Are you Swissing me?

Do bear with the title - I do love puns and cliches. :P

As a matter of fact - the very first "public" criticism I received upon publication of a couple of articles, when I was about 15, was that my articles were based too much on cliches. It was excellent criticism, and I learnt from that to go all out in being "original" i.e. come up with your own, previously unpublished, cliches. Hahahaha. Only joking.

But anyway, this trip to Switzerland couldn't have come at a better time. Now my mind's rather more open - well, at least, I'm trying to make it more open - and I'm all gung-ho in immersing myself in as much of the way of the Swiss as I possibly can. :D

For starters, I want to communicate with the locals better. Imagine my disappointment in discovering that Switzerland isn't technically an English-speaking country! :( And knowing full well that I can't expect to "communicate with the locals" in the beloved Bahasa Melayu or my poorly-formed, angmoh-accented Cantonese ... I turned to the power of Google.

Did you know that Switzerland has FOUR national languages? Yeah - not one, not two, not three - FOUR! German, French, Italian, and Rumantsch - I don't know any bits of the first three except "Paris", "pizza", and as for the fourth - what is "Rumantsch"?? If you're interested to know a little bit more, click here:
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/article/Switzerland/Languages-in-Switzerland/223.

That particular website also states that German is the main language, so I guess I should just pick one and try my luck. :) I've always loved language - whether familiar or foreign - so the Mandarin DIY-lessons and now Swiss-German can't be too bad.

I'm headed to Zurich, which - again according to the site - is the largest city in Switzerland, with a population of 360,000. Man, I'm such an ignorant ditz - I used to think Zurich was in New Zealand or the Netherlands! Ah, well - what good is life if I knew everything already, right? :)

Whoops hey I gotta go - I'm seeing double vision from playing Space Strike for 2 hours, hahaha. Will continue the lessons another time!! Bye!:)