the corner office

Whew, I speled it right! ;-)

Ronwen dragged me off to a commemorative lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand tonight. It was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Louis Leakey's birth, given by his son Dr Richard Leakey and Prof Philip Tobias. Prior to tonight, I'd had no idea of who the Leakeys are, this isn't quite my sphere of interest. Prof Tobias had presented a television series recently on the origins of man, and he had been one of a colleague's lecturers at varsity. If it weren't for that, I probably won't have known who he was, notwithstanding the fact that he's a rather preeminent figure in the world of paleoanthropology. And a thoroughly eccentric old fellow to boot.

Richard Leakey's speech was a hoot and a really touching recollection of his father. Prof Tobias, I think, is one of those people whose age and accomplishments mean that if he decides to overrun his allotted time by an hour, then by golly, he will. In fact, prior to the beginning of proceedings, a few American academics sitting behind us were placing bets on how badly he'd overrun the time slot :-) His recollections of his times with Louis Leaky were interesting, if a little drawn out at times. I think we lose touch with what it must have been like 60 years ago, traipsing the East African plains in clunked out old trucks, discovering evidence to support theories about our origins that were still heavily disputed at the time (and probably still disputed by some).

A really interesting evening. Sometimes my girlfriend does broaden my horizons :-)

The other interesting aspect, is that Wits is my alma mater. I was there from 1991 - 1994. (I got my BCom in '93, we won't talk about '94 though :-) It's been a good many years since I set foot on campus, and it was quite a trip down memory lane. The old lecture halls, the buildings. A lot has changed, but many things have stayed the same. Yeah, a LOT of things have changed. Back then, the 'Internet' was something the senior BSc students had access to, and the rest of us hadn't even heard of it (unless you heard some student bragging about chatting to people in other countries, and you didn't quite know whether to believe them). Guys with the meanest computers were driving 486's, and if you sat in a lecture hall there wouldn't be cell phones ringing. What's a cell phone? Oh, and of course, for the first 3 years of my varsity career, I could vote, but the dude sitting next to me in lectures couldn't if his skin was black. Each year I'd have to send in a form saying that I was studying to avoid getting conscripted into the army, to defend Volk en Vaderland. We've come a long way... thankfully.