Life lately: Swiss chocolate, Zoom, and emerging from the lockdown
Some memories from the past few months.
After a three-month hiatus, Geneva’s famous Jet d’Eau finally sprung back to life on June 11.An English breakfast at my hotel in London in early March, just before everything went to shit.Easter was subdued this year. And the chocolate bunnies at Manor were kind of scary.Right at the beginning of the lockdown, when all non-essential shops had to close. The city became a ghost town overnight.Even though my organization had adopted Zoom before the pandemic, we had to get up to speed on it, fast. In a training, about 40 of us got to unleash our creative energy / pent-up frustration in the form of annotations. This has very strong meme energy to me, especially the random BONJOUR (bottom left) and fantastic (bottom center).It was also around this time that I learned that you could conjure 3D animals with your iPhone just by typing the animal’s name into Google. I was obsessed with this feature for one day and then never used it again, lmao.Waiting in line to get into the supermarket.Delicious salmon, asparagus and fries for dinner.Waiting in line to get into the post office.A lonely walk by the lake.I was briefly sick with a sore throat in April and asked my sweet friend K if she could pick up a pack of nurofen from the pharmacy for me. She did… and threw in some extra goodies! (I am so tickled that even the French are obsessed with Meghan and Harry.)In May, I started getting targeted Instagram ads (in German, thanks guys so helpful) from the Swiss government advising me to wear a mask. Ummm where have you guys been this whole time?!I also got an Italy-themed Bialetti moka pot. This is the real deal!When the office opened back up around mid-May, the work cafeteria wasn’t allowed to operate due to government rules. We had to bring in our own lunch, something I hadn’t done in forever. Ended up getting a little bento box from the Japanese shop downtown. This thing is TINY and cost like CHF 25. That’s Geneva for ya!My work really took physical distancing to a whole new level.Eating lunch alone was sad, but the view made up for it.Ikea was a chaotic mess and not enough people wore masks. I popped in, got a succulent and then got the hell out.The Jet d’Eau back in action!Watching someone feed the swans.Baked some bruschettas this weekend with cherry tomatoes, spinach and mozzarella on buttered Italian bread, drizzled with Portuguese olive oil. Yum!I also returned to in-person French classes in June. The school has introduced a ton of new measures, like banning the elevator, restricting foot traffic to one direction, and wiping down desks after every class. The teacher will also put on a mask when she walks around the classroom to check our work. I feel like the one productive thing I did during quarantine was bring my French level up from A1 to A2 (the rest of y’all can keep your sourdough starters and your judgment), but returning to class made me realize that there’s still so much to learn. We did an in-class exercise conjugating irregular verbs in past tense, and I got… uhh… 8 out of 14 wrong. THE SHAME.Finally: I just got Antoni Porowski’s cookbook in the mail! Watching Antoni teach people how to cook on Queer Eye has really helped me become more confident and curious about cooking, especially non-Asian cuisine. There’s sooo much good stuff in this book, and I plan to try out one new recipe a week.
Train to TBD 