Encounters with a Fat Chemist: Teaching at a University in Northern Cyprus

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Author House, May 29, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 264 pages
Chris Payne writes a hilarious surreal account of life as a university professor at a dysfunctional university in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. On the beautiful island of Cyprus, little works as you expect it to, from the primitive plumbing to the maniacal university bus service. The American Institute of Cyprus is a seat of higher learning like no other. The place is chaotically organised for the students who attend class only if they feel like it. They cheat on their exams, photocopy textbooks illicitly with university approval, and deliberately fail their courses to avoid military service. Meanwhile, the management spends its time devising all sorts of ingenious money-raising scams and schemes to cheat students and teachers alike, while the AIC owners business strategy is to sell as many university degrees as he can alongside his cake shops and motorcycle franchises. But then, as everyone says, this is Cyprus, an Edenic Mediterranean paradise where everyone is on the make and the only guiding principle is money is money.
 

Contents

One
1
Two
21
Three
27
Four
41
Five
61
Six
79
Seven
99
Eight
123
Nine
141
Ten
159
Eleven
169
Twelve
189
Thirteen
203
Fourteen
225
Fifteen
241
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About the author (2012)

Chris Payne was born in Oldham, UK, in 1942 and studied at several British universities where he earned degrees in mathematics and engineering. He worked for many years in a number of British and American universities as a lecturer and professor of information systems, computer science, and mathematics. From 2004 to 2006, he was director of mathematics for the University of Maryland in Europe in Heidelberg, Germany. He has also lived and worked in the USA, Nigeria, France, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands, and he is the author of a number of publications in mathematics and computing. For several years, he ran his own software company. He is currently rector of BENI University. He lives in the UK with wife Loydz, whom he married in 2006. Apart from writing, he also likes to collect pictures and antiques. http://cpayne.com

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