Back home...

I got back home a couple of hours ago. I need to rant a little bit, but I'm not going to do too much because I need to sleep at least as much as I need to rant.

First, let me summarize more of the trip: After I was no longer jet-lagged and the weather got a little better, I was able to enjoy things more, though there were still some seriously broken things. For some reason, the citizens of Zurich like room temperature drinks no matter how sweltering it is outside. I like very cold drinks no matter how cold it is --- this led to strange looks, head-shaking, and questions on numerous occasions when I lived in Ithaca! --- so the fact that I had an obscene difficult time finding truly cold drinks made my life very hard. I can handle things being really hot, but then when it's very hot and humid outside and most of the conference rooms are worlds stuffier than Jorian's place (which is saying quite a lot, by the way), it becomes very annoying when I can't get a refreshing drink. (And I'm not just talking about having trouble getting cold coffee drinks, which I realize is much harder in most places outside the US. I mean truly cold drinks of any kind, so this isn't just a matter of my own weird preferences). When I didn't have a big preference of one session over others, I starting choosing parallel sessions in better-ventilated rooms.

Anyway, I can handle the heat if there is some means of escape/refreshment, which proved to be rather difficult.

The ice cream sold on the street was melting (and one place that I tried had a strict one-free-sample policy, which is fine, but I really didn't like the one I tried and wanted to see which of the others I liked --- I felt committed to buying the ice cream after I had a free sample [until I found out about the strict policy, after which I thanked the person helping me and left], and it seems like their policy isn't conducive to attracting customers. Ah well. It wasn't an unpleasant exchange or anything; I was just taken by surprise by the abject refusal for a second sample. (Maybe I should have explained that with my sampling flavors that I definitely felt committed to buying a scoop so that the person behind the counter wouldn't worry about my sampling lots of things and not buying anything, but I decided to leave instead of attempting to convince her.)

The ice cream wasn't a big deal, but the situation with the water was extremely annoying. It was almost impossible to find non-carbonated water. I strongly dislike sode water and don't find it refreshing. Whether or not I could get tap water at a given place depended on whether I could get my point across, because the facility people had with English varied strongly from person to person. (I'm guess that at some of the places, I might well have been able to get tap water and their insisting they didn't have it was probably just an unsuccessful attempt at communication on my part.) And it's like the use of ice is a foreign concept there. I was almost always in places without air conditioning, and this contributed greatly to my not feeling well for much of the time I was in Zurich. In the hostel, I bought one thing of iced tea from a vending machine (and with no ice and a very hot/stuffy environment, that didn't stay cold for long) and fill that with tap water once I was done with it, because the sink water was much colder than any water one could buy (and the only bottled water one could get was soda water). It wasn't a great solution (especially without ice), but it helped. (My understanding is that I was far from the only person who resorted to doing this.) The only place where I could get an ice cold drink was at Starbucks, where the stuff was made the same way as in the US. While I prefer local coffee places (or Peet's) on normal occasions, for my Zurich trip my two visits to Starbucks turned out to be an FSM-send: I found three different locations, and the one at which I camped had (a) air conditioning, (b) numerous comfortable chairs and couches, and (c) very cold coffee drinks (where 'very cold' was far more important than coffee). This made Starbucks the only place I could reiliably escape from the weather and has given me more respect for them than I had before. Sometimes, just knowing what you're getting is what needs to be optimized, and that was the case here. Just enjoy the cold drink and the air con, sit down, and read for pleasure.

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but let me reiterate that (at least in terms of food) Zurich has by far the highest cost of living of anywhere I've been. I think prices are a factor of close to 2 higher than anywhere else I've been. I guess salaries there are high and I expected prices to be high, but I didn't think it would be as ridiculous as it actually was.

By the way, the old town area of the city is unsurprisingly cool. I skipped some of the conference on Friday to walk around there again (which I also did on Sunday, but that was when I was really exhausted) and go to the science toy shop. (The toy shop unfortunately had sold their Chladni plate a few years ago, but there was still other stuff there to see.)

My trek home started Saturday morning and proved to be a disaster. Unsurprisngly, I saw lots of conference people at the train station, airport, and on my flight. This gave me the chance to talk to more of them. (There were also a number of others who I knew were with the conference, but whose identities I didn't know.) The return flights were each about an hour longer than the flights there (because of relative wind directions), which I could handle except for what happened: Namely, on the 9-hour flight from Zurich to Philadelphia, I developed a migraine headache and puked on myself (I couldn't find a barf bag in time). Migraines suck anyway, as do 9-hour flights, but getting a migraine on such a flight is simply awful. (Today may well have been my worst flying experience ever.) One of the flight attendants was really helpful, as was the guy sitting next to me (who moved to an empty seat elsewhere that was more crowded so that I would have room to clean myself and wouldn't have to sit in the stuff), so it's good that some people aren't totally callous. (That was the bright spot amidst the whole ordeal.) I cleaned things the best that I could and then once the flight was over, I had to deal with customs. I got through the first part ok but then after I got my checked luggage, one customs guy took it upon himself to accost me before the second part. Maybe he thought I was stoned or something, and I was certainly in bad shape because I was dizzy, walking slowly, and shaking fairly uncontrollably. He asked me how I was doing, and I first thought he was using that as a synonym for 'hi', which people often do, so I just said 'hi' back (and I'm sure I didn't sound friendly... when I feel that awful, I can just imagine how pissy I might sound as part of my state). He repeated his question with more than a hint of anger in his voice, so I said I felt awful (which was true). He asked me why, so I explained about the migraine (with four-part harmony and all that). We talked a little more and he was (IMO) rude to me. He ended up undoing the 'ok' for me to just turn in my card and leave, and asked me to go to the inspectors before I got out of customs. I did that and I explained why I was traveling and that all I had to claim was three bars of chocolate. (I went to a chocolatier on Friday. This is some really good shit. Well, I only tried one of them, but I expect the other two will also be really good.) He re-ok'ed me and let me get through customs to get past security again (which thankfully went smoothly).

I got coffee and a pretzel before my 6-hour flight from Philadelphia to LA, and I also made sure to take a 2-pill dose of dramamine. (I normally only take 1 when I bother to take it at all these days, but I decided that I really needed to avoid another 6 hours of pain.) The dramanine's side effects put me to sleep for about 3-3.5 hours of that flight, for which I was very thankful. So that was definitely a good move.

The flight arrived slightly early and then I dealt with Supershuttle. The driver was a prick. He missed my apartment slightly, which was just an honest mistake of not hearing me when I mentioned where to stop (or of my possibly not being loud enough; given my state, I couldn't exactly speak very loudly at the time). That's no problem and is easily corrected. But then he started giving me a tongue-lashing about my not having mentioned anything, which is utter tripe because I had said it three times before he passed by the place. He complained about the extra driving and having to pay for gas himself, which was also asinine because he only overshot by a quarter of a block before we squared things away! Like I am going to have sympathy for a quarter of a block worth of gas money! Anyway, the driver backed up and I left the bus and got my stuff. Then as he left, he shouted something incoherently in my direction. I have no idea what it was, but that kind of treatment is just a bunch of shit. I briefly considered reporting him to Supershuttle but I decided I'm not going to be that petty because he probably had a long day and it's not like I'm not ever ornery to people who don't deserve it.

Anyway, then I came hear and have been reading baseball box scores (and trying some of my chocolate) and, in general, relaxing a bit before I officially crash.

OK, so this entry was much longer than I was planning. Se la vie. In subsequent blog entries, I have several movies I still want to discuss. I saw them a while ago now, but I want to go over them anyway.

And I have some chocolate for the locals to try...