March 28, 2013 — ‘Seni
March 28, 2013 — ‘Seni
It was a bitterly cold day, arctic day out here today. The temperature barely went above two degree centigrade, wind speeds were in excess of seventeen miles per hour and snow flurries waltzed down from the skies intermittently all day. To think that only a year ago today we were smack in the middle of a heat wave sounds unbelievable, but I distinctly remember all four of my best mates piling into Chibuzor’s old beat up Ford, picking up junk food take aways from Jimmy Chungs and heading out to the beach for an extended hour of lunch.
Today, all that was on my mind was to find my way home to the warmth of my couch, snuggle beneath my duvet and watch the boys of the Big Bang Theory act out every nerd stereotype under the sun. The trick was acting interested enough at work, and demonstrating enough progress, to convince my #OgaAtTheTop that the ANSYS model of a defect I had spent the last week developing had a converging solution somewhere. Abby, my favourite goddaughter had other plans. Excited by the thought of sleeping in their new house, she convinced her father to convince me to crawl out from beneath my duvet and help with sorting out her bed.
I wish I could say that I jumped quickly to the rescue of the poor little damsel in distress, but like the grumpy old git I am, I tried to side step the request. I used every trick in the book, pleaded tiredness, offered to do it on Saturday, offered Saturday and Nandos, but the dogged, feisty, sharp mouthed, convincing Bini woman-in-training refused to be swayed. In the interest of peace, and to guarantee my hand made Christmas card with ‘To Uncle ‘Seni’ scrawled in the cover, I dragged myself away from Sheldon et al and helped.
The ANSYS simulation converged before I left work. For what it was worth, Abby’s big, toothy grin when she gave me a big thank you hug for helping put her bed together said it all.
That, was the most important thing I did today
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‘Seni self classifies as a nerd — not that there are very many other ways to describe a Chemical Engineering PhD — who started out with great hopes of developing THE fuel cell to solve the world’s energy problems, flirted briefly (if three years of one’s life can be counted as brief) with the nuclear industry before auctioning his soul to the dark side of big oil. For what its worth, even his dear mother thinks he sold out.