Today was guest lecture day, a guy working as IT project manager, head of system development for Statoil, Norway’s biggest private company had a talk about methodology and architecture at Statoil. Then in the middle of it the fire alarm goes off. And this reaction I thought was quite interesting. First of all there was no rush, no urgency whatsoever. And looking around the auditorium everyone including the guest lecturer and the two professors had this look of irritation and indifference on their faces. As if to say “oh crap not this now”. So very very slowly we start walking out of the room, going down the stairs and outside in the parking lot. On the way out we pass a janitor in the hall, he was going down to the basement. After a few minutes the fire department arrives on the scene, again no urgency in their conduct. It was a dull event, no smoke seen anywhere, the chemistry institute is right next door from us so presumably they messed something up. But just to see the reactions of the people was interesting, a universal contempt for something that would disturb their day without having any inherent significance to it other than to annoy them.

My instinct reaction was thank goodness that alarm bell they have every few doors down every hallway is not my alarm clock.

They may not understand much because they’re in a completely different phase of their lives but parents do know the simple truths of life. As a kid my parents used to tell me to cherish my family, because they are the only ones in the world that are going to be there for me. Other family would say that too, at the annual family gathering where everyone is there for once, they would emphasize how great this family is and how lucky we all are to be part of it. At the time I thought that was a little exaggerated, I had good friends, I’m sure they would want to help if I really needed it. And it’s also that the relation between family and friends changes over the time, many people grow up feeling closer to their friends than they do to family. To the extent that some portion of young adults barely keep in touch with family while they spend lots of time with friends. I didn’t quite believe that prophecy at the time but I wonder how many more times they are going to prove me wrong.

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Imagine you’re driving a car.. you stop at a red light and another car pulls up alongside you. Now you’re drag racing, both drivers are impatiently waiting for that green light. Now, of course drag racing makes no sense unless the cars are comparable in performance, otherwise it would be a blowout. So there you have it, two different cars, but similar in performance, waiting to start the race. Finally comes the green light, both cars speed out burning rubber. It’s neck a neck in the race, both drivers shifting gears to reach that top speed.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where we extricate ourselves from this very dangerous and very illegal practice of drag racing. Now let x go from zero to infinity as we imagine a straight road of infinite length. The two cars are both going at top speed and their speed is the same. Now imagine that we tie a piece of string, attached to the mirror of one car, going toward the other and fastened there around the mirror once again. These two cars are now bound by a thin piece of string, they are tied together.

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