I first met Doug at the beginning of our first year at MIT.
Well, not quite, actually. Doug was still in Africa with Anne-Marie and their daughter Cato and they only arrived a bit later on. Meanwhile, there were some very non linguistic based speculations about the origin of his family name.
When they finally got to Cambridge, and we realized that Anne-Marie was Québécoise (and very spunkily so), we quickly started spending evenings together with Anne Rochette and my future wife Catherine, enjoying speaking French and impressing each other with our cooking. I vividly remember the day of my thesis defense, when this group of friends gathered around a Henry Moore sculpture on MIT grounds, enjoying a sip of bubbly while Cato clambered all over the curvaceous bronze.
We kept seeing each other regularly for years after leaving MIT. The friendship still endures, and my daughter Evelyne got to know her godparents better during the years she spent in Vancouver.
Enjoy your retirement, dear Doug. It’s a highly recommendable activity.