"You never call, you never write!"

Yeah, I know - I don't do much of either one. Although I do get plenty of gentle reminders regarding my lack of communication... Ahem. I hear you, I do - it's just hard to keep writing about "Swiss" stuff, when it all just seems like "normal life" stuff now. While I wouldn't say I've gone native, my distance from the differences and oddities has shrunk down to pretty small. So I guess now, only things that are actually funny make me notice - not just things that are Swiss or French or German or European are funny in their differences. Does this make sense?

I can describe what it looks like out my window right now - maybe something interesting will inadvertently come up. It's a sunny day with a bright blue sky and it's freaking COLD outside. The wind is blowing some serious chill as well. The campus here at work is all under construction, and I have a front-row seat, as I'm on the second (US: third) floor of a building overlooking several active construction sites. They are pulling down three older buildings right across from me, and it's quite a process. Rather than just, say, knock them down (or even implode them) and then cart away the demolished rubble, they seem here to quite carefully take the building apart. Literally. They pull out anything and everything that could possibly be recycled and put it all into separate skips to go to the various recycling places. I'm talking glass, metal (eg, window frames, pipes), bathroom fixtures, including tiles, etc. Then they start at the top floor and put a wee digger inside the building to break things down and shove the rubble out the (now empty) windows. Meanwhile, from the outside, they have some very large digger thingies working at pulling off larger chunks from the outside walls. One of the diggers has a large saw at the end of it, along with constantly running water, that sort of cuts of chunks of building off. Then, after the rubble pile has grown around the bottom of the building, another extension of another digger has a great huge magnet on the end of it, and it combs through the rubble pulling out any missed metal bits and dumping them into the recycling skips. It's a very involved process, and took them nearly three months to pull down one six-story building. They're still working on the one next to it, but I have an obstructed view to that one.

Meanwhile, there is a very large open pit across from the dismantled building, which is the foundation being made for a new building that's going in. There are three of the national bird of Switzerland (the crane) being used for this new building. They're all red and they swing around a lot - they use them constantly all day long. They are very carefully placed so they can't whack each other, but that is hard to tell from my angle, so I'm always a little nervous that they'll knock each other over and the poor little crane dude will come a-tumbling down.

Hmm, let's see. There's also a smoke stack with lots of steam coming out of it - this campus still has some production facilities, so undoubtedly they're cooking up some Cure for All Mankind in that building. Off to my far right-hand view, the palace of the king - I mean the Corporate building sits - where the CEO and all the other big dudes (yes, dudes) have their offices. I go over there when I need money - because the company bank is also in that building, not because there are actual handouts or anything. My company bank account is suffering from failure to thrive at the moment. I'm hoping that the springtime warmth and love (read: bonus time) will breathe new life into it.

Oh, here's something you might find interesting. As I may have already told you, they divide up one's annual salary into 13 payments instead of 12 (get paid once a month here), and then in November, you get a double paycheck. It's not a bonus or anything, it's your money that you've already earned and they're kindly holding it for you until the end of the year, but it is nice to get a little influx of cash. But it's not unique to this company, no, not at all. It's a veritable Swiss tradition, and everyone gets their 13th paycheck in November. And don't all the bill collectors know it! I got more bills in December than I could even have dreamed of expecting - so all my 'extra' paycheck and more are certainly gone. Just for some examples: I got a bill for annual car insurance, CHF 1800. Got a bill for semi-annual health insurance, CHF 1850 for Scott, CHF 1500 for me. Got a bill for the dentist (two crowns, three large fillings, x-rays and a cleaning) CHF 3600. Got a bill for the tram passes for 2006, CHF 1280. Several doctor and pharmacy bills, about CHF 500. Still in my purse, waiting for an influx of funds, are my electric bill (which they only send once per year, after they see what you owe versus what you've already paid) to the tune of about CHF 550, and a bill for one year and one quarter of TV and Radio tax - yes, taxes to own and operate a TV and a radio (and we only told them we had one of each), CHF 680 (!!!)...and the cable sucks! It's an outrage I tell you. I'll take my time paying those last two. Hmph.

Finally got our taxes done (okay KMPG got our taxes done) and we ended up owing the Feds (US) about $1500, which I also just had to pay in November. (Then the Feds sent me an interest bill for $7.62 - are you kidding me?? I paid them a check in green ink with very tiny writing, and I wrote the check for $7.65. Let's see if they get back to me with that overpayment.) Got a whopping ~$150 back from the state of Utah. And the Swiss tax authorities owe me nearly CHF 6000 in overpaid taxes. They'll probably take their sweet time rushing that money back to me though. I paid in CHF 48,000 in taxes, so I should think they'd have enough of my cash to spare me back my piddling low four figures. Hmph again.

Oh well, for the money we pay, we do have a great life - the standard of living here can't be beat, and we're still having a really good time and enjoying things in general. Funnily enough, despite our exotic locale, our favorite activity still is staying home in our living room with our dogs and cat and watching movies/TV shows on DVD. But it's totally exotic how we do it here, because you see, we're in SWITZERLAND. See that? Totally.