When bad things happen to good people...

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful girl. She was a very good person. Who always had good intentions. One day, this wonderful, good girl, decided to go on a detox diet. She even convinced her devil incarnate friend, who we shall refer to here as Jon, to join her on the detox diet. Jon agreed to do it, albeit begrudglingly.

For the first two days, everything was perfect. The wonderful girl had nothing but fruits, vegetables, and salads and soup for lunch and dinner. On the third day, the wonderful girl had dinner plans with her wonderful friend. For the sake of this story, we shall call him Chris. Chris knew that the wonderful girl had a dark and terrible secret. She was addicted to Fondue. Only Chris was privy to this deep, dark, shameful secret. Okay maybe the whole world knew about her secret, but only HE had the power to use it to his advantage. Okay that's not really true, but let's just pretend it was. Anyway, on the third day of the diet, Chris uttered the F word on the tram. This powerful word shattered the wonderful girl's world. All of a sudden, the only thing she wanted was Fondue. She couldn't function like a normal person. She started wailing on the tram. People were staring, but she remained unmoved.

She begged Chris to allow her to focus on her diet, but he insisted that they go for fondue. Despondent, she had no choice but to follow him there. Now, if you come across this Chris guy, he may give you a different version of this story. HE may say that HE tried to get this wonderful girl to stick to her diet, and that SHE insisted that they go for fondue. He may claim to not even know where the restaurant was located. But don't be food by his charming smile. For under that charm lies the heart of an evil kingpin, who can fool you into doing his bidding anytime. I mean, look at this wonderful girl here:



Does this face look it belongs to the wonderful girl who made the decision to go have fondue herself? Or does it look like she was forced to go there? I mean, if the tears that you can almost see glistening in her eyes don't make you believe the latter, then I don't know what will.

In the meantime, the actual devil incarnate Jon was made aware of such flagrant violations of the diet. But Jon, being the devil incarnate, allegedly already foresaw such developments and therefore broke his diet even earlier by indulging in cake therapy. The moral of this story is that wonderful girls should never hang out with devil incarnates or with evil kingpins, for they have the power to ruin people's lives. Or at least their diets. Let this be a lesson for all. That is all.

The world is coming to an end

Why, you ask? Because something incredible is happening as we speak. Something no one thought possible. Something that will go down in annals of history as the definining moment that changed the world as we know it. Generations have waited for this moment. Protests were launched for it. People risked their lives for it. And the moment is this: I'm going on a diet.

Yes, you read it right, and you read it here first. I am going on a 7-day detox diet. You may have thought that I was going to comment on the crisis in Egypt, but there's enough coverage about that historic event already. On the other hand, not a SINGLE newspaper has come to me to talk about my diet. So I've decided to take matters in my own hands and blog about it.

You see, when I got back from New York earlier this week, I planned to blog about all the insane amount of food I had eaten there. And believe me when I say this: it was insane. Just making a list of all the different things I ate took up an entire page. Going through the list also helped me resolve the mystery of my expanding waistline. I knew that something had to be done. And so I decided to do the 7-day detox diet, not really to lose weight, but mainly to cleanse my palate, so I can try to stop being in a constant state of craving. Today is Day 1, which is only fruit and veggie soup. To say that it's not going well would be an understatement. I see cupcakes floating around me, and people are starting to look like banana pudding. I'm sure there's something wrong with this picture, but I just can't figure out what.

On a related note, I'm sure you are aware that there is a lot of eveil in this world. And some of these evil people have no shame and would never think twice about sitting next to you in the cafeteria with a plateful of raclette, KNOWING that you are on a diet. I demand that such people be slapped. Some other people will also have no shame and will bring up the names of all the wonderful things that you ate while in New York. Such people's heads need to be shaved. And on that not-at-all violent note, I'm going to make me a wonderful fruit salad and have some delicious (not) soup. If I'm alive this time next week, I'll be back. If not, well, it was good knowing you. May the force be with you. Amen.

New York, New York!

Oh New York, how have I missed thee. Ten minutes into being back in the city, I was under a dual pronged cold and wind attack, witnessed a large woman yelling at a cab driver, and sat in a cab that smelled really bad. And I felt like I was home.

I'm not going to lie, most of this week has been spent eating and shopping. I'm staying with one of my best friends for part of the trip, so there has also been a lot of "chin wagging" going on. That's right - apparently I talk so much that I'm considered a "chin wagger". Certain people from the Land of the Queen coined this phrase to specifically be able to describe just how much I talk. One day when I'm done being mad about it, I might even find it amusing.

Anyway, I digress. Due to the fact that I'm only back for ten days, each meal matters. So the day I landed, I went to the nearest Chipotle, had a veggie burrito bowl, and cried in joy after the first bite. After being able to check off one of the food joints off my long list of restaurants, I made my way to Fifth Ave. By this time, the wind had picked up and I was also under the influence of food, so before I knew it, I was walking out of Aerosoles with a pair of boots. I don't quite remember how that happened. One minute I was simultaneously cursing the gods because of the frigid weather and thanking them for inventing Chipotle, and next minute I found myself holding a pair of brown suede boots. I guess god does work in mysterious ways.

The next day, I went to Crate and Barrel with a handy list of 54 items that I needed to buy for my new apartment in Zurich. I ended up buying out pretty much the entire store. I believe they shut down right after I was done because they ran out of everything. In fact, I bought so much stuff that I needed to make three trips to carry it all back to my friend's apartment. I made two trips that day alone, and decided to make the third and final trip the following day.

I went to Macys yesterday, and I kid you not, I just lost it. Do you know just how hard it is to find petite clothing in Europe, where everyone is 800ft. tall? You think solving the economic crisis is challenging? Try being five feet tall in a country where the average woman is 5'8. You will understand devastation. And only when you have experienced such devastation will you truly appreciate the power of Macys. Swimming in a sea of petite sized clothing and hanging out with Michael Kors handbags while coveting Via Spiga shoes was just too much for me to handle. I was walking around the store looking like a freak, with a huge smile plastered on my face. I think I scared all the sales associates at the store. One of them even came up to me and asked me if I was alright. I have lived in New York long enough to realize that no one really smiles here, so I immediately understood her concern and rearranged my face to depict a sulk, which was a much more appropriate look for the city.

After I was done with Macys, I went to Kati Roll (another one of the places from my list) for a quick lunch, and suddenly found myself holding four different dresses in the dressing room at Lord and Taylor. The exact events that led to me getting possession of these clothes are a blur, much like the Aerosoles incident from the night before. By this time, exhaustion was starting to rear its ugly head, but I was determined not to let it win. So I decided to mix it up a little and ended up going to Barnes and Noble for a bit and picked up a few books.

All this culminated in me going to Crate and Barrel to pick up part 3 of my shopping collection. Even the sales associate who brought out the remaining items from the warehouse looked at me in awe. Probably because he was thinking, "how can a tiny person like you POSSIBLY need SO. MUCH. STUFF?" But I like to awe people and boggle their mind, so I just gave him my best mysterious look and left the store with a grand total of 4 bags and 3 boxes. The associate wasn't sure how I'd even make it out of the store with so much stuff. But if there's one thing a woman knows, it's how to shop AND how to haul it all back.

This weekend, I've decided to take a mini-break from shopping, in order to devote all my attention to eating. I am visiting family in Jersey, and have only now recovered from the food coma that I was in for the last three hours. I'm now going to bed to ensure that I have enough sustenance to deal with all the food related plans that I have for tomorrow. Good night, and hope you have a good food-related weekend!

Oktoberfest Shenanigans

Ladies and Gentlemen, the wait is now over! After an over extended hiatus, I'm back in the world of blogging, and with a backlog of stories that I need to share. We'll begin this return with details about the Oktoberfest trip to Munich:

Oktoberfest, an annual three week festival, takes place in the Bavarian region of Germany. During these three weeks, it traditionally attracts around six million people from all over the world. I'd tell you the historical significance of this festival, but that would require me to check Wikipedia, and since boredom levels are insurmountable, that's not going to happen. It's mainly known for the copious amounts of beer that is available and is consumed.



Now, most of you know that I don't drink beer, so every time I told someone that I was going to Oktoberfest, they gave me the same perplexed look that we all had when we found out that Justin Timberlake could act. The look said, "Really? You? How?". Having never attended Oktoberfest, or any beer related event really, I convinced myself that I could always just get a glass of wine at a beer tent in Munich. Go ahead, you can laugh. Everyone else already did. Anyway, with a carefully formulated plan that was based solely on naiveté, my friend C and I left for Munich by train. We were to meet up with my BFF Dev, who was already in Munich, and then meet up with J and S, a couple of other friends, who were taking a later train to get there. I spent most of the time sleeping and thinking about what I wanted to eat for dinner. I mean, if I'm not thinking about food at least once a minute, then who am I, really? We finally made it to Munich at around five in the evening, dropped off C's bag at his hotel, and made our way to Dev and my hotel.

Having not seen Dev in over six months, my excitement levels, which each approaching moment, were out of control. In fact, in my excitement, I got us lost on the way there. A genuine mistake, one that anyone would have made, I'm sure. We finally found the hotel, and Dev and I shrieked loud enough to cause the building to shake. There was plenty of incoherent mumbling and a lot of blubbering. C, being a guy, didn't know how to react to this, so he resorted to admiring the dull, white paint on the walls. We caught up on six months of gossip as fast as we could, and then met up with the rest of the boys - J, and S - who, by now, were in Munich.

We all proceeded to have dinner, a whole FIVE HOURS after my initial plan, mind you, but the food was delicious, so I had no complaints. We then made our way to a Beer bar, where, based on my naive plan, I ordered wine. The woman looked at me funny and got me orange juice instead. That's when I realized that my "wine at a beer place" plan was deeply flawed. Now the question was - do I leave aside all my prejudice and give beer a shot, or do I continue to hate it and then just end up having nothing but water at Oktoberfest? Keep reading to find out what happened...

Shenanigans take a new turn...

Since the men - C, J, and S, had no semblance of a plan on how to approach Oktoberfest, such that we could get in without having made reservations at any of the tents, Dev and I decided to take control of the situation and informed everyone that we would meet at the actual Oktoberfest venue at 8:30 the next morning. The boys assured us that they would be there and that we needn't worry. They also assured us that they had directions to the place, and with their GPS, Google Maps on phones, and BatSignals, there was no possible way that they would get lost. Being women, we should have known better, but we decided to trust the guys anyway. After shaking hands on the verbal agreement that we had just created, we parted ways at around 1am - the guys went to their hotel, while Dev and I went to ours.

The next morning, we - and by we I mean the women - were at the designated meeting point at 8:30 in the morning, complete in wardrobe, hair, and makeup. Even though the day was cold, rainy, and dreary, we were ready to partay at a moment's notice. We waited around for fifteen minutes for the guys, and then called them for an ETA. And whatdoyouknow- they were LOST. In MUNICH. They couldn't find Oktoberfest. IN MUNICH. It bears repeating and can't be written in lower caps. We just told them to follow the crowd. I mean, thousands of people walking in on direction is hard to miss, right? RIGHT? WRONG! Apparently, trusting a freaking GPS is better than following a million people. So, with the help of this wonderfully trustworthy GPS, the boys found themselves in Cambodia. Well, not really, but they might as well have been! Upon calling them 134th time and being told that they were "only ten minutes away," we knew that we'd see them one day, when we were grey and old. So we did what any normal women would do under these circumstances - we went and got a pretzel. The pretzel was as big as a house, but hunger levels were high, so it was demolished in no time.

An hour, I repeat, an HOUR later, the boys found us. I was ready to unleash my hour long pent up rage, but looking at their cold, wet, and sad little faces, I couldn't muster up the energy for anything more than resigned shaking of the head. That's right, they walked around for an hour in the rain, without an umbrella. Because apparently, not only do real men walk around following GPS systems that don't work, they also don't believe in the power of an umbrella.

Anyway, after giving them numerous disappointing looks, we made our way into the Paulaner tent, which was one of the bigger tents at the festival. The mood inside was - haha - very festive, with people breaking into song and dance spontaneously, and music playing everywhere:



And, guys and gals, this is where history was created.

What history, you ask? Well, this location, this tent, is where, for the first time, I had beer. Yes, you read it here first, I had beer. And it wasn't bad! Not that I'm going to line up for the next beer event, but the fact that I managed to have some beer and live to write about it is historic in it's own way. Here's a Kodak moment that captured said history:



After hanging out in the tent for nearly six hours, the five of us decided to venture out in the daylight and change locations. And this is where technology played havoc again. C, who had the power of Google Maps that led the boys the wrong way, had run out of credit on his prepaid cellphone, so as soon as we got out of the tent, he promptly got lost. Because that's what men do these days. They get lost when left unchaperoned for more than a minute.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't think finding a white guy in a crowd of hundred thousand in Germany is exactly a piece of cake. Dev and I took control of the search and rescue operation and organized search parties among the four of us who were still standing. After a couple of hours, we decided to head back to the hotel, hoping that he'd be there. One of us had the idea to try and refill his cellphone on our own, so we finally organized an international search party by calling someone in Zurich to go to a local store and have credit added to his phone number.

Eventually, we found him, and upon asking him what he had been upto, we found out that after walking around for twenty minutes, he got hungry and went to McDonalds for some burger and fries. While we were working on a route for the search party. He was eating fries and having a McFlurry. At one point, due to my vertical challenges, I was standing on top of an overturned beer barrel to find C, while he was having a McFlurry. This is why women need to rule the world - at least we aren't distracted by food! Okay fine, I can be, but when in crisis mode, even copious amounts of pastries and chocolate wouldn't make me budge from the task at hand! Anyway, all's well that ends well, and the only way this could have ended well was with food, which it did. We went to another German restaurant, where I had the most amazing Pumpkin soup I've had! Satiated, the failed search and rescue operation of the morning was almost a distant memory. With emphasis on the world ALMOST.

On our last morning there, C, Dev, and I went on the Third Reich Tour in Munich, where we learned about the rise of Hitler, before he moved to Berlin. Here's a look at the Beer Hall where Hitler gave his first major speech:



The tour was extremely informative and educational. We walked in the footsteps of people who reshaped world history and tried to get a glimpse into life in Munich in 1933. In conclusion, the Munich trip had it all - humor, drama, suspense, and history. It was a wonderful trip with some truly awesome people - even though many of them were incapable of following instructions and hid in McDonalds during search and rescue operations :)

What do I miss about New York?

I've been here for close to six months now, which seems incredibly long, and yet the time here went by unbelievably quickly. In honor of this realization, I thought I'd compile a list of the Top Five things that I miss about New York:

- FALAFEL. I can't explain how much. Indian Food. Thai Food. Food. FOOD FOOD FOOD.

- Shopping. The next time I'm in New York, I'm going to hug Macys, make out with Ann Taylor, and have a wild fling with Banana Republic.

- Lifelong friends - and the convenience of just picking up the phone and yapping with them for hours, or making an emergency Viniero's strawberry cake run at 2am.

- Grocery stores being open on Sundays - I never thought I'd miss Whole Foods as much as I do!

- The energy of a big city - the hustle and bustle, and the rudeness, and the jaywalking.


The list of Top FIVE things that I don't miss will be up tomorrow! I know at least half the things in the above list are food related, but honestly, would you really expect anything different? Can anyone else who's an expat relate to any of the above? Or is it just me?

Facebook "Like" of the week

"Inside me lives a skinny woman crying to get out...but I can usually shut the bitch up with cookies."

This week is killing me, but I'm hoping to be slightly less dead on Sunday and finally blog about Paris. Right now, my knee pain is back, my tooth hurts, and I'm googling "how to make your ear pop" because my left ear has been blocked since Monday. Now you understand why I had to finish a pint of ice cream this week? Hope you're all having a better week than I am!

It's a Hard Life

This week was supposed to be all about London and what I did there and what I ate. I figured the Land Of the Queen deserved more than one post. But things happened, as things tend to, that lead me to alter my agenda a little bit. For today is the day that I introduced a whole new set of people to the horrors of my gluttony. My friend Julie had organized a dinner for, get this, 22, that's right, TWENTY-TWO women, at my favorite(and perhaps, the only) Ethiopian restaurant in Zurich. As I am an idiot wrapped in a moron, I got lost on my way to the restaurant, even though I have been there numerous times now. Julie and Carla were standing out on the street trying to spot me. This is why I wore a bright red jacket today; I knew something like this would happen that would require me to be spotted from space. We finally united and I made my merry way into the restaurant.

The fellow vegetarians in attendance united and formed our own front. We were a varied bunch, from U.S., Canada, Germany, and Sweden. It was a great group of people and good conversation was had, with much of it centering around food, to my delight. You all remember what happened the last time I went to this restaurant. Well, this time, I decided to take it up a notch. So we got two servings, yes, two servings, of this:



When I finally stopped eating, as usual, I couldn't breath due to the food coma. I almost wanted to lie down on the couch and find the will to move again. Julie did an absolutely wonderful job organizing everything and the company was exceptional. I also caught up a bit with Jenny, whom I met on my disastrous bike trip back when I first moved here. After she was done playing hostess, I had her look at my knee, which was bothering me. She moonlights as a knee expert, so I'd highly recommend that you solicit her services when required. She did some complicated looking things with my knee and concluded that I may have some tendon inflammation in my right knee.

I don't really know what could be the cause of this knee inflammation - the only thing I can conclude is that maybe leaping across the table to get the last bite chocolate before someone else ate it may not have helped the situation. I've been asked to lie down, wrap an icepack around my knee, and perch it at an angle such that it's above my heart. So here I am, in a comically awkward position, with my laptop in my lap (but not really), looking like I'm doing more acrobats than those at a circus. Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Gatwick Airport - Stuff that nightmares are made of

Whenever a little kid refuses to eat his veggies, his mom probably tells him, "Have your veggies, or you will be forced to fly into Gatwick airport the next time you go to London". I had heard stories about this, but after flying into Gatwick this time around, I am convinced of their authenticity. By the time I landed in Gatwick on Thursday night, hunger had started to hum. As a result, I was already a bit disoriented. And we all know what kinds of things happen when I'm hungry. On top of all this, many of the exits from the Gatwick terminal to the Shuttle were closed, and the Detour signs were unclear, to say the least. I ended up going through Baggage claim and customs at least twice. And I didn't even check-in any bags! I had that vacant look that people get in their eyes when they go to watch The Predator and find out that Adrian Brody only took his shirt off once. You begin to question your very existence. Fortunately, before the questioning got too intense, I found my way to the shuttle and then to the train station to take the Express train to my friend's place in East London.

Aforementioned hunger made me buy a Same Day return Ticket from Gatwick to London bridge. Yes, Same day. Apparently my hungry mind decided that riding the Gatwick express back and forth would be an ideal way to resolve my hunger issues. At the train station, I saw something marvelous: I saw Subway. Yes, the fast-food chain. It has been exactly 4.5 months since I last saw one of these. I just stood outside in adoration of the store for a good five minutes. Who knew I'd get so sentimental over limp lettuce and canned olives? I wanted to grab a sandwich before I boarded the train, but the display kept blinking at me and informed me that the arrival of the train was imminent. I rushed to the platform, only to find another blinking display - this one announcing that the train was delayed by 20 minutes. I wanted to rail against the gods and ask, "Why, god, why?" Alternatively, I could also have run back to the Subway stand and bought my sub, but the thought of lugging my carry-on up and down non-escalated stairs didn't sound too appealing at the time.

By the time I made it to London Bridge, I was blinded by hunger. Literally blinded for two seconds, but then I realized it's because I had closed my eyes. I grabbed a cab and made my way to my friend's place. I made the cab driver drop me a block away from their home because I spotted an Indian restaurant and wanted to grab some take-out before I went over to their place. Most people bring gifts to the people they are visiting. But I don't follow any such norms. Me, I took take-out. For myself. Before I went to their place. My friend T was out of town that night but her husband S let me in. Instead of making conversation and catching up with him, the first words out of my mouth were, "Hi S! So good to see you!! I'm very hungry and desperately need to eat right away!" I then proceeded to make him watch me wolf down some Naan and curry. In between the chomping I'd come up for some air and mumble something at him in an attempt to make conversation, but such was my hunger that my eyes didn't even leave my dinner plate until everything was swept clean. Never let it be said that I don't give my hundred percent to anything that I do.

S, who was probably in shock and awe, had plans to leave early the next morning and went to get some sleep. Poor bloke probably had nightmares about a crazy houseguest who ate all their food. Satiated, I switched the TV on, and found English channels! For these three days, I wouldn't have to watch Castle in German, or Monk in Italian, or CSI in French - all the shows and channels were in English. I cried a few tears of joy and watched some NCIS before I went off to bed. Tomorrow, I introduce you to my lovah...

To smell or not to smell

Summer is a beautiful season. It brings out flowers and the green and fun skirts and dresses, and...some men who don't use deodorant and wear wife-beaters. This is not only an assault to the eyes but also to the olfactory. This assault is exacerbated when you're on a tram, and you begin to dread the moment someone lifts their arms up to hold on to the railing. You pray to every god, wishing and hoping that they wore deodorant. Sometimes god obliges, sometimes he doesn't. When he doesn't, you feel like you are doomed to a lifetime of disappointment.

I went through such an experience just last week. I was on the tram, on my way back from work. Halfway through the ride, there was a strange stench that filled the tram. My nostrils lodged a protest and immediately shut down. My quest to find the source of the stench brought me to to a wannabe-rockstar-but-couldn't-ever-be-one guy wearing a wife-beater and sporting a wonderful beer belly, lifting his arms up to hold on to the railing. I doubt he knew the devastating impact such an act would have on society as a whole. You could almost see the fumes emanating from under his arms. This is disgusting, I know, but if I get to live through it, you get to read about it.

The entire tram must have felt the waves of stench, and it ended up being each man for himself, because I kid you not, we ended up losing people at every tram stop. Within three stops, almost everyone was off the tram, with the look of fear on their faces, and tears in their eyes. I stuck around for one more stop, but then abandoned ship and leaped out of the tram before the doors closed. There was no time to warn unsuspecting on-boarders of what awaited them inside the tram. I just hope they made it out okay. Maybe one day we'll run into each other and reminisce about this shared torture that we went through. But for now, I'm armed with Febfreeze and am ready to launch my counterattack on any tram at a moment's notice. "They may take our lives, but they will NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!!!"

I'll Stand By You

When I started this blog, I decided that it would be a non-political one. Those of you who have known me for a while know that I have very *ahem* strong opinions on all things political. So if I started talking politics here, this could quickly derail into just another political blog, and the idea of talking about Zurich and my experiences here would be nothing but a distant memory.

But something pretty monumental happened today that I think deserves a mention. Prop 8, an intensely discriminatory ballot initiative that was voted into law in California has been ruled unconstitutional. As someone who has long propagated equal rights for all human beings, regardless of their race, religion, gender, and orientation, you can imagine how happy this makes me feel. In fact, I was so happy this morning that I decided to be a good girl only had one lunch. And one dinner. I just hope that people finally do the right thing and realize that discrimination under the veil of moral outrage and societal concerns is still discrimination.

In honor of this decision, I'm going to share a story with you that I absolutely, positively, never wanted anyone to be aware of. But such is my joy that I am going to reverse my decision and post it, for your amusement, as always:

During my first couple of weeks in Zurich, I went to Blue Monkey, a really good Thai restaurant for dinner with some colleagues who are visiting from New York. The restaurant itself was one of the better places I had been to here in Zurich. Food was good, conversation was interesting. As usual, I zoned out when I was getting intimately acquainted with my green curry and fried rice, so details of the conversation, of course, cannot be recalled. I do remember that at the end of the meal, we were satiated, and decided to forgo dessert (a heartbreaking decision for me, but I was outvoted). The waitress started to clear the table, and in the process, took a burning candle off the table and promptly poured a generous amount of melted wax on my wonderful and recently washed black pants. I watched the whole thing happen in slow motion, certain that the wax wouldn't find itself attached to my pants. But oh how wrong was I!

Now I don't know about you, but having a huge blob of melted wax covering a majority of your pants doesn't exactly scream "fashion". At first, everyone at the table was in shock. Then everyone started laughing. Actually, they didn't laugh out loud, but I'm sure in their head they were cracking up. The waitress profusely apologized and confessed that that day was her first day at work. I felt bad and decided not to demand free dessert, which I totally deserved. I covered the white on black with a tablecloth while we were seated, and wore my overcoat as soon as we got up to leave. I was clutching the overcoat so tightly around me, you'd think I had a million dollars hiding underneath it. Instead, I was hiding melted wax on black pants.

Tell me honestly - do you know anyone else who had hot wax poured on their black pants at a restaurant? Why do such things only happen to me - and that too on a global level? What have I done to deserve such things? Let us together find an answer, for I cannot solve this mystery alone.

"I never thought I was smart enough to get depressed, but here I am."

Is anyone else watching True Blood this season? If you are, then the title of this post will make complete sense to you. If you're not, then I just want to let you know that I am not depressed. Sad about living in a currently ice-creamless apartment, but definitely not depressed.True Blood keeps blowing me away on a regular basis. I laugh, cringe, swoon, salivate, and get grossed out all at the same time. Can't wait for next week's episode!

This weekend was amazing, food-wise (going forward, just remember, if something is amazing, it's most likely due to a food related activity). Fellow True Bloodies (Blooders?) Julie and Carla hosted a housewarming party at their place this weekend. Since I've sampled their cooking before, I most certainly didn't want to be in a situation where I'd show up and all the food was gone, so I came up with a strategy: I decided to show up at their place well in advance, under the pretext of "helping them out." And boy am I glad I did that. There were three different kinds of empanadas, amazing chili cheese enchiladas, corn salsa, pico de gallo, roasted red pepper and garlic hummus, chocolate chip cookies, an assortment of meat dishes, and sangria. This is what the spread looked like, and the reason why I had to employ my strategy of showing up early:



Here's the roasted red pepper and garlic hummus, veggies, and pico de gallo:



The rest of the evening was also a lot of fun. I'd love to give you details about the guests and share some interesting anecdotes, but I was basically in a food coma approximately sixty minutes after I got to their place. In fact, the coma got so bad at one point that I physically couldn't stand and had to lie down on their couch. Yes, I have to lie down on couches now because I can't control my eating.

I reluctantly made my way back way too early, which, in my heart I knew it was the right thing to do, for the eating would not have stopped any other way. As it was, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking how full I was. But it was worth it. My only regret: I forgot to take leftovers back with me. I cried the entire train ride back. You may think I'm exaggerating, but I really did. Little children ran away in fear. Oh well, it was worth it. Now if only I can get myself to stop dreaming about the cookies...

Ich bin idiot

Hunger does strange things to me. I think we've established this time and again. In case we haven't, I have yet another example to make you aware of such a theory. Today was my first German class. I arrived with literally seconds to spare before the class began, and was thus forced to sit in the first seat. I had forgotten that the class was one-and-a-half hours long and thus didn't haven my first dinner before the class. As a result, two minutes into the class, I started experiencing hunger pangs, and it became harder and harder to focus.

The first thing we learned was how to say "I am..."which is Ich bin...We also learned to ask, "Are you..." which is Bist du...?We were then asked to introduce ourselves to the class, and ask one of the other students if he/she was x, y, or z (based on the placards with students' names written on them)? So, all I had to say, in German, was, "I am Jigisha, are you Carl?" This should have translated to "Ich bin Jigisha, bis du Carl?" However, due to my hunger issues, I ended up saying, "Ich bin Carl, bis du Jigisha?" , all the while not even realizing what I was saying. The entire class, including the instructor, burst out laughing, and only then did I realize that I in fact introduced myself as Carl, and asked dear Carl if he was Jigisha. I'm sure this wouldn't have happened had I eaten my first dinner.

By the time the class ended, I was almost blinded by hunger, so much so that I couldn't even find a way out of the floor on which the classroom was located! I opened every single door I could find, and each one of them either led to the Women's Bathroom, Men's bathroom, a utility closet, or a coat closet! Driven by hunger induced insanity, I asked someone to point me to the way out. She pointed me to the door that said Exit and asked me to open that to go downstairs. Apparently, hunger can also make you lose the power of sight and English word comprehension. I'm just letting you know these things, so you are never a victim of hunger that I always am. I'm now going to do my walk of shame back to my bed and am going to rewrite this evening's events in my head in a way that doesn't make me look like a bumbling idiot. Guten nuit!

When tragedy strikes twice

If you remember, a few weeks ago, I talked about rediscovering religion here and here. I was a born-again believer. I believed the Almighty was all encompassing and powerful. Well I am here to tell you that unfortunately, this is not true. Before I begin telling you why, I'm going to digress and talk about my near death experience.

This Saturday I had grand plans to go shopping in Germany. Yes, I can go shopping in Germany if I want to. How very Mariah Carey of me. Anyway, the plan was to go there with a few friends, but as always, come Saturday morning, laziness set in, and ultimately won over, so I bailed out of going. Saturday was the first day in nearly eight days that we saw the sun, so I decided to sit outside in the backyard and just chill. After my first lunch, I started to feel guilty about my fatness and decided to go on a bike ride. I had ambitious plans to ride the bike for 25 miles and go to Rapperswil, which is apparently a cute little town right outside of Zurich. The ride itself is along the lake on a very quiet and a not-so-busy road.

Ten miles into the ride, I decided that I was a bike-expert and could do jumps through slopes and over sidewalks with my "kids" bike. I was feeling badass and decided to do a bike-jump on the sidewalk from the bike path that was on the road. Needless to day, this ended in tragedy. I ended up with bruising on various parts of my lower right leg and my palms. My leg is currently sporting various shades of red, and apparently I also hurt my right wrist. The worst part of it was that there was no knight-in-shining-armor to even pick me off the road! I had to haul my bike and my fatness off the sidewalk myself and make sure that said humiliation was not witnessed by any other living being. Thankfully, the road was deserted, so my shame was mine alone. The worst part was that I had to ride the bike all the way back to my place, with a bleeding knee. And one of the wounds on the leg was on the bone, which led to swelling, so now my one calf looks fatter than the other.

As if all this wasn't enough, I was faced with an existential crisis this morning. The final part of my migration over from New York to Zurich was supposed to get done on Friday, so the hope was that Monday morning I'd have everything the way God of Microsoft intended. Imagine my shock and horror when, upon going to work this morning, I discovered that my email, internet, intranet, chat - nothing worked. And all my documents and files disappeared! The curse of Microsoft had hit again, putting my computer in a catatonic state. I called my God, the one who defeated the Microsoft warlord the last time around, hoping that he'd work his magic again. Unfortunately, and to my immense disappointment, he didn't know what to do! He said he was helpless and powerless in this situation. I felt hope slowly leave me.

I frantically called five different groups and was always told to contact someone else. After SIX hours of chasing my own tail, I knew this had to end, and went "New York" on everyone. I called one group and told them that I'd keep calling them every ten minutes until my access was restored. And I did. Within thirty minutes, I finally had access to chat. The rest of the things were still being worked on, but at least I could communicate with other people! The rest, I'm being told, will be fixed tomorrow.

This whole ordeal got me so stressed that I even forgot to eat my second lunch, can you believe it? I promptly made up for it by eating two dinners with a couple of friends and a dear friend who is visiting from New York. I feel marginally better, emotionally speaking. I just got back and it's now time for me to go to bed and dream hot men dreams, so good night and please pray that my system is up and running as it should be tomorrow morning!

STIDT: First Edition

I promise not to make this whole blog about my mucus, but really, who isn't missing the irony here? I was perfectly fine for three months back in NY - snow, wind, thunderstorms - nothing had the power to make me reach for Nyquil. And the minute I land here, I get sick. I had such wonderful dreams of making a splashy entrance at work with my new suits and my new haircut. Instead, I end up going in hacking and hawing and sounding worse than Betty White. The group here was probably expecting a 20-something yr old Business Analyst and instead got stuck with an 80yr old sounding crazywoman. Oh well, life is full of disappointments, so whatchagonnado?

So here's another life lesson: Nyquil's brother is good, but not as effective as the original. It's more like a step-brother actually. MediNait didn't knock me out for 8 hours like Nyquil usually does, so by 1am, I was wide awake. Unlike the previous two nights though, this time I made myself fall asleep by promising myself Hugh Jackman dreams. The sleep itself was fitful, but I did manage to sleep for the first time in 48 hours, which is great. I did, however, have to pull a Britney Spears and do a wardrobe change in the middle of the night when my fever broke and I woke up drenched in sweat. Joy. The good news is that I think my sneezing and coughing has improved by .0000001 second/cough (I think), so it's only a matter of time before I'm fully recovered, right?

As you all also know, I have been known to say and do dumb things every now and then (read: everyday). In fact, a certain someone had a running list of "Top 10 things Jigz said" in college. Usually I limit myself to 1 dumb thing a day, but jetlag + sickness = party time for dumbastic activities. So without further ado, here is the first edition of the Stupid Things I Did Today, known from here on out as STIDT:

- Sat at someone else's desk instead of mine for 10 min, earning confused looks from everyone around me. Eventually I realized what I had done and apologized to the legitimately confused look-givers.

- Someone tried to take a look at my ID to write down my name correctly, but for some reason, I offered her my palm - I still have no idea why. I also couldn't understand why she wanted my ID. So every time she'd ask for my ID, I'd give her my palm. This continued for a minute before I realized what I was doing and finally offered her my ID so she could spell my name correctly while writing it down.

- Jammed the printer on my non-first first day, delaying everyone else's document printing.

- Tried to self-translate the vending machine instructions that were in German and ended up paying 1.60sF without getting any M&Ms in return.

- At 1am, when I couldn't sleep, I went to the lobby to ask for some salt so I could do salt-water gargles. Unfortunately, the receptionist's English wasn't very good, so I had to explain Salt as follows: White, powder, and doing the salt shaker imitation. Needless to say, his eyes grew wider and wider every time I said or did that. Finally, I pretended that there was breakfast in front of me and I was adding salt and pepper to it, and I kept saying, "Food, salt, and pepper", and pretended to pour salt and pepper on my plate simultaneously. He finally understood and asked housekeeping to bring me...Pepper.

Since I look like a horror story these days, I came back to the hotel at around three in the afternoon. The sun was out so I decided to explore the area a bit. The exploration lasted all of five minutes, after which the hawing and the sneezing won and I came back to the hotel room and crashed for a couple of hours, which mercifully limited STIDT to just the above acts. But fear not, tomorrow is another day. The STIDT list will do nothing but keep on growing and growing and growing...

Having said that...

I'd just like you to know that on my first night here in Zurich, I am sick, very sick. In fact, this is the most sick I've been in a while. I have a terrible cold that just won't go away, a killer headache, and am suffering from lack of sleep for 36 straight hours.

One interesting tidbit that I learned very quickly about Zurich is that everything here is closed on Sundays. Everything - even pharmacies! However, certain "big" train stations have all these stores, which are the only places that are open on weekends. I went to a Pharmacy (they are called Apotheke) at the big train station across from my hotel to buy some cold medication. The woman at the counter asked me to bend my head and point the areas in which I had pain (nose, head, etc) - she wasn't sure if I had a stuffed nose or sinus issues. Since I wasn't going to be doing any bending of any sort in public, I quickly told her that it was a cold. She told me that the pain in head and nose indicated that it was sinus related (?) and gave me a sinus medication. I asked her for a cough syrup and she looked at me like I had landed from Mars. She said any other medication was for body ache and other symptoms, and that for a runny nose, this was the only medication that would work.

So kids, here's Lesson#1: you have to be extremely precise in describing what you want or what you are suffering from when in Switzerland. Otherwise, like me, you will end up with a box full of green pills that you will need to take 3x a day for 10 days to recover from a common cold.

Also, Lesson#2: just because you haven't fallen sick in months, doesn't mean you won't in the future. So, let Nyquil and Theraflu be your friends; bring them with you when you travel. Otherwise you will have to learn lesson#1 and lesson#2 again and again.

It's about 3am on a Sunday night, so ponder over these life lessons that you have learned today while I try to salvage what's left of the night and try to get at least some sleep. Guten Nuit!