Livin' in the City

Trip to Morocco: Day 6 - Marrakech

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:25:05 GMT

We had a great hotel in Marrakech, maybe the nicest of the whole trip. Many of the group I traveled with had diarrhea/issues with digestion. My roommate for this trip had it worst of all. From Marrakech onward she was weak, had fever and diarrhea and spent the whole time in bed.

The restaurant where Hitchcock shot a scene for his movie "The man who knew too much"

Trip to Morocco: Day 5 - On the way to Marrakech

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:27:31 GMT

After a night in the worst hotel room I've ever slept in, it was time for another journey by bus to Marrakech.

An Arabic Coke bottle

Sunset

Flu or Swine Flu?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:33:18 GMT

I'm sick. I don't know whether it's just a normal flu or swine flu. I don't have a fever, but I have 5 of the symptoms on the NHS list (unusual tiredness, headache, loss of appetite, aching muscles, diarrhea). In short, I feel like I've been run over by a truck. Unless my one day of bed rest prompts some sort of miracle, I'll stay home tomorrow.

Trip to Morocco: Day 4 - Sunrise in the desert

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:11:15 GMT

We got up super early (4 a.m.) to be in the desert at 5.30 to be up in the dunes at 6, when the sun came up.

Cute kittens at our hotel

Funny looking stone formations

Trip to Morocco: Day 3 - Traveling to Erfoud

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:43:01 GMT

Day 3 was mostly spent on the bus, with photo stops and bathroom breaks.

European-looking Ifrane

Stop sign in Arabic

Oasis with palms

Trip to Morocco: Day 2 - Fes

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:58:57 GMT

Next stop was Fes. Fes never had a map that was actually factual. They have so many small nooks and crooks in the old part of the city, they advise you not to go in there without a local guide and they are not lying.

Citygates of Fes

That where they make and dye leather. My god, it smells so bad. They actually handed us Peppermint to help with the smell.

A Storyteller and our guide

Henna

Trip to Morocco: Day 1 - Casablanca

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:23:53 GMT

We flew to Casablanca.

Court building in Casablanca

Mosque of Hassan the Second in Casablanca

The inside of the Mosque. It was very strange to walk around in your socks, shoes in hand.

Cool looking lamp

Area where people can wash themselves before prayer. They do this every time before their 5 daily prayers.

It's been a while

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:03:06 GMT

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted anything on here.

Life has been going on as usual. I was in Morocco on vacation. Morocco is a beautiful country. The group I traveled with was good as well. No oblivious jackasses like my trip to Greece this year. I took over 400 pictures. I've weeded it down to 318 and uploaded the best ones online. I might do a photo post later. We started in Casablanca, than Fes, than went to the desert, Marrakech, spent 2 nights in Essouira and then back to Casablanca. There is a serious downside to being a tourist in Morocco and that is there are always people trying to sell you something. It's seriously annoying. Also as a woman, you feel really vulnerable. Once I went to the ATM around the corner from our hotel by myself and was immediately followed by a guy on a scooter, hitting on me and trying to find out what language I was speaking. Thankfully, when I ignored him, he went away, but it's just not pleasant, you know.

Work blergh

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:26:49 GMT

At the moment, I'm not happy at work at all. I think it's the result of the two months I worked for two. I'm still sort of tired and grumpy because of that, even though I took a week off. And starting this week, my coworker starts to work part time (60%). I'm trying really hard not to resent him for that. I mean, it's not really his fault. But I'm just so fucking tired of being the responsible, reliable one, the one that has to take care of everything. In addition to that, I've come to the realization that while the job is a challenge on a organizational level, the rest of it is boring and I'm way overqualified. Of course, now is the perfect time to look for a job in finance *sarcasm*. I'm just fucked....

Monday again sigh

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:48:55 GMT

I had a nice vacation last week. I chose a great week weather wise. It was almost too hot. I bought a small table for my balcony on Monday. So the rest of the week I spent a lot of time having breakfast outside and reading. Such a simple pleasure. I also got 2 massages and spent some time with my parents on Wednesday. I even got lunch out of it. My dad is such a good cook. Afterwards we went swimming in the local pond. Too bad my vacation is already over.

I got some stuff done too, I cleaned a bit, did some laundry and cleaned out my closet. I got rid of 2 bag full of clothes and 3 pairs of shoes.

Epic fail DHL, epic fail!

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:32:09 GMT

They "attempted" delivery again today and noted that receiving address was closed when attempted delivery. I'm sorry, I gave them my work address and we are not closed on Friday morning. What do I need to do to get them to deliver it, sacrifice a goat? I live in the biggest city of Switzerland. There are street signs and numbers and everything. DHL is supposed to do this for a living. How hard can it be????

ETA: They apparently tried again an hour later, so I should be receiving it this afternoon. Hopeful yay!

Stupid DHL

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:47:07 GMT

I ordered some shoes from Shoebuy two weeks ago. Turns out they arrived in Switzerland 12 days ago. Shoebuy contacted me to verify my address. So apparently DHL attempted delivery and didn't leave me a slip. Asses! I want my shoes. I will call them tomorrow and try to sort it out.

Also, no massage today, because my masseuse is still in Poland. Hopefully I can go on Friday.

On the plus side, I took next week off. I'm so looking forward to it. My motivation is non-existant at the moment. Yesterday I was so tired I went to bed early. I slept 7 1/2 hours on a week night, which must be a new record.

Here it's summer, anywhere else it would be called Monsoon season

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:01:41 GMT

I chose Morocco. It's still a long time away I feel. I'm just so tired at work. It's not that it's not doable, it's just that I'm sick and tired of having to do everything by myself. I'm thinking of taking a week off before my vacation. I only have to survive the next week, then my coworker will be back. Maybe a week where it's not raining cats and dogs.

Which brings me to the weather. My god, July was wet. Thankfully, it was also sunny and warm from time to time, but the amount of rain we had is staggering. And it was weird, sometimes it was raining like crazy in the morning, but by 5 or 6 o'clock it was 30 degrees Celsius. Well, I guess it's better than rain and cold.

Hopeful

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:44:43 GMT

I had another Facebook chat with my former classmate. It seems he is interested in me in that way. Woohoo! I told him I was too. We still haven't actually set up a real-life meeting, though.

Decisions, decisions

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:08:06 GMT

I'm planning my next vacation. So it's either Morocco, Egypt or Thailand. Morocco would require me to take 8 days off work, Egypt 10 and Thailand 13. Egypt and Morocco would both take place middle of September, and Thailand middle of October. I really just need a vacation asap. Always these damn decisions.

Slow torture

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:22:06 GMT

I've mentioned this former classmate of mine a while back. We're still chatting over Facebook and it's slow torture for me. We're still flirting and getting to know each other, but god, I'm so impatient. I really like him. He makes me laugh. He asked for my cell phone number a while back, so we exchanged numbers. It seems like he's interested, and hopefully he can tell that I'm interested too. I don't chat with people I don't like over 4 hours! There have been talks about meeting eachother but in a joking matter. I'd very much like to meet him (haven't seen him in 6 years), but on the other hand, I'm scared that if we meet it'll be horribly awkward and it'll destroy whatever we have now. Aaargh! Why must I be such a wuss?

Birthday redux

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:16:50 GMT

My birthday was two weeks ago. It was nice, although I didn't really celebrate it on the day. I had to work, I went working out, got home, showered and watched Northanger Abbey. Sunday before my birthday, we had our family celebration. We had a nice family BBQ. My mom's birthday is the day before mine and coincedently my brother's girlfriend's birthday is the same as mine, so we had plenty to celebrate. The weekend after my birthday I was invited to dinner at my friends place. Another friend, Gabi, was there to surprise me. They had even baked me a cake. I was really touched. Saturday morning I met up with Gabi again and we went to a yoga trial lesson. A former classmate of ours wants to become a yoga instructor and because of that, she has to give lessons to Newbies while someone is observing her. She did a good job. I like yoga, but I still prefer the faster and more physically exhausting workouts that I have now. On Sunday, my friend Shirley came over for dinner. All in all, hanging out with friends all weekend was great and just what I needed after another stressful week at work.

Things that didn't suck today

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:22:41 GMT

-The massage I got. 1 1/2 hours and I'm all relaxed and ready to fall asleep.
-The muffin I got from a coworker as a thank you for nothing specific. Nice, n'est pas?

The rest of the day can go and die in a fire for all I care.

Back from Greece

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:23:44 GMT

I haven't updated in a while. I blame it on work being really stressful and my roommate moving out, which meant that there were people coming by to see the room all the time. And really, the last thing I wanna do after a stressful day at work is talk to strangers, trying to get an idea whether or not I can imagine us being roommates.

Things that happened in the meantime:

-My grandmother moved from her second floor apartment to a ground floor apartment in the same building. Although moving took the whole day, I had fun. My family is quite amusing and together we made fun of the gazillion things my grandmother owns whenever she wasn't in the room. I think I will never forget the look of horror on my aunt's face after unpacking something particularly ugly.

-My roommate moved out about 4 weeks ago. I still haven't found a new one. To be honest, I haven't been looking for the past two weeks, because I went on vacation. I should put a new ad up. Well, maybe tomorrow. Living alone has been a nice change. I forgot how much I turn into a slob without a roommate. I'm in no hurry to find a roommate, but I want to eventually get one again. I don't need the extra space and I like to be able to talk with someone when I get home.

-My vacation was nice. The weather was great, real summery, almost to hot to sightsee and we had a good group, with one notable exception. Why is it always guys that can't read social clues? The guy was generally immature and incapable of retaining any information, a xenophobe and homophobe and spoke only German. I wondered why he even left Germany when he doesn't like new things and back home, everything is better? Part of me felt sorry for him, but part of me was annoyed. He provided countless hours of entertainment for the group though and unified it. All in all, it was relaxing.

-Work is trying to kill me. The Swiss army in their infinite wisdom thought they needed my coworker not just 3 weeks but 4, which means I will do two jobs for the next 4 weeks. Thanks so much, morons!

Return from the Super Flu and other stuff

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:54:45 GMT

I spent a good deal of last week in bed, because I was sick with the Super Flu. Not that Super Flu is the official name or anything, it's more the first time in a while where I have been so sick and haven't felt better after 2 or 3 days. Now I only have to get rid off the cough and I'll be back to normal.

I had booked a trip to Thailand (guided tour) in May, but two weeks after I booked, they canceled the trip, because of too few bookings. I then booked a shorter trip to Greece also in May.

Continued mingling with cute guy from Business English Class: yesterday having lunch with him and his coworkers and today in Business English Class.

Only two more work days to work before the long Easter weekend. I have a meeting tomorrow about a project I have been working on for a while and I'm pretty anxious about it. I'm scared that I have forgotten something important and will therefore embarrass myself horribly.

I'm a bit annoyed about my coworker. He took the next 2 days off and has given me a lot of his work to take care of. And I get that you can't finish everything before time off, but there's a lot of stuff that I feel he was just too lazy or too unorganized to take care of. Bleh, the next 2 days will be stressful.

Stuff

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:41:59 GMT

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was ready to curse the heavens and today I'm happy and grateful.

Grateful because my friends pretty much organized our weekend trip to Lausanne in April by themselves. All I had to do was okay the hotel. They were so fast emailing back and forth and I was swamped at work and voila, it was done. One thing off my plate.

I have a business English class once a week paid by my employer. Yesterday, they called me and told me they would dissolve my class, because the minimum of people wasn't met. They gave me 3 other classes I could join. I was all, the universe is against me, cute guy is totally gonna pick another time and I won't see him every week and slowly get to know him, damn. And today in the canteen, he came over and sat with me (his coworkers had left, but still squee). We talked, it was a bit awkward, but okay and he totally picked the same class. Awesome! He has the prettiest eyes. And later we joined his coworkers for coffee and it was way less awkward.

Yesterday I got the Pushing Daisies Poster I ordered. It's not quite as big as I would have liked, but the next bigger one would have been to big for the frame I already own. It's pretty and I hung it up directly opposite my bed.

And tomorrow I get a massage. Life is good. If only the taxes filled themselves out, it'd be perfect.

Maybe?

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:16:38 GMT

My love life is still non-existing, but there's been a slight change in the past few weeks. I've been chating with a former classmate of mine over Facebook. We've been talking about hockey, holiday plans and other stuff and the messages have gotten pretty flirty. I haven't actually seen him in several years. But I've always liked him and had a crush on him back in the day. He's a sweet guy and really funny.

There's also a cute guy in my Business English Class, that I'm trying to get to know better. And Office Crush is still nice to look at, even though there's nothing happening there.

My roommate is moving out

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:24:17 GMT

She told me that she gave notice at her job and will move back to Germany around Mid May. I'm don't quite know how to feel about this. On one hand, it was inevitable. She has a boyfriend in Germany and they saw each other only about every 3 or 4 weeks. And there are certain habits of hers I won't miss, when she moves out. On the other hand, I've gotten really used to her, I like her and we've settled into this routine. And now I have to find a new roommate. Last time was a pain. Bleh!

Not without my internet connection

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:08:02 GMT

My internet has been really on the fritz the last 3 weeks. Sometimes my internet connection works, sometimes just not. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for minutes. It's a real pain in the ass. I complained about it to my ISP, but I've not received any answer yet. I have a feeling it might be connected to the various construction sites that sprung up in my neighborhood since the new year. My beautician has had the same problem (she lives across the street from me).

I almost set my nightstand on fire yesterday. A candle to close to my earphones & my iPod-Remote = stinky electronic disaster. Fortunately, "only" my earphones and iPod-Remote were affected, but still. It stank horribly and I could have hit myself for being so stupid.

Brrrrr! Will it ever be warm again?

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:48:52 GMT

God, it's so freaking cold. The past week and a half the weather has been constantly 5 degrees below zero. And to top it off, there's this lovely wind chill, which makes it feel even colder. I know the rest of Europe is even worse off, but brr. I'm so not a fan of winter. And the cold makes my skin all dry and flaky. Can it please be spring?

In Swiss hockey news:
Streit first Swiss Player selected as an All Star. And here's an article about Streit's long way to the NHL.
And yesterday, my favorite Swiss Club the ZSC Lions won and made it into the Champions Hockey League Finale. They don't stand a chance in hell against the Russian club, but still, Top 2 Club in European Hockey. On the way to the finale, they won against Swedish, Czech and Finnish Clubs, so it's a success for Swiss Hockey in general.