Switzerland

I gotta say it is really amazing to be here. I just got in from swimming in Lake Zurich, my dad has a little beach area out there with a table and some chairs. The water is incredibly clean, you can see right to the bottom, it's like swimming in the Caribbean. There's virtually no pollution here. I was just swimming in the water and a swan literally came right up to me. It was a little freaky! I got a picture of it though...

I've been keeping busy. Yesterday I went to the art museum, which was pretty cool. There was this amazing exhibit that I just sat and watched for 20 minutes. Can't even describe it to do it justice.

Today I met with a guy at the IP office at a Zurich university, mixing a little business with pleasure. I figured it would look good to my bosses if I made the effort to meet with some IP people here to prepare for covering European IP from London. It was a good talk actually, I learned a lot and the guy was very helpful.

Photos from Zurich

So far, Zurich has not been disappointing. I'm sitting here out on my dad's balcony overlooking Lake Zurich, watching the boats go by. Kind of like Roosevelt Island, except...so not. What a gorgeous city, if a little small.

I haven't slept since Monday night, so I should probably get to bed soon but I wanted to post some pictures of my trip so far. Up above is a picture I took today from the steeple of the Grossmunster cathedral, which affords a great aerial view of the city. I spent the day just walking around and exploring the city, trying to get my bearings. It actually reminds me a lot of Prague, especially the narrow, winding pedestrian streets. Very picturesque.

Leaving the country

Well tomorrow’s the big day, I fly out to Zurich late tomorrow afternoon to visit my family, who just moved there two weeks ago. I haven’t even begun to think about packing, although I tend to usually do that at the last minute. Still, I should probably get on that seeing as I’ll be there for a few weeks. I’ve set up a few business meetings there too so I have to bring a suit.

I’m not bringing my laptop because there would be no way to charge it there, but my family already has their computer set up at the house so I’ll be online pretty frequently I imagine, aside from when I’m traveling. I’ll write updates in here regularly and regale you with my tales of Swiss life. There will be pictures, anecdotes, witty banter, you name it. I’m looking forward to it, it will be great to see the house and my brother’s school, etc. And I can help them with the things they’ve been having trouble with. Next weekend we’re driving through the Swiss Alps to Bern, Lausanne and Geneva. Should be amazing.

All in all this trip couldn’t be coming at a better time. I recently realized I’ve been at this job for 7 months and have not yet taken a vacation. Funny, I’ve now been at this job longer than I was at Medialink, the company I worked for the year after I graduated college. It doesn’t seem like that at all, but there it is.

When I get back, it will be time to make a decision about whether or not I’m going to move to London. I think this trip should help me decide. So much of the reason I want to move to London is because I just want to move to Europe, as I have this powerful obsession with the continent. Spending a few weeks there again (I haven’t been to Europe except a few trips to the UK since I left Prague) should help me decide if it’s really what I want to do.

Family in Zurich

So my dad and brother moved to Switzerland on Wednesday. They're off to a bit of a rocky start. Obviously it's a bit overwhelming for them, they're having a lot of trouble setting up basic things like phone service, internet and cable. All of the instructions are in German, and they don't speak a word. They'd like to get this stuff set up as soon as possible to set up some semblance of normalcy. My brother starts school tomorrow, hopefully being with some English-speaking kids will help him feel more comfortable. He sounded pretty unhappy when I talked to him on the phone today.

I've had an incredibly difficult time getting ahold of them since they moved over there. I actually wasn't able to reach them until today, which has made it really dawn on my how weird this is going to be. It's a six hour time difference, so it's going to be hard to find convenient times to talk to them even when they do get all the phone stuff sorted out. I'm pretty worried about them, I know this has to be really hard. So it's been driving me crazy that I haven't been able to get ahold of them.

I know there's going to be inevitable difficulties adjusting to this new situation at first, both for them and for the rest of my family too. I think going out there next week and staying with them will help the situation. I can help them out with the things they still have to figure out, and it'll be comforting to actually be able to picture where they are when I talk to them.

Another human rights condemnation? yawn

During my sometimes tedious days at work I frequently check Google news to get up-to-the-minute breaking news on everything that’s going on. The great thing about the site is it goes through publications all over the world and shows you what has been statistically written about the most in various categories. In that way, there’s no editorial filter and you get to see the raw news, with no one deciding what is important and what is not except the pure law of numbers, which thankfully also tends to show what is most important. Fortunately the pool only includes reputable news organizations (aside from the entertainment section) so you’re not getting literally what is most popular but rather what is most published.

One of the most interesting aspects of the site is that you can monitor how different areas of the world are covering the same news event. And one of the more frequent occurrences is that a story will get high-level play everywhere in the world except in the US.

Such was the case today when the UN human rights committee issued its most scathing critique yet on the human rights violations of the United States After a two-day hearing in Geneva last week into US compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the committee concluded that the United States is in serious violation of the treaty through its extensive secret interrogation and detention program for terror suspects. The document is probably the most critical and serious human rights report ever concluded by the UN about a Western nation.

US continues support of Lebanon war

The Rome summit on the future of the Middle East has wrapped up, and it was a bit of a fiasco. Condoleezza Rice is trying to sell Arab nations on her theory of “creative chaos,” in which the blood being shed in the middle east is somehow for the greater good. This is a preposterous claim and everyone knows it, including Rice. But it is the only way to buy more time for Israel to achieve it’s objective.

One problem: its objective is impossible.

Israel has set it’s goal as the eradication of Hezbollah. Even in the best circumstances this goal is impossible to meet, and these have not been the best circumstances. Israel has been caught off guard by the ferocity of Hezbollah’s defense, and especially by their ability to fire rockets deep into Israeli territory. Their “surgical strikes” have seemed to be anything but. So far Israel has killed more than 400 Lebanese, of which only 12 are known to have been members of Hezbollah. All the while the group continues to fire rockets into Israel, showing it has barely been scratched.