Getting Swissed

Imagine you are waiting to catch the metro. You are standing with a dozen or so other people at the empty platform. Everyone is milling around at the accepted distance, establishing their place but not standing so close to the edge as to be in danger. Then the train starts approaching. Immediately the person who had been standing next to you steps directly in front of you, and is now precariously close to the platform. This triggers the person who has been standing to the other side of you to take action, stepping up to the other person in front of you, ever so slightly closer to the edge. It does not matter that the train has yet to stop, and so the exact location of the doors is as of yet unknown. As soon as the train does stop the jostling focuses on the doors. Even if there are only three people vying for one door, the jockeying continues until the door opens. You let the two people who have been forcing themselves in front of you step onto the train, trying to be the more mature person. Just as you lift your foot to step on, two more people materialize and squeeze into the 3/4-of-a-person space that had been between you and the entrance. Just as the doors are about to close, you make it in. Welcome to Lausanne, you just got swissed.

Kris and I have even experimented, seeing how close we can stand to the door and still have someone get in before us. Frequently, even though we are standing next to each other as the train pulls up, we will end up with four people between us by the time we actually board. At first we thought that this was an oddly aggressive practice in a highly structured society, but we have since learned that it is because the entire swiss population suffers from a common disability: they are incapable of waiting in line.

As Americans, we wait in line all the time. In the cafeteria. At amusement parks. At restaurants. Waiting to come in from recess in elementary school. When we walk up and see two people waiting at a reception desk, we go stand behind them. If another person arrives, he or she stands behind you. Simple.

In Switzerland this situation almost never arrises. When you walk into a building - anything from the post office to a cell phone store - there is a ticket machine. Think of the numbered tickets you get at the deli counter. Instead of standing in line in the order you arrived, everyone takes a ticket and sits or wanders around until their number appears on the overhead screen.

It's a chicken-or-egg question whether this system exists because swiss people can't wait in line or swiss people can't wait in line because this system exists. What is clear is that if the ticket system is in place, it MUST be used.

When Kris and I went to register with the power company we walked into a room with no customers and five employees behind five desks. After consulting the labels above the desks, we walked up to the employee for people who had just moved. Before we can even introduce ourselves he waves both hands in front of his face and tells us that we must first take a ticket. Looking back at the entrance we notice a small electronic ticket machine. We also notice that there are no other customers. We look back at the man to make sure he is serious and go get a ticket from the machine. The man then greets us politely and asks us what we need. We start making our way through the French phrases we had rehearsed when we are once more cut off and told that we are at the wrong desk. We were supposed to go to desk four; he is clearly at desk three. We apologize and head over to desk four, but are immediately stopped by more frustrated hand-waving and emphatic pointing. You can't just walk up to the desk; you must first go get a new ticket. Please note that in the time it took for this exchange, no new customers have come in. We get another ticket, proceed to desk four, and register. Simple. So much better than standing in line.

This protocol may seem ridiculous, but the few places we have encountered without the ticket machines are havens of frustration and a constant sense of impending chaos. Our insurance office serves as an excellent example. The lobby is set up with a single desk and a line of four chairs against the left wall.

Each time we have entered there has been one customer at the desk and at least one person sitting in the chairs. Being from a line-literate country, we recognize that our place is to sit in the other chairs and wait until everyone else in the room has been served before we approach the desk. We sit down, smile at the people in the other chairs. They recognize that we know our place in the metaphorical line and smile back.

Then another person enters the lobby. This person, either willfully or not, does not notice the people sitting in the chairs. This person sees the customer at the desk and walks up behind them. This new person does not stand at comfortable line distance, but rather stands so close that if the person at the desk bent to tie a shoe, they would bump the new person with their behind.

The people sitting in the chairs now begin to experience the early stages of panic. Has the person not seen them? Does the new person not understand that the people in the chairs are waiting instead of simply sitting there to enjoy the fake ferns and strange hissing noise from the overhead speakers? The people in the chairs begin to shift to the edges of their seats, never getting up but clutching frantically at their purses and making intense eye contact with the new person's left ear. In the US, this is the point where someone would say, "Hey! There is a line here!" possibly followed by a gender-specific or body-part-themed expletive. In Lausanne the people in the chairs simply become increasingly agitated until the person at the desk completes their transaction. At this point the person in the first chair leaps up and hurls herself at the desk in front of the new arrival, never making eye contact. Now confronted with the solid evidence of a genuine person standing in front of them, the new person looks around and takes one of the vacant chairs. The process can then repeat itself.

Viewed in this context the free-for-all of boarding the metro seems to make more sense. It isn't that you weren't standing close enough; it's that where you are standing doesn't matter. The goal is to get on the train. If you get on the train, you win. It makes me wonder what would happen if someone put a ticket machine on the platform and had the numbers appear over certain cars as the train pulled in. Would this fix the problem, or would people peacefully move to the door of their indicated car and then proceed to force their way in front of the other people allotted to the same car? I would be interested to find out.

That's all for now. Au revoir.

A Evening of Sweat, Stepping on Strangers, and Portu-french-kor-english

There are many ways to spend a Friday night in Lausanne. You can meet friends at a wine bar. You can go dancing. You can have friends over who need to borrow your shower (true story). Or, you can go to a two-hour taewkondo seminar given by your master's master who is in from Portugal. Tonight Kris and I chose the last.

Not knowing what to expect we brought all of our gear along and arrived relatively early. We had been told that the three-day seminar was quite popular. Bruno was nice enough to save us spots even though we had been out of the country during the sign-up period. He greeted us at the door like old friends, shook Kris's hand and leaned in to give me a kiss on the cheek. I have tried to channel my inner European with this, and even felt proud when I kissed him back without my usual, "Oh God, I am so american" flinch. I flubbed the second kiss, feeling so proud of the first, and completely failed to meet him on the third. Thankfully he wasn't weird about it and simply stated, "In Switzerland, we do three."

The kissing thing had actually come up at taekwondo before, when one of the blue belts asked me how many kisses Americans do. He thought Kris and I were messing with him when we told him none. After we showed him the handshake and the one-armed, bro-hug, he looked sad and asked if all Americans hate each other.

After a warm welcome and changing into our uniforms we milled around on the mats with a few of the people we recognized. Sam, a green belt, started to tell us about the visiting instructor's reputation for working black belts into the ground during practice. Having spent the week recovering from a chest cold, this did little to settle my nerves. Soon we were all called to attention and started warm-ups.

It didn't take long for me to notice that, even though I am used to understanding very little of what is being said, I was understanding even less. At first I thought it was the visiting master's accent, but I soon realized it was because he was speaking Portuguese. Since he is from Portugal, I guess I should have expected that. Things seemed to be going well enough for the portuguese students he had brought with him, and the french-speaking locals were getting by with the bits of critical French being tossed in with the Korean commands. Bits of English even made and appearance. An average set of instructions went something like this:

Portuguese Portuguese Portuguese, ok? Portuguese, the Korean numbers 10 and 20, French, French, French. Korean numbers, change. Korean numbers, stop. Portuguese, Portuguese. French, French. Go faster.

It has given me a new perspective on the idea of a melting pot.

As Sam had warned, the visiting master took the dozen black belts to the far side of the gym to make a separate group. With the exception of a few truly baffling language exchanges, Kris and I fell into place rather well. I was paired with the other short, female black belt and we did some more in-depth stretches. Unfortunately for my new (portuguese) partner, this included a number of wall stretches holding up your partner's leg. As my CW Taekwondo family has learned, my frame is quite deceiving. Even though I am 8 inches shorter than Kris, we have the same length legs. This meant that my more normally proportioned and equally short new partner had a hilariously hard time holding up my leg above her head. Rather than helping her out, the portuguese master saw this as a great photo op and took about 15 pictures.

The actual drills were fantastic and, though my legs may disagree tomorrow, felt really good to do again. Despite our limited ability to communicate verbally, my new partner and I were enjoying ourselves and sympathizing with each other by the end. Though the practice was long, it hadn't been as demanding as Kris and I had expected. We have since decided that it is probably abnormal that we have been to practices where people puke and keep going, have their legs just give out completely, or need help lifting their arms to put on a coat at the end. It made us miss our CW family a little bit more.

After practice we started the partner stretches again, with the added bonuses of walking up and down the back of your partner's thighs and pounding on their arms, legs, and back with your open palms. As we were standing around waiting for others to finish I rubbed my partner's shoulders. She moaned appreciatively and spoke her clearest English of the night, looking me in the eye and saying, "I should pay you." When I laughed, her boyfriend came over and she proceeded to tell him in Portuguese that I give better back rubs than he does. I laughed and felt like some of the cultural barriers were starting to come down.

The moment I enter the locker room I am reminded how far I still have to come. In the US, there is a certain set of expectations that go with locker-room etiquette. Once you are done showering, you will dry yourself and get dressed. Maybe you will stand around in a towel for a while. If you are one of those weird older folks, you will stand around naked for at least 20 minutes, but you won't make lasting eye contact with anyone. Ladies, if they are changing bras, will do so quickly. If a conversation is happening when underwear is being changed, no comments or eye contact are made.

In my Swiss locker room, everyone is standing around topless. Apparently, once you have showered, it is standard to put on some highly fashionable panties, and then mill around for awhile. You can brush your hair, talk to people. You can even weigh yourself and then talk about weighing yourself, sometimes holding panties or a bra in your hand seemingly just for emphasis. Once a bra is put on, you have a good long while before any other clothes are even considered. It is not uncommon at this stage to do your makeup. Apparently the situation is relatively similar in the men's locker room. Kris says that forcing himself to have conversations in French with a bunch of men standing around in boxer briefs is one way of fitting in.

Once everyone was finally dressed, we said our goodbyes and everyone kissed each other again. There seems to be no requirement for the language of the speaker to match the language of the listener. In French, English, and (we presume that was what was being said) Portuguese, everyone said they looked forward to seeing us tomorrow. I can honestly say that I am quite looking forward to seeing them.

Bonne nuit.
Boa noite.
Good night.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Scientist

I know from past experience that living outside of one's native country can cause your patriotism to pop up in the oddest of places. I don't mean that you will suddenly have the urge to shout, "I'm an American!" on the subway or anything, but you may end up cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner for two people or buying a basketful of a brand of cereal that you recognize but never even ate at home because you failed to figure out the Swiss Post Office that day. Recently that patriotism popped up in the form of our absentee ballots. Kris and I were so enthusiastic that we made ourselves some tea, sat down with our ballots and laptops, and complained that the ballots didn't come with a little "I voted!" sticker. Like I said, strange places.

The great thing about absentee ballots is that they let look up every candidate and read about every issue with the ballot right in front of you. You could take hours to fill it out.  

On the other hand, the terrible thing about absentee ballots is that they let look up every candidate and read about every issue with the ballot right in front of you. You could take hours to fill it out. 

Studying up on this year's election revealed some interesting things. Not so much about the issues issues; that would have been nice. No. This year I learned that in a state-level race between an idiot, a bigot, and a fanatical activist, I apparently prefer the fanatic. Sure, she may shout slogans and chain herself to her desk to show her commitment to a meeting, but at least she will have read up on the issues and doesn't dismiss an entire sub-population of the country as lesser people. 

I also learned that it is seemingly fashionable to use some part of your campaign website to hate on scientists. Come on America. If politicians bother to put down science in their campaign materials, it must be seen as a selling point. It must be seen as something that will help get them elected. Why?

That said, at least we didn't pull an Italy. For those of you unfamiliar with the situation, the italian judicial system recently convicted a group of scientists for failing to predict an earthquake. As a member of the scientific community, I find this upsetting. As someone who just spent five years discerning a ~800,000 seismic history from the plate boundary that has yielded some of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, this gives me stomach pains. Americans may currently be enjoying writing off scientists along with other questionable practices, like wearing jeggings and the use of puns during serious news casts, but at least we haven't done this. 

I'm not going to turn this into a rant about why our culture has turned its back on science; too many people far more eloquent and gifted than I am have already made that point better than I ever could. Instead I want to use this post to make another point: 

Scientists are people too. Just weird ones. 

Like our common understanding of most careers, the average person gets his or her image of a scientist from popular culture. But based on movies and television, that would mean that all lawyers are eloquent and attractive and spend most of their day drinking coffee in thousand-dollar suits, and over the course of five years all surgeons must have sex with all other surgeons. I imagine at least some part of those analyses are inaccurate.

Television representations of science and scientists have their own short comings. We do not all work in futuristic-looking labs in designer clothing while listening to The Who. We don't all have access to the latest technology, and we certainly aren't all attractive enough to be on the covers of magazines. We also aren't all mentally unhinged from our secret histories of hopping through various timelines and dimensions. The reality falls somewhere between the squints on Bones, the cast of The Big Bang Theory, that arrogant math jerk from Good Will Hunting, and Doc Brown from Back to the Future. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Scientists often laugh at these representations. I know that as a geologist most people base my job description on Jurassic Park or Tremors. This is adorable at parties and deplorable in politics. To deal with the rift that exists between the daily life of scientists and who society thinks we are, we turn to humor. Two of my favorites are xkcd and phd comics. For example, see how each of these web-comics handles the tv-science versus real-science problem. First, xkcd. 

...and television science, according to PhD comics. 

Taken a step further, PhD comics addresses how these misrepresentations of science affect those we know and love. Sadly, this happens more often than any of us would like to admit. 

All of that being said, scientists are not completely in the clear. There is a reason that we are so easily parodied. There is a reason that, if you showed up to a costume party in a lab coat with crazy hair and some goggles, people would know you are a mad scientist. There is a reason that Sheldon Cooper is freaking hilarious. I believe that xkcd uses the following comic to display this fully. 

In general, most scientists know that they are a little off. Sure, a few think that everyone else in the world is off, but most of us know. How do we get this way? How do people go from the curious and mildly self-destructive person represented in the comic above, to the socially non-functional person represented in the xkcd comic below? 

Basically, the problem is that we surround ourselves with other scientists. We go to labs and universities and spend the day talking to other people who have spent years devoting themselves to a singular task. We surround ourselves by people who are all doing this: (phd.comics)


















It isn't glamorous. We may be weird, but when encouraged that weirdness yields cell phones and cancer treatments and plastic and gortex and heart stints and electricity and the internet. Most of us want to make the world a better place. Most of us genuinely want to make sure that the things we put in text books and teach our doctors are as close to the truth as our most accurate methods can get us. When new methods develop, we don't complain about having to do it again; we fight over the chance to get to. We fight over that chance to slog through that mud and compile those samples and come up with the best data possible. That person collecting dead fish and sleeping on the lab floor pursuing truth certainly isn't your local congressman; it's your friendly neighborhood scientist.