I am NOT SWISS and I DON'T SOUND SWISS either!

i'm a crazy welsh person (who grew up and lives in switzerland)





Monday, April 23, 2007



first day back at work

saturday was my first day back at mcdonalds. relieved to find i haven't forgotten anything, i was there for 8 hours, didn't need to engage my brain once... ;-)

it turns out they've promoted the biggest moron ever to work there to the level of his incompetence. now the guy i've learnt not to talk to because his stupidity makes me want to throttle him and then chop him up into little pieces and throw them on a VERY BIG BONFIRE!! is going to be my boss!!! sorry, i cannot stand that moron, it's toooooooo much! there is honestly nobody worse!!!

i was glad he didn't start till seven on saturday, that was when i finished. i managed to ignore him completely ;-) am ashamed of myself, not very christian and all, but that guy makes me want to put the keyboard through the screen! hmm, maybe i should change the subject now ;-)

annoying other boss person is as bad as ever. insisting that i've just had a six month holiday. 'sprachaufenthalt, das sind ja ferien...' meh, i was working thank you very much! and i already knew english!!! he's got this huge chip on his shoulder cause he failed the second year exam twice at the ETH. so he's always tried to make me feel inferior cause i haven't failed anything so far :-D haha, i'm nearly done and he hasn't started on his 'i'm going to go back and study economics at the uni zurich' nerner-ner-nerner! :-p

not quite sure going back to mcdonalds was the best course of action, but i desperately need money... luckily i only had (more or less) sensible and polite guests on saturday and the two annoying morons didn't turn up till just before i was done ;-)

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Friday, April 20, 2007



puzzlemania

i'm completely hooked on these online puzzles:

www.puzzle-nonograms.com
www.puzzle-loop.com
www.puzzle-bridges.com

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Thursday, April 19, 2007



my blog is boring...

i just looked at the title of my last post... i did warn people that once i was back in switzerland my life would return to its old utter snooze-inducing (of course, that's why i keep oversleeping!) state and so my blog looses most of its entertainment value. no more true tails of me getting so drunk i get completely lost in the back garden... sad, isn't it... i'm sure my liver's quite grateful though ;-)

the polymesse'll be on again in a week or so. it's where loads of companies come to our university to try and find the few intelligent organisms that accidentally ended up here (i think there might be two of them) and get them to go work for them. so of course we're all talking about finding jobs once we're finished. that subject scares the shit out of me... but worse, somehow i've ended up thinking maybe it would just be easier to do a phd than find a job, put it off for a couple more years... waaahhhh!!! no no no! ariane mentioned that they're desperately looking for doctorate students at the iis (integrated systems lab) and suddenly i'm really tempted! luckily i can't do anything about it yet, have to sort out my master's first ;-) hopefully i'll come to my senses in time...

i'm much too susceptible to suggestions: i almost studied biology cause i went to an information day at the uni zurich and in the afternoon all the tours were full except biology so i went on that. no problem really, except that i HATE biology!!! and i had originally promised myself i wouldn't study at the eth, because it's such hard work, only i didn't remember that until the first year exams were a few weeks away by which point there was no way i was giving up unless they kicked me out... and they still haven't, wonders will never cease ;-)

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oops, i've just sat here for an hour doing nothing much...

i just went online to update the volleyball website after which i was going to go and read the compiler design books i got from the library. but now i've been sat here for mare that an hour browsing studivz.net... (updating the website took me 3 minutes). i've found friends i hadn't heard from in ages :-) good fun :-) and a good way to waste loads of time... ah well

volleyball was fun last night :-) yang from english lit came along. she's a complete beginner, but we're desperate ;-) peter's really good, he's very patient and helpful. she did quite well and she enjoyed herself. in fact she enjoyed herself so much she asked 'how do i sign up? where do i pay?' at the end :-D so she'll be back :-) what a shame it's the school holidays now, so the hall is closed for two weeks...

i've got training again today. hurray, lots and lots of volleyball :-D i'd have brought yang along today, but i think this team'd be slightly less tolerant of beginners. i always feel completely useless... but they've promised to let me play middle :-D cause they're desperate, they currently seem to have about 6 outside players, 1 setter (and they don't play 5-1, but there's no way i'd be a setter, i'm absolutely crap at it) and (apart from me) two players who will play middle if they absolutely have to. so of course they were over the moon when i begged to be allowed to play middle :-) i just hope they don't change their mind and decide i'm too crap to be put in such a key position... i desperately need to get better at blocking, fast! luckily i have been getting better at it :-) playing in bristol was really good for me, it improved my blocking, my jumping, and pretty much my whole game :-) so now, every now and again i actually manage to block a ball :-D

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Monday, April 16, 2007



20 shots...

A large and very loud American goes into a bar in Glasgow.
"I hear tell all you Scotch people are real hard drinkers." he says in a big booming voice, "Now you folks just don't know what hard drinking is! Why I'll wager a bet with any man to drink 20 shots of whisky one after the other and give you $500 dollars if you can do it."
No-one takes up the challenge. One bloke even leaves!
"Well, there ya go, sure proves my point!" the American says disgustedly. A few minutes later the guy who left comes in and says "Hey Big Man, is that bet still on?"
"Sure as hell is!" and he orders a line up of 20 glasses of whisky. The man runs along the bar, grabbing each glass and throwing back the contents, to huge cheers and the astonishment of the American. The American of course tries to do it as well, but can't pass the 17th, so he gives the bloke the $500.
"Tell me," slurs the Yank, "where did you go before you (hic!) came back in again."
"Eh? oh aye" says the man pocketing the bills,

"I went tae another pub just tae make sure Ah could dae it!"

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Friday, April 13, 2007



hurray for Döbeli!!!

frau döbeli's the ITET department secretary. marcel and i managed to catch her as she was coming back from lunch so we could hand in our registration forms :-) she wasn't at all surprised. i wonder how many people she gets each term who miss the deadline...

marcel's currently finishing off a semester project and looking for a work placement so he's usually not around. lucky for him that he randomly decided to turf up today, and that i'd screwed up so that i spent lunch time kicking myself for it (no not literally, i've stopped doing that, it never worked). cause he's finished all his exams he assumed he didn't have to register anymore. thing is, you still have to register for the master project if you want to start it this autumn. so if i hadn't been moaning about the registration he'd never have realised (cause i wouldn't have had a reason to tell him) that he had to register today as well...

i hate it when things like this happen. i'm always completely useless for the rest of the day cause i've spent so much energy imagining what could go wrong and beating myself up over it and then the relief... i could just lie down and spend the afternoon being relieved... the thought of having to wait an extra term... eek!!! although there seems to be a rumour that you can register late, you just have to pay a CHF50 fine... who knows, i don't care :-) i never have to register for exams at the ETH again :-D (there's no way (ever!!!(ever!!!!!!)) i'm going to fail these exams!)

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failed to register for exams....

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*takes deep breath*

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CRAP!!!

WHY?! why would they say the deadline for registering is friday, and then the stupid office is closed on fridays!!! that's just ultimately nasty!!! crap crap crap!!!

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007



recruiting for volleyball

for four years now i've been trying to recruit girls for my volleyball teams and failed miserably cause there're so few of us in my course that the couple we have got who would be interested live the other end of switzerland. admittedly that's not very far, as countries go switzerland isn't the largest, but still, who wants to travel two hours to volleyball training and back...

turns out i should have studied something else, it'd have been much more useful ;-) this english lit malarky is definitely growing on me. i managed to recruit two new girls in the break time. just randomly asked them and they were really chuffed with the idea :-) one of them might even come along tonight. i'll have to make sure we do actually train next week, otherwise they might forget all about it or join some other team... only problem is that we are quite away down the lake and i think they both live on the hönggerberg... ah well, we'll see.

cool :-D

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007



registering for exams

i'm convinced they do it on purpose! if you manage to fill out the forms correctly by the time you finish this course you're clearly a human being of very big brain. myself, i'm much closer to winnie the pooh (a bear of very little brain, if i remember correctly). i'm not altogether sure it's possible to get by without ever getting anything wrong. last year my friend ariane (who's very clever!) managed to register for an exam she'd already passed... i signed and dated that i'd handed it in and it was all correct, the secretary was not impressed... managed to avoid that this year. at least, i avoided it on the usual white form, not sure about this new yellow form we have to fill in so that they can print our diplomas if we pass the exams and the master project. the bottom looks exactly the same as on the white form, where i got told off for signing it. however the text just above 'unterschrift' (signature) says 'i am aware that in case of wrong or illegible information i will have to pay to have the diploma reprinted' or something to that effect... it doesn't really make sense that the department secretary would have to sign that...

it's not fair: the IT students always get loads of credits for hardly any work. it's really gutting when we take one of their courses, cause we only get the same number of credits as the course takes hours per week. so for a course that has a two hour lecture and two hours of practical each week we get 4 credits. they get 6!!! gah!

i hate filling in these forms. it's so embarrassing getting it wrong year after year... i guess they're used to it and there are so many of us getting it wrong, but still... there are still blanks on my stupid green form (that's the one where you actually have to write which exams you want to take), i'm hoping rosmarie will answer my email about how many credits we got for 'information systems for engineers' last year, another IT-department lecture. but this one topped the rest: they couldn't decide whether it was 3 or 4 hours a week so the number of credits wasn't clear... we've officially been awarded 3 credits but i'm sure we got an email at some point saying that because it was listed as a 4 credit course in the green booklet of lectures we would be awarded 4 credits even though it was really only worth 3... :-S

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Thursday, April 05, 2007



posting via email (2)

don't like the way it formatted that last email/post. that reminds me: i meant to see whether i can embed html tags or not since the help page wasn't clear (to me anyway). <br>i'm trying again from a different email account. ooh, but it did work so that's something at least :-D


[i guess embedding tags doesn't work, but at least it doesn't convert extra line breaks when i send it from gmail. must remember to use that (if i ever use this function again...)]



posting via email

once again i'm bored. (might be slightly less bored if i'd bothered to
attend a single lecture this week, but ah well...) so i'm playing
around with the blog. this post is really just a test to see whether
the posting via email function works (or if i can screw it up somehow).
i guess there's no point in making it long in case it gets lost... not
that i'd have much to say anyway...

well, here goes...

Wednesday, April 04, 2007



overslept every day so far this week

i've got one lecture each day except on fridays. on monday, tuesday and wednesday the lecture starts at 10.15am. you'd think i'd be able to make it by then. but this week i've overslept every day, haven't been to a single class yet... oops. wonder what'll happen tomorrow morning. rubbishy humanity lecture starts at 8.15... not sure i can be bothered... ah well ;-)

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Monday, April 02, 2007



volleyball season's over

we had out final two matches on saturday. won both of them although we scared ourselves by loosing the first set to a really bad team with me flunking the serve at 24-21 or so. but then we beat them easily in the following two sets so that was alright ;-) we ended up third in the league with the same number of wins as the first and second teams but we'd lost more sets. ah well. at least it means we don't have to worry about the playoffs. our lot never want to get promoted (one year we almost won the playoffs, we'd decided we had to lose the last game no matter what, but then they wiped the floor with us anyway...) and this year we haven't got enough players anyway: there are 8 of us including junior (not my idea to call her that) who tends to go green if she has to play a whole set, one is away somewhere, not sure she'll be back in two weeks time and two others can't make it that day cause they're kids are being confirmed (is it called that in english? no idea. you know, churchy stuff)

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back at mcdonalds

i went to mcdonalds on friday, got my job back. not sure whether that's a good thing though ;-) ah well i can definitely use the money since i can't seem to stop myself spending it no matter how little money i've actually got... hope they don't want me to work next weekend though. i'm not quite sure what marco (restaurant manager) meant when he said easter... did he mean i'd start after easter or at easter? ah well i guess i'll see...

this means i have to get used to planning my life around mcdonalds again. crap. they never let you know when you're working more than a week in advance... but if you want the day off they want a month warning... but i need the money. meh.

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