rofl @ the mental image of that combined with "I walked into his house, and he would start the timer. Once the timer hits 1 hour, he will cut off mid sentence and send you on your way.", which means he was actually physically in the same room while doing those exercises I guess.
I bet lessons with Roman would be pretty awful as well. Though a friend of mine had an ongoing blitz match + flame war on FICS 20ish year ago where they kept playing each other, flagging in dead draw positions and hurling insults at each other. Good times