I will keep this post short because I want to finish writing before the bitterness of coffee fades away.

For those who know me well I have speaking engagement with major universities in Australia. Especially Macquarie University where I spent 5.5 years of my life, I often visit the building ‘C5C’ just to refresh my old memories, prior to seeing Dr Wang who has been inviting as a guest lecturer since 2012.

I was in the room to review my lecture materials for a while. All of sudden a security guard entered the room and asked all students to present their student cards. There was a group of students in the corner who seemed uninterested in what the security guard said. They were asked to present their student card repeatedly and they appeared to be very reluctant to comply. The security guard asked them “What do you study?” One of them answered in a very resentful tone “Commerce”. “This room is for the students who study business administration only. You guys should not be here.” One of them suddenly stood up and said “Listen mate! Business administration is under the umbrella of the Commerce faculty. Get yourself educated mate. No wonder you are a low-paid security guard.”

The security guard walked away and I could sense that how upset he was. They laughed and said “That was so cool bro. I like that sh!t man.” I kept my silence for a moment to observe them. Soon I realized that they were the students of the class that I was going to teach that evening so I chose to withhold my retaliation and waited to ‘strike back’ in the classroom instead.

I was on the verge of concluding the lecture and I stared at the group of students who made a fun of the poor security guard and said

“People have different status in life – some are rich and some are poor; some are more fortunate than others; some are highly educated and some are not. However, you do NOT, I say again, you do NOT have the right to claim that your integrity is worth more than others. Today unfortunately I witnessed a group of Macquarie University students who humiliated a security guard because he did not know that business administration is under the commerce faculty. One said “No wonder you are a low-paid security guard.” Not an ounce of humility but a full of arrogance. This is not the quality that I expected from Macquarie University students.

Perhaps it would be wrong to assume that this small group of students represent the overall quality of all Macquarie University students accurately but it was very, very distasteful, and I still remembered the bitterness of that moment. Time to go and pick up my car now – the bitterness of coffee is about to fade away from my mouth.