Now I realize I should have bought one, even though it would have cost me about US$150-200. There are no walmart style discount shops here, but $200 over 4 months isn’t bad at all. I could easily have gotten $50 of use a month out of it and probably much more than that. Especially on a day like today, when I’m working from home and don’t want to walk 20 minutes into town to get some real food. Not to mention saving money on my commute to the office.

OBVIOUSLY I had to try them. Take a moment to think about how roasted chicken flavor chips might taste….

In fact, they’re pretty gross. But they do grow on you..

The welcome mat is well timed though. Today saw Basel’s first snow fall. It’s been snowing all day but so far only a couple of inches accumulation. Mostly just light flurries since noon or so, but still damn cold. For a country with insane hygiene laws I find it really odd that there are no snow plows or salt trucks and no laws requiring the removal of snow from sidewalks. Even in public areas like the central tram station, they just don’t bother. Makes me wonder what their personal injury laws are like…

The only gripe I have with all this is the fare system. Everything runs on the honor system. If you don’t have a monthly pass you purchase a ticket (for up to about CHF3 or US$2.4 depending on distance) at a vending machine and just board your tram or bus and take it to your destination. The ticket is never collected, by man nor machine. You can throw it away once you get to your destination. The only check is the occasional inspection by transit police and a fine of CHF80 (payable immediately) if you don’t have a valid ticket. Conveniently, there’s a vending machine at every stop; 2 in fact (1 in each direction)! Sounds great so far, right?

My problem is this: first of all, the machines only take coins. No bills, debit or credit cards, and nothing like a metrocard exists. Most often, this isn’t a problem since coins are so popular. There’s no bill denomination less than CHF10 so you usually have plenty of coins. It also means you use a lot of coins and many times will find yourself coinless at the vending machine. What to do?

The other major problem is that you must buy your ticket before each and every ride since each ticket gets stamped with the current time and there’s no ticket collector. If you see a tram or bus coming as you’re walking to the stop you have no choice but to let it pass and wait for the next one. Most of the time that’s ok, but what about when you’re running late? Or when it’s cold out and you don’t want to stand in the cold. Or it’s late at night and it’s probably the last tram of the night. What do you do in these cases?

I chose to ride sans ticket. And the more often I did it without incident, the more I began to do it even when I had time to spare and coins in my pocket. Eventually I was just playing the odds and today the odds went the other way. I got caught on my way home from work. I got off by paying about CHF78 (CHF70 + €5) which isn’t really that bad of a fine. I figure it comes out to about 24-25 rides which I’ve easily got under my freeloadin belt. So at worst, we’re even, and at best I’m still up a little, but I won’t be fare skipping so cavalierly from now on.

No, it wasn’t the earthquake. I’ve been sick all week and it culminated in a bit of a fever last night. The worst part about being sick is definitely the loss of appetite. I like to eat. Eating and not enjoying it, heck, not even being able to taste your food, sucks. And even worse, I’ve been feeling a little bit nauseous after each meal so I’ve been eating as little as possible.

I really hope I get the taste back in my mouth before my flight to New York next week. It would really suck to be back and not enjoy all the great food that awaits me there.

Bizarre “conversation” I had the other night. Apparently the lines were “too good” so it “must be fake.” Go figure.

Speaking of Christmas, our holiday party was this past Wednesday. It was held in a restaurant of sorts, but with a twist. It was actually an old factory which had been converted into an event hall. On this particular evening it was a “dinner spectacle” and with good reason — it was actually a carnival complete with juggling, gymnastics and “high wire” acts, fire breathing, knife throwing, and silly animal tricks!

It was lots of fun and I got to meet a lot of people from BIG whom I hadn’t had the occasion to meet yet.

Anyways, I’ll be gone until the new year, so there most likely won’t be any updates until then. I just hope I don’t run out of storage for my cameras!

So what’s there to say that hasn’t been said already? I guess I haven’t talked about work yet. I’m having a good time so far though it can get a little boring at times. Mostly due to the same old “work, eat, sleep” daily grind which is pretty much the same no matter where you go. The fun of being in a new city wears off pretty quickly once you get into your daily rhythm and the days start to blend into each other. The whole week is spent looking forward to the weekend and the whole weekend dreading another work week on Monday.

It doesn’t help that my job so far has been fairly uninteresting. Ok, maybe uninteresting isn’t the right word. We’re actually doing lots of interesting things but most of them aren’t tech related. I’m really the only IT guy and since we’re still in startup mode, IT isn’t getting too much attention. It’s up to me get the ball rolling but unfortunately that ball has to roll uphill.

This Wednesday is a big board meeting which should give us some breathing room for at least another six months and on January 1st we move into our new offices so things are definitely starting to look up. With that out of the way we should be able to get to work on real things and actually produce something more than budgets and expenditure reports. It should be an interesting next couple of months — and hopefully fun too.