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9.17.2001

I'm on information overload already, and today is the first time I've been able to deal with radio, television, newspaper, or news websites since Saturday.

I know that, on some level, we all need to suffer as much as possible before we get through this. However, while I recognize that Malcolm X was right when he said that the revolution will not be televised, right now, world events are being OVER-televised. Maybe it's not the revolution he was talking about per se, but it sure feels like something...

I did talk to Bob very late last night, though. He's the only person on earth allowed to call me at midnight and live. He'd been at work all night, on the base, of course, and the mood there, he says, is like nothing you can possibly experience unless you've been enlisted in wartime. It's unreal. People aren't just gunning up, they're really, honestly, scared to death of what they're going to find whenever they get wherever they're going. I can't even imagine being an enlisted or a reserve right now. Yeah, you're in a position to go out there and "kick some ass," but whose ass, exactly, are you being sent out there to kick? And how many of your unit are going to die when you get there?

With the lives of five thousand people vaporized in just about one hour, everyone from the Administration to the man on the street are a little more ready to ship our boys and girls off to die, more so than in 1990. I know, they signed up for it, and they knew in the backs of their minds that at some point, they might face this, and so did their families. But they've got more than just tanks and sniper fire over there, you know, they've got canisters packed with Anthrax and sarin and mustard gas and they're going to unleash them if they have to. They're a desperate people with nothing left to lose, and if they lose some of their own, who cares? They're starving, hollowed-out skeletons anyway. They've already been raped and pillaged so many times over there's not an Afghani alive who remembers what peace feels like. And nobody really knows how to fight a war against an enemy who is invisible at best, remember, we learned that one in Vietnam. We all know who won that one.

There is nothing in this world as disconcerting as the voice of a man who, very probably, will be shipped off to that sort of future inside of four weeks.

9.16.2001

I haven't been around since about three yesterday, and only just now checked my email...

Thank you, Skip, for commenting. You're the only one who did, so either you're the only person who reads this godforsaken thing on a regular basis, or truly nobody gives a shit what color this damn thing is, or both, which is probably more likely.

The first order of business: Happy Birthday, Mom!

Order of Business Number Two: I love you, Karen. The thought of you even thinking of leaving makes me want to bash my head against a wall, but purely for my own selfish reasons. Whatever you decide, I will love you and support your decision. Frankly, I don't blame you for considering it at all - I'm surprised as hell that you stayed here for as long as you did, and for that you get props...

Order of Business Number Three: M., you enthrall me. I know that that was really hard for you to watch last night, harder than you even know or are willing to admit, but I think you've made all the right choices so far. And thank you for this morning. That was just what the Doctor ordered. ;)

Order of Business Number Four: Lainey, I'm sorry too. I will call you later. This email thing is making me nuts.

Now. I'm going to go have a nap. I slept terribly last night and had some of the worst nightmares I think I've ever had in my life. And no car-accident nightmares, either. I can't even start describing them or I will start grinding my teeth into stumps...

Then, I'm going to go pick up my present and tootle down to Pico for a very special something for a very special someone.

Oh, and Toes has decided he wants to be a lap cat. I couldn't be more pleased.

I appreciate the little, wondrous things in the world more now that it looks like the one that we knew before last Tuesday is rapidly disappearing...

Come on, Toes. Let's go have a nap.

9.15.2001

Hm. I will say this: redesigning on the fly is a great way to distract oneself from the television set. Where the hell did my morning go? Yeesh...

I'll be continuing to make updates hither and thither today, so be sure to tell me if you find any busted links or anything. Use the contact link.

You all might notice a few spur-of-the-moment changes around here...I'm tired now, so I'm going to bed, but if you have any thoughts, let me know.

I thought pink would be a nice direction. Bitch at will. I like it.

9.14.2001

I sent an email two nights ago to my big brother Bob, my closest male friend, next to Jason. Bob is the guy who, if my father dies between now and the blessed event, will walk me down the aisle when I get married.

Bob is, quite possibly, one of the best things that ever happened to me. He's kind. He's caring. He's brilliant. He's Catholic, and an Irish Catholic at that, so he understands what it's like to grow up in our kind of Catholic household, which is exceedingly rare in California. Although he's way more devout than I will ever be. He's an artist, a writer, an actor, a really great guy. He does poetry slams all over Texas and he wins them, for God's sake, wins them with poems about lost babies and watching your best friend kill themselves. He's a bleeding-heart liberal, a guy who votes with his conscience, with a bumper sticker on his truck that says, "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans."

I met Bob just as we were finishing college. I wish I'd met him sooner, but the times that we have had since more than make up for it. We actually went on one, count it, one date once. We laugh about it now. We're friends, the very best kind, and we know we're way stupid for even thinking we could be otherwise. It would just ruin it.

After kicking around Los Angeles for a while, trying to kickstart an acting career, becoming a teacher, teaching in the Compton school district, one of the most hostile in the nation, feeling directionless, aimless, and loveless, he did something that startled us all.

He joined the Air Force.

Bob is now stationed in Texas, near San Antonio. He's got just a few months to go...or at least, HAD a few months to go, until all of this happened. I suspect he's gotten his holding-pattern orders, given that they're calling up reservists now and they're readying much of his base for "New Information," whatever that means.

Some of you who read this met Bob when he was in town in July for my birthday - he sat across from me at dinner and smiled the whole time. The last time he had visited was when I had first moved out of my apartment with Willy. It was right up on Christmas and it was rainy and cold and just after the whole Wendy thing and I was scared to death of everything. I'd been in my apartment for two months and the only reasons I would leave were work and groceries. He came over and we sat on my couch and ate orange sherbet, because I always have a gallon of that in my fridge. He said the scoops looked funny and I told him it's because I didn't have an ice cream scooper, and I'd had to serve it in coffee cups because I didn't have anything else.

My birthday present from him, given to me at my birthday dinner just a few weeks ago, was a silver ice-cream scooper and four gorgeous glass bowls. Because everyone should be properly prepared for the serving of ice cream. I about burst into tears.

That is the kind of guy that Bob is. He remembers stuff like that. I think he'd be the perfect boyfriend...hell, I bet he IS the perfect boyfriend, because he's the perfect friend already. Which is why the thought of Bob being taken away from me scares the holy hell out of me and I hate the idea and I hate thinking about it.

I sent him an email two nights ago:

Bob...

I just wanted you to know that I love you very much and that I am thinking of you and that I hope that you are okay.

This was his response to me this morning:

thank you beautiful. Things here are very rough, but I am sure that they are rough everywhere. Say a prayer for the poor bastards we still dont know about, and for the poor bastards (possibly, me included) who will be dealing with it in the future.

I'm not OK right now, but I will be. As will we all.

Love

Bob

So I guess I'll ask you, if you pray, do it now.

Everything about this thing scares me on multiple levels because while all this was going on, they were living among us.

They were living here, taking flight lessons, renting cars, living in quiet suburban neighborhoods, shopping in the local market, taking advantage of the opportunities that our free society provides, and using the safety and quiet that it provides them to do their work.

Like cockroaches, or ants, you may see one or a few, but there are many, many more hiding within the walls. People are starting to ask, how many more are there living next door to you and me? How many more of them work with me, and you, and everyone we know? How many more of them are here, waiting for a moment to carry out the plans they were sent here to construct? And where are they?

We are instructed to stay calm. We are instructed to not become paranoid. We are told that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. We are instructed to love, not hate, and treat all our neighbors as our family. And we do that, all of us, without comment or complaint because it's what we need to do. It's what we WANT to do. I don't WANT to walk through my day with suspicion and dread. It's not right.

My friends, my neighbors of Arabic descent are loving, generous, wonderful people. And still, there are some among them who are going to exploit the trust that they have worked so hard to build in a decidedly suspicious American populace. They've been exploiting the goodwill, the friendships that have been fostered, masquerading as our friends, when they are truly not friends at all. That's the saddest thing of all; that all of a sudden our friends and neighbors feel like they have to justify themselves, to explain themselves, when they shouldn't ever have to.

Well, if it was meant to create at least a seed of doubt, maybe it did. I'm not sure in whose hearts the strongest doubt will reside in yet. I guess the jury is still out...

In the meantime, I'm going to go make sure that my friends and neighbors, regardless of their ethnicity, know I'm here for them...

9.13.2001

Maybe I'm just thinking with my brain instead of my ass here, but maybe we should all just stop joining the op-ed armada for now. At least let the urge to get in on the cavalcade of conspiracy theorists and finger-pointers and blamers pass us by until the bodies are cold.

How about this for a change: no posting links to yet more New York Times editorials about Who Might Have Done It And Why. No more theorising in worthless little corners of the Internet as if we have a right to know anything right now. No posting to quasi "debates" where all rational thought goes out the fucking window in favor of feeding the mouths of greedy little opportunists with nothing better to do than feast on tragedy and the perceived failings of our government in order to try and make themselves look thoughtful, interested, and relevant.

This is exactly what people mean when they talk about Americans as being whiny, self-absorbed, heartless, emotionally bereft, intellectually bankrupt little narcissists. I have never been so ashamed to be an American as I am right now, judging by what is going on both in the corners of the Net I used to like hanging out in and in the rest of the world. If that's what it means to be one, I give up. Give me my Irish passport and I'm out.

I have failed to see how the opinions of plaintive, impotent do-nothings all of a sudden became worthy of your notice, but I refuse. I absolutely refuse. And so should you. My God, the shame on your heads. The shame. I can't even look anymore.

Wake the hell up, people. The answer is not in the Times or CNN or workingforchange. You're not going to find it in your television set, or your newspaper, or the goddamned internet. There is no commentator or intellectual in the world who is going to bring you the staggering story in the evening news. It's in your hearts and minds, so act like you have them, already.

9.12.2001

Oh, my God.

He was just here, in my building, for a meeting last Wednesday.

I had never met him before then, but I knew how huge his company is. I shook his hand and apologized for the screwup in their meeting time, seeing as how it was my first day back in the office. He asked me about my vacation. I told him. He said something to the effect that he'd never been to Ireland but that he'd like to, and someday soon, maybe on his next vacation.

My boss has been close to him since long before he started that company.

My heart...my God, is it possible for it to hurt this much?

Dear Danny, you can go wherever you want, whenever you want to now.

9.11.2001

An observation, which is rambly and not making sense, but I have to write it down so I won't forget it...

The person or persons who orchestrated this little exercise in mass murder must be in a very dark place. A very dark place, indeed. The kind of person who does this might be considered a monster, inhuman, but really, what does that mean?

Allah does not teach his children to kill. Jesus did not instruct us to flatten those who do not agree with us. And yet throughout time, entire dynasties, nations, and races have interpreted the words of prophets and leaders to mean your other is your enemy and your enemy must be annihilated. Somewhere, the words have been twisted, the meanings have been perverted, and now they are visited upon us just as they have on countless other peoples around the world.

It's funny, you know. We barely pay attention when it's Gaza or Armenia or Afghanistan or the Congo or any one of a number of nations where mass slaughter occurs on a frighteningly regular basis. But now it's us. I can't help but think, in some perverse way, that we somehow deserve this, or at least it's an indicator that the monumental hubris of the American consciousness has just come to a catastrophically abrupt end.

It is amazing to me what a deep, deep poverty, personal, moral, and otherwise, can achieve in an entire people. The kind of poverty that only religious oppression can provide, the kind of rage that systematic abuse at a deep-seated, cultural level can cause. What terrible lies we believe about them, and what terrible lies they believe about us. That we even describe our relationships at a global level as "them" and "us" when we are all members of the same human race is a symptom of the sickness that engulfs the world, and has for as long as it has existed.

I would argue that the sort of people who would plan and carry out what happened today were dead before they even woke up today. Walking corpses, shells of flesh inhabited by anger and rage and confusion and grief and loss. I cannot even fathom what terrible, terrible things these people must have been taught about America. I can't even begin to imagine how right they thought they were about us. I can't begin to know how hurt and terrified and powerless they must have felt to do something like this. They must be so full of self-hatred to turn it on us like this. I'm beginning to understand how full of self-hatred we have been, as a nation, to have stood idly by while this happened in the Congo, in China, in Israel, everywhere, on every continent, among every member of the human race. We have been no better, albeit in much more subtle ways, and here we are. Maybe this is a crude way for them to show us just how full of sadness and rage and hate they are, but show us they did.

And I know that we're the richest, most powerful nation on this earth, and we did nothing to stop it. Any of it. And that's probably to blame for why we are here now.

Cardinal Roger Mahoney of the Los Angeles Catholic Diocese was just asked to say a few words on CNN. He asked us all to light a candle in our windows tonight; a candle for hope, for peace, and for brotherhood. Not just for us, but for Them, whoever they are, as well. I'm going to go get one right now.

I'm watching all of this and thinking of all the friends and family I have in New York City and I think I have to throw up now.

I can't stop crying.

My God, what have they done?

It is so cold in here...

9.7.2001

If you must know, I woke up feeling somewhat sassy today, so I dressed for it. That doesn't mean I slathered on black eyeliner and hiked up my cleavage in some gothy little outfit for everyone I work with; it just means I decided to do something a little different. I'm wearing a blue denim jacket today. With a black dress. And red shoes. Open-toed, to show off my dark red toenails, which I had done last night after work. I did my fingernails, which have gotten incredibly long, to match and then I went to bed. I didn't want to go to bed that early, but I suspect I returned harder than I took off, because the last few days I've been untenably tired. I need a vacation from my vacation...

I'm in a mood. Not that I'm bitchy or upset or anything, I'm just in a mood. I have a ton of people to call and I haven't called any of them. I have a ton of things to do and I don't want to do any of them. Instead, I listen to a clock ticking.

I'm coming towards the end of the journey, at least, this part of it. In twelve days it will have been an entire year that I've been alone. In two months I'll have lived alone for a year, and it'll be time for me to decide what I'm going to do next. I don't know how I feel about it.

I do know this: I met M. for lunch outside the office yesterday. I knew I would be happy to see him, but it wasn't until I saw him, just sitting at a table, reading the menu, how much. It took every ounce of energy not to run at him and throw my arms around him and try to disappear into his chest. And even though I know when I look at him, when I talk to him, that this probably isn't going to be forever, just because I think ultimately we want different things out of life, it's nice to imagine what if? and smile and just kiss him.

He has such sparkly blue eyes, with straight brows that furrow a little when he's thinking. We talked about my experience seeing the Danish healthcare system (it's socialized medicine) in action, and he did that little furrow thing and got very quiet, the way he does when he's thinking. I'm beginning to notice things like that. The different smiles, the thinking stance, the way to read certain different ways he kisses me. It's so new, yet it's still so familiar. And while I still think I'm not quite ready to be anybody's girlfriend, looking at him and recognizing the things I can finally begin to allow myself to experience and to feel when I look at him, now I think maybe I might be a little closer to it.

If I can do this, if I can write the little things down on the notepad in my head, that little list of things that are endearing and unique and important, then I might be okay to go further. Not now, but sometime soon. And if he isn't ready, that's okay too. I can thank him for being such a huge part of helping me heal and we can shake hands and walk away. Or we might decide that the next level is somewhere we can go together. I have no way of knowing what the next few days or weeks or months will bring. A few years ago it would have driven me crazy, but now, I kind of don't mind the uncertainty. Normally I'd begin to tighten my grip right about now, but I've easily resisted the urge because I know that's not going to work. For either of us. What's working is NOT working on it, just letting it evolve.

But tonight, before I go home, I'm running by my favorite shop on Hollywood Boulevard and purchasing that fuschia lace set of underwear I should have bought three weeks ago, then I'm going to go home and sweep my bedroom floor and run all of my sheets and duvet and bedding through the washing machine, and then I'm going to put on my new underthings and wait for him to show up on my doorstep, probably around ten or so, after his prior committment is over with. And after that, what happens is anyone's guess. Because while one can prepare for rapture, after that you just have to live in the now.

9.5.2001

I don’t know what to say that won’t make me sound like an ungrateful brat. Maybe I should just stop worrying about it and just say it and get it over with so it stops making me feel this way.

I’m going to post the photos (if the film, in my suitcase, ever gets back from Zurich) and the story of my trip elsewhere on this page, because there’s way too much to put here. Way too much. But something happened on this trip that I truly didn’t anticipate, and it’s really upset me in ways I didn’t think it was possible to upset me. Don’t get the wrong impression; it was a good thing that I went, I wouldn’t trade it for anything, blah blah blah. I’m looking forward to going again – WITHOUT my parents, and going with someone who maybe has a little more of an idea towards the things I like to do. But, as per usual, this is what’s been in my head since I arrived in Copenhagen (yes, it’s been stewing for that long) and it just needs to come out.

Going on this kind of vacation with your parents indicates that one is going to get enough Family Togetherness to last a lifetime. I learned more about the daily bullshit of being my parents than I ever wanted to know. I expected that. However, I also found out what my parents really think of me. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t know how little it really was. I didn’t know how minimal my accomplishments really are. I didn’t know that according to them, I still haven’t done anything worthy of admiration, respect, or praise. I didn’t realize that my mere existence is something of an embarrassment to them, so much so that I wondered many times during this trip why I was invited to go with them at all. To hear them tell it, compared to my sister, I’m really a disappointment, and I don’t really do anything interesting at all.

It’s funny. You know, my entire life, I heard from the two of them how much of a fuckup I am. How impractical I am. How bad my choices have been. How I never do anything that’s going to be right. Yet, here I am, at 27, and I didn’t make a single choice that I truly wanted to make because it wasn’t fucking practical. I went to school. I got out. I did my best to find something that would make me happy, barring the ever-present want to just be a writer, because that didn’t pay the bills. So now, at 27, I have a stable job, a really GOOD career. I have a great house. I have a fantastic guy in my life. I’m pretty, I’m smart, I’m mostly successful at what I do. No, it’s not as glamorous as what my sister does, but I made choices that were “good for me,” not necessarily made because they were what I wanted, but because they were what I supposedly needed to do.

This entire trip was an exercise in listening to my parents gush about my sister and all of the places that she’s traveled and the things she’s doing and how glamorous and interesting she is and how much like my father she is. Meanwhile, half of my relatives who actually met ME on this trip have no idea who I am or what I do because somehow it’s just not as interesting or as glamorous to talk about. Moreover, it seems that the only purpose of bringing me with them is so they’d have someone to denigrate and minimize and talk down to. It was almost as if they went to the time and trouble and expense of bringing me with them just so they’d have someone to bag on for the sheer entertainment value of it for two entire weeks. Never mind that it put me in a situation where I could do nothing about it because, as you all know, they’re the ones who bought me the plane ticket as a birthday present in the first place.

It was as if every time I opened my mouth, it was embarrassing to them, like they wished I would just eat silently and go away. Every time someone asked me a question, I got cut off. Every time someone asked me to explain something, I was corrected (even when it was something as stupid as asking about the color of my hair, they had to butt in and make a monster issue out of it, because we all know that my color isn’t real, and my mother has to make a scene every single time it comes up). Every time I was asked to offer an opinion, I was denigrated. My mother is especially good at doing it verbally; my father excels in doing it in his signature nonverbal manner.

Here’s one example of the daily bashing:

The subject of my name created lots of opportunities for bitchiness. I changed my name almost ten years ago; the only people who haven’t internalized this yet are my parents. So they kept addressing me in letters and emails as one thing, but I introduce myself as another, and then everyone got confused once we got there. This created a great opportunity for my parents to create a scene. Really, it’s not that hard. My name is Siobhan. Get the fuck used to it, people. But of course, as far as my parents are concerned, even though I ASKED THEM if they were okay with it BEFORE I did it, it’s fair game for them to bash me because they don’t give a shit.

Here’s an example of the minimizing:

We were staying in Jutland, at Soren and Annette’s farm outside of Vejle. We arrived there in the afternoon, and had dinner with them and their two children, and Soren’s parents, Svend and Carla (Svend would be my maternal grandfather’s first cousin) and their other child, Jens Christian, and his wife and four kids. The entire night, I barely said a word, and this was one of the few dinners where everyone at the table (including two of the kids) spoke English. For at least an hour of the four hours we sat at the table, the conversation turned to my sister: her trip to Africa. The pursuit of her masters’ degree. Her trip to Japan. How she felt about those countries. Her experiences there. Blah, blah, blah. I hardly said a single word the entire evening, to ANYONE, and I was sitting NEXT to Soren.

The next morning, at breakfast, we were packed and ready to drive back to Copenhagen. Annette said to me, “you know, I know all about what your sister has been doing, but I don’t know what you’ve been up to since I saw you last.” (The last time she saw me was when she and Soren came to visit on their honeymoon about six years ago.) That’s right, because nobody even addressed me during dinner, and when they did, my mother quickly turned the conversation back to something else. I began to tell her a little about what I did at work, and my mother interrupted with something like, “Siobhan, nobody understands what you mean when you say that.” I then tried to explain it a little differently, but gave up when she gave one of those exasperated sighs and interjected, “She does something for the Web.” Um, hello, but that’s not what I do. Don’t even get me started on the part where I tried to respond to her query about my love life.

It kept happening EVERYWHERE WE WENT. The same shit, the same issues, just to different relatives. They talked for hours about how amazing my sister is and how great her life is. Every time I was asked about, I would begin to explain, and it was as if because they couldn’t do my speaking for me, they would rather I didn’t explain at all, because somehow I just didn’t do it right, or enough, or whatever, or make it sound just the way they wanted me to sound.

Now, I love my sister. I’m very proud of her. She’s doing pretty well, all things considered, even if she’s still totally unable to sustain any kind of stable environment for herself. I also know that her globetrotting and dithering has been enabled by my well-meaning parents, who feel guilty and whatever for her meltdown several years ago, and hey, who can blame them, on that count they’re right to accept some guilt and responsibility, but I was never the type to go so far as to permanently fuck up my life in order to get out of doing what I had to do to survive. So now she’s off doing Exactly What She Wants and that’s fabulous, as far as my parents are concerned, but I’m doing Exactly What I Should Be Doing, and that’s a disappointment? Pardon me, but there’s something wrong with this picture.

For some reason they seemed to have decided over the last few years that supporting what I want is stupid, but supporting what she wants is noble and inspiring and whatthefuckever. I work my ass off to be financially independent, to be good at what I do, and to do things that are interesting to me, that are challenging, and that are a lot of fun. I think I turn that in in spades. Somehow I find myself in a situation in which there is no possible way I can ever do right by them, even though I did everything right, I did everything by the fucking book.

You know, my life could have been that fucked up and emotionally disastrous for everyone in my path and glamorous and oddly psychotic and all of that. It could have been. I didn’t choose that because after I kissed them off for the three years in college, I couldn’t face the possibility that I might never speak to them ever again. I had to learn a little compromise and forgiveness in that time, because otherwise who the hell knows what would have happened to me? But I promised myself I would NOT be beholden to them, and beholden I am not. However, in the process of becoming independent, and supporting myself when nobody else would, all of a sudden I somehow became less than they think I should have been. I concentrate on things like paying rent, not navigating the Japanese bus system. So maybe I meet their expectations, but I do not surpass them. And that is where I have failed in comparison.

When you’re an identical twin, your entire life is consumed by comparison. It’s characterized by sameness, identified by incidence, and anomalized only by divergence. It’s not like it is with simple siblings. I can’t even begin to explain why to you. You won’t understand.

So I’m destined to be this, aren’t I? I’m the one who did okay, I’m the one who functions in the outside world, I’m the one who maintains and strives and does for myself, yet I’m the one they are less happy about. The one they’re not so thrilled to have with them. The one they’re just not as proud of. And they reminded me of it every chance they got, whether it was warranted or not.

Some people wonder how I manage to be so calm about this. Don’t worry, so do I. I will probably curl up into a puddle over this at some point, with the harsh, stark realization of it all. I will always be less. I will always be less. And I will be forever searching for that person who sees that I might be more.


And by the way, you two, you know who you are, I feel compelled to remind you that I read your journals and you read mine, I see you in my referrer logs. And I see exactly what is going on. Don’t think I don’t know, because I do. Mark my words, velvet and ballet slippers and dulcet tones are the stuff of daydreams, but the harsh light of reality is enough to shatter the glass you sit behind, exploding like a bullet in a platinum mouth.

9.4.2001

I am back.

My suitcase is not. It was holding my cell phone, my one good remaining camera (a very expensive Minolta 35mm with three of its lenses including a telefoto I saved for months to buy), a really nice Shetland sweater bought in Dublin, several Christmas presents bought in Georg Jensen Silversmiths in Copenhagen (yes, it's as ritzy as it sounds, and I'm not telling you what I spent because it's an obscene amount of money), a lot of my favorite clothes, most of the underwear I currently own, my travel journal, and about fifteen rolls of trip-related film.

The flight from Copenhagen was late, and we only had 40 minutes to make the connection in the first place, but I made the connector flight. The bag didn't.

Therefore, the last place it was seen was in a baggage transfer area, and it's probably still there.

Where, you ask?

In Zurich, Switzerland.

I'm going to go lie down now.