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.

Ball Valve Bonanza

We are off steel balls, we are now onto Ball Valves. Google Ad-sense has spoken, and I followed the link and was amazed! I came into the world of Modentic Ball Valves of Taiwan and read the splash headline
HOT News: Modentic model HPV-40FS/41FS/43FS passed API607 5th fire safe testing!!!!!!!

Hot news indeed, I hear you all gasp as one man. Not only that, but Modenic also make metal-seated ball valves, forged ball valves, sanitary ball valves, flanged ball valves, trunnion-mounted ball valves, high-pressure ball valves, globe ball valves, gate ball valves, multi-port ball valves, v-flow ball valves, strainers, and last but not least, synchronous needle valves.

Well! With all this expertise to dazzle the gawping millions, and advertised on my blog, my google Ad-Sense account would surely be bursting at the gussets. I went gleeflully to check. And found:-

	Paginavertoningen	Aantal klikken	Pagina-CTR	Pagina eCPM	Opbrengsten
	102	5	4,90%	€ 6,80	€ 0,69
Totale opbrengst					€ 0,69

Come on folks, help me out! Just buy a few Multi-port ball valves or a bucket of strainers. you never know when you might need one. Be safe, don't get caught out. 69 cents in 3 months is not going to get me that swimming-pool we talked about.

A more sensible blog entry will follow this one, or, since they appear in reverse order of input, will precede this one. Love you all.

It is weekend!

I have no photos to post, and had I any, they would have been about horses. Today at work I had my first experience of handling an exam. It is quite pleasing to note that the bevvy of young ladies clustering around the door, in a violent clash of clothes and smells (some perfumes and deodorants are fine alone, but combined chemically are quite revolting) seemed pleased that 'Mister Spike' would be sitting at the front. I assumed that this was because I was popular and charming. Turns out it was nothing of the kind. I was a soft touch. The first exam was all about skin care and such. 'When I give you the papers you will be quiet and begin. There will then be no talking, no bags on the table and nothing ear-phony in the ears.' It didn't take long for the first of many attacks on integrity. 'Mister Spike, can we have a window open. The 'eat's causing havoc to me pigment cells what's sitcherated in me adipose layer. I think'. Knowlegable Nerd at the front shakes her head and twenty three ladies change their answers. Lots of dropping of rubbers and coughing that sounded like 'hrrumpffarnserfourteensisaitch splutter bugger me I've gobbed on me paper'. They are allowed to leave the room when they are finished. They then hand in the paper and sign The List of Names. They waited until they had accumulated a small task force and then rushed my overseers desk en masse creating confusion and much noise, scrambling for purposely dropped papers, blocking my view of the class. It was some time before I realised that most of the noise was coming from the rest of the class, now happily swapping answers. One girl deliberately left her gold pen on the desk. I, fool that I am, rushed after her to return it. As I left the room, an answer market quickly got going and was doing brisk business as I returned. One girl had an eyepatch and kept looking up at the lamp for inspiration, or to illuminate whatever was perhaps written on the inside. All great fun. Some of them looked totally confused when given a choice of four answers - A, B, another B of another A. Some of the questions were very simple, on the level of - 'If one group attacks another because of differences in race, religion or colour, is this (a) The Pirates of Penzance (b) A bowl of rice-crispies (c) Two soft-boiled eggs (d) Discrimination . On these socio-political questions, the Muslim girls wrote amazingly knowledgable stuff. But they are generally the brightest and the most hard-working anyway. I am still much enjoying my new career. I try to get to the students through drawings on the wall. I shall scan them in. Mostly concerning the awful mess they make and the rubbish they leave. It is sometimes a battle to deal with huge 18 year old youths (there are a few chaps as well as hordes of girls) who come in, sit down and put their feet up on the keyboard and play loud music. One tatooed, muscular Sylvester Stallone, built like a brick karzy, comes in with just a vest and trousers, greasy fifties hair-style, all gold chains and earrings. He wants to borrow a picture book of fairies and elves. He is training to work with little kids in the creche, and is actually one of the nicest and gentlest people I have met here.

Teacher Remko knows all the words of every Fawlty Towers episode. Each morning I am tested with another small lead. 'Papers arrived yet Fawlty?' 'Thpoons?'. 'Just off to see Mr O'Reilly, dear', and I must respond immediately or fail.

I have been having a lot of golf lessons. Everyone I know who plays golf is working in the week, the time that I can play. I booked a round at Sparnewoude, but you cannot play on your own, it is too busy. You join the next group that makes it up to a foursome. Arriving at the first tee, I see that my partners will be a fit looking chap of about fifty and two fit looking ladies. They are tanned and have expensive equipment, with hats that have 'Ping'. And wooly covers for the drivers and woods. And the golf bags have hundreds of pockets for all the stuff they need, rows of tees, pencils, umbrella, ball-retriever-out-of-water-thingy. The man is swishing his 500 euro driver and showering all with grass and twigs. They are a couple and the wife's sister and are an entity. They are not pleased to see me. I apologise for being foisted upon them and hope that I will not slow them down. Having arrived last, I will be first to go. On the range, you have a bucket of balls and you can afford a few mistakes. On the course you have ony one, of course. The first ball is a nervous one. With the 3 watching me, together with another 8 who are waiting for us to move ahead, I make my first shot. Not paricularly good, but dead straight and bounces along the hard ground for about 160 meters. Matey says nothing, unimpressed. The women are next, and it quickly becomes apparent they are are, despite the expensive clothes and clubs, useless. They both manage about five feet. Matey is next, and with his enormous driver in his hand he studies the far flag, throws grass in the air, squats a few times for a better view, studies the map of the hole on the card and eventually takes his stand. The club goes so far back that the head reappears in front of him. An intake of breath and the club uncoils like a powerful spring and sweeps down towards the ball with the noise of an express-train. And misses the ball. Difficult when the club-head is the size of a saucepan. The momentum carries the club around his body and spins him with it like somebody who has just thrown a discus. He is off-balance and falls, the women rush tutting to help him. Much stifled laughter from behind, followed quickly by irritation and a pantomime of watch studying. The rules dictate that the one whose ball is furthest from the flag has the next shot. I will have a long wait. The next shots of all three are measured in yards, in single figures. We proceed in a leapfrog manner, putting towards my ball in the distance. I tell my partners that we are using too much time and that we should let one of the groups behind us move ahead. This group all put their balls about where mine is, and move away for the second shot. I wish I could go with them. It is a nightmare. By the time we get to my ball, they have each used up around 13 strokes. I get a five. Matey does not want to tell me his score, because it's not about points, it's about playing a noble game with the right attitude. He had an 18, but should have given up at 11. It is bad manners to stop playing a round, but this truly was awful. I gave up afte six holes with the excuse that I needed to get home and the prospect of getting to the ninth before midnight seemed to be remote. By the fourth hole we had let three more flights move ahead. And I shared in the collective guilt and the black looks. And I was late for my dinner. Black Looks in Hunger - John Osborne for those who remeber the 60's . Never again. For Adam's amusement I shall post a story that I wrote in 2004, at the time of the GVB exam in Texel. It is spoof on the complexity of the rules in golf.
Another remarkable episode this week is that of

The Amazing Gyrating Pussy. Too late - come back tomorrow!

PS If you see an advertistement about Golf, this is because I have signed up for Ad-sense, whereby gGoogle inserts advertistments in the text and I will receive huge quantities of shekkels on the post.

And furthermore

I don't have time to fill up more nonsense, so enjoy some pictures of Heiloo and its environs, and I will make something up to go with them later.

Some water on the way to the Pony Club

And a bunch of Snow Drops in the woods.

Looking up a tree with lots of bark, but not the one I meant to look up. Barking up the wrong tree or something. I need my pill.

This is Emmz showing off her outfit for the School Party.

The chosen theme is 'schoolgirls , which somehow does not seem to be particularly original since it is a place where girl go to, er, school.

I'm not sure what this picture has to do with anything, but it fills up the page quite nicely. It is now about 4 weeks since Berny got ill. Things are going a little better, but she cannot stoop or sit down for long. It is still vey painful and she sometimes tries to do too much at once. The bed in the living room does enable her to have a social life what with the constant ebb and flow of the coffe table visitors, the pots always warm and on constant standby. And the bed is perfectly located as an ideal central observation platform from which to direct execution of household tasks and to effect the dictation of terms generally and the calling of any odds needing a call. And with a panoramic view of the carpark, the stall and the Hoogeweg, not to mention the web-cam, nothing escapes her eagle eye. We, along with her colleagues all wish her a speedy recovery, especialy those who would normally be at home for most of the week and the accountibility of whose movements may have gained in the rigidity department. We go twice a week to the fizzio. I have just had my first trip taking Bernadet and found it most relaxing watching someone else being pummelled, stretched and distorted by a muscular lady therapist. I found it so relaxing that I fell asleep and had to be awoken as my snoring was disturbing the session.

I digress at this moment. I am still in the Open Learning Centre. It is rather quiet as it is Exam Week. A group of charmless young ladies has just entered. They have nothing to do and are fully dressed for going home. Scarves, raincoats the lot. Some of them have thier scooter crash helmets and gloves on, and are having loud but muffled conversations from the insides of their helmets. They cannot go home yet as they must await a piece of paper. They are not the brightest of the bunch and I have not seen them here before. One appears to have furry moonboots and several overcoats. It is quite warm in here. She is complaining that she smells. "Ireen! Yer gottny Deo?". Irene produces from her duffle bag a huge cylinder that would be the envy of British Oxygen, and the large student, without unbuttoning her coat, manages to worm it through strata of wool and nylon until the offending armpit is reached. The insertion of the gas may temper the sweaty depression, but it also displaces the originally trapped air and forces it outwards, enriching itself as it passes through layers of cloth and plastic, collecting other smells en route. The deodorant, spearmint flavour, this mornings rain on wool plus the expulsion of foul, sweat-moistened air that has been trapped under layers of synthetics for god knows how long, pours over me in an avalanche. As if this were not bad enough, she has discovered a most interesting trick for our amusement. By pumping her substantial arm up and down, causing layers of wet fat to enfold and release the wet cylinder, she can cause the can to squeal and fart to the rhythm of 'Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer' while her three cronies fall about the floor, cackling like witches in Macbeth. I have ejected them all, but not before requesting the use of the deo to spray around my desk.

Anyhoo, back to the Bernyherny of life. Poor Bernadet has been going around for a while with two huge elastic plasters in the form a a giant X from bum to shoulder. This is to pull her shoulders back, and she walks like a penguin following a plane flying overhead. It has been very hard for her and she has been voluntarily reducing the pain-killers to avoid dependence. Today the big X would be removed. The fizzio gripped the ends of the X. We all gritted our teeth and closed our eyes. When I opened mine, the X was gone with narry a wimper. Most disappointing.

Anyhoo, it's coffe time again, so I'll leave you with this picure which I entitle 'Merel on a horse'.

By the way, it is going much better with both Merel and Thijs. I think we have all changed and it is alll going along so much better. See you in a bit.

My New Job

I have a splendid job. It does not involve a great deal of thought or responsibilty, but I really enjoy it. I am, I'll have you know, a Technical Teaching Assistant in charge of the Open Learning Centre. It is a few rooms containing around 50 computers, loads of DVDs and books. I sit at my desk copying video tapes onto DVD and waiting until the customers need my help. And looking important. Sometimes it is very quiet, at other times it is a cattle pen. Thousands of teenage girls pour in and fight for a computer. When they leave the floors and tables are covered in empty packets of crisps, drinks cartons, half eaten sandwiches and the keybords are sticky with mayonaisse and ketchup. I wait, looking important, until called upon to do my magic. Like fixing a jammed stapler or explaining why paper with two holes is a bad choice for a binder with three rings. And stop calling me Mister. My name is Spike. Alright, Mister Spike. It is great fun and unpredictable Events of great excitement occur quite regularly. Today the laminating machine caught fire while a student was sealing a piece of work that rivalled the Sistine Chapel for work input. It's making a 'orrible smell Mister Spike. She made the blunder of turning the machine off, stopping therefore the motors that draw the masterpiece into, and, more relevantly, out of the overheated machine. The work melted and caught fire. Hours of work down the drain. You have to laugh, don't you.















This is part of the OLC before the inward stampede. In a few minutes it will be filled with squealing young ladies. Me? Fifth Duke of Woppington, on my own, in the daytime, in a room full of teenage girl students? With my reputation? Are they quite mad?

My desk is by the door, a strategic position where I can all parts of the OLC and control entry and exit.

This is my mate, Herman Dood.























And this is my locker.
Anyhoo, it is late and I am off to bed. I will keep more in touch. Love to all.

More fantastic translation from Google

Sorry! I could not resist this! This is Google's version of the story about the old farmhouse of Bernadet's granddad. So if you don't understand the Dutch in this blog, use Google to give you a perfect translation!

For the farm of my grandfather (and later my uncle and his children) is a sloopvergunning requested. To prevent the demolition hammer with a piece of horticultural history of Heiloo disappears, I asked my father about the history of the farm. The farm was probably built around 1900, the year that my grandfather was born. He started a mixed farm with a few cows, strawberries, apsperges, beans and tulips. Saturday, the farm is about 2 acres of land. The early years were not easy. It was at the beginning of the crisis years and if he had not bought the company, he was probably walk away. It was anything but profitable. The milk was only 3 cents per liter, the peas 4 ct per kilo and a carton of strawberries (2.5 kg) yielded only a quarter on.

It was not easy times. My grandfather and grandmother had 12 children, so there was something earned. In time the crisis was by government or aid given to these firms, not in cash but in kind. Otherwise they would eat or clothes for the children of Buying and that was not the intention. No, you had to return a map and then you got for example a wheelbarrow with a pneumatic tire. This was a whole progress. All these wheelbarrows manure spreading over the country had to be, this was a lot lighter and you could also bring together more. Other "small growers aid" consisted of things such as a manure fork, hoe, pitchfork, etc.

In the stable behind the woonboerderij fit about 6 cows.
Most farmers, as my grandfather had only cows in the winter (These farmers were deliberately backers said). He had in the early period but a couple of cows owned. He borrowed money in the bank for two additional cows. In the spring, then went back to the dealer and the loan was repaid back. The cow he owned had been sold again. There have been at this farm is actually never walked out of cows. I think the ground is too expensive for washing. In the crisis years, my grandfather lost the right to grow tulips. There was an oversupply of tulips, they yielded very little on it. My grandfather therefore decided to halve its tulips construction of 400 AW to 200 AW. Then came the association of growers however bulbs with the measure that all tulips farmers still only half of the year could grow. The kids had to stop completely. My grandfather had therefore decided too early, because now he could therefore have only one quarter of its original volume grow. That he was such a small grower become, that he no longer received authorization. His confidence in this organization had a considerable toll. He thought he was much wronged.

The pump house

The pump house next to the farm was built after the war. The land surrounding the farm was becoming drier, probably by the water from the dunes. The growers tried first by zandafgraving the ground again to get a little less dry. The sand could they lost to contractors for the houses. This brought only temporary relief. Because all neighboring gardeners went to do the same, thus destroying the effect was made. After the war, there was the Marshall Aid for the reconstruction of the Netherlands. Many gardeners in this area have received a subsidy when source store and a pump to buy, so they could irrigate the land. at a given moment, however, there was so much water diverted from that too little water for drinking water remained in the dunes. There was a rule that when the farmers had to start paying for water that they took from the ground. This, however, as they were wrongly, that it was massively rejected. The rule was tacitly abolished. For the drinking water was extra water from the leak through the Zuiderzee, the dunes been inflated.

Spikes Uitkijkpost

I began making drawings of things in the Heiloo-online news because it is a challenge to draw something without knowing what the story really is. And because my family find them amusing. Paul Mars of Heiloo-online presumably also likes them, and wants to put them in the news section. I shall thus put only the latest two here, and delete the older ones. They can be found by clicking on the link to Spikes uitkijkpost. Some people may ask why much of this is in English. Although I have lived in Holland for more than 30 years and have reasonable Dutch, this blog is aimed at my English-speaking family in England, Canada and New Zealand, who would otherwise spend the day with a dictionary. The Dutch part I leave to Bernadet who does it much better than I .