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A slightly different weekend
Mar. 25th, 2013 09:34 am...because I don't usually attend balls or observe elections.
Still, let's start with Friday.
Friday was officially a Bad Day from Hell, not least because of the Migraine from Hell I'd had on Thursday, the hangover from which decided to stay with me for most of Friday. If Gerald -- whom the eternal fires may consume slowly, starting at his feet -- had been here, I'd have taken sick leave, but since he wasn't, that wasn't an option. The visa section is closed on Fridays, but the document people had come from Vienna, and so I couldn't very well not be there.
The seminar (let's call it seminar, even though it was... well, we'll come to that) was scheduled to start at 9.30; at 1 p.m. we were to go to lunch, and then to continue from around 2.30 till 4. Of course the two troglodytes holding the seminar had been informed beforehand about the schedule, and I reminded them once again before we started. What did they do, though? They went from 9.30 straight to 2 p.m.
Now, when I schedule lunch for 1, I know why I'm doing it -- none of the girls eat breakfast, and neither do I, and therefore we get pretty queasy around 12 and definitely ravenous at 1. Had I had an inkling that this was how it was going to go, I'd have put more on the table than just coffee and water.
Even so, I suppose the event would have been bearable, had not thetroglodytes' experts' performance been absolutely abysmal.
Learning about, or brushing up on, travel documents, the production and falsification thereof, and the identification of document holders, can be very interesting. I ought to know -- I've attended four or five such seminars.
Austria being Austria, the Power Point slides and teaching material were of course exactly the same as ten years ago, but even so it could've been interesting, were it not for the totally confused, badly prepared and heavy-handed presentation. Of course the two experts are policemen working at border control, but they're part of a large pool of experts, and why in heaven's name don't they get selected based on presentation skills as well as their (undoubted) expertise? Plus, they'd been informed way ahead that they'd only have around five hours, i.e. they had to cram 16 hours' worth of information into five. There are different ways of doing that, but the way they did it isn't one of them.
On a side note, I know that the measuring and classifying of facial features is an important and necessary part of identification, but did they *have* to sound so gleefully racist about it?
Had I not been feeling absolutely awful, I would've said something, but I was not sure I wasn't going to lose it completely, so I just suffered in silence (and left for approx. 45 minutes in order to go buy cat food -- this way, the day didn't feel like a complete waste of time).
And afterwards, I had to take the two twerps to lunch, although I'd have preferred to kill them.
The girls were invited, too, but I (very discreetly) told them that, if they were as sick as I of the two twats, they didn't have to go. Needless to say that they jumped at the possibility.
I was so wrung-out afterwards (by then it was 4.30) that I decided to have a no-sports day, went straight home and relaxed on the couch with the Critters and one of the stiffest gin-and-tonics in the history of mankind.
From then on, the weekend did improve, though.
On Saturday I went to the Viennese Ball with the girls, Slavica and her younger son joined us as well, and we had a really great time.
Here's a really nice pic Ana made of Slavica and yours truly (the dress is slightly padded -- boob volume not entirely natural):
Among other things, we were having an incredible amount of fun looking at and bitching about a woman at the next table: bottle-blonde, maybe 25 years old, not very fat but the owner of one of the most enormous, cart-horse-sized arses I've ever seen, and squeezed into a strapless, shoulder-baring dress in signal red, as tight as a sausage peel. The thing was figure-hugging down to the knees, i.e. she couldn't walk in it, either. Not to mention that Coca-Cola-bottle shoulders do *not* look good in that kind of dress.
We didn't just bitch of course, but ate, danced and chatted, when the music wasn't too loud.
I'd intended to leave around midnight, but stayed till 2, and when I had wound down enough to go to bed it was 3, and I woke up at 6.30.
Needless to explain that the little bit of (local) election observing we did was rather hazy and not-quite-there, as far as I was concerned. Luckily, I'd teamed up with Stefan the Police Attaché, who'd also attended the ball (but left earlier), and wasn't overly committed to establishing a most-polling-stations-visited record, either.
So, basically, what we did was: meet at 11.30, have breakfast, stroll to a polling station (where everything was going according to the rules), drive to a more problematic part of town, visit another polling station (ditto), drive back to the center, have coffee at the Old Bazaar, sitting in the sun, and go home.
Although I was overtired, I'd had such a lot of coffee that the following afternoon nap wasn't very restful; it didn't matter much, though, because I spent the rest of the day reading, doing a bit of household work -- nothing too taxing of course -- and cuddling the Critters.
Today I'm rested and, if not exactly motivated for work, at least facing it with equanimity and in the knowledge that Friday will be a half-day, and the weekend a long one.
I *think* I might have managed to snap up the SSHG prompt I wanted, but will be holding my horses till prompts are assigned.
Still, let's start with Friday.
Friday was officially a Bad Day from Hell, not least because of the Migraine from Hell I'd had on Thursday, the hangover from which decided to stay with me for most of Friday. If Gerald -- whom the eternal fires may consume slowly, starting at his feet -- had been here, I'd have taken sick leave, but since he wasn't, that wasn't an option. The visa section is closed on Fridays, but the document people had come from Vienna, and so I couldn't very well not be there.
The seminar (let's call it seminar, even though it was... well, we'll come to that) was scheduled to start at 9.30; at 1 p.m. we were to go to lunch, and then to continue from around 2.30 till 4. Of course the two troglodytes holding the seminar had been informed beforehand about the schedule, and I reminded them once again before we started. What did they do, though? They went from 9.30 straight to 2 p.m.
Now, when I schedule lunch for 1, I know why I'm doing it -- none of the girls eat breakfast, and neither do I, and therefore we get pretty queasy around 12 and definitely ravenous at 1. Had I had an inkling that this was how it was going to go, I'd have put more on the table than just coffee and water.
Even so, I suppose the event would have been bearable, had not the
Learning about, or brushing up on, travel documents, the production and falsification thereof, and the identification of document holders, can be very interesting. I ought to know -- I've attended four or five such seminars.
Austria being Austria, the Power Point slides and teaching material were of course exactly the same as ten years ago, but even so it could've been interesting, were it not for the totally confused, badly prepared and heavy-handed presentation. Of course the two experts are policemen working at border control, but they're part of a large pool of experts, and why in heaven's name don't they get selected based on presentation skills as well as their (undoubted) expertise? Plus, they'd been informed way ahead that they'd only have around five hours, i.e. they had to cram 16 hours' worth of information into five. There are different ways of doing that, but the way they did it isn't one of them.
On a side note, I know that the measuring and classifying of facial features is an important and necessary part of identification, but did they *have* to sound so gleefully racist about it?
Had I not been feeling absolutely awful, I would've said something, but I was not sure I wasn't going to lose it completely, so I just suffered in silence (and left for approx. 45 minutes in order to go buy cat food -- this way, the day didn't feel like a complete waste of time).
And afterwards, I had to take the two twerps to lunch, although I'd have preferred to kill them.
The girls were invited, too, but I (very discreetly) told them that, if they were as sick as I of the two twats, they didn't have to go. Needless to say that they jumped at the possibility.
I was so wrung-out afterwards (by then it was 4.30) that I decided to have a no-sports day, went straight home and relaxed on the couch with the Critters and one of the stiffest gin-and-tonics in the history of mankind.
From then on, the weekend did improve, though.
On Saturday I went to the Viennese Ball with the girls, Slavica and her younger son joined us as well, and we had a really great time.
Here's a really nice pic Ana made of Slavica and yours truly (the dress is slightly padded -- boob volume not entirely natural):
Among other things, we were having an incredible amount of fun looking at and bitching about a woman at the next table: bottle-blonde, maybe 25 years old, not very fat but the owner of one of the most enormous, cart-horse-sized arses I've ever seen, and squeezed into a strapless, shoulder-baring dress in signal red, as tight as a sausage peel. The thing was figure-hugging down to the knees, i.e. she couldn't walk in it, either. Not to mention that Coca-Cola-bottle shoulders do *not* look good in that kind of dress.
We didn't just bitch of course, but ate, danced and chatted, when the music wasn't too loud.
I'd intended to leave around midnight, but stayed till 2, and when I had wound down enough to go to bed it was 3, and I woke up at 6.30.
Needless to explain that the little bit of (local) election observing we did was rather hazy and not-quite-there, as far as I was concerned. Luckily, I'd teamed up with Stefan the Police Attaché, who'd also attended the ball (but left earlier), and wasn't overly committed to establishing a most-polling-stations-visited record, either.
So, basically, what we did was: meet at 11.30, have breakfast, stroll to a polling station (where everything was going according to the rules), drive to a more problematic part of town, visit another polling station (ditto), drive back to the center, have coffee at the Old Bazaar, sitting in the sun, and go home.
Although I was overtired, I'd had such a lot of coffee that the following afternoon nap wasn't very restful; it didn't matter much, though, because I spent the rest of the day reading, doing a bit of household work -- nothing too taxing of course -- and cuddling the Critters.
Today I'm rested and, if not exactly motivated for work, at least facing it with equanimity and in the knowledge that Friday will be a half-day, and the weekend a long one.
I *think* I might have managed to snap up the SSHG prompt I wanted, but will be holding my horses till prompts are assigned.
