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

i've just gone through my posts to see how many old drafts i haven't finished and there are quite a few of them. never finished the full sized version of the office christmas party, christmas and new year never got done, there's a long list of notes from about two weeks ago, i think that was quite a full week, and i was away in cardiff last week... and of course i didn't even complete the sunday night in dublin (dia bashed her leg, nearly broke it, remember...) let alone monday (jameson distillery...). haven't even got a draft for that though.

so anyway, i'm going to start with the most recent stuff and then... no actually i'll probably just write down whatever comes to mind (as usual, why am i bothering to write this, it's not as though there's ever much of a structure to my ramblings...)

now my mind's blank... (yes, more so than usual...)

going back chronologically...

had my second to last (9th) guitar lesson with charlie tonight. cause i'd been in cardiff most of last week i hadn't really practised much, but he was still pleased with me. i finally decided to call him on the whole 'you're so talented, the rest of my students are quite rubbish' thing, but he insists it true, that he's not just saying it cause it's a good way to motivate me. still don't believe him though ;-) he's not happy that i'm going back to switzerland, he'll lose his excuse for not helping put the kids to bed on monday nights :-)

was just leaving the house this morning when i heard the bed making odd squeaking noises in the boys' bedroom (no, this is not going to be rude!). went in to find they'd put the ladder from josh's new bed across between the two beds and josh was climbing up it almost two metres off the floor and caleb had done his trick of positioning a plastic box underneath so in case someone did fall off they'd be sure to get sliced to ribbons on the shards when it shattered (he did that to himself about a month ago, i obviously didn't write about it. his back looked awful, he nearly had to go to casualty (i think if his mum weren't a doctor he might have gone)). usually i leave them to whatever mischief they're up to when they're meant to be getting ready for school, after all marion and dave managed to cope before i arrived, they don't need me butting in just cause i'm here (what i'm saying is i'm not very diplomatic, so the kids are more likely to go berserk than calm down if i try to interfere...). but this did seem slightly dangerous (PG to my way of thinking: a parent should be made aware of it so they can decide whether or not it is in fact too dangerous (cause sometimes i seem to overreact to things, or at least marion doesn't think they're as dangerous as i do)). i went and tattled... dave's reaction did seem to say that he thought it looked quite dangerous as well (my way of saying they got yelled at). so i was quite glad that tom seemed to have forgotten all about it when we got picked up from our various activities tonight :-) telling tales tends not to help things, but sometimes you just have to...

sunday next. nothing much happened. church was good. trixie puked on my clean jacket. her teeth are quite sharp and she really enjoys using them. left big dents in my thumb ;-) the twins are incredibly fast now! kept trying to retrieve them and bring them back to ulrika but she didn't seem bothered so i gave up. then i went off to look for the polyp and trixie got there first. i had to pick her up cause she was blocking the doorway and causing a traffic jam (there are a lot of people at that church). so i brought her back to ulrika at which point she puked all down my arm...

gotta go, just spent ages chatting to my brother on msn and now marion's back from her prayer meeting so we can watch battlestar :-D for some reason tim suddenly seems to think he's the most sane member of the family (although it should probably be least insane). ah well, if it helps him to thnk that. although it's a difficult call... hmm, i wonder who it is. maybe we should have a vote on it when i get back

Labels: churchy stuff, kids - arrgghh

thursday night marion and dave went off to their swimming lesson, leaving me to babysit three little sleeping angels... er, no! caleb was sleeping, but tom and josh were wide awake, making me wish i were asleep having a nightmare so that i could just wake up from it!

first load of thumping
me: i heard thumping. what's going on?!
tom (in a very indignant voice): nothing! it's not us. it must have been in the kitchen
me: nope, it was definitely not downstairs. i think it was you
i stand there glaring at him for a while
tom (whiny, 'it wasn't me'): josh's in my bed
me (thinking why me?!): umm, what's he doing there???
tom: oh no, i was wrong, he's not in my bed
me: ok. so what's that lump at the end of your bed then?
tom: it's my teddy bear
i wander down to the end of the bed and tickle josh so he starts wriggling
me: your teddy bear moved! that's not normal teddy behaviour!
tom: i did it, it was my legs, wiggles his legs see, i did it again
i'm still tickling josh until he kind of sneezes/snorts/laughs
me: it snorted! surely teddy bears don't snort!
tom: it was me! makes a similar kind of noise see, me! i did it again!
so i carry on tickling until josh can't take it any more and comes out from under the covers

so i put josh back to bed and go back downstairs to my film (can't remember what it was). of course there's more thumping. but when i go back upstairs i can't find any incriminating evidence and of course they're back to pretending they're innocent, this time tom claims the neighbours must be making the noise.

the third time i go up i find josh has made a den in his bed by hanging up his welsh flag. we agree that since he's finished building his den he can now go to sleep in it and we'll forget about the whole thing.

but of course once again there's thumping. quite a few loud thumps this time. tom claims it was books falling out of his bed ??? why are books falling out of his bed??? but to tom this is a perfectly reasonable claim, when i question it he starts to get aggressive. gah! annoying brats!

in the end i just turned up the volume on the film and ignored all further thumping. brats!!! only good thing was that caleb slept through the whole kerfuffle.


second mare:
marion and dave went to church sunday evening after i stupidly offered to babysit so they could both go (you'd think i'd know better!). the kids were such (SUCH!!!) monsters!!!

started out, tom was in marion and dave's bed reading, josh was in tom's bed reading (there's a kind of cover on it so the light should have disturbed caleb less), and caleb was in his cot. first there was a load of thumping. both times i went up joshy had got out of bed to give caleb back his dummy.

the third time it was time for tom and josh to put the lights out, but caleb was hopping up and down in his cot, just generally being naughty. so i put josh in the playroom and made tom stay upstairs, which they both accepted, i was very grateful.

but then there were more noises: josh had crept upstairs into bed with tom. i said they could both stay if they promised to behave, so they promised. of course it didn't work... when i then asked who was going to sleep downstairs they both pointed to tom, so off we went to put him to bed in the playroom.

at this point i decided to just pretend to go back downstairs, made some thumping noises and then waited on the stairs. quite quickly i heard tom's bed squeak as he got out and then the loft floor started creaking and josh knocked something over... cause tom always pretends he was going to the loo i thought i'd let him get far enough that he couldn't pretend before i told him off. by this point i was furious though: marion and dave had been gone for 90minutes and i was only half an hour into the film!!! it sounded like josh had found a load of coins and kept dropping them on his way to the stairs :-S odd child...

josh seemed to have stopped at the top of the stairs and was playing with the coins when tom finally crept out of the room (proper creeping, all hunched up...). he was obviously about to head into their bedroom when he spotted me, straightened up, said 'i'm going to the toilet!' in a very defensive tone and marched off to the toilet. at which point i decided i'd had more than enough: i shouted up to josh to get back in bed right now or he'd be very, VERY sorry. 'oh, ok' goes josh... ;-)

when tom rushed out of the loo and back into the playroom i warned them: 'if i have to come back up here one more time, i WILL start yelling! and tom, i know you can yell loudly (oh, and how he loves to do so the spoilt brat), but i can yell sooooo much louder!!!' and went back downstairs.

five minutes later i can hear someone shouting for me! 'WHAT?' i realised it was caleb so i went in but he was snuggling into the covers, wouldn't answer me, so i went out again. at which point of course he goes 'water! water!' so i had to find a cup, filled it with water, with him yelling more insistantly by the second. get back and he refuses to drink it! then he points to the floor by the cot and goes 'water'... he was just confessing to having tipped his water... so i had to try and convince him that it was fine, that the water would dry...

of course every time i'd checked on caleb i'd had to check whether he'd taken off his nappy and weed in the cot (or through the bars) cause that's his favourite trick nowadays. luckily he didn't do it last night, i would have freaked!

well, after that i turned up the volume again and ignored them. that worked, by the time marion and dave got home they were all fast asleep. except josh was back in tom's bed :-S (tom was still in the playroom). musical beds!!! that'll teach me to offer to do extra babysitting!! monsters!!!

Labels: kids - arrgghh, rant

marion's gone out to prayer meeting and tom just keeps yelling for her. he was yelling 'muuuuuuuum!!!' over and over about an hour or so ago so i went up and told him he could yell all night cause she'd gone out and whether i could help him. so he said 'never mind' :-)

but now he's started again. and he woke caleb! could have throttled him. good thing caleb didn't throw his dummy very far or tom might just have got a bit of a fright... grrr!

went for a run with marion earlier. seven minutes ;-) ah well, everyone has to start somewhere... at least i didn't collapse wheezing. and next time we'll make it a bit longer. seven minutes thirty seconds is the aim :-D

marion's found someone who knows a volleyball team. the mother of someone in tom or josh's swimming lesson. and this lady is going to find out where and when they train and whether i could go along ;-) hurray!!

had a bit of a failure of a day. nothing worked, my stupid block just kept going slower and slower instead of faster and faster :-( and the area kept getting bigger and bigger...

but at least the weather was absolutely wonderful. it was totally foggy :-D i really love that! no seriously! got out of work at five feeling completely miserable, saw the weather and danced down the road to the bus stop... i'm not kidding, sorry :-) i have enough trouble at the best of times stopping myself from dancing down the street when i'm listening to fun music, but in that weather? not a chance :-D at least i managed to refrain from doing cartwheels this time

lovely lovely weather!!! i really hope it stays like this :-D

Labels: kids - arrgghh, volleyball

my cousin tom is an absolute nightmare! he's 8 in three weeks but he behaves like a teenager, sulky, oversensitive, screaming at his parents, yelling 'how dare you do this' 'how dare you do that' and these explosions happen every day... i'm sure i wasn't ever that bad, even at my worst i was mostly just horribly sulky ;-) (i say mostly, i did explode, but not daily!!!) and he's only 8, what'll he be like at 15?! ideally he's getting it over with now and he'll be a really nice kid by then, but somehow i doubt it...

i've survived a whole month in this crazy house with three small boys and my crazy (but lovely) aunt (and my uncle of course, but he doesn't need to be survived, he's laid back AND normal ;-) ). not sure i can take much more though. the kids are driving me up the wall. i didn't want kids before, but now i really can't see how anyone could decide to have kids after thinking about it carefully: sure babies are really cute (when they're not puking on you or screaming at you) and toddlers are very cute (especially when they're saying sorry for trying to break all the bones in your foot with a serving spoon 'sowy kiki, sowy kiki, sowy kiki...' ad infinitum) but after that all the cuteness in the world can't make up for the monsters... anyway, no kids, thanks!!

Labels: kids - arrgghh, rant