An unfortunate post

I know it's been unexcusably long since my last post, and I promise to post a lot in the upcoming weeks, but unfortunately, my very first post this year is a real downer.

My apartment gets almost no direct sunlight and can get quite cold. He had been fighting a losing struggle ever since he arrived and it was pretty clear this day would come before winter was over. I had friends water him while I was gone on break, but it just wasn't enough. When I returned from vacation there were no living leaves and there was nothing I could do.

Readers of this blog have been avid Basil supporters since the beginning, so I felt it was only fair to make a small tribute so that everyone could reminisce. He will be missed.

Basil - A Retrospective

A break in the action

Between now and midnight (which is when the first results come in over here), I can either sit here and develop an aneurysm, or, more constructively, I can post some random odds and ends that I've had sitting around for a while. Fortunately for all involved, I've decided on the second choice. So, in no particular order ...

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When I first arrived at my new apartment, the only thing waiting for me in my mailbox was a letter from my property manager telling me that someone would be around to fix a leaky radiator, and a bulk mail catalog from Ronja Versand. Ronja, as it is effectively known, is a retailer of the finer things in life: microfiber sheets, bath robes, and high fashion clothing for him and her. Best of all, Ronja delivers these products at very competitive prices. How do they manage to do this? By cutting out the middle man: products are shipped directly from 1993 to your door. Check out some of these dope threads.

Fig. 1: Having a tough time choosing between a dragon motif and tiger-print for the sheets in your babe lair? Problem solved.

Fig. 2: Please Hammer, don't hurt 'em!

Fig. 3: They have many different styles, so everyone in Tha Funky Bunch can sport a unique look.

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The first thing you notice when you see my apartment is the front door. Not only because it's literally the gateway to my apartment, but also because it is crazy. First, it is big, ugly, and gray, which doesn't fit at all with the muted cream/wood colors of the building interior. Of course, it's a hideous color of gray because it's made out of industrial sheet metal, not wood. Also, it has a huge door knob in the middle of the door (hobbit-style) and big, metal circle on the left where the lock is. All in all, it is not the most welcoming door I've ever seen; it really looks more like something you'd see in a prison or bank. As ugly as it is from the outside, to really appreciate it you have to open it up.

Fig. 4: Between the many deadbolts and the long hallway that it opens into, my apartment is virtually impregnable.

As I have cleverly marked with the red arrows, the door has not one but SEVEN deadbolts. Four are located next to the normal latch, one above that, one below it, and a final one that goes vertically into to the top of the door frame. These are the kind of locks that you have if you live in the Bronx, in the 70's. Last I checked, the crime rate in Lausanne was fairly low and although my neighborhood has a definite "ethnic" feel to it, I would hardly call it dangerous or even slightly sketchy. Further, the fact that these doors are so "secure" is sort of countered by the fact that the main door to the building is practically zero security: if it happens to close properly (which it usually doesn't), all you have to do to open it is press the button labeled poste and push the door. This is a secret, though, so don't go telling any criminals.

As everyone in the building has one of these crazy high-security doors, they were obviously purchased by the management in bulk. Which leads me to the question: what kind of person decides to buy obscenely expensive doors for every unit, but doesn't buy a clothes dryer for the building? All I can figure is that the doors salesman/woman must have been one helluva looker.

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I have a problem in my apartment: fruit flies. I've never really noticed these before in my life, but these little buggers are all over my new apartment. It's true that they don't bite, and in general they don't really pester you that much, but, man, to paraphrase my governor, they are some ugly mofos.

Fig. 5: If you zoom in, you can see their creepy looking red heads. GROSS.

I know what your thinking: Paul, you must be a slob. But no! I swear, my apartment is clean, there is no rotting food anywhere, and I don't leave crumbs or dirty dishes on the counter. As best as I can tell, most of the flies seem to be attracted by (gasp) Basil. So, obviously, I can't just "remove the source of the problem" as one might do under normal circumstances, so I need options.

I looked around on the internet and found a couple of home remedies. One suggested putting some white wine in a cup along with a micro-dab of dish detergent. The idea is that the wine attracts the flies, but the dish detergent breaks the surface tension of the water and causes the flies to drown when they land on the water, instead of float. This idea intuitively appealed to me, as it seemed grounded in solid physics, so I set up a small jar as instructed. Another recommendation was to put a piece of fruit in a jar, then cover the jar with cellophane. If you punch just the right sized holes in the cellophane, the flies can fly in, but they can't fly out. As I had some fruit, some cellophane, and another jar, I set this one up as well. My office mate suggested a bowl of honey, mixed with a dash of vinegar. He claimed that the honey attracts the flies and that the vinegar kills them. I told him that his entire setup confused me, because, well I've certainly heard about honey and vinegar vis-à-vis catching flies, but I wasn't sure that it agreed with his premise. Also, I don't have honey or vinegar at home, so I couldn't test his theory.

Fig. 6: Basil's future hangs in the balance.

This is a picture of the overnight results of the test. As you can see, the glass of wine seemed to attract quite a few flies, but only a couple actually took a swim. Since it only killed three flies in about 12 hours, it was not as effective as a paper towel or a rolled up newspaper, so I decided to call it off. The fruit in the glass has not yet attracted any interest from the flies. I figure I'll give it a couple of days to properly "rot" and we'll see if that makes any difference. In the mean time, I continue to hunt the flies myself and I, of course, eagerly await suggestions from my beloved readers.

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Last Friday was Halloween, which I almost totally forgot about. No one here seemed to be to excited about it, and I don't think I saw a single costume on campus all day. Oh well. But, when I got home, there was a whole gaggle of kids in costumes milling about my building. I got super excited that for the first time in my life I might be able to actually give out candy to a kid for Halloween, but, of course, all of the candy that people have sent me here in Switzerland is sitting in my office. So, I ran down the street to the corner store, bought a bunch of candy bars (full-sized!) and ran back to my apartment. By the time I got back, the group of kids was gone, but I optimistically put the candy in a nice bowl (it would have been weird to give people candy out of a plastic bag) and grabbed my camera -- I wanted to be prepared. Of course, not a single other kid came anywhere near my building, so it was all a huge bust. Oh well. I didn't really have any good reason to post this, I really just wanted to mention Halloween so I would have an excuse to show a WAY TOO ADORABLE photo of my nephew in his costume.

Fig. 7: Although it wasn't as good a costume as last year (he was a baby Elvis), at least he went with Bob the Builder instead of Joe the Plumber.

Currently, the Man (and his mother and father) are in Rome. On November 12th, I meet them in beautiful Sion, Switzerland, and from there, I get to spend 4 full days with Alexander. It will be awesome. If I were you, I'd be jealous already. And, don't worry -- I'll take plenty of pictures.

Inner City Pressure

Well, it only took two and a half months, but I have finally moved into a quasi-permanent apartment. With a little help from Serge and his car, and a few fully-encumbered hikes across town, I have cast off my tiny, ugly, smelly studio for a much larger, less ugly, and significantly better smelling apartment on the other side of Lausanne. Last night was my first night in the new apartment, so I am still getting to know the place, but I figured I ought to post something before people start boycotting my blog in protest.

First, the good:

• The apartment nice, clean, and spacious.
• The bathroom is clean, has a full shower, and nice fixtures.
• The kitchen has a full-sized oven, four-burner stove, and plenty of cabinets.
• The bedroom is large, has it's own radiator, and has a wooden floor.
• The building looks really high-class on the inside and looks well-maintained.
• I have a cellar the size of a basketball court. Unfortunately, there's no electricity, so I can't turn it into a second bedroom.
• The surrounding neighborhood has an eclectic (for Switzerland) mix of people and places. Just down the street from my house, there is a Chinese, an Indian, and a Middle-eastern bodega. There is also an Indian restaurant, a Vietnamese restaurant (Linda Vista represent!), a Middle-eastern restaurant, and two pizza places.
• There are two barber shops in my building and at least 4 on the block. I live in the absolute epicenter of stylish, low-cost hair-cutting. How ironic.
• I am within walking distance of a huge supermarket (which is only open during "normal" business hours) and a couple of smaller places that are open as late as 10pm.
• I am only a 6 minute walk from the metro stop, thus making my total commute time 18 minutes.
• I am around the corner from the "Colonia Liberia Italia," an Italian community center. If I ever get the urge to play cards with Italian pensioners, I don't have to go far.
• I am only a 5 minute walk from the Collection de l'Art Brut, i.e. the single-greatest art gallery in the known world. Everyone I know loves this place. If you are even remotely thinking about coming out to Lausanne to visit, let me say: You need to come to this city just to see this gallery. It will BLOW YOUR MIND.

The bad:

• The apartment is on the Rez-de-chaussée, i.e. the ground floor. Fortunately, it is somewhat elevated from the street so there is at least some semblance of privacy.
• A significant portion of my total floor space consists of a long, fairly useless hallway.
• There are no closets.
• There is not a single drawer in the kitchen.
• There is not a square inch of actual storage space in the apartment.
• There are 27 units in the building, and there is exactly one washing machine in the basement for everyone to use.

The ugly:

There is no dryer. Just a bunch of laundry lines and a space heater. I haven't gone through the calculation myself, but I would estimate that this system is so obscenely inefficient that a new dryer would pay for itself in energy savings within a few months. Further, given that they must be pulling in around $25k a month in rent, you think they could swing the one-time cost of a dryer. Really, what aggravates me about this is that I have lived in this building for 24 hours and I am ready to go fight (metaphorically) with the concierge, the management, the ownership, or whoever it takes in order to get a frigging dryer in this building, and I want it immediately. On the other hand, there are 26 other people who have lived here much, much longer but are of such weak moral fiber that they probably haven't even voiced a complaint. Pathetic.

People who've known me a long time know I have a certain fondness for quixotic quests such as this (e.g. open lunch in high school, math forum at Mudd, recycling at Sharon Crest, etc.) so I assure you that there will be future updates on the situation.

Time for some pics!

Fig. 1: The outside of my building. Those two (and a half) windows belong to me. "Coiffure Edgar" offers surprisingly reasonable rates for being in Switzerland, but I still doubt that it can hold a candle to San Diego's Happy Barber and Happy Barber 2.

Fig. 2: The entrance of my apartment. I am thinking of covering the walls in mirrors to give the illusion of space.

Fig. 3: My living room. Yes, that is my only piece of "furniture." I am typing on it right now.

Fig. 4: My quite large bedroom. The white thing in the bottom right corner is the edge of a folding bed that my labmate has let me borrow. In the future, I will probably put my bed in the middle of the room, because as my one-time roommate Jonathan Hsu wisely noted, "I have seen tons of episodes of MTV Cribs and not one rapper has their bed in a corner."

Fig. 5: My kitchen. The clothes (visible on the left) are there because the small ledge there is quite literarly the only place in the house that I can hang clothes at the present time. A trip to Ikea in the near future will hopefully remedy this situation.

I hope that you have enjoyed this brief tour of my new place, I'm sorry if there isn't a whole lot to show. Once I get some furniture and whatnot, I'll probably take some more photos, just to whet your appetite to come visit. And, of course, I'll make sure to take a picture of the new dryer as soon as we get it.

Had I an AK, today was the type of day during which I might have had to use it

Today was a bad day. Bad, bad, bad. In just about every way that a day can be a failure, today was a failure. Normally, I wouldn't want to bore my beloved readers with the sordid details, but I think that this blog has taken on an unrealistically upbeat and optimistic tone. I don't want the reader to get the mistaken impression that, as the Hungarians might say, life here is sour cream all the way to the bottom, but that, in fact, some rain does fall (metaphorically) here in Lausanne. So, a brief rundown of the vacuum of suck that was today.

First, I woke up in a great mood. That should have been a worrisome sign as I usually have to drag myself out of bed, but instead I skipped out of my apartment at 8:30 with a smile on my face and a belly full of coffee. The first thing I checked when I got to work was the score of yesterday's Chargers' game. Eight and a half point favorites against an undermanned Carolina team; I had every reason to hope that the Chargers would give me a pleasant start to the day.

Of course, they managed to lose on the very last play of the game. Great. Not only does the loss make me slightly unhappy, but it also means that I can't read any football websites this week for fear that they'll pour salt on the wound. It's only fun to read sports when your team is winning. So, five minutes into my work day, things are already not going well.

Settling down to work did not improve my mood. My current task involves doing two things: purchasing an expensive piece of equipment and designing some parts to make it do what we want. The company I want to buy the equipment from is a real penny-ante operation in England that has become a giant pain in my butt. They want 30% of the payment price up front (a whopping $20,000, or so), which of course is not something that Universities typically do, so we've been trying to make special arrangements to get them their money early. Friday, they told me that the arrangements we had carefully planned were no good and that we'd have to do better. This puts me in the uncomfortable position of actually having to negotiate, something which I haven't done much of since the 1994 San Diego Comic Con. I had to write them a classic, "well, if that's they way it is, I guess we'll have to take our business elsewhere" email, and now I have to wait. If they don't blink, I have to start looking for another company, which is difficult since the only other offers I got were almost twice what the Brits wanted. Sucks. Oh, and the 3-D design program I've been using (SolidWorks 2008) is a flaming turd. If you're at all familiar with SolidWorks 2000 (which I know many of you are), then let me describe the "new" version. It's slower, it has even worse laid out menus and toolbars, it is even more awkward to make drawings, and it straight-up reboots your computer at random every hour or so. Sometimes it does this literally as you are clicking on the "save" button, thus resulting in a barrage of swear words and a forced trip to the water fountain to cool down.

Finally, this evening I had a date to visit an apartment. This is roughly the 30th apartment I have visited (not an exaggeration), so it's getting a little routine. I called up the agency last Monday, was told to visit today at 6pm the following Monday, made a note in my "apartment search" spreadsheet, and didn't think of it again until this afternoon. I took the bus to the apartment, knocked on the door, and was greeted by the current tenant who informed me that the "open house" was last Tuesday and that the agency had told her that there were more than enough applicants by Wednesday afternoon and that they weren't accepting anymore. It would have been amusing or infuriating if this were the first or second time that I'd been misled by one of the agencies, but this is probably the 10th time I've gotten incorrect information which has led me to waste an hour or two of my life. At this point, it is just depressing.

Fortunately, when I got home, Basil was waiting for me and looking better than ever. I think he's getting a little big for his current pot, so I will try to get him a newer, bigger place. I think we could both use a bigger place. Here is a picture I took a couple days ago of him, he's changed a lot since then, personality-wise, but his appearance is still roughly the same.

Fig. 1: My vast new domain. During the day, Basil gets to sit on the windowsill.

Just so both of my readers don't go calling the suicide help line all at once, I want to end this by saying that I am in a much better mood tonight. Lately, I've become a deeply religious (in an ancient-Greek sort of way after finishing Herodotus's Histories) person and I've decided to start checking auspices and auguries whenever possible. As I don't know how to properly read the flight of birds, I instead just look for encouraging signs wherever I can find them. Below, I offer what I consider to be an excellent omen of things to come. Also, eating it made me pretty happy, too.

Fig. 2: This egg and I have a lot in common: same birthday, same basic shape, same delicious interior.

The agony of defeat

Today is Sunday, which means -- of course -- that absolutely nothing is open. Well, practically nothing -- maybe a half dozen or so small grocery stores are open. Swiss people find this state of affairs perfectly normal and, I guess, find ways to entertain themselves that don't involve eating, buying or doing anything. As far as I can tell, they don't even stray from their homes. Here's a picture I took at 2:00 PM at "Place de la Palud," pretty much dead in the center of town.

Fig. 1: This town... is looking like a ghost town...

Under normal circumstances, I would probably take the train somewhere or go for a hike or something. Today, though, I am not planning on doing anything that might require moving or flexing any of my muscles. Why? Well, the simple answer is because I'm an idiot. Here's how it went down.

My officemate (Jens, the German) noticed that I had packed a pair of court shoes in my lugage (all of my lugage was in my office for a while). He asked me if I played badminton, which sure enough I did at one point in time, and suggested that we get together to play sometime. Even though I haven't actually touched a racquet in about five years and haven't played seriously in almost ten years, I figured that this would be a great way to get to know my new co-worker and also a chance to exercise a little. I've been so busy between work and finidng an apartment that I haven't even gone running since I've gotten here.

Jens mentioned that there was a "Badminton Club" somewhere in Malley (a suburb of Lausanne) and that we could rent a court there. Sounds great. One of our other labmates lives in Malley and gave us directions to the club ("it's not far from the metro stop, just go past the 'glass building'. Look for a sign that says 'Keops'") and after a quick check on the internet, we made a date for Saturday at 10 AM.

Yesterday at 9:55, I met Jens at the Malley metro stop. We saw the "glass building," and headed towards it. Once nearby, we saw these signs.

Fig. 2: Hey! There it is.

Fig. 3: We must be getting close!

Fig. 4: Almost there ...

Feeling fairly confident that we were indeed heading towards a badminton club of some sort, we followed the signs. Of course, they lead to a dead end where we encountered this building:

Fig. 5: Not big fans of the song "Bizarre Love Triangle," evidently.

Since we had no other leads to follow, we knocked on the door. Maybe it was a combination Illuminati/Badminton club. Oddly enough, there was no answer, so we snuck a peek inside and intuited from the piles of trash that the place had been taken over by vagrants some time ago. We retraced our steps to the "Keops Fitness Club" -- which exists independently of the "Keops Badminton/Squash Courts" -- and asked the woman at the desk what the deal was with the courts. It turns out that they had been closed more than 3 years ago, but no one had bothered to take down the signs. The site we had found on the internet belong to the other Malley badminton courts, which were a few blocks away.

A few minutes later, we found the "Malley Badminotn Club" and got ourselves a court for an hour. I probably should have been worried by the fact that Jens not only had his own racquets (they weren't his nice ones -- he'd left those in Germany) but he also had his own professional looking equipment bag. After warming up for a few minutes, Jens proceeded to kick the crap out of me for the remainder of the hour.

If you've ever played badminton before, then you know how much bending and lunging is involved. Especially if you're getting the tar beaten out of you, you tend to spend a lot of time reaching low for shots just out of your reach. After about a half hour, I could feel some soreness in my back. I figured it was no big deal -- I mean, I've played tons of badminton and I've never had anything worse than a little soreness -- and kept playing. For an hour or so after the beatdown, I felt pretty good. Endorphins rushed through my body and although I could feel some slight stiffness when I bent down to untie my shoes when I got home, I felt fine. I took a shower, got dressed, then had a light lunch. Then, it hit me.

I spent most of yesterday and today lying down or sitting still. I dropped a sock on the floor this morning getting dressed and just decided to go with one sock for a while. Now that more than twenty-four hours have elapsed since "the hurt," I finally have the strength to venture out of my apartment. Being old sucks.

Speaking of the apartment, it's really improved. I bought a plant at the supermarket the other day and I think it really brightens up the room.

Fig. 6: I call him "Basil."