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

i thought this was supposed to be a building full of engineers and aspiring engineers! sadly it seems that some of the females on this floor are not the brightest of them all...

there are two cubicles in the female toilets on each floor. i went to the loo a while ago, and the first cubicle was closed. not locked, not occupied (the thingy (what's it called?) was green), just the door closed. i automatically carried on to the second cubicle. don't ask me why, could be anything that made me walk past. complete and utter laziness? could be.

i left the cubicle to find a highly pregnant woman standing there looking surprised. i couldn't quite understand what she was saying, she seemed to be switching between english and german randomly, but it sounded like she was expressing her surprise at so many people being in there at the same time. it's the top floor of the department for electrical engineering, if both cubicles had been occupied at the same time i'd have been surprised too, you don't have to wait here very often. but seriously! the door was just closed!

just now i go back again (i drink a lot of water) and the first cubicle is still closed. again i automatically head for the second one. while i'm in there, someone walks in to the loos, walks up to the two closed doors, huffs in exasperation and leaves again! wtf?

i put the first one down to random not-too-brightness (no, i didn't blame it on her being pregnant! though that might have been the reason *g*). but it happened again! what is wrong with these people?!

i couldn't resist checking when i left, just to make sure. yes, the first cubicle was unlocked and empty!

i should have closed it again ;-)

Labels: bizarre, random, uni

i took the bike to volleyball training last night. this has resulted in two things:

1. my arse hurts! those saddles are awful. you'd think with a backside as well padded as mine, i wouldn't notice the discomfort... stupid bike!

2. i showered when i got home, so i washed my hair last night and went to bed with wet hair, planning to get up nice and early in the morning and sort it out. but when i (finally) got up i couldn't be bothered to do more than run the straightening iron through it quickly. the one side of my head looks ok, but the other side... it looks like this guy:



sorry, i couldn't be bothered to put together a picture of 'half a bad hair day'. but i'm sure you can imagine it.

now i'm just trying to avoid mirrors and glass surfaces. and standing with my back to the sun, my shadow looks freaky today...

Labels: i'm special, random, volleyball

my test bench has decided it's had enough of being a sensible little programme that does as it's told, when it's told. and regular division's boring anyway. it's decided that non-zero remainders are optional. or at least, they're only calculated for certain division operations which are selected using a (pseudo?) random algorithm known only to the imps inside this annoying computer!!! aarrghhh!!! how can a program that hasn't been changed suddenly start doing different random things?!

so to my great delight, i can no longer tell whether a simulation is going well just by checking whether the report file is still empty, because the stupid stupid STUPID (sorry) test bench is insisting that there are errors. 'i want that remainder to be zero. what a cheek to claim it isn't zero!' ZAP! 'ner-ner, i've reported you for not conforming to zero!'

Labels: arrgghh, bizarre, uni

i've fixed my eth webpage. i've taken out the links to this blog, cause as far as i know it was the only way that linked my blog to my full name. it's the only way i've ever found my blog (indirectly) though google by typing in my name.

i know it's compromising my integrity as a freak who doesn't care who reads what on her blog, but it was just too weird. they asked me whether my second project went badly because i disliked the professor! i didn't realise where they got that random idea until the third interviewer told me she'd read the blog. then it became clear to me that they must also have read the eth page where i'd said i didn't recommend doing a project under that professor. i've taken it out now, more compromising... but the reason i specified the professor was that there are two professors in that lab with two completely different fields and i only have experience with the one and i don't know what the field's called...

the only criticism i have (other than the fact that he complained after our presentation that he hadn't understood how PLLs worked because we only explained them very quickly, assuming everyone else in that room knew more about PLLs than us anyway, and especially him, since we'd taken the diagrams out of his lecture notes!!!) is that his english is really horrible! every fifty or so swiss people, you come across one who sounds as if he were still speaking swiss german, when really it's meant to be english. and that professor's one of them. *shudders* but other than that, i have absolutely no reason to dislike him (and even for me that's to ridiculous a reason to actually dislike a person. he can't help being linguistically challenged...)

so anyway, from now on i hope not to have to field such bizarre-seeming questions at any job interviews i might have. trying hard not to think about the last one. still a week to go until i find out! gaaah!!!

Labels: i'm special, job search, uni

i had this interview on tuesday (my first proper interview ever!) and the more i think about it, the more i'm convinced i screwed up! it started badly, with me ending up half way across the county/kanton a quarter hour before the interview was meant to start. stupid online timetable sent me on a train that doesn't go to dübendorf!!! luckily i'd planned in half an hour of wandering around lost, so i was only quarter of an hour late in the end. and thank goodness cecile told me how to get into the building (she had an interview there for a different job) cause not finding my way in just might have finished me off at that point ;-) luckily the last thing i'd done before leaving the house was to write down the number, so i was able to give them advance warning. they were very nice about it, but i can't believe i was late to the interview!!! me who's early everywhere (except to lectures of course *g*)!!!

anyway, i don't think i came across as particularly bright ;-) and to round things off, they'd read my blog! in particular the last post. as i posted it, i thought it might not be the best of ideas. ah well, what's life without a little risk every now and then ;-)

anyway, i'm now on tenterhooks, waiting for them to let me know what they've decided. i was surprised myself, but they didn't say 'sorry for wasting your time, but...'

the job sounds fabulous! it'd be so cool! difficult and challenging, but really fascinating :-) and it's near zürich :-)

help! i can't take the supense!

and now i don't dare post this for fear they might read it and think i'm trying to suck up or something. arrgh! grow up vicky!
*smacks self on head and clicks 'publish post'*

Labels: arrgghh, getting lost, i'm special, job search

i've been asked by some person from some recruiting company to send her more detailed information than i had in my CV so far about my university projects. i managed to cobble together something more or less sensible about the first one, but then i really enjoyed that one and did well in it too.

the second one is not going so well. this is my first draft:

it was crap. using simulink, which is crap. and the results were crap. but luckily the professor was too clueless to realise... crap

it's ok like that, isn't it?

Labels: i'm special, job search, uni

the night before last i had a nightmare. i go to church sunday morning and get pressganged into playing the keyboard with no warning whatsoever and no opportunity to practice at all. looking through the music before the service starts, i see that the first two songs should be ok, they're songs i've played before, so i'll manage more or less ok. but the next two are songs i've never even heard before! short moment of freaking out before i decide that aince i've got the guitar chords and everyone else'll know the song, i can follow their lead with regard to timing and whatever and muddle through somehow.

but when the time actually comes, the person who chose the songs stands up on stage and says 'i heard these next two songs were really nice, so i thought we'd try singing them today :-)' meaning absolutely no one has a clue what they're supposed to sound like and i'm supposed to do an intro... after spending a few moments trying to calm down and just get on with it i work out that the person (it's my mum, but don't tell her, i edited this part when i told her about it) has done it on purpose, just to be nasty or something, not quite sure. i lose my temper, shove over the keyboard (mum's really good, really expensive keyboard) and leg it. the dream carries on, with me on the run all round zurich... *shudders*

yesterday morning (real life sunday morning), no, actually lunch time. we had lunch at church with everyone. after lunch for some reason we ended up on the subject of dreams. so of course i told them about the dream i'd had about church the night before. lili thought maybe i'd been thinking of joining the band and that that was why i'd dreamt it (i told them the edited version too). but i definitely hadn't, don't know why i dreamt such weird stuff.

but ten or fifteen minutes after i'd told them about the dream, the pastor comes up to me and says 'vicky your mum said i should ask you about playing next week, we're really short of people.' lili who's standing next to me just falls about laughing. how weird is that?!

so now i'm playing next sunday. how scary! it'd be scary anyway, the usual pianists are professionals and i'm nowhere near their level! but right after that nightmare... so bizarre, i never usually dream about playing in bethel. lili suggested it might have been a warning ;-) if so. i've ignored it. what's the worst thing that can happen in real life...

now i just have to decide whether to have the lid of the grand piano open or closed: if it's open i'm less visible behind it, but on the other hand it's louder, so they'll be able to hear my amateurish playing better... i think probably closed and play quietly ;-)

Labels: bizarre, churchy stuff, music