CTF3, Fondue, my worst Swiss hangover and Kelly's arrival

25/02 - Oops, I nearly missed this day out. I took a tour of the Clic Test Facility (CTF3) with Tina, Rob & Tim, guided by Max. It was pretty cool, good to see inside some actual machinery rather than just messing around on computers. I took a load of photos which may or may not turn out to be any good - they were mostly of massive 2 ton magnets, so I think they may be of limited interest to the viewing public. In the evening we (most of the Royal Holloway and Sussex people) went out to Café De Soleil for dinner. Much like last night, 9/11 people had the fondue, along with a bit much white wine. I was sitting at one end of the table with Max, John & Matt Tamsett, definitely the biggest (or at least hungriest) four people. We wolfed down our fondue, stole some of Dan and Tim's, had more than our share of wine and generally did rather well out of the whole thing. One downside to Café De Soleil over Bains Des Paquis is that it's a lot pricier - twice as much in fact, as it cost us a whopping CHF50 (£31), nearly twice what we paid last time.

After dinner a few of us (i.e. all except Ricardo) went on to Pickwick's pub, a massive British pub which was hosting the CERN and ERASMUS mixer. We cornered a table and very definitely did no mixing. Matt got me involved in a 4 person round, so I was compelled to stay for 4 pints, which is about 3 more than I had planned - consequently Dan and I didn't leave until about half 12, walked to Gare Cornavin in the pouring rain, waited ages in the aforementioned rain for a bus that never came (our fault, misread the timetable) and then walked home (a total of 3 km) in the same sodding rain, arriving home around 2.

26/02 - Eugh. what an awful morning. My hangover knew no bounds, and I just about made it in before 11, having a meeting at half past. During this meeting I was the only one present from CERN and everyone seemed to be having a go at me. I was somehow responsible for the poor AV setup (I was using the mic built into my laptop, which has been perfectly adequate in the past) and criticised for not having decent videoconferencing equipment. It did not seem to matter that I do not have access to the contents of the cupboard, did not know what to get even if I did, and was struggling to hold my brain inside my head with the heels of my hands. At one point I got so furious at the chap telling me off that I very nearly told him to fuck off and slammed my computer shut, but thought better of it and just got my headphones out, which seemed to shut him up.

Still rather spaced out, I made the odd choice of salmon tartare and chips for lunch, and after drinking all the coffee I could manage and trying to work for a while I came to the conclusion that my mind was utterly incapable of useful thought so I left a little early to get stuff for mine and Kelly's dinner. As I was not capable of planning ahead I ended up going to the Coop at Forumeyrin for some things, Manor in the centre of Geneva for a specific wine and some things I had forgotten, and then to the Coop near my house for all the other things I remembered after that. There is currently an air traffic controllers' strike in France, which led to the cancellation of various flights back to the UK, and caused Kelly's plane to be delayed by an hour or so - this gave me plenty of time to cook our dinner and get to the airport, where I saw that Kelly had met Sam's girlfriend Verity on the way. She saw her in the airport and called out to her, but then realised that she only recognised her because she had seen loads of pictures of her on facebook, rather than because they had met in real life. In a clear misuse of CERN resources I had printed out "KELLY!!" in size 200 font, one letter per A4 page, and held this up as they came through the gates - Sam did not have a banner, I apologised for making him look bad.

When we got home I managed to finish off dinner in about 2 minutes - it was merguez sausages and grilled vine tomatoes on olive & sunflower toast with café de paris butter, with a rocket, grape, goats' cheese and avocado salad. Awesome.