graham’s blog

More bad weather

This is another one of those weather posts but it does emphasize the lack of any notable news here in Geneva. It has been rather wet these past two weeks and every time I leave home to go to work - or leave work to go home I have to see if it is raining enough to get out my umbrella.

Paradoxically I’m a Great Britain (slight pun intended) and always pack my umbrella but use it as little as possible. My jacket has a hood and I prefer using that to using an umbrella that i have to keep on my knees and avoid getting anything else wet during public transport.

Here is a tip I learnt from my Dad. Always carry a plastic bag with you and put the wet umbrella into it during transport. When you get home, or at work, dry the umbrella conventionally and turn the plastic bag inside out to dry for the next run.

Practice what you preach

I came to Switzerland in 1978 and was surprised to learn enough French to get by with in the course of 4 months. Ever since that era I have perfected my French and consider myself bilingual. I often calculate, think and dream in French but of course make many errors most of which are more visible in written form. Then there is my accent, but I’m trying to keep on topic here

Many people ask me how I managed and I always tell them that the only barrier to learning is in holding back and failing to try, because the person you are trying to communicate with wants to understand you and the errors you inevitably make aren’t as important as the message you are trying to convey. You always have to “Go for it!” and leave your inhibitions behind.

How come I don’t practice what I preach then? I’ve been mulling over this for a few days.

I have quite a few visitors and family members that are more comfortable in French and each attempt I have made to write in French and in English has “lost steam” after a few days or weeks due to lack a perceived lack of interest.

A good webfriend reminded my lately that it wasn’t because there was an absence of comments that people aren’t reading what I am writing. This must of course be true when I write in French too.

I’m going to try again and to hell with my faults in French (which incidentally is a lot harder to write than to speak, in my opinion).

I won’t even try to do too much spell checking and grammar sifting. I will only have one rule. Black writing for English and blue writing for French. (Once I work out a comfortable way of accomplishing that)

If I’m successful at it, I’ll consider adding a plugin and doing it as professionally (well almost as) Stephanie does on her perfectly bilingual blog.

Localisation woes

Two things that have bothered me today.

First off I log into MySpace only to be greeted by a welcome to the Swiss MySpace and in German! The login screen had mention of French so I chose that in order to understand what was happening. Once I had logged in I was directed to the UK MySpace.

Problem is I live in Switzerland but in order to ‘benefit’ from Swiss Groups or happenings I would have to accept MySpace in French. My Web language however is English. Why can’t we have a Swiss English Speaking Group ? I’m sure that Stephanie would have something to say about this over at Climb to the Stars as she has extensive coverage of language problems on the Web on her blog.

My mind has gone a complete blank for the other item I wanted to post here but I am sure it had something to do with a site assuming that because I am living in Switzerland I must speak Germann.

I get “junk mail” from Nero, Filemaker and Iris in German and there is no way to get them to change languages so all these messages get deleted.

I’m not an exception. A recent ethnological survey lists 12 living languages in Switzerland.

Websites should bear this in mind but at least leave English (as it tends to be a common language for many) when they are localising.

A major pain is EBay that directs Swiss customers to their German website or more subtly Swiss (French speaking) sites that direct their customers to French Websites. I’ll stop there or I’ll start ranting.

Image of the day

This particular scene attracted my attention the other day at the barracks.

Almost recovered

In my last post I mentioned that we were going to Parent’s Day at the Swiss Army Barracks of our son in Frauenfeld. In fact he sleeps in Frauenfeld due to size constraints but spends all his active time at Auenfeld Barracks a few kilometres away.

I won’t go into the details of the day but we spent more than 7 hours in the car going there and getting back and almost an hour of that time was in traffic jams around Zurich.

We did have a great day though and it was interesting to see all that Davis gets up to and now we can fit images to the faces and places he describes.

Fortunately the sun was shining but it was still bitterly cold and we really got the feeling of real Swiss Army Life which my Son-in-Law described as “running to wait and waiting to run” which seems pretty accurate. I will be posting some pics on Flickr in addition to the few I’m posting here.

Army Manouvers

Although it has become a little easier these past few years, army training is still more or less obligatory for men in Switzerland. Our son has been doing his “Service Militaire” since October and tomorrow is Family Day. The day starts at 9.00am on the other side of Switzerland over 300kms from Geneva.

So tomorrow morning we will be up at 3.30am in order to pick up our Son-in-law and make the 4 hour journey to Frauenfeld the other side of Winterthur.

That’s why we have to get a few hours sleep. Goodnight!

I found these videos on YouTube.

Brrr!

We thought Spring was just around the corner but the cold weather is back with a vengeance and a freezing wind has been chilling me at the bus stop these past few mornings. The thermometer has lost almost 10 degrees celsius and both scarf and gloves are necessary.

The wind was whipping up a storm in the garden too and we have had to redress pots and recover umbrellas on the lawn.

Luckily the forecast is for warmer weather this weekend. (Icy) Fingers crossed.

Geneva Roundup

 The main story of these past few days is that following on from a surprising popular vote just over a week ago, our local government - who is also my employer - has passed a law banning smoking in the vast majority of public spaces from the 1st of July this year.

I don’t think I mentioned the results of the vote but more than 55% of the population voted and almost 80% approving banning smoking in public spaces.

The government’s buildings are smoke-free since the 2nd of January this year and the general ban on smoking enters into force in the same year. It’s almost too good to be true.

I’m an intolerant ex-smoker and smoked almost two packs a day before giving up 25 years ago. I’m looking forward to going into restaurants and bars that were previously too smoke-filled for me.

I’m very pleased.

Two other pieces of news :

• The Geneva Motor Show will start in a few days time and Geneva will live the effervescence of the event as usual. Don’t plan to visit over the next ten days as the hotels are all booked up.
• Geneva will be recycling some of Naples waste (180,000 tonnes of it) in our incineration plants.

Looking forward to going home

I’m glad that this evening will be a quiet night at home.

Yesterday was the Opera and the day before we ate out at a really nice restaurant.

After the starter (a Tuna Sashimi), we had a whole Zander (I had to look it up in Wikipedia as although it is hard to find here, it was fished from the lake). The waiter prepared it at the table and we all had some (We were a party of three) Eaten with three dainty sized vegetables portions and “pommes frites allumettes” it was delicious.

So this evening we will eat a lot more modestly, but after I will have the time to relax and enjoy an evening with my Valentine. She is the most amazing woman in the world and I love her passionately.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all wherever you are and with whoever you are with.

Love rules!

I was looking for a recent photo of the two us but as I am the photographer, they are hard to come by and I’m posting this away from home.

I started looking for photos of hearts and came across this very interesting photo through Google Image search.

As I don’t take without permission I read the blog that this illustration came from and it is a really nice blog in the inspirational vein.

I think it only fair to link back so here it is.

Effervescence over at Going Solo

As you know I’m a strong supporter of Going Far’s upcoming conférence, Going Solo in Lausanne. It will be happening just up the road from me in Geneva on the 16th of May. This is why there is a badge in the sidebar.

I learnt that registration was open the other day through Twitter and today through Facebook.

I also noticed that there is a special Earlier Bird price if you register this week and I wanted to draw your attention to it so you don’t miss the opportunity.

As for me, and as surprising as you might think, I’m hesitating. It’s certainly affordable and definitely worthy of my paid support but I’m not really a freelancer in the real meaning of the term. I work for the Geneva State at 90% spread over four days instead of five which doesn’t leave me a lot of useable time on my hands.

I am however launching my own business very shortly and definitely well before the conference day.

Why? Well it’s because I want to put the fun and excitement back into my professional activities and I regularly get frustrated in my main job as it is very conventional and far from social webbish. What excites me is the Social Web and the possibilities it opens for discovery and working together on media and projects. I have a lot of experience and I know how to use this to help and accompany others in setting up their web identities. It is a reality that decently priced quality hosting is available and that with open source software and some help from professional web developpers and graphists it is possible to establish your home on the web and sustain it either with a little help or with more substantial support packages. The hurdles are therefore financial, skill sets and disponibility. I can successfully address these issues and that is what I am going to do.

I am therefore launching for the experience and excitiement of doing something new and for opening up new horizons. At my age I don’t see myself freelancing myself to retirement and it wouldn’t be fair on my wife and children to jeopardize our current situation which is the fruit of our labours.

So to be brutally honest I’ve just reserved our holidays for September and have to put aside for the taxman and I’m finding it a little difficult justifying the expense for a conference that I’m sure will be useful, pertinent and fun but would only be of use to me. My wife and kids won’t get much from it directly.

I still have a few days to make up my decision though and there is a good chance that I’ll attend anyway. It’s only a fool that can’t change his mind.

It is going to be a fantastic conference from what I can see and we don’t have a lot of these in Switzerland. We are indeed lucky that Stephanie is organising it and this a pre-indication of how successful it will be.