Short interlude

Before I continue with chapters III and IV, I just wanted to mention a few interesting things that happened lately...

Weather
That's quite an interesting topic here. I honestly thought that the Swiss weather was unpredictable with major temperature changes in a short period of time. Now, here's an example of the weather in Princeton: Last week on March 14 it was a fantastic warm spring weather with temperatures going up to 20°C. And then on Friday (March 16) NY looked like this: there was snow...a lot of snow! They had to cancel hundreds of flights because of the snow. So what did we do? We went North to Montreal... ;-) ...ok, it was a bit of a crazy idea with this weather, but we had planned to be in Montreal for St. Patricks Day a few weeks ago and didn't feel like changing the plans. Took us 14 hours to get there...and 7 to get back on Sunday...
And how does the weather look like after all the snow on the weekend: well, we're almost back at the 20°C spring weather again...honestly: everyone claiming that the world's climate is not going crazy, is completely nuts!

Driving
I had already mentioned that you're not allowed to drive fast in the US...at least officially, but more about this later. Let me first mention the truck drivers...they drive faster than what they're allowed to. And if you think they would drive slower if you don't see the street because there's so much snow on it, you're wrong. It was amazing to see how crazy this truck drivers are here (especially during our snowy trip to Canada) and finally realizing why it absolutely makes sense that they're not allowed to drive this fast in Switzerland (or Europe in general). I mean, how often does it happen in Europe to be overtaken by a truck? Or seeing trucks or buses going into an impressive tilt in a curve? I mean it happens quite regularly to be stuck in traffic that is still driving at the allowed speed (that's probably the advantage of a slow limit) and then being overtaken by a faster truck...either on the right or left side...
But let's talk about how fast you're really allowed to drive: This morning, I was driving to work as usual and after overtaking a few cars (on the right side...everyone does it here anyway), I happened to be just behind a police car when the road became single-lane again. So, I was already worried that my trip to work may take longer than expected...but well, the police car was driving 5mph too fast at a distance of about half a meter to the car in front of him (let's call that one carX), that had about the same distance to the car in front of him (carY...btw: sticking to other cars is also common practice here). I relaxed, increased the volume of the radio and followed them at a reasonable distance. As the road became double-lane again (unfortunately most of my trip to work is single-lane) and the officially allowed speed was 50mph with carY driving slightly slower than 50mph, carX accelerated on the left lane...so did the police car...so did I...and so we all continued at more than 60mph and the police car didn't care at all! Long story short: You're unofficially allowed to drive at least 10mph more than what is allowed officially. I mean, I was told about that shortly after I arrived, but that was quite a nice demonstration of it... ;-)

Basketball
Just wanted to mention this homepage containing some pictures to a basketball event organized by CDS (the company that helped me (and all the other Siemens interns and many more) to get my visa here). My own pictures will follow soon...as there were some people that threatened to never talk to me again, if I don't stop talking about basketball games, and there were some people that wanted to see pictures of it, I won't talk about the game between the Knicks and the Mavericks at the Madison Square Garden. I'll just show the pictures and mention the cool Allan Houston jersey we got and how nice the stadium is... ;-)

(more pictures from NY and Montreal and more chapters for my "book" will follow...)