The Local Angle

Catastrophes of all kinds hit the headlines. Both the smaller local papers and the big national papers.

In 1912 an Aberdeen paper ran the headline Aberdeen Man Drowned at Sea.

The same event was also reported in the big papers. Here one of the headlines was The Titanic has Sunk.

Mad I and II Missing

George I and II were OK, but George III was mad. Or rather, he became mad. So mad that sometimes he had to be tied up.

This, of course, is great material for fictional treatment. In 1991 a play was staged in London. The title of the play was The Madness of George III, and it was written by Alan Bennett.

In 1994 the play was made into a movie. The original title, however, was changed. It was no longer The Madness of George III. It was changed to The Madness of King George. 

Why was that? Well, at least according to urban myth, the reason was that the producers were afraid that people wouldn't bother to see The Madness of George III if they hadn't seen I and II.

For Whom the Lights Beep

My Uncle Jack is a tourist guide. He takes visitors around the old brewery and tells them all about how beer was brewed, and he knows the names and uses of all the old utensils and machinery. He can also tell you stories about all the former owners of the place and of the people who worked there.

He is a properly qualified guide, and to prove it he wears a blue badge indicating that he is a tourist guide.

One day after having shown visitors round the old brewery he walked home through town. He had forgotten to take off his badge, and while waiting at a zebra crossing for the green man to come on, he was approached by a lady, an American tourist.

- "Excuse me", she said. "I see that you are a guide. I have been wondering about these pedestrian crossings. I can understand the green and red man, that's like in the US. But why does the beeping come on, when the pedestrians have a green light? What is that for?"

- "It's for the blind", Uncle Jack answered. "In this way they can hear when the light is green."

The lady looked perplexed for a moment, then said with disdain: "In the US we don't let blind people drive!"

Now my Uncle Jack never forgets to take off his badge when off duty.

Smiles and More

Everybody going to work by car in the morning knows how boring it can be. Congestion everywhere and stressed parents trying to get their kids to school on time. To make it more interesting I started to time my drive. By cutting corners, using a free lane to get ahead and then edging my way into the lane I should have been in, not letting anybody out from a side road etc. I managed to cut nearly two minutes of my half hour drive to the office.

But that also got boring in the end. Now I have devised a new strategy. I count smiles from other drivers and road users. I let another car get into the line (1 smile), I do not enter the intersection until I am sure I can make it across before the light turns red (1 smile), I give way to cars waiting to enter from a side road (1 smile), I let cars enter the nearly blocked roundabout (1 smile), and there are many other ways to make life easier for your fellow road user.

My record so far is 7 smiles. My target is to get to 10 smiles on a drive to work before the summer holiday. Can you beat that? And the strange thing is, I actually also have managed to get to work as fast as I used to.

And a smile to start the day on is a nice thing. One day a lady even blew me a finger kiss.

It's not just about the Computer

I was helping my daughter with her computer. Buying a program on line and installing it. Everything seemed to go smoothly, that is until the program was installed and we wanted to try it out. We had to enter a code - and the code provided did not work. What a nuisance. Shut down, reinstall - still no access to the program. We tried this and we tried that till we no longer remembered what we had tried. I think you have all had that experience.

Last resort. We had to call Support. I dread calling these helplines - but what can you do. I had a cup of coffee and a cigarette to brace myself up and dialled the support number.

Press 1, if you want assistance in French, press 2, if you want ........ etc.

And after that I got through right away. But that wasn't the only surprise. A sympathetic female listened patiently to my description of the problem. She asked calmly in clear and perfect English about some further details. She was given remote access to my computer (after politely informing me about the implications of this). Then she explained what she was doing as she competently went through some settings and account statuses. It turned out, as I believe is usually the case, that I - i.e. the client - had not paid enough attention to the details and had tried to open an older, preinstalled and not-activated version of the same program.

The problem was soon solved and she offered to help with default settings for some of the programs. Great.

Even those of you who are not and has never been married know that to help others solve a problem all too often implies impatiently letting them know how stupid they are.

But not so this time. The whole session took place in a calm, professional and friendly atmosphere. I had the feeling she was genuinely interested in helping me solving my problem. She made my day. Competence counts.

I felt in a good mood. I decided - against my inner nature and guiding principles - to be nice to everybody (at least for the rest of the day and maybe the first part of tomorrow). "Moien!", I said to everybody when I was out bicycling in the afternoon. (Moien is Luxembourgian for It's a beautiful world, I love you, have a nice day!). 

So Moien to all of you.

That's what happens when you come across friendly and competent people.

Microsoft rules! Long live big corporations.

NB! I hope they give her a big banker's bonus. Bill Gates would have done worse without people like her.

Cheating

"Hi handsome! Do you want to come home with me?", she asked. "You look so sexy. We could have some fun and make love. Come on now! it will be so great". 

"She" was a gorgeous girl. Blond, sexy and at least 20 years younger than me. And she came up to me just like that, when I was walking in a street downtown. The unimaginable suddenly became imaginable.

"I'm sorry", I said. "I am married, and I love my wife very much, and I would never cheat on her. You are a very beautiful girl, though, and I'm sure you will have no problem finding somebody else, even somebody younger and more handsome. But thank you for asking, I do feel a bit flattered. I wish you a very pleasant day. Enjoy the lovely weather."

She then laughed and told me that everything was being recorded by a hidden camera. Someone was trying out how sexual harassment would work if applied by females on males, and not in the more common opposite direction. And it was going to be shown on television if I accepted. I accepted without hesitation.

I told Uncle Jack about it. "Wow", he said, "that's the perfect answer for a hidden camera. You were lucky. I'm glad I wasn't there. It could have been embarrassing. But it doesn't sound like you, what happened."

I had to admit that I had been having a coffee at a cafe opposite and had seen the crew at work.

"That's cheating", he said.