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

i had a telephone interview with a company in sheffield. richard p. from infineon works there now and he forwarded my CV to the people responsible for doling out jobs ;-)

they seemed impressed with my experience and knowledge. you can really tell the difference: at interviews in switzerland the people doing the interviewing have been to the eth themselves and aren't particularly impressed, cause they've been there, done that and bought the t-shirt. in the uk, they aren't so jaded and can still appreciate that the stuff we're taught here and the practical stuff we do is pretty unique. annoying jaded swiss engineers!

i wasn't very well prepared though. my mum made some comments about how i shouldn't be looking for a job in the uk, and if i absolutely have to get a job in the uk, why not 'that company youu were at before'. and anyway, 'dad says the field you're looking for a job in is very narrow', i.e. why don't you become a computer programmer like i wanted all along...

so i was not in the mood for an interview. i was feeling more like applying for a full-time job at mcdonald's or jumping off a cliff just to spite her... or getting a job in sheffield, it seems like a nice distance from her...

and then they asked some questions where i just thought 'how can they possibly be asking what it sounds like they're asking, that's just too simple. the simple answer can't be the one they're looking for' and didn't answer at all. of course the simple answer was the right one. as usual, well done vicky...

after the interview i had kiwo (kinder woche, kids' week). i've agreed to help out with one of the workshops. so i'm spending an hour a day helping kids make cards. how on earth did i let myself get stuck here?!

my friend who's in charge of this particular workshop got the times mixed up and arrived 5 minutes late. the kids arrived 5 minutes early... so i spent 10 minutes freaking out, going mumbling under my breath about killing alexandra. the problem wasn't only that i simply cannot deal with kids (although that's a huge one to be going on with anyway), but that we'd been given the model for how to make the cards yesterday and alexandra took it home to work it out. so i had no clue what we were meant to be doing... i got them started colouring things in and eventually she arrived and took charge of the annoying boy who was not impressed with the colouring in. instead i got the timid one who was too timid and indecisive to do anything other than colouring in, so i pretty much did all of her card for her. ok, i can see why she claimed she couldn't draw palm trees: at the end she drew some waves (copied them after i drew them on a piece of scrap paper for her). they weren't really wavey, more like jagged... and she's coming back tomorrow to finish the card off! oh noooo! i really don't do well with kids...

Labels: interviews, job search, kids - arrgghh

played in church again yesterday. in spite of the fact that i've been down as playing on that date for about a month, i finally got the names of the songs on wednesday after a spate of emails going 'are you available to play the piano?'... just the names of the songs mind, and for four of the nine the books the music's in. except we've only got one of the two books listed. so the person in charge says she'll send me the rest of the music. by post...

i get a large envelope on friday containing five songs, including one of the two i already had, and a note saying 'sorry, i haven't got the music for the other two.' and she couldn't have told me this by email on wednesday when she promised to send the music? or on thursday when she got ready to send the music, noticed there were some missing, wrote a note about it and posted it to me? a little time bomb to brighten up my friday...

and what about the third missing song that she's just decided not to mention at all?!

i start stomping around, swearing about how i'm never playing with these people again... how come nobody ever understands that I NEED THE EFFING MUSIC IN ADVANCE IT MAY BE A COMPLETELY ALIEN CONCEPT TO YOU BUT I LIKE TO EFFING PRACTICE AND IF I DON'T HAVE THE BLOODY MUSIC UNTIL FRIDAY NIGHT I END UP DOING MY WRISTS IN! and i loose the will to ever play the piano again except for my own enjoyment when nobody else is around...

anyway, i phone the pastor's wife ruth in a panic, assuming that since she's the one who chose the songs, she's probably got some kind of music for them. luckily she also happens to be my brother's girlfriend's mum. so i had the full set of music when i got up saturday morning (or midday, whatever). finally! of course the songs i got last were the hardest to play, how could it have been any other way...

ruth didn't have the music for the last missing song. eventually i managed to calm myself down (i was fine on the phone to ruth, maybe a little frazzled, but since the whole music debacle wasn't her fault there was no reason to be angry at her and i'm pretty sure i was perfectly polite) and had a look through some of the books and found the song. luckily ruth had sung it to me over the phone, so i knew it was the right one. thing is, people are running out of good song titles, so sometimes you find you've learnt the wrong 'holy, holy' (seriously, there are about three songs in ONE BOOK that have that title!)

i think i've lost my train of thought. where was i?

anyway, all the feedback said the music sounded great (except for one moron who told me the piano was too quiet and i should play louder. he got growled at for trying to be funny while i was trying not to unleash a stream of neverending music-playing-hating abuse into the general atmosphere...) which is good. but i just felt... awful, angry, frustrated, depressed, did i mention angry?

at band practice i managed to explain that i NEED THE FLIPPING MUSIC AT THE LATEST ON WEDNESDAY AND THAT'S ONLY CAUSE I CAN TELL YOU OBVIOUSLY CAN'T SURVIVE BY YOUR WITS ALONE ...oops the subject makes me angry and i've been reading dilbert books... i meant it's obviously too much to ask for a full week, so i'll compromise by allowing for wednesday (even when they promise a full week i get it on tuesday if i'm lucky). i managed to say it calmly and hopefully non-confrontationally. but i was too stressed over it to use the usual diplomatic 'it's my problem not yours, but could you please help me with it?' tactic. cause in this case i really don't see why it's too much to ask. how come i'm the only one practicing anyway?! to me, not to practice would be disrespectful. but i guess they don't see it that way.

anyway, i managed to tell them in a mostly positive way, so hopefully they'll remember and be aware of my need for timely provision of the music, for the time being...

since i'm playing again this sunday coming, but with a different group of people, i thought it might be best to give advance warning rather than turn round afterwards and say 'the music is late, i'm not playing!' cause none of them was in church yesterday i had to send an email. i hate sending emails about stuff like this. it's much harder to tell whether it's coming across properly or not. i hope they don't take it the wrong way...

urgh, life is difficult sometimes. especially when you have a temper like mine and are supposed to be all loving and christian... you know, during the 'worship' (that's what the singing-songs part of the service is called) the band members are meant to be chanelling the holy spirit so that the congregation will be touched, according to the band leaders. while this is a worthy thought, the only spirit i tend to chanel is definitely not holy... i have to count it as a success when i manage to restrain myself from thumping the keys angrily during mellow songs after some new screw up... (so far i've always succeeded, but it's been a close thing every time)

Labels: churchy stuff, life, music, rant, temper

you know, i thought no-one at the day care center knew about us except our two close friends (hmm, what were their names?). one day i thought i was being clever when i asked one of the carers 'you don't know who i love, do you?' (can you hear the 'ner-ner' tone of voice?). i was utterly horrified when she knew!!!

but i got over the horror, and was only slightly more self-conscious about the whole thing (i was a very shy child, adolescent,... in fact, i'm still very shy. i just mostly manage to overcome it with a huge amount of effort. and then you can't get me to shut up...)

the worst thing about everyone knowing... i'm still ashamed and it's been nearly twenty years now!

we were in kindergarten and kinderkrippe (day care) together, and until that fateful moment i was convinced that no-one but our two faithful sidekicks knew and was desperate to keep it that way. i think i might have thought my mum would find out. just don't ask me why that would have been such a tragedy, that's a whole other can of worms.

so one day in kindergarten we were playing a game of some kind of tag. i can't remember exactly what happened. he was standing on a chair next to me, and he'd obviously done something i construed as endangering our cover of 'just friends'. i shoved him, just a little, to show anyone who might have been watching that there was nothing (absolutely nothing, do you hear?!) between us. (can you believe it, i was six! clearly, i've always been a weirdo.)

roberto fell off the chair and hurt himself. not badly, but of course the teacher was very upset, anything could have happened! she sent me to sit outside in the corridor as a punishment.

i was absolutely devastated! i hadn't meant to hurt him! i'd never have... and now i couldn't even apologise cause i was stuck out here and he was inside... i hated myself for hurting him.

and when i was let back in, i was too embarrassed to go and apologise. i don't think i ever apologised for it properly. and although he didn't really get hurt physically, i'm still ashamed of it. how sad is that...

and that was the worst thing about finding out that everyone 'knew about us': that horrendous moment was completely unnecessary (of course it would have been unnecessary anyway to a normal person, but we're not talking about a normal person here), cause everyone already knew anyway.

better memories: the four of us used to play this game where two of us were in the little room at the back of the kinderkrippe-building and the other two went outside the door. it seems to somehow have evolved out of nothing. the two inside would hide under the covers in the bed there and the two outside would creep back in and try to scare them. who knows why...

but it evolved further to the point where roberto and i would always insist on being the two in the room, so we could kiss under the covers. we thought we were so grown up! no tongues of course ;-) i'm not sure we could have imagined it...

our friends got more and more bored of this version of the game. in fact, i think the boy gave up on us completely, long before the girl did. she kept trying to get us to switch places, but i was too jealous... oh dear ;-)

how weird, the things you find hidden in your memory sometimes...

the last time i saw roberto: the final day of kinderkrippe, before we all went off to separate schools in different parts of bern. we didn't want to say goodbye till the last minute. but his father came to pick him up and i was terrified of his father. he was a doctor. i think he was quite strict, but i'm sure he wouldn't have bitten me for saying goodbye to roberto ;-)

but i was too shy and scared to go up and say goodbye. i just lurked and watched him leave without ever looking back. he didn't say goodbye either...

（；_・）

Labels: guys, i'm special, sad, sometimes i don't like me, x365

it's fun. and it has one huge advantage over volleyball: my knees aren't even aware i went to training tonight. i didn't realise until i had to walk up the steps at the station on the way home, but my knees feel completely fine and that is not normal for wednesday nights...

i didn't get much of a sweat going though, as there wasn't much any training, it was all playing. and because i wasn't particularly confident, i didn't chase every ball that might have been mine but let the more experienced players take it, so i didn't move as much as some of the others. but in time that should change. :-)

my left arm got rather cold though as the hall wasn't heated and the weather is back to being a bit chilly. i was going easy on my left wrist (i'd have used it less anyway, as the normal, right-handed person that i am *g*) cause i overdid it last weekend practising for playing in church. i wasn't supposed to be playing, but the guy who was backed out very late. so i started practising friday night, i didn't even know half the songs, and of the ones i did know i'd only ever had a go at one of them once for fun...

i told myself no-one could complain if i didn't play them as well as possible, given the short notice. and no-one would care. i knew this. except that there was one single person who would have cared if i hadn't given my all: me. so i ended up getting one of those infection thingies in my wrist (sorry, i only know the german name: sehnenscheidenentzündung) from going from playing the piano for an hour or two a month or an hour per day if i'm playing in church on sunday to four and a half hours of serious band practise one saturday morning... bad, bad idea. (and if i'd realised it would be that long, i'd have had breakfast first...)

anyway, after putting cream on it and bandaging it up to keep myself from using it too much, my wrist feels mostly better. mostly. and now my right hand hurts too from the fistball. my little finger feels seriously bruised and i can't work out how that could have happened. i hope it's not broken...

and i'm playing again this sunday. and the week after. hmmm...

ah well, same old same old, my hands hurt and my shoulders hurt (but that's just from habit and cause they've needed a serious massage for years now, but i'm too ticklish to let anyone near them). but my knees don't! hurrah! success :-)

Labels: fistball, i'm special, music, volleyball

i woke up this morning to a loud, confusing noise. well, when i say woke up i mean got up, or perhaps stood up. because i certainly wasn't awake! i lurched towards the bathroom, passing the source of the aggravating racket. it had to be stopped. my hand reached out, lifted the receiver and slammed it right back down again, never even breaking (my admittedly lurching) stride.

until... i woke up. and realised what i'd just done! oh crap, i hope it wasn't important...

i went back to bed and woke up again to the sound of the door bell ringing. still slightly befuddled, i initially thought it was the phone again. 'i'm not going to get it, i might slam it down again, best just to let it ring.' my brain doesn't really work properly until an hour or two after i've got up. by the time i realised it was the door bell this time, i couldn't be bothered to get up. 'anyway, i'm in my pyjamas. and it's probably just one of my sister's friends and she's away anyway...' were my more or less lucid rationalisations.

eventually whoever it was gave up and left.

this guy from the insurance company phoned up and went on and on at me about something and insisted i take a message for mum. i hope i can decipher it when she comes home, cause he himself wasn't particularly coherent and my writing is bad to start with, but when some german guy is mumbling at you down the phone at top speed, it starts looking rather hieroglyphic...

a friend of mine who works for a recruiting company phoned to give me some tips on my CV. that was the one good phone call today ;-)

then some woman trying to sell burglar alarms phoned up. i've had her on the line before. it's getting annoying. she did mention that she'd tried to phone this morning and not reached anyone... that cheered me up a bit :-)

i'm surprised the woman from the piano tuning company hasn't phoned again. yet. i should probably run away in case she does ;-)

i'm off to try fistball. hope i don't break anything...

Labels: fistball, i'm special, job search

wow! i'm on indie bloggers. how cool is that :-)
thanks stacy!!!

doing the sitting-down happy dance again :-D
yay!

(here's the original post btw: the moment)

Labels: happy dance, i'm special, literary genius?

i'm fixing the last of my code for my masters project. except i'm spending a lot more tie surfing the internet than doing anything else. nothing new there...

right now i've got an excuse, i'm waiting to find out whether the upgrades i've made to my testbench actually work, or if i've just screwed the whole thing up again.

i've just spent ages trying to find this fun blog i stumbled across while i was meant to be working myself to death two weeks ago, called have you met me?. google refused to find it, even when i did a blog search for 'have you met me'. stupid search machines, they haven't got a clue! eventually i remembered that i'd found it via indie bloggers. Finally!

grace (from have you met me?) links to garfield minus garfield. how superb is that! garfield without garfield there. utter genius! :-D

Labels: blogs, fun, links, random

much less traumatic than the last one ;-)

although the zvv website tried to send me on a train that doesn't exist this time... luckily there was a different train going to the right place so i caught that and then had to run to catch the bus cause the actual train was slower than the mythical one i'd planned to take... ah well.

in spite of the zvv's nasty tricks i managed to get there half an hour early, so i had a wander round. it's quite nice, right by the woods, lots of green, so lunchtime wanders look good again :-)

the people interviewing me were all very nice, and if they'd read my blog they seem to have ignored it, cause there were no weird questions :-)

and the job sounds great, much better than the other one: challenging and interesting, but slightly less scary responsibility. i want it! :-)

they want me to sleep on it and let them know on friday whether i'm interested or not. i'm interested!!! gimme gimme! :-)

the two engineers who interviewed me have both been at the eth and know both of my supervisors and want to get a reference from them. i hope h recommends me...

Labels: interviews, job search

hope it goes better than the last one ;-) as long as these people haven't read my blog, it could hardly not go better... ;-)

i'm so nervous! wish me luck!

Labels: job search

where to start?

volleyball first. i've quit both teams, although with the one ('my other swiss volleyball team') it's not definite. i am planning to take a break from volleyball now. it's not really a happy thought, i've been playing it for fifteen years now, i can hardly imagine life without it :-S but for the last few months, being on that court has been a nightmare for me. i haven't actually enjoyed a single match. sure, there have been some cool points where i couldn't help but be pleased, but overall, the main feeling on court has been 'please let me off this damn court', with the added though of 'what underwear am i wearing, can i just quit, strip off the kit and leave with my head held high?' mostly the answer was 'yes, but are you sure you want to do that? apart from anything else it would be seriously burning your bridges...' i managed to hold it together (just) and quit more civilly after the season ended ;-)

so hurray, what a relief! :-D

and i might even have found a replacement: fistball :-)

spent the afternoon at michi's (guy from church) flat with some friends. most of the time the topic was the music in church and the good old days when andi m. ruled the band with an iron fist. at some point i mentioned that my thursday evenings are now free cause i quit both my volleyball teams (hurrah!). it seemed a bit random when michi said 'so you trained on wednesdays?' huh, how does he know and why should he care...

he plays fistball on wednesdays and is recruiting... it sounds like it could be fun. quite like volleyball in many ways, but different. and his team doesn't actually play in a league, it's just training and random tournaments sometimes. but they train hard anyway. hurray, definitely trying that! and i've already got the knee pads ;-)

so that was the good result of the afternoon.

the bad one. hmm...

i played the piano again in church this morning. on the whole it was fun. some minor screw-ups (which resulted in me having to force myself not to thump at the keys during some soft songs *g*, but mostly fun. and most people complemented us on how wonderful it sounded. lots of praise for my playing. i now believe i play well enough not to be an impostor up there ;-)

but there are some who like to criticise any imperfection, not matter how minuscule. each and every one of them is someone who themselves plays or has at one time played in church. my dad's one of them. to my great shame i'm one of these people too. however, i always manage to praise the musicians rather than criticise them, because i recognise that the problem has nothing to do with their musical ability and performance, i couldn't do it better. the problem lies in my need to take every pianist apart and convince myself that i probably would have done it better this time. it's because i'm jealous they're up there and i'm not. i'm ashamed of myself and trying to work on it... as we played today 'i'm sorry Lord for the thing i've made it, when it's all about You'...

seriously though it was a total criticism-fest! i'll admit i agreed with some of the stuff cause some stuff seriously bugs me and makes it impossible for me to play properly. but they were going on about how great it was when andi m. was in charge and the days when they had auditions for places in the band. yes, auditions! can you imagine? it's church ffs!!! if you can't let everyone have a whack at it in church, where else?!!! and apart from that, was that a dig at me?! after i've just started believing i'm good enough? screw you... he claims it wasn't aimed at me, and a male friend told me a while ago, when a guy says something that could be an insult or it could just be missing filter between mouth and brain, it's generally the latter. but i'm a girl. i'm not convinced...

there was good stuff and bad stuff. michi thinks you should have band practice every week, build up a repertoire of songs you can do pretty much perfectly and work from there. i think that's a great idea and would totally commit an evening a week to it, if we did something like that. thursday is good now that volleyball's out ;-)

but somehow i don't think it's likely to happen. and seriously, this barrage of criticism has kind of depressed me. right now i don't want to play at all anymore if
that's the reaction... how horribly annoying! next time i play i'll be obsessing over it, i can see it coming already :-( buggrit.

it wasn't even that close to perfect as they think when andi did it anyway! they're just remembering the good, not the bad...

and anyway, professional isn't that attractive. this is church, ffs! it's not supposed to be smooth and slick, it's supposed to be from the heart! man i hate this!

Labels: churchy stuff, fistball, guys, music, volleyball

during the fun and games with the free dictionary last week, dani remembered this wonderful collection of the most obscure and rare words in the english language:
the grandiloquent dictionary

never having heard of 'grandiloquence' before, i promptly tried to look it up in it's own dictionary only to find it's not in there! is there a gaping hole in my vocabulary?! or does the word not exist...

i asked the free dictionary:
gran·dil·o·quence

huh, i guess you learn something new every day :-)

Labels: links, random, words

ok, the last post was a bit freaky. sorry about that. i was in a freaky place...

have recovered quite well, thank you, after spending the last two days sleeping, with a few breaks to relax, eat something, maybe watch a film (love stardust, almost as good as the book *g*) and then go back to bed.

i kind of went from freaky to being slightly depressed (while i was awake, anyway). but i'm slowly building up to excited. currently i'm at pleased. maybe even very pleased. i'm getting the urge to do cartwheels again, which is a good sign :-)

i should celebrate. but how? can't go out drinking, my drinking buddies are all in bristol :-(
maybe the cinema. but there's nothing on that i'd want to go see to celebrate having survived uni... hmm, what to do about it?

Labels: i'm special, sleep deprived, uni, weird urges