Tales of the Open Learning Centre

Maria chapel Heiloo
Dear All. Things have slowed down a bit in the blog department. Along with the sad businees of Irene, there are three ex-colleagues now in various stages of cancer, all terminal. It has been difficult to think of much else lately. Fortunately Irene shows signs of improvement. The long-term prospects are not clear, but at least she has less pain. She is also enjoying the visits of family from Holland. Tineke and Bernadet went first, followed by Opa and Carolien. Carolien returned to NZ and Opa remained. He will stay as long as he can, a maximum of three months on his visa. Before Opa went, he took part in a marathon candle-burning event. People come in one after another to keep a chain going. The candles burn for about 9 days. This attracted the attention of KRO TV who made a program about people who burn candles in this chapel and what the background is to their stories. I shall include a link of any one is interested. Kees has been in Arizona for two weeks and returns today. There will be a break in the chemo treatment in a month or two and it is hoped that things can be arranged to bring Irene to Holland. We are looking at the possibility of setting up a building somewhere on the farm. She prefers to be alone but close to family and help. Anyway, it's looking better for her than it did a while ago.

My job, alas, will probably go at the end of this term. Economics determine that the last in will be the first out. I shall miss the place and the students. And the money! Everything is going well, although I have had some difficult situations to deal with. There are about some 50 computers in a small space, and it is important that people don't disturb each other. I turn a blind eye to soft music, MSN, Hyves etc, prefering to hand out headphones to miscreants rather than ban them. My rule is that you can waste your own time but not that of another. Last week I had to throw out two girls who were fighting. Not with teeth and claws as would be expected in a catfight, but with scarves with knobbly knots tied in them. Stools and vases went flying, but your hero is not afraid of girls and they were ejected. I recently had my first real confronation with boys. Most of the students are girls, but there a few young men between 17 and 20 years old. Some are large and full of themselves, swaggering in with hands in pockets, putting thier feet on the keyboard, turning up the music and pulling gigling schoolgirls onto thier laps. I always dread these occasions. I am not allowed to take action but am instructed to call the class teacher. I have never done this as I would lose all respect from the students. On this occasion a neanderthal with a baseball cap back-to front kept turning up the music, despite my diplomatic pleading and grovelling. I lost my temper, went up behind him and shouted 'OFF'. The room entered stunned silence mode. The monstrous youth and I eyeballed each other for a while, each daring the other to blink, and then he said, softly. 'Make me'. O my God, what now? I have no alternative plan. But I am now looking as fierce as a lion and as steady as rock, not the slightest tremor, but this is because I have concentrated all my physical and mental powers toward my buttocks which would need a crowbar to separate them. 'Make me' he said again, and leaned back on his chair with hands behind his head, the ultimate Mr Cool. Girls are tittering nervously. I am undone. I shall never be able to come into this room again. I am to be humiliated before all. I shall escape with a 'Goodness me, is that the time?' sort of tactic. Then my eye falls on the power cable. Without losing eye-contact, I reach out and pull the plug on his computer and the screen plops and the music stops. Gasps. Then his cronies begin to laugh, tension evaporates and the day is won. Later, on the way to my car, I run a gauntlet of 'OFF, OFF, OFF' but it is not unfriendly. A good day. Sometimes it is not busy in the OLC. I cannot see into both rooms but I knew there was only one girl there, a very plump girl with pebble glasses and the sniffles. As she breathed, one could hear fluids being blown down towards the nostils to form bubbles only to be drawn back up by a monstrous wet snort. I was about to leave my desk to bring her a roll of kitchen paper when there was there was an an enromous liquid sneeze followed by groaning. I went to see if she was alright, and found her looking at the screen which was glazed in snot in subtle variations of hue and opacity that was slowly drifting downwards. She stared at the screen for a few moments, until stimulated by my suggestion that she could perhaps clean it up she began to wipe it with the edge of her hand from right to left, much as one would clean a window with one of those little rubber squeegee things. She only manged to push waves of snot to the left where it slid more quickly down the screen owing to the increase in thickness and the pull of gravity towards the centre of the earth. What was left on the warm screen, a thin layer like a polythene bag, dried out and became quite opaque. I was feeling ill by now, and told her to use another computer. I could see that not only would I have to deal with coagulating but still liquid snot dripping down the screen, I would need to pick off the dried snotty film. Hopefully it would all come off in one layer like that stuff that protects the screens of new mobile phones. I went to get Kleenex and Ajax. When I came back, she was still typing, saying that she had to log off to use another computer. Her fingers were wet and slimy. I wondered if we had anything to get mucus off keyboards, and especiallyfrom between the keys. I would have to prise them all off with a screw-driver and clean them individually. I hope the G doesn't go back where the H was. Later, I heard another massive blubbery sneeze. By the time I got to the other room, the girl had collected all her stuff and was leaving. She was the only one in the room. The only lit-up screen looked as if it had suffered from a mollusc stampede. I said 'what about the terminal?. She looked surpised and said she didn't know nothing about that, mister. Must have been some other fat girl who snuk in, sneezed snot, sniffled and snuk out again. Where's the bucket. I leave you with some of my drawings that try to get the kids to clean up the mess and not leave it all to me.

There is a pakistani cleaning lady but she is not very good and I have a lot of sympathy for her because she does not have much time to clean so many rooms and she gets a lot of complaints and her boss shouts at her. She cannot understand him because she doesn't speak Dutch. I clean up and make sure that it is all perfect before she starts and her boss has no complaints about this room. One night the inspection was early and I still had the broom and bucket in my hand. The Commander of All The Cleaners asked if I was a new one and not to waste Vim or take dusters home and not to stand there like a loon which is not what was paid for but I was to get on with it, chop chop, if I knew what was good for me. Bloody foreigners. The pakistani lady has learned one Dutch word. She can say 'thankyou'.

I leave you with some photos of my favorite tough guys, the two lads doing the midwife course. I think it is brilliant that boys like this want to learn how to help women give birth and how to bath babies.

And that while all thier mates are doing the Motor Mechanics or the Electrical Engineers course. No money for guessing where I think the real men are. When they leave here I will send them T-shirts with a slogan such as 'Macho Midmen', 'Let me hold you, Baby' or some such nonsense. Any suggestions?

By the way, the piece before this was all about Ball Valves. Google Ad-sense tailors the ads to the blog. Now ALL the ads are about Ball Valves. I have power over the ads that appear in this blog. It's a good job that the Ball Valves artikel appeared so soon after Amazing Gyrating Pussy. who knows what disreputable and tasteless purveyors would seek to sully this pristine blog with thier wares.

Stef and Sara - please arrange some Skype time! Love you all
Take care.