Matteo the Japanese Gentleman

I recently encountered again after many years, a little Japanese man named Matteo (or "Matt the Jap" as he is more commonly known to the students, staff and visitors of Trinity College Dublin), one of Trinity College Dublin's' resident characters. Matt, for lack of a better name and description for him is a well known but very mysterious little Japanese man (usually seen with walking stick and his bag of sandwiches and newspapers walking around the Arts block or Front Square) whom you will eventually bump into if you ever idle long enough in Trinity College Dublin. Every student who has passed through Trinity since the early 80's (to late 70s even, I think) would have at one stage heard of and quite possible have seen Matt walking slowly past them.

Not a lot is known about him but there are plenty of rumours. These range from Matt being an eccentric genius who studied in Trinity a long time ago but the pressure of his thesis was too much for him so he snapped to him being thrown out of college for fouling an ancient manuscript (by writing footnotes on it) in the library. Some say that he is deaf and dumb while others say he is perfectly fine but just doesn't like to talk to people. Some say that he is actually French and not indeed Japanese. There are people who say that he is harmless while there are others that tell a different story saying that Matt is indeed a violent male chauvinist pig with a grudge against all women.

My recent sighting of Matt got me thinking again about what actually is his real story. These days, sadly to say, he is looking very old and frail and I'm sure that he hasn't many years left on this earth. I'm sure he must have had led a very interesting life at one stage. One that many students and staff of Trinity would like to know about (even if it is just to reaffirm some of the rumours about him). Luckily for me I got some of my answers via this little interview I found today done by the Record with Matt. It's not a great interview and needs to be taken with a pinch of salt (partly because another rumour about Matt is that he is a notorious liar) but non the less it has shed some light on this mysterious little man whom I associate to be part of my overall college experience. From my initial reading of the interview it does seem that some of the rumours do run true. He does indeed appear to be deaf and he does seem to bare a somewhat a grudge against women as this shows from some of the answers he gives in the interview.

On a completely different topic. I went to see "Eastern Promises" last night. Damn good film. I highly recommend going to see it when you get the chance. It's David Cronenberg at his best... and for the ladies, you get to see Viggo Mortensen's, erhem, sword, erhem, at some stage in the film.