Does anyone know how the Playstation3 works?

Both Mrs. Chritensi and myself shed a tear yesterday.

Four kids all going away to universities - and in four different countries. The youngest one was the last to leave. It was sad to drop him and wave goodbye. Will he really be able to manage without us? Well, of course he will. We all had to go away from home at one time.

And think of all the fun, when they come home for holidays. Old friends and new friends visiting. And all the stories and knew knowledge they bring home from the different places. Life will be rich.

But the house is empty just now. I braved myself up to make a tour of their rooms. Their private domains where parents were not always welcome in later years. There are all the memories from their childhood and teenage years. Favourite Teddy Bears, school pictures and toy cars.

And in my boy's room there is the Playstation3. I never played with him at the Playstation3, as I thought he spent enough time at it without me. But now I'm tempted to have a go.

All I know is that you need some bottles of coke and some bags of chips. Is there some Parental Control that needs to be deactivated? Does anyone know how it works?

The Air is better in the City

Pete is no good with mechanics of any sort. Far from it. Not long ago he moved to a house outside the city. In real nice surroundings with fields and woods. And he bought himself a new fancy bicycle.

He noticed, however, that the back tyre was loosing air. He pumped it, although it took him some time to figure out how to do it as the valve was of a new type where you had to loosen part of the valve to get air into the inner tube. It kept loosing air, however, and he had to use the pump every day.

He decided that the tube must have been punctured and decided to have it repaired. There was a bicycle shop in the village, but he checked the price of a repair, and found that it was much more expensive than in the small repair shop in the city where he used to live.

 

He loaded the bicycle in the car and drove into the city. The guy in the repair shop checked the tyre and smiled. "You have to tighten the valve after pumping", he said, and showed him how to do it. "If not the tyre will loose air." He then pumped the tyre, and Pete drove the long way back to his new home in the countryside.

 

Me and my Uncle Jack visited him some days later, and he told us the story. Later the same day some other friends arrived to see the new house. Pete was showing us around, and the city friends were impressed with all the green stuff and the cows in the fields and the silence and all the rest. So much better than in the City.

 

Uncle Jack was listening. A smile came on his face. "But the air is better in the City", he said and told the story of Pete's bicycle and the trip to the repair shop.

Everyone was amused - except one.

Tentative Dosing of Sleeping Medicine

My grandfather, who was a well-respected man, had held several positions of confidence in the rural community where he had a small farm.

Once he served on the Tax Board. It was in a time when rules were more lax and records not strictly kept. He told me of a letter he once received from one of the big farmers in the community:

Dear Sir,

Lately I have not been sleeping well. I realise that it is due bad consciense. I might occasionally not have informed you of all my income. I would like to make up for my faults and I therefore enclose a cheque of 5000 kroner.

Yours Faithfully.

NB! If I still have problems sleeping, I will send another cheque.

Fear of Failing

I keep having this recurrent nightmare in slightly different versions, and have for years and years:

 

I am going to sit an exam. I get up early in the morning, plenty of time to get to the examination hall in time. I need some milk for my breakfast and go to the shop in the next street to get some. I start walking back to my house. I take a shortcut through an alleyway. I recognise the tall building near my home, but the street I get out into do not look familiar. I walk and walk. Some features of the cityscape seem familiar, others not at all.

 

I run into one of my fellow students. She holds a book. "Did you study this well?", she asks, "I've been told that all this questions will be from the Chapter 5 in it". I look at the book in panic. I remember buying it and putting it in the shelf, but then forgetting all about it and never reading it. She laughs deridingly, and I realise that it is my former boss from years ago.

 

I keep on walking the streets, now realising that I just have to turn the corner to be home, only to discover that in fact I have to walk round a whole block to get there. The railway barrier is down and I wait and wait.

 

I suddenly realise that there is a series of lectures I should have followed but never managed to attend, however much I tried. I always arrived late for some obscure reason, or went to the wrong lecture hall.

 

I go in a front door of a house and get out the back door, thinking that I am in my own street, only to discover that I am in a completely unknown street. I discover the Amsterdam Central Station in the far and the Eiffel Tower in the background.

 

Finally I make it to the examination hall. A little late. Everybody look up, then starts laughing. I have forgot to put on my trousers.

 

Then, fortunately, I am saved by my brutal awaking.

 

Cooking Every Day of the Week

Jack came round today. His wife had been ill and been in bed for a week, so I hadn't seen him for a while. They have two small kids, so his mother-in-law, who is well into her seventies, had been staying with them to help out.

 

I could see that he was a little bit upset and asked if everything was OK. He hesitated. "Mrs. Jones from down the road called today", he said. "She was telling me off for letting my old mother-in-law work so hard."

 

Here's his story. Believe it or not:

 

Jack was in the kitchen everyday, taking care of the family dinner and the snacks for the kids during the day. His mother-in-law was also mostly hanging out in the kitchen.

 

On the Monday, his mother-in-law had asked him to get some leeks from the greengrocer's. Afterwards she sat down at the table in the kitchen with her coffee and cigarettes and cleaned the leeks.

 

On the Tuesday he was sent for some cabbage. She cleaned it and boiled it together with the leeks.

 

Wednesday was carrots and potatoes.

 

Thursday was onions.

 

Friday Brussels sprouts - and then the soup was ready.

 

Friday evening Mrs. Jones came round to see how Jack's wife was doing. The three ladies sat in the kitchen talking. Jack overheard Mrs. Jones tell his mother-in-law how nice is was that she could come and help her daughter. She asked what she had been doing.

 

"Well, I have been cooking everyday", she said. Mrs. Jones apparently thought that Jack could have done the cooking some of the time and let him know so in no uncertain terms over the phone the next day.

 

"And the soup", I inquired "was it good at least". I was happy to see a smile appearing on Jack's face. "The small ones both stuck their tongues out, their faces were contorted with disgust and they let out a loud "Aurrrrgh!"", he said.

 

"Sometimes you just can't help loving these little brats", he added, his smile never leaving his face.

Lesson learnt

When I finished school, I thought I had learnt enough. I was too boring and now I wanted to live the real life.

 

I was 17 and got my self a job in a factory producing cardboard packaging. The cardboard was cut and folded and sometimes stitched together at various machines. Print was added. Afterwards it was bundled and loaded on pallets for delivery to the clients. It was in the 70's, and automatising was not at the level that it is today. The physical effort was quite hard for a boy just released from school.

 

I was working with a guy, Bob, who had already been at the factory for several years. He was in his 50s. He had worked on the farms, until tractors and other machinery made him and many others redundant.

 

We had job sheets for the various orders we had to process. One morning when we had finished with all the job sheets we had he said, "You come with me. We have to see the manager to see what we have to do next."

 

We went up into the big office with the big windows overlooking the entire factory floor. The Manager, Mr. Smith, told us to sit down and offered both of us a cigarette. He then fetched a bundle of job sheets and started explaining. "First you run this lot for the fridge manufacturer", he said. "That should take a couple of hours. And then Carl can start loading them onto the truck. Then you can do the lot for the wholesaler in Copenhagen and finish off with 100 boxes for the auction hall in the harbour."

 

He looked at Bob to see if he had made himself understood. The instructions were quite simple I found, but Bob looked a bit hesitant, and the Manager offered us both another cigarette, and while we leaned back in our chairs and smoked our cigarettes, he went over the instructions once more.

 

We went to see Carl, who was the fork-lift driver who would take the cardboard from the store to the machines on the floor, and when the job was finished he would load it onto one of the trucks.

 

Bob shoved him the new job sheets. "First we have to do the lot for the auction hall", Bob told him, "then you bring us the 100 by 100 for Copenhagen and then we do the lot for the fridge factory".

 

I protested vaguely. "We had to the ones for the fridge manufacturer first", I ventured.

 

"No", Bob said, "that should be the first delivery. You can only unload there until five in the afternoon, so it has to been at the back of the truck. Then Bill - Bill was the truck driver - can make it to Copenhagen. It's only a small lot for the wholesaler, and he will be able to make it to his sister for dinner. The auction hall he can do when he comes back. They will be there all night."

 

"But", I insisted", the Manager told us to do the lot for the fridge manufacturer first."

 

"Don't be daft", Bob retorted, "Mr. Smith is a not a fool. He has been to high school and everything. He would never say anything as stupid as that."

 

The goods very delivered on time and to everybody's satisfaction. And Bill had dinner at his sister's in Copenhagen.

 

The next time we had to see the manager for new assignment it all worked out in the same way.

 

And by that I learned the importance of having a staff that's dedicated to making things work in the most rational and efficient way.

 

I also learned the importance of good managers - because with time I came to realise that Mr. Smith was very well aware of how things worked.

 

I also learned that by playing stupid, you can sometimes earn yourself an extra cigarette and a few more minutes of rest.

And, most importantly, I learned that there are things more boring than schools, so after a year a started High School.