The other day at work, I went to clean viruses off of this Professor Emeritus' computer, a structural engineering major. Cleaning viruses is a pretty time-intensive topic, and usually they leave me to sit there for 45minutes and twiddle around on my netbook. This guy didn't though, and I'm glad. He was one of the most interesting, entertaining guys I have met, period.
He was probably 80 years old or so, and had lived an amazing life thus far. He told me stories of getting into a bar fight with American GIs in Germany in the 50s, the things you miss at home when living in Burma in the 1960s, the time he charged an entire party in NYC to his expense account unknowingly, and a whole host of other great stories. The entire time he was trying to convince me to travel more, to go to Cuba and the end of the world in Burma, to the point that he just sent me an email for a travel agency that specializes in Cuban travel.
His personality could be summed up with a story he told about a student in 2006- The student had a prestigious job lined up and came to him, he said, "This is really stupid, but I really want to go to the World Cup in Germany." The professor said," Go! The job will wait!" It did, and the student emailed him to tell him that the German World Cup experience was one of the most amazing times in his life.
I hope I can tell those kind of stories when I'm older.
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