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

Last week, 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.