4. "Today my topic is..."

Had the sun not hid behind some big, dark juicy rain clouds just three minutes before I'd finished examining today, I might have seen some people wearing today's featured Retrosuperfuture sunglasses manufactured by Selectism, designers of 'premier ocular wear for brighter weather conditions'. They also come with Easy FrameTM. I expect to see everyone wearing them when I get back to the UK.


Yesterday and today I was examining five minutes down the track from Caserta in the medieval town of Maddeloni. The school I was at was a little different from the normal as the students were not only wearing uniforms, but there was less graffiti on the walls AND they were more well behaved - I passed classrooms and actually saw students sitting at their desks. What was the reason for this? Well it wasn't your common run-of-the-mill school, it appeared to be a kind of feeder institute for the military and for a certain kind of engineering. The clue to the type of engineering can be seen on the roof of the school itself [pictured].



The type of school necessarily affected the type of presentations the exam candidates gave. To briefly summarise, the exams are at 12 different levels, with different tasks depending on the levels. From a fairly basic level, candidates have to prepare a 5-minute presentation / talk which I ask questions during / after. Because of the school, it meant a surprising amount of talks were on avionics, military aircraft design, the Euro-fighter Typhoon and the effects to drag and lift on different wing designs. For some, this might see like boredom itself, but having a pilot for a father, I was brought up on aircraft varieties, what to do in the event of sudden cabin depressurisation and the effect of the ITCZ (Inter-tropical Convergence Zone for those not in the know...) on meteorological patterns in Europe. What fun.


Anyway, the upshot was that I actually understood most of what the kids were on about and even managed a few informed questions on wing design - I gave one kid an 'A' when he took a piece of paper and modelled it to explain the effects of up and downward forces on a wing in flight. Hey, it might not be in the syllabus but if you can do that in English, you can't be bad.


Not all topics, however, where on military aircraft (e.g. the F-16 versus the MIG) or wing design. I had one 15-year-old lad come in in tell me he collected balls He had 10 small balls he told me (five Adidas and five Nike). He also had two big balls. Suppressing a grin I had to ask how big they were, to which he gestured the size. Yes, they were quite big. But that wasn't the only thing he collected, oh no. The following exchange took place:



St: I also collect heads.

Me: Heads?

St: Yes, heads. I have 25.

Me: Heads? [said again in disbelief and gesturing towards my head just to make sure]

St: Yes [now slightly disconcerted]. Heads. I have 25. My favourite is black and white.

Me: [pause and confusion] Heads? [said yet again, with more rising intonation, and gesturing again to my head but this time motioning it cut off with a machete and holding it up by the hair]

St: Eh, yes [looking more disconcerted]. I have Nike, Reebok and a NY Yankees one.

Me: Ahhhhh. Hats.

St: Si. Er, yes. Heats. My favourite is black and white.



I think we should have stuck to his balls.




To punctuate the exams, one teenage girl brought in some cakes for me (getting to be quite the obligatory hardship). Again, rather heavy and a touch on the sweet side, but getting a 7 / 10 for tastiness. Two were filled with a kind of citrus paste with little bits of lemon and orange peel inside and the other two standard cream. I just wonder what the possibility would be of putting in a request early doors that if teachers or candidates are going to bring me food, could it be a selection of meats and cheeses instead, with perhaps, a small bottle of red.

Another topic which was only just scraping past the pass bar was on this lad's collection of currency, mostly lire dating from before 1980. At the end of the exam he insisted on giving me a 500 lire note from 1974. Being Italy and not knowing whether this was some kind of a bribe, I dutifully accepted the 'gift' and bumped him up from a 'C' to a 'B' just to make sure I didn't break local protocol. Well, you don't want to offend, do you?

Other topics of note include different techniques to carry out the death penalty (along with pictures to aid discussion). Upon questioning, the candidate said he'd prefer hanging to lethal injection. I suggested a simple bullet to the head and to my surprise he said that he hadn't thought of that, but that it did seem an alright way to go.


And then there's also the perennial young chap in a band who likes Rage Against the Machine and will be famous one day soon, and just might be. One Alessandro (from Sparanise) gave me his link on Youtube for his band 'Same Shit, Different Date'. If you do go to the site, type in Sparanise SSDD and you'll see him repeatedly throwing a microphone off a wall. The action with the microphone will probably account for the lack of singing going on and the great amount of shouting. I wonder if anyone's yet suggested singing into it.


Not that it's all fun aeronautical design, death and cakes. There's also the usual quagmire of 'My family and other animals' and 'My hobby: football'. There was even a terribly earnest one on AIDS on Tuesday - not at all the kind of thing to build your appetite before the next round of cakes is brought in. Anyway, same shit, different school tomorrow and my last day in Caserta before heading to Naples and there's still the local evening examining scene to describe, the Bourbon biscuit palace and an amphitheatre.