things are coming to an end in the kitchen sink. yes. that is the affectionate term that i have found to relate to this pied-à-terre right smack in the middle of the swiss capital.
i call it a pied-à-terre only because although i spend a lot of time here and it is a rented, not an owned place, i do not consider this home. i am here often, this has been my office for the last few years, and i have rented the place from a very nice art gallery owner for almost eight years. this is the longest that i have ever rented a place. otherwise the family owns plenty of property, and what i call my beach apartment has been in family hands for almost twenty years, we (i.e. they, the family) still own the house where i was born. now you know, i was born at home and i never went to kindergarden. in a way, it explains a lot about me, although it does not explain why i am so poor and struggling to make ends meet.
i was in italy for a few days at the end of last week. one of my long standing fantasies has turned into reality, or at least the reality of last friday fairly closely approximated one of my fantasies. there is a man in my life, i call him a representation of paradise, and last friday my paradise had a few meetings in town - milano - and i had a few hours to spend in said town. you know the scala, and the galleria, the duomo, and all those things, that is milano.
he dropped me off by a metro station and i headed to the center in search of the american bookshop because there was a book that i was looking for. paradise, himself an english speaking gentleman, did warm me that it was unlikely that i would find that book there, but i had to check it out. forget armani, forget prada, i head for the bookshops and the cafés. i did the lunch thing at peck and then wondered around towards the castello sforzesco. indeed, the book, the said book, which i do not feel at liberty to mention here, was not available. just a couple of weeks i had met the author of said book at a conference, and i ended up publicly disagreeing with the fellow. now to my own embarrassment i realize that i do not have a clue of what i was talking about and i ought to read his freaking book, if i am to get into an argument with him. being much too something-or-other to simply order it from amazon, i prefer to either buy it at the bookstore or yes order it online, but from my local bookshop. simply i have not gotten around to it - it reminds me that i am supposed to be packing my other thousand or so books - thus the wild goose chase for the book in milano, a most unlikely place to go book hunting for a book by an american author. this author is well known, however not that well known that his most recent book would be stocked in the american bookshop in milano.
eventually, i had taken enough of the city for one day, and it was time to sit down, that is, reading and making notes. i gravitated towards the galleria, and walked by the hyatt park hotel. i was more in the mood for a chaotic and down to earth drinking hole, but after poking my nose in a few, i did not find that one that i had wanted to find. for want of anything else, i went into the hyatt's bar. it was empty. i ordered a coffee and a mineral water, sent back the complimentary biscuits with a smile and after being reassured that they were home made - at the hyatt - again i smiled and explained that i was allergic to the stuff. got lots of sympathy from a young and handsome italian man, the waiter. there i spent a couple of hours until some american television presenter or something like that came in with two friends and their conversation got much too interesting to allow for any of my own spin. eavesdropping on americans abroad remains one of those perversions of mine. that is not what made my day.
after his meetings we met again at the same metro station, and we quickly decided to go out of the city for our evening. he took me to one of this favorite places on the lago di como, and there we contemplated the sights and exchanged impressions on the events of the day and the past weeks, a conversation that we had already started on our drive out of the city. the usual friday evening thing that two middle aged adults do, an aperitif and the dinner, some conversation, some laughter, a few glasses of wine and grappa. still, the whole day was as close as i have come to a very old fantasy of mine: spending the day doing autonomous activities and coming together in the evening with no expectations. it sounds so absolutely banal, and what made it precious to me was the intent of the day... it was a day without much of a purpose for me other than to just be there, to be with him. to be with him even when i was minding my own exploration of milano. trivial, simple, pleasurable, and marked by a sense of freedom that i do not always taste. it meant not thinking about the kitchen sink, forgetting blogging, ignoring the internet, and yet doing what i like doing: watching people and places, and being with another unromantic soul who loves to just unwind on the lake' shore.
still here.
Tuesday, 21 February 2006
Saturday, 11 February 2006
today
went to bed sometime around 2 this morning. that was after i had returned home before midnight after our stammtisch or old boys club meeting near the university.
after training yesterday i was exhausted and with bloody knees that were hurting. i did not think that my knees were so soft, but the kind of suwari waza that we did yesterday was fast and furious and i ended up sliding on my knees more than what my skin could take. the whole training had a lot of irmi - or get into their face with your center - techniques in response to chudan and jodan tsuki attacks and ... i love it. i love it and did get carried away, in a moment of distraction, i got my elbow on my sensei's throat which is something to avoid in aikido. aikido is not about hurting the other, and if you did not know an elbow on the throat can do rather serious damage.
my bernese friday nights have really evolved into my evenings with the boys during the past years. first aikido, and then geeking physics. come to think of it, aikido is also much of a geek thing to do. aikido is technically demanding and unlike computing it requires long periods of practice without much visible progress until the next learning breakthrough manifests itself. in this respect it has been aikido that has taught me to deal with my impatience.
last night when i returned home it was not just the knees that were hurting, something else inside me was unsettled. i opened up the PowerBook and did the usual thing of checking email, looking at what had happened in the blogosphere by looking into my rss aggregator 's headlines and the statistics of my blogs. about the counter on the blog: i am seriously considering deleting it. it is a distraction for the attention whore that i am, but then it teaches my ego a valuable lesson each time that i look at it and discover that i am not yet famous and that there is just a hand-full of people that either intentionally or unintentionally err onto these pages.
i was unsettled and i wanted to write, what was on my mind besides the present story-in-draft or what i sometimes refer to as "schemata" were the few lines that i had written on what became the previous post. so i sat down, read parts 1 and 2 and tried to give form to those vagrant thoughts. the story is not yet finished and i feel it emerging. i like how this feels. oh yes, my fucking feelings and all!
being saturday and the karate dojo still not yet operational after the floods in august, i have no kata training, and thus i also did not set the alarm, and gave myself a treat of letting the motor run free. i woke past one in the afternoon!
after training yesterday i was exhausted and with bloody knees that were hurting. i did not think that my knees were so soft, but the kind of suwari waza that we did yesterday was fast and furious and i ended up sliding on my knees more than what my skin could take. the whole training had a lot of irmi - or get into their face with your center - techniques in response to chudan and jodan tsuki attacks and ... i love it. i love it and did get carried away, in a moment of distraction, i got my elbow on my sensei's throat which is something to avoid in aikido. aikido is not about hurting the other, and if you did not know an elbow on the throat can do rather serious damage.
my bernese friday nights have really evolved into my evenings with the boys during the past years. first aikido, and then geeking physics. come to think of it, aikido is also much of a geek thing to do. aikido is technically demanding and unlike computing it requires long periods of practice without much visible progress until the next learning breakthrough manifests itself. in this respect it has been aikido that has taught me to deal with my impatience.
last night when i returned home it was not just the knees that were hurting, something else inside me was unsettled. i opened up the PowerBook and did the usual thing of checking email, looking at what had happened in the blogosphere by looking into my rss aggregator 's headlines and the statistics of my blogs. about the counter on the blog: i am seriously considering deleting it. it is a distraction for the attention whore that i am, but then it teaches my ego a valuable lesson each time that i look at it and discover that i am not yet famous and that there is just a hand-full of people that either intentionally or unintentionally err onto these pages.
i was unsettled and i wanted to write, what was on my mind besides the present story-in-draft or what i sometimes refer to as "schemata" were the few lines that i had written on what became the previous post. so i sat down, read parts 1 and 2 and tried to give form to those vagrant thoughts. the story is not yet finished and i feel it emerging. i like how this feels. oh yes, my fucking feelings and all!
being saturday and the karate dojo still not yet operational after the floods in august, i have no kata training, and thus i also did not set the alarm, and gave myself a treat of letting the motor run free. i woke past one in the afternoon!
Technorati Tags: aikido, attention whore, berne, ecto, ego, falling pray, fame, feelings, geek, irimi, karate, stammtisch, stammtisch physik
bent, not curled (part 3)
continued from part 2
i - lower case me - does not have a thing to hide, yet shyness is but a mild approximation of my nature. yes, bent, not curled, but shy? yes shy. meek is what one of my professors used to call it.
you have seen me in public, you have seen me challenge big men with either strong muscles or unruly egos, and you do not want to believe a word of what i say. fine, you do not believe, that is your problem. my problem is another, if it is a problem what i have. shy and very competitive i am. one of those is enough to paralyzer you, both is like fucked-up-big-time-now. i like the kind of insanity that i can create!
last sunday i stumbled on an aspect of my nature that totally startled me: i am so very competitive and impatient that games, especially online games bore the living daylights out of me. at least i can not find any other explanation for this fact. my son has tried on many occasions to explain to me his games, and literally has held my hand while he shows me how the games work. still, i got bored or at least i found no interest in the online games. this fact has also led me to conclude that as far as a geek, i am not a real one. all fallacy! i am a geek and as geeky as they come, but what is true is that my geekiness is not in coding these days. i had my days of high on code, but those are gone long ago. if you visit the definition, like most modern days definitions, they are not black and white and the dictionary will only give you an historical accounting of the meaning of the word. it is a good word for me, it is complex, it is descriptive, it is an abstraction of the imagined. last week i was called both geek and visionary. i know it to be right, and i have one hell of a time just being with it. although i parody myself in claiming limited imagination, deep down i know that i do not lack either imagination or the ability to project and explore that which seems unexplored. i repeat that which seems unexplored.
knowledge is a beast with seven heads, fifty three hearts and a looping conscientiousness. an impossible phrase to define knowledge is only to reflect my own frustration with humankind's inability to either use it or grasp it.
where does this shyness come from? i say that the shyness is the expression of a deep seated shame. shame. shame is the painful emotion arising from the conscientiousness of something dishonouring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one's own conduct or circumstances. all right, that is what the freaking and beloved oxford english dictionary says about it. what does it mean?
you tell me, but to me this makes no sense and it feels true. i have this deep shame for all the mental abilities that i have been graced with. i have wanted to write ever since i could, and i have tried. publishing has frightened me. publishing under pseudonym affords me a level of experimentation in plain sight - it is the very opposite of hiding - that i could not reach otherwise. the bottom line is that every single word here is all a probing into just being me. so far i have discovered that not only am i shy, but i also have no qualms about challenging and questioning ideas only because i do want to understand, i want to grasp it, and i am impatient. playing an online game that renders the visuals for me is much too slow compared to reading a book - or writing a story - and letting my mind render a virtual reality far richer and more brilliant in detail than any glorious high tech digital reality. i want to be there leading the front edge of what i see, i do not want anybody else telling me what i see. i do not understand what drives me to want to create images never before seen with just plain words, i just know that that is exactly what drives me.
i wish that i knew so much more. i think of the man's bent toe and i am reminded that he is pure inspiration, and all of that is inspiration is represented in that bent, not curled toe. from his imperfections i derive the power to unfurl my mind and being and make those dreams of story telling a reality. one bent toe.
when last week i spoke up at a conference and contributed a tiny little bit of my thinking, Cairo Otaibi was not in the room, and i stood there with the experience of being that just one and same person surrendering to that inner self that i have come to know a lot better.
"There are three basic rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are."
i - lower case me - does not have a thing to hide, yet shyness is but a mild approximation of my nature. yes, bent, not curled, but shy? yes shy. meek is what one of my professors used to call it.
you have seen me in public, you have seen me challenge big men with either strong muscles or unruly egos, and you do not want to believe a word of what i say. fine, you do not believe, that is your problem. my problem is another, if it is a problem what i have. shy and very competitive i am. one of those is enough to paralyzer you, both is like fucked-up-big-time-now. i like the kind of insanity that i can create!
last sunday i stumbled on an aspect of my nature that totally startled me: i am so very competitive and impatient that games, especially online games bore the living daylights out of me. at least i can not find any other explanation for this fact. my son has tried on many occasions to explain to me his games, and literally has held my hand while he shows me how the games work. still, i got bored or at least i found no interest in the online games. this fact has also led me to conclude that as far as a geek, i am not a real one. all fallacy! i am a geek and as geeky as they come, but what is true is that my geekiness is not in coding these days. i had my days of high on code, but those are gone long ago. if you visit the definition, like most modern days definitions, they are not black and white and the dictionary will only give you an historical accounting of the meaning of the word. it is a good word for me, it is complex, it is descriptive, it is an abstraction of the imagined. last week i was called both geek and visionary. i know it to be right, and i have one hell of a time just being with it. although i parody myself in claiming limited imagination, deep down i know that i do not lack either imagination or the ability to project and explore that which seems unexplored. i repeat that which seems unexplored.
knowledge is a beast with seven heads, fifty three hearts and a looping conscientiousness. an impossible phrase to define knowledge is only to reflect my own frustration with humankind's inability to either use it or grasp it.
where does this shyness come from? i say that the shyness is the expression of a deep seated shame. shame. shame is the painful emotion arising from the conscientiousness of something dishonouring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one's own conduct or circumstances. all right, that is what the freaking and beloved oxford english dictionary says about it. what does it mean?
you tell me, but to me this makes no sense and it feels true. i have this deep shame for all the mental abilities that i have been graced with. i have wanted to write ever since i could, and i have tried. publishing has frightened me. publishing under pseudonym affords me a level of experimentation in plain sight - it is the very opposite of hiding - that i could not reach otherwise. the bottom line is that every single word here is all a probing into just being me. so far i have discovered that not only am i shy, but i also have no qualms about challenging and questioning ideas only because i do want to understand, i want to grasp it, and i am impatient. playing an online game that renders the visuals for me is much too slow compared to reading a book - or writing a story - and letting my mind render a virtual reality far richer and more brilliant in detail than any glorious high tech digital reality. i want to be there leading the front edge of what i see, i do not want anybody else telling me what i see. i do not understand what drives me to want to create images never before seen with just plain words, i just know that that is exactly what drives me.
i wish that i knew so much more. i think of the man's bent toe and i am reminded that he is pure inspiration, and all of that is inspiration is represented in that bent, not curled toe. from his imperfections i derive the power to unfurl my mind and being and make those dreams of story telling a reality. one bent toe.
when last week i spoke up at a conference and contributed a tiny little bit of my thinking, Cairo Otaibi was not in the room, and i stood there with the experience of being that just one and same person surrendering to that inner self that i have come to know a lot better.
"There are three basic rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are."
William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)
Technorati Tags: authenticity, fear, fluage, geek, integrity, pseudonym, shame
Tuesday, 7 February 2006
oh... there are choices to be made
there are many stories to tell, many books to publish... and this morning i received an invitation to tango in south america. literally an invitation for a gala dinner and tango show in south america.
i am have been in a state of drunkenness lately... the last week has flown by. most of the time i manage to keep my feet on the ground, but then on other occasions, i totally lose my hard won cool. it is calm and serene in the midst of all of this, and there is work to do for the next 3 weeks that make it imperative that I do not waste much time.
but what is it that we call wasting time?
what is it that i call wasting time?
right now it is just dealing with the flow of ideas, and making sure that these ideas get converted into action. my life is becoming simpler and much lighter. what seems strange is that i miss my son a lot. he is grown up and managing his life, but for heaven' sake, california is a long way from europe, and he is a most wonderful human being. but is there another human being who is not most wonderful?
do you know why i need to write? i need to create and put some of these thoughts to rest, once they are out on paper or on the computer, then they have left my mind, and i tend to forget most of what i write anyhow. it is always a pleasure to read some of the stuff that i write, it brings back memories and as time passed these memories take on different hues. the power of words is that they have two kinds of meanings in several dimensions. the writer and the reader may not derive exactly the same meaning; the details of meaning will be experience and context dependent, and then there is an absolute meaning, a meaning that has a meta quality to it, and that meaning travels through time and history, and carries with it the cultural dna of our existence and spirit as humans.
got to get back to reality here and write a nice letter in response to the very nice invitation to tango.
i am have been in a state of drunkenness lately... the last week has flown by. most of the time i manage to keep my feet on the ground, but then on other occasions, i totally lose my hard won cool. it is calm and serene in the midst of all of this, and there is work to do for the next 3 weeks that make it imperative that I do not waste much time.
but what is it that we call wasting time?
what is it that i call wasting time?
right now it is just dealing with the flow of ideas, and making sure that these ideas get converted into action. my life is becoming simpler and much lighter. what seems strange is that i miss my son a lot. he is grown up and managing his life, but for heaven' sake, california is a long way from europe, and he is a most wonderful human being. but is there another human being who is not most wonderful?
do you know why i need to write? i need to create and put some of these thoughts to rest, once they are out on paper or on the computer, then they have left my mind, and i tend to forget most of what i write anyhow. it is always a pleasure to read some of the stuff that i write, it brings back memories and as time passed these memories take on different hues. the power of words is that they have two kinds of meanings in several dimensions. the writer and the reader may not derive exactly the same meaning; the details of meaning will be experience and context dependent, and then there is an absolute meaning, a meaning that has a meta quality to it, and that meaning travels through time and history, and carries with it the cultural dna of our existence and spirit as humans.
got to get back to reality here and write a nice letter in response to the very nice invitation to tango.
Technorati Tags: choice, invitation, tango, writing
Monday, 6 February 2006
this made my day yesterday...
Larry Cone quoted Cairo Otaibi while writing about blogging. The citation is from "out of context: beyond 2 sigma" which i will be taking offline fairly soon to have it edited, and then republished later. i would like that later to be soon.
Technorati Tags: blogging, blogosphere, citation, publisher
it is good to be home...
whatever that means, really. really, it is good to be home in the kitchen sink. now that i am preparing to put it all in boxes and set up the tent a bit further up, on the other side of the river... this kitchen sink here really feels homey. it has inspired the whole of this blog, and sometimes the thought that i might close this blog down when i leave this place seems appealing. seduction comes in many shades, or so i am told.
all i know is that today i had one crazy and wild day: it was an excellent day. what am i rambling about? the whole fucking week has been fantastic!
today my karate sensei gave me a call, i have made myself a scarce presence in the karate dojo for the last six months. the reasons are quite simple, the tennis elbow, a fucking depression, and a flooded dojo that took training to another part of town. nonetheless i did show up for the demonstration at the end of last year, and we agreed to have a chat soon around the coffee table. a thing that she called, i was going to give her a call, but still had to look for the number in my voice mail where she had left a message on friday.
if blogging is about anything, it is about a bunch of people exploring a tool for instant publication, and some are indeed trying to find a way to pay the rent and do what they like doing while staying true to themselves. include me in this group please. this is all i want to do, and the world of traditional marketing is one that i could not crack. perhaps i could crack it, but frankly i did not give a fuck about trying to crack it and to make it work for me, it just did not, possibly still does not in its majority, reflect any of the values that give my life meaning. this is an odd situation to be in, one of my good friends does a fantastic job of marketing a product that indeed is one hell of a challenge to market. he uses what looks like traditional marketing tools, but when i listen to him and discuss with him the essence of what he does and how he does it, i have a feeling that the man is a born blogger of the cluetrain hour. i suspect that not all of present day marketing is total crap, just a lot of it is, and that lot does make the good stuff difficult to see.
if all of this blogging - at least for some of us - is allowing us to do what we love doing while being ourselves... it sounds like we have just become buddhist monks, all of us. is that it?
uhm... it feels good to be just me, with or without pseudonym.
all i know is that today i had one crazy and wild day: it was an excellent day. what am i rambling about? the whole fucking week has been fantastic!
today my karate sensei gave me a call, i have made myself a scarce presence in the karate dojo for the last six months. the reasons are quite simple, the tennis elbow, a fucking depression, and a flooded dojo that took training to another part of town. nonetheless i did show up for the demonstration at the end of last year, and we agreed to have a chat soon around the coffee table. a thing that she called, i was going to give her a call, but still had to look for the number in my voice mail where she had left a message on friday.
if blogging is about anything, it is about a bunch of people exploring a tool for instant publication, and some are indeed trying to find a way to pay the rent and do what they like doing while staying true to themselves. include me in this group please. this is all i want to do, and the world of traditional marketing is one that i could not crack. perhaps i could crack it, but frankly i did not give a fuck about trying to crack it and to make it work for me, it just did not, possibly still does not in its majority, reflect any of the values that give my life meaning. this is an odd situation to be in, one of my good friends does a fantastic job of marketing a product that indeed is one hell of a challenge to market. he uses what looks like traditional marketing tools, but when i listen to him and discuss with him the essence of what he does and how he does it, i have a feeling that the man is a born blogger of the cluetrain hour. i suspect that not all of present day marketing is total crap, just a lot of it is, and that lot does make the good stuff difficult to see.
if all of this blogging - at least for some of us - is allowing us to do what we love doing while being ourselves... it sounds like we have just become buddhist monks, all of us. is that it?
uhm... it feels good to be just me, with or without pseudonym.
Saturday, 4 February 2006
tired, amused, and here
the house is a mess, and i am not looking forward to the work involved with moving, although i can barely wait to get out of these wonderful gray quarters. they are wonderful really, this is one of the nicest flats in town, and it is a bit dark. the japanese friend from osaka of one my good friends was quite stunned when he first saw the place. most of my friends get all exclamative about the place the first time they see it, then they get used to it, and like to visit often. i like guests, so this all works well anyhow. when some months ago i made the decision to get another pied-à-terre, then i got a lot of questions about how i would miss the place. i will not really miss the place, but i will miss the neighbors. we are a fantastic family in this house. however already in november last year our eighty-year-old neighbor moved to a retirement home, and i dearly miss her. she came for an unannounced visit last week when i was already in the midst of my messy plans for the move, and we had a brief chat around a drink. she too feels rather displaced and does miss living in the house. she invited me to join her for lunch at the retirement home soon, and i will. it was a very touching, i really felt her need for company.
ok, so that was not particularly amusing, but the conference on thursday and friday and my musings about it are. i am now just plain exhausted although i slept long. now what i want to do is to curl up with a good book, and i even know which one... think "istanbul". i have however been busy dealing with email and voice mail, shopping... and really, there is the laundry too. besides i could not resist going to sit at the diagonal for a tour of the paper version of "le monde".
ok, so that was not particularly amusing, but the conference on thursday and friday and my musings about it are. i am now just plain exhausted although i slept long. now what i want to do is to curl up with a good book, and i even know which one... think "istanbul". i have however been busy dealing with email and voice mail, shopping... and really, there is the laundry too. besides i could not resist going to sit at the diagonal for a tour of the paper version of "le monde".
Technorati Tags: altstadt
Friday, 3 February 2006
having fun, lots of fun
the epitome of abuse was my alarm ringing this morning at 5, a brief four hours since i had gone to bed. it really was nice and warm in my bed, and if anything, what i would have liked this morning was to turn around and find another naked body in that bed. getting up required turning off my brain, desires and ego. it meant turning on the auto-pilot. well, i am used to turning off my brain, and letting the out-pilot do its thing. i got up and started the machinery of getting ready to leave the house in less than one hour. yesterday and today i have been attending a special conference in geneva, and it turns out to be a lot of fun.
every month or so i do go to geneva, but yesterday was the first time that i noticed a musician beggar - the kind that you find all over the parisian metro and rer trains - in a geneva tram. it made me feel like geneva is indeed getting to be more and more french by the hour, and it shattered a bit of that image of the rich banker's metropolis populated by international organizational types.
the most fun was to be had after lunch yesterday while i took a coffee at the bar. by accident or fortune, a german fellow sat there eating his lunch and chatting away with another character, a swiss german. this being sort of a "cool" conference they were speaking in english, not german. i drank my coffee and glanced casually at the two men while eavesdropping on their conversation. the usual thing, what do you do, where do you come from, and what brings you here. the german fellow was very keen in giving away a few details of what he does and whom his clients are. he described himself as psychologist-sociologist consulting for big companies and living in northern germany in theory only since he travels a lot. eventually i got into the conversation, and i asked him a few questions which he eagerly answered. i must have charm coming out of my ears some times, or whatever it was, but i was able to ask this man rather probing questions about his business and i had the clear impression that he never quite realized that perhaps i was not just making casual conversation. this german consultant is one of those who positions himself as what i call a futurologist - an expression that i always associate with gatologist, an expression used by a good friend to talk about the veterinarian - and i just happen to be more than just skeptical about the validity of their work, while i have great appreciation for the veterinarian's efforts with the cats (gato or gatto in a few latin languages) - so i probed into his methodology.
i was delighted that the german chap never quite got the idea of asking me what i do. i would have been much too tempted to answer him that i am a writer, used to be a consultant, and my career is from future. i could just see the amusing dialogue coming, and i would end up issuing my dismissive check-mate by revealing that i am a physicist turned storyteller.
now that i managed to get my ass out of the house on time for the train to geneva, i decided that perhaps i am having much too much fun. i am in the kind of mood that preempts any kind of seriousness. all play, i am.
then it could be that my mood is rather buoyed by a chance encounter on the train back to bern last night after the conference. while looking for a seat i bumped into one of my friend's brother-in-law. it so happens that he is one of those geneva bankers and lives in lausanne, so we had a rather animated train conversation between geneva and lausanne. what did we talk about? oh yes, the good stuff.
yes, i had a bit of a long day yesterday. when i got to bern around nine in the evening, i still had a social function to attend to, one that i could have canceled, but one that was so important to me that i sacrificed a few hours of my sleep to go keep company with these people. it could be because of the fifteen waiting, one of them is a close conspirator of mine, and a few other dear colleagues. i must have been tired, and some of these people i do not often see, some not more than once a year, and this was the occasion. it was not until i was back home last night brushing my teeth before going to bed that i could think of the first name of the only other woman in attendance at this gathering. i was also much too tired and too embarrassed to admit the fact.
the train is in lausanne now, while the train gets to geneva i will try to get a few winks of sleep. will beam this up once at the conference thanks to public wifi.
every month or so i do go to geneva, but yesterday was the first time that i noticed a musician beggar - the kind that you find all over the parisian metro and rer trains - in a geneva tram. it made me feel like geneva is indeed getting to be more and more french by the hour, and it shattered a bit of that image of the rich banker's metropolis populated by international organizational types.
the most fun was to be had after lunch yesterday while i took a coffee at the bar. by accident or fortune, a german fellow sat there eating his lunch and chatting away with another character, a swiss german. this being sort of a "cool" conference they were speaking in english, not german. i drank my coffee and glanced casually at the two men while eavesdropping on their conversation. the usual thing, what do you do, where do you come from, and what brings you here. the german fellow was very keen in giving away a few details of what he does and whom his clients are. he described himself as psychologist-sociologist consulting for big companies and living in northern germany in theory only since he travels a lot. eventually i got into the conversation, and i asked him a few questions which he eagerly answered. i must have charm coming out of my ears some times, or whatever it was, but i was able to ask this man rather probing questions about his business and i had the clear impression that he never quite realized that perhaps i was not just making casual conversation. this german consultant is one of those who positions himself as what i call a futurologist - an expression that i always associate with gatologist, an expression used by a good friend to talk about the veterinarian - and i just happen to be more than just skeptical about the validity of their work, while i have great appreciation for the veterinarian's efforts with the cats (gato or gatto in a few latin languages) - so i probed into his methodology.
i was delighted that the german chap never quite got the idea of asking me what i do. i would have been much too tempted to answer him that i am a writer, used to be a consultant, and my career is from future. i could just see the amusing dialogue coming, and i would end up issuing my dismissive check-mate by revealing that i am a physicist turned storyteller.
now that i managed to get my ass out of the house on time for the train to geneva, i decided that perhaps i am having much too much fun. i am in the kind of mood that preempts any kind of seriousness. all play, i am.
then it could be that my mood is rather buoyed by a chance encounter on the train back to bern last night after the conference. while looking for a seat i bumped into one of my friend's brother-in-law. it so happens that he is one of those geneva bankers and lives in lausanne, so we had a rather animated train conversation between geneva and lausanne. what did we talk about? oh yes, the good stuff.
yes, i had a bit of a long day yesterday. when i got to bern around nine in the evening, i still had a social function to attend to, one that i could have canceled, but one that was so important to me that i sacrificed a few hours of my sleep to go keep company with these people. it could be because of the fifteen waiting, one of them is a close conspirator of mine, and a few other dear colleagues. i must have been tired, and some of these people i do not often see, some not more than once a year, and this was the occasion. it was not until i was back home last night brushing my teeth before going to bed that i could think of the first name of the only other woman in attendance at this gathering. i was also much too tired and too embarrassed to admit the fact.
the train is in lausanne now, while the train gets to geneva i will try to get a few winks of sleep. will beam this up once at the conference thanks to public wifi.
Technorati Tags: bern, conference, eavesdropping, fun, futurologist, gatologist, geek, geneva, in the train, LIFT06, story-teller
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