Now that I've gotten the babbling about engineering education out of my system...

Last week, Chris Myers Asch from the US Public Service Academy came to visit Olin, thanks to David Soo. (I'm going to miss him when he leaves Olin for grad school next year.) The PSA is a proposal for a government-funded 4-year liberal arts college geared towards public service, with full scholarships for all students with the stipulation that they serve at least 5 years in their chosen sector (education, public infrastructure, environment, healthcare...) and Mr. Asch is traveling across the country full-time now, asking people to help him start a school. It remains to be seen how well the PSA is implemented when it eventually comes into being, but I have great admiration for what Asch and his colleagues are doing and will be watching the project with great interest. I believe they will do a spectacular job.

Tonight: For someone who's perpetually dehydrated (something I'm trying to change by walking around with a water bottle), I'm surprisingly dependent on running water. Needham's cleaning out the H2O system again, which means that we have no water at night until about 5:30am for a while (hence the second part of the post title, which comes from a sanity-check wiki where Olin folks posted to make sure the water problem was consistent across all of campus - as you can tell from the title, it's the third time we've experienced this). The failure of little reflex actions like sticking your toothbrush under the tap or leaning down towards a water fountain jolt you out of normalcy and make you realize how much you take water for granted.

I remember staying at my grandparents' house in Manila and brushing my teeth out of water from a little jug and bathing by scooping water from a barrel over my head. And we were among the wealthy ones. That was luxury, to have a jug of filtered water to drink from.

To bed, slightly thirsty and mildly sweaty. Tomorrow morning, I shall rejoice at the tap.