PURPOSELY WAITING GAME

My wife and I are sitting watching the Bear's Monday Night Football game... well I can't really say that we are watching or even sitting as we both lay on opposite ends of the couch with our legs propped up on one another, she reading the THE BIG SHORT and how the bankers and financial institutions bought (yes that's bought!) the world's economies to it's proverbial knees and me reading my Economist magazine and the many discussions on deforestation and it's impact on American Midwest rain patterns.   But alas, neither one of us are really reading while pretending to watch the Bear's attempt at becoming the only undefeated team in the conference.

NOPE, we're both pretending to read pretending to watch the Bears game when we're actually purposely playing the "waiting game".  The Economist is good stuff, especially as it opines about President Obama's failed attempt to woo big business while not having one former business vet on his administrative team and I'm sure THE BIG SHORT is an excellent read on doomsday economics but not even Devin Hester's line drive punt return can take our attention away from the "waiting game."  The visas are on our minds.  It's plain and simple, everything else is secondary, tertiary, or as far as we're concerned as important as Middle East Peace talks to the past 20 U.S Presidents.

So our visas have not arrived and quite frankly it's probably a good thing because it gives us more time to learn the language, brush up on current Zurich and Switzerland events, and say our goodbyes to all our friends and family for let's just say the 20th time.  I've literally had 12 goodbye lunches with my mom and while people at the office think I'm the world's greatest son, my unemployed bank account is threatening to unionize and go on strike. Seriously, we're starting to think that our friends and families believe we were lying when we told them that the wife got an amazing job opportunity in a far far far away land (that's what my niece calls it) called Switzerland and that I would be taking a 12 month sabbatical to learn some important life lessons including but not limited to cooking, speaking and writing German/Swiss-German, and getting my european experience on.  And guess who we have to blame, no not the Dutch, THE SWISS.  We're so flustered that we'll call Switzerland by it's proper name Confoederatio Helvetica (CH)!   


We probably should have expected this right?  From our research, we know that the Swiss government and the country's businesses are infamously notorious for their due diligence, immaculate processes, and attention to detail/precision.  They even have a patent on time, not the magazine but time as in Swiss timepieces.  They keep track of days, hours, and seconds better than anyone in the world.  In the back of our minds we thought that sending copies of our wedding certificate, fingerprints, our 4 degrees, hair samples, resumes and toenail clippings would expedite the process but I guess their CSI division has been taking the past 7 weeks off.

In all seriousness, we're still excited but it's like playing 7 preseason football games when you and the fans only want to see 3 o 4.  We're ready and our fans are too!

So what do we do, we get our friends and family involved.  No don't write your local congressmen, senator or the Swiss Consulate. Write us, tell us if you had the opportunity to live in Switzerland for 12 months and see the rest of europe, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

We're going to create a "IF I WAS IN EUROPE, WHAT WOULD I DO" LIST and it starts with YOU.  We'll be writing about it every week at ths blog location and posting pictures as well.