This is it. Ground Zero. The last Day.

This morning it was so cold, my hair froze solid during my 5 minute walk from my house to the bus stop

I know its a cliché, but it feels like I've only been here a few days. Or it feels like I've been here forever.

What will I miss?

-the bread
-the coffee and many many coffee breaks
-the BEAUTIFUL scenery
-the police visiting my parties
-sleeping on trains to visit random towns
-the Canadians calling me "Becks" (don't get any IDEAS about that, folks) and other crass habits they have
-love-life talk at dinner time
-the castle on the hill
-the IMPOTENCE (oops, I mean Impedance) Lab

What won't I miss?

-Frau Schmid, the landlady from hell
-the clocks EVERYWHERE
-living on a sustinence salary

I am excited to be going home.

Though I have managed to pull a Sarah in terms of packing (you know what I mean if you had seen Sarah's room on graduation day, with less than 24 hours and multiple parties ahead before moving out). I haven't packed a single thing.

AMERICA HERE I COME!

This is the Swiss nun, signing off, since I probably won't update this journal again for a few more days...

I blew up the washing machine.

So, I successfully evaded all the normal college pitfalls over the last few years. I never turned all my underwear pink. My clothes were never really destroyed. I never put the wrong soap (like Joy liquid soap) in the dishwasher, causing it to fill with bubbles and flood the floor (like a certain boy I know). I was doing good. No laundry problems here.

That is, until last night. I was doing my LAST load of laundry before I started packing. I opened the door. Pink water started pouring out. It covered the floor. My clothes were DRENCHED since the spin cycle was obviously not effective(this is a major crisis, as I don't have a dryer). So let me reiterate the problem: 1. I flooded the laundry room. 2. Something RED manage to dye almost all my shirts pink. The first problem I ignored (the landlady is a pycho anyway, she deserves all the heart-ache she gets). The second problem was rectified (mostly) by washing all those clothes a second time. Crisis averted. But still funny.

Eggplant - my vegetable (fruit?) of the week.

I made eggplant parmesean about 3 days ago. I still have leftovers that I have eaten for both lunch and dinner every day since then. Enough said.

I really really need to start packing. Its so hard to believe I've already been here 6 months, it seems like I was packing my dorm room a couple of days ago. But after that, I backpacked, I visited, I spent a flooded week in Houston, I spent a painful (though nice if you don't think about the hospital trip) week in Canada, and then I have been living in Switzerland for six months.

Occasionally I shake myself when I go to bed at night. You're in Switzerland. (That is the voice of the midget in Moulin Rouge who says, "Its set in SWeetziiiland", for those of you have seen the movie). Its very surreal. And now I am going back home. To America.

I miss America. But I love it here. What a dichotomy.

So, in my typical daily boredome, I have decided to make a list of all the places have been since I graduated high school. Long list. Not that I endorse going to places just to "list them". But you know. Kind of in chronological order. Its cool.

Atlanta, GA USA

London, England

Stratford-Upon-Avon, England

Paris, France

Heidelberg, Germany

Fussen, Germany

Munich, Germany

Cinque Terra, Italy

Venice, Italy

Florence, Italy

Sienna, Italy

Rome, Italy

Cava di Terrini/Pompeii, Italy

Paestum, Italy

Barcelona, Spain

Amsterdam, Holland

Houston, TX USA

Philadelphia, PA USA

Bob's Lake, Canada

Baden/Zurich, Switzerland

Lyons, France

Lugano/Lacarno/Ticinio, Switzerland

Rheinfalls, Switzerland

Reggio/Sicily, Italy

Naples, Italy

Vienna, Austria

Appenzel, Switzerland

Interlaken/Grindewald, Switzerland

EuropaPark, Middle of Nowhere, Germany

Marakesh, Morocco

Erfoud, Morocco

Casablanca, Morocco

Flims/Laay, Switzerland

Cranfield, England

Cantebury, England

Montreux, Switzerland

Zermatt, Switzerland

Bern, Switzerland

Nurnberg, Germany

La di da, news news news

So, this guy I know got a Rhodes' Scholarship. So now I know a Marshall and a Rhodes and all these other prestigious national award winners. When was the last time I won something on the national level? Hm. That would be in high school. Somehow Junior Engineering TEAMS competition and Lincoln-Douglass debate don't quite have the name recognition of a Rhodes scholarship :). Anyway, Will Roper won it and I am really happy for him - I know him only because we TA-ed a math class together and he was definitely as close to a mathematical wizard as I've ever known (though he did confuse a lot of poor freshmen by showing them mathematical puzzles in the tutoring room rather than teaching them to integrate). I find it strangely funny that he got the scholarship though (the people who were there when we did the 'Nique story on him would know the reasons for that). A few years ago, I met an EE professor who was a finalist for the Rhodes who never got it. He, obviously, was a flawless academic, but he also was on the U.S. Olympic team (a fencer). This seems really impressive to me and he didn't get it.

Ok, ok, sexual misconduct story

I am glad to know Maayan has become a faithful reader of my journal. Hiya Maayan! Did you get an invitation to Alex's engagement party? HOW FREAKY IS THAT??? Oh, did you see that the state department is advising against all unnecessary travel to Israel right now? Be careful girl!! Ok, that said, you want to hear the story. Since I am just sitting around, waiting for lab time (is this a re-occuring theme here?), here goes. Its a long one, so sit back, and let the seriousness roll.

So, over the summer we had a girl here, Nikki, who was the daughter of basicall one of the top three corporate executives at Alstom. She was a wild (product of British boarding schools) type, and so when she told us that the staff photographer asked her to pose for pictures (he said, in broken German, that he was an "artiste"), we kind of just laughed. But she was really weirded out by it. Since she told the story a lot of other of the female praktikants said he approached him too. Basically, every woman in the building had taken to avoiding this guy.

Anyway, the staff photographer comes around and takes pictures of everyone on the staff (imagine that), like little headshots, for the wall in each department. Well, he ran into another praktikant from my office in the hallway and said he'd like her to pose for him. She just assumed there was something wrong with her headshot and went down to his studio in the building. (She had been out of the loop on the previous stories about the "artiste"). So, when she went down there, he started showing her pictures he had taken - starting with cows and fields and progressing to apparently very pornographically posed women. And she recognized them as working in the building. She was totally freaked out and ran away as fast as possible. She told us, in our praktikant office right away.

This was two months ago. We all told her she should go say something right then. But she kept saying that she didn't want to cause trouble. And she didn't know if there was anything wrong with it or if it was just a European thing. Basically, she didn't want to say anything. The other girls in the office who had been approached said they didn't want to say anything because they hadn't actually seen the naked-pictures.

Anyway, a few days ago, he approached another girl, and she was telling the story. So, we finally talked the one who had seen the naked pictures into saying something - she went and talked to an American full-time employee, an older, VERY NICE guy who tends to fill a mentor roll for most of the North American praktikants (by his own free will, not really part of any job responsibilities). The American did the right thing and went strait to our division's boss.

So, he had a long talk with the girls who had been approached. Apparently, someone had said something to him about this BEFORE (someone who had been propositioned to pose naked) and he IGNORED them, because the photographer is a family friend and the woman didn't seem that reliable. But now that he had other complaints he had to do something (he said he would sit on it for a day and speak to his wife about it, since he can't possibly imagine what a woman thinks about that sort of thing - something that I think is REALLY reasonable to do).

As for what is going to happen as a result, I don't know, but the thing that bothered me were the observations I made about the way the people behaved.

1. Our boss was completely willing to ignore an allegation of misconduct the first time he heard about it - he didn't even go down and look at this guy's piles of pornography.

2. The guys in our office were completely outraged by this whole thing. They kept saying "This type of behavior is ridiculous, its a clear-cut case. People doing things like this in the workplace is what causes all these unreasonable rules. Something needs to be done about this." I thought this was great! I was encouraged tremendously... Contrast this to the female attitude:

3. The girl that made the allegation kept saying, "Well, I am only a praktikant and the guy has been here for a while... and it isn't really wrong for him to take naked pictures, its just that he keeps them on company property and stuff. It happened a few months ago, so.. I already have a bad relationship with my boss, this is only going to make it worse. I don't even like my job or this company anyway..."

4. Another girl in the office who had been propositioned, but never seen the naked pictures, who works in the lab (where the photographer frequently photographs for company brochures), has been avoiding him whenever he comes into the lab (to the detriment of her work), and she keeps saying "Well, what he's doing is wrong, but he's never actually done anything to me, so I can't say anything." That girl even went into our boss to tell him that she didn't want anything she said to interfere with this guy's job of photographing her lab because it was really needed to provide the appropriate level of support for her team's project (she, of course, didn't say anything about how every time he comes into the lab, all the female employees FLEE).

I tried to explain things to the other female students. I tried to explain that they have the right not to feel uncomfortable where they work and how its important to speak up or our boss would think that it was a single allegation and ignore it like he had done in the past. The men were in COMPLETE agreement. But the women kept making excuses "But, but, but..." They also didn't understand the argument that if they didn't say something there would be future praktikants that found themselves in REALLY awkward positions. It was horribly frustrating. So we'll see what happens.

Good weekend. The Christmas market was awesome but too damned COLD. The funniest part was the "very beautiful fountain" in Nurnberg (its actually called that, but substitute the unpronouncable German words). Anyway, there is a ring on the gate around the fountain that you are supposed to turn to make your wishes come true. On the side facing the street there was a gold ring, and all the tourists were lined up, turning away. But our guide (a guy from work who's wife just happens to be from Nurnberg) showed us the REAL ring. It was black and on the backside of the fountain, very well hidden in the gate. I found this very funny, all the people lined up, wishing on the WRONG ring!

Ok, so I am mucho busy and should really go to the lab in the next 20 minutes and never be heard from again. But, since the growing trend (amongst GT female aerospace engineering diaries) is to do this silly survey, here I go:

my hair: brown, curly, frizzy, long, usually wet in the mornings or braided

my makeup: None, ever. Unless you occasionally count Body Shop scented lotion.

my dream: To colonize Mars, become a war reporter, travel to every continent (including Antarctica), become a presidential adviser and write my memoirs

my obsession: reading, occasional men, traveling

my most attractive feature: my sexy TOES and definitely my hair, even when it is frizzy.

my favorite thing to do: fly at sunset, when everything - the sky, the buildings, the trees, the ground changes to eerie colors

i'm wearing: Blue jeans, round neck t-shirt

i'm eating: a tangerine (somehow this is a Christmas thing here)

i'm drinking: coffee (not the watered down American kind - the thick rich Swiss kind)

i'm listening to: The sound of keyboards clicking

i'm feeling: Ready to go home to America, well-rested

i'm thinking: I should actually write this darned lab manual that I keep avoiding

i'm going to: Go to the lab and do cool things where I get to burn stuff

i see: The hill out my window, the postcards on my wall

i need: To start cleaning up my room and packing my stuff

i find: Nothing. I get lost too easily

i want: everything - success, love, my dreams to come true.

i have: my pilots' license, diamond earings and a black opal ring, otherwise nothing tangible of any value whatsoever.

i wish: there was more time to do everything

i love: my family, my friends, discovering something new

i hate: monotony

i miss: America, Georgia Tech, knowing what I want out of life

i fear: weapons of mass destruction

i smell: shampoo in my hair

i wonder: will I actually get to do my experiment in the combustion lab today?

i regret: being too arrogant

The Canadians are finally going to help the U.S. with the war on terrorism!

They have pledged 2 of their biggest battleships, 600 ground troops and 6 fighter jets.

After the American exchange rate, we ended up with 1 canoe, 2 Mounties, and a flying squirrel.

St. Nicholas Day! Ho ho ho, and a pile of peanuts and clementine oranges

So, yesterday was a very confusing day for me. First I went down to the cafeteria, and they were giving out free little bread men and tangerines (clementine oranges). This was delicious, but it seemed strangely kind from our normally prudish cafeteria staff. THEN, at 2 p.m., a feast of candy, champagne, peanuts, cakes and orange juice magically appeared in the coffee room (this had the unintended side effect of completely stopping all work for the rest of the afternoon). I couldn't figure out why the generousity at such a random time. I should've looked at my calendar.

Instead, it took me until I was at the grocery store and saw a man dressed as Santa Claus handing out peanuts to children. Finally I figured it out. In Switzerland, December 6 is ST. NICHOLAS DAY!

Santa Claus actually comes on December 6 from his home atop one of the highest mountains in the Alps (where he can look down from above and watch them). Unfortunately for the poor little Swiss children, he doesn't bring any presents. Instead he takes the bad little kids and puts them into his sack. The good little kids get to recite fun poems for him (Sanna Nicha Nacka.. starts one of them) in really THICK Swiss German (I know its thick Swiss German, not from any linguistic ability of my own, but when the women were telling us the poems last night, the High German speakers' jaws dropped and their eyes widened and they said they didn't understand a single word of what was just said).

If Santa likes their poems, they get a plate of peanuts, tangerines, and chocolate (strange combination!).

The story of comparitive Santa Claus's

It could make a good cultural study about different Santa traditions. For instance, the traditions in Italy are very similar to Switzerland, but Santa comes on December 14 (also bringing a plate of peanuts and oranges). In Spain, Santa comes on Christmas like in America, but he lives in Scandanavia, not the North Pole, and he rides his pet donkey (the children leave out plates of grass for the donkey to eat). In the Netherlands, they think Santa comes from Spain. In Iceland, Santa's mother is a hideous troll who EATS the bad little children.

But don't worry too much about the presents...

The Swiss children actually do eventually get presents on Christmas day. The presents aren't brought by Santa, though, they are actually brought by the Christ-Child (Kristos-Kinder). The Christ-Child is actually neither Jesus nor is it a child. Instead, the Christ-Child is an angel. So, what happens is one parent takes all the children hunting for the Christ-Child on Christmas morning. They wander the streets yelling "Christ-Child! Christ-Child! Where are you? Come out, we want to meet you!" And then, when they come home, there is a decorated Christmas tree waiting and presents all around, and the parent who stayed home says, "Oh, darn, you just missed the Christ-Child, he just flew away a few minutes ago. He says hello!" and all the children are disappointed that they missed him!

Read this entry later

So, if you aren't bored yet, later I will update the entry to include my plans for the weekend and my tale of serious sexual misconduct at the work place. BUT, no time now, because I have some side tube manual writing to do..

What would you think if I sang out of tune,

Would you stand up and walk out on me.

Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song,

And I'll try not to sing out of key.

Here comes the sun....

There's a break in the clouds... oooh ooh, look its the sun! This has made my day. We've been a week without sun. Maybe I will go skiing on Sunday (I am going to Neurnberg tomorrow evening and staying until Saturday afternoon to do some shopping at the most famous Christmas-market in Europe).

Working in a coal mine...

So, I had been told there was no way my side tubes are going in the combustion chamber. So instead, I have been diligantly writing manuals and documenting everything for whoever eventually ends up running my tests. Anyway, I was told today that maybe they are going in the combustion chamber by next Tuesday. As exciting as this is, I really didn't want many work obligations for my last few days on top of whatever I already have (mainly a lot of writing).

What would I do with a million dollars?

This was Sarah's question of the day. Its funny, but a million dollars really isn't enough money. But, let's just suppose for a moment, its enough for me to be rich for the rest of my life (so make that 40 billion dollars, a la Bill Gates), without working. What would I do?

First, I would circle the world (two or three times). On my list, I would definitely stop in Antarctica for a while, go to Everest Base Camp, take an African safari, and spend a long time in Australia being a beach bum (namely sailing and SCUBA diving). Then I would write a memoir of circling the world.

Then, I would probably go back and do something cool in aerospace for a while (maybe start my own company that generates zero profit but just lets smart people work on what they want with all the hardware they want) and I would probably devote a lot more time to flight training. I mean, I really really want to be a better pilot, but without the time and money, well..

Somewhere in there I would buy a trip to the space station :). Or maybe finance my own Mars mission where I would be the first ever Martian journalist-historian-homesteader.

I would also probably start collecting degrees and experience in the random fields that interest me: journalism, archeology, philosophy, public policy, international affairs, religion, astronomy...

Ok, maybe that's a little selfish answer.

The return question...

So, in a book I was reading last night, there was a reference to Goethe's personality profiles. Namely everyone's personality can be divided up into desire for: adventure, love, fame, and power. How much you want each of these compared to the others determines your life path. So, waht are you?

(Does it worry you to be alone)

How do I feel by the end of the day

(Are you sad because you're on your own)

No I get by with a little help from my friends,

Do you need anybody,

I need somebody to love.

Could it be anybody

I want somebody to love.

Would you believe in a love at first sight,

Yes I'm certain that it happens all the time.

What do you see when you turn out the light,

I can't tell you, but I know it's mine.

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends,

I won! I won!

In my fight to the death with Frau Schmidt (the evil psychobitch landlady), I actually WON and got my half month's rent back. Yeah!

It was really funny, she kept trying to tell me that when I went to her and said "I will be moving out on Dec. 17" that was NOT my notification of departure. I said, "What would I have to do to notify you?" She said "Well, come in here and tell me what day you are moving out." !!!Which is what I thought I did.

But she kept saying "No, when you told me you were moving out on Dec. 17 that was just you giving me the courtesy of knowing when you were leaving." This was a very confusing line of conversation for me, because I couldn't discern what "notification" meant then. So, we went in that little circle of conversation for a while, then she examined my lease contract more closely and said that something in the terms meant that I could actually get half my month back, even though I didn't really give her the "notification" she required.

The only problem is that now I have to leave on December 15, though my flight is on December 17. I don't know what I will do in the interim. I think that maybe I will go to a ski resort or something for the weekend with the 255 CHF I saved on rent.

So yesterday I found a rock-awesome job

Bored at work (which is part of the norm for me lately) I was surfing the IAESTE web pages. (IAESTE is the organization that sponsors my work permit). I found a job listing for the Moscow Aviation Institute in combustion research. Oh, how I wish I knew that existed last year or that I had the time to go to Moscow for a while. That would be awesome. But I am definitely committed to become a real human being and moving to Houston at least for a few years now. So I sent the notice to Sarah, I hope she gets to go. Then I will go visit her in Russia.. on my way to India, because I just found out that Charu (a friend of mine from high school) is getting married in India and I want to go to her wedding!

Oh, so ready to go home

I think I have definitely gone through the full roller coaster of adjustment since I came here. My first few weeks were miserable, since I was bedridden and couldn't move (from that stupid back injury). Then I spent several months actually getting work accomplished, traveling like crazy, making friends, and generally partying more than I ever have in my entire life. So, that was a complete high. Then I started to get drained, and settled into a more normal life in between my trips, with the mix of enjoyment and boredome that I think is just a normal part of life.

Now, I just wanna go home. Actually, I just want to go back to America. I want to be done working here (I just can't get excited about gas turbines, what can I say..).

Frau Schmidt, fight to the death, part deux

So, after complaining all yesterday's entry about my landlady, here I go again (and this time it involves my life). Some of you might have heard me complain about how I had to pay the whole month of December's rent, despite the fact that I will only be here half the month. It came as a surprise to me, because when I first moved in, Frau S. told me that as long as I gave her a month's notice I could pay a portion of the rent.

Last month, right before I left for England (so on Nov. 14 or 15) I gave Frau S. my notice. And she said something along the lines of "Oh, well you still have to pay the whole month of December, because I have too many other girls moving out in December and I can't fill your room over the holidays."

Though I know its HER problem to fill the rooms, not mine, I just assumed that the reason was because I had agreed to stay the whole month (which is what my Alstom contract says I will be doing). Anyway, I was complaining about this last night in an anti-Frau-bitch-fest at our dinner table, and Ester, our wise resident Swiss friend said something like, "well, if you are staying until the end of December, you would be here 6 months? What's your monthly rent?" And I told her.

She said that if you stay 6 months, you get a rent that is 30 CHF per month LESS than what I'm paying. So I went to look at my contract, and, low-and-behold, it had a departure date of December 15. Frau S. had her notice and had already agreed to let me leave mid-month! Its in the contract. She had to have known that while she was lecturing me about being obligated to stay for the whole month of December!! That infuriates me. And even more, not sticking to the contract is VERY UN-SWISS!

So, tonight, I will head home from work and argue ("discuss") until either I get half a month's rent back from her (205 CHF) or get reimbursed the 30 CHF per month for the 6-month-rent rate (180 CHF). Either way, I intend on getting some money back.

Frau Schmidt, fight to the death, part trois

So, I found this Alanis Morissette lyrics generator, so I had it compose a song for my evil landlady.



"Why"



Landladies, the Swiss, armies