Who'd a Thunk it?

The big news this week concerns Dr. Darius D. Martin who has earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The path has been long (UCSB is excited to retire the oldest student ID in history) because Darius didn’t want to write a thesis, he wanted to win a Nobel Prize. I will take this opportunity to review father-son conversations over the last few years.

“My paper must astonish! It’s magical.”

“Do it on-time,” I admonish.”It’s maniacal.”

“You’ve complained,” Darius exclaimed.

“The path is fraught,” his father thought.

“It will be great.” Darius replied.

“It will be late.” “Before I’ve died?”

Unlike his Dad – who wrote a thesis proving that “Two Heads are Better Than One” (I am not making this up), Darius (The Great) likes complexity. His thesis has integral signs and math stuff.

I knew, of course, that the final submission would take place at the last hour of the final day. And, because Darius needed to have UCSB send a completion note to the American University of Beirut by September 15, I naively assumed that he would be done on September 14. Unfortunately, one of his committee members was on holiday – scheduled to return on the 16th. Darius talked him into coming back a day early and convinced Beirut to interpret “September 15” as “September 15, Pacific Daylight Time”. It was the last possible minute.

Nazy has interrupted the preparation of this letter. She claims:

“Darius finished, Dan! It’s great! So stop making jokes. Besides, didn’t you spend 10 years at Georgia Tech?”

“But I got an undergraduate degree and a..”

“And when you left, didn’t Georgia Tech celebrate retirement of the oldest student ID..”

“Wait a minute, Nazy.”

“And didn’t you finalize your Ph.D. the last possible day?”

Flashback: June, 1974

I was getting nervous. It was noon – scheduled time for my defense of thesis. I also had to deliver three copies, signed by my advisory committee, to the graduate office before 4:00PM. My professorship in Memphis was contingent on receiving this information on, or before, this date. Nazy and I were booked on a flight to Iran the next day. We hadn’t heard from my outside advisor, Dick Kain, who was driving to Atlanta from Minneapolis. We couldn’t get in touch with him. [It was 1974: mobile phones had not been invented.] At 12:30 Dick called from a payphone [In 1974 these telephones were quite common. It was a wired device that was coin-operated.] at a nearby McDonalds. [It was 1974: McDonalds had been around forever.]

The thesis defense, rescheduled for 1:00PM went flawlessly. As Dick signed the document (at 3:30):

“You’ve misspelled my friend Lewis Cobbam’s name,” he told me.

“Chobbam?” I replied.

“No ‘h’,” Dick said. “Just fix it before you hand in the final version.”

“Naturally,” I replied. (Evasively.)

Thoughtfully, I carried my thesis to the graduate office. I submitted it unchanged. [There was only one person in Atlanta certified to type a Georgia Tech Ph.D. thesis and there was no time to take it to her.] When we returned from Iran, I checked out the three copies in the library and crossed out, in ink, the superfluous ‘h’.

Present Day

“Dad,” Darius had said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t submit the thesis. It will be published and accessible on the web. Someone might find a mistake.”

"Undoubtedly, Darius wouldn’t approve of my approach," I thought. I said something else:

“That will mean that someone is reading it, Dar. They’ll cite your paper. Your academic stature will expand. Perhaps you should offer a reward for people who find errors – and cite your paper. Google rankings, Dar, are based on cross-references. If your paper is cited often, you’ll move to the top. Make errors intentionally.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Of course, not, Dar. I make my errors unintentionally.”

“But..”

“Submit and get out, Dar. It’s time.”

“Do you think?”

“Yep.”

Darius celebrated with his sisters before leaving for a quick trip to Thailand and Cambodia. On the 25th he passed through Zurich “on his way” (routing courtesy of Darius) to Beirut. He will start work at the American University on September 28. Friends responded predictably.

“He’s working in Lebanon? As in Lebanon?”

“Of course,” I replied. “He is Darius. As in Darius.”
.

The Planetary Walk

Nazy planned several activities for the visit of Mitra and Stefan. Stefan, a vegetable connoisseur, really enjoyed the Burkliplatz farmers market. (I like it too, but mainly for the flowers.) Following tradition, we took them on the planetary walk on the crest of the local Uetliberg Mountain.

I had a 3:00 PM con-call (my employer keeps getting in the way of my social life) so we left early – and just missed Tram 3 toward Central Station. (The next tram came 9 minutes later.) We arrived at Central Station, only to discover that we had just missed the train. (The next train came 15 minutes later.)

The planetary walk features a scale model of the solar system. It begins with the Sun (the size of a basketball) and continues with scale models of the planets. (The Earth is the size of a pea.)

As we were nearing Uranus (a ping-pong ball 2 miles from the start), I explained the solar system to Mitra.

“But,” I said. “The model is not completely accurate.”

“Why not, Dad?”

“The solar system doesn’t go uphill,” I puffed.

“Hmm..”

“And it’s a good thing that we didn’t do the interstellar walk.”

“Why Dad?”

“On this scale, the nearest star would be in Rome.”

Passing Neptune (pictured above), we arrived at a picturesque restaurant and took a short break. Then we walked to the cable car for the ride back down the hill. We just missed the departure. (The next cable car was scheduled in 15 minutes.) We admired the view while we waited. Somehow we didn’t see the arrival of the subsequent cable car and, as a result we just missed its departure. (Add another 15 minutes.) Arriving (finally) at the bottom of the hill, we walked to the train station arriving just as the S-18 departed for the Hauptbahnhof. (The next train arrived 15 minutes later.) We made it to the central station 15 minutes before my con-call.

“Just enough time,” I thought, “to make it home for the call.”

It would have been, but I just missed tram 3. I took the con-call in the tram.

Love Means...

It had been a long trip and, although the flight home was smooth, I arrived tired. I’ve found that the best way to handle east-bound jetlag is to take a short nap upon arrival. Nazy saw that I was tired and concurred. Leaving me on my own, she left to buy some groceries.

“Don’t worry, Dan. I’ll be back in about 2 hours.”

“That’s great!” I replied, locking the front door and simultaneously failing to notice that I had left the key hanging in the keyhole. I took a quick shower and instantly fell into a deep sleep.

As promised, Nazy returned home a few hours later. As mentioned, I was sound asleep. There was one unforeseen development: It is not possible to unlock the door from the outside if there is a key in lock on the inside. Nazy couldn’t get in. Unaware that I was sleeping with my good ear buried in the pillow, Nazy rang the doorbell. I didn’t hear it. She called the home phone. I didn’t hear it. She called my iPhone – it was on my desk in ‘silent’ mode. Nazy left several messages – culminating in:

“It’s been two hours, Dan.”

She was just about to call the police (maybe something had happened to me), when I heard the pounding and ringing. Nazy was not amused.

“When I left the key in the lock and trapped you outside for 20 seconds, Dan,” she noted. “You were very angry. You kept me outside more than two hours. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

The photo shows the messages left on the iPhone (which was in the other room). A similar number showed up on the home phone (also in another room).

The Upgrade

While Nazy was battling the (deputized) tram police, I was in London talking with the customer. The London trip was fairly simple – until I discovered that I would have to be in New York the following Tuesday and in Frankfurt on Wednesday and Thursday. The company-negotiated fare category (LPP: Lowest Possible Price) was, naturally, not upgradable. Equally naturally, Nazy was not convinced.

“I’ll ask Astrid.” She explained. “I am sure that she will give you an upgrade.”

“I’ve already called Continental Airlines, Nazy,” I explained. “It costs $1493 and 25,000 miles to upgrade. One way! There is nothing that Astrid can do.”

It is a rare pleasure for me to make the following announcement: I was right. Nazy was wrong!

In fairness (and as a result of considerable pressure on the domestic front), I provide a few additional pieces of information:

· After I took my (economy class) seat on the Zurich to Newark leg, Astrid came into the cabin to apologize: “Please tell Nazy that I really tried,” Astrid told me.

· On the Newark to Frankfurt leg, I was upgraded for no miles and no dollars. “Thank you!” I replied hearing the news. “Don’t thank me, sir,” the agent replied. “This is a favour for Astrid.” (And she did it as a favor for Nazy.)

· It is better to be upgraded on the flight from the USA because that flight occurs over night.

The meetings went... [response to additional spousal interrupt: “Yes, my dear, the flight was exceptionally comfortable. Thanks to you!”] ... smoothly.

The Tram Deputy

Current dreary fall weather matches the current economic condition. It's so bad that even civil servants have begun to worry about meeting the budget. Desperate times call for innovative measures:

“Vigilantes, Dan!” Nazy exclaimed.

“What?” I replied. (Articulately.)

“A random woman asked to see my tram ticket.”

“I hope you told her to get lost.”

“She had a badge, Dan. Someone had deputized her.”

“In that case, my dear, she wasn’t a vigilante. She was an irregular member of the law enforcement community.”

“Irregular? She smelled.”

“Dealing with criminals rubbed off on her. Eh, did you have a ticket?”

“Of course I had a ticket. But that vigilante..”

“... deputy sheriff....”

“... gets a percentage of what she collects.”

“Isn’t it great? Capitalism and job creation combined in a way that fosters human initiative.”

“Just make sure that you don’t forget to buy a tram ticket, Dan.” As usual, Nazy had the last word.

Stonehenge Redux

I have considered critical comments that had been received about the recent post describing my trip to Stonehenge.

Example: The letter is all nice and pleasant, but there is no evidence or proof that you actually visited the site. The excellent photo was unrepresentative of your usual ill-focused and poorly framed efforts. Perhaps you simply downloaded them from the web. No photograph of you, for instance, was available to confirm your presence.

“Ah, ha,” I thought.

I was, of course, prepared for skepticism. In fact, I had the exact remedy for comment at hand: A self-portrait with Stonehenge in the background, poorly framed, ill-focused and featuring inadequate lighting.

The Basement

The news was ominous and frightening.

“He says,” Nazy explained, “that there is a water leak in the basement.”

“So? They will have to fix it,” I replied.

“The leak is directly under our storage and we will have to clear..”

“Oh No!”

Like all Swiss apartments, ours includes a storage closet in the basement bomb shelter. Our storage contains an eclectic mixture of random stuff stacked to the ceiling. Luckily, many of the items are useless drivel that should be trashed. Unluckily, because I have been consistently unable to fathom Zürich’s complex garbage and recycling regulations, nothing has been disposed of. As a result, my response to the troubling situation mirrors a predator’s response to a skunk: avoidance. I never go to the basement. You can, therefore, imagine my reaction to Nazy’s suggestion, eh, command:

“We will have to sort the storage.”

“That means we will have to go downstairs and look at it.” I replied.

“And sort it, Dan. Be Brave!”

I shuttered.

Undaunted, Nazy enthusiastically directed activities. I moved everything into the hall. She sorted.

I noticed a musty smell as I dislodged useless waste, eh, treasured possessions. (The water leak had bubbled up through the crushed gravel ‘floor’.) Nazy, meanwhile, had rapidly constructed a “disposables” mound. Old and empty suitcases formed a foundation that was two meters high. In addition, we discovered several Apple Computers (last used in the previous millennium), a computer monitor heavier that the Battleship Missouri, and a collection of pots and pans that had been earmarked for donation to archaeological researchers. As these were cleared, I located cartons of VHS tapes (we no longer have a VHS player). Tape theme established, I uncovered a few boxes of cassette music tapes. (We found a cassette player in one of the boxes. It didn’t have a power cord.)

The musty smell grew stronger as I continued the excavation process. I eventually located something important – boxes of photographs and files of important papers. All suffered significant water damage. (My thesis, for example, had the pages stuck together and smelled like a broken septic tank.) Nazy, surveying several boxes of photographs from her childhood in Iran, was not amused.

“You, Dan, arranged the basement when we moved.”

“Well..”

“And you, Dan, put the most important stuff in the absolutely worst location.”

“I protected all of that stuff by covering it with impervious layers of suitcases and electronic equipment.”

“Dan..”

“Who would have thought that a Swiss residence would suffer from a water leak? I am sure there is a rule about that.”

Clearly on the back foot, I decided to change the subject. “Well, my dear,” I craftily began. “What do you plan to do with the stuff that you put in the ‘dispose’ pile?” Well aware of the garbage regulations, I was confident. “Heh, heh, heh,” I thought. “I wonder if she’ll try to stuff those suitcases into a Zürisack?”

“We will take it to Schneider’s in Meilen,” Nazy replied – instantly. (And triumphantly.)

“But..” I spluttered.

“Bunzi told me that Schneider will take everything.”

“For a fee,” I replied.

“A small fee, Dan.”

The following four sentences have been inserted into this post as the result of a spousal command: Schneider took the junk off of our hands. And, as Nazy predicted, the cost was low. She paid a meagre 10 Francs to get rid of a zillion suitcases and a variety of useless electronic equipment. Without her, nothing would have happened.

Update note from Dan: Schneider was closed when we arrived the first time.