In Switzerland, paternity leave is a fun thing. Women are entitled to (usually) 14 weeks of leave. Fathers, on the other hand, way less, and this “privilege” is still deeply divisive among Swiss politics because, you know, men have to go to work, women have to stay home and raise children. All this only started… Continue reading Paternity Leave
Author: blogayfkm
Post Sent
Finally we got all the Taiwanese documents, legalized them etc. They have been sent by registered post to the Swiss Industries Office in Taipei, luckily nobody had to go there in person because it’s a few hours drive from Taileng. Meanwhile, I mailed my birth certificates and copies of our passports to the Zivilstandsamt in… Continue reading Post Sent
Comments Are Open
Let’s try this out. Blog comments are now open for everyone, not only for registered users BUT they are manually approved, so FU spammerbots. I’ll give this a try as long as the volume remains manageable but, needless to say, it might take years months weeks a few days before your comment appears, and I… Continue reading Comments Are Open
Mei-Lin’s Birth Certificate #2
So, Mei-Lin’s relatives ordered ANOTHER copy of her birth certificate from Taileng’s city administration. Just to be clear: that’s not for free. Then we asked the notary. “It’s very strange” she said, “I have never had a problem like this, in fact my duty is also to certify the accuracy of the translation, so in… Continue reading Mei-Lin’s Birth Certificate #2
Conflict Of Interest
We have some homework to do. Let’s start with the easy part: my birth certificate. There is actually TWO types of birth certificates you can get from Italian authorities: the ESTRATTO and the INTEGRALE. In theory both work, but just to be sure I’m gonna go for the INTEGRALE I opted for the “ESTRATTO” instead,… Continue reading Conflict Of Interest
Serse Is Born
At the beginning of december 2022 our son Serse was born at a local hospital in Zerneve. During the previous months, Mei-Lin and I discussed over and over again our geographic options for giving birth. We are resident in Switzerland, but our families live in Italy and Taiwan, and to be honest it’s quite a… Continue reading Serse Is Born
Preamble
So it has come to this. We already had the idea of starting a blog like this back in 2020, when it was becoming clear that getting married for us would have been an ordeal, but we didn’t consider it interesting or complicated enough back in the time (obviously we were wrong). We again came… Continue reading Preamble
About
Hello, we are the Fantasia family, a multi-cultural couple and their two children living in Switzerland. In this blog we are going to show you how our life is a daily struggle against the evil forces of international bureaucracy, and we will share with you our successes and defeats. Most of the times defeats.
Usually we live a relatively happy life, except when the bureaucracy demons come screaming and tearing our flesh apart with some obscure, ridiculous process that threatens our path to a peaceful existence and forces us to a fight for survival. When this happens, we will exorcise our fear and our shock by saying ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME (AYFKM in short).
We are:
Mario Fantasia: an ’80s guy from Spelunca, Italy with a PhD in tech, who moved to the big city of Zerneve, Switzerland, around 2017, pursuing new career opportunities and dreams of shitloads of money which never came true.
Mei-Lin: a 90’s gal from Taileng, Taiwan with a passion for food and manga, a real otaku with deep knowledge of Japan and its culture and language. She abducted Mario in 2018 and turned him into a personal cooking slave.
Penelope: our firstborn girl, born in Taiwan in 2021.
Serse: our secondborn son, born in Switzerland in 2022.
All the above names and references are absolutely not made up. OK, yes, they are. We will try to keep a minimum of dignity and privacy in this blog, although people who know us can easily identify us by this description. Whatever.
How To Read This Blog
This is probably going to be a boring read for you, unless you like pain. In any case, this blog recounts facts and experiences in chronological order, starting from early 2023 onward, and adds some background on events happened before that where necessary. You can jump to random posts if you like, but that would probably leave you confused. The best way is probably to start with the Preamble and follow from there. If you get lost, check the Glossary.
Contribute
This is a personal blog without 3rd party affiliation or advertisement. If you like what we write and would like to help us with our legal expenses to support this blog, feel free to buy us a box of diapers beer! We only support cryptocurrency donations for now, because that’s the easiest way to evade taxes integrate them in this blog.
Monero: 8C8gUg5S956VgSNuUCQTas8LG77jZ8oVp34tDBSHnabVYEjSycFY31BFk5wRGtfsE6BZ14AF1nNCi4Ea3JYiLAfcAyer9ns
Bitcoin: 3JDzRroduGHUty86gJJi8ygQq8eXisKTFD
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Algorand: HKW4PU6GTXZA4RKWOROMHBJSGY4FDDNQCPMUGFMEZEYDUEYNGA3ZYTQBX4
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Are You Fucking Kidding Me 