Living In Zurich Now

Sam now lives in his nice new home in Zürich city, and he is very happy with it. It sits directly on a major intersection at the better end of Langstrasse. It feels especially-special that Google Earth has the building as a 3D model so you're able to look right into my window from the street! W00t for Sam. Sam's new roommate Mélanie is great too; she's a 26 y/o fine-arts-history student with a different taste in interior decoration than most. Because of this, our new house name was named Спутник (pronounced sputnik) after the fact our lounge room light looks like 50's Russian space satellite. Sam's room is rather skewif, with each of it's five walls a different length and none of them parallel. The room is bright with it's fancy Pfister light (also skewif) and a window, which faces a jazz club - doesn't keep you awake unless you're trying to listen and you do want to listen. Kitchen: new and fancy with dishwasher. Bathroom: new and fancy with googley-eyed fish pattern shower curtain. Lounge room: freaking huge and has two windows looking into the Hooters restaurant on the opposite corner. Yes - everything is rather fancy in Sam and Melanie's new apartment.

Luckily, Sam had a little helper for all the Ikea and mattress shop trips. Although at first Sam and his little helper had to sleep on the floor, after 2 days work they had a bedroom complete with shelves, plants and even curtains! Bugger me! Sam thought, as his forearms complained under the strain of a large wooded bed-head. You owe me, big-time! his little helper yelled, as she carried the mirror down the hill to catch the number 8 tram to Helvetcia Platz.

Monday morning Sam started 'working' in Winterthur (that's a place name), designing trains and whatnot. Those suspicious single quotes give you the general idea - when we say work what we really mean is cake testing meetings (plural). It's a Swiss custom that you bake your own birthday cake and share it with friends. Our Winterthur group takes this and integrates it into formal meetings, including a full evaluation and statistical scoring system. Presentation, technical difficulty, taste, etc - all scored and recorded. Rather serious working environment. Well, this week half of the managers were on holidays anyway. Oh, and Sam would preefer to my omit his employer's name so no one finds Get More Massive and connects it to him professionally. Sam thinks they have a policy about this, and he wants be liberal in his writings - hehe!

Work has a very fancy coffee machine and a very fancy bubbly-water cooler. Of course they're both free for all, and Sam approves of this muchly. Every day there is an all you can eat buffet nearby for all the hungry Engineers for only 13 CHF. I only noticed very late that the whole industrial estate there is populated entirely by rival train manufacturing companies facilities; in other words: Stadler Trains are below us, Joe Blow Train out the back, etc and so on. No one's worried that we'll all give away all our secrets? Hmm... Herein lies the big difference between the service industry and the manufacturing industry: services has no money in it (very competitive) while manufacturing has huge money behind them and more work than they can supply ( everyone shares). Say we have a train here in Switzerland, chances are it was a group effort between Siemens, ABB, Stadler and Bombardier. Everyone puts in their bit, everyone gets a share of the money, everyone is happy :-) Perhaps that's why the coffee machine is free?

There are two types of engineers Sam works with, Geeky Engineers and Business Engineers. Geeky Engineers grew up playing with model trains and are still dressed by their mothers, while Business Engineers look very smart in their collared and cufflinked shirts and focus on talking smartly. Both have their plusses and minuses but you tend to warm to the businessy ones first since they approach you to chat, while the geeky ones nerd-it-up at their computers. The geeky ones could probably tell you which nuts and bolts to use to with your joints, but Sam has no need to ask that just yet so he is sticking with the businessy ones for now.

To go with Sam's new address (Stauffacherstrasse 97, 8004 Zürich), Sam also has a new phone number (+41 79 399 2538). Larry, Sam's new iPhone, is a rather fancy was to have a new phone number. Trieste commented that something powerful you whip out of your pants to impress people should have a more sexual innuendo- and phallic symbolism-filled name. The name Larry just gives you the image of a lazy, time-wasting person, don't you think? Also, that Larry of the Leisure Suit Larry PC game series was always looking for sexy-times. So now we all agree that Larry is apt'ly named? Good.

What kind of work was Sam assigned week one? None. What was his only task all week? Read a book. That becomes a challenge in itself, staying awake. Did Sam stay awake at work all week? Fail. This needed fixing. Sam found one of those nice project managers and asked for something to do. The nice project manager (who's name Sam forgot) thought, then said: ok, design a monorail for Las Vegas - Aaaaaaaand... GO!. Sam had some thoughts that he kept to himself (OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG...OMG!) and then set about designing a frame. Was Sam taking shots in the dark? Yes. Did the nice project manager like Sam's work? Yes! The comment you may need to go to Las Vegas now was taken note of. Then Sam grinned a lot and started liking his job immensely. It got even better after Sam's Swiss bank account balance increased by 2.5 times, 1.5 months faster than he expected. Suddenly, Sam was no longer the poor uni student. He levelled-up to Employed Engineer!

• EXP - 6 years uni
• INT - questionable
• STR - massively buff
• DEX - can jump really high
• LUCK - unbelievable (found a job in an airport security line)
• CHF - many (Swiss Franks, that is)

What did Sam's little helper do all week while he was working? She tried posting Mike a package but forgot why she was in the post office, left, remembered, felt too silly to go back in, then found another post office to sent it. Hehe! Sam got a good lol outa' that one!