Painting...

Last week we got a letter from the Lodgement office informing us that our bathroom was getting painted this Tuesday and Wednesday, and that for those days we shouldn't take showers or baths as the humidity of the water isn't good for the new paint.

As you can expect we weren't very pleased about this, though it was good that they fixed the leak in the ceiling, I think we could have all dealt with some peeling off paint until the summer when less of us would be around.

Ah well, now we have a newly painted bathroom which we can use again.

Cleaning

Today was apartment cleaning day. Not by us, but by professionals organised by the Bureau des Lodgements. *grins* All we had to do was remove everything from the counters and shelves in the kitchen, bathroom and toilet. Oh, and all the food from the freezer so they could remove the ice. So it was nice to come home today with everything all shiny, though the residual fumes from all the cleaning products isn't very pleasant.

This apartment is such a good deal for students at the university. The rent is only 355CHF a month and we don't have to pay for electricity, water or internet. I was so lucky to be offered a room here. It is a little far from the centre of town, around 20 minutes by bus in good traffic, but it's only a 20 bike ride or 10 minute drive to CERN, which is fine by me, since that is where I spend most of my time, and I had possession of my research group's CERN van for the winter.

Housemate Changeover

Yesterday the Argentine girl moved out of the apartment to University of Geneva owned studio in Rive, which is right in the centre of town. I'm really happy for her, since she is in a two year program and this way she is in town and closer to uni, but I'm going to miss her heaps, though now I have a place to crash if I happen to miss the last bus home...

This afternoon, the new girl moved in, in a huge hurry as she had to get to work after putting all her stuff into her room, sparing about a minute to introduce herself to me and the other housemate who was in. We got to know her better over drinks after dinner, when she got back from work. She's a first year student doing law and is from a town near Zurich.

So now my apartment is stable again, at least until summer when I'm leaving, let's hope we all get along!

Housemate Changeover

Today the Swiss-German guy moved out of the appartment to another University of Geneva owned place in Carouge, which is closer to the university, in a more vibrant neighbourhood and where he'll be living with his friends, so I'm fairly happy for him.

And then the new guy moved in an hour later. He's a semester Erasmus student from The University of Freiburg in Germany, doing political science and economics I think. He seemed nice and friendly.

I got to practise my introductory French, which was nice, since it's the only conversation I can carry without too much difficulty. And I'll get a chance to practise it again in a fortnight's time when there is another housemate changeover.

Tết Preparations

Tomorrow is the Lunar New Year, and even though I'm missing out on a heap of festivities at home, I figure I should follow some of the traditions, namely cleaning the house in preparation. *smiles* I don't believe that it's bad luck not to have a clean house on the New Year, but it is a good reason to clean the place up, and it's nice to have everything all shiny.

Swiss Working Hours...

*sigh* I forgot that Swiss people don't work after 4pm or on weekends. I just called up the person in charge of the students apartments in my building at the university as the bathroom ceiling was leaking last night. She'll have to call the real estate person since apartment above me is privately owned, maybe they'll be able to get somebody to look at it on Monday. I really hope it doesn't get any worse over the weekend...

Snow!

It's snowing outside my bedroom window right now! So pretty! Just little flakes of snow coming slowly down and melting on the ground. Maybe it'll get cold enough tonight that tomorrow morning it'll be all white!

Apartment Inspection

Last Friday, everybody in my apartment gets a letter which said:

Nous vous demandons de pendre note que nous effectuerons un constat d'entretien et de proprete des appartmements et des chambres le jeudi 20 novembre 2008 entre 9h00 et 13h00

So I spent a couple of hours on Sunday cleaning the bathroom and my room and the three of them spend Wednesday night cleaning their rooms and the other shared areas. The apartment looks so nice and shiny.

And obviously the inspector thought so too, so there was a notice on our dining table when we got back in the evening:

Suite au controle de ce jour, j'ai trouve votre logement bien range et propre. Je vous remercie pour votre collaboration, et vous envoie mes meilleurs salutations.

Yay! No paying of fines or losing our places!

Full House...

Coming home this evening, I met our last housemate. Guess I haven't really talked much about my new apartment yet. It's a four bedroom place, two smaller bedrooms and two larger ones. I luckily have one of the larger ones. It's right next to the entrance to the place, the kitchen and lounge/dining area, so it's lucky that I'm a heavy sleeper. It's a little annoying though, since the kitchen has no ventilation, we have to cook with that door open, which means I have to close my door so everything doesn't smell. I don't want to be antisocial, I just have to be. I also am afraid that my music and singing to it will annoy other people.

So yeah, from the entrance, you can see three doors and the living/dining area. One of the those doors is my room, another is the kitchen, where I have two cupboard shelves and one and a half fridge shelves and half a freezer shelf. The third door leads to a hallways, off which the toilet, bathroom, and the three other bedrooms. Oh, and two hallway cupboards which are for the people in the smaller rooms.

People wise in the place, there's me in the first room. You know about me. The next room along belongs to the guy from Madagascar, who has lived here for a year already. He is on the same scholarship as me, but has a year extension. He is currently during a masters in information systems. The third bedroom belongs to the guy who moved in today, from Bern, who is doing a bachelors in international relations. He is in the room where the Canadian guy I mentioned earlier moved out of last week. And the last room belongs to a girl from Argentina, doing a masters in development. We get along quite well, which is really nice. I think the fact that her English is almost fluent helps with that.

It is nice living with non-physics people. And people who I can learn French from. It makes me feel like I'm getting more out of this stay than work.

Oh, speaking of learning French, I went to an information session for the French courses I can take at the university for free during the semester due to my scholarship. So the good thing is that I understood most of the session, even though it was in French. But the bad thing is that the only classes in the evenings are Intermediate 2 level. I'll try them out next week and see how lost I am... I am thinking of going to them anyway though, since they are free.

Administration, the Swiss way...

involves lots of waiting and paperwork. Today the first day I could go and do all my University of Geneva stuff. So I started at 10am, and didn't finish until 4pm. First up was the International Relations Office at the University, where I picked up my scholarship money order for the month, and some forms. The next stop was the University cashier to cash the money order in. Then I had enough money to go to the Student Residence Office sign my lease, pay my bond and pick up me keys. Unfortunately I needed to wait about an hour before seeing the person who was in charge of new students renters. Fortunately, she had so many students waiting for her, she let me have my keys before going to the bank with the form to pay my guarantee, as long as I promised to do it the same day and fax and mail the forms back to her as soon as possible. It was a little strange signing a contract in French. I will have to go to the apartment sometime this week to do an inventory check and maybe meet my new flatmates. After that I headed to the population office, 20 minutes bus ride away to hand in my forms for a residency permit. Where I had to stand in line for quarter of an hour to get a ticket to wait in another line. Love that efficiency. It was very quick and painless once I got to a counter about an hour later. I didn't even have to pay the fee due to the scholarship. Then I headed back to CERN, about an hour by public transport, so I could open a bank account there. I figure that would be easiest since that's where I'll be spending most of my time while I'm over here. I had to convince the lady to give me a bank account though, my CERN contract didn't have a high enough percentage of time spent here and I didn't have my residency permit yet and forgot to pay a temporary one. Luckily having the paper work from the my scholarship and my apartment was enough to convince her that I really needed an account. So now I have a Swiss bank account. *grins* Not one of those cool ones though. *sigh* I still have a more administration to do next week. Fun times.

New Flatmates

all speak French and English! It's kind of amazing actually, they are almost all trilingual, since they also know their home language. I feel so uncultured. All I have is English and a bit of Viet and a tiny bit of French. Hopefully that will be better as I'll be living around French speakers now. Not that any of them are native French speakers, they all seem to be exchange students, kind of like in the movie, The Spanish Apartment. Actually, it's almost exactly like that since a couple of them are Eramus students, as are their friends, who always seem to be around.