It's rainin (not always men)

What a wet weekend! Spent most of it at the Gampel Open Air, v cool & v large music festival in Wallis (my 2nd home recently...) Friday night was funny coz we arrived around 10.30 so most of the people there (average age 16) were already wasted. For those of you who don't have younger family members (or are too old to remember being 16 and drunk...) it is VERY funny, though admittedly sometimes difficult to avoid 'stumblers' about to vomit. OH well - it least it was dry on Friday...

Which is more than could be said for Saturday! I have never been so wet in my life! Of course being British i was well prepared and took NO waterproof clothes. After a night hanging in Stefan's cellar my jacket is still wet (no not the orange fleece, don't wear that in public!) Still it was good fun. One of the tents was a kind of rockers' disco, playing all the classics: Bon Jovi, Meatloaf, Lenny Kravitz, etc. Of course everyone thought i was a bit of a freak coz i knew almost all the words to these! Imagine my amusement when in the midst of this, Geri Halliwell's rendition of 'It's Rainin Men' finds its way mysteriously onto the playlist :o)

So in case you are ever soaked to the skin in the middle of a field, all you need to do is dance for a couple of hours and everything seems much better...

Oh i guess i should talk about the bands who were there. When we arrived there was some rap-band from Lausanne. Not really my cup of tea, though at least i had a bit of giggle at them trying to speak German to the crowd - maybe i am learning after all :o) Then there was a Zürich band called 'Gigi Moto': quite good to listen to despite the bizarre name. There was also a British band, 'Archive', who started out promising but left me feeling almost suicidal. So i dragged myself away from that for the climax of the evening (everyone else's words, not mine...) provided by 'Nek'. An Italian singer with very nice blue eyes, who had all the women screaming à la Tom Jones in 1975. I'm sure my mum would have loved him almost as much as Robbie Williams...

And then i was back at Stefan's place, wondering how to get into the house covered in mud without making a mess. Getting undressed outside the front door when it's 4 degrees is not nice :o(

So this morning i travelled back to Bern, with Jacket, jeans and socks still soggy. You see folks, i may not have stayed in a tent but i still got the 'festival spirit'. And i have the mud to prove it :o)

you belong to the zoo...

once upon some time, we had our first MC dinner together in the place where the majority of the MC members live
if this was going on then, what will be happening in June???

And so it starts...

I suppose i deserved this. To those of you who had heard me saying 'what a waste of time' or 'why don't these people find something else to do with their sad lives' the irony must be deliciously sweet. While I was happily blogger-bashing, 3 particularly obsessive bloggers were secretly making me into a blogger!

So welcome to the 1st 'real' Rob post. Wow, where to start...? According to the counter thingy at the top there have been over 200 visitors already. I hope i can maintain the interest once i start blogging myself - man that's a LOT of pressure.

So, what have i been up to lately? Today i had lunch with my friend CK (he even made a special effort to be on time, thanks!) Then i had the frustrating but ultimately satisfying job of trying to resurrect one of the old laptops we have in our office. Frustrating as I spent the 1st hour trying to guess the Windows password. Satisfying because we have had a request from AIESEC in Pakistan for us to donate the laptop to them. They only started out this year and currently have one pc between 4 people in their office. So i guess it will be much more useful to them than it was to us, sitting in the cupboard gathering dust. Happy belated birthday, Russell :o) And special thanks to Mr Tschan for his amazing ability to remember passwords from the distant past...

This of course did present me with a small moral dilemma - now that the laptop was working I could use it for myself, couldn't I? (For those of you unfamiliar with my situation, i am currently crippled with debt, living in one of the most expensive countries in the world, and my office desktop is on its last legs with no money in the budget for a new one.) Then i remembered meeting the representatives of AIESEC in Pakistan back in February in Romania, and the thought was gone as quickly as it had arrived. I remembered the determination that they had brought, the passion, the ambition, and i knew that AIESEC in Switzerland had a duty to help if we could. So the laptop will be going to India in 2 weeks. After all. why do i have a credit card...?

Last night I had dinner in... guess... go on... you'll never get it... HOOTER's! For those of you who don't know what this 'institution' is, think of the following question: where would men, desperate for flashes of female flesh but without the money or contacts to go to a proper strip-club, spend an evening? Yep, Hooter's! Think cheap women in even cheaper orange hotpants, and vest tops that make their boobs pop out at gravity-defying angles.

When i asked my other half why we would go to such a place he replied: 'They do great chicken wings.' I am happy to say he was right. So if anyone is interested, it's in Thun, just behind the train station and opposite an army barracks.

I think i've talked more than enough for the 1st time. This is quite addictive... Remind me when the last tram leaves...?