I am furious.

And pretty down at the same time.
In November our seminar teacher told us that the university is giving away some money, they announced it yesterday, the grant application deadline is in ten days and that we should apply if we have something coherent on which we are working.
I wrote a piece of crap (the application form was incomprehensible but for name and address fields), the grants office guy returned it with three pages of very sarcastic comments like Every idiot should know what is the difference between result and outcome, using 'if' and 'should that be' is not scientific enough, leave it for chitchats with your girl friends in the cafe etc., three pages. I got furious. Not because I didn't get something. Not even because if it said Write this and that in 100 words, I stuck to the limit and the guy wrote that it was short and since it was short, it told nothing. I just hate when someone is impolite. After all, if there were no ifs and questions, there would be no reason to do any research, that's all the research about.
So I got furious, I rewrote it to even a huger piece of crap, when I didn't know ('When and how are you going to publish the results?'), I plainly lied ('As soon as there is any coherent outcome, I plan to publish the research results in specialized magazines, possibly I will publish a monography.'), I interspersed the thing with lots of strange (understand: Swedish) book titles.... and created a piece of highly polished crap.
The results should have been known in February.
Nothing happened in February so I forgot the whole thing. The money was eaten by the postgrad people, so what.
Yesterday the impolite guy called that I got the gant and why I don't come to do the paperwork.
"What?" I replied intelligently.
"I am from the grant board, you know, and we have the results and you got a grant. Why haven't you come...."
"I got a grant? No idea about it. But yeah, nice."
Today there was some tutorial meeting on how to do the paperwork and stuff and I had no idea for what theme I got the grant and how much. I guessed that I wanted like 40 000 czk and got 5 000 but it was written in the personalized agreement, not in the general info papers. THe tutorial took two hours (What is the difference between a receipt and an invoice. You have to buy the books without VAT. The university will pay the VAT - I would like to know what bookseller would sell me a book without VAT and I guess I know where they would send me if I asked for it.... and so on). Then I got the papers and they gave me all what I applied for. A bucket of money.


Yes, there is a but. This is for students. The day I pass my finals, I'm not entitled to spending a single cent. Meaning that I have to do all the travelling in summer. Meaning that I should go to Italy, find the university people there, ask them for credentials and letters to the libraries. No problem, you think? Once more, slowly.
July in Italy. 40 degrees in shadow.
Summer in Italy. Everybody is at the seaside and there's no living soul at the uni. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Well, it's something like 3000 euros. Half of it is a scholarship so that I don't have to wash toilets in the shopping mall but do the... whatever I will do full time. The other half has to be spent by half of September (well, before my final exam and I have no idea when it is. Like middle of September). I have a good use for the money. Buying myself some more books, shares and yarn. And anyway. So I'll have to do some crazy planning to get the whole thing working and I guess it'll be some strange sort of fun.
At the time being, I'm angry and terribly down at the same time.

And now about something completely different, the first pic is a summer top being knitted in larger size, I somewhat underestimated the gauge. So I'm knitting the larger version directly from the smaller, why to rip it extra.
The beauty resting on the keyboard is Noro Transitions that arrived in today's mail. It's a single skein, that's why I could afford it ($7 instead of the usual 30). I love it.
The last picture is showing a tangledmess. It's Noro Airisu being knit into one-shoulder dress. The blue, green and yellow thingie is a silk, dyed by yours truly. When I was knitting in a cafe today, the waitress almost snatched it from me and since she wasn't the first one who drooled over (e. g. Jane Glorioushats) or on it (let that knitter remain anonymous) so the question is, should I make more of it?