You'll never guess who I talked to the other day. Alfred Nakatsuma, an old Stanford buddy from years and years ago. The last time I saw him was more than fifteen years ago when he visited me in Amsterdam when we were living in a monument house next to the Singel Canal. Wow, that's a long time ago or so it seems. The other day I received an email from Alfred who was in India. He would be in Amsterdam for four hours at Schiphol Airport in transit back to the States. He did not know when that would be exactly which made it difficult to plan seeing each other, but he would give me a call anyway. So early Thursday morning when I was still in bed the phone rang. It was good old Alfred after all these years. How you doing, I'm fine, that kind of stuff. Brief, casusal, slightly superficial, but really great to hear his voice again after all these years. No use trying to recount everything that has happened in the last fifteen years, but what to say? Before I realized it we had talked about ten minutes and the telephone line went dead. Boom, the last coin had been used up probably. Good-bye and let's keep in touch.
