The strange Mister Wu

Years ago, I worked with a strange guy.

We will call him Mister Wu (fake name).

He was a nice guy, but odd.

Strange

(picture from Bob Price)

Mister Wu was a foreigner, mostly hanging out with people from same country during lunch but working in a team of international developers.

He was dressed the same, exactly the same, every single day. Pants and T-Shirt, black. He was never wearing a jacket during winter, whatever the weather.

Mister Wu was living near the workplace and going at work by foot.

But there’s more strange.

After some time, he started to really redecorate his office.

On the wall, he disposed tens of A4 sheets fully written. Soon covering the full wall(s). I kindly asked one day about that and he told me about being some sort of the tablets of 10 commandments.

But there’s even more strange.

Every day, he would sit on his desk and make an origami, more precisely a paper bird.

A paper bird (origami)

It was not that strange at first, but after days, months, years… His office became literally a mountain of paper birds.

I’m not sure that you can imagine, but screen, keyboard, mouse and his personal stuffs were like swimming in an ocean of paper birds.

I would love to have a picture of that, so you would get shocked the same than I was, but I’m also happy not to have pictured that (in regard to privacy and respecting this person).

This was strange.

Mister Wu told me that doing this paper bird was a lucky charm. To my eyes, it mainly sounded very strange.

Then, long time later, I got it.

For years now I’m doing a work journal. It’s in order to keep traces of what I do and ease my future reporting etc…

Looking back later at the journal, with days that transforms into months then years, it’s frightening how it represents the time passing.

Mister Wu, looking at the heap of paper birds, was likely thinking that each paper bird was, once, a day. It appears to me very deep and philosophical now.

After all, Mister Wu was maybe not that strange.

After a few years as a developer, Mister Wu went back to his country and changed his job to become a teacher.