Smoking weed in Zug

Last weekend I had the nationals in Zug. It's a nice little town (or a big village, depending on how you look at it) by a lake, surrounded by picturesque mountains. It's famous for being a tax haven in Switzerland as this canton/federate has the lowest income tax rate. So lots of rich people from Zurich tend to have a home here in Zug.

On Saturday night we went to this cafe by the lake where the party is. We sat outside on the benches and when I looked around, I realised that the clientele of this cafe were almost all smoking weed. I believe the laws of smoking weed is quite relaxed in this part of Switzerland, but there was one table that surprised us.

On this table were sat a family. Daddy, mommy and a bunch of kids between the age of 12-17 (my guess). The Dad then rolled up a big joint, lit it up and then passed the joint to the kids. So here we are watching a 12-year old kid puff away on this big joint. The joint kept going around the table, being passed from parents to kids. Then after a while the kids left, with the biggest kid holding this huge joint, where I assume they will smoke it.

I remember the first time I smoked weed, that was back in university (I was on holiday in Amsterdam), and was down on the couch at my friend's place after 2 puffs.

I'm not sure it's healthy for the 12-year old kid to be smoking weed already, I'm inclined to say that it's bad parenting, but voila what can I do? I'm sure my friend (you know who you are) will tell all the psychological and physiological effects this 12 year old is having by smoking weed with his dad and how his future is going to be.

It'll be interesting to see this kid 20 years from now...

Speed Demon

Even though these days I ride my scooter in town, there are still times when I drive my car. Like when I go to training twice a week as it's on the other side of town.

Some time ago, the city changed it's traffic cameras. They used to be old cameras and some of them were either for speeding or for traffic lights but rarely for both. Now they are all digital and are used for both when before it was only for traffic lights.

On the way back from training there is a camera which is for a traffic light that almost never turns red. I used to zip before that camera knowing that I will never be flashed by it. Then they changed it and I wasn't aware of it. Yet. Until this week when I received three speeding tickets.

All three were from the same camera and were taken in the space of two weeks. I go to training twice a week so in that period of time I drove past it 4 times and got flashed 3 times!

Fortunately I don't go too fast. The speed limit is 60 kph and I was driving 70 kph, 68 kph and 70 kph respectively on each occasion. That's a fine of 40 francs each time.

Maybe next time I'll just go on my scooter...

Barcelona

In Spain, Real Madrid won the league in the last 10 minutes. They won their last game, so they won the league even though they tried on points with Barcelona and have a worse goal difference than Barcelona. This is because in Spain the head-to-head result counts first. So a big bummer for Barcelona. (Had the Spanish league used the Dutch rules then Barcelona would have been champion and had the Dutch league used Spanish rules then Ajax would have been champions there.)

I don't think Real Madrid deserve to win the league, it was that lady luck and her friends were sitting in Real Madrid stands at every game.

Not sure if Rijkaard will stay at Barcelona, rumours are that he's tired and want to take a year off. And we don't know whether Capello will stay with Real Madrid or not. All we know is that David Beckham is off to the United States of America to play for the Los Angeles Galaxy and be neighbours with Tom Cruise. He'll be talking about scientology soon, Beckham that is.

Got nothing else to rant at the moment, this is just a random rant coming out of my random mind on a random Monday where I feel that everything is just randomly random.

I need to buy a CD

I have a habit of buying CDs. Normally it's at least one CD per week, most likely it'll be two and when it's a good week I can end up buying 5. It all depends on the time of the year as artists tend to come out with albums at the same time.

But for the past 3 weeks I haven't bought a CD. The last CD I bought was Mark Ronson's Version and that was via Amazon. I'm not sure why I haven't bought anything lately, but it's getting to me now. I need to buy a CD.

Not sure what to buy though. It'll probably end up being an impulse buy, to buy a CD just for the sake of buying it and then ending up listening to it once or twice. I have loads of CDs that I have only listened once or twice (Architecture in Helsinki, Catatonia's Paper Scissor Stone, Manic Street Preachers' Know Your Enemy, Leaves' Angela Test just to name a few).

So what to get?

Travis' The Boy With No Name?
The Nightwatchman?
The latest Queens of The Stone Age?
Bjork's Volta?

I don't know...

Macy Gray at Caribana

Last Saturday was the first night of my summer festivals / concerts. The first festival of the season is Caribana, a nice little festival by the lake. In the past I've seen names such as Phoenix, K's Choice, Moby, Nickelback, Natasha Beddingfield, Supergrass, and even Tom McRae here. Not bad for a festival that lasts 3 days and can only hold up to 7,000 people per day.

This year I went to see Macy Gray. I know she's a bit over the hill already (having climbed it very very fast in 1999) and I saw her already at the height of her fame (in 2001) but I was curious to see what she's like these days.

So she got rid of the big hair. She still has that squeaky voice. She still seems to be getting high before concerts. Seems a bit off, but always managed to pull back at the right time. She's entertaining in a way.

Suddenly she throws in Justin Timberlake's My Love, resulting in her squeaky voice trying to follow Timbalands beats but not quite getting it right. She sang I Try to the delight of the crowd (although she herself seems to be bored of singing that song). And after an hour she went off, without an encore.

Oh well, it was good weather, the beer was flowing and the food was about right. I enjoyed it.