I don't know how many other Philadelphians are going to the Winter Olympics in Turin this weekend, but I know of only one who is going to hold the flag for his country.
A former professor of mine from Drexel University, Dr Prawat Nagvajara is!
- He saw a cross-country skier from Kenya named Philip Boit, dead last and completely exhausted, collapse into the arms of the gold-medal winner, Bjorn Daehlie, who had crossed the finish line in the 10-kilometer event 20 minutes earlier.
For some reason, it all looked like fun to Nagvajara, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University.
"He's my hero," Nagvajara said of the Kenyan. "So I had a goal. It became my endeavor that I should start training and maybe go to the next Olympics."
Nagvajara put it all together. Boit was from a warm-weather climate, yet he performed in a Winter Olympics. The professor is from Thailand, where the temperature is typically in the 80s year-round and where a pair of skis is, well, probably the least considered mode of transportation. If Boit could do it, why couldn't he?
Sure enough, he did. After receiving sponsorship from the Thai government and competing in Olympic qualifying events, Nagvajara represented Thailand in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. "It was like a dream," he said.
Dr Nagvajara had the best class at Drexel ever.
Microcontrollers. It was a class on programming Legos. No kidding. This was in 98-ish, so the first generation of Lego Mindstorms hadn't yet come out. They were controlled by a 68000 series CPU with a couple of inputs and outputs and they controlled motors, sensors, etc. Programming in C and Assembler.
The final project was to create a robot that navigated a rock strewn course, memorized it, then ran it as fast as possible.
My partner and I won. We were the only team that completed it.
On completion, the robot played a little tune and did a little jig. My final grade for that class was OVER 100.
Which is about 30 points more than my other classes. At least the ones I passed or didn't drop.
One more horn toot, while I'm at it. My class attendance was pretty lousy, and skipped it more than I should have. I was planning on skipping it one day but figured, what the hell, I'll go anyway. I showed up 10 minutes late to the mid-term. I took the test and was the first to leave... ... and I scored the highest.
Anyway, congratulations for getting to the Olympics, Dr Nagvajara. Getting there is a victory!
- Nagvajara had the honor of carrying Thailand's flag in the opening ceremonies. He was an easy selection for the honor because he was the lone representative of the country, and he will be again next month at the Turin Games, carrying the flag and competing in the 15K cross-country ski event.
"I hope someday Thailand will have more than one athlete for the Winter Olympics," he said. "That they'll have a team."
Nagvajara is not out to win a medal. He knows that's impossible, but he'll be better prepared than he was four years ago, when he was lapped in the 30K and therefore automatically disqualified. "I should have lasted longer, but I didn't do my thing," he said. "And the rule is if the leader catches you, you're out. He caught me."
