Quote Originally Posted by kidkboom View Post
And as a foreigner - how the squeak do I know when (or if at all) to use this word??
Heh-heh -- kidkboom, you've kind of answered your own question here! What does "the squeak" mean in your sentence? Answer: It doesn't really mean anything; or, rather, it's a euphemistic replacement for "the fuck", which in turn doesn't really mean anything. You could leave it out and the sentence would have the same meaning: "How do I know when..."

"How the fuck" is really just a strong (and obscene) way of saying "HOW??!?!?!" And же often serves the same purposes as "the fuck", only without any obscenity -- it just strengthens the word that came before it. If I'm doing a text-to-text translation from Russian to English, one way to "translate" же is simply to omit it, but underline or italicize the word that came before же in the Russian sentence. So, to take your example:

Что же вовремя не писали, на приёме?

I think the meaning is basically:

Why the heck didn't you finish writing this when you were still in the waiting room??" (or "at the reception desk", "in the admission queue", etc.)?

Although more literally it's like:

WHY didn't you write it on time, upon admission?

In place of "why the heck", you could of course also use "why the fuck" or "why on earth" or "for the love of St. Bridget, why", depending on how rude or euphemistic you wished to be, or depending on the "dialect effect" you wanted to create ("for the love of St. Bridget" might suggest the voice of a 19th-century Irish priest who's too sober to say "fuck"...).

Also, note that when же is used after certain "demonstrative" terms (words with the basic meaning of "that one", which often start with т in Russian), such as тот, то, так, тодга, туда, такой etc., then it can have the meaning "the same" -- although what's really happening is that the basic "emphatic" meaning of же is reinforcing the "that one" meaning of the demonstrative, so the combined meaning is like "that VERY one". (i.e., the same one). For example, туда = "to that place" or "in that direction"; туда же = "to that very (same) place" or "in that very (same) direction."