?

You may or may not know that Switzerland loves a referendum. They seem to vote on something every other weekend, and this past weekend was spent deciding whether to ban minarets or not.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/switzerland-bans-mosque-minarets-20091130-jzcx.html

The minarets lost. There's a grand total of four minarets in Switzerland. Denis is not feeling too proud of Switzerland at the moment, but at least he can say that his county (Vaud) voted against the inititaive (ie, Vaud has no problem with minarets).

He's been covering the issue for Reuters for some time now (the storm started brewing a few years ago) and has always been horrified that the right-wing party thinks that such initiatives have any place in a country with a supposedly neutral stance.

Me? I feel yuck about the whole thing. But I don't get a vote yet.

Wonders Will Never Cease

I found out the other day that even though I have only been a legal resident *cough* of Switzerland for just over a year and that I am self-employed I am entitled to 15 weeks of maternity leave pay at 80% of my usual income.

Eh?

I had resigned myself to saving my pennies this year in order to spend 2010 not earning money but looking after the little prawn full-time.

How does a country of 7 million people, who pay less tax than we do in Australia (both direct and indirect), manage to find this kind of cash in the kitty?

How is it that we are still only at the stage of discussing this kind of thing in Australia?

On another note, I can't figure out how to alter the fonts on my blog anymore, so it's back to serif for now...