And now, bunnies

The weather was slightly less horrible on Wednesday, so I took the train to Leimbach and walked back.

It appears to be "log the slopes by the river" season.

Huge piles of tree trunks were piled up on the river bank. Not sure how they're going to get them out. (Helicoptering trees seems to be quite common here, so that may not be as wild a guess as you think.)

Bigger trunks lying parallel to the river.

Some had numbers spray-painted on them, or else a logo - "Holz" (wood) with a Swiss cross.

 Just for Austa, the current Stadt Adliswil fire station by a bridge near the river (in the same compound as the city recycling/disposal station)...

And the old fire station, you can just make out "Feuerwehr" above the doors on the left. It's now a row of shops and a vets, with entrances on the far side (just off the bridge).

And as promised... bunnies!

We'd seen them before but only inside their hutches during the cold weather. They were out nibbling the grass and chasing each other. 

Hello you.

And I managed to finish two baby blocks for a friend's baby - she moved to California last year, so hopefully David can meet up with her or her husband and hand them over while he's there.

Progress

Himself has just left for a business trip, so I'm going to try to really catch up on study this weekend. I haven't left myself much room to manoeuvre with the second part of Topics in Health Sciences - Understanding Cancers - finishing up in June, and Elements of Forensic Science and Inside Nuclear Energy just starting. The deadline for the last two is October, but I'll try to get them done well before that. Oh, and Introductory Human Physiology on Coursera is proving to be a lot of work, but fascinating. Makes me look forward to the OU level 2 biology courses.

Looking back (ah, hindsight!) what I should have done is taken Introducing Health Sciences - that together with Topics in Health Sciences would have given me the Certificate in Health Sciences. And I definitely enjoyed some of the Short Science modules more than others - having heard good things about Introducing Health Sciences (30 credits), I would probably have gladly done that instead of Plants and People, Understanding Human Nutrition and Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis (10 credits each).

I could go back and do Introducing Health Sciences, but it's about £1,000 to do it in Switzerland even on the transitional fee structure, it's being withdrawn in 2015 and if I want to make progress on level 2 I don't really have the time for it before then...

Which brings me to the next question. Under the transitional arrangements, I have until the end of 2019 to complete my BSc Open Studies. (I thought about trying to convert to a science BSc but I think that would involve changing too much at this stage.) That's plenty of time, but do I try to do all of level 2 in one year and same for level 3?

The level 2 courses I want to take all start at the same time this October, and one of them is going to be hard (The Molecular World, a whopping 60 credits of chemistry) although I'm hoping the other two won't be as difficult as I already have some background knowledge (Cell Biology and Human Biology, 30 credits each).

The level 3 courses are a bit more spread out, but all between May 2014 (overlapping with the three level 2 courses!) and October 2015. So it would be better for my sanity to space them out, doing each level in two years instead of one, but I'm not sure I want to wait until 2017 to get the BSc.

I'll keep my eyes open for new courses, but at the moment these are the ones I'm most interested in. And that is the key - some of the courses I struggled with were ones that I thought I'd be interested in but just wasn't (I'm looking at you, Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis). Nothing wrong with the course, but if I don't have that little spark going for the subject then it just feels like work. (All of this is unavoidable if you're still in school, but you feel rather embarrassed about it as a mature student choosing and paying for your own courses). But this is all new, so I can't expect everything to go perfectly. There are a lot of things I would change if I could go back to me in secondary school, frightened by drawings of benzene rings.

Roundup

Time has flown since we were in Geneva - it feels like it was months ago, and at the same time I seem to have got almost nothing done since!

Seen in our local Migros - I was tempted.

I went through the shops to try to find some felt to make a cover for himself's tablet, I didn't find anything suitable in the end but did find some felt I'd bought in John Lewis and forgotten about. Also came across these giant balls of wool in the Co-op in Sihlcity.

Bunny-shaped breads for Easter, some holding chocolate sticks.

A rather disturbing papier mache kit on sale in Migros Brunau.

Back in Sihlcity, some shop I can't remember closed and now there is a Butler's! Where else can you get a plush mounted unicorn head?

They also do great tableware.

The certificate for my Certificate in Contemporary Science also turned up. ^_^

In preparation for doing some sewing, I pulled out my collection of Japanese handkerchiefs and furoshiki, and washed the ones that the Yamaguchis gave to me as they cleared out their flat prior to moving.

Very happy with how this little box came out, especially as it was my first time using interfacing! I gave it to Mom and she is now using it to keep her glasses in.

A discreet pot of shamrock on the table when we went out to celebrate Mom and Dad's wedding anniversary at Aqua.

Views of Portmarnock beach on a very windy afternoon as I headed in to town.

Happy days

We went down to Geneva last weekend, to see my friend Dawn and to enjoy a little city trip. We stayed in Nyon, just outside Geneva, and enjoyed walking around the castle and the lake front.

The delicious Croix Verte restaurant in Nyon - best tagliatelle carbonara I've had in a long time.

The castle in Nyon, perched on the hill above the lake.

Another lovely building across from the castle, which I think is the town hall.

A charmingly crooked house near the castle.

Road not gritted.

Some plants on the way down to the lake that were being a bit optimistic about the best time to bud.

Beautiful old buildings down by the lake - and even some shops open on Sundays!

The lake with clouds over the French side.

David getting some photos of sea birds.

It was a very cold but clear, still day.

David found half a baguette, and chaos ensued. Ducks, coots, grebes, swans...

There was still plenty of snow on the ground, and on the piers.

Danger! A lovely patchwork shop that I avoided going into, as I knew I would probably go mad in the Japanese food shops in Geneva.

A scale model of the Swiss mountain train painted in the livery of the Hakone-Tozan Japanese mountain train.

A wonderfully clear view of the Saleve across the lake at Geneva, with the sun just starting to go down.

Dawn and me by the lake.

We found a fantastic place for fondue and enjoyed delicious moitie-moitie and mushroom fondue...

Followed by some amazing desserts, handmade meringues and Gruyere cream, and vin cuit (pear juice cooked for 30 hours until it's a thick, almost fig-like syrup) over ice cream.

Back in Zurich, the as soon as the Valentine's Day chocolates go on sale... it's Easter.

Clearly labelled - it's horse meat.

And I never noticed it before, but the local supermarket also has rabbit.

We went out to one of our usual haunts, Nagasui, on Tuesday night and I had an amazing chicken stir-fry with fresh shiitake mushrooms and dried black mushrooms, with dark soy sauce, chilli and pine nuts, all in a "dish" of deep-fried noodles.

And finished off with black sesame ice cream.

We got fortune cookies with our bill, and I opened mine on Thursday evening - just before receiving notice from the Institute of Translation and Interpreting that I had passed their exam and was eligible to become a full member! I also got the cute shiba-inu puppy card you can see in the background, from my homestay mother in Kyoto.

One of the joys of working from home is that you can take lunch in the kitchen if you need some emergency cake - I did my usual green tea steamed breads and decorated them with little sugar balls which melted during steaming, making them look like little green asteroids.

I also did a batch of cocoa steamed breads with chilli - and took one for myself for a little celebration!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Himself's present (one of them) was to decide what gets done with the last bit of pumpkin that was in the freezer, and he went for muffins. I managed to get breakfast and the muffins cooked before he was too late for work, and I got a big Lindt chocolate heart and lots of small Laderach ones!

Have a lovely Valentine's Day! (And for those who are avoiding the celebration, himself's office film club are showing Shaun of the Dead tonight.)