Keyboarding

I think schoolchildren get classes in “keyboarding” now, rather than “typing”, am I right? Well, all travelers to and within Europe should be required to attending keyboarding classes prior to their first use of a PC in a particular country. Well, the keyboards in the Netherlands aren’t too different – there is a symbol for the Euro and the Pound hidden somewhere among the number keys.

But Moldova and Finland’s are crazy! Moldovan keyboards have the Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet on them, and I guess pressing alt or ctrl+shift or shift+enter+F6+tab turns it on. (Turning the computer off is the best way to turn it off.) But everything else remains fairly similar to keyboards in the States.

Then there is Finland. For three weeks, I struggled to find and then to remember that it is ALT+2 that gets the @ symbol. The extra letters in their alphabet are placed to the right of the L for 2 keys and (I believe) to the right of the M. That leaves the ; : ‘ “ and I think the < , and > . homeless. So the : is where the ? should be, and the ? is where the ( should be and the / is where the ) should be. I don’t know where the <> exist, but I’m pretty sure the { and the } don’t exist. The $ is an afterthought (of course), and I don’t know where it is on the Finnish keyboards. I began writing without any ‘s because it was too hard to find. And I used the address book on our webmail instead of typing in any e-mail addresses. The @ eluded me for about a week.

So what is the first thing I do when I use our computer (from America) again? Forget where the @ is.

$@%,)*