theinbetweenismine

just a girl living the expat life

16: Five current pet peeves

filed under: NaBloPoMo, pet peeves

I am doing NaBloPoMo this month. 30 blog posts in 30 days. Come join me. #nablopomo2020


Photo by David Klein on Unsplash

1. My biggest pet peeve right now: People who don’t wear masks and don’t adhere to the guidelines around COVID. This is not hard, people. Wear a mask and keep your distance. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for the people you love.  

2. Instagram is changing things around again and I just can’t with it. I wish they could stop making changes. I really don’t care for a Reels or a Shop tab, and having the Create tab and Like tab at the top right of the screen is just not very convenient (I don’t have the large iPhone and it’s already hard to reach with one hand). I also really don’t care for the new “dark” theme for creating posts. Whose decision was that? (Calm down, I’ll get used to it, but JFC, why?)

3. People who don’t give you space on the sidewalk because they’re either glued to their phones or just don’t care when other people are approaching them. I usually try to go out of my way to social distance when I am out running, but I wish other people would be just as considerate and pay attention to what’s going on around them.

4. Bloggers who wonder why they’re not getting comments but who never respond back. I understand that it’s not always possible to reply to every single comment or comment on everybody’s blog, but making that connection every once in a while is so important, IMHO.

5. When tech items slow down over time. My iPhone 7 is 4+ years old and it’s getting really slow when loading images on IG and it drives me bonkers. Does anyone else have that problem with an older phone? (I don’t think it’s our Internet connection.) Might be time to upgrade soon.

What is one of your current pet peeves?

14: Five Pet Peeves

filed under: NaBloPoMo, pet peeves

How about another round of pet peeves, friends? I always like to share the things that drive me up the wall, haha, and I always like to hear what other people find really hard to understand or endure.

1. Non-voters. I just read that the midterm elections had a record voter turnout of 49.2%. ONLY 42.9% – that’s not even half of all eligible voters. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

2. People who don’t help to bag groceries when there are lines at the checkout (or even when there are no lines). They stand there with their arms crossed watching the poor clerk try to ring up and bag up the groceries while not lifting a finger. I want to know, what’s your deal?

3. Along the same line, grocery baggers that don’t know how to bag groceries. I usually have a pretty good system down when it comes to bagging my groceries and it’s hard to watch people, that should be trained for this job, bag very inefficiently. They pile the heaviest things in the biggest bags, they put the eggs on the bottom of your shopping bag, or they don’t maximize the space but just throw stuff into the bag. I use more of a tetris-kinda approach.

4. People who don’t make eye contact when they talk to you.  I know some people are just shy or socially awkward, but it’s so hard to keep a conversation when they’re not looking at you. Alternatively, there are some people who don’t break eye-contact at all when they talk to you and that can be equally awkward.

5. Drivers that don’t stop at stop signs when entering traffic from a side street or from a parking lot. I can’t tell you how many times I have almost gotten hit by a car when trying to cross in front of them when I was out running because drivers just roll through the stop line. They’re busy looking to the left watching for cars, but they never look to the right to watch for pedestrians. It’s not a yield sign, it’s a freakin’ stop sign and you’re supposed to stop.  

Your turn. Share one of your pet peeves with me. 

25: Pet Peeves

filed under: NaBloPoMo, pet peeves

It’s time for another round of – old and new – pet peeves, my friends. Sometimes it’s good to release them into the blogosphere because it’s like venting (and it’s good to release some steam and commiserate)  and I know that there are other people out there who must feel the same. Tell me I am not the only one.

I love the word ‘pet peeve’, by the way. The German language is usually pretty creative when it comes to making up single words that describe one thing perfectly (e.g. Schadenfreude), but I have yet to find a good, one-word translation for ‘pet peeve’. Suggestions, anyone?

1. I am so, so over the social media’s algorithms that are trying to tell me that they know what I want to see in my feed. I am looking at you Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Let me tell you what I want to see: my feed in chronological order (or at least the option to choose to see it in chronological order), so that a string of images/updates actually makes sense and isn’t delivered all jumbled up (or days late!) and so that I can keep track of what I’ve already looked at. I am so confused now about the things I have seen (multiple times) and things I might have missed. This is seriously so annoying.

2. I know, I must sound like a broken record, because I probably have mentioned this particular pet peeve on this blog so many times, but I literally experience this every single day. People who think that traffic rules and basic driving functions are not for them.

It makes driving so incredibly frustrating and not to mention dangerous! People don’t use their blinker, or if they use it, they blink right and then take a left turn. Oh and don’t get me started on people who, now that the darker season is approaching, don’t turn on their headlights at night and drive around completely “invisible” to others. Yeah, that person that is honking and flashing their lights at you… that would be me. This stuff just drives me batsh*t crazy. At the end of a long workday, my patience for this crap is very, very low.  Come on, people, it’s really not that hard!

3. This is a runner’s pet peeve and unfortunately, I encounter this often on my Sunday park runs: People walk three-abreast taking up the whole walking path or they stand there with their dogs chatting with someone and they see you coming and they just won’t move to let you squeeze by them. I don’t understand. What happened to common decency and kindness to the people around you?

As a runner, you know that every step away from your running path costs extra energy and caution and making me step onto the grassy area or into the gutter is not only rude but potentially dangerous.

4. People who ask me for some help with something, I agree to help and make time to do so, and then they never get back to me about it. What’s up with that? I mean, it’s fine, it saves me some ‘extra work’, but why ask me in the first place?

5.  I get so annoyed when I find a product that I really, really like and then it gets discontinued. Argh. I mean, I don’t know if I should feel special for having such an exclusive taste or if I should feel just mad. Probably the latter. On that note, did Trader Joe’s discontinue Speculoos?? I didn’t see it on my last grocery trip and I NEED IT THIS HOLIDAY SEASON.

Your turn. Share one of your pet peeves with me.

Five Pet Peeves

filed under: pet peeves

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+ Twitter: I am (almost) ready to cut you out of my life. I can barely keep up with my feed, besides the fact that I feel like “talking to myself” 99% of the time. Do you also feel like only the same people – if anybody – responds or reacts to your tweets? Just me? This is not a complaint, more of an observation.

+ I said it before and I’ll said it again, “People, use your turn signals, for Peet’s sake”. There is nothing more annoying on the street than when people don’t signal where they’re going (not to mention, it’s dangerous!). Oh, maybe there is because why do so many people forget to turn on their lights when it’s dark outside? I see so many cars without their headlights on every morning (and for the record, I leave my house before 7 a.m.).

+  I hate to be the person who complains about traffic pet peeves a lot, but in the last few days on my way home (which is a 20 minute-commute on surface/city streets), I saw not one, but a total of 4 cars driving around with one of their headlights out. Why do people drive around like this? Why don’t they get their cars fixed?

+ I don’t know what the proper etiquette is and how long one should wait before inquiring about a gift that was sent by mail, but if you’re worried that your gift didn’t make it to the intended recipient, a) track it via tracking number (if you have one) and b) give the person time to respond with a thank you card/email. If you must inquire, make it clear that you just want to make sure that the package made it and don’t insinuate that you expected a thank you already. Sometimes things happen and thank you card don’t go in the mail right the same minute the package arrives (or the postal service takes its sweet time delivering your card. This is not unheard of.).

+ When will Instagram finally allow multiple logins to manage more than just one account? *verydeepsigh*

18: Five pet peeves

filed under: NaBloPoMo, pet peeves

1.  People who don’t return their shopping carts to the designated areas. Why do people not do that? I don’t understand. I hate pulling into a parking spot that is blocked by abandoned shopping carts.

2. Price stickers that won’t peel off. I hate when they leave a film of paper and adhesive behind on my new purchase and I have to use other (time-consuming) methods to try and get it off. It’s 2014! You’d think that is one thing they could have figured out by now.

3. When I email people and they only reply to half my email (or not at all).  It drives me nuts when I write a long email and then half of my questions go unanswered. I asked these questions for a reason, you know? If you don’t want to answer a question, just say so, but don’t pretend I’ve never asked.

4. Emojis on websites. Just don’t. As much as I love emojis for text messages, I can happily do without them on blogs and in email conversations. I am talking about the yellow smiley-faces, not necessarily the keyboard-shortcut smileys :) I don’t mind those as much (but don’t like to see them overused either).

5. Asking for help and basically being told to figure it out myself.  Well thanks! That sure doesn’t make me want to reach out ever again!

Pet Peeves

filed under: about me, pet peeves

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1. Instagram Overload. Please do me — and everyone else — a favor and don’t use Instagram as a place to dumb all of the photos that you took in one day. Pick one, maybe two. Instagram is a sharing platform and I love to be part of your life by seeing your pictures every day, but Instagram is not a photo backup platform.

2. Bad tippers. Tipping is something I had to get used to here in the US (we do tip in Germany, but it’s not mandatory and the amounts are really small —  you basically round up to the next Euro, or two.) However, I know that tipping is part of the waiter’s wage here, so I make an effort to tip people generously, especially when they went out of the way to provide friendly service. It’s just part of the expense.

3. Head-in-the-clouds bicyclists. I can’t really tell you why, but it drives me bonkers when bicyclists — when they actually manage to ride on the streets as they’re supposed to (don’t get me started on the sidewalk bicyclists!) — don’t obey traffic signs/lights.

4. Bad parking. I see it every day. Every day. I don’t really know what is so hard about parking your vehicle between the lines that have been provided for your guidance.

5. Clueless baristas. If you work in a coffee shop, you should know the difference between a Café Latte and a Latte Macchiato.

6. Discontinued products. I get so annoyed when I find a product that I really, really like and then it gets discontinued. Argh. I mean, I don’t know if I should feel special for having such an exclusive taste or if I should feel just mad. Probably the latter.

7. People who interrupt other people constantly, because they clearly think what they have to say is more important or something. There are some of those individuals on TV who ask questions and then never wait for the other person to finish their response. Annoying.

8. Slow Internet. I know this seems a little first-worldish, but I have no patience for slow Internet.

What are some of your pet peeves?

25: Five pet peeves

filed under: NaBloPoMo, pet peeves

1. Bikes without lights. It’s pretty dark outside in the morning when I leave for work and also at night when I drive home. No surprise. It’s November. I really don’t get, however, why so many people who ride their bikes, don’t seem to think that it might be a good idea to make themselves visible in low lighting. I’m not sure why bikes are even sold without lights (except for sports bikes. Maybe.). Please enlighten me.

2. People who linger on the sidewalk. If you need to check your phone, tie your shoe lace, talk to your friend, … get out of the way. Don’t stop suddenly (or people will run into you) and don’t slow down to the speed of a turtle.

3. People who clearly (should) know me and don’t greet. I run into the same people at my office building frequently and there are a handful of people who just never say hello. Is it really that hard to be friendly?

4. The mail carrier ringing my door bell for a package, after he has put the rest of my mail in my mailbox. WHY?

5. Overly enthusiastic shop assistants. I’m ok with having someone greet me at the door and maybe even point out some deals, but that’s as far as I want to interact with that person, unless I have a specific question. And then I will ask. Don’t keep asking me if I need help finding something when I already told you that I’m just browsing.

Pet Peeves

filed under: about me, NaBloPoMo, pet peeves

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I get annoyed and irritated by people, who…

… say one thing and then go on and do another. Seriously? This is pretty much similar to lying in my book.

… who can’t be honest. With me or themselves. I know that honesty can be a b*tch and it’s not always pleasant, but in the end, honesty is the only thing that works (in my opinion.)

… pass me in the right lane on the freeway. I mean, I know there is no law against passing on the right, but isn’t it widely understood that slower traffic should keep right and that you get in the left lane, if you want to pass? That is like basic escalator-behavior, right? Why not apply this to the streets?

… hug me by not hugging me. Ugh. Either you hug me, or you don’t, but don’t give me one of those “fake-hugs”, where you pretend you like me enough to press your body against mine, but at the same time lean back as far as you possibly can. That’s not a hug, that is awkward.

… have no table manners.

… never are considerate of others, who always think of themselves first. It makes me wonder in what kind of family they were raised or if they had to fight for themselves since early childhood. I know, there is a fine line drawn between standing up for yourself and at the same time being considerate of others. It can be confusing growing up to learn to be helpful and compassionate, while not having other people take advantage and walk all over you. It’s just irritating when you meet people that have not one bit of consideration in their bodies.

… never return phone calls or emails. In this age and time, it is so easy to stay in touch. So freakin’ easy. I mean, it’s not that hard to write a quick text message or email. I don’t expect you to be as communicative as I am, but if someone just completely ignores my attempts to get/keep in touch, it really rubs me the wrong way.

… cut in front of me when in line. I am usually very easy-going and don’t mind letting somebody go ahead of me if they ask me nicely. Hey, I might even offer it when I am in a particularly good mood. What I don’t appreciate is people sneaking up from the side and pretending that they were in line all along.

… don’t use their turn signals properly. You know, I don’t want to be overly dramatic about this, because I am sure I have taken a turn myself without using my turn signal ( only if there were no other cars around though), but if you’re on a busy, five lane freeway using your turn signal is pretty much imperative! Still, a hell of a lot of people don’t seem to think that it is necessary to indicate that they are going to change lanes. I really can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed – or been part of – a scenario when a car from the right lane and a car from the left lane were simultaneously trying to change to the middle lane, barely avoiding to crash into each other.

… leave their shopping carts in the parking lot. Especially when they leave them in a parking spot, so that you can’t pull in all the way. I mean, seriously, how hard can it be to walk another few meters to return the cart to the cart return area? It’s not like you have to walk back all the way to the entrance of the store. It’s just common courtesy, you know?

… can’t put away their smart phones while they’re talking to you. I get it. Smart phones are cool. It feels good to be so “connected”. I can get sucked into this myself sometimes. But is is really necessary to glance at your display every 5 minutes while you’re having a face-to-face conversation with someone? Be assured, all the very important messages will be there when you check it again later. Let’s have a conversation right now, shall we?

… complain about other people posting “boring and mundane” things on Twitter and then go ahead and think that their “boring and mundane” tweets are anything special.

… use inside jokes/information to clearly exclude somebody else from taking part in the conversation. Sorry, but that’s just so rude.

… don’t pull up to the next corner/drive way when parking along the curb to make sure that the parking space along the whole length of the curb can be fully utilized. I understand that it’s kind of hard to figure out where to park when no parking spaces are visibly drawn on the street, but the corner/driveway is a clear sign that this is the end of the parking space and there is no need to park 5 feet away from it (or from another car for that matter).

… don’t acknowledge the server at a restaurant, who keep talking while the server is serving food, bringing more iced water, etc. How about a “thank you”?

… call me Sandy, even though I introduced myself as “Sandra”. What gives?

Phew, that’s a long list.

Do you have similar pet peeves? Tell me some of yours!

Pet peeves: How do you feel about dubbing?

filed under: about me, I can't make this shit up, pet peeves

I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts on this blog and it has become somewhat of a pet peeve of mine: dubbing.

Dubbing is described as

“the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting […]. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be speaking a different language. […]
Foreign-language films, videos and sometimes video games are often dubbed into the local language of their target markets to increase their popularity with the local audience by making them more accessible” (from Wikipedia)

Most of my English speaking readers, you probably won’t understand what the big deal is, because you don’t do dubbing in this country. Which, I would like to emphasize, is very smart (for the most part). You use subtitles.

Germans are lazy and to read subtitles is strenuous, so somebody decided that it would be a good idea to dub movies. Did you know that Germany is the effin’ capital of dubbing in Europe? It’s embarrassing, really.

“Dubbing films has been and is still tradition and common practice in the German speaking area since subtitles are not accepted and used as much as in other European countries. According to a European study, Austria is the country with the highest rejection with regard to using subtitles, followed by Italy, Spain and Germany.”

In Germany, Austria and the German speaking part of Switzerland, practically all films, shows, television series and foreign soap operas are shown in dubbed versions created for the German market. (from Wikipedia)

Oh, it irritates me like nobody’s business. I mean, just imagine, when I came to the US and watched a lot of movies that I had previously seen dubbed in German and finally heard the original voices of some of the actors, I felt like “Uh, ah, cover your ears, this sounds terrible” only realizing a minute later that those were, in fact, the actors’ real voices and that I had completely different voices associated with the actors and actresses. It’s quiet disturbing to be honest, but I guess the following explains it:

“Famous foreign actors are known and recognized for their German voice and the German audience is used to them, so dubbing is also a matter of authenticity.” (from Wikipedia)

What bothers me though is that the German voices often don’t resemble the original voices of the actors/actresses. I give you a (really bad!) example.
As some of you might now, I am a big Sex and the City fan. I’ve only started watching it when I came to the US (and I have watched all seasons, some of them more than once!) and therefore only know the original voices of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte.

I know, SATC is not everyone’s cup of tea and I understand that. I still was very surprised when I talked to a friend in Germany, who told me that she really had no idea why I liked this series, that she found it to be horrible and annoying.
Later I found out the (possible) reason for her distaste and here is why: the dubbed German version is absolutely appalling. Not only is the translation of the dialogs really bad, but the dubbing companies didn’t even bother to try and find anybody whose voices would resemble those of the girls’.

Carrie’s original voice for example is  pretty unique and kind of rough. Her German counterpart is high pitch and squeaky and absolutely annoying to listen to. I cannot for the life of me understand who in the world was responsible for giving Sarah Jessica Parker this squeaky German voice. Miranda’s voice is totally off as well. No wonder people are turned off by it.

Compare the US and German movie trailers and tell me what you think, just by the sound of it.

Besides that, another thing that just simply sucks about dubbing is how much content is lost between the two languages. Yes, fine, I understand that there is no one-to-one translation for a lot of things and with dubbing, you also have to deal with limited time frames to match the lip movements with the substituted voice. But for heaven’s sake, do a better job already or don’t do it at all.
(The same applies to the reserve process as well – even though foreign films are usually not dubbed here, only subtitled, the subtitles are sometimes really really bad translations from the original. Even J has noticed that before when we were watching a German movie and the subtitles didn’t quite measure up to what was actually said/conveyed in the scene.)

But then, I also read that …

German dubbed versions sometimes diverge greatly from the original, especially adding humorous elements to the original. In extreme cases, like The Persuaders!, the dubbed version was more successful than the English original. Often it also adds sexually explicit gags the U.S. versions might not be allowed to use, like in Bewitched, translating “The Do-not-disturb sign will hang at the door tonight”  to “The only hanging thing tonight will be the Do-not-disturb sign”. (from Wikipedia)

I guess there can be an upside to everything after all :)