Daffnee

I'm having some serious problems sleeping in these mornings, though I'm not sure if it's the amount of light, the cathedral bells that go off every 15 minutes, the birds, or some underlying psychological illness. It makes working from 2-4 PM rather difficult, but seeing as we apparently can take 2 hours for lunch at WHO, perhaps I should just start siesta-ing.

Got a 1/2-fare train pass last weekend, so I've been trying to plan all my weekends in the next month: I'm thinking Bern, Lucerne, Interlaken, Gimmelwald, possibly Ascona, Neuchatel or Basel. I'm so much more motivated when I only have a month to do all this. ..

...and speaking of motivation, I love staff meetings. I get to do things after they're done. And now I think I can work it out so that I can write a memo on indigenous rights in India and Nepal that will serve as 1) my research project for the summer, 2) a legal writing sample, and 3) my contribution to a human rights and equity statistical analysis that might -- cross fingers -- be published in the Lancet this fall. And how cool would that be?

This is week 7 in Geneva already, and being Wednesday, it's what Mr. Williams would've called "hump day" -- the absolute middle of my little adventure. Time goes so quickly here.

But maybe time just goes too quickly generally. I should've spent that extra 9 CHF to upgrade that package of Paris sketches I sent home to first class, I suppose.

Chateau de Chillon, about an hour away from Geneva and next to Montreux:

It's getting a bit warm up on the 4th floor here. I had completely forgotten that one sweats in the hollow of the elbows.

The Fete de Geneve has been going strong all weekend, and it seems like everyone in Switzerland has invited themselves to my little Vieux Ville to camp out. The city has set up 30+ tents of every conceivable music genre, including a nice big one right on my doorstep. We were treated to 2 hours of little Swiss kids singing yesterday, and opera the day before.



Sandra and I are going on a poster- and dot-stealing expedition tonight. Hopefully by tomorrow we'll have the most unique, pink/yellow/orange polka-dotted door in the house.

No one can ride a grade curve the way I can ride a grade curve. I positively surf it. *sigh*

I was kind of disappointed the next morning, because Vicki’s travelling mishaps were much more interesting than mine. After leaving Galway for Shannon, she squeaked into the airport 30 minutes before her flight because her crazy Irish bus driver decided to take a smoke break at every bus stop along the way. Her budget airline stops checking people in 40 minutes before, of course – so Vicki, being the intrepid soul that she is, books a flight of Dublin and buses across the country to fly into Paris at midnight.

A few more hours and a directionless Parisian taxi driver later, she got in to our hostel 13 hours late. But she was there. And we were going to do Paris.

Went downstairs to get croissants and coffee (later discovered to be instant, for shame), and re-encountered Jenni. She had been rudely awakened by her roommate (from Melbourne) who had arrived home more plastered than I’ll ever be and proceeded to relieve himself on her bed (with her in it) at 3 AM. That, in my book, is some kind of ew. She decided to join us for the day since we were heading to the Louvre first too, and spent a goodly amount of that time insulting Melbourne as a city.

Also met Amelia at breakfast, another Sydney native who had spent the last 6 months in Whistler and was traveling about Europe until she started work in London. We trooped down, did the Louvre thing, posed with Mona and Venus and discussed how disturbing cherubs were. Saw a mummified alligator, which was just slightly neater than a mummified person.



Had a massive quiche at a French bistro, and my first escargot. Good texture – kind of like squid. Add pesto, and it’s chewy, green, and fun to pry out of a shell.

Walked to Notre Dame, where we griped about people taking flash photography in a church and I debated whether lighting a votive candle / signing the Book of Life was heathenish considering that I’m not baptized. Ultimately decided against it for economic reasons, which probably says even more about the state of my immortal soul than I’d care to think about.



Jenni left us to sleep (having not gotten much the night before), and the three of us walked the entire length of the Champs d’Elysees from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. That took about 2 hours, during which time I was given a fantastic evil eye from a passing Asian girl that even Vicki noticed, especially since she was so fixated on spiting me that she almost ran Vicki over. That was very puzzling, and she was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and white woollen scarf in mid-June. I consider myself fairly innocuous-looking. People don’t usually hate me on sight, I think…



Vicki and I had dinner at La Maison Rose behind Basilica Sacre-Coeur, after I tricked her into taking 8 flights of stairs instead of paying the 1.40 € for the elevator. Charming little bistro in a very quiet part of Paris. Ran into two WHO interns. Had the French onion soup (not so good), chicken (good), and French yogurt (v. good).

We had thought about going to the Moulin Rouge with Jenni, but the tickets were quite a bit more expensive that we had anticipated so we ended up having drinks at Le Chat Noir before making a late-night run to the Eiffel Tower (for Vicki’s benefit). Had some Nutella crépès, got the last train home, and then the last bus to Sacre-Coeur.

Now, for whatever reason, it’s apparently OK to ethnically slur Asians in Europe. This was part of a pattern that Vicki and I would develop over the weekend – she would get stopped (by a drunk guy wanting a hug, a West African guy forcibly selling bracelets, or a panhandler), I would turn back and tell them off along with her, and somehow the entire situation would dissolve with us walking away and the guy yelling about whether I was Chinese and making rather rude noises to go along with it. Bah.

In any case, we got back to the hostel, had one last round of wine together in Paris, and called it a night.

It was a great day.

I’ve never backposted before in my life, but this might make this easier for the girl with the unreliable short-term memory (i.e. me) who has problems separating days of the week.

So I had a bit of an adventure this weekend, involving Paris, a pact with a school friend that (for once) comes to fruition, and just a little mayhem to keep things interesting.

Things actually started off interesting, meaning that I woke up on Friday realizing that I had absolutely no idea what the name of the hostel we were staying at was. I put my faith in good karma, printed out the maps to two of the likely candidates, utterly failed to withdraw Euro from an ATM in Geneva and got on the TGV to Paris.

2 hours after reaching Paris and having done a nice little foot tour around Montmartre and Basilica de Sacre Coeur, I had chatted up a nice Aussie named Dennis but failed to locate housing or Victoria Murphy. Failing to locate Vicki would prove to be a common theme for Friday, but the hostel keeper and Dennis – bless him, wherever he may be – pointed me out to an Internet café around the corner and invited me out to drinks if I ended up without a place.

I forked over 75 Euro-cents and spent 15 minutes copying down the name and address of every hostel Vicki could have made a reservation at, and the next ten minutes playing “Avez-vous un reservation pour Victoria Murphy?” with hostel owners across the city.

In what must be the first good idea I’ve had this year, it worked. Trudged back the way I came for a kilometre, dumped off my stuff in a room with three twin beds pushed together and met our roommate from Sydney. Proceeded to harass the front desk for the next 2 hours about whether Vicki had called/emailed/checked in/eloped, which ended up being somewhat fortuitous because I was feeling energetic enough to start conversation with Jenni (schoolteacher from Sydney) and then Jeff (computer engineer from Burnaby) whom I tagged along with to the Eiffel Tower after it was clear I’d be Vicki-less for awhile longer.

Jeff and I did a half-witted search for an ATM, after which we did our own currency exchange of 300 CHF for Euro while waiting for the Metro. We headed up to the Eiffel Tower right at dusk, went up, froze in the wind a bit and got to see the city lit up at night. There’s something about lights at night – city of light or no.

The two of us got dinner across the street from where we were staying afterwards – around midnight by this point and still no sign of the Vickster – and proceeded to argue public policy. Since I was less of an Asian lightweight than Jeff was, I fuelled up on a lot of rose wine by the time 2 AM rolled around and was being the perfect libertarian poster child while illustrating my points using statutory rape analogies lifted right out of crim class. We concluded at the bar shortly thereafter. I think we left on good terms...

Vicki was there when I got back, already in bed and ignoring me.

That was Friday.

So I'm off to Paris for a few days, kids. Perhaps it'll help me stop feeling like an ineffectual bureaucrat that's sucking up WHO payroll (well, NYU payroll) and doing very little to further any good in the world.

I wonder if the reason that I find it difficult to take international treaties seriously is because breaking treaties was always an option while playing Sid Meir's Civ.

Rain splashing on trees in Geneva smells like jasmine.

That's quite some trick.

First, the latest addition to the family has hit 7 lbs, which is shamefully a full 3 lbs less than me when I first arrived in the world:



I resolve to take weekend trips on my own from now on, or with very select individuals that can keep the trip a secret -- three different groups had extended invites to go to different places in Switzerland this weekend, and all three were finally rejected by moi.

The first trip to Lugano (Swiss Italia) didn't have travel arrangements until Friday evening, when one of the interns discovered that the new intern (who joined at the last minute) fortuitously had a car. They were leaving at 6 AM. No, and no.

The second trip started out as a weekend trip to Luzern, which must be the only European city my parents have ever raved about. Thinking things settled at 5 PM on Friday, I arrive home after dinner with an e-mail saying the trip has been changed to a 2-nighter in Montreux and a cheese factory. Being lactose intolerant and finding the Montreux/Lausanne area a bit sleepy, another no.

The third trip was the most promising -- a boat ride up to Lausanne and a beer festival. Having gotten back from France late (groceries in France are half as much and 20 minutes away) and thinking that I really shouldn't be drinking THAT much beer, I instead resigned myself to a weekend of reading, EIW prep, and further museum-hopping in Geneva.

Unfortunately for me, they show some pretty disturbing stuff at the modern art museums here:



These went all around the first floor. The second floor/exhibit was a huge warehouse room with a massive pile of styrofoam pellets painted to look like a mound of sand/concrete. It was deep. Changed my life.

Meanwhile, back at the convent, I've been researching firms for EIW and finding disturbing similarities that do not bode well for me. They seem to like good grades, for example. And go-getters. They work a lot. I am also supposed to come up with a mysterious "writing sample" by the end of the summer, which seems to involve me using my mental faculties before August. Imagine!

Ladies and gents, you are witnessing the process by which corporate America creates their lawyers. Let me know if this scares you.

I spent a few minutes in front of the Cathedral St-Pierre watching the Genevian and Swiss flags flapping the way that flaps are meant to flap. Sat on a marble bench, kicked my feet like I was five, and drank from my Nalgene. Watched Martin Luther's old church not move. Felt the Murphy's stout work through my body and noted how square flags flap much better than rectangular ones.

The housing debacle may have sorted itself out now, meaning I get to stay with my rather easygoing German roommate who doesn't mind that I have a strange playlist, polka-dot underwear and speak Chinglish late at night when I'm calling my folks. On my side, German in the background is kind of soothing and good white noise to go to bed to. She also makes me speak more clearly, which I'm told is a long-standing problem.

Haven't been sleeping well, i.e. getting up at 5:30 AM. Nearly passed out at work this afternoon from sleepiness; sorry kids, but reading UN resolutions on indigenous rights just isn't the same as a vente Americano. I must be in the completely wrong profession if I don't enjoy building up rearview padding and eyestrain, eh?