Halloween in a nutshell

Back when we were packing to move to Geneva, we decided to leave our costumes behind. While we did not celebrate Halloween in a big way, we did have our fair share of costumes. I have 2 wigs – a blond one (to channel Lady Gaga) and a black one (to channel Sadako from the Ring). When we hosted our Halloween party in 2009, the Man dressed up as Pimp Daddy and me as a swinging Flapper Girl. And let’s not forget about our traditional Japanese costumes that we kept from our Tokyo days.

But all of our costumes have been stowed away because we thought we weren’t going to have many friends nor go to a Halloween party here in Geneva. Boy, were we wrong! For we did get invited to a party hosted by L&G over at the Swiss Watch Blog. I admit I was a little stressed over the choice of costumes and wished that I had somehow packed my other costumes in. But well, time to move on. We did manage to find some costumes when we went to London. The Man went dressed as a ninja and I was supposed to play cop but decided to reuse my Dirndl outfit instead. I revamped the outfit a little and had wanted to go either as Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I went as the former but didn’t think that I did justice to the character. Loaned this funky bow hair-band from the Style Princess and I think that was the only fun part of the outfit. Hehe.

Our friends however did such a great job in dressing up! Check out the pics below:

Sam and Sam over at Schwigen in Switzerland dressing up as ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ and a German beer drinker in a Lederhosen. Our lovely hosts – Lauren as a Flapper Girl and Gabe as Indiana Jones. The Hughes also got creative in their choice of costumes. Ashley was decked out in a lovely lace dress and came with her metallic briefcase as the ‘Deal or No Deal’ girl. While Adam came as the human version of the Operation Man toy. There was a ‘Best Dressed Competition’ as well where the winner walked away with a pumpkin and 2 vodka jello shots. Sam won the contest and I think she definitely deserved it for a lot of effort was put in for coming out with that outfit choice. I wonder how long it would take for her to wash off all that hair gel?

The lovely Lauren also did a fantastic job of feeding us with scary foods that was fitting of the theme. Beers and alcohol flowed freely as with the pockets of conversation with different groups of people throughout the night. What a great night it turned out to be before we head back to Singers. Next up? I think the boys just arranged for an evening of whisky tasting upon our return.

Can’t wait!

[Some of the photos taken from L over at the Swiss Watch Blog]

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!!

Singapore food feast in Geneva

It had been an interesting weekend of sorts. The first weekend that we stayed in Geneva after 4 entire weekends of traveling. This weekend was extra special for we invited our friends over to our place to sample our Singaporean cuisine. I also extended the invitation to KT who’s currently studying in Paris to join us in the feast. He had wanted to come visit me in Geneva and I figured he would probably miss Singaporean food by now, so it all fell into place.

The Man and I cooked up a storm in the kitchen. We made Gado-Gado, Chicken Satay served with Ketupat, Curry Chicken, Prata and Kaya Puffs. I think we did pretty good and did Singaporean cuisine proud thanks to pre-mixes and sauces that comes out of a packet! The little intern and the Style Princess also chipped in by helping to design place-cards with descriptions of the food for our guests. Thanks guys!

We’ve been really lucky to meet up with these lovely bunch of ladies and their respective other halves. And it’s pretty amazing how we all kinda ‘hooked’ up with one another. Long-short on how we all met: Sam over at Schwingen and Switzerland was going to be moving to Geneva in June/July, she found me through my blog, we started emailing one another and the rest was history for we became fast friends. Sam introduced me to L over at the Swiss Watch Blog for she moved to Geneva approximately the same time as we did. We hung out a couple of times and explored bits and pieces of Geneva together. And I met Wildcat over at Switzerland Hughes through L and we hung out one afternoon over at Carouge. I guess that’s the beauty of living overseas and having the opportunity to meet different people from different countries through different ways.

It sure was a fun night with great company bonding over wine (loads of it) and the food that we so loved! And it does feel that we are finally settling into Geneva.

[Additional photos from Collage 2 thanks to KT ]

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.