Tracking my activities on a daily basis is getting too much.
I should switch to a weekly report.
I finally opened an account with UBS in Rennweg as many colleagues have suggested.
It came as a surprise to me that depending on the bank and the branch (!!!) one tries, he gets totally different answers, i.e., denied to open an account due to being classified as a 'US person for tax purposes', considered a 'US person' but not denied, or even not considered a 'US person' at all!
The stuff was friendly but the whole picture looked a bit like a charade to me.
Try to picture me dressed more or less in my usual style, sitting face to face with a bunch of uptight Swiss bankers dressed in suits. I assume that the Google salary played its role but still I have trouble feeling easy with that picture. The best part (sarcasm) came at the end when the person opening the account was explaining to me the security measures taken by the bank in order to initialize the web banking access to my account. He concluded "but you are an IT(!!!) professional, so that should be easy for you". What???? 'IT' professional??? What next??? Will someone ever call me, e.g., "Web Support and Testing professional"??? I am a computer engineer, dude! IT is a utilitarian term as viewed by business people like you. Do you realize that "The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers"? OK. I should take my pills and relax. Anyway, it looks like the bank account has been successfully opened. Fingers crossed, Google payroll goes through successfully and I will be a happy man.
Change of topic. My efforts to practice my limited German are more or less a disaster up to now. Reason number one: people tend to judge from my face too hastily that I am Spanish and do not address me in German. I have been called "senor" and "caballero" too many times. Honey, if you knew me you would know that I am nothing close to a knight (an alternative translation of the word 'caballero') and moreover, I was very proud that people in the US recognized me as Greek just from my face. Do not spoil it for me please :) (A professor I TAed for, once left me in a Kinko's to make copies for the class. He later sent someone to pick-up me up with the following instructions: 'He looks like Greek'. I got back to class safely.)
Reason number two: someone claimed that Swiss people have such a strong antipathy for Germans that unless you can address them in Zurich-German, they prefer to speak in English. Way to go gov'! I will have my team at 5'o clock promptly :)
Fun facts for Swiss-German: the way to pronounce the word kitchen is something like 'hoohee', the verb to be in the third person instead of pronounced like 'isst' is pronounced more like 'isht'
It turns out Sunday is my kind of day.
Usually, I am so exhausted from the whole week's effort on Saturdays that I have the minimal energy required only to do my laundry and then I crash to bed sleeping all day.
But on Sunday afternoon I am determined to explore the city!
Today, I took the tram number 4 which crosses the "Bellevue" area, a posh area which starts from the foothills of ETH and extends along the right bank of the Zurich lake.
Pictures and more comments will follow in a subsequent post.
The tram goes through the Rathaus, the town hall of Zurich.
The astute observer will not face to observe that the external walls of the Rathaus are decorated with the busts of famous Greeks, I guess as examples of civic virtue.
I could not fail to think that if there were too much civic virtue around I would not be here right now :)
The area around the Rathaus is full of open air cafes.
As mentioned in a previous post, I love sitting outdoors late in the afternoon during the Spring months when the temperature is just right, the day grows longer and longer and there is people around.
My personal OKR (Objective and Key Result for the Google outsiders) for this quarter is to explore as many cafes as possible and eat as much chocolate, coffee and pastries there! Some beer would be fine too.
One thing one cannot fail to notice is the smoking in public spaces.
I was sitting at a restaurant outdoors enjoying my early dinner around 6pm.
Two tables away a young couple was smoking before and after their dinner.
The smell took me by the noise and the feeling was most disagreeable but nobody seemed to notice or complain.
Apparently smoking in Europe is common even among younger people and considered socially acceptable. Too bad.
(to be continued)
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