Magiel: 2 as a percentage of 5 by Tiamari

How do you express 2 as a percentage of 5? That is the question that Magiel posed in the staff room this morning.

The kettle started to boil and still I couldn’t quite get my mind around it. I was feeling the beginnings of a slight headache and a slightly more significant feeling of stupidity rising like a mist in my head, swallowing up several unused brain cells and bewildering several other seldom used ones. My gray matter felt gray indeed!

Of course I shouldn’t feel bad about it. Magiel is a very educated individual. “So what seems to be the problem, Officer?” Well… let me explain. Magiel never boasts about his intelligence and/or achievements. He is the guy who will fall into the nearest chair and look like he just went through hell. He always gives the impression of being totally incompetent and unable to teach a single First Year student anything worthwhile. He will regularly complain about not being able to speak the English language properly, and promptly illustrate just how bad a case of “uselessness” he is suffering from at that very moment, by getting his words completely upside down. His favourite saying is that he is “verstandelik teruggetrokke” which is of course a very clever word play, meaning absolutely nothing, yet sounding like a serious disease.

Of course we all know that Magiel is none of the above. You don’t have to be a genius to pick up the tiny little hints of his amazing intelligence… and to realize that he is hardly serious when he says silly things like “I am teaching my students to be radically innovative” or “the trouble with the world started when women started to call men by their first names” while peering over his spectacles with an expression as serious as only his can be.

Apparently 5 as a percentage of 10 is 50 (You divide 5 by 10 and multiply it by 100) – so 2 as a percentage of 5 is 2/5*100=40%… that’s if I understood it correctly!

(written by Tiamari) 2008