Today is Wednesday, the day the RC has a regular lunch meeting. So, I went there to see people and be teased by people.
I was a little bit surprised at seeing my adviser there. "Hi, JR, what a surprise! Are you here because the university president gives a talk today?" The university president was a guest speaker for today. And he said, "Yeah, something like that. And I've got a free lunch!" Yes, free lunch is always an incentive, hee hee hee.
Anyway, I took a different table and started chatting with my lovely Rotarians there. Then, I saw one of my committee members. OK, something is going on, I thought. But JH didn't say anything special. We just had a small talk, and he left for John's table.
Then, the talk of the university president began. He started talking about a brief history of the university. He said, "The university was pretty international from the beginning. There were 10 international students in (I don't remember what year). One of them was from Japan. H (my name), you are from Japan also. Will you come up here?" So I came close to the podium. Then, JR and JH approached me. And my eyes caught one of the Rotarians bringing out the robe! "Oh, my my, what's going on here?!" And JR said, "You can't escape this." Oh-uh.
JR put the robe on me, I felt like Harry Potter, the university president read his congratulations, and JR gave me my certificate!
The official graduation ceremony will be this Saturday, which I'm not planning to attend because I have no friend to graduate with. And the certificate is supposed to be posted (sometime in September). Even during the ceremony, the certificate isn't handed to graduates (they get fake ones). That's the university rule. But I got the real one today, in August! I was told later that a powerful Rotarian nagged the university to issue my certificate for today. Wow, I knew she was powerful, but she is really something. Besides, I've got congratulations directly from the university president. I'm not a super student who deserves special attention from the university president. Wow, I was totally speechless.
And I also got a lovely hand-made card with everyone's signatures. The back of the card reads, "This card is brought to you by MB Cards." MB is my friend's 10-year-old boy. He created this card. Awesome! I will keep this in a frame.
Well, it was a pretty surprising day today. I can't say wow and thank you enough to those lovely people!