The Magic of Dr. PET
It was the beginning of the semester, and the University of Mendes is open for the new academic year. There were rumors the physics professor was going on a sabbatical leave and a replacement would be handling the second year's physics class. Some students in the university always tend to get the latest news on the campus. They are like the privileged kids whose parents paid for a backstage pass to see that popular musician before the show.
The class was billed to be by 8.00 AM and the students already knew that 8.00 AM is a African Time. This is not out of place in most dealings in the vicinity. In other words, 8.00 AM is a range of period from 8 AM to 11 AM. It all depends on the desire of the lecturer to show up. Often times, lecturers were known to not show up, but would send a text message five minutes to the supposed end of their class to give their regrets for not making it. Those are the gracious ones; others would not bother to inform the students of their inability to make it to class.
Also, the first two weeks of school's opening was treated as a holiday of sorts. It was an unofficial rule that if the date of school's resumption was billed as 14th April, everyone knew to add another 14 days to that day before expecting "serious" lectures. The second-year university physics students were 105 in number but that day only a handful of them numbering about 25 were in class. Those in classes were students who were forced to return to school by parents who had gotten tired of their homes being turned into a youth rendezvous camp by their adrenaline-filled children and were eagerly counting the days till resumption in order to ship them off to school.
