Here I tell the story of my trip to Kenya and the amazing Journey to Marich Pass
In 1998 my wife, an IBM AS/400 programmer, was made an offer she could not refuse, to come to the UK and save civilization from the year 2000 bug.
Around the same time there was a story circulating on the Internet about a guy called ‘John Titor,’ a time traveller from 2036 who had been sent to get software from an IBM 5100. They needed to debug various legacy computer programs as they in the future were due to have a similar year 2000 bug problem with UNIX machines in 2038.
Let’s hope he got what he came for.
Or we’ll all have to go through this, ‘End of the World,’ nonsense again.
So off went the wife to work on her, “Save the world from the YK2 AS/400 bug program.”
While I marched around West Byfleet with our kids, looking to offload them to the various schools.
In we go to Fullbrook School and up to the administration office.
“This is Max,”I said, “an A level student. One of the top Danish competitive swimmers for his age.”
They were not interested and turned him down.
No room at the Inn. Maybe next year.
A Danish A level student, a top-sports student and he gets rejected.
Thought, ‘Welcome to the UK, land of the Educational Numpties.’
Max was very upset, he needed to be in school. He needed to learn.
Next up was Bishop David Brown in nearby Sheerwater.
On the way up the drive to the school offices, we spotted a swimming pool.
Where I again pitched Max’s academic achievements.
“Exactly the people we are looking for,” was his reply.
Max chirped up at this. We met Mr. Knight, the acting headmaster
Bingo! Max was setup for school. One down one to go.
I off loaded Jack to West Byfleet junior school. So job done.
Both of the boys enjoyed going to school.
Helped in part by the fact, they could speak better English than most of their comrades. And academically, because of the Danish teaching system, they were ahead of their peers on everything except written English.
Max was in a class with super clever Asian kids who pushed him to excel.
And he was adored by the school because he was a super athlete.
So both a Jock and a nerd. Which was unusual in English schools back then.
Jack had his gang of chums and started playing cricket.
A game, as one wit put it, were the cricket audience loses more weight than the players.
I landed a job in a new Internet Service Provider. Just 5 minutes from where I lived.
Wages were rubbish after Danish standards, but I figured I needed to learn to work in an office. Having never done so before.
They were charging £39.95 plus VAT per annum for a standard dial-up internet connection.
And then the bottom fell out of the ISP market, when Freeserve gave it away for Zilch.
My boss locked himself in the office and snorted larges mounds of a white Colombian happy powder.
Then came out with all sorts of ridicules instructions.
I remember they were trying to sell the company to ‘Tiny Computers’ at that time, one of the biggest sellers of PCs in the UK.
The Tiny team looked around and then noticed our, ‘Linux For Dummies,’ book on our desk. That sale fell apart.
Another big company came in, sat in the office and they were ready to make a deal.
We, at that particular point in time, had no Internet Connection to our own systems, from our office to the outside world.
Panic was the operative word, as we watched the group through the office windows and knew they would come out and want to go online.
We had no idea why we could not connect to the Internet, using our own Windows Network.
Around the office was lots of Computer Magazines, Dot NET – Linux World etc.
I grabbed one and it had, like all the rest, a Setup Disc for connecting to Freeserve.
So we bunged it in a PC and it setup a free account and we were back on the Internet.
Just as the group of potential buyers arrived at our desks.
They stood back as I browsed the Net. Going to their website and back to ours.
Happy, they went back into the office and continued negotiating.
And nobody was the wiser.
Welcome to the,‘Bat Shit Crazy,’ early days of the UK Internet.
I cannot say I was impressed with the UK office work ethic.
But I joined in the boozy lunch’s that went on for hours.
And went native, so to speak.
Read the rest of the article via:
https://www.twistandtwain.com/memoir/journey-to-marich-pass/
Image Courtesy of Pixabay