First photos from Taipei

http://picasaweb.google.com/christian.pluess/Taipei1?feat=directlink

Just arrived in India!

After 3 fascinating weeks in Taiwan, I arrived in Dehli today. It's much more chaotic, pushy and unpredictable than Taipei. I really look forward discovering and learning to understand this huge country in the next two weeks. Next to Dehli, Agra, Varanasi and Jaipur are some of the sounding names I'll visit by boat, train, riksha and bus.

(I still haven't managed to upload the pictures from Taiwan - I'll try another time since this small hotel has only one terminal and people are queing)

Changing life stages

Okay, finally I manage to cover how it all started:)

Once upon a time, on Friday morning after several crazy days with little sleep, I got up at Math attic at 6 am to go back to my appartment to pack my backpack. After one hour packing I left my empty appartment and went back to Math to have a shower and was welcomed with a nice cappucino and fresh Swiss bread :). After that I had to work my last day... and park my car on the HACO parking for the next 8 months... which required removing the battery connection and the number plates... unfortunately I did this exactly at the time when a heavy rain shower hit Guemligen, so the little car mecanic in his business attire was all wet:(. After finishing my last business tasks, and receiving a very nice farewell "Apero" from my board-collegues I had to rush back to my appartement at noon to hand it over to the land lord. In the afternoon I did the farewell round in my company, before I finally started at four (!) to clean up my office. As you can imagine the separating wasn't done in a very sophisticated matter since I had to catch the train to the airport at5.30! And... I made it! At Bern mainstation I got a big can of beer and a salami bretzel for my indulgence on the train to Zurich airport. There they even accepted my bags without charging me overweight... So everything went well until I had to change planes in Frankfurt... but that's another story.

YES!!!

Finally I can post a blog without being translated into Hindi all the time! Xing nian kuai le!!! (Happy lunar new year)

P.S.: I got help true the blogger help forum! :)

चंगिंग लाइफ सतगेस!

Computers and I have a love-hate relationship. Most of the time it is on the hate side unfortunately. As currently since the computer is only writing in hindi for whatever reason. I couldn't fix it during the last days and it is still not really working as you can see in the title. Usually I blame the guy who is wasting most of the world populations time: Bill Gates. I really don't understand why he earns money for stealing peoples time - he should be punished for his mediocre products.

My new home

This is my new home since today! I live on sixth floor and have a brand new 6 square meter room;) My visting hours are 7 days a week from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The elevator has 24 hours music and from the sixth floor you do have a nice view of the Swiss television building (including the meteo studio on top of it)! Since I don't fit in anymore, after we put in all my stuff, I have to go traveling now ;)

Moving pro's

Click here to see the two heros in full size!

Gosh this was a tough moving weekend! Since Friday 5 p.m. non-stop packing and moving until Sunday night! It's now 11 p.m. and I'm lying in my empty flat fully exhausted... but without my two brothers Math and Andy (and Jerry), I would not even have filled the first truck by now! They really proved to be moving professionals, who managed to fill truck and my self-storage like a three-dimensional Tetris ;)

My employee of the day

My friend and employee Fritz, who has with his 59 years, 2 sons and one divorce quiet some life experience has sent me today the following quotes on being a husband. I immediately had to forward this to my two good friends who are both called Marc and are engaged but not yet married ;) Next to that he organized for my great russian customer Bushido (www.bushido-coffee.com) within one hour a 'prototype' of one of my crazy ideas which I generated at the lunch table with the customer: A vodka with HACO coffee flavor:). The amazing thing is that he sent me this email even before the vodka!

David Bissonette

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him
keep her.

Sacha Guitry
After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just
can't face each other, but still they stay together.

Hemant Joshi
By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a
bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

Socrates
Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.

Dumas
The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, "What
does a woman want?

Sigmund Freud
I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.

Anonymous
"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and
dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays."

Henny Youngman
"I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years."

Sam Kinison
"There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic
banking. It's called marriage."

James Holt McGavran
"I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me, and the
second one didn't."

Patrick Murray
Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming
1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it,
2. Whenever you're right, shut up.

Nash
The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it
once...

Anonymous
You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.

Henny Youngman
My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.

Rodney Dangerfield
A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.

Milton Berle
Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.

Anonymous
A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: "Wife wanted". Next day he
received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: "You can have
mine."

Anonymous
First Guy (proudly): "My wife's an angel!"
Second Guy: "You're lucky, mine's still alive."

Finally father discrimination stops in Switzerland

According to my favorite daily newspaper (www.tagesanzeiger.ch) unmarried and divorced fathers in Switzerland, will finally receive the same rights towards their children as woman do have today. Switzerland is the last country in the world where currently the rights of parents towards their children are not equal! So far separated mothers had to actively agree to equal rights of the father towards the children. If they did not do so, the rights over the children were solely handed over to the mother. Of course this has been abused in many cases to blackmail the former husband in order to achieve a preferable divorce deal. Good to see that things are finally moving in conservative Switzerland :)

Leaving a job with a one million dollar view

I probably will never get a job anymore with such a great view! Yesterday it was unbelievable - Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau in the red evening sun - just gorgeous! So today I decided to take the camera along, but of course the weather wasn't as great anymore, but at least you get an idea of the view! As a matter of fact my board colleague Urs, who I appreciate business-wise as well as personally very much, told me that he could never work in my office because the temptation to leave the office on sunny days would be too great ;) He has climbed all peaks you can see and even para-glided down most of them!  

Leaving save haven

In order provide my brother Math, who - thanks god - 'volunteered' to take care of my administrative stuff, a comprehensive overview, I started writing a list with the most important contacts. By now the list has 3 (!!) pages and it's probably not complete yet! I just got aware what incredible need for security we have got in Switzerland: We don't have one social security pillar - we need three (!), we have SUVA (governmental accident insurance) and the private health and accident insurance as well as an additional personal life insurance. 

We do need a travel cancellation insurance, which includes a search and rescue insurance, even though this is already covered by the health insurance's global travel add-on, the SUVA as well as the voluntary contribution to the Swiss air rescue company. I thought the only thing I did not have covered was the rescue out of a war area by the US marines, which will be included in the green card my brother Andy is currently applying ;). But then Math reminded me that I lack of a personal legal liability and a householders comprehensive insurance... which of course I instantly did online including a third party car and motorcycle and theft and travel luggage insurance :). Any other risks you can think of which I have not covered yet?

Leaving frozen wonderland

I couldn't believe having -9° C on my car display this morning! Since weeks it has now been exceptionally cold and covered in Bern, while the mountains had fantastic weather day after day! Today, I had to take a long lunch break in order to pick up my passport from the Chinese embassy, get an express visa at the Vietnamese embassy and hand the passport over to the Indian embassy for my forth and last visa (Cambodia has a perfect instant online visa service! I was really impressed!). 

On the way there the sun was suddenly breaking through the clouds and everything looked just like a frozen wonderland! Really gorgeous, the photos actually do not really display it, since they were taken with my cell phone. I really still can't imagine being in 10 days in a much warmer place (even though Tanya just complained that it is currently really cold in Taiwan! Approximately 10° outside, which is okay - only that they don't have real heaters, so it isn't much warmer inside neither as I had to learn last year;))!

Why doctors are perfect sales persons

I have been organizing a sales (we called it customer orientation) training for the whole management of my company this year. Our coach always referred to doctors as role models to do effective sales. And today I really experienced why: I went to the tropical institute at the 'insel' hospital in Bern to get the one and only vaccination which my good friend Dejan could not do himself, because the tropical institute has the exclusivity on it: yellow fever. Dejan is an excellent and pragmatic doctor and already did the vaccinations for ticks as well as hepatitis A&B and I still had protection for poliomyelitis, diphtheria and tetanus. 

I expected to get it within 10 minutes, but after 30 minutes talking (and before the usual 20 minutes waiting time) the doctor has explained me all possible lethal illnesses in the countries I'm traveling to, that I agreed to get 7 additional vaccinations (!!!) and even ran out of time to have the risks of malaria explained. Eventually I was there for 1.5 hours and still had to book an additional appointment (to have the malaria risk explained and to do the second rage vaccination). 

P.S.: For people who are interested in the additional vaccinations: Yellow fever, rage, poliomyelitis refresher, typhus as well as measles, mumps and rubella (because I'm not 100% sure whether I had it as child). On top of it I will receive the malaria prevention next week. Medically spoken I'm ready for any trip now! 

To umlaut or not to umlaut, that is the question!

I just have to publish this link to my brother Andy's surprise wedding on youtube for all of you who haven't seen it yet ;)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyB7xUvwmHw.

Countdown

Just 11 days until take off and just 6 days until complete clean off! From next Saturday on, my things will rest in the self-storage in Zurich Oerlikon (www.swiss-selfstorage.ch). So today I need to start packing the next 7 months. Segment the things I need the first 3 weeks in Taiwan and the 7 weeks travelling, 2 weeks in spring with Jerry as well as the 'Swiss Snow Mountain Adventure Weekend' with Math, Daniela, Andy and Jessica, and then the big trip around the world going west. But first of all, I should now start cleaning out the mess that I don't have to pay storage for things I don't need anyhow ;)

Farewell Party

Thank you, my dear bernese friends for enjoying a last evening together with me before my departure :) It's has really been a fun evening full of unexpected reunions! Marc, Lynn, Christoph, Stefan, Noemi, Math, Daniela, Dominik, Hanspeter, Evie, Urs, Andreas, Alex I wish all of you and your families a wonderful year and look forward staying in touch with you. Take care!

surfing life

Okay, now I'm actually really starting to write a blog. It's a start, but neither a promise nor a commitment. So, if this remains the last comment during my trip through the world, you definitely know that I'm doing very good and forgot to write my blog :) Cheers!