Bootstraps

Im happy!
I just had my first class. I talked to the four girls in the “Advanced PC Maintenance” class about their tests, we went through the first few questions. I talked about the non-volatile ram inside a computer, what it stores and what that information is used for; I talked about booting a computer and what that means, and why it is called boot. It’s a good story. At one point I stood on the desk and attempted to lift myself by pulling on my shoe laces (yes, it is relevant). My colleague sat that the back so I could judge from her facial epressions if I was still behaving in an acceptible way with the Kenyan students; I think that had she not been there I would not have been so confident. But the point of all this is that I really enjoyed it. I have not done any teaching for a long time. It gave me a massive lift to do some today. I have been sitting fidgetting in the staffroom doing the JavaScript past paper for the last hour because the lab is closed while one of the Cisco on-line exams is being taken. Eventually I had had enough and had to come over here to the library/internet cafe and use one of these dodgey PCs to tell you all how happy I am with my morning’s work.

I’d like to add that I cooked the chips last night, made them properly by frying them first to cook and then removing them from the oil and salting them while the oil got nice and hot to put them back in and make them brown and crisp. Meanwhile I put some onion and some of the deliciously ripe and sweet tomates that they have here (unripe and flavour-less tomatoes are one of my long-standing gripes with UK supermarkets) in a pan with olive oil and fresh correander, fried them for a bit then covered them to make them steam and go lovely and soft for the tomato salsa. It was great. It wasn’t so much that I was missing chips as I had promised some colleagues that when they come to visit I will cook them something typically British, and I don’t know how to make Chicken Tikka Massala.

Awoke at 6.15 this morning and went for a run while it was still cool. The sky was clear — contrast with overcast last time I went running at that time — and I saw a beautiful sunrise. Its hot today.

I’ll write again soon and tell you about my new nickname and with some local photos.