22/06 - I think today was quite unremarkable, as far as I remember. I was running a little behind schedule so I didn't have time for a proper lunch, meaning I had to grab a(nother) McDonalds at Servette in the 6 minutes I had to wait for my tram. I think that pretty much nothing happened on shift, more commissioning stuff and other things that don't affect my desk at all. Oh, also I realised that the disappointing Chicken Satay ready meal I had for dinner was tiny, and only contained '28% RDA' of energy - I feel that a dinner should probably contain at least a third of my energy for the day. The main thing that happened today is that Ivan (who I first met in Thailand somewhere round here, then had the time of my live with in California here and visited in Serbia here) sent me a message saying that he would be in my part of the world on Thursday, and would I like to meet up? On further investigation it turns out that he is in Munich, which is still a long way away, but I guess that by Californian standards it's pretty close.
23/06 - Pretty much the same as yesterday, to be honest. I came in a little early to pick up my new suitcase which had been delivered to CERN (it is incredibly red), and passed yet another uneventful 8 hours waiting for commissioning to finish. It did not do this in the time I was on shift.
24/06 - I headed for CERN at about 1030, picking up a steak sandwich for dinner on the way, as I had a lunch meeting in R1 at noon after which I found a little hill to lie down behind and have a bit of a sleep in the sunshine before my shift at 3. I also picked up some Thai pork pasta to supplement the rather weak looking steak sandwich (actually, the pasta looked awful and I ended up leaving it in the fridge at the end of my shift - it is now Monday, four days later, and I am going to go and check if it is still there). During my shift I got a call from Ivan, who I was supposedly meeting at the station after my shift, to tell me that his train had been delayed by 2 hours, extending what was already an 8 hour journey from Munich. I was a little worried he wouldn't make it at all, but in the end he managed to get the very last train to Geneva, changing trains 6 times en route. He got in at 0105 and I met him at the station, then we headed over to Les Brasseurs for a beer or two, then walked home and had a couple more while we caught up on the last 21 months of each others lives.
25/06 - We went to bed at around half 4, and I had to be up at half 10 as I had a couple of meetings - I ended up calling in to them while Ivan went for an adventure round the old town. We then headed into town when he got back, having a beer on our way to see Janus, the two-headed Tortoise. We borrowed some of the free city bikes and rode down to the lake to hire a boat (we bought four more beers too). Our boat trip was fun, it was a really beautiful day - there were lots of pedalos full of bikini-clad girls out on the lake as well. We parked up over by the fancy houses near the UN and had a swim in our pants - we took it in turns so that the boat didn't float off (which was, in retrospect, entirely unnecessary on such a still day), the water was cool and really clear, but after we got out we noticed a massive dead fish floating in the water. We rang up and extended our hire period as we wanted to adventure a bit more, and then rode around to the other side of the lake. There was a beach volleyball tournament going on which we watched for a few minutes before deciding it was rubbish and leaving. There was a lot of commotion coming from a group of guys on the pavement, and a lot of money was changing hands - we watched for a while, and it seemed to be a version of the pea in a matchbox trick. The guy running it was taking CHF 100 bets, and if you got it right then you doubled your money. As we were unlocking our bikes, Ivan said he wanted to take another look - we went back, and got caught up in it a bit. In fact, I was persuaded to bet - predictably enough, I lost my CHF 100, and stood back for a bit to think about what I had done. Watching from a greater distance, we saw who was in on it and who wasn't - the guy had 4-6 people working with him, a guy who was repeatedly walking up and betting then walking away, someone who was just there to encourage others to play, a couple of lookouts and some other guys who seemed in on it all. There was a bit of a scuffle when they got two Asian guys involved who were none too happy about losing their money, and had to be taken away by one of the co-conspirators to cool off (shortly after this the game disbanded). We returned our bikes and on our walk back down we encountered some police, and I thought I should tell them what had happened - I started to do so and they guessed what had happened before I had finished explaining, handing me a flyer with "Beware of pickpockets and gamblers" on it, along with a picture of the matchbox game. The policeman told me he could not do anything about it, but if we saw the guy then they could get my money back. To be honest, that is all I wanted anyway, so we walked with them until I spotted him. I pointed him out, and as we approached he wordlessly got CHF 100 out of his pocket and handed it over to me - phew. Ivan and I hastened away, relieved but a little nervous that some of his colleagues might choose to get that money back from us.
We went down to check out L'Usine, where we are planning to go tonight - it was pretty grimy and smelt strongly of spilt booze, which we took as a good sign. After some discussion we decided to go for a Mike Wong's dinner, as it is cheap and good Thai food - I originally met Ivan in Thailand, so it seem appropriate. While we were there I got a call from Kelly, telling me that she had been stuck in a tunnel for an hour and might not make her flight - this worried me a little, but she is always so early for flights that she even with this delay she was still at the gate over an hour before the flight left. Relieved, Ivan and I went home for a bit of a nap, then grabbed some beers and a couple of tintos and went to the airport to get her. Ivan and Kelly got on well immediately, and on our arrival in Geneva we headed over to a bar on some pontoons in the lake, just by Jardin Anglais - it wasn't as nice as we had hoped, and when Kelly sat down to wait for us to get drinks she was joined by an Albanian guy who didn't leave when we came over and sat down. He spoke no English, French, Spanish, German or Serbo-Croatian, so we were unable to communicate with him - he kept talking to us anyway, possibly in Italian, occasionally high-fiving us and laughing heartily. We tried to leave him after a while, but he came with Kelly and I to the back of the bar, and just kind of hung around. We basically had to run away in the end, which was a little odd. It was about 0030 by this point, so we started heading towards L'Usine, stopping off at another bar on an Island in the lake where we had some good wine and a plate of Viande Sechée, with tons of bread - before we knew it it was 0145, and we only just made it to L'Usine before 2 am, when the cover charge went up.
Inside it was as grimy as we had hoped - the upstairs bar had black walls and a glass roof, and sold pretty cheap wine. After a couple of rounds I noticed something - all beers and other cans were sold with a CHF 1 surcharge, refundable on return of the can. Hardly anyone was doing this though, with most people discarding their empties on the floor, so we took it upon ourselves to tidy up - within a couple of minutes we had got 11 empties, enough for 3 glasses of red wine and a lemonade, which makes three tintos. We repeated this twice more before we left, so we were able to get three rounds for free! The DJs were OK, the first guy (Daniel Haaksman) was a little boring but the guys who came on at 4 (Tête de Tigre) were really good, they were playing some amazing stuff and were really into it, bouncing all over the booth. We bumped into Portuguese Sara on the stairs, Kelly and her had a long chat and we went back in for a final dance before leaving at about half four, I would estimate. Oh, Kelly broke one of her rules this evening, walking home barefoot as her shoes were hurting. I think that is forgivable, however, in a city as clean as this.
26/06 - Oh dear. We all woke up at 1030 in order to get Ivan to his train at 1145 - we just made it, with about two minutes to spare. he is heading to Vienna today, a 12 hour journey with no certain bed at the end - there is a festival going on which means that all the hostels are fully booked. Starving and hungover, I dropped by Manor and guzzled three pizzettes and a coke on the way home. I started to feel awful when I got in, and had to go back to bed for a bit before I felt ready to face the world. Kelly and I eventually made it out of the house at about 4pm, heading first to Migros and then to Manor in search of ingredients for the dinner that we agreed to cook for Zack and Masa. This ended up costing us about CHF 100 - we decided on horseradish crusted trout (with enough horseradish this time), preceded by some dips Kelly had found recipes for, and followed by cherry trifle. We did a lot of the preparation at home, and got to Zack and Masa's at about half seven, but somehow still had loads to do and ended up eating at about 2130. Bing, Zack's Dad, was there too, and it was a really good dinner - everything worked really well, and it was a pleasure to cook in Masa's tidy, well-equipped big(ger) kitchen after getting used to my tiny one for the last few months. We had some good discussions and some good wine, and ended up staying until about 0030, in spite of the fact that Zack only flew back from Panama today - Masa and Finn went to bed a little before this. I think Masa was pretty pleased to have someone else cooking for them for a change, she was hovering around the kitchen a bit at the beginning, but relaxed and left us to it after a while.
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