Matthias Schwab:
Another thing that strikes me as so inexplicable [about his death]:
I did exercise twice with Jos.
Once we biked his routine route,
the other time we walked for several hours as fast as we could.
In both cases Jos utterly frustrated me by speeding ahead
and graciously waiting for me with good advice or simply a joke.
He was so much stronger than I was. He ate better.
He did gymnastics.
When we lived together at your home,
we had a program: every evening we would take turns
choosing a movie. Then we would watch it.
But we "allowed" ourselves the movie
only as long as we did do stretching exercises while watching.
There are many discussions I had with Jos.
Here are several:
-
During a long walk at night
we discussed regulating
shop hours in Europe and the benefit it had for family life.
-
Another discussion was about "the holocaust and would it have happened
if Germany would have had US gun laws".
-
Another thing was planning an urban "village": a type of community
where the anonymity of modern cities is replaced by the "natural
frequent interaction between village inhabitants.
We believed the urban village would reduce suicide,
crime, and drug usage.
-
I taught him about "interfacing":
the need to decide what 2 people have to exchange on information and
emotions and
what information and emotions are better not communicated.
-
He taught me about his scheduling and routines ...
something I try to apply to my life every day,
but never as successful as he did.
-
We talked about you his parents. He loved and respected you both so very much.
-
I suggested to him some humorous stuff,
which I thought would fit his own writing style:
Tom Sharpe (especially his books about South Africa)
and the politically questionable but very hilarious P.J. O'Rourke.
-
We talked much about the "Third Chimpanzee" (Jared Diamond) and "The Moral
Animal"
by Robert Wright: both books we had read independently. And there were
other books ..
I have to check: I kept a list of books Jos suggested and books I had
read.
The one thing we never discussed (by gentlemen's agreement, I guess)
was my thesis difficulties. Nevertheless, did Jos almost make me drop out ...
I cannot remember when and why,
but Jos suggested that I read "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.
I enjoyed the book greatly.
For days we called each other "Howard" or "Howard Roark",
the hero of the book who drops out of architecture school
because he was not willing to compromise his vision.
Dropping out was appealing to me at the time,
but I guess, I could have hardly argued that it was because
of a compromised vision.
We both loved books that described the same event but came to different
conclusions.
When we parted I gave him the book "Ordinary man"
that discusses the same German police squad
that "Hitler's willing executioners" discusses.
Both books use the same court materials to argue their case:
what made these police man to executioners
of Polish Jews?
I had looked forward to Jos's take on the issue ... but
we never had
a chance to discuss it.
I left for Germany and he stayed behind.
I know he was planning to visit us in Germany and I had told
[my boy] Lukas much
about the
great funny friend who would come. I can't help even now to think about
the places
I want to show him.
PS: one funny thing. I always thought Jos a little shy in some ways.
Maybe I should write about that ...
PPS: Jos loved you, Diane and Jon. And I could tell how happy he was
that you enjoyed him being in Palo Alto and being successful.
He was so proud of both of you and greatly appreciated your encouragement:
Jos and the internet industry are in many ways a perfect match!
