The concept of loyalty never before really occured to me. I'd measure things out, try to be diplomatic and through careful consideration, it'd be easy to see who was at fault and who wasn't. While on screen this might read like a reasonable way to doing things, in practice, it has the tendency to turn you into a waivering fool - someone who really doesn't even have the luxury of a cartilage backbone of principle . It has a way of twisting you into someone, that while trying to be nice, or fair, or sparing of feelings, that inevitably drops the ball for everyone. Disappointing to the Nth degree, but always trying to save face, to mend fences, to self-deprecate, to out-loud explain the lessons you've learned when you haven't learned a thing.

Around me, there have always been people who were loyal, some fiercely, some tacitly. For the most part I always found their way of doing business - possibly even ignoring mathematics and chemistry for old-fashioned stick-to-itiveness, for friendship, for love - as flawed somehow.