Two slow days and Fondue

09/02 - Well today was rather a waste. I overslept, yet again, made little progress in doing any useful work, and adjourned myself to the Hypermarché/shopping centre at Balexert in another instalment of my fruitless quest for decent footwear to deal with all this snow & cold. Once again all the boots were horrible, but the giant Migros had loads of interesting european stuff, such as vacuum packed veal tongue and unidentifiable things in cans. I steered away from the tongue and ended up accidentally buying another CHF 150 worth of food, including lots of freezer stuff, a massive steak and some Café de Paris butter. As is the way with supermarkets here, I was ejected at 7pm and made my way home where I had the aforementioned steak and butter in a massive sandwich.

10/02 - Hmm - today was again rather uneventful, which is why I'm including 3 days in one post here. I had lunch with the Imperial guys (Paul, Arlo, Alex, Ravi & Mike) and spent the afternoon half working, half looking up flights. In the evening I got the bus with Dan, James and a few others who were going for the Pizza a gogo night, but I left them at Gare Cornavin and went on a little adventure with my camera, as it was just getting dark and the river/lake looked amazing. I ended up walking home, linking together a few places in my head along the way - this city really is rather small. Well, the centre is, I'm sure there's lots more to explore a little further afield, but I haven't got there yet. I went home and cooked myself a chilli, which was enormous and delicious, before going over to Dan's to watch a film. I arrived to find 10 people already watching No Country For Old Men, not The Godfather as was previously suggested, but a welcome substitution as it is a good hour shorter.

11/02 - Kelly rang me nice and early to ensure I would get up too, so I did so and made myself an enormous sandwich out of the leftover chilli before leaving the house. The weather forecast on the radio predicted that today it would be between -4 and -15 degrees, and even though I was wrapped up in 4 layers (including thermals) and my hat and gloves I was still freezing by the time I got to CERN. I had a late lunch of soup today, and I believe this may be the only way one can eat cheaply in Switzerland. The vegetable soup isn't too exciting on its own, but add the free parmesan, bread and tabasco and it's actually pretty good. More importantly, it is only CHF 1.20, making it cheaper than a cup of tea!

Unfortunately it is not that filling, as I discovered around 4 o'clock when my stomach started grumbling about its emptiness. I fended it off with fruit but this did not seem too effective, so I distracted myself with looking up French courses instead. At 5 I had my training course to be a moderator at the International Physics Masterclasses next week - this was essentially a run-through of a sample program, giving us some simple tips about how best to engage with the students, but it became an exercise in semantics, as the physicists around me picked apart the most petty and irrelevant aspects of the presentation instead of seeing the genuinely useful information we were being given. What an annoying bunch, I have been paired with a couple of them next week and I dread to think who I may have been paired with.

We caught a serendipitous lift with Max to the Royal Holloway dinner, which consisted of the six of us going for fondue at Bains de Paquis, a little place temporarily built over the changing rooms on a pier into the middle of the lake. As we were walking out over the exposed jetty, skidding on ice, the wind whipping down the lake & whistling through the masts, it dawned on me that this was probably the coldest I have ever been. I mean, most of me was warm, but my exposed face and fingers were incredibly cold - I was unable to breathe through my nose due to the stinging cold which felt like my brain was frosting up, and my fingers were numb within 200 metres. Once we reached the restaurant things improved, as Ricardo and Dan braved the cold once more to order our food from the little shack outside, and returned bearing wine. The fondue was awesome, we had tons of bread, dried meat, onions and a few cornichons to dip in it, and it went fast. I mean that the 6 of us demolished an enormous vat of cheese in a shade under 20 minutes, down to the last scraping. As we were so quick we went to Café des Arts for a drink and a chat before we went home - as is always the case with these things, there were some awkward moments in conversation where one could tell that we were, for the most part, colleagues rather than friends. I have certainly attended much less pleasant dinners though, and it went better than I expected, even if we were all done and on our way home by 10. Oh, while we were in Café des Arts Dan somehow managed to drink CHF 30 worth of whisky in the time it took me to drink one very small glass of wine - impressive, but not very frugal.

I came home and packed rather excitedly - I am looking forward to going home tomorrow enormously, Kelly has planned dinner already and limited the number of jobs I'm allowed to do - I can fix the bed and the internet and that's it (I'm going to try and fix the toilet flush while she's not looking). I am also looking forward to it not being so incredibly cold - I like the snow and ice, but not the biting wind that seems to come from all directions at once, making shelter impossible to find. I am not, however, looking forward to my meeting in 9 1/2 hours - I have been trying all week to rewrite a piece of code and make it simpler, but now it won't run and I can't get the results I said I would send last Monday. All this means that at my meeting in the morning I will have not proceeded in any way since last week, which is a bit frustrating. Also I will have to admit to this, which is rather more embarrassing.