Friday, March 10, 2006

Few Good People

One day I came to my office and found my head-phone set broken; the wire was cut. I thought that maybe it got entangled in my chair. The janitor apologized for cutting the wire when he was operating the vacuum cleaner in my office. I told him that I understand his actions were not intentional and I would buy a new one soon. He enquired every day about them until I bought a new one. Charlie is ingenuous.

It was a Friday evening. I was working late in my office. The police officer on duty locked the exits to the building as usual. Passing by my office door, she notices me working. She is very thoughtful and informs me that I could call the campus police to let me inside the building should I go to dinner and decide to come back for work.

Two weeks ago I decided to defend my PhD proposal. One of the members of my advisory committee was advised by his doctor against teaching. He quit teaching classes. I sent him an email two weeks before the defense about my intention and enquired if he could make it. He replied in the positive and flew from Europe just to participate in my defense. I was shaken by his social commitment. He is one of few people that I know who has a true engineering mind. I am very glad that he could make it to my defense.

My neighbors were locked out of their home at 2:00 am in the night. The maintenance personnel have a master key and we could wake them up in the morning. But, one of the neighbors desperately needed to get into her house as she had to catch an early morning flight. Feeling sorry, my neighbors repeatedly banged the window and door of Carlos' house. Carlos, who usually appeared to be full of mulligrubs, did not even flinch at them that night.

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