Rollercoaster

Well, I can't keep titling the posts "I'm not dead".

Had a blissful Easter weekend in Zurich, arriving late on Thursday night to meet up with himself at the apartment he's subletting while a colleague is seconded to the US. On Friday we walked down to the lake and around the old town, through some beautiful gardens and down the west side of the lake. Saturday was spent in Horgen, where himself is flat-hunting, and we saw one possible place - the ground floor of a 3 storey house, gorgeous but out of our price range. I swear the current tenants were a German/Swiss version of a certain couple we know in north Wales.

Sunday was spent at the zoo, with an additional adventure on the way there as we had a ticket check on the tram and after we'd happily handed over out tickets were told they were the wrong ones. The inspector warned us there is a 80 CHF fine, then took us off at the next stop to buy the correct tickets instead of charging us. The ticket machine didn't take notes. We didn't have change. He didn't have change. His colleague didn't have change. He told us to keep going on our wrong tickets, break notes at the zoo and get the right ones back.

The zoo is quite large, but did suffer from a bit of that "animals in a cage" feeling. The elephant keepers had batons, which I haven't seen before. Mind you, one of the elephants took it off the keeper while he was hosing them down and he just put his hand out and they gave it back. There's also a huge tropical dome, which is amazing but very uncomfortable with the high humidity. We had coffee and cake and wandered home.

Monday wasn't quite as hot as the other near-sunburn days, so we went out on the lake. It was billed as a cruise, but was more like a modified ferry journey. This suited us, as we wanted to look at potential neighbourhoods from the water. Some were added to the list as a result of being able to see how built-up or not they were.

Got back into work on Tuesday glowing (mentally and physically). I knew there would be some kind of comedown, but was not expecting to be called into a room with a number of other people to be told that our end client was terminating our agency. The rest of the week was spent in a blind panic and deep uncertainty about whether we could - let alone would - continue beyond the end of April when the termination took effect. Many hours were lost meeting new potential agencies and discussing our situation, during which some unsettling facts were discovered.

The weekend was spent checking on tax and residency laws, reading sample contracts and constantly on phone and messenger to each other. This week was more of the same, although I started skipping the agency meetings and tried to concentrate on getting some work done. Old rumours ran riot, new ones abounded and as the week dragged on with no information from the end client, people started to make plans.

In a wonderful demonstration of their unique modus operandi, an email with a request to speak to all of us individually went around at 5:50pm on Friday, when most people had gone home. I was in work until 8:00pm waiting to talk to HR and did get some questions answered, but not all of them and now, with four days to go, I still have no contract to sign. But it looks like there can be one, although all this was worked out by my good self, instead of the end client who caused the problem.

After talking to himself about the expenses involved in moving to Zurich, I've decided to stay on if possible. A few things will need to be worked out, but hopefully it will be possible. The other option would be just not taking the return flight after the May bank holiday weekend (which is on Friday 1 May here). Looking forward to going back for a few days for a break, even if it is to close up the flat for decoration.

Other good news: himself has had an offer on a flat - in one of the new areas we started looking in after Easter, excellent to get to work, smaller than he really wants, but about the same size as our current one and renting is incredibly expensive - and I got written confirmation from the Finanzamt that they don't want any money from me.

Reality check: I am applying for an extension for my MA. I'm just nowhere near far enough with my translation to be ready in 6 weeks, even with 2 weeks off. I keep putting off sending in the form, which I think shows how much I hate doing it. But this is one thing I can't afford to get wrong, especially after the poor mark on my last essay.

So, one more (short) week of uncertainty, and then hopefully back to business as usual.

Spring has sprung

Yesterday was a lovely day, sunny and fine, until I decided to go to the shops and we had a rather impressive sun shower. But I am now stocked up on all the essentials - and some chocolate biscuits.

Been having a lot of fun reading reviews of the new season of anime in Japan, ranging from "For those of you who have already figured out that this is a big load of garbage and isn't worth wasting your life on, here's a picture of a bunny. Please enjoy it and move along," to a reviewer actually going out and finding an animated icon of a little Pac-Man type thing shooting itself in the head to put in place of the number for "x out of 5" in his review. Only Japan could bring you an animated series based on a lavishly illustrated "erotic" choose-your-own-adventure game.

Other than that, actually made some progress on my Annotated Translation yesterday. I'll try to edit what I did (got very choppy towards the end as I lost concentration) and if all goes well I might be able to do another section today. The will is there but the brain power isn't always with it. Staying up until way past bedtime playing with fish on Endless Ocean did not help. At all.

I keep trying to convince myself I can translate, but this ain't simple game dialogue. It's painful even when I ignore the Meiji era quotes which I can barely decipher. I really need to improve my reading...

Work life

Got back in full daylight! The internal employee in charge of locking away consoles went home early and so did I. I was the subject of some justified mockery for acquiring a console through purchasing via our team leader and I've managed to hook it up to the mobile broadband and it is happily updating itself.

In other work-related news, our boss' boss - the one who draws on bananas - left his notebook on the formerly mentioned internal colleague's desk. We promptly got hold of a newspaper-cutting style font and wrote a ransom note demanding chocolate, and added a picture of a kitten for good measure. It took him about two seconds to figure out who had done it. He gave us some chocolate eggs, even though he really didn't owe us anything after rumbling us.

There are some pale candy-pink cherry trees on a nearby road, one I only walk up when I've got the bus. One is in magnificent full bloom and two more not far behind. It will always, always make me think of being on Kyoto's Path of Philosophy with my parents. It's 10 years since I met my homestay family this year - must do something special.

Twilight hours

I got back to the flat in almost-daylight yesterday. Woo.

There's a bit of a fin de siecle mood at work. The automated metal blinds are malfunctioning and opening and closing relatively randonmly so we're in darkness for most of the day. At least it's better than not being able to work because of glare. We've been banned from our own breakout room and most-used kitchen because of guests for most of the week and today will have to go out onto the roof garden and cross to the other side of the building to come and go into our side as the breakout room is the only other access from the lifts/stairwell. I went out and bought hand soap for the ladies and gents in our side as the in-sink pump had run out and the cleaners replaced the soap with watered-down washing up liquid. Nice.

Everyone is still busy, but discontent and looking around. The money is good, and the experience, and the people, but it's still almost not worth it. There are rumours about the agencies which disturb me greatly. I've already popped them in the 'incompetent' box, but it's looking much worse than that. The flats haven't been cleaned in weeks, and most people are now cleaning them themselves. Handing the cleaning contracts over to the people who allegedly clean the office hasn't made any difference so far.

Need to do my accounts this weekend, as it's nearly tax time. With the constant overtime, I am earning nicely, but will be paying for it. Oh, and as freelancers we have been officially liberated from the tyranny of the German 10-hour maximum working day and no working on Sundays. We can now work as long as we like whenever we like, with authorisiation of course. 10 hours still sounds like a good limit to me.

And, oh yes, my Annotated Translation. I do need to actually pass this MA at some point. That is the plan for tomorrow.