Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Mungowitz in Deutschland--Day 4

A very busy, somewhat productive day.

Breakfast today smashing. EXTRA crusty brown bread. I thought I´d get tired of leberwurst on brown bread, but not yet.

The most intrepid Jans-Jorg took down to visit the trolls of the OIT grotto twice today, and scored a major victory: my laptop is now registered on the University system! If you didn´t know it was OIT, you still would know: there is just an OIT "way" of dressing and acting. I wonder if there troll manuals, and grotto design books?

Worked a lot preparing for class. Lots of complaints that my class is "too hard." They are probably right, on reflection. I am expecting them to read in English, and there are too many readings. And, as I noted in class, there IS a language problem: MINE. I don´t speak German. So I asked what topics we should narrow down on, and that worked out pretty well.

A strange thing: after class, all, or nearly all, the students, knocked their knuckles pretty hard on the table. It was like applause, except it was even more like they all knocked their knuckles on the table. Is this common? I´ve never heard of it before. It was a thank you sort of thing, or maybe a thank God it´s over thing.

Finally: I am OUTED as a blogger; mz colleagues are reading. Hope I don´t get fired. Sorry about the Belgium, thing, really. "Advancing through Networks" is an excellent motto, and I mean that.

7 comments:

Robert S. Porter said...

From my understand such knocking is common in Germany and Austria after a lecture.

'Regular' applause is reserved for non-academic settings.

Christoph said...

Yup, knocking is common as a form of applause. It's a "thank you", rather that a "thank god it's over". There is some (albeit weak) correlation between the perceived quality of a class and the noise. Clapping is not frequent, although it occasionally is used after the last class of the semester.

Anonymous said...

At debating society meetings, we used to rap our knuckles on our desks as a form of agreement with/applause for the speaker. This was in North Carolina.

Angus said...

In our local casino, players will rap their knuckles on the table to signify a good play by, or nice hand for, one of the other players at the table.

Michael Munger said...

Angus must have it right.

Clearly any student taking MY class is gambling HEAVILY with his/her future.

Steve_0 said...

Mungo you crack me up.
I am sad that you will be gone so long, I was hoping for more episodes of the "Russ and Mike Show", my favorite comedy hour.

I laughed out loud in the computer lab here at school several times. I tried explaining the steamer trunk "crowding out" joke but I got blank stares.

Sigh. The lonely humor of the econ nerd.
(On the positive, to crow to complete strangers, I got into my chosen MBA program and they gave me a scholarship for half the cost of the program. Yay!)

chaze said...

So you thought Germans couldnt use Google?
Be aware: If you write too many funny blogposts i will never finish the reading for next lesson :)