My pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danesecooper/sets/72157604156435040/
D
On Mar 18, 2008, at 10:57 PM, Danese Cooper wrote:
Arthur lived for many many years in Colombo, Sri Lanka. As
essentially the patron saint of the Sri Lankan IT Industry, he
often appeared at tech conferences organized in Colombo. The first
year I spoke at FOSS-SL he came to visit, but on a day when I was
absent (I was visiting the Naval Academy with one of the founders
of the Lankan Software Foundation at the request of the
conference). When I found out I'd missed meeting Arthur, I was
very disappointed.
Dr. Sam (a really short version of his name) who had been with me
at the Naval Academy said, "I've known Arthur since I was a boy.
I'll try to set up a visit at his house for you". Dr. Sam is in
this picture http://www.flickr.com/photos/anuradha/57993643/in/
photostream/ standing on my right. I take time to show you a
picture of him because he recently passed away suddenly and he is
greatly missed (at least as much as Arthur is in Sri Lanka at
least). If Arthur was the patron saint of Sri Lankan IT, Dr. Sam
was its father...
Anyway, the next afternoon I got a call to take a taxi to a certain
address. Because my hotel was already close to Arthur's house, I
was on time for once and arrived nearly 45 minutes before the rest
of the folks who came over from the conference and got stuck in
traffic of some sort (David Axemark and Sam Ruby had also been
unable to meet Arthur earlier at the conference, so also got an
invitation to come over to the house).
So I got a private audience with Arthur and Dr. Sam for 45
minutes...and Arthur was completely charming. That year was the
50th anniversary of the publication of Arthur's original paper on
geosynchronous communications satellites. He was handing out
signed copies of the article and told a charming story about its
publication (which was something of a fluke, since the journal in
which it was published thought it was a hoax). With only Sam and
me in the room our conversation was easy and enjoyable. Arthur's
mind was completely sharp, although his hearing was definitely
failing. I admired all his tschatskes, including his MBE which was
on a shelf next to his collection of Space Odyssey action figures.
He showed me pictures of himself as a very young man and I told him
he had been beautiful, which made him very happy and we even talked
about whether he planned to father children someday. He introduced
me to his "family" the bodyguard and nurse who lived with him in
his house and happened to be married to each other...and showed me
pictures of their teenaged daughter who was away at school and whom
he professed to miss terribly. I asked him whether he believed in
God and he said, "I've thought a lot about that and I'm just not
sure...but I hope She believes in me."
When the rest of the conference party arrived there were really too
many people in the room for Arthur's hearing aid to keep up and he
was pretty frustrated but still cordial. He did tell one joke
which I remember. He asked what Melinda Gates said to Bill on the
morning after their wedding night...
Now I know why you called it "Miicrosoft".
And then he laughed so hard I was concerned he was going to fall
out of his wheelchair and die right then and there. Terrible joke,
right? But SOOO much more enjoyable to know that Arthur C. Clarke
told it.
We met in Arthur's "office" which was lined on all four walls with
tall bookcases. The one behind us in the picture was filled with
just the English language versions of his books.
I have some other pics from that day. I'll post them to my Flickr
account tonight.
BTW, not so sad a day as we might think. The man was 90 years old
and led a very rich and rewarding life. He was completely at peace
with the idea of leaving the planet when I met him, you could sense
it and in fact we spoke about it before everybody arrived. He was
getting tired of the limitations of his body. He wanted the next
adventure, but he was willing to ride this one out until the very end.
Oh, did I forget to say that we installed Google Earth on his PC?
He'd not seen it before. So I guess I got to show Arthur C. Clarke
a vision of earth from space that he'd not had before :-).
Thanks for asking, Udhay.
On Mar 18, 2008, at 7:38 PM, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: [ on 07:31 AM 3/19/2008 ]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7304004.stm
Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90
While on this topic, here's something I found on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/anuradha/57993644/
Danese/David, want to share the story behind the picture?
Udhay
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
