A sweet surprise indeed!

Our final days in Geneva (just 3 more days to go) saw me packing up stuff and passing some of the useful items and/or food over to our friends.  I was feeling a lot better so was out and about making arrangements to meet up with friends to catch up over coffee.

I’ve been meaning to catch up with L over at the Swiss Watch Blog after her surgery but had been too ill to do so over the past 2 weeks.  So, I was really glad when I received an email from her last week asking if I was free for tea before our departure from Geneva.  Yay to an afternoon out, for I really wanted to could catch up proper with her.  I asked if it could be a bigger gathering asking if the other gals were free, I knew I wanted to meet with A (The Switzerland Hughes) to pass her our rice-cooker.  L said she would arrange, but I thought no one else other than A could make it.

Boy, was I wrong!  I rushed in carrying 2 heavy bags filled with stuff for the pair but as I stepped in, I was greeted with shouts of ‘Surprise’ by familiar faces!  So it seems that L had been planning this surprise and I was not to know that the rest of the girls were going to be there.  Must say they were pretty good at keeping me in the dark for I met with S from Schwingen in Switzerland earlier that morning for coffee and she gave me a quizzical look when I asked if she was going to join us for tea.  I also met with N at for a morning session yoga but there was no mention of the party.  L, you certainly did a great job on planning this little surprise!  Thank you! 

That’s not all!  A lovely spread of afternoon tea delights (they knew I was crazy about making macarons) were prepared in my honour by these superb ladies.

It was indeed an afternoon that got us all on a sugar high – macarons from Laduree from A, home-made peanut butter cookies by N, home-made pumpkin brownies by L, home-made matcha (green-tea) tiramisu by T, chocolates and other treats from S and L.  We had girly conversations and stuffed our faces silly with the sweet treats.  The girls also compiled a little online album filled with the adventures that we had taken during our stay in Geneva.  Aww.. thanks ladies for everything!  Once again, am really touched.

Prior to moving to Geneva, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make any friends and I’d probably become a hermit by the end of my expat journey.  Honestly, making friends from scratch can be rather challenging but looking back, I most certainly did not become a hermit for I’ve gone on to make this small but amazing group of friends.  How?  One of the ways was through blogging.  It has really opened doors for me here and after that, we kinda expanded the group further by pulling people we knew separately into the group.

Thanks again ladies for the wonderful memories and the great times that we spent together exploring Geneva.  It was short but I’m thankful that our paths crossed.  It’s goodbye for now but hopefully we’ll get to see you real soon.  And be sure to give us a shout-out if you ever come to Singapore. 

[All photos courtesy of L over at the Swiss Watch Blog]

P.S: Vain me talking here but I wished I put on some make-up before leaving the house.  And let’s not talk about my bad hair day! 

What next?

[Image source]

I can’t believe in just less than 2 weeks, our lives would change again.

We’re heading back to a life that we’ve known a good part of our lives, a life that I’ve been so looking forward to return but yet I can’t quite describe how I’m feeling as I write this post.

I wonder where this chapter in our journey will lead us.  I wonder what I am to do with my life back home.  But most days, I honestly just wonder where I will go from here.

Friends asked me at our farewell party, what are some of the things I’m looking forward to in Singapore?  I say we’re definitely looking forward to spending time with our beloved fur-kid, Sparky; to meeting up with our family and friends; for the Man – saner working hours and for me, to be gainfully employed soon.  But beyond these, I’m also looking forward to things that I’ve taken for granted back on our tiny island.  For instance, safety – I’ve heard too many cases of pickpockets in trams and unfortunately for us, the Man fell victim to this petty crime recently in Paris.  To stores opening on Sundays – don’t think I can deal with wondering what to do on Sunday if we’re staying put in Geneva or rushing to the grocery store on Saturday just to stock up on food.  And knowing where to seek medical attention when needed – now that I’m super duper sick, I want to be able to walk into a doctor and ask him to give me antibiotics for a quicker recovery.

They also asked what I will miss about Geneva?  I paused for a while trying to think of what are some of the things I would miss about this place.  The list ain’t too long but given that we’ve only been here for 10 months, I think it’ll suffice.  I say I would miss the four seasons.  Having four seasons make dressing up a little more fun.  Also, I’ll definitely miss the traveling.  Geneva is really the perfect springboard to travel and see other parts of Europe.  I’m grateful for the many weekend trips that we’ve taken.  Lastly, I will also miss the friends and the wonderful people that we’ve met during our stay here.  They definitely make life in Geneva a little more colourful.

So, what’s going to happen next?  Honestly, I have no clue.  But stick around, won’t you to watch the story unfold?

Fall-ing in love

It’s my first Fall and I’m actually kinda loving it.  The weather is cool despite it being erratic at times.  I’ve heard that there will be loads of rain to be expected but so far, the weather gods have been kind.  So much so that my pair of funky rain boots that I specially purchased for the changing season is still sitting in the shoe cabinet.  I’m wondering if I should bring them back to Singapore instead for I’ve heard that we’ve been getting quite a fair bit of torrential rain.

The weather was lovely today so I set off for a coffee date at Starbucks with S from Schwigen in Switzerland. She was craving for one of the Fall flavours from Starbucks while I was craving for a Peppermint Mocha for I’ve heard its been launched back at home.  But unfortunately, none of the flavours are available here in Geneva.  After a nice chat, we headed to do some window-shopping.  S needed to get some stuff to complete her Halloween costume.  As for me, I tagged along but ended up getting a really cool tulle champagne cocktail dress from H&M instead.

Here’s what I wore today:

I paired my metallic Zara knit with my new grey leather jacket purchased in Florence (a gift from the Man ).  One of the products that Florence is famous is quality leather goods.  While roaming around the streets of Florence, we marveled at the number of stores selling a variety of leather goods.  We eventually walked away with new leather gloves as well as a new jacket each.  I’m pretty pleased with the quality and the design as well as the decent price-tag that came along with the jacket.

Go on raid my wardrobe!

Bath time

We got ‘Ms Cayenne Pepper’ some time in June this year.  Her black hue means that we gotta spend more time up-keeping her.  We used to have a black car back in Singapore and that vehicle goes for weekly car-washes because somehow she used to get dirtier a lot faster.  We asked around and heard that a car wash here in Geneva could cost anything between 50 – 100 odd CHF (72 SG – 145 SG).  We weren’t prepared to spend that kind of money on a car wash here on a weekly basis.  So when ‘Ms Cayenne Pepper’ gets real dirty, we usually pray for rain and take her out for a spin.

After our recent road-trip to Tuscany, ‘Ms Cayenne Pepper’ was really dirty.  Well, the Man could take it no longer so he decided to bite the bullet and send her in for a much-needed bath that was long overdue.

Turned out that the cost of the car-wash wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.  Total cost?  28 CHF (40.50 SG).  Yeah, granted that it still cost a lot more than what we would have paid in Singapore but this was kinda the cheapest that we could find.

Peeps in Geneva, here’s the addy if you wanna send in your vehicles for a wash:

Shell

Address: Rue Dancet, Geneva

Opening Hours: 8.00 – 18.30hrs (Mondays – Saturdays)

Look how pleased the Man is for ‘Ms Pepper’ is finally spanking clean again. 

My allowance in Switzerland

Haha… gotcha!  If you think I’m going to be talking about the ‘pocket money’ that the Man is going to give me.  Well, that’s not quite it but let’s talk about a topic pretty close to my heart – Shopping!  Okay, I promise I won’t bore you with this one.  This one actually contains useful information on duty-free allowances on shopping done abroad for those residing in Switzerland.  Guess what?  It takes us all of 15 minutes to cross over the border and head to France to do our shopping.  That’s even nearer than us going to Johor Bahru back at home.

Many foreigners and Swiss, particularly those living in border areas (eg: Basel, Geneva and Lugano) actually take advantage of the generally lower prices outside Switzerland and do their weekly shopping abroad.  Almost half the residents in Geneva (one-third of whom are foreigners) regularly do the bulk of their shopping in France and overall around 15 per cent of Swiss residents regularly shop abroad.  Germany, France and Italy all have a lower cost of living than Switzerland.  Many food items and wine are up to 50 per cent cheaper in the above-mentioned 3 countries.

Prices in Germany are lower for most goods and you will often save around 25 to 30 per cent even after paying Swiss VAT and receiving the German VAT refund.  We kinda knew because on our recent trip to Munich, we actually stuffed in our luggage, dish-washing tabs and cleaning liquids for the toilet.  Yeah, we’re known to check out the supermarket when we travel.  And we especially love going to Carrefour in France for the groceries definitely are a lot cheaper there.

So here’s the useful bit of infor I promised you; the Swiss customs regulations allow duty-free purchases up to CHF 300 with the following restrictions (amounts per person and per day):

• 1 litre/ kg of butter and cream
• 5 litre/ kg of milk, cheese, yogurt and other diary products
• 2.5 kg of eggs
• 20 kgs of any vegetable or fruit
• 2.5 kg of potatoes (including chips!) [*good to know since I know stocking up on chips!!]
• 20 kg of flour or flour-based products (bread, cakes, etc)
• 3.5 kg of meat and meat products.  This may include a maximum of 500g of fresh or frozen meat (oxen, sheep, lamb, horses, goats and pigs)

Also, people over 17 years can import the following items:

• 2 litres of wine or champagne and 1 litre of alcohol (if you import more than one litre, duty on excess amount is likely to equal or exceed its cost)
• 200 cigarettes or 50 cigars or 250g of pipe tobacco (double for visitors domiciled outside Europe)

At the Swiss border you must declare what you’ve purchased and if asked, must produce receipts to verify the place of origin and the price paid.  When you exceed the permitted tax-free limit, you’re liable to pay VAT of 7.6 per cent on ALL your purchases, including the duty-free allowance.  [What?  They take the duty-free allowance from us?  Yikes!]

In the handbook, it’s also said that Swiss custom officials are usually reasonable and flexible.  Unless you’re a big-time smuggler, they often treat you fairly.

We don’t know if that is true but we are definitely not taking chances.  So each time that we cross the border to do our shopping, the Man is rather diligent in declaring what we’ve bought when we get stopped by the customs officers.

A peek in Lady J’s life: Saturdays

Weekends are usually very precious for us.  Most of the time, we tend to take advantage of it by travelling to nearby countries.  But after an intensive month of traveling every weekend in September, we decided to take a little break.  So last weekend, we hosted some friends that we’ve met here in Geneva to a Singapore food feast.  This weekend, we are opening our place up again cooking up a storm for some friends.

Here’s what I did this Saturday:

• The Man went for a golf game with friend while I hung out with E and the little Style Princess over morning coffee.
• Loving those awesome boots that the little Style Princess had on.
• Did I tell you I’m a potato chip junkie?  Well, I am… ;o
• The Man lost the golf game and ended up buying lunch for the group.  Steak for lunch.. I had the half portion which was good enough for me.
• The Man prepping dinner.  Another Asian feast but smaller scale this time round: Nasi Lemak with Sayur Lodeh.
• Dessert was a freshly baked Pandan Chiffon Cake that I had baked earlier in the day with E.
• Dinner with friends was really nice.. 3 bottles of wine polished off by 4 people.  Thank goodness guests loved our food too!

This time next weekend, we’re going to be in Florence.. Woo hoo… I seriously can’t wait!!

Let’s talk dirty

I’m putting the spotlight on ‘Trash’ for this week’s edition on ‘The Sw(iss)-eet Life #4′.  One of the things that we learned almost immediately from living in Switzerland is to separate our trash.  Not a difficult thing actually for when we were living in Japan, we had to separate our trash too: combustible versus non-combustible.

But I’ve come to realise that waste disposal here in Switzerland definitely surpasses than most other Western European countries.  While researching for this post, I found out that the country has one of the highest rates of waste recycling in the world and most Swiss religiously sort their rubbish. Clearing out the trash can be quite a mind-boggling experience especially coming from a country like Singapore where the government tried to encourage recycling for the past couple of years but have not been very successful in that area. Here in Switzerland, aluminum cans, plastic bottles, glass bottles, milk bottles, batteries – all have specific bins that you must depose the items in. Disposal of these items are usually done at a communal collection point located around the neighborhood.  The nearest one that we have is about 3-5 minutes walk from our home.

As for daily trash that we put out in the large rubbish disposal bins located at our apartment, I just found out that we must deposit rubbish in special ‘official’ bags that are usually coloured and printed with the community name.  These bags can be bought in local stores and supermarkets.  Waste deposited in these bags is usually restricted to materials that can be incinerated.  If you use unofficial rubbish bags, usually grey or black in colour, they won’t be collected.  Plus if you do not adhere to these rules, the local waste ‘detective’ (Wow! Waste police!) may just track you down.  They often up open garbage and search for evidence such as old bills which connect the bag to the household/person they originated from.

No one told us about these rules again.  We just bought a whole lot of trash bags in France because they were way cheaper.  How was I know the difference between one black garbage bag from the next?  After all, the garbage bags sold in the supermarkets here are all black as well. I guess we had better do a better job of separating the trash.  Not going to be taking any risks now that I know the implications involved.  Yikes!  We keep breaking all these rules ;0

L over at the Swiss Watch Blog shares her experience on recycling in Switzerland.  She definitely does a much better of recycling than we do.