I can't believe this :))

In our packet switching class to today we listened about buffer size and the professor started by asking us how big we'd think today's router's buffers are. Since now one had a spontaneous answer to this, I volunteered by shouting "20 packets per line-card". Contrary to what I thought this did not remove the shyness from the class and the other students still didn't propose their guesses. Finally the prof asked each student by name and the answers slowly came in: 19 packets, 100, 2000, and the last students even guessed in the millions and billions.

The prof then started his lectures and after then minutes we learned the answer: it's about five million packets per line-card. I could be happy with this result, since I had made the first guess, but not the worst. Actually I thought it would be quite a waste to store so many packets, that's why I came up with the low number. (And also by the theoretical stuff that I knew.)

But on with the story. 15 minutes further in the lecture, the prof had a slide given the buffer size according to different formulas. With today's formula we get a buffer size in the millions, with tomorrow's formula we get a buffer size in the ten thousands and with the formula of the future, buffer size will be only about 20 packets per line-card. Yes, you read that right! 20 packets. That's just the same number that I guessed! What a strange coincidence. %-)

But it also shows: I have my head far more in the far future then in the now of the present. Actually, I didn't answer the question that the prof asked, but I answered the question that I am thinking about myself all the time. Not about the present, but about the future.

Thanks for reading this.

PS: Of course, I know that this event was basically chance. But it's still funny to think that I hit that number exactly. And everyone who knows me knows that I am really a dreamer of the future.

postal coincidence

Here's a story that happened to me, I am learning of it right now. My questions are: do you believe this? Can you explain this?

On about 20th August 2006 I sent a postcard from Munich, Germany to a friend in Taipei, Taiwan. I only had her office address so I sent it there.

On Saturday, two weeks ago (6th October 2007) I sent her another card from Toronto to her apartment in Taipei. Now, from last Tuesday to Friday she was away on a business trip. When she came back on Friday night, she got my card that I sent some days ago. She complimented my Chinese writing, since I had copied the characters comprising her address, like little pictures one at a time.

Now, today. Saturday. She went to her office and on her office table she found -- the card that I had sent over one year ago. It had arrived in the mail just the same week as my other card! Two postcard sent to two different adresses one year apart... arrive in the same week!

That's the story.

How can that happen?