This afternoon, we went to Bern in order to have dinner with my aunt. We met her in a restaurant in the city, or well, we intended to meet. After she did not show for about half an hour, we decided to call.

What seemed unbelievable proved to be true: My aunt forgot to set her clock this morning and was late for an hour.

We made plans to celebrate my uncle's birthday on the lake of Zurich.

So much so.

This weekend started off just great! I have ordered 'Sex and the City - The Complete Series.' That is hours and hours of my long-time favorite TV series.

Even though I've loved this show since I first saw it, I have not yet seen all episodes. This is going to be a truly exciting TV-watching-all-day-and-night-weekend.

As all of you know, I have been looking for a job. I am looking to work either part-time and start my Master's degree in September, or - and that would be the real deal - work for some time somewhere abroad.

And so I have scheduled a call with John this afternoon. He is a friend of my aunt and truly lives the life style. Not only does he live a thoroughly healthy life (no alcohol, no cigarettes, and hours of sports per week), but he also seems to be much happier than average people. I wonder whether the first part of the last sentence is positively correlated to the second?

What more is interesting about John is his passion for cars. He regularly takes part in Ferrari car races across Europe. John is a native of Scotland and moved to Switzerland about 10 years ago. He still spends his vacations in Scotland next door to the Queen's summer residence.

I truly hope he can find me some work abroad..

Reading news papers online is convenient. I read major Swiss, German, and Northern American news papers on-line on a regular basis.

When I read about Jamie Lynn Spears' recent engagement to her long-time boyfriend Casey Aldridge, I couldn't help but wonder "Is this news?".

The story was on the homepage of blick.ch, the most read newspaper in Switzerland, for an entire day.

Is this truly news?

My grandmother turned 80 some time ago. On this occasion, she invited reams of people for a huge diner, an extended follow-up birthday party so to say.

Being entartained by a live singing choir, we drank, we ate, we had a wonderful and jaunty time.

My grandma often tells me stories about the time when she was young. When times were different, when two wars were in everybody's memory, when social classes were visibily separated, and when true luxury was truly exclusive to the well-to-do.

Most of the time, I enjoy her talking. It clearly shows that many things have not changed at all.

and it's snowing!!

Who would have thought it would snow in late March when this was one of the mildest winters I had experienced in my entire life? Is this global warming at play?

Either way, I must admit that it feels great to be chilling and relaxing inside the house while outside winter gets what it's due.

And this is exactly what allows me to keep up with my reading projects. My bachelor's paper aside, I now have time to finish Obama's 'Audactiy of Hope' (less interesting than I had thought, in fact, but I still decided to finish reading it).

The last two books I read, 'Herr der UBS: Der unaufhaltsame Aufstieg des Marcel Ospel' (The boss of UBS: The unstoppable advancement of Marcel Ospel) by Dirk Schütz and John Gray's 'Straw Dogs - Thoughts on humans and other animals,' were way more exciting.

Does anybody have any book suggestions that may top these?

What a day! I met with friends this morning for brunch. Interesting as their lives are, we shared all the latest news. Regardless of some prior tattle, I tried to take the high road.

Each and every one of my friends were amazed today that I was released from the Swiss Armed Forces after none of my efforts to escape yielded fruit; even more so as I had planned to be "away from my regular life" for over 6 months.

I currently feel my life is in full swing. I am truly looking forward to spending some time abroad. Today, I even made plans to spend a week in New York to meet up with them.

All of this gives me motivation to quickly come to terms with my final paper. I am pretty sure it won't be long before it's done.

Someone offered me to live in her apartment for 2 months in Zurich as she won't need it. I guess I will accept, and try to find some internship before college starts again.

Or ... should I wait with collge for another year to really start over and totally break with my former college town and all that is associated to it? I'm wonderin'.

What first felt like a tremendous relief suddenly turned into emptiness. My release from the Swiss Armed Forces in the nick of time has brought about new questions to my life: What now??

I literally thumped the table this morning and first went for a run. The fresh air, the nice weather, animals and a few co-runners brought some clarity into the picture.

I must say I am curious like my cat of what is going to happen next, of where life will lead me. Yet, as I have faith in my strengths and power, I need to take a decision sooner or later as to where I would like to work.

My final paper for college is evolving and will eventually be finished even though I cannot foresee when exactly it will be done.

Currently, my heart is set on an internship, or rather, on various internships. Most probably I will only begin my master's degree in about one and a half year. Therefore, I need to plan for more than a year.

I am curious.

Some time ago, a friend of mine advised me to always have a "plan B". This is exactly what I was carrying in my mind yesterday when entering the caserne.

And it worked! At 5 o'clock in the eveing I was out again. And here is the result: I do not have to do any military service, nor do I have to join the civil defense. No nothing!

How I did it? Well, I did not contribute much effort to it. After some talks, it turned out that the guys with the recruitment center erroneously decided to have me do a service.

Certainly, I can pursue my life goals again, and finish my bachelor's paper as soon as possible.

I am so happy!

In about 18 hours I will arrive at the caserne for my basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces. It will take 18 weeks until I am released. A 3-weeks accounting course will follow, based in a Geneva hotel. At least, this is what they have said.

As with anything new I am pretty excited about the experience. So far, I have believed the service will be an interruption in my life, an utter loss of time.

From the first minute on, I will be happy to have me convinced of the opposite. "Make the best of a bad job" - they say. And so, I will be looking at things closely in order to find something nice, interesting, and useful about it.

When worse comes to worse, I will be carrying two books with me. (Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" - I wonder whether my subconscious was inspired by the title to bring the book along -, and Cunningham's "The Essays of Warren Buffett".)

Soon, I will know what the service is all about.

Last night, I came home from my trip to Zermatt. I decided to leave one day early in order to assist my sister in preparing her birthday party on Saturday. She will be 26 - which somehow seems unreal, it seems like yesterday when we last were at each other's throats.

Zermatt was simply terrific. I went there with my parents and a friendly couple of theirs. He was pretty impressed by me since I managed to solve an issue for him and his wife in particular. Nobody else had been able to bail him out. To make a long story short, he shipped a 6-foot-large-wooden giraffe from Namibia to his home town in Swtzerland. The freight was supposed to arrive in Switzerland between 2-3 working days. Unfortunately, the giraffe never arrived and, in addition, he had lost the tracking number.


This year, the weather in Zermatt was simply great. Last time I was there, winds on the Klein Matterhorn were so strong that my mom was having a hard time breathing.