On Sat, Dec 5, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Jaime Fernández del Río < jaime.frio@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm alive and well: trying to stay afloat on a sea of messaging protocols, Java and Swiss bureaucracy, but doing great aside from that.

Jaime

Glad to hear it. I was beginning to worry... Java? Poor soul. Anything special about the Swiss bureaucracy? Reminds me of the old joke *Heaven and Hell* Heaven Is Where: The French are the chefs The Italians are the lovers The British are the police The Germans are the mechanics And the Swiss make everything run on time Hell is Where: The British are the chefs The Swiss are the lovers The French are the mechanics The Italians make everything run on time And the Germans are the police Chuck

On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 1:40 AM, Jaime Fernández del Río < jaime.frio@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 4:15 AM, Charles R Harris < charlesr.harris@gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Sat, Dec 5, 2015 at 4:49 PM, Jaime Fernández del Río < jaime.frio@gmail.com> wrote:

...

I'm alive and well: trying to stay afloat on a sea of messaging protocols, Java and Swiss bureaucracy, but doing great aside from that.

Jaime

Glad to hear it. I was beginning to worry...

Java? Poor soul. Anything special about the Swiss bureaucracy? Reminds me of the old joke

Well, if you don't have a suitcase full of $100 bills, opening a bank account in Switzerland is surprisingly difficult, especially if you are moving here from the U.S. If immigration then decides to request from you documents they already have, thus delaying your residence permit by a few more weeks, the bank ends up returning your first salary, just about the same time you have to pay a 3 month rental deposit for a small and ridiculously expensive apartment. Everything is slowly falling into place, but it has been an interesting ride.

The cash economy is nothing to sniff at ;) It is big in NYC and other places with high taxes and bureaucratic meddling. Cash was one of the great inventions. Is the interp fix in the google pipeline or do we need a workaround? Chuck

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 2:25 AM, Sturla Molden wrote:

Charles R Harris wrote:

...

The cash economy is nothing to sniff at ;) It is big in NYC and other places with high taxes and bureaucratic meddling. Cash was one of the great inventions.

Yeah, there is a Sicilian New Yorker called "Gambino" who has been advertising "protection from ISIS" in European newspapers lately. From what I read his father was big at selling protection for cash, and now he is taking up his father's business and selling protection from ISIS. To prove his value, he claimed ISIS is so afraid of his organisation that Sicily is a place they never dare visit. Presumably Gambino's business model depends on a cash based economy, or at least it did.

That's interesting, sounds like "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" come to life ;) Chuck