There are some things you do once, and then never again. Well, if you're the average reasonable man. I tend to go about things fairly nonchalantly, with not too much fuss, regularly leaving the house without essential items - keys, wallet, ID, bus pass. J watches in frustration as the apartment door slams behind me and I look up at him blithely, in a you-better-have-the-keys look. Fortunately, he always does. I'm not really sure what is the bright idea behind these self-locking doors except to give local locksmiths a never-ending supply of bewildered slipper-shod customers desperate to get back into their apartments (the business card of a locksmith business is very helpfully taped up in the lobby). Surely, the landlords can trust their tenants to lock their doors securely with one - or all three - of the locks provided, without taking the precaution of installing a lock that, once shut, may only be opened with a key from outside.

I used to fall victim to these doors in college: it didn't help that some dormitories did not have them, and some did, and to me it was unfair and quite random. In a dorm, also, there are far more reasons to casually leave your house empty-handed - a quick trip to the bathroom, say, or popping over to your next door neighbor's to use their microwave. It seemed a little much that one was expected to carry the key everywhere - in your shower caddy, even, for want of pockets in a towel. But a few stiff fines from campus police later, and I was never to be seen without the bright orange rubber bracelet that housed my keyring. Of course, the stiff fines from college are nothing compared to what a Geneva locksmith will charge you for getting locked out of your house - 200 francs! J is paranoid, though, and short of keeping a spare set of keys up a tree in Parc La Grange (which he has contemplated doing, but I have thankfully dissuaded him) he finds great satisfaction in "hacking" the doors of our houses so they don't close automatically. This is the latest endeavor, and it's pretty awesome:

This is all well and good, of course, but we have yet to come across a system to remind me to take my bus pass AND my wallet on me at all times. I was once caught without the former, but thankfully I had ID and came away with a slap on the wrist - a 6 franc processing fee as opposed to getting hauled off to jail because I had no identification (it happens, really, but then you can get a phone call to a 'friend' to come bail you out with the appropriate documentation). It doesn't help that the bus pass issued by the TPG is leaps and bounds larger than any wallet you've ever owned (it's about the size of a passport, like the B and C permits). The CFF, wisely, issues its passes in credit card format, and so I always have mine regardless of how far I am from an actual train at any given moment.

If I thought it was embarrassing to be called out on the tram and have to give my name and address to the ticket checkers because I had left my pass at home, it was nothing compared to what happened a couple of days when, after coming home and exchanging one purse for the other, I left the house and wandered into a nearby Migros, filling up my basket with lots and lots of groceries. When it had gotten too full to carry, I unloaded it on the conveyor belt and watched as the cashier rang up my soy yogurt, margarine, a new pineapple strawberry jam that I was looking forward to tasting, various vegetables... and then I started rooting around my bag for the debit card. Needless to say, I didn't have it, although I came across my bus pass staring up at me unhelpfully. I mumbled something to the lady about having lost my err, porte-feuille, non, porte-monnaie, and stumbled over the potted plant section in my haste to leave the store. I never went back. If anyone comes up with a way to suture debit/ credit card chips into the skin, why, I'll be first in line.

I will readily admit to being one of those people who has not thought about Michael Jackson in months, not cared much what he was up to, and yet has been suddenly swept up in the maelstrom of media attention surrounding his death. I found out he had died on the morning of 26th June, my wedding day, while I was idly checking up on my emails and the internet press, as I do each morning. (Loading the homepage of CNN each morning is like opening a present, especially since all the important updates get filed during the U.S. daytime, which is our bedtime in Geneva.) The newness of the death has worn off now, but I remember opening numerous tabs and reading as much as I could about the circumstances that led up to the event. I was, like most, sad for a few days, and played an unending rotation of old Jackson favorites. But I'm over it now - well, mostly, now I just feel sympathy for the children he left behind.

Over the years, I have been at one time or the other called myself a fan of a pop musician whose work I really enjoyed. Michael Jackson was probably the first, and then the others I remember are... well, let's not go into that. I plead the fifth. No point in revealing potentially damning information here. Anyhow, the interesting thing about being an MJ fan, as I realize now, is that I did not witness him in his heyday, which probably peaked around 1984. I was born in '83, and the Michael-era that I followed was Dangerous and HIStory; the former on an audio-cassette which we played incessantly and the latter one of the first genuine CDs we ever bought (at great expense in Accra) for our brand-new CD player. Of course, both albums were played non-stop, the videos were watched frequently on national television, and hits from Thriller and Bad were discovered in retrospect. I still don't love the Thriller album, despite all the records it's broken - it's from another era I was never a part of. Like Elvis Presley, or the Beatles - I get that they were great during their time, but frankly it's not doing very much for me.

The Michael I came to love, then, in the early-nineties, was already pretty quirky. I listened to Dangerous on repeat, fell in love with the great video for Remember the Time, even rented Moonwalker from a video rental place and was charmed, as everyone has been, by Smooth Criminal. I had never known a dark-skinned Michael with a broad nose and frizzy hair, and while I cannot now analyse my twelve-year-old self, I am sure I did know that he was African-American. Did I ever hear of his vitiligo? Probably not. Living in Ghana, far from any access to tabloid magazines and American cable television, all I knew about Michael was his music, and the facets of his personality that I attempted to decipher from his videos and lyrics - his love for children, for example, which only made me like him more. I would not know until much later about his child molestation accusations in '93 and his subsequent retreat to a rehab center to overcome an addiction to painkillers/ narcotic drugs, which may yet turn out to be what eventually killed him.

I did tune in somewhat to his marriage with Ms. Presley, his subsequent divorce and second marriage to Debbie Rowe, and the birth of his two children (around which time I moved to the States, in 2001, and discovered a whole wealth of information I had not known about MJ). With access to Amazon and eBay, I bought more of his music and videos, and watched them on repeat in my college dorm. My best friend from college was similarly obsessed - as we watched him disintegrate before our eyes, become a shadow of his former self, we wrung our hands in despair. We fantasized about what we would do if we could intervene - meet him, help him, give him a hug. Poor guy. When Invincible was released, ill-fated to coincide with 9/11, I didn't buy it. I had heard the first single, You rock my world, and was not impressed. The video with Chris Tucker failed to impress. New, tired, whispery and pale Michael trying to imitate the old vibrant Michael made me sad. I put Beat It on repeat, and eventually got tired of even that. MJ faded from my consciousness as I explored other artists, surfacing briefly when I tuned in for the verdict of the 2005 child molestation trial, and then disappearing entirely from view when he left Neverland, and the States, to go live in Bahrain.

I had nonchalantly read the occasional story about his movements since then, perhaps even raised an eyebrow when I learned about the sold-out concerts in London. I had no interest in attending or even watching them - Michael as he was in his later years was not the Michael I had been a fan of in my childhood, and he had long ceased to register as an object of my attention. I did not, then, follow the rumors of his apprehension at performing so many dates, of his ill-health and frailty. The Michael who came out in April to announce the concerts was completely unrecognizable to me - hollow-cheeked, sharp-jawed, and remarkably emaciated, as pictures of his final rehearsals have since borne out. And then Michael died, and like everyone else, I was immediately struck by a profound sense of loss - in the days after his death, I could not think of another person who had united so many people around the world in unanimous adoration... and then repelled them all just as spectacularly. But it was obvious that we were willing to let his missteps be forgotten, and to each remember the Michael we had admired.

In death, MJ proves a lot easier to understand and accept, simply because he can no longer confound us by making another ill-fated decision that leads to a storm of negative media coverage - no more dangling baby or Martin Bashir documentary incidents. No more concerns about yet another nose job, just when we were getting used to his peculiar new visage. Of course, many unflattering portraits of MJ emerge after his death also - his profligate spending and prescripton drug abuse, for example, as well as his insistence on getting his way despite advice from well-meaning friends and family. But he was an extraordinary man who lived an extraordinary life, had a spectacular rise and a similarly spectacular fall, and experienced extremes that many of us will never know. Ever a larger-than-life figure, perpetually masked and made up, it is strangely pathetic that all he left behind was a shrunken pale white body, bald and ridden with needle marks. It's like Oz all over again - the wizard has been revealed, and the figure he cuts is far from striking. Speaking of which, I have yet to see The Wiz.

Those of us who tried to understand Michael sensed that growing older would not agree with our self-proclaimed Peter Pan - the indignities and infirmities of age would not go over well. The responsibilities of being an adult, of adopting proper adult behavior, had never been assumed and yet lingered below the surface, as reports of his parenting skills reveal. But it was clear in the past few years, but especially since his 2005 trial, that he was not much longer for this world of ours, with our probing cameras and invasive microphones, our never-ending curiosity about his quirkiness and eccentricity that had long ago proven too much for him to bear. Even as I listen to Tabloid Junkie, I can't help refreshing TMZ to see what else, if anything, will be revealed about the life MJ lived, so different from my own, so  sordid even as he seemingly strove to surround himself with childhood innocence and maintain a certain naivete. I think, well, he's not around to care anymore what gets written up about him. I'll just keep telling myself that.

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It's one thing to learn how to ride a bike, and it's another thing entirely to bike properly. I was fortunate enough to be taught to ride by my husband J, who is a very proficient amateur cyclist - both riding and repairing - and I scoff at friends who ride bikes without ever changing the gears. This seems unfathomable to me - I use a 7-speed Shimano Nexus on my city bike and I love my grip shifter, constantly changing gears depending on the gradient of the street. As it should be.

There are many mistakes I still make, though, even on my very basic easy-to-ride step-through frame women's bike. I attribute all my woes to not having been riding very long - I still can't manage to take my hands off the handlebars, and so hand signals are out of the question. I hold on tightly, mentally squeeze my eyes shut, and usually do a pretty good job of going where I mean to go without much incident. The occasional bus driver honking at me because I'm in front of him in the bus lane never fails to startle me, and motorcycles in the bike lane are incredibly annoying, to say the least. But I persevere because biking is fun; even though I cannot start without being firmly seated in the saddle first, I have never managed to stand and pedal up a hill, and my fingers lose sensation with alarming regularity because of my poor posture/ too-tight grip/ undersized bike (at least a full 8cm less than what I would need for my height, but it was also easier to learn how to ride in the beginning because of this).

We looked into getting me a properly-sized road bike, because J could not stop crowing about the supposed comfort and durability and speed of road bikes - after all, he said, no one spends eight to ten hours in the saddle of a city bike! And I bought the story. So, finally, a good deal came along and we snapped up the beauty and wheeled it home from Nyon. The first thing to adjust was the pedals - I didn't have clipless shoes and had no intention of getting any - what if I needed to brake suddenly by putting my feet down? So mountain bike pedals were duly fastened, the saddle height was adjusted, and we went off for a test ride. I will say confidently now that those Tour de France guys deserve every penny of their unpaid (tsk tsk Astana) salaries. Perched upon that narrow wedge of leather for 200km at a time? I barely made five, and most of it downhill at that. There is nothing more uncomfortable to a woman's anatomy than these anatomically unadapted monstrosities, and the padded diaper-like cycling pants I wore made no difference. Zip. Zilch. For all the money I forked out for those unsexy leggings, one would've thought the padding would have provided more of a defense than it did. But then again, I don't have the sub-20 BMI that professional riders do. Oh, well.

The punishing saddle was quickly exchanged with a more comfortable one salvaged from one of the many bike wrecks littering the Geneva streets, but I still could not get used to the road bike. The braking system, for one - I find the handlebars too wide, the brake levers generally too far from my fingers, and with half as much effectiveness as my city bike. Stopping downhill is a nightmare which leaves my fingers strained and shaking. The posture on a road bike is also, while aerodynamic, counter-intuitive. Hunched down as one is, it becomes harder to see the road and navigate traffic, and the pressure placed on the palms (and surprisingly elbows) is unbearable after a few kilometers. The shifters were the easiest transition to make - having been spoiled by my foolproof grip shift, I find this a little harder to use but not impossible - the wide range of 27 gears is also much appreciated for climbing up Geneva's many hills.

In the end, though, despite several adjustments for comfort, I still find the road bike intimidating and I'm beginning to lust after the beginners' models that Decathlon has, with a straight handlebar. Somehow I feel that might make the transition a bit easier. But learning to bike was an adventure in itself and learning to use a road bike promises to take the whole cycling experience up a notch. Perhaps practice will make, if not perfect, at least more at ease. But I'll save those practices for once a week or so... till then, pass me my little city bike with the grip shifters. It might not go as fast, but it gets me there with much less pain.

You may not know it, but a lot of older apartments in Geneva use fuses as circuit breakers. I'm not exactly sure of the technical explanation for how this works, but that's not what the point is here. What happened, then, is that a couple of nights back, we were cooking up a storm - lentils steaming, onions frying, pasta boiling, plantains baking in the oven (fantastic way of cooking them, much better than frying) - when, turning on the kettle for a hot cuppa, we apparently overloaded the system and everything went dark.

I'm used to having the lights off, it's a regular occurrence in a third world country. This time, though, I realized just how completely we depended on electricity, never even considering the possibility that it might not be available at some point, if only for a short period. Fortunately it was still somewhat light outside at 7pm, so our lack of a flashlight was not immediately obvious. To go to the bathroom, I took a scented candle we rarely used; it was received as a present and left to languish on top of a cupboard. There was no helping along the cooking process: the bubbling lentils were eerily quiet, despondent at having the fire suddenly extinguished; the pasta, surprisingly, was done anyway, so we drained it in silence and wondered how best to proceed with dinner.

The first line of defense in a situation like this is not always clear. I tend to hold the regie responsible for all issues with the apartment (although I was indignant when I reported a defective light fixture and they suggested that I needed to change the bulb at my own expense. Well, duh). This was 19h00, though, and everything was closed. The concierge company's office was closed, and there was no concierge who lived in the building. Fortunately, we discovered that the "depannage" number for SIG had been helpfully posted up in a public area, and so I called them, whereupon an eager and extremely helpful young man advised me to change the fuse in the hallway (which we had checked and discovered to be alarmingly hot) before calling back if that didn't make any difference. Fuses were cheap, he said, but if the SIG had to come by the apartment to install one, they would charge us 200 francs. All the shops were closed by then, though, so he advised looking in a tabac, and mentioned a specific one in Rond Point de Rive that was open 24 hours.

So we took our time and had dinner in the dark, discussing our woeful lack of a battery-powered radio, charcoal-fired pressing iron, or paraffin-fueled lantern. Fortunately I have hand-laundered enough times to be fairly adept at it, and my electric toothbrush isn't the only one I have. Despite trying to convince ourselves that we could tough it through the night if needed, the absence of an internet connection was sorely felt. After washing the dishes, we hit the streets to find a 20A fuse, easier said than done. The first tabac, carrying everything from McVities Hobnobs (marked up 100% from the regular price in Coop) to frozen lasagna, also had a few fuses, but the strongest was 16A. The second tabac - and this is where I was floored - didn't even sell fuses, but the owner showed us a box he kept in the store for his own private use. Jackpot - 20A! When we explained that this was exactly what he needed, he offered us one, at no charge. He insisted he was doing this to provide a service, and all we needed to do was bring him back a 20A fuse when we were finally able to procure a box of them from a store during opening hours.

I will admit that while I have seen many instances of an egregious lack of customer service in some Swiss stores, I can't complain about too much myself. It takes some getting used to coming from the States where it is easy to purchase and return and get a refund (good luck here, unless it's Manor), but eventually some highlights emerge, like this tabac owner (I would make it a point of patronizing his store more, but unfortunately his two main sellers: cigarettes and French newspapers, are not of much interest). Having never purchased a fuse and not knowing how much they cost, and unwilling to stumble around our house in the dark, we were quite willing to pay 5, 10, 15 francs for a new fuse (it turns out that a box of 5 is only CHF 2.20! Suffice it to say we now have several at hand). I was reminded of another instance when my boyfriend borrowed a wrench from Hotpoint to carry out some repairs on his bicycle. He had been fully expecting to pay to use it, but they lent it freely and he used it on the sidewalk outside the shop, completely unsupervised.

There are times, of course, when I would appreciate the convenience of easy returns and exchanges, especially on big-ticket items. But if there was ever a time when I appreciated small favors... well, this was it. Now I had better purchase a solar-powered lamp, just in case!

At the beginning of the year, I had to move house, and didn't want to bring all of my books with me since I wouldn't have space for them in the new place. Having already patronized the book section of local thrift stores - Emmaus, Caritas, etc; I thought it would be a good idea to cart my own books to Emmaus, so someone else could take advantage of them. In fact, I had obtained many of these novels cheaply - either at these thrift stores or for free from fellow English speakers in the region. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I also entertained the notion that for the books I really liked, I could go back to the store and repurchase them. So I would basically be using the store shelves for storage - great, right?

A couple of weeks later, I was in the parking lot of the Emmaus store when I noticed huge dumpsters on one side. Curious, I walked over to explore them. There was one for paper and cardboard, another for furniture and wood, and a third for metal stuff. The paper bin, apart from being full of cardboard boxes, was also overflowing with books! I was taken aback. Here were a bunch of books in perfectly fine condition, being carted off to be recycled. I can understand why some furniture would be trash, especially if they're broken beyond repair, but books? If the store couldn't sell them, why didn't they leave them outside to be picked up for free? A lot of places do this in Geneva and I often pass by to check out the selection - I'm thinking specifically of the Library in English at Paquis and the community library, also in Paquis. The Red Cross on the Rue de Carouge in Plainpalais also leaves out books in large wooden boxes on the sidewalk, and I've helped myself to those a few times.

While some of the books in the Emmaus bin were not really my kind of thing - a stack of about 100 Mills&Boon titles, for example - others were perfectly good literature and right up my alley. In fact, I noticed some of the books I myself had taken to their deposit only a couple weeks back! Which meant that they had never bothered to put these on their shelves to see if anyone would take them, but had deposited them directly in the garbage, sometimes ripping off the covers to ensure no one else could retrieve the books and sell them. On another visit to the Emmaus dumpster, I fished out Linda Polman's "We Did Nothing", as well as a title by Philip Roth - I'm looking forward to reading these. While there is a big sign next to the bins that says "No recuperation allowed", I find it hard that the folks who run the store would begrudge me a couple of paperbacks they were going to discard anyway. At least this time I got there before the rain did.

There has to be a better way for people who live in the first world to reuse such crucial learning materials as books - there are many programs, for example, that ask for used books to send to struggling libraries in third world countries, to teach kids there how to read and write. Perhaps some of these organizations could liaise with the charitable organizations here to support their literacy programs with donations of books? It occurs to me that every Wednesday when the paper-recycling trucks pass through the city, they must collect hundreds of books, to be sent off to goodness-knows-where. Recycled as toilet paper, perhaps? What a shame. Even the Library in English, which I just praised for leaving out books for free in the lobby, also puts out books for the trash, as I realized passing by their doors last Wednesday.

You know what? I get it. There are far too many books in print, and not enough time to read all of them, what with the television, the internet, movies, all the other great sources of entertainment on which we spend our time today. With so much distraction available, books are no longer the exciting source of diversion that they were a few hundred years ago. But we should still probably figure out a more responsible, environmentally-friendly way of reusing our old books, and getting them to those whose access to these resources are restricted. That, too, is charity.

It all sounds so simple, and anywhere else, I'm sure it works. Deciding on new housing should not be any more complicated than finding the moving boxes - after all, why should it be so hard to find a place to live if you can pay for it? Spot a suitable vacancy, go off to the regie's office to arrange a visit, then prepare the required documents: work contract, copies of ID and permits, salary slips, a document from the State asserting that you aren't the subject of any lawsuits. Of course you can pay the rent required: that's what the work contract and salary slips are for. There is sometimes even a slot on the sign-up form where you can state your current rent, which is ideally close to what you want to be paying. And so, you rub your hands and sit back and wait for the phone call, thumbing through Ikea catalogs to plan out the layout of your new pad. The call never comes. Three days later, wracked with nerves, you call the regie yourself and are greeted with an unempathetic receptionist. "Oh, that apartment," she says. "Rented ages ago. Better luck next time. Good bye, madam." Numb with shock, you hang up and wonder what could have gone wrong.

It's not that simple to figure out, though. The Geneva rental market has been extremely tight for some time, with approximately 2 vacancies for every 100 apartments rented (although it sure seems like less than that). It's one of those things you take for granted, an old wives' tale, until you're actually in the thick of it. Oh, what recession? And then suddenly, buying a pack of porcini mushrooms for 18 chf seems like a wasteful extravagance, and you sigh, Ah. That recession. And so here I am, in that housing crisis. I have been to "open houses" for apartments that would make a struggling artist weep with regret that he did not have a fifth of the audience for the opening night of his gallery exhibition. The apartments were so small that barely ten people could stay in them at a time, the elevators of the building so tiny that the prospective tenants took turns riding up to see the Promised Land. And yet we persisted, all (approximately) 150 of us, climbing the stairs even up to the fifth floor and beyond, joyful in our haste to find Oz. Single file through the apartment, please, not much space to spare. Here's the hall - watch your step, under construction; there are the embedded cupboards in the hallway; here's the living room, on the north, not too much light, but oh well; here's the kitchen - squeeze in really tight here, forget about "habitable"; and then, finally, the bedroom. Put in a double bed, a desk, and a wardrobe, and the floor will magically vanish. Better a mezzanine, maybe, but then how cumbersome. At least it's something, and everyone wants it. Next day, fill in form, take to regie, and the receptionist greets you with amazement "You too?", in a tone of voice that unmistakably says, "why bother?". But yes, you say, me too, here you are, here are my papers all in order; have a good day ma'am.

It's only painful the first few times. After a while, you get used to it. You'll never find an apartment anyway, so you might as well have fun with it. Forget the reservations you once had about living in Paquis; now your dossier appears promptly in a pile for consideration for an apartment right on top of a not-so-subtly named sex shop, complete with a giant neon light outlining a crudely-drawn penis outside your future window. No luck - many others wanted that apartment too. Ground floor? Not a problem, you'll take it. But not so fast - the societe proprietaire has unnamed objections to your file, and that also goes to someone else. Grossly overpriced? Ah, well, what can you do. It's only money. But apparently yours is less green because no one's taking it - the grossly overpriced apartment, 2000 francs net for an unfurnished 3 piece apartment of barely 50 m2 in a noisy corner of Servette, is rented before you can muster up the indignation. And so it goes. Your list of must-haves: double-pane glass, good view, high ceilings, wooden floors, equipped kitchen, chimney, balcony... everything becomes negotiable. Your dossier has been photocopied into near illegibility, and now you send it off to regies at the slightest provocation, forgoing the cattle-call open visits in favor of just applying blindly, what the heck. And still, nothing. Eventually, perhaps, you look at properties in Meyrin, Grand Lancy, Onex. Maybe you even move to Gland and take the train into Geneva for work each morning, wondering what could have been if you had been able to saunter down casually to work instead of the bothersome commute you currently undertake. Not bitter, you mutter to yourself. NOT BITTER. And that, dear friends, is the acceptance stage.

I'm not quite there yet myself. I'm slowly working my way through the other stages, and I remain a tad incredulous that my money is literally no good. How can it be that hard? I will actually be paying for an apartment. Givng my money to someone else in exchange for a place to live, an age-old transaction that has been tried and tested. I've had more luck applying for scholarships, and probably my chances of winning the lottery are better. There was denial: That cannot be right. Are you sure? Let me spell my last name for you again - wait, no? It's really gone to someone else? But...! And then, anger: This is unbelievable. How are there so many people applying for every last hole-in-the-wall? Why don't the authorities build some more? Does no one else notice that this cannot persist??? I moved on to bargaining pretty soon, where, as described, I gave up all my dreams of a balcony in Champel and settled for a first floor apartment in the red light district. Ha! As if. The depression set in pretty quickly, as I despaired of ever finding anything. Now I'm inching towards acceptance. Veyrier isn't so bad. Bernex is still accessible by bus! And Chancy, why, it's only "a deux pas de toutes commodites". Soon, I'll no longer be "Exploring Calvin's City," but trekking through the farmlands of Avully. It should be fun.

It's not hard to see that the powers-that-be have everything to gain and almost nothing to lose from this housing crisis. The Office des Poursuites is raking money in hand-over-fist - 17 francs each for the print-out saying you don't owe anyone, and it's only good for three months, for some regies it has to be less than one month old and it has to be the original copy. Which means that for your next dossier - and I'd like to meet the lucky bastard who hasn't sent out at least ten of these - you'll need to procure another if the regie in that case does not accept photocopies. The landlords, on the other hand, must be gleefully rubbing their hands together all the way to the bank. A minimum of input for a maximum of profit; what luck. I've read horror stories on the glocals.com forums, the one that stuck with me being the poor chap who paid his landlord 500 francs a month under the table, hard cash, so that he would agree for the regie to accept his application (the maximum rent allowed for that apartment being apparently insufficient for the landlord). Oh, and the regies. Swamped with applications, deluded with pleading letters and eager faces; who wouldn't want that kind of authority? You should see the state of some of these apartments: they're shown in the midst of construction works, or sometimes even before, with long cracks running down the floors and a steady trickle of water from broken bathtubs. What is the incentive for quick repair, or even sprucing up the place before inviting prospective renters to visit? Someone will take it anyway! I've seen places under renovation with holes in the walls you could crawl through, and still they got rented, the new tenants having no idea of what the finished product would look like before they sign the lease.

But our day will come - this bubble, too, must surely burst. And then I will move into a glorious apartment for a perfectly reasonable rent, and refuse to budge for the next twenty years. A girl can dream.

It's not often that there's a crime of this magnitude committed in Geneva - in fact, in the four years I've been here, I believe this is the first I'm hearing of something like this; where a father of two killed his sons, wife, and himself for unknown reasons. On the other hand, I've followed enough of these stories in Geneva to realize that the coverage, which has now pretty much tapered off, will be nonexistent for a few months. The main story, which remains the most read on the TDG website, is here. Eventually, the police will finish their investigation, and a follow-up story will be written (my estimate is in three months' time, give or take a few weeks, when most of us will have forgotten the story). Undoubtedly the follow-up will be unsatisfactory and leave more questions than answers. I remember the story of the young Rwandan woman found with her throat cut in a train, the eventual conclusion being that she had accidentally cut her own throat. Ridiculous? Absolutely. How, why, and, oh wait, how? But that was it, case closed, and we must move on to the next murder mystery.

In the absence of any concrete evidence of the motives, there is much speculation on the internet - I have dusted off my French and pored through many of the comments that readers added to the story, many of which guessed that financial harship must have been a factor. In this economy, one is inclined to agree, but apparently another commenter on the story has some insight into the situation, claiming that the perpetrator was a Scientologist who had donated lots of money to the church, and this act was in some way influenced by his new religion. I do not know much about scientology beyond what I have learned from watching Tom Cruise jump on Oprah's couch and whatever else is portrayed on South Park. What I do know, though, about any religion is that when taken to an extreme of devotion, it can wreak havoc and lead to destruction. If this father, who has been described by some as "authoritarian", was also in the throes of a religious fervor which the rest of his family could not understand and did not wish to take part in, then I can only empathize with the poor victims of this heinous act. Did he kill them believing that he was doing what was best for them? From his suicide note, this seems to be the case. Probably thinking he was close to God, he decided to literally "play God" and decide the fate of his family. What a shame. Having experienced firsthand this sort of overzealousness and self-righteousness, especially destructive when combined with an explosive temper, I feel I can well imagine what transpired in his mind - and perhaps theirs also - during those last fateful moments. But we shall never know. After all, the police have yet to confirm whether or not the commenter's hypothesis is accurate.

Anyone else notice the poetic flourishes used to report the story? I'm ashamed to say I don't read enough in French, so unfortunately it takes me far longer than it should for me to read a few paragraphs. As I read this one out loud to my fiance, though, I also attempted to translate simultaneously into English, and found myself stumped when it came to the more flowerly language employed by the reporters Thierry Mertenat and Adélita Genoud. Perhaps this is standard for French journalism? There was a description of how "the noise of the river hushed the voices of the neighbors", and my favorite, "the waters of the Arve had never seemed so cold as they were yesterday, when the bodies were removed". It's like a movie voiceover, poignant and dramatic! I'm still trying to decipher this sentence in the second paragraph, which seems to be about how the house reflected the story... I'm stuck. "Cette façade d’immeuble sans histoire a désormais la sienne." Help, anyone?

Speaking of houses - you know you've been looking for accommodation for too long in this city when you read a story like this and your first thought is: "Damn. The regie must be hopping mad." I have not actually followed through by going to Cheval Blanc and looking up who the regie is for number 7... I actually haven't been past Place de l'Octroi in weeks, so I have no idea what the scene was like there on Friday the 6th when the bodies were discovered, or what it is like now. Is there still an active media presence, seeking interviews from friends and neighbors? One would imagine that's been over for a while, since there haven't been any more stories, at least not on the Tribune. But what exactly happened to the building afterwards - was it closed off to all inhabitants after Friday while investigations were carried out? One thinks not, since the crime appears pretty straightforward; there's no mystery as to the culprit here. And still, I am full of questions, many probably inappropriate: what do the tenants think about remaining in the building? Have any moved out/ planned to move out because they no longer want to live at the scene of such infamy? Does this mean the rents will be cheaper (due to fear of ghosts) or more expensive (some cachet gained from the notoriety) after this incident? More importantly, is there a vacancy for an apartment somewhere (finally), and where do I apply (or maybe not, might be scary)? Although I just might consider it if it was a really good bargain - what is the rent, how many square meters, how many rooms, is it "traversant", how high are the ceilings, is there a wooden floor... oh, so many questions!

The coverage for such a story in the States would be far different, giving readers far more information than was necessary, unearthing little tidbits from decades ago, perhaps even interviewing the family back in Romania for an even bigger scoop. But in Geneva it seems the journalists still have scruples (sigh) and even the full names of the deceased have not been published yet, let alone pictures. Perhaps this isn't as big of a story as I'm making it out to be? I can't help but compare it to a similar high-profile case I recently followed keenly as it unfolded in the States: Octomom. As you can see, she even has her own wikipedia page now. It's a different story in many ways, of course, since there isn't an actual tragedy (although some would beg to differ), but I would rate the potential for sensation as just about even - the Cheval Blanc case, while a scenario (familicide) that seems to occur quite often in the States, is still rare here. And yet the coverage has been sparse, and, a mere week later, seems to have died down entirely. I guess we're all moving on to Lucie now.

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After having sat out the shows of 2006, 2007, and 2008, I decided to go this year and see what all the fuss was about. It helped that J got us discounted tickets from his company... speaking of which, I wonder if the tickets are only valid for one entrance? I had to scan the barcode to get in, but I still have the actual slip of paper... not that I would go again, though, we couldn't wait to get out on Sunday. While it was pretty packed, it wasn't as unbearably crowded as we'd feared - mainly because there were so many stands that there seemed to be enough space for everyone to mill around.

I don't drive, and J doesn't either - but frankly he's in the better position of the two of us, since I don't even have a license! However, he admits he may have forgotten how to drive, having last been behind the wheel more than a year ago, so... I like to think eventually I might want to, in which case I will take driving lessons and procure a suitable vehicle, but what with the economy and the environmental issues, as well as the availability of public transport in Geneva, this might not be for a while. Perhaps going with something like www.mobility.ch might be the best of both worlds, although if I make good on my threat to move to a far suburb of Geneva (Avully, Confignon, Chambesy) or even Vaud or neighboring France, where the rents are lower and I can actually have a garden, I will need some sort of transportation.

Personally, I was charmed by this beauty at the auto show:

I liked the vintage display that Audi had going with this, er, "Silver Bullet". It looked futuristic to me, but J assured me it was vintage:

And... well, that was about it. Not being a car connoisseur or aficionado, the whole thing looked like a large parking lot, except the cars were very very shiny and there were lots of lights (which made every photo taken look pretty good, admittedly). I'm sure there was a lot of attention being paid to environmental concerns, ergo:

Only time will tell if the hype is warranted... right now it appears that the market for cars is a tad oversaturated, to say the least, and this large party is a little desperate, given the real fear that the automotive industry - at least in the States, where the execs go to Congress for bailout dollars - is in some very serious trouble. What I would like to see, though, is some serious innovation in public transportation - there is something about being stuck in bus 9 on the Pont du Mont Blanc for minutes at a time that makes one want to cry, almost. If only there were no cars to create all the traffic! I'm looking forward to the no-auto show, that's for sure.

It's a common mnemonic strategy to associate certain places and countries with peculiar phenomena: India with curry (or maybe IT tech support...), Russia with communism, Rwanda with genocide, South Africa with apartheid, China with overpopulation, the United States with Bush (unfortunately), and Switzerland with chocolate. While all of Africa at times seems to be considered as one large land mass without distinct countries, occasionally the rest of the world will come to know a fairly obscure country for one reason or the other: Madonna adopts from Malawi, Angelina Jolie gives birth in Namibia, and Nigeria is the headquarters of 419 scamming.  Not that Nigeria was ever particularly obscure to begin with, but I'll be the first to admit that even I now associate it (at least partly) with scam emails, not to mention fake bidders and buyers who have ruined many an exciting eBay auction.

Last night I saw the French movie Cliente, about a male prostitute living in Paris. It's a premise that doesn't immediately lend itself to much imagination (or so I thought), but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the plot was remarkably well-developed, and apart from a character or two whose presence seemed superfluous, I felt that it was a commendable performance and I would certainly see it again. Perhaps my bar for excellence in French movies is somewhat low since I haven't seen many, but I was assured that critics loved this movie, and so I will defer to to their superior judgment.

This will probably sound counter-intuitive to the uninitiated, but the least complex part of being vegan is the dietary aspect. The rest of it is a heightened awareness - consciousness, if you will - of the many casual acts of animal abuse that seep into our daily lives and mostly go unnoticed. In retrospect, I find it pretty surprising to recognize all the instances of animal cruelty I had taken for granted a few years ago. The earthworm basking on the pavement after a rainy night, accidentally squashed underfoot in a mad rush to catch the tram (for which I am perpetually late) leaves me feeling guilty for the rest of the day. Unintentionally dispatching a slug, hidden in the earth, as I turn the ground with a hand trowel leaves me resolute never to garden again.

Sure, I know it’s only September. But it might as well be January, because I’ve already taken my winter coat out of storage, and I spend a lot of my time indoors huddled beside my new space heater (and my time outdoors itching to get back inside and hug the heater). My old age must be catching up with me; apparently 25 is the new 80.

I’m not sure how this happened. A couple of weeks ago, I was still debating what color to paint my toenails, still making a selection among various strappy sandals and floral skirts. Now I sit with a steaming mug of tea and a box of Kleenex (flu season already) choosing among various colors of yarn for my seasonal crocheting binge. Who knows, maybe I’ll get around to finishing that ambitious blanket (or afghan as fellow crocheters call it).