Troy Dinner Speech

摘要

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very much aware of the fact that the invitation to speak at this dinner to a man who is well over ninety and is a quarter blind and three quarters deaf, is an extraordinary honor. The only reason why I felt I could accept it, is that my life has turned out to be an illustration of a cybernetic principle. I started out without any idea of what I wanted to do, but there were things I was very sure I didn't want to do. I was not guided by a fixed purpose, but by a set of constraints. I was lucky that I had been brought up on skis and with more than one language. So when things got bleak, I could work as ski instructor in the winter and as translator during summers.