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The locals adore flowers and they do dress up buildings like nobody's business.

More sail boats.

Pedal boaters exercising their quads.

Facing a distant Lausanne.

Somewhere in the middle, Switzerland ends and France begins. But I haven't checked the map closely enough yet to know exactly where. Let's just say that "doing lunch in La France" is a mere ferry ride away even for regular folks here.

A tele zoom capture of the Mirador Kempinski. Very close to the right of the blue crane but hidden behind the trees is the Tibetan monastery where a resident yak grazes the meadow.

A statue of the Vajrasattva deity at home reminds us of the Tibetans' proximity up the mountain.

To return to audio -- somehow, belatedly and in mere passing -- Vajrasattva sits atop a stack of bonsai audio in the new office: Red Wine Audio's one-box Isabella/Isabellina and 30.2 amp fronted by a MacBook, all eagerly awaiting the arrival of my speaker harem and headphones. Sleeping the sleep of the innocent (ha!) is Blondie the cat. A Cyprus find, she's named after Clint Eastwood's character in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. He was the "Man With No Name". And Blondie still doesn't know her name so you can call her anything you want. Hence Blondie, she of the treasure. And in case you wonder, yes, Casa Chardonne is the house that Ikea built. Thank the Heavens, there's a massive Ikea in Aubonne which makes outfitting a new home a far saner proposition than some of the other luxo outfits around here. For example, we found a bedding place outside Rolle that wanted CHF 30,000 for a mattress. I kid you not. Stuffed with horse hair doesn't begin to tell that tale. I thought the Swedish sales woman was off her rocker though she just worked there and let on that she was equally out of her league. If she only knew what I've spent on hifi already. She'd call me a deep six off my rocker - and not the Ikea version above. Well, now you have a few images to put with our new haunt. Henceforth, we'll focus on audio again. If that container deigns to show up. A phone call to our Cyprus agent Athina Papaneophytou might be in order by now? Not that I'm looking forward to unloading it. The after will be the good part. When the system is up 'n' running again...