The Summer of 07
A blog on my internship at EPFL, SwitzerlandYoghurt and India
While doing my regular round of shopping at Migros, I came to the yoghurt section and was about to pick my standard : two banana, two orange quota. That is when I laid my eyes on mango yoghurts. And I literally leapt into the air. You can take a man ouf of India I say, but not India out of a man.
Todo: Write a post on the German weekend
Of presentations and research interest
I have to make an intermediary presentation on 11th June (coming Monday). It is scheduled for 25 mins. The whole of last night and today were devoted to getting a ppt done. And it looks like it is going to take much more time. Making a presentation I feel is a very crucial step in the cycle of research or even study. A professor in IIT once said to me that the research process is like a spiral. You go up for a while, that is research for a while, and then you go around trying to assimilate and present to others what you have done. The true gravity of that statement strikes me only now. Read the rest of this entry »
Trip to Zürich
My trip to Zürich, the first to the German side of Switzerland, was different and memorable in many ways. The most noteworthy (and sour), thing however would be the conspicuously bad photographs of the place I have taken. As the weather gods would have it, it was overcast the whole day and a few sprinkles came down now and then and managed to adorn my camera lens with pearls of droplets, much to my blissful ignorance. The pleasant touch to the visit however was that I met Ania who was very kind enough to show me around Zürich. ::Hey thanks again:: Read the rest of this entry »
Geneva – The Old town
The earlier visit to Geneva was worth every moment of it. The little trip on the fancy excursion train showed me the Old Town, but as I had said it was not enough to have a little thrifty glance. So I went again to Geneva, this time to the Old Town ie Geneva on the other side of the lake. The place was distinctly different with narrow passages leading to huge buildings, which I guess, have come up only recently. But the old town charm still pervades the place. Read the rest of this entry »
Sizing up the Swiss franc!
Getting used to a currency which is 32 times costlier than the one back home takes a bit of doing. Even those tiny little coins convert to a good number of Rupees. Here is a pic of the coins I have. Click to see a bigger image.
Notice something strange: the sizes of the coins. The coins from left to right increase in their sizes. As you would notice the half franc (= 50 cents) coin looks, and is, smaller than the 10 cents and 20 cents coins. Just the way the Swiss like their money to be sized, I guess.
Happy Meal Ver 1.0
In the quest to satisfy my very Indian tastebuds, save a few Swiss Francs and avoid acidic gastric juices, I have been constantly mixing and matching to cook up a Happy Meal, that satisfies all these constraints. So here is the Happy Meal Ver 1.0 (the naming is done with an anticipation of further enlightenment).
Happy Meal (Ver 1.0)
Menu
Carrot Rice with a strong Papprika flavour,
Orange yoghurt (pineapple one is good too),
Apple juice,
Two kinds of aachaars, and
A bar of chocolate.
Time spent in kitchen (inclusive of time to eat and dish cleaning) : 40 mins.
Satisfaction level : 3/5.
Stomach filled : 100 pc
Cost : 2.25 Frs (~ 80 INR).
Here is a pic (the aachaars and chocolate are missing though)
Visit to Geneva
Geneva is touted as a very international city boasting of many organizations. To cap them all is the UNO office. Also Geneva is promoted as an intellectual center, a close second to Paris in the French speaking region of Europe. My visit to Geneva did a lot to reinforce these ideas in me. A surprising thing however was that the tourism office was closed and thankfully they had left behind a good number of maps of the city on the entrance. But this was a fact hard to digest. In the month of May on a Sunday you had rather expect tourism personnel to be busy disseminating a lot of useful information. But so is the nature of laid back Europe I guess. The street on which the tourism office is located is a very popular one: Rue du Mont Blanc. A symbol of the new city. Read the rest of this entry »
Visit to St Sulpice
Following the visit to Ouchy, was the visit to St Sulpice. It was not planned as such. So kind of turned out a bit sour, as we moved there a bit late. St Sulpice is another lake-front adjacent to Geneva and boasts of what I believe is a better view than Ouchy. As always we just got down in the closest possible station and walked, with just a map to guide us. The little French I have learned (!) helped us along and we finally did reach our destination after a good 3 kms of walk. The pics dint turn out good as by the time we reached there it already was well past 8 (still notice the brightness in the pics). Yeah so again the album (one I must update with another visit to St Sulpice) is here.
Visit to Ouchy
The weather gods were forbearing today, with the sun shining out gloriously and mercury reaching 20 degrees. That sounds like hot weather for me now. Anyways the weather merited a visit to Ouchy, the Geneva lakefront adjacent to Lausanne. Truly the lakefront was worth the visit, with clear blue water merging into the blue sky through the bluish lovely Alps. Missed a boat ride as was a bit late. Some other day I guess. Ouchy also boasts of the only Olympic museum in the world. Not a really great place, but since it is the only one of its kind in the whole gory planet, spent half an hour there. There is a large stretch of parks lining the lakefront providing for a leisurely stroll. Pics are uploaded here.
Ascension day feast
Today is celebrated as Ascension day in Switzerland, and is a public holiday in Vaud. Ascension day is the day on which Christians celebrate the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, forty days after Easter and ten days before Whitsun. It therefore falls on the fifth Thursday after Easter. It is tradition to have a good feast on Ascension day. And since the weather in Lausanne did not allow us to get outdoors, we prepared the south Indian dish: Imli rice. Here is a picture
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