August 18, 2010

Sihlquai (upper image), the place to go if you look for sex (and are willing to pay for it) or for a new passport (middle image). If you note the little sign in the lower left corner you see that there was indeed an entry for trolleys, you just had to walk around the entire block to get there. Due to the new biometric passports you are then kindly requested to make your 4 weeks old baby to hold his head still and straight and his eyes opened and fixed at the same spot for 5 seconds in order for the new, specialized camera to focus. It is always so nice to see how totally in touch authorities are with reality when they invent new regulations. Thanks to the lovely and patient people working at the passbüro we managed after only 14 attempts.

After that my baby and I had a well deserved coffee at Josefstrasse (lower image).

Yesterday the people in Switzerland collected 13 millions swiss francs to the floobding victims in Pakistan. It is a good thing but I always get a funny feeling of trying to buy away my bad conscience of not doing anything that really matters.

A couple of weeks ago Wikileaks published about 90'000 confidential reports concerning the Afghan war. The U.S. has condemned them as irresponsible whereas other thinks it is important things to reveal. What is a bit scary in the world at the moment is that nobody has any trust in any kind of authorities anymore. Today, we almost take for granted that we are being fooled and kept in the dark. I can really miss the trust I used to have when I was a child seeing the US as the heroes saving the world from all evil as when they helped Europe beat Hitler. I think that we have almost become too critical against them, especially in Afghanistan. It is not as if they went into a peaceful paradise with their tanks. Afghanistan has known nothing but war as long as people can remember and one additional reason to go to war against the Taliban, a part from the terrorist one, is for the women. Under the Taliban rule the conditions for the women are absolutely horrendous, they have absolutely no human value, no right to work, no right to health-care, not even to make sound with their shoes against the pavement when they walk on the street. In addition to that they can be stoned to death for the mere suspicion of having been seen with a man that is not a relative or their husband. It is awful what is happening to the afghan people in the war but I honestly don't believe it used to be much better.

August 11, 2010

Even though I have been too busy, or maybe too lazy, to write anything during the summer doesn't mean that I haven't been around enjoying Zürich in some of the endless ways that it has to offer in the summer.

Cooling down with a swim in the Limmat at Ober Letten.

Another swim in the Limmat at the charming Unter Letten.

A relaxing walk in the forest on Hönggerberg with a coffee at Grünwald.

Enjoying the view over Zürich from polyterasse in from of the ETH.

Just because I have been lazy this summer doesn't mean that everyone has been. Entire Switzerland seems to be a huge "baustelle".

The Prime Tower, still under construction but just passed the limit of becoming the highest building in Switzerland.

Switzerland has always been a rather liberal country when it comes to drugs and even though the consumption is not yet legal, report after report by experts in federal commissions keep on insisting that all drug consumption should be legal. Not to encourage the consumption but to better be able to fight against the dependencies. Although the experts seem to be united on the topic the public isn't, a couple of years ago there was a vote for the legalization of cannabis that was rejected. To the big disappointment of the cannabis grower Bernard Rappaz, who until very recently was in prison for drug dealing. To protest against his punishment and to favor the legalization of cannabis Rappaz went on a thirst strike this summer and the authorities got confronted with the choice of letting him die or to force feed him. In the end they went for the second option and Rappaz could serve the rest of his punishment at home with a personal guard. Is he a hero standing up for his beliefs or is he a junkie? People are of different opinions but most people are not so happy about using their tax money to pay for him being guarded at home. Anyway, Rappaz is now comfortably at home and can start thinking about on how to reorient his business towards pharmacies, to where he can sell his weed legally for medical purposes from 2011.

Pakistan is being washed away by rains and landslides and Russia is burning due to an extreme heat. Is this another effect of the global warming caused by humans? Probably. Will it make us change? Probably not. We are indeed very resistant to changing our habits by choice even though we are constantly forced to change for adapting to a changing world. According to the famous physicist Stephen Hawkings we have less than 200 years to spread into space to save the human race. Well, throughout the history of mankind we have always believed that we are doomed in one way or the other, through the wrath of God, through the atomic bombs, through the swine flu etc. We have always been very innovative in predicting ways to our extinction. We should definitely do our best to keep our planet clean but I think that there are more urgent reasons for doing so than fear of Armageddon, such as for instance the luxury of clean air and clean oceans.