strange things

• The secretary has no decent paper to print.
• There is no xerox machine at the secretary.
• We are not allowed to make outside phone calls.
• It seems that there exists some house for professors to stay overnight, but two clever engineers have taken over the place, making it impossible for others to sleep there. In typical Brazilian style nothing happens: no one likes to take the fight.
• I already had a small fight. Students do pranks on the newbies (freshmen, is that what they are called), which sometimes lasts for months and can be rather humiliating. I wrote an email to my colleagues saying I would not tolerate such things, like a male student dressed as a woman, in my class. But apparently it is an old tradition and one colleague did not agree, telling me it was my duty to ....zzzzzz (teach?). This was were I stopped reading. I was once involved in another fight with a known nut. He told me also about duty, and I was not even an official professor. Anyway, as soon as people begin to tell me what my duties are I lose concentration.
• They still use Pascal to teach programming. Actually this is how I learned programming, 32 years ago. Pascal, user manual and report, by Niklaus Wirth. Silver and red -- thank to Gijs Tuynman. I must have it somewhere with my books still in Holland.
  
• The corridor and lecture rooms are old and depressing. Though I must say that there is a lot of new construction going on, which gives an air of action, excitement, ...
• Two computers where bought a year ago to be installed in the lecture rooms, but the Director of the institute claims that the technician responsible for installing them with the projectors has has more important things to do OVER THE LAST YEAR. Can you believe it? And the dept head swallowed it, in Brazilian style.
• I asked and got an email account but wanted IMAP access, besides webmail. The guy who helped me gave me the wrong server. I complained, IMAP became POP, and still it is not working.