At work I invented a gimmick to avoid turning [my*] back to the class. Or maybe I did that last year, who'd remember exactly. The blackboard were wide, all over the wall, the mašinska requires a lot of drawing. Good that I don't have to wipe it that much, or to call for the orderly to do his number and amuse the class, but the far left end of it, in the corner by the window, is a fuckup. I have to turn my back to the class to reach the corner with my right hand, and then there's clamor within seconds. Well maybe I don't have to... I remembered how in 1976 I realized that I'd suddenly become illiterate if my right hand was out of commission, say in a cast, so I started practicing my left. Took the chalk in my left and it turned out even easier than with a pen, and not too much uglier than with the right. The added effect was that this attracted the guys' attentin („look how prof writes with [his*] left!“), all the better.
It would happen often that there's five-three-two minutes left before the bell and I've done what I planned, nothing to do now. To check the time, I used the pocket watch I got in Moscow (24-II-1978.), which is discrete and I can do it unnoticed, facing the blackboard. This unnoticed thing is one of the two things I remembered from the methodics class (the other was „don't shout, there's 40 years of breathing chalk ahead of you“). To fill the time, I'd tell a joke or two, or when there was just one minute left, I'd just pull out the bag (later the tozna) and roll a cigarette. While smoking in a classroom was forbidden (except during a popravni), no regulation anywhere mentions rolling. After a few months of that, I noticed that a guy from the last bench extended a hand across the aisle and received money in it. They explained to me later that they were betting on my speed, if I roll it within 20 seconds one guy wins, if not, the other. And this wasn't the first time they timed me.
Salary would land on our savings booklet, which wasn't called an account for reasons unknown. We'd simply go to the bank (all at the same bank, in our case the SIZ for education selected Ljubljanska, not LJB but LB, because lj is not a separate character in slovenian) with the noodle**, where they'd check it against the list they got from the school, and would update the booklet with it. We'd raise cash from there, you just go fill the cash takeout slip, the girl in the window checks it (do you have as much money as it says, they seemed to have that much of computing at the time), writes a cashier's order, the cashier counts the money to you, done. They had some bearded guy for a cashier, a true wonder, the hand ballet as he counts the money, I loved to watch him do it. Not because of the money, but for his skill being so honed that he achieved a full elegance of movements.
It happened just once that the girl behind my window was Branka. How did she get there. We greeted silently, she filled what paperwork I had, I went to the cashier, got my cash and then didn't see her next forty years. She appeared somewhat withdrawn, no smile, not quite sad but would rather be anywhere else. As if her chief grated her ten minutes ago. Who knows what it was.
Around that time I remember attending yet another moba, for colleague machine engineer (or was he a metallurgist... most likely the rijeka school like the others). On Gradnulica Guvno, the north end of town. This is where there was a lot of wild construction, so city regulated it and released (finally!) a whole set of building lots, so some three-four new streets were built. Everything the same like on any other moba, don't even remember what we were working on, probably pouring the upper floor floor (yess!), I remember he already had some walls. The same old gang of professors from mašinska, just not mathematicians alone this time - engineers to, even one of them PE guys. The one thing I clearly remember was excellent beans from a huge pressure cooker, proper domestic.
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* is this really necessary in english? Is there anyone else's back or hand that I could have meant? What possible confusion is this supposed to avoid?
** the salaries were calculated on huge sheet, almost two meters wide and as longs as there were workers, in duplicate. The calculant would write numbers for all categories into their cells - work hours, points accumulated, sick leave, paid leave, tax, social [security] contribution, montly installments for loans etc etc... who'd remember it all. There was one row per person. Then the calculants would take out the totals, type the a virman for each thing to pay out, and eventually archive their copy of the big sheet. Our copy would be sliced into strips, called noodles, it's all written in there.
4-VIII-2022 - 25-III-2026