Friday, August 06, 2004
Visit 2 - Days 10 and 11 - Of Printing, Presenting, and Travel Woes
Sorry this did not go out Thursday night, but I quite simply fell asleep while trying to type. Wednesday and Thursday were packed days. Not exactly ?fun filled? but filled with something.
Wednesday morning dawned early (sounds like the start to that silly novel that Snoopy has been trying to write since the 1950s) and I was up and out of bed at 6. Had to get the last few edits done on my 10K proposal submission that morning, so as soon as I was awake I had grabed my laptop and headed under the tree on the back 40 where I do all my work (when it is not, as Thursday night, doing its best Hurrican Keswick impression and flooding the grounds).
By 9 am I was done, ready to print it out and hand it in and start working on the presentation I had to make. I was thinking that with 24 hours to work on my presentation, I could write a nice 10 page article that surveyed the sweep of my thesis, and, who knows, maybe even submit it to the Scottish Journal of Theology. Well that was my plan at least.
The mistake I made (and this is a little like me planning trips), was thinking that actually printing out my paper would be painless. This was not the case. I walked into the Information Technology Suite above the library (little known fact that suite comes from the old Saxon word used for ?Torture chamber, dungeon, pit ? place of despair? ? can also be used as a synonym for the Hebrew word Sheol). Well, you would think that, what with the thousand and thousands (and thousands) of dollars that I and my fellow students are paying for school, that the IT ?Suite? would be helpful. You would think that things like printing out a paper might even be, oh I don?t know, free? Ha Ha. Milton Friedman once said that there is no such things as a free lunch. I now say that there is no such thing as a painless printing experience at NTC.
Things started off smoothly enough. I hooked up my laptop, emailed my paper to my student email account here at the school (where I had already paid 2 pounds to buy 40 pages of printing credit). No problem.
First problem ? upon opening the document on the lab ?computer.? This alleged computer, running I believe on a 286 platform, with technology so old it was donated to the school by Russian Nazarenes who were going to junk it (not true, but that is the legend at least), is running Linux and ?Open Office? ? the worlds idea of a free alternative to Microsoft Windows and Office. Okay, so I lost three minutes of time waiting for my machine to open up my document.
Second problem ? upon opening my formerly 17 A4 sized page document it had magically become 22 pages (and I have to print out 2 copies). Why? Because, the alleged IT ?expert? for the school doesn?t think that Times New Roman should be loaded on the machines. Huh? So all we have is four font choices, all of which make the printed material expand to from 22 to 26 pages. This is clearly not going to work. I try and install the correct font, but, in Linux, this is requires at least a Masters in Engineering, and, I believe, a speaking and writing knowledge of Hindi.
Third problem ? deciding that I needed to print out at least one copy, I sent the document to print. The problem is that my friend Cary sent his document to print moments before. It printed Cary?s document (which had gone from 7 to 19 pages), and then?started printing out the first page over and over and over and over again. We cleared the print que ? result: more pages. We turned off the printer ? result: more pages. Disconnected it from the network ? result: more pages. Resset the entire network ? Result: more pages. The end result: it was now 12 o?clcok, we had about 2000 copies of Cary?s first page (now I know how the people felt standing near Noah when it started to rain) and my paper was still unprinted. Wait, the printer is starting. My paper? Nope, Cary’s page 1.
It normally takes a fair bit to get my upset (or just watching a Denver Bronco game). I was beyond upset. I was looking for one of those fire axes to tear into the printer. No matter what we did, not matter how long it temporarily stopped printing that one page?. It would start up again, seemingly for no reason, printing another half million copies of page 1.
At this point, I was drug out by Cary and another friend here, Mike, to lunch. These are both good Nazarenes, but the first thing the did when we got to lunch was buy me a pint. They too were on the verge of violence (I think Mike was considering Voodoo, judging by his recommendation to make a little doll of the IT man and his lusty look at the acupuncture needles in the window of one of the stores), but found me to be, well, humorous. They had never seen me even upset before.
Well, at 1:30 I returned to the IT ?suite,? fed, calmed, and ready to print, to find more copies of page 1 streaming from the printer. That was it?I gave up, when to the School Vice-Chancellor, handed him a disk and said, ?You want it ? you print it. Cheers!? And they did. I promptly went to my room, read a bit, took a nap, and awoke at 430, ready to now start my ill fated presentation.
Well, at this point, a nice article was out of the question. Instead, panic seemed more appropriate. So, I started re-reading all the articles that capture the central point of my thesis, raising questions that I needed answer, or had a great German term that said in one word what literally paragraphs of prose would do in my thesis. I worked, drank bad coffee, smoked my pipe, drank water, more coffee, a snickers bar, and finally, now in the dark, gave up the ship at 11:30. Figured that I would get an early start the next morning.
Thursday dawned cold (coolest it had been yet) and by 5 I was under my tree, typing away trying to capture fresh insights, looking at the growing squiggly red lines on my screen (not sure if I am simply typing too much German or if my fingers had stopped working?). Found a cup of coffee at 7 to warm me back up (the nice Work and Witness lady, not knowing my predicament, said, ?best way to start the day, a cup of coffee.? I of course could only respond with ?Start?, Start? Where were you two hours ago??) At 745, I headed to the shower to get ready for my 930 grilling. Now, given the difficulty I had in the IT ?suite? the day before, you are properly not surprised that I ended up taking my shower in, what can only be referred to here as, the shower ?suite.?
For those of you who are long-time readers of this weblog, you know that I have had issues with this shower before (same shower as last year, not the one from June). So, I start the water, lower the head (there are too many tall people in this world) go to take off my clothes, and notice that there is a sudden summer rain storm throughout the room. The head, having fallen from its stand, is spraying ,(like one of those 1970s sprinklers you still find on some people?s lawns) from right to left and back again, the entire room. Of course, I am half way in the process of undressing, unable to move, as the room slowly fills up with water to the depth of half an inch. Eventually untangling myself from my soaked clothers (and noticing that I now have a nice wet towel, socks, you name it) I hope over the side of the tub, grab the shower head and, well, shower. There is simply nothing a smelly, wet and naked human being can do about it in a place with no mops. So, I showered, shaved, lathered, repeated, turned off the water, stepped out of the shower, slipped, landed on my bum, and realized that I really should have cleaned up the water before my shower.
At this point, I dash upstairs to my room, dress quickly, and start to realize that I am not heading into this presentation in the best of shape. I am tired, cranky, my tummy hurts because all I have ingested for almost 24 hours is a snickers and about 400 cups of coffee (yes, I am also jittery), and I am about to go before people who could send me home, having taken thousands of dollars and 13 weeks of my life for nothing. So, to cheer myself up I announce that should I be flunked out that Thursday at 6 I would be throwing a naked kegger party, complete with cigarettes and the reading of Calvin?s entire Institutes. That would be appropriate revenge on the Nazarenes. For some reason, people laughed at this idea?which instantly brought me back to sanity, and ready to present.
Another student went first in presenting. Karl is doing his thesis on Wesley?s Christian Library. To be honest, it sounded dreadful (the topic, not his presentation). At 10:10, after grilling him over his presentation and material, the spotlight fell on little old me. Well, I started out sharing generally the genesis of my thesis, the reasons for Pannenberg, then took them through the outline, and for some reason started reading the description of my chapters to them verbatim from my 10K document. I was standing there reading my paper (though as always making animated sidebar comments), which is something I swore I would never do. Finished presenting, there was silence in the room (10 other people, including other students and examiners). Silence. Silence. Silence. Then they spoke. They loved it. They are excited about it. No one at NTC has ever written a truly theological Phd like this. They loveed the topic. A few minor comments about trying to write three separate thesis (which will be an ongoing issue for me), but mostly, the comments were, ?We don?t really understand what you are talking about, but from what we do see, this is going to be great.? With that, we broke for coffee. At 11 I returned to meet with the two main examiners, where we talked more about the process, about next steps, and the like. They thanked me, and I was done.
Feeling a bolt of freedom, I suddenly realized that I had promised to help Cary pack and get him on his flight. So back to the dorm for packing and loading, then we started, at 1:30 to the airport. One of the examiners, Dr. Brower, offers to take us to the train platform, not in Didsbury, but one stop down in Burnage. Now, after my experience the first time with Dr. Noble and his dropping me off at the wrong terminal at the airport, you would think I would have told Dr. Brower, ?no, we can mange.? Instead we piled Cary?s bags in the car, rode to Burnage, piled out, climbed the platform?.and discovered there were no trains from Burnage to the airport until 5 pm. At this point, I turn to Cary and tell him I had given a world wide warning for people not to travel with me, that I was known chaos. He smiled, and we walked down to the village of Burnage. After trying to use a phone booth to call for a cab ? the phone consistently spit the money back at Cary ? we eventually had to beg help from a record store, who called a cab for us, and away we went. It was at this point that I realized how tired I was. I was dead on my feet. I got Cary to the airport (cab man dropped us off, yep, at the wrong terminal), carried his luggage a mile to the next terminal, and said my farewells.
Walking back I notice that there are about 10,000 Arab and PAckistani men, women, and children in the terminal. All dressed in traditional white (or full covering for women). Is it time for the Haj? They are all waiting in the same line, for the same airline. This is the longest que in the history of Manchester. Awed by their willingness to stand for hours (and confused because all the signage was in Arabic, which I read even less well than Hindi) I headed down to the bus and train station at the airport. Realizing I have half an hour wait, I run to see the BMI counter (back in the original terminal again) to see about moving my tickets to Saturday so I can come home (I am so ready to be home). But the lines are long as well, so I simply hop on the train, and am sped back to Didsbury.
Last night was spent then in celebration. Karl and his wife (Americans living over here) had me over for dinner and a round of Settlers of Cataan (Tanya and I?s favorite game). They were too competitive for me, so half way through we decide to walk back in the hurricane, watch one of my movies on my laptop (Waking Ned Divine), and from there?a happy night sleep.
It is now Friday morning, 945. I am helping to run cable here in a few minutes for the new library (you want something done right ? do it yourself). Will send one more weblog, either with details about my homecoming or with details about why I am still in Manchester. If you can, pray that I can get moved up to Saturday on BMI without breaking our piggy bank.
Talk to you later from the IT ?Suite?
Manchester • Summer 2004 • (12) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
