In an attempt to remedy this situation, here is a list of things I have done recently:

• bought a folding bicycle and started riding to work
• started using the gym at work
• bought a guitar and taught myself 4 or 5 chords, and on a good day even to play different chords consecutively
• bought a cheap display-less GPS device, and started geotagging my photos
• upgraded the iPhone to firmware 2.0 and lost all my nice applications (but got different ones in return, so I’m not entirely unhappy)
• started swing dancing again
• travelled to Spain with S (Barcelona, Costa Brava)
• put flower and herb pots on the balcony, and almost killed (some of) them by going to Spain for a week
• put a barbecue on the balcony, and used it exactly once - it’s far too big for just one person
• read a book about the interesting and complicated relationship between the Swiss and the Germans (a psychoanalyst’s wet dream)
• started classes to learn Swiss German (against the advice of the aforementioned book)
• started (but not finished) filling out a Swiss tax declaration
• started (but not finished) filling out an Australian tax return.

Of course, anything involving sex, celebrities and crime scores well on all papers. But most days, you can see a pattern where Sydney readers care more about sensationalist superficial stuff than Melbourne readers, and Brisbane readers invariably love reading about sex. (The WAtoday was added too recently for me to form accurate prejudices.) But today’s excerpt was particularly revealing:

(actually, I didn’t say that last bit, I only thought it. It was still good though.)

The start of my garden…

What the birds did to my basil plant

Food at Google

Earning a bit on the side (”breast enlargement through laying on of hands, Fr5, money back guarantee”)

An “electric clavichord” (how cool is that?)

Options on the Electric Clavichord

I’m never looking at Mozart Balls the same way again.

• The front page of the Palo Alto Mercury News praises the AMGEN Tour of California bicycle race as having (and I quote) “more cowbell”.
• At the next table during dinner, a young man entertains his date with a detailed explanation of how he has his work mobile and home phone set up to forward calls to each other so that he only has to check one voicemail box. And then moves on to a explanation of Mean Time Before Failure, and how hard drives work. And she seems to be enjoying it.
• The local cafe has a list behind the counter, listing Things That Do Not Go In The Bin, which includes, as well as “recyclable plastics” and “drinking straws”, not only Chuck Norris but also Your Mom.

I feel like I have left the real world and am now living inside The Internet.

(it’s kinda cool.)

Meanwhile, another sunny day in San Francisco, top of 19 degrees. I like spring.

Similarly, Silicon Valley doesn’t actually need a physical manifestation. Just the concept is enough. And yet, here I am, going to an organic coffee bar hearing a live acoustic band with lots of long-haired laid back californians … who are wearing eBay t-shirts and texting on their Blackberry. Or checking email on their macbook. Or playing with their new iPhone. The biggest peril I face every morning is getting on the right employee shuttle bus. A mistake might accidentally result in me ending up not at Google, but at Yahoo!, or eBay, or Microsoft, or LinkedIn, or… you get the idea. Inicidentally, these companies are also things that don’t need to exist. I mean, we all use Google, or eBay, or LinkedIn, but the thought of them having massive office buildings, all near each other, with busloads of brilliant college graduates commuting every day to work there … well, why can’t I just stick to my nice fantasy that eBay is “just a website”?

Speaking of iPhones, there’s yet another thing that really doesn’t need a physical manifestation. The concept is so powerful that even had Apple never brought a single iPhone to market, people would be queueing to buy them. We all somehow *know* this thing is cool. (Just like we *know* that Apple’s marketing guys deserve an award. Or a long and painful death, depending on which angle you’re coming from. Regardless, they’re all geniuses, whoever they are.) And yet it exists, as if to insult you by saying “I don’t trust you to believe all our marketing, why don’t you just *try me* and see?”. And just because it is so very cool, and does in fact turn out to exist, I now own one.

Of course, good things can’t last: as I write this I am packing my second suitcase in preparation for a flight to the USA in a few hours. Meanwhile, after having survived Siberian winds and ice in Berlin, the radio now reports of large storms in California, causing traffic delays and power outages around the Bay Area. Nothing is every easy!

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Do you dream of developing an application for consumers globally? Do you have software coding and design skills you’d love to put to practical use? Or… are you simply a techie with too much time on your hands?

Google looks forward to hosting a competition for university students in East Africa. Participants from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Ethiopia can design and build gadgets and win prizes. Gadgets are small, simple applications that run on web pages. There are gadgets for easy email access, gadgets for football results, gadgets for fun and gadgets for frivolity. They’re simple to develop, given some knowledge of HTML (and ideally XML and Javascript too). And they’re easy to distribute – through iGoogleTM (Google’s personalised homepage), platforms such as OpenSocial(TM) and third-party websites. There are tens of millions of people who use gadgets globally, generating billions of gadget pageviews per week!

The competition will run between February and June 2008, with more details (including a dedicated competition website and explanation of terms and restrictions) to follow in January. In the mean time, there’s more for the curious and the technically-minded at http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets.

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Official Announcement

Zürich is a beautiful city. Neutrality during two world wars, and other wars before and since, has a wonderfully preserving effect on heritage architecture. Also, the weather is beautiful here. Either it is sunny with blue skies, or it is snowing. Admittedly it is also very very cold, but I hide from that by staying in the heated indoors.

The people here are on the whole lovely, although they speak a almost-entirely-incomprehensible language that somehow is also called German. (For my linguistically inclined readers, yes, it is blatantly obvious that the language is not context-free. Words come in the ‘wrong’ order.) But I am steadfastly watching Swiss television and trying to learn. Meanwhile, I am learning that it is better to be taken for an Australian than mistaken for a German. To make some gross generalisations, the Swiss (as a whole) can be rather unfortunately hostile towards foreigners, but they seem to reserve a special level of distrust for Germans. Possibly this is due to the fact that the Germans (as a whole) tend to look down their noses at the Swiss - presumably out of jealousy that Switzerland has more money, better cheese, better chocolate and better skiing than Germany. But these are just my impressions after a few weeks here, and all the people I have met have been friendly and lovely and helpful and kind, which is something I have learnt not to take for granted.

As far as working for Google goes, the Interblags have enough rumours and writing and whatever about that. All I will add is that it’s all true. (Yes, “20-percent-time”, free food, on-site haircuts and massages, even the secret moon base.) A week ago I had a bit of a moment on the stairs, where I had to stop and think, wow, how many people all over the world wouldn’t kill (or more!) to be right where I am now. This is cool.

Last week Google launched Google Maps Switzerland and Austria (oh, and Lichtenstein, natch) to great acclaim and media brouhaha. T-shirts all round. Finally I have one not in Extra-Extra-Large. (I have to learn to be more proactive about t-shirt sizes!)

Thus far I have been living in a one-room corporate apartment while I searched for a permanent apartment. Finding an apartment in Zürich is remarkably difficult, especially if you’re after the sort of one-bedroom, one-person apartment that seemingly everybody is looking for. But I shall cut a long story very short and just note that I now have an apartment, and I will be moving in on the 26th. Yesterday I went to Ikea to buy plates and bowls and knives and forks and pots and pans and things so that I won’t starve (that sort of stuff is provided in this corporate apartment), and the removalists will deliver what little furniture I own to my new apartment when I move in, so I will have a bed on which to sleep. The next great adventure will consist of finding furniture. This corporate apartment is tiny, and the fridge is right next to the bed and gurgles at night, and the internet is so slow it could be the 1990s (well, not quite), and the cleaning ladies barge in en masse to change the sheets at inconvenient times, so I am greatly looking forward to moving into a place of my own.

Well, we have had snow during the week, but now we have blue skies and sunshine, and the temperature is thinking about dipping above 0C, so perhaps it’s time for me to wind up this epistle and head outside into the fresh air.