Reverse Culture Shock [en]

Things I could not have seen in India:

  • A few weeks back, a man at the bus stop was spending his waiting time chasing cigarette butts into the gutter, systematically, undisturbed by curious onlookers. Now you understand why Switzerland is a clean country.
  • Two days ago, a woman in the (clean) toilets at my workplace dropped her purse on the floor near the sink. She actually took a piece of paper to pick up the purse with.
    She was doing something with her ham sandwich before that – I now suspect she was washing and drying the ham.

Communicating [en]

To communicate, people need to be standing on the same ground. Too often, conversation is flawed, because we think we are on the same ground, but the reality is that each person’s ground is different.
By clarifying which parts of our ground are different, we can understand better where and why we disagree.

Outlook Beware [en]

[fr] Twitter n'envoie dès à présent plus de SMS aux utilisateurs basés hors des Etats-Unis, du Canada, et de l'Inde: trop cher. Oui, ça veut dire que même vos DM ne vous parviennent plus sur votre téléphone. Très déçue et embêtée par ce changement assez important dans l'intégration de mes communications online et offline.

Some versions of Outlook and Outlook express can be vulnerable to viruses that act as the mail headers are read, i.e. even without you opening the message or the attachment. The good news is that a patch is available.

Flat and Car [en]

I got my flat!
Bagha is happy, although he doesn’t know it yet, because in a bit more than two weeks he will be allowed outside again.
My collegues at work saw me leap in the air with joy as I received the news by phone.

I also found a cheap car. Car, flat, cat, job and studies awaiting me in October… what could I ask more?

Astounding [en]

I’m posting quite regularly at Astounding these days.
I also discovered CitizenX – a rather cool place to hang out. Contact me if you need my nickname at any of these two places ; ).

Two personal sites caught my interest:

  • First, [the bwg update]. After having spent a year in India, the site of a person living in Hong Kong could only interest me.
  • Second, CannBoys. Though I must admit I didn’t spend much time on the main parts of the site, I had a really good time (so did my brother!) trashing the web.

Apart from that web-news, I have started work. The three first days of instruction were a bit of a bore – the kind of days that leave me wishing I was a little less swift and a trifle more dumb.
Lots of time spent amongst students, professors and other smart people can make you forget what the Real World Mind is like.

Update 01.06.2004: Astounding is long gone, as its (short-lived) successor Fathom5. It was nice while it lasted.

Translator [en]

Another useless thing I did today (this is my last day free on the net, I’m starting work tomorrow).
I put one of my pages in a translation site. Want to see the result?
“Everyday life” in french (extracted from my logbook). It made me squeal with glee at times.

Web Insanity [en]

I must be going slightly mad… I’ve registered an email address for my cat at meowmail.com.
You can now write to him directly at [email protected] to ask him how he is coping with Switzerland (locked up in a flat, no pure beef for dinners anymore – canned food instead, no playmates, no dog, no baby…).
I think he’s even more impatient than I am to find a flat where he can taste outdoor life again!

Yea. I admit it – mea culpa. People do such useless things on the web, at times…