I do not think the latter two have understood a single word of what I have said: as all their colleagues those two seemed utterly blind to the subtle, but profound difference between "being vague" and "being abstract": that it is the specific purpose of abstraction to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise, is more than I can teach to a superficial person to whom such considerations are, intellectually speaking, totally foreign. That leaves a well-educated audience of 18.

Yet it was a difficult audience to address. Seven had English or American as their native language, another two had studied at an English or American university, but the remaining nine (1 Italian and 8 Frenchmen or French-speaking Belgians) suffered from the usual language barrier. (At meals they had a tendency to separate themselves from the others....) If one is the kind of speaker that delivers monologues in front of any audience, such a language barrier only causes problems in the audience; I, however, do like to adjust my presentations to my audience, I do like to develop a dialogue of some sort. The French half, however, did not give any feedback: they listened respectfully. (Later I have been given to understand that it was not only the language barrier that made them so silent, but also the Latin respect —or even: awe— for authority.) As a speaker I suffered very much from this lack of response and I must confess that after a few days I more or less forgot them and focused my attention on the responding part of the group, no longer consciously restricting my use of the English vocabulary (to the extent of using the verb "to obfuscate", which seemed to puzzle even some of the English natives).

Despite these difficulties it was, on the other hand, some sort of an excellent group: I spoke to them five mornings and four afternoons, and each of these 9 sessions lasted more than three hours —once even close to four!— at a stretch, with one interval for coffee of at most 10 minutes. This is an absolutely cruel thing to do to an audience, in particular if they had —as they had— to sit on plastic. Such long sessions, however, were not planned, they "happened" and that would never have taken place had I seen their attention wavering.

I observed one marked phenomenon: while most of them followed the formal part of my lectures with a keen interest and some even with considerable intellectual excitement, the group was very disappointing when I asked them to solve a problem themselves. For all sorts of problems admitting a solution in the form of a five-line program, it was exceptional if more than one-and-a-half solutions turned up. (This was similar to the San Diego experience: there they were more productive, but also more productive of errors. This group has a little bit stronger inhibitions.) I do not think that this is in all cases a basic incapability, it must be the result of our educational systems that pay not enough attention to the development of skills and tend to restrict themselves to the broadcasting of "knowledge". The resulting wide-spread incapacity to "do something" (rather than "to know something") is nonetheless frightening and alarming.

Outside the official sessions —but occasionally also during them— I observed, perhaps stronger than in San Diego, feelings of strain between "technology" and "management". These are reactions that do not amaze me a bit: I have encountered them at least a few dozen times. During the after-lecture discussion, someone nearly always remarks —after I have shown a perfectly decent way to solve a problem— "But, Sir, our problem is that our managers won't let us do it that way." My standard answer, of course, is "If misunderstanding from the side of your manager is your main problem, perhaps you should try to educate him..." an answer, by now, I have given frequently enough to know that it evokes roars of bitter laughter. In other words, the feelings of strain are quite well-known to me, and I can also understand them, from both sides; I do not have much material for comparison, yet I could not escape the impression that in this group the feelings of conflict, frustration etc. were stronger than average.

We broke up on Friday at noon. The departure is always a little bit sad: however imperfectly one has built up a kind of "family", which then dissolves for no other reason than that the end of the week has come. We said good-bye to each other.

Also the homeward trip was done by day-light, be it that, after a week of continuous sun, I encountered between Bastogne and Liege a severe rain storm. In Nuenen the sun was shining again. A week earlier I had left Nuenen with the trees still bare, when I returned they were green. But the magnolia, who had [been] in full bloom when I left, had lost its flowers.