Swiss Walks

At the moment I am walking with worn shoes, not because I do not have shoes that are not worn, but because I do not want to walk with shoes that have good tread at this time of year, due to the mud that gets stuck in them. When I walk with shoes with treads I collect mud during my walk, and I bring it up the stairs when I walk up, and I drop it off when I run back down. This leaves a mess, which, if I was a child, would be forgivable to some degree, but as an adult may be seen as immaturity.

For months, or even years, I have seen adverts for the Rivella Unlimited Bottle. it is a competition that you can play, and if you win the competition you get a Sigg Rivella bottle that you can get refilled anywhere for free. I thought the idea of putting Rivella into any reusable bottle was absurd and messy so I didn’t try. Today I did.

As I poured the Rivella from a half litre rivella bottle into the Half litre sigg bottle I was afraid that it may overflow and I was careful not to lose too much gas. Eventually the transfer from plastic to metal was complete so I went on my daily walk. I wasn’t thirsty during the walk so it was air cooled by the ambient air temperature. It is currently 6°c according to the Apple weather app via an apple watch. It is fridge temperature outdoors, so perfect for such an experiment.

I am against travel during a pandemic. I am against venturing further than a two hour walk. To be more accurate I was against these things until the vaccines. My attitude since then has changed because of the indifference and incompetence governments have shown. Instead of having a primary and a backup safety measure they have gone for a primary, with no backup solution.

Switzerland and other nations behaved as if vaccinations, by themselves, without masks, without social distancing, without any other mitigating measures, were enough. Now we’re in the fifth wave and all age groups are vulnerable, from young children to older people. The entire social column is at risk at the moment.

This morning, as I was doing laundry, I found that I couldn’t focus so I started to look at all the teas that are available at a local shop. I saw that they had herb teas, mint teas, nettle teas, weed tea and more. I also noticed that tea is cheap. You can get twenty cups worth of tea for 0.95 CHF if you’re not picky about the tea you drink. What I find interesting about the broad selection and choices of tea is that it is so cheap compared to water, soft drinks, fizzy drinks, juices, coffee and more. Not only is it cheap, but it is light and easy to carry.

What do snails have to do with chairs, I wondered as I listened to a book speaking about our addiction to sitting and chairs. It turns out that snails and other animals are programmed to move, walk, slither or other in an individual way. He started, by discussing sleeping in class, and having chalk thrown at him. Movement is an integral part of our lives and apparently, and as we have seen, children move a lot more than adults.

richard - Nov 1, 2021

With the right people designing the interface it should be simpler to do things sustainably today. I think that a QR code that we can print out and add to a book with the same sticky things as for photo albums might be the best solution. A QR code takes seconds to scan and add a comment to. I should suggest that to them. I should study how to implement it.

Today I went for a slight variant and came across a book dating back to 1930 so of course I picked it up. I like the look and feel of old books. I also like that they carry history. The book is 91, almost 92 years old and it has been passed on from generation to generation for almost six generations. I looked in the book and at first I just ignored the scribbles at the front of the book, not thinking much of it. Now that I looked closer I noticed the BCID so I looked up bookcrossing.com and logged that I found the book.

Switzerland is currently following a flawed approach to ending a pandemic, because rather than taking a pro-active approach to preventing outbreaks in various communities across Switzerland they are doing the opposite. They are ignoring the problem until it flares up enough that they can no longer pretend to see it. Today the number of cases has reached 6000 a day for the whole of Switzerland.

A rational and moral government, within a healthy democracy, as we have seen in pandemics since the SARS crisis and others, have done everything to contain the threat, but also to prevent it from spreading. They have done everything they could to contain the threat, and to keep people safe.

I tracked the run and walk with the Garmin Instinct Solar. It is very easy to use while wearing gloves. You can stop the activity, change sport, start the activity, do the second sport, and then stop the tracking of the second sport, without taking off your gloves. Now that we’re in the cold part of Autumn this is useful. On the flipside anytime the clouds hide the sun this watch is unable to recharge itself. Despite this the battery life is still good. When fully charged it displays 27 days, but it loses around two or three days of charge per day with a tracked activity. This is still excellent. The Apple watch needs to be charged every single day. It is a watch that you can wear in the classic style of wearing a watch, i.e. keep it on for days or weeks at a time.

Several years ago I needed to download TomTom and I needed the latest map updates if I wanted to drive from Switzerland to England or from Switzerland to France, or to Spain. Thanks to roaming I now have a much broader choice.

TomTom was good in another era, when we had to pay roaming fees. We downloaded the relevant maps. We set off, and the GPS would guide us from A to B and that was that. I tried doing the same with Waze, hoping that the entire map would be downloaded when I set off, only to find that eventually I went off of the downloaded map and I had no more information due to a switch from Spanish to French roaming on a Swiss contract. I made it home, but it showed the limitation of roaming at the time.