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

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

i'm just getting miserabler and miserabler (yes i know that's not a word. eff off). i'm in one team where they won't listen to me, just carry on doing the most ridiculous things quite happily. aggravates the heck out of me. and in the other team i'm one of the worst players. now this would be fine, in fact for me it should be the ideal setup, cause this way i can learn the most from them. the problem i've got is that they're insisting on playing me, no matter what utter crud i play. and the coach won't bench me until we're 22-something down in the final set, even though the middle hitter on the bench is wayyyyy better than me! thank god we've officially completed phase one of building up the team with this match today (3-0 defeat). now, the aim is no longer to let everyone get some court time in to build up the team, but to actually start winning stuff so that we don't get demoted... if that doesn't mean more bench time for me, i'm gonna have to fake an injury. oh no, wait, no need to fake one, i can pick: the bust elbow, bust fingers, chronically screwy right (i.e. main) shoulder... stupid sport.

and apart from the not being benched, he keeps giving me the same instructions over and over again. fuck, that drives me mad! if i'm playing so badly, that he has to give me the same basic simple instructions in single syllable words 10 times, surely anyone can see that either i'm the biggest moron ever to stumble onto a volleyball court (in which case i should be benched in case i start trying to score goals) or I CAN'T DO IT, I'M FUCKING TRYING AREN'T I!!! and again, SHOULD BE BENCHED, telling me the same thing ten times makes things WORSE not better. fuckit.

Labels: arrgghh, rant, volleyball

arrgh!!! how come everyone else in the room manages to murmur quietly to their collegues, while the ticinesi have to chatter on at full volume?! how come they never ever turn it down?! it's driving me up the wall! last time i worked in this room (two years ago) they were doing a project here too, but at least then they were half-way across the room from me. this time they've got the desk next to mine! i'd have to turn my ipod right up and blast my eardrums to kingdom come before it could drown them out!!! i hope they started their project long before i started mine, otherwise i've got another 5 months of this!!! arrrghh!!! it doesn't bear thinking about!!!
help! help! HELP!!!
(btw ticinesi are swissies from the italian-speaking part of switzerland ticino)

Labels: arrgghh, rant, uni

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

*%&! %$*@!!! &*£!%! &*%@! &**@£$ &*!%$! #&%@!!!! ******* *bleeeeeeep*

so far i've been very good and haven't ranted about any collegues (well there's just the one i've wanted to rant about really), but this is just too much!!! what have i done to deserve this?! however, since i no longer can be sure about who reads this i have decided to rant in german... (swiss german, i'm hopefully assuming that nobody in infineon understands that...)

huere schiisdräck!!! das chan ja ächt nöd wahr sii! dä typ isch eifach mega schlimm!!! scho mal abgseh devo das ich jetzt de gruch vo curry nüm chan usschtah wil er eifach konschtant (aber vorallem am namittag) derna schmöckt...

und är isch bi wiitem eifach nöd der hellscht. är erchlärt mer eifach jede chliine scheiss (wie zum biischpil 'da benützed mer en multiplexer, dä funktioniert e so'... aber das gaht ja no im vergliich zu 'es and-gate, das funktioniert so') schiinbar haltet er absolut jede für ultra dumm, nöd nur mich, aber es närvt trotzdäm mega!!! und s'bescht dran isch das er sälber mega blöd isch!! är hät ewig bis er au s'eifachschti züg begriift, und wärend är sich dure ackeret erchlärt näbebii no doofs züg :-(

aber jetzt! jetzt! ich han's gschafft d'divisions pipeline schnäll gnueg z'mache, vil schnäller als ich dänkt hett das möglich wär. und jetzt han ich's natürlich no müsse teschte, isch ja klar. nur hät de cleveri cleveri sg (au uf dütsch han ich nöd vor sin name uszschriibe *g*) e besseri idee als das ich eifach e testbench schriibe und s'züg simuliere. neinei! mir hacket eus da öppis zäme, wil das vil schhneller gaht. dunschtig friitig händ mer dän versuecht das gehacke zum laufe z'bringe, was eus gäg de friitig abig schiinbar glunge isch. s'resultat: min code isch nöd korräkt, was mich nöd überrascht hät, ich han ja vorhär überhaupt nüt chöne teschte.

hüt isch är chrank gsi, aber ich han's gschafft de fähler uf ungefähr 10 ziile code zrugg z'verfolge, nämlich zumene block us der synopsys bibliothek, wo komischerwiis immer nur nulle ussegit... ich nimm natürlich a, das ich das ding falsch aghänkt han, das isch warschiinlicher als das d'synopsys bibliothek so en schlimme fähler drin hät... nachdäm ich scho fascht de ganzi tag a däm scheiss umegchnoblet han, mues ich eifach iigseh, das min code richtig isch... gange also öpper go sueche wo mer säge chan was da schief lauft.

alli händ mich agluegt als wär ich irgendwie grad vom mars glandet oder so! 'wie um alles i der wält chunsch dän derzue das so zmache??' han ich mer immer wider müsse alose! das bin doch nöd ich gsi, ich hett ja ganz happy e richtigi testbench gschribe (ok, nöd mega happy, aber ich hetts ohni z'murre gmacht)!!! aber nei, mir müends uf di 'schnälli' art mache... grrr!

und dän hät mich de einti hilfriichi typ (kein sarkasmus) zum experte gschleikt (wider di gliiche entsetzte frage...) und dä seit, 'ja, entweder du hacksch no mal chli meh, und machsch es e so... (tönt guet find ich, zimlich eifach) oder du hacksch es eso und kompiliersch der dini eigeni bibliothek (also irgendwie di ganz synopsys library neu baue..), was e chli übertribe isch, findsch nöd au' ja natürlich find ich!! wil ga und de eifach hack umsetze, da seit er no 's'einzig problem isch das es eso eventuell au nöd funktioniert, wil eigentlich isch nöd dänkt das mer das eso macht wi du das mache willsch' ich will ja nöd, s'isch alles de sg!!! arrrgghhhhh!!! und ich 'great, great...' mit zäebissne zähn... de ander hät müsse lache, ob das dän e neui variante vo 'great' seg...

han's dän gmacht, das züg hät ewig gha bis es dureglofe isch, e halb schtund, für's cve vo so emne chliine ding! aber juhui!!! kei fähler!!! ich bin doch guet!!! ;-) han dän no mal de dae (design application engineer) gfragt, är hät de log agluegt und gseit es gsächi guet us...

und ich han wider mal huere vil ziit chöne dermit verschwände en nöd exischtierende fähler zsueche... &*$%"@*!!! schiisgring ahoi!!!

there, i've had my rant, i feel better ;-) just mustn't think about tomorrow...

ps: sorry mirjam, jetzt schriib ich doch ändlich uf dütsch und defür isch es alles so technischs züg... ;-)

Labels: arrgghh, rant

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