While you’re at it, if you could make the incredibly-similar pieces of paper just a little bit more distinct from each other, that would be super-nice, and I would be your best friend forever.

Thanks,
Noirin

Women’s lib isn’t our usual go-to topic of conversation. But what got us onto it, and what brings it into sharp relief for me, is the thornier topic of reproductive rights. This weekend, I discovered that the contraceptive implant on which I have relied for the last two years had broken. Wikipedia describes Implanon as the most effective form of birth control currently available. But mine is currently in two parts, inside my arm, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it’s meant to be. I don’t know for sure that it’s non-functional in this state, but I’ve had a pretty awful withdrawal bleed, so I’m just guessin’…

I’ve been lucky with the timing of this failure. I’m pretty confident that I’m not at risk of an unexpected pregnancy. But that’s sheer luck on my part – and it’s just lucky that I noticed it when I did, too. I’m happy in my career, I love to travel, I’ve just taken up dancing. I don’t want a kid right now. I’m married to a wonderful man, who has medical problems that mean his sleep is extremely precious. He doesn’t want a kid right now. We’re not reckless teenagers – I’ve always been careful about contraception, and a large part of the reason I chose the implant was because of the combination of reliability and ease-of-use that it offers. It works very well, and it’s hard to get wrong.

But “hard to get wrong” is not the same as “impossible to get wrong”. I’m in a fortunate position – I know a pretty good amount about contraception, at least for a layperson. I’m reasonably familiar with the menstrual cycle, I’m bright, I’m numerate. I can remember when I last felt the implant intact, and it’s not all that long ago. I can do the math, and I know when I was last sexually active, and I’m confident that this will all be fine. And despite that confidence, I’m stressed and freaked because I made a choice about my reproductive organs, and the method I used to enact that choice has failed.

I can’t say what I would or wouldn’t do in different circumstances. When it came down to it, I hope that I would choose not to have an abortion – but I’d sure as hell want it to be my decision! It’s my body, it’s my future, it’s my career, it’s my family, it’s my life. Ultimately, this is one decision that’s not about you, it’s about me. And I believe that every woman should have the right to make that decision for herself.

So let’s back up to my shocked little sister. She wasn’t even two years old when Ireland elected a woman to the highest office in the land. And yet she still lives in a country where, were she to need or want an abortion for any reason – personal, social or medical – she would have to get on a boat, or a plane, and leave the island where she has lived her whole life, in order to make that decision. She’s every bit as lucky as I am – she has a supportive family, a big sis in Switzerland, and the brains to work out what she needs and how to get it. (She’s also very familiar with the world outside her island, make no mistake!) No matter which way I look at it, that just seems wrong to me.

Having reproductive choices taken away from you, for any reason, is horrible and scary. Forcing you to go to another country to make those choices is cruel and twisted. And this, dear friends, is why I’m pro-choice.

There was a funny smell of burning, but I presumed it would pass. As I turned to go back to the sitting room for a few minutes, the smell continued, and intensified. I looked back at the oven, wondering what could be causing the smell… Could there possibly be some (shock, horror!) crumbs, hidden somewhere behind the dazzling clean oven fittings? Orange, I thought. Yellow, I thought. Those don’t belong there… Flames! What on earth?! The oven’s on fire!

Actually, not quite. Just the baking parchment, burnt in a nice pizza-sized circle in the bottom of the baking tray. Stephen put out the flames without destroying my pizza, and we cleaned up the ash. And so we come to “Weird things about Switzerland #203: Baking parchment that goes on fire when you put it in the oven”.

I was a little bit nervous about landing in Switzerland on a Sunday – getting keys to a new place on a Sunday can be tricky sometimes, and my experience of Munich was that you could really write off Sunday altogether when it came to any kind of administrivia. I didn’t expect Zurich to be a whole lot different, really. But I checked with the relocation co-ordinator, who assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem. When she gave me step-by-step instructions on where to go and how to get the keys, I stopped worrying. I looked up the street addresses on Google Maps, and all seemed to be dandy.

Yesterday afternoon, we landed in Zurich. Hailing a cab was no problem – and the driver was lovely. He gave us a guide to Zurich, and wished us luck in our househunting. He even turned off the meter when we arrived at the right street, and then spent ten minutes helping us locate #71. All in all, a great experience. Until we got to the door of #71, only to find it locked, with no indication of where or how one might procure keys. The apartment number that we’d been given confused the very helpful local who we flagged down – there are no three-digit apartment numbers here, he assured us. Without a name, we could have tried every buzzer in the building, but there was no guarantee that was going to get us anywhere, so we decided to leave the residents in peace. All of the names looked like personal names anyway – they all had initials, and no AGs or GmbHs to be seen.

We headed over to #69a, where my apartment was supposed to be – and yes, my name was on the buzzer of what we decided might be Apt 15. Definitely not the other three-digit number we’d been given then. There was nothing useful to be found in my mailbox – newspapers dating back to March, and a pile of junk mail that would constitute a reasonable start to the Second Tower of Babel.

After talking to a couple of answering machines, and hanging up on a few more, we decided to give up on trying to talk to the relocation people, and phoned a lovely Lady Google. She sounded suitably shocked, didn’t at all seem to mind us phoning such a rather bizarre issue on a Sunday evening, and promptly booked us in to a hotel near Google – even sending a taxi to pick us up. Thank you Lady Google!

And now, we head out to start the hunt for our very own apartment. Things can only get better, right?!

Once Mark arrived, we jump-started Stephen’s car, headed to the office, picked up the stuff, and brought it back to the apartment to sort out. Mark brought his stuff out to his car, borrowing Stephen’s keys to let himself back in… We watched a small bit of Zoolander, and generally just took things easy. We realised at some point that the laptop was still in work – but oh well, he wouldn’t need it unless he was paged…

9am on Saturday, Stephen’s pager went off. Eep, panic, runaway! We got out of the house, closed the door, and realised agh! No house keys! Anyway, such is life, taxi to the office, page dealt with, laptop collected, and back we go to the house, to meet the landlord. We arrived at the house a while before the landlord was due, and suddenly Niall rang. Turned out, he hadn’t gone to Galway the night before – so he was in the house! Huzzah! Keys were collected, there was pointing and laughter, and Stephen offered Niall a lift back in to work…

Only Stephen’s car wouldn’t start. Bugger. Neither would Niall’s. Uh oh… Anyone see a pattern starting to emerge? Niall explained that he had a battery charger, so we decided to dig that out later, and Niall went off to work.

The next mission was a driving lesson – so off to my house, where my car wouldn’t start… Oh, what a weekend! Stephen tried to start it rolling down the hill, to no avail, so he pulled in at the bottom of the hill, and drove dad’s car (which, praise the Lord and pass the tambourine, worked!) down to it, to jump start it… The lack of connectors on dad’s jump cables was only a minor issue, once Eoin was persuaded to actually hold the cable against the battery contact, rather than just wave it in the right general direction… We got my car going, and left it running while Stephen returned dad’s car to the driveway… He was just about to reverse in, when mum got home. Much laughter and some explanations later, we returned to my car, and headed off for a drive, in the hope of recharging the battery a bit.

Back at Stephen’s house a while later, Niall realised that his battery charger was in the boot of the car. The centrally-locked car. Whose central-locking only works when there’s enough power in the battery… So we weren’t getting that charger any time soon!

On Sunday morning, we waited at the bus stop to head into town (Mission 1: buy a jumpstarter/battery charger). And again, Stephen’s pager went. Out comes the laptop, and he spends the entire trip into town trying to get it working. No joy. Cafe Insomnia on Nassau St advertised wireless – so we went in and bought drinks – but again, no joy. Eventually, the kiddies shoe department in BT2 yielded the necessary, and Stephen sorted out the problem.

So onward and upward to St Stephen’s Green, in search of Argos and a battery charger. Until the pager went again… Oh, what a day. I sat around, watched some can-can dancers, played Big Brain Academy, collected an Argos catalogue, and generally looked busy until it was all fixed… Dinner was definitely on Stephen, including a tasty strawberry margarita for dessert, while he tried to get online to send his on-call report (eventually giving up, because he couldn’t get it going).

Next weekend is Skycon… Oh please, please, let it be a little bit more relaxing than that!?

“What Val gave a picture was a charity”

is a valid sentence – and I think it’s right…

I still haven’t decided whether

“Sal suggested Val to hate a cat”

is valid or not though.

I think I might love linguistics. Or hate it. It’s hard to tell.