I’ve been to the cinema to see the 5th Harry Potter film tonight. I almost discovered what time the last train back from Dietlikon is!
Good day at work. This morning, my boss and I went to a meeting at a Clariden Leu bank office about a project we are going to be working on for them. Recently Credit Suisse and Clariden and Leu and Hoffman banks have merged, so there are lots of areas where the systems and reports are different. All I can say is that there is a lot of money in banking here! You should have seen the wood panelling in the reception area!
At lunch time I was due to go and meet my new landlady at the apartment – I thought I was going to get a key, but not yet! I have to wait until 31st July. Never mind. Had a bit of a look round the apartment. It seems bigger than I remember it (which is good!) I guess having the previous tenant out of the way makes it seem less crowded. She showed me that she has put my name on the letter box, and also showed me the communal laundry room. This is quite common in Switzerland – quite sensible really.
Weather is still quite hot here, although we had a large amount of rain last night again.
I wanted to tell you about Parking Meters here. Where you have a car park with several spaces, or some on-street parking, they number the spaces and then put one machine up. You go to the machine, press the buttons to say which space you are in, and pay your money. The machine then remembers how long you have paid for, so it’s easy for them to see if a space is occupied illegally. Must be cheaper than individual parking meters, and more eco-friendly than issuing tickets with sticky labels.
I also wanted to metion trains and railway staff. You know in UK they have lots of men on each platform blowing whistles to say that the train can leave? There’s none of that here. At the allotted time, the train doors close automatically and the train leaves. You don’t see any staff on the stations – the driver is in charge of his train. Again, I am sure there are huge opportunities for savings in UK, if they were able to adopt a similar system. I guess there would be the initial cost of converting all the trains to automatic doors, but that would soon be re-couped, I reckon!
Anyway, enough of me twaddling on. Time for bed.