I'm losing my religion...

"No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man" - Plato (Wise man old Plato!)

"We don't encourage drinking"... They were the almost the first words spoken to me after checking into my hotel for a weeks training course. My retort, sharp, quick and I believed reasonably witty wasn't well received... "Trust me, I don't need any encouragement"... no, this quick quip was just returned with a stern look of disdain.

From that point onwards it commenced... I started losing my religion... Humour...

My new job brings a new opportunities and some very expensive training is also required... Ummm... OK, so I'll loosely call it training for the moment, but after surviving the first four days at the 'Training Camp' it's beginning to feel more like rehab! There is a bar of course, but that's located half a mile away in the main Hotel building, and by the time I've managed to cram thirteen hours of classroom study in per day and then finish the evening off with a few hours homework, forgive me if I don't really feel like taking a stroll, to be honest conjuring up the energy to crawl to the bathroom for a pee seems somewhat of a miracle!

So virtually forced rehab it is, Mr Robbie Williams I salute you, now I understand what it is you going through (Detox, easy life you want to try being educated simultaneously!). OK so this might not be the Priory, but it's a pretty close run thing... Partly because the building I never leave, where I live, breath, learn, eat and sleep 24/7 was for a considerable length of time before being utilised as a educational concentration camp, a convent! (Now this figures, this is all gods doing! OK your gracious holy dudeness, I'm sorry, whatever it is I've done to piss you off in this life or any of my others previously I take it all back. His sense of irony isn't lost on me, but this is just taking it way to far!)

OK so maybe it's just me, being honest I'm know I'm not as young as I used to be, and twenty years of a more than decedent lifestyle might well of eroded more than just a few of my limited brain cells (What I like Guinness!). And of course the task in hand, that is of learning, is made even more difficult personally as I have no clear recollection to the last time in my life I actually sustained any form of such intense education, it might well of been my 100metres free style swimming test when I was aged 10!

There are a few upsides off course. The fact that my new employer is paying for this very expensive (well its Microsoft!), course is one of them, but this luxury pales into insignificance compared to the free; all you can eat; constant; virtually intravenous supply of chocolate! (Yes ladies, you did read that right, an endless supply of free chocolate!), and I can't remember finding a Gold Ticket anywhere!

But no amount of chocolate can substitute for a few wee Tots at the end of an evening, that and add to the scenario that for an Ex-convent there's appears distinct lack of any "eye-candy" around here to distract (unfortunitly almost all Tecky's tend to be male, and those that aren't usually look like hermaphrodites!), things are desperate, and I'm far to old to find my calling now, the monastic life is not for me!

But the end is in sight, exams Saturday, and as the first British "Home Run" solider to escape Colditz during WWII, Airey Neave said, before the INLA decided this Hero was a suitable target in the 70's to be killed in a car bomb attack by cowards, "I learnt that the escaper must have absolute confidence in his success"... I will pass, I will pass, I will escape!

Wish me luck folks :o) And if anyone can find any humour in OLAP Cubes please email me fast, because "That's me in the corner"!!!

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten" - B.Skinner.

Ciao Ciao
The Cooler King ;o)
Confined to Deepest Darkest Oxfordshire Somewhere
I Blog There4 I Am

[NB. Added 22/03/07 (To Late to stop the torrent of email abuse!!!) "unfortunitly almost all Tecky's tend to be male, and those that aren't usually look like hermaphrodites" F**k... Sorry C, you know I think your more Sandra Bullock than hermaphrodite :o) ]