Tuesday 10 October 2000

Pic of the day: Archive foto, since I did not bring my camera to work and did not get home until next morning. Taken outdoors last week. Pretty sad, huh? It is so fall.

Late night show

Well, this will be a rather pathetic entry, as I write it from work at 2 in the night. I have helped with installing the new telephone system here. Actually, I have mainly replaced the telephones (nearly 70 of them, some requiring some creeping and crawling to attach). I'm rather tired and worn.

And of course they were not finished till midnight, when my last bus went. So now I'm waiting for the 6 AM bus home. Yeah, I like late nights; but this is ridiculous. I could of course take a taxi (cab) home. Yeah, like I would pay for having to work past midnight. Keeeeep dreeeeaming. On the contrary, the workplace should pay me.

***

Anyway, as you can guess, my entire afternoon was wasted on work. Work is the curse of the drinking classes, as the poet said. Even though I mostly drink chocolate milk, I share the sentiment.

Incidentally, I saw an article in a usually fairly trustworthy Norwegian newspaper ("Vårt Land") saying that 40% of alcohol drinking was job-related. That is not to say that Norwegians drink at work - this is taboo to most. But they drink like sponges during training courses, conferences, and social occasions related to work. -I found 40% unexpectedly high, but I can attest that any attempt to teach working people anything away from their usual workplace is doomed to result in a drinking binge instead, in which people learn very different things from what was scheduled.

To be painfully blunt, I have found that after hotel courses I have been the only one who have mastered the intended content. Though in all fairness, sometimes others have learned it after they got home. Yeah, it probably helps that I am more intelligent than your average human. But on the other hand, I am correspondingly lazier. Usually these two more or less cancel out. So I think most of the advantage comes from being sober and from not concentrating hard on thinking of sex during the presentations.

The latter stems largely from not having much sex to concentrate on thinking of. But still.

***

Now you may say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure:
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
and there's a mighty judgement coming - but I may be wrong ...
You see I hear these funny voices, in the Tower of Song.

Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song.