Smelly Swiss Dilettante

[Jean]

For medicine, I stoped because the idea of being and intern for 6 years full time after graduation before i can set up shop felt terrible, and for nuclear engineering, that was mostly due to covid, because i was more interested in going to school and get a frame, than in the degree and profesionnal perspectives. Also, my personal belief in the usefullness of nuclear energy to limitate our impact on the planet isn't shared by people wo could decide to build new ones.

[guitarplayer]

I can then see how you can easily formulate arguments against being a vet after a while, for example animal welfare based or when you see how much antibiotics you’d have to administer. But maybe you have no personal preferences on the above or you are okay working in this environment regardless. Finally, I might be wrong on both accounts my knowledge or the vet industry is anecdotal.

[NewBlood]

Good luck Jean, that's a cool new potential adventure!

Could you try and talk to a bunch of vets in your region, both in cities and rural, to see if they'd be willing to share what they like/don't like about their job?

[zbigi]

My understanding is that it's not for the faint of heart. Seeing animals suffer day in and day out can take a toll on more sensitive people (apparently there are lots of suicides among vets). But, as @Jean is a hunter, I don't think he fits the profile of a fragile city dweller who loved animals, became a vet and now is crushed by it.

[Jean]

Now that i think about it, i remember that what really triggered me to go for it was a documentary about vet suicide rate. My ego probably saw it as a challenge.
Main reasons were angry clients and access to deadly products, and vets being more sensitive than average.
I'm a sensitive person, but if people tell me their dog is like a child to them, i'll send them to a pediatrician.
I talked to a few vet, and they confirmed my impressions about the job.

[Jean]

I was disapointed by the actions of a prominent public figure I had a mostly good opinion of, and it is very interesting to see how much and how quickly my youtube feed changed. The reactivity of the algorythm is impressive.

[chenda]

Jean do you happen to know a good shooting range in Switzerland? Preferably French or English speaking.

This is unrelated to your last post.

[Jean]

There are shooting range everywhere.
If you just want to try shooting once, you should go to any shooting range in the french speaking part during the "tir en campagne".

This is a countrywide fest, where most shooting range are open, and you can shoot one programm for free.
https://www.swissshooting.ch/fr/kalende ... /efs-2025/

If you want to go shooting regularly, you should contact your local shooting society, there are plenty of them

If you just want to rent a shooting range, there are private one. Here is one I know of where you very likely can rent guns.

https://www.lagardere.ch/index.php/le-stand-de-tir

If you want to do something else, you can be more specific, and I can try to help you.

[chenda]

Many thanks Jean that's very helpful. The tir en champagne looks ideal for starters. If it appeals I would like to shoot regularly.

[Jean]

I didn't know that you were in switzerland or learned french, so i assumed you asked for someone else.

[chenda]

I didn't know that you were in switzerland or learned french, so i assumed you asked for someone else.

I may be spending the summer in Switzerland, shooting clubs are very expensive and uncommon here. My French is ok, I find Swiss French much easier to understand than metropolitan French.

[Jean]

You don't have to clinb to join ere climb fest.
I think it will be great.

[chenda]

Thank you Jean. I will let you know when my plans become more certain.

[Jean]

I'm currently in southern piemont. I want to be in genova in 4 days, so i hitchhiked all the way to about 4 day of walk from genova, and now i walk.

One dude that gave me ride works for a company that sounded great. I looked on their website, and they have an open position for which i would be a good fit. I will try to arrive early in genova to find an internet cafe to write an application to convince them about that.
I was blocked for a night on a rest area on the milanese tangenziale. Italians dont often take hitchhikers. It's worse than sweden. It was impossible to leave on foot without destroying stuff. I got out by directly asking people for a ride in front of the shop.
One thing i really enjoy about italy, is that as it has the closest distinct language to french, and as i never learned it purpousefully, i get to experience spontaneous learning, which is a very enjoyable feeling. It is probably one of the closest thing to what a baby that mess around experiences when he reach something he wanted to reach. You make effort but without effort, purely trough your brain hardwiring.

I think english speaker can most easily experience this in norwegian or maybe dutch. Slavic languages might be just too similar to each other to experience this, but I don't know and curiously ask the numerous poles that read this

So to say i really enjoy my trip and talking to people.
At some point i was on a trail, and two young lads told me i had to turn around, and after some discussion, they told me it was because a mean lady illegaly closed the way. They told me how to open the gate, saving me a 1 hour long detour.

Anyway, i'm trying to vlog this trip, but i'm often annoyed by my filming or the idea of filming. It feels in competition with the experience itself.
Also, i asked a lady in front of a restaurant if the restaurant was open and good.. It was her restaurant, so she gave me wine, made me a sandwich, gave me a delicious bonet,( a piemontese dessert), and didn't want my money. She alllowed me to camp on the terrace where i am now.

I think this post might at least partally answer @jacob famous blogspot named "explain travel to me"

Also, i can manage my production line on prun from my phone

[jacob]

I think english speaker can most easily experience this in norwegian or maybe dutch.

Grammatically, English is basically Viking pidgin, so there's not much to learn/change. You may see me mess up inflections in terms of singular and plural when writing in English because I still don't naturally make the distinction, but other than that, it's an easy/natural transition. In terms of vocabulary, though, there's very little overlap. Some words, sure, but they're not obvious due to "the English vowel shift" that happened some centuries ago.

E.g. "house" in English comes from Scandinavian/Germanic ... but is pronounced---I don't know phonetics---similarly to "whose" but with a very short vowel and spelled like hus. This is how the English used to pronounce it. Otherwise, I can affirm that DW (English speaker with no foreign language ability) has no ability to process Danish (which is 90% similar to Norwegian) whether written or spoken.

OTOH, the Frisian language of northern Germany or parts of the coastal Benelux countries---only spoken in a few areas anymore---is downright uncanny as in: "I almost thought I heard you say something in my language. Could you repeat it slowly?!" To me, Frisian is easier than e.g. Norse or Old English.

See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaoohSLIrt4 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ply1m3ArX0s

[loutfard]

Dialects are slowly dying, but still very pronounced where I live. I sometimes joke how I speak at least three Dutch languages.

Anecdote. I was born the child of two parents who officially speak Dutch, their native cities less than 100km apart. I remember a rather interesting situation from the pre-gps days. An old man from my mother's native city had arrived at the railway station of my father's native city. He was looking for a specific address that I didn't know. Luckily, someone else did. Only as heavy dialect users, their communication did not run very smoothly. I translated.

[chenda]

Afrikaans probably comes closest to a sister language to English, it's basically simplified Dutch and some of it is mutually intelligible e.g. 'my naam is... 'in die somer is dit warm en die winter is koud'. It only has three tenses and no conjugations or noun genderisation.

[Jean]

@jacob
Maybe i was biased by my knowledge of german when evaluating how close it is to english. I can understand quite a lot of writen danish/norsk. When spoken, norwegian is the one i understand the most, but norway is also the scandinavian coubtry where i spent the most time in.

@loutfard. That's a funny story. The situation is similar in switzerland.
I think another factor is how much people are used to have their own language spoken differently.
French and americans are very bad at this, because their language are very unified.
In quebec, i noticed that french often have a hard time understanding quebecois, while most swiss don't. My hypothesis is that it's because we are more used to ear different accents than the frenches. I don't know, i might also be biased.

@chenda
I didn't think of it. It seems quite right.

[Jean]

I really enjoyed sicilly. The food is amazing and cheap.
Real estate seens quite cheap. In winter, weather is perfect for outdoors activity, and tourist frequentation is low. Landscape reminded me of iceland.
I don't understand why main tourist season starts when temperatures start to be horrible
That would make sicilly as a very good winter dwelling for an ere person who doesn't like cold winters.
One could buy a dwelling, and rent it out during the tourist season, sharing the income with someone who stay there in summer and handle the rental.

Also, it was very special to reach the sea by hitch hiking and walking. First view on the sea was moving.

I'm looking forward to apply to the aforementioned job. The more i think about it, the more it looks great.
Also they are looking for people again at the care place, so i'll apply there again too because i need money for my gf.
I also think about borrowing a lump sum to do some work on my house.

I will try to monitor my expenses for the second half of february.
Basicaly, that means food and transport.
I will then make a meal plan. I mostly need to refrain from buying fast food at the train station.
Mc donald closed, but it is replaced with a fancy burger place. I need to picture them making disgusting stuff to the patties I also buy shitty sandwich at the convenience store.
I need to gain the ability to resist hunger in fact.
I don"t feel bad when i'm hungry, but i can't resist food, even if it's behind a 2 hours walking and cooking wall.
Or maybe i should always have something delicious on me. More delicious than a burger at least.
But it's hard to walk around with a grill and marinated meat, and start it in the train station.
Or maybe I should revert to buying butter or citrus to curb the hunger. But butter isn't as pleasing, it's just very efficient at curbing hunger, making the mental fight shorter.
Or revert to biking to places. If I always leave home last minute, I won't have time to buy food on the way. I'll just look like an animal whenever there is food where I arrive.

[Jean]

Is there anyone here that could review my resumee and cover letter?
It's for a swiss company, the HR person is a german gen Z woman