What a day

Funny how I always get an uncomfortable feeling around seven on Monday morning when I get to this place. It has been my weekly home for the last 27 years and will be for the next two and half (I suppose) until I go to the happy pensioners hunting grounds. Today was a particularly stress Monday. It was raining all day which does dampen the spirits, and it seemed that the wonderful customers had run out of tools over the week-end. On top of it one of the colleagues was off for the afternoon and the afternoon is always the worst. The computer also decided to take a pause now and again which didn't actually help with getting the work done. I eventually managed to crawl out of the place at 05.45 this evening. The work was done, but I gave up answering phones this afternoon and luckily one of my colleagues took them over for me. I told him to tell them I had had a heart attack, fell over a cable from the computer, or crashed the car at lunch time, just to put them off a bit. I do tend to have a black humour now and again.

At least it is a short week. Europe closes down this week on Thursday for Ascension day. Actually Europe without Great Britain is closing down. We have the holiday every year. As I have over one hundred extra hours, I will be taking Friday off as well, at last two days plus the week-end away from the stress of it all. My son informed today that he will also be taking a long week-end and hopping home from Brussels for the holidays. He will be going back next Monday, so it looks like a family gathering over the holidays. It is quite handy he is coming, being a legal person he can advise me how to kill my neighbours on the top floor and get away with it.

Otherwise my new lawn is coming along nicely. Funny nearly all the neighbours have stopped me or my husband and told us how lovely the garden now looks and how the gardeners did a wonderful job on it. I have planted some anemone bulbs and a couple of flowering objects. Strange that my neighbours living upstairs havn't told us how much they appreciate our new garden. I mean we really did it for them. My cats don't like the new lawn so much. Funny really but they avoid it when they go out into that part of the garden. I think it is very considerate of them as the gardener said we should avoid walking over it for the next two weeks.

And now to go and stick some photos of footballers in my Panini album. There are 545 pictures all together and I only need 120. I have not worked out how much it has cost up to now, but you get 5 photos for one franc. Obviously as time goes on you get doubles, but we have organised ourselves at work and more and more are joining. It started with me and two younger girls in the department. We now have an apprentice and a purchasing clerk in the team as well. We take our doubles to work and exchange them. If you don't have enough to exchange, then we just pay the 20 cents for the ones that we would like extra. One of the younger girls in my department said she had to take 18 pictures from my doubles, but I told her that is ok as I had just taken 17 of hers. Before you think we don't work, this was all done within 10 minutes during the coffee break. As most of the international players are to be found in the english teams it is as if the English team would also be there, although they are not. Here one of my photos from the Liverpool v Chelsea match. I particularly like this one. I think the player in question recovered, but he seemed to have had some sort of painful injury at the time of taking the photo. I was not at the match personally, but watching it on the tv.

Bits and Pieces

This was early Monday morning in the office. It was early because we were dealing with details before the daily work began. What do we see - on the right and left two of my colleagues and in the middle a third colleague concentrating on some important work. I did mention on one of my last blogs that the Panini sticky photos for EU2008 had now arrived in Switzerland. Over the week-end my colleagues and I had been sticking our photos of footballers into the album and had managed to sort out the photos that were double. I even took time to make an Excel list with filter, so that I did not have to take the album to work but just the photos. We were then busy exchanging our double photos - after all for one franc for a packet of five pictures, it is not a cheap hobby. I seem to have the Turkish team complete and quite a few Swiss, but the Italians are few and far between.

I was reading in a magazine under the title "Panini fever hits Switzerland" that the Swiss are buying the most and even 83% of the infected are over 15 years old - is this possible?. The biggest problem that Panini had was to pick the 20 footballers from each team to put in the album. Yes, Panini are very sly. In the 2006 world cup they apparently chose the German goalie Oliver Kahn as being the goalie for that team, only to find that Jens Lehmann was the chosen goalie. No problem, they quickly issued a sticky of Jens to replace that of Oliver Kahn. They even brought out a special edition to accommodate the new photo with information about Jens Lehmann.

Well I have about 300 pictures to go, so I am sure I will get there in the end. Even Mr. Swiss offered on Saturday to go half way with the pictures I bought. Yes, although the Swiss team have zero chances of winning anything the fever is there.

And now for something a bit sad. Now and again a bear finds its way into Switzerland. Not very often and it still gets into the headlines. The photo is bear JJ3 (we give them names) who has been drugged before being shot. There is of course a big uproar in certain groups of the population, so what did this bear do wrongly. He has been around for some time and decided why hunt for food when the human population leave enough lying around, so he started going too near to the villages. People living in bear countries know the problems with bears, basically they are scavengers taking what they can, but the Swiss do not realise this and leave their rubbish in bins outside. JJ3 thought this was meant for him and was getting too near to civilisation. To make sure that he didn't take any humans with him on his food hunting trips, it was decided that he days should come to an end. I was listening to a radio report where one of the wildlife keepers said that the trouble was JJ3 was getting too intelligent and was avoiding the wildlife keepers and going more to the houses where people were living. The authorities found that this was getting out of hand and shot JJ3. There is a bit of a discussion in Switzerland about this act of "terror" as the WWF found that our hunters should have waited a bit before making such a decision (wait for what - the first dead cat/person/child?). He was even offered a roof over his head at the bear pit in Bern, but this was turned down. Anyhow JJ3 will be preserved for the following population of the Swiss. He will be stuffed and exhibited in one of the museums.




Further to a blog I once wrote about politics in Switzerland and a lady, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, that was elected into the government of Switzerland as a minister, things are not going so good, or perhaps they are. Her own political party did not want her in the government as there was a strong fraction still supporting the minister that had to leave. This party, like any other, has rightwingers, and moderate wingers. The politician that had to go was extreme right, and this lady is more moderate. The situation was sharpened up last week. Her party said she no longer had their support and should quit the parliament immediately. The rest of the government were sort of split ideas, and she herself said she would stay. Well one thing must be said for the women of Switzerland. There was a bit demo in Bern (over 10,000 people which is a lot for Switzerland) came together and made their thoughts clear that the lady should stay. She came herself eventually, accompanied by loud applause and said "You came here not only for me, but because doubt has been cast on our democratic institutions". More than 100,000 people have signed an online petition in support of the justice minister (that is her department). Her party has said (i.e. the right wing) that they will expel her from the party, but I don't think this will go that far. You see we even have a bit of wild west in Switzerland from time to time.