It was during a sort of deep talk at lunch with my teammates, that I had a deep discussion with Hadi about the future. I talked about the goals I wanted to reach, all the things I wanted to learn, but how far away or out of reach they seemed. He then told me something like

It was something like a challenge and at the same time a promise, an expectation, a motivation.

He’s a person I’ve looked up to a lot since we started working together, and he’s approximately that much older than me, so when that time passes it will be interesting to see if I’m sitting at that “side of the table” where he was sitting, perhaps giving the same advice to someone sitting in the place I was.