I guess I need to break my own rule here a little and bring some Amnesty into this post.

I've been doing multiple things for several days with a colleague who came down with a terrible flu.  He was here from Oregon and he stayed at the conference hotel for a few days, but then he was staying extra and to save money planned to stay in a hostel.  I decided he better come to our house instead.

We had an appointment yesterday afternoon with a guy who is a human rights hero to both of us.  Andreas was in DC for work -- he lives in Jakarta.  I went to the appointment and though the details are amazing, they are not for this blog.

What I found interesting was Andreas's reaction when I said our friend was too sick to come, that he was at my house in bed.  Andreas said, well then, I need to go to your house.  It was his immediate solution -- he didn't spend any time working his way to that decision, and didn't ask me at all if that was OK with me...which of course it was, but it never occurred to me.  This was totally dinner time, but obviously food was of no matter ...he needed to make the meeting happen.

For so much of my life, and probably still, I would have thrown all kinds of Western manners in here, and they would have stopped me from making the move Andreas did so naturally.  He knew what was important.

We're part of a small community and we both wanted to meet Andreas so much...and he knew of us and wanted to meet us as well.  So, at 5PM we got in my car.  I called Doug to wake up my friend and tell him Andreas was on the way.  He was totally excited...said that when he knew I was leaving he kind of tried to crawl out of bed and tell me to take him.

I ordered some take-out dinner -- hadn't been home to cook or shop for days -- and we had a short but wonderful time together.  Doug, also my hero, was left alone for the weekend but charged into action when I called to say we'd be a temporary sick house.

I learned a lot from Andreas last night.