Nobody enjoyed my "Laundry" entry and instead called for photos and adventure stories. I'd better break the news to you all now that this isn't going to be a travel blog. We will try to put up as many pictures and stories of new places we go but meanwhile you have to read about the everyday aspects of ours lives. Take this for example...
This is the very first thing they decided to print on the front glossy fold-out section of the 80 page brochure about Zurich:
Bad Habits.
When Angela (31) rides her bike downhill she seems like a local here in this little village - the fact that she is from Chicago and works in a bioscience company could be overlooked because she has learned a bad habit: getting to the local rapid train station just in time to stop the bike and hop on th etrain seconds before it leaves the station. The world has heard a lot about the magic of the local transport system but people really seem to overstreatch it.
Roger (45) also has bad habits: when he sees a classic car he starts to shake, his voice becomes uneven and his eyes go out of focus (lucky for him the region is in the top five of worldwide classic car markets). He does this also with rare red wine and motorcycles, as well as with reggae discs imported directly from Trenchtown (people from London also fly in to get them here). His level of eccentricity is not good and overshadows the time he spends with his wife and the children as well as his involvement in a sustainable hedge fund developed with partners years ago in a defunct factory complex by the shore.
Bad habits continue: take Leo (38) for example, already a professor of architecture and urban planning. Again he puts his international reputation at risk by devoting much of his time to editing a new type of magazine combining corporate cultural affairs with branding and art. Flying around for his magazine takes him to distant places while his own city needs his ideas and experience. He is active in the local gay community and as his city is a node in the global network, he has access to new world trends.
The examples could go on and on. As we beging the 21st century, indivivdual lifestyles in unparalleled technologiical and monbility infrastrucure become attractors for people working with their brains. Whether in financial services, in creative think tanks or bioscience labs: tolerance combined with a track record in quality of life is the key to a new breed of individuals and companies. To be sure, the advantageous tax climate, free economy and stable political conditions are still important, but they are only the starting point.
It goes on for another even more confusing page touching on such subjects about what happiness is and how different people define it. There is section of odd Zurich facts such as "Highest per-capita number of psychiatrists and plastic surgeons after Los Angeles" or "Nightlife has no closing time - and thus never closes". After this very odd Bad Habits essay the booklet goes on in a very coherent and helpful manner. I'm glad that it did because after reading the rambling and confusing first few pages I was really staring to worry.
Now our inside joke whenever one of us running late is to remind each other that we shouldn't be getting into Bad Habits.
That's really strange. Both the good and bad habit show how cool Switzerland is! "J (45) has a bad habit of taking time away from his millionare bank job, making Zurich the world's banking capital, to donate his time to helping one of the many charitable organizations Zurich is well known for. As always, he uses the World Wide Web, developed at CERN in Geneva to conduct his business and view Zurich's beautiful party girls. But this is only the starting point..." It sounds like Singapore over there with the strange "big brother" social messages. Interesting.
Wheelson, January 19, 2005 06:31 PM:I totally liked the post about the laundry machine. I guess if you have to sell a product across Europe it might be hard to put all the different languages on the user interface.
Getting to see examples of the "little differences", like this laundry machine and what they call a Whopper are the things I'm looking forward to.
Prep Sensation, January 21, 2005 08:06 AM:Are they saying that these are good or bad behaviors based on the typical Swiss view?
Bryan, January 21, 2005 09:54 AM:Bad. Bad Habits. I guess I can kind of see the first one but why it is a bad thing to rely on the world renowned 'magic' of leaving the station on time? The second and third ones are just really odd to me. Roger really should focus more on that hedge fund. They are obviously trying to tout some of the nice aspects of the area but it's almost like you shouldn't enjoy them.