Perceptions

I was feeling ever-so-slightly depressed at the weekend. I wasn't unhappy, but was a little tired and dispirited, and most of all I was feeling inadequate.

So when I went juggling in the park on Sunday morning I had the feeling that I wasn't much good at it. The throws that should have gone straight up in the air went a bit to the side, and the crossed throws looked ragged. I could do a trick with my right hand well, but with the left hand it looked all wrong. All in all I seemed to spend much of the time picking up dropped balls.

There were a few kids out with their mum and dad to fly a kite. They were amazed how good I was, and couldn't believe their luck that someone so unbelievably good was juggling in front of them. When the kite was successfully launched (launching a kite is so much more fun than flying it), they turned their hands to juggling two balls. One of them was really good and is well on his way to juggling three balls. This success cheered me, and I realised that I can juggle enough balls to start a minor workshop.

Young children give the best feedback, as they are so bad at fake politeness, lying or hiding their feelings. I know there are other things in which I'm not as useless as I think I am, but sometimes I don't know exactly what they are. Maybe I should be less scared at overestimating myself. What's the worst that can happen?

Schon wieder ein Deja Vu all over again.

I'm back where I was in September 2006: unemployed, looking for a job, and trying to fill out all the necessary forms. I'm trying to do things better this time and not get annoyed as quickly. The most difficult part of becoming officially unemployed is filling out the form which certifies that I had a job. The employment agency gave me six working days to get this form completed, and told me to ring them for a personal appointment by today.

In these six days, I had to take the form from the employment agency to the Personell department of the University, who had to send it to the central administration in Dusseldorf, who had to stamp it and post it back to me. Of course I haven't got it back yet.

I rang the employment agency this morning, but before I could apologise for my slackness and ask for an extension, the man asked whether I had got this particular form. I could tell in the tone of his voice that he knew I hadn't. He knew that it was impossible to do it in six working days. He told me to piss off and ring back when I had the form.

A year ago, I would have finished the post here, annoyed, with Muzak ringing in my ears. Now I will try to think what positive steps I can do...

thinking...

thinking...

I can't influence the speed of German authorities. I can't ban Muzak. I can't decimate the ranks of German beaurocrats to improve their efficiency. I can't redesign all government forms, banning any font less than 10pt and the use of their beloved abbreviations.

All I can do is try to chill out. Say it doesn't matter. Say that one pointless phone call isn't that bad. Appreciate that German beaurocracy always seems to get there in the end.

Here is a reward for getting this far.

edit: I see that the "reward" picture is quite old, and was already featured on Snopes

Snow

I was the only person on the University campus trying to start a snowball fight this morning. As nobody else was in the mood, I settled for throwing snowballs at concrete pillars and juggling a quick 3-Ball Boston mess. I think my relation to snow depends on where I grew up, and how often it snowed there. It is also easier and more fun throwing snowballs if you don't have to go to work.

Kitchen WTF

I looked at my loaf of bread, which was topped by a large fluffy green mass, and wondered how it had turned mouldy so soon. I looked on, and thought that the mouldy mass was too big and too green, lacking the white and brown tints. I then looked more closely and saw it was a lump of fresh Broccoli on top of a fresh loaf of bread.

I managed to buy food for three whole days over Easter, and cooked and ate it too. I may need to rethink my storage system, though.

Muggelangelegenheiten

As you will know, it is possible to make new words in German by stringing other words together. As no hyphen is used to show which the original words were, it is possible to misread the long word. The standard example is Urinstinkt, but I prefer Zugreifen, which can be read either as Zu-greifen (go and grab) or Zug-Reifen (Train Tyres).

So while reading a Harry Potter book in German, I took several seconds to correctly read the word Muggelangelegenheiten. This word, meaning "Muggle Affairs", contains the following possible German phrases which have nothing to do with the real meaning: Mugge, Gel, Elan, Lang, Lange legen, Angel and Gen. The words translate as follows: gig, gel, elan, long, to lay for a long time, fishing, and genetic, which is enough to form the plot summary of a short novel.

Language experts think that constructions such as
Muggel-Angelegenheiten or MuggelAngelegenheiten are ugly. Maybe I should stop reading Harry Potter books and get a job.

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A letter to the editor of the Guardian had me laughing this morning. I think the credit goes back to the Marx Brothers.

Jonathan Powell on Tony Blair (Weekend, March 15): "He would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and write in his underpants." No wonder it took him a long time to learn how to use a computer.
Bryan Morgan
Worksop, Nottinghamshire

In fact, having looked at the link, the original extended quote is even better

Blair felt he needed to pen his own words - in longhand. "He would get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and write in his underpants, then we'd have to dash downstairs and give it to the Garden Girls [the No 10 secretaries] to type it up... it was complete misery for the rest of us."

Any Chance of a Game?

Following on from Monday's game, where our supporter saved the day by coming out of retirement for 30 minutes, I was intrigued by the plight of Gretna FC. They are rooted to the bottom of the Scottish Premier League and in the hands of administrator David Elliot. The club is in debt, losing money and struggling to put out a team on Saturday. The BBC say that

Just 10 players have indicated that they are willing to face Aberdeen on Saturday as doubts surface over insurance and future payment.

and the administrator is quoted as saying

Failure to play on Saturday would mean we are in breach of league rules and would leave us open to be fined and face other penalties.

The solution is obvious: In the best interests of the club, Mr. Elliot should lose his suit and don his football boots. Surely there is time tomorrow to fill out the necessary forms.

Kezboards

I reread my list of things to help me decide where to live, and I wondered whether to remove the point of "never having to see another kezboard". Surely this is a triviality. Is the transposition of the letters 'y' and 'z', and the goddamn ugly placement of 'ö' onto a homekey really that important? Does it matter that entering a '{' requires the right hand to be bent into an unnatural position. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the answer is yes. The German kezboard is a all-time disaster of bad design, and I don't think I can ever adjust to use one.

In my last job, I set the computer to recognize the US English layout and just ignored the symbols on the kezboard. However, when I first turned the computer on, it required a password using the German layout before it changed to English and then needed the password again. Every morning, without fail, I entered the wrong password both times. This put me in a shit mood for the rest of the morning.

I then probably annoyed my colleagues by typing 'ss' instead of 'ß' in important documents. This is why these funny letters are on the kezboard: they are considered important. Typing a document in Word was mental torture, and the text-speak message at the top of the screen only added to my misery.



So either I find a technical solution to this problem, or I get a job in Germany that doesn't need a keyboard, or I move to an Anglo-Saxon country. It is really that important for me. Make me work unpaid overtime, cut my pay, insult my intelligence, but please don't fuck with my coordination. It's like someone switched the cables going to your fingers, so you try to bend your index finger but end up bending the ring finger. It may sound crayz (I did that one on purpose to show that my sense of humour is not completely gone), but I'm making the requirement not to have to use a kezboard a non-negotiable part of my future.

I also want my word processor to permanently display the message "UrSTpDCNT" at the top of the screen.

Dead Trousers 3 - Torpedo Entenhausen 4

Being a supporter of Torpedo Entenhausen is a dangerous business. If the number of fit players drops below 10, anyone with two legs is press-ganged into playing. If the number drops below 8, even the cripples are called into service. So when Axel left to put the kids to bed, having scored the first two goals to leave the match finely poised at 2-2, Horsti was called out of retirement for a match-winning cameo. The decisive moment came as he beat one man, found space to shoot and drew the keeper into a parry. Following up, I scored my customary rebound to give Entenhausen the decisive 4-2 lead.

Torpedo Entenhausen 2 - FC Polterberg 5

It's times like this that playing in orange shirts, green shorts and yellow socks pays off. The groundsman turned the floodlights on only 5 minutes before the 8pm kick-off, so we warmed up by running round in the dark hoping that there were no potholes in the pitch. It was a clear night and, having just avoided bumping into each other, right-midfielder Georg and I took to a bit of star-gazing. We could only identify Orion and the Great Bear, and had an educated guess that the Northern Star was somewhere over the Opel factory.

Georg had been the hero of last season's dramatic comeback against Polterberg, but this time we had little chance, despite going 2-0 up early on.

Make Do and Mend

The pockets of my jeans always seem to be the first thing to go, and for the past few days I've been leaving a trail of small change and Stabilo pens wherever I go. I then bought a needle and thread, and sewed the hole together. I did the right pocket with them on, and the left pocket with them off, and found that it is easier and safer to sew when not wearing them.

This kind of thing goes against the spirit of my generation: if it's broke, or old, or no longer in fashion just throw it out and head to the shops. I found the sewing to be quite therapeutic, despite dropping the needle a couple of times.

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I was listening to the radio this morning, and tried to decipher the words to "Back to Black" by Amy Winehouse which is getting a lot of airplay on WDR 2. I could have sworn she sings

Life is like a pie, and I'm a tiny kidney rolling up the walls inside

An expression of the futility of life and its pastry ceilings using the imagery of old-fashioned british cookery. Sadly these are not the real lyrics. It's probably a good thing that nobody can tell what she's singing about, as "He... kept his dick wet" isn't really what you want to hear over breakfast.

Profile Change

About two years ago, when I started this blog, I wrote in my profile that I was "bitter, pessimistic, depressive, downhearted and confused". I have started a course of psychotherapy and am trying to change all of these things. I still sometimes feel this way, but I'm no longer happy using these words to describe myself.