SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON'S GALLERIA

Yeah, I know, Philippine malls have skating rinks and winter wonderlands now, and London gets feeble flurries or the wrong kind of snow from time to time.  But I wanted the LLDD-Baby to experience before I was recalled the real good stuff -- pure, uncut, deep dish i-snow. Fortunately "Sunshine" -- a close colleague from my days working in "Pardek's" office and now posted in Geneva -- had an extra room in her chalet and could put us up for a holiday weekend.  So swish over to Swisherland we go!  The LLDD-Baby was pumped!  She wouldn't stop waving her hand and singing "Let it Go"!

Geneva Cruise

But for one tiiiiiiny detail: I didn't check the global weather reports beforehand to see if Geneva did still in fact have, you know, snow.  

It didn't. 

(hey, it was February in Switzerland -- I'm from the tropics, I thought there'd be tons of it lying around!)

So, um, LLDD-Baby...this is awkward...you up for just going around Geneva on foot and by boat like Daddy did years ago?  You know, across the distinctly unfrozen and not-snowed-over lake?  You are?  Love you anak. 

 

 

 

 You've been cool about all this no snow thing.  Pag-uwi natin, Daddy will buy an Elsa gown for you (and some Prince Hans tights...for mama ; ) 

Saved by Salève

But hang on...."Sunshine" to the rescue!  She could hook us up with a nearby snowy mountaintop! Apparently, Mont Salève on the Swiss-French border is just a short local bus and cable-car ride away! Salamat Salève!

Salève, of course, is French for "kanya kanya na tayo pababa!"

What's Zermatt-er with you?

Salève was great for getting our snow on, but now we wanted even more.  "Sunshine" recommended taking a long train ride to Zermatt, the world-famous ski destination that sits in the majestic shadow of the one and only Toblerone Matterhorn.   We found the resort town itself to be quite lovely and posh (although my only point of reference is "Hot Tub Time Machine") but, unfortunately, as you headed up to the vistas there was too much snow, i.e., there were total whiteout conditions that rendered the mountain ranges near invisible and Matterhorn-framed-in-the-middle-of-hands-in-the-shape-of-a-heart tourist photos futile.                

 

On the other hand, the Battle of Hoth re-enactments were adorable

Release the Trubschachen

Looking back at it now, our whole Swiss sojourn was a series of slip-ups and saves.  Take the last things on our Swiss list: cheese and chocolate factory tours in the Gruyere region.  Once again, the LLDD-Baby was pumped for this. However, it turned out the cheese place was only worth visiting in the early hours when milk was delivered, while the chocolate factory was freakin' closed for renovation the day we planned to be there. Quick re-adjustments had to be made, so we found ourselves heading to the town of Trubschachen instead to visit the factory of a well-known brand of biscuits, and then back to Geneva for some fondue.  Not quite the same, we know, but the train ride views were pleasant enough and the biscuits were covered in a satisfactory amount of chocolate.

      And did I mention, anak, that fondue is cheese with alcohol?  Yeah, Switzerland is great. 

DIPLOMATIC TRANSCRIPTS...OR EXCERPTS FROM THE NEXT 50 SHADES? YOU DECIDE.

Either way, I'm just thankful my Office Concierge meetings never deal with such, um, unconventional requests.

As far as you know

FOUR SIGNS IN LONDON OF THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE...OR SOMETHING

YES, BUT OF WHAT?!???

LET IT NOT BE SAID THAT TUBE STATION VANDALS DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PUBLIC  

SHOULDN'T IT BE WHERE DE-BRIEFINGS ARE HELD? (see what I did there? debriefings?)

AND, UM, YEAH...

SIX THINGS I STILL DON'T GET AFTER SIX YEARS IN LONDON

1) Which side should I walk?

I dutifully (and stressfully) adapted to the whole cars-are-right-hand-drive-and-travel-on-the-left-side-of-the-road scheme here in the UK.  It will make for some interesting times once I'm back on the counterflow-on-demand streets of Manila.

In the meantime, I still don't know the correct side to move on when I'm not in a car. I always thought every place in the world would intuitively follow its own road set-up, i.e., if your country drives on the left side of the road, your pedestrians would walk on the left side of the sidewalk/staircase/concourse, and vice-versa.  

Not here in London. I see just as many throngs shuffle through the right side as they do the left. Some Tube stations have signs that direct you à gauche...

...yet people in two-way staircases always seem to instinctively drift à droite.

What does it matter?  Well, I've seen (and been involved in) a lot of awkward walking bump-ins over the years, and each time there's a split second where you can feel some righteous indignation/rage about to boil over, only for it to instantly drain away upon realization that neither person knows for sure whether they were on the correct side.  Hilarity ensues.

Don't ever figure it out, London, is what I'm saying.
      

2) What's that knob on the side of the bus for?

On the exterior of every London double-decker is this thingie:

I have no idea what it's for.  My best guess is that it helps hold in place the splashy advertisements on the side of the bus.  But if so, don't the layout artists factor in the knob's location when they make their designs? Often it blends right in, flattering even 

A lot of other times though, it's...not

3) Is there really a person...oh my God!

From almost my first month in London, I've seen signs like this on a fairly regularly basis:

I've been going back and forth on what it really means ever since. At first, I took it literally: someone must have taken a tragic fall somewhere. But then, similar notices continued to come quite frequently over the years and were delivered over the PA system rather nonchalantly, so I began to think they were just euphemisms for any accident that caused some delay. Then again, why? Why of all possible ways to refer to an incident go with...that?

I mean, what would you make of this announcement at a Tube station I distinctively remember from a while back: "There are severe delays on the District Line because of a person earlier under a train, while there are minor delays on the Central Line because of another person under a train"?

um...


4) So you're basically saying there could still be a lot of people out there unhappy with how they look?

I don't know why this bugs me, but it does. It appears cosmetic products are the staple advertisements of every TV reality or talent show over here (um, so I've heard; nothing but Downton Abbey and Question Time touch my stiff upper lip). And it appears local truth-in-advertising laws require the cosmetic companies to back up their "younger looking" and "more refreshing" claims with real-people surveys.  Fine. What always surprises me is how consistently low these giant conglomerates set the bar for their products' campaigns.

That's it?!? You're promoting your product to millions of people, and you can only be bothered to survey around a hundred of them? You spend millions of pounds in product development and promotion, and your satisfaction rate barely cracks 70%?

I'm sorry, but even our Consulate interviews a 114 people before lunch. And if your approval rating is lower than my fantasy team's Free Throw Percentage, I'm just not going try your product.

(I may, however, still watch your reality and talent show)


5) What do you have against lunch?

First of all, you start it at 1:00 p.m., an hour later than nature intended. Second, I'm guessing all those yuppies spilling outside the pubs during their lunch hour aren't even having any lunch (that's not a complaint, by the way; more of admiration as to how you get away with it)

My biggest peeve, though, is the reckless way the phrase "Substantial Lunch Buffet" is thrown around. That should be the most beautiful three-word combination in the English language, and I literally wept the first time I received an invitation card that had "a substantial lunch buffet will be served" scribbled in gold font at the bottom. Yet imagine my feeling of...I don't even know the proper word for it...when every "substantial lunch buffet" event I've ever been to just comes out and serves a a few trays like this:

Why? WHY??? It was supposed to be a buffet! A substantial one!!!  I mean, aren't you violating some EU regulation or something?   Saisaki feels insulted!


6) So what's the deal with UK Fil-Com groups' line dancing?

Because I can't think of anything else that can put a bounce in your step - literally! - the way the unexplained phenomena that is Pinoys in the UK grooving to "Achy Breaky Heart" can!

I'll totally admit: I did not see this one coming.  I mean, c'mon, you certainly wouldn't think it was possible for everyone in a room at almost every Fil-Com event in the UK to somehow know all the steps and spontaneously join in like a scene from a 90's teen movie to - of all things - a country music song from a pre-twerked Billy Ray. 

And yet, here we are.

Heck, they're even competing to see who's the best at it!

I guess there are just some things in life that I'm not meant to understand...but which will forever make me happy. So, so happy.

PAKI-LISTA NA LANG LAHAT

(Clock's tickin'. Best chance to have a satisfying photodump of everything I have from my UK stay is through a bunch of random lists from now until I leave.  Let's start with "Places I Remember: Bad-Ass Edition")

Three of the most bad-ass sounding (and looking) places I found in London

Battersea Power Station

Wormwood Scrubs Prison

Thames Barrier

Three totally bad-ass sounding places but which I didn't visit because I didn't want to ruin the mystique 

Three places that sound the complete opposite of bad-ass 

And a possibly bad-ass place I shouldn't even tell you about...you might be in danger just looking at this...in fact, just forget I said anything