2nd Average day

Yesterday I had another average day here in basel and thus it was not possible for me to write in the blog. You'll see why in a sec, but first I should congratulate some of my IESE colleagues that have been writing (and entertaining) almost everyday in their blogs this year (Noelle, George, Miller, Pradeep.etc etc) Absolutely admirable. After a week I have realized that for sure I would be unable to do this for a year, even without taking into account my tendency to get bored quickly with routinary issues.

Well, here is my day: First of all I got up very early by the personalized morning alarm clock that Novartis pays to all associates, consisting of a group of people playing traditional swiss songs with strange instruments in front of your balcony for 10 min (I guess the neighbours can enjoy the human alarm clock up to a certain extent as well). Novartis takes care of its employees with original solutions for their needs.



Then it was time to go to work after watching teletubbies (Rationale: I need to watch something else during breakfast in a language that I understand, appart from CNN, and that's teletubbies. No coment on Italian TV). I ususally walk, but yesterday I was extremely tired and decided to take the tram. The big surprise was that during the previous night the center of basel acquired this appearance (see below), and obviously there were no 4x4 trams going through that street at 7:45 in the morning (there are some 4x4 Hummer trams here but only work at night).

No problem. I decided to steal a bike. Two years ago my loved yellow "Marin" was stealed in Barceloneta (our dirty beach in bcn), and yesterday I took my revenge from a swiss neighbour that is everyday playing "ragaton" (aka "dame gasolina") on his stereo at 6:AM. Easy job since here the security level of the bikes is close to zero. Road bike in order to go faster because I was already late. Very professional, fast, and clean job.

Then I managed to arrive on time at work, but I was really really tired, so I decided not to work. I decided to have a very long and pleasent siesta at my office from 8:00AM till 7:00PM. No worries, here you have freedom to work or not, depending how you feel.

I was feeling sleepy so I slept.

Then the good news. After sleeping the whole day I went home and guess what? I discovered why I'm experiencing those problems with the image-loading function in blogger.com. There has been a person hidden in my wardrobe the whole week, a kind of hacker that has made my blogging experience pretty painful. At the beggining I thought would be a kind of IT-indian-intruder-hacker-kidnapper, but it turned out to be a very different thing behind the black ninja dress below. I wanted to convince her that I don't deserve this kind of treatment by blogger.com but she insisted in some kind of favours if I wanted to recuperate my full service at blogger.com.

Here the author of all my electronic nightmares.

The best of all this is that I am always ready for any kind of inconvenient, and by chance, the night before I had opened the special kid that the relocation agency gives to all associates in the company, called "luxury red satin nights", which incldes a full package to have a "good evening" with anyone. So at the end, after some hours, I managed to convince the mac-user sent by blogger.com that I deserve to load images properly in my blog. And the day ended pretty well after all. (See today the image function is working!)

The relocation agency "special package".

Disclaimer: By no means any of what you have read here reflects the "real" life in Basel nor the services provided by Novartis or the relocation agency. The opinion of the author is also not reflected. The facts written here just don't reflect anything. The "satin nights package" is in my bed, but it is the only second set of sheets that I have here. The wine I drank it alone some days ago (during some days, I mean), and I haven't seen any kind of "body" hidden in my room (yet). Ahh! And I AM working here, really!

Music: Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington - Day dream (for your satin nights).