At the request of the “respectable public”, I integrate my column of 15 days ago with other anecdotes related to my “being Italian” in Bolivia, trying, this time, to make some teachings more explicit. If pain is the spice of life, anecdotes, especially funny ones, are the honey of existence.
For today’s article, I have selected the area of university teaching, which I practiced between 1974 and 2015.
Once, I was invited by the School of Agronomy to be part of the examination tribunal for aspiring teachers in the area of basic subjects. Since the topic of the oral presentation was drawn in advance, it was necessary to ensure that the candidate had not memorized the respective chapter of a textbook, but had actually understood what he was talking about.
With this in mind, after a candidate had masterfully explained the theoretical part of the “weight, mass and density” topic, it occurred to me to ask him how he would prepare the “chuflay”, a popular cocktail to soften the cold winter nights on the plateau farm that belonged to that faculty.
The candidate first went into a catatonic state (silent and paralyzed), then made me repeat the question a couple of times because he didn’t understand its relationship to the topic of the exam. Obviously, the ratio consisted of the correct order in which the ingredients were added, which usually is: ice, “singani” (a local distilled alcoholic spirit) and Canada Dry, a soda.
Once the relevance of the question was clarified, the candidate could not answer correctly: first ice, then alcohol, because it is less dense than water, and finally soda, so as to facilitate the mixing of both liquid ingredients. It was a practical and simple application of density comparison, as I explained to the candidate who was visibly sweating at that point. The candidate was then unable to answer the additional question of why ice is put in the glass first. He said, trying to please me, “because of its density,” when the expected answer was “so it doesn’t squirt.” I guess that colleague (colleague, because he finally passed the exam) has preferred a beer to the hated chufly all his life.
On another occasion I wanted to emphasize the uselessness of academic reports that we were forced to fill out every semester in increasingly bombastic and complicated forms. So, I started by filling out the report correctly, but after a few lines I continued with the story of Little Red Riding Hood. To this day, I’m still waiting for someone to reprimand me for making fun of academic solemnity. The truth is that no one reads these boring reports, but everyone requests them with the consequent waste of time and paper. Finally, during one of the Ultraviolet Radiation campaigns, I traveled to Sucre to give a workshop, together with other colleagues, and, in my spare time, I went to the famous “La Glorieta” factory hoping to find a hat to my liking for my extensive collection. While I was talking to the clerk, the manager (or maybe the owner) came out of his office. He, who had recognized my peculiar Italian accent, came up to me and embraced me heartily, saying that the campaign to promote the wearing of the hat had revitalized his industry, crediting me, as the director of that campaign, with saving hundreds of jobs in the industry. He then asked me for permission to take measurements of my head and promised to send me home, free of charge, the model of hat I had chosen. By the way, I never received the promised hat, but no one can take away the warmth and sincerity of that grateful hug.