Easier understood than done

Received an email from a professor that I respect greatly. While his email was full of well wishes & warm praise; it was also a timely reminder that multi-tasking-loving ways does not a good relationship make.

An excerpt of our exchange is as follows:
...

Please don't take this badly, but I think I know you well enough to tell you frankly that I was very surprised by your having an extended conversation on the handphone during our meeting a couple of weeks - I did tell you to go ahead and take the call, but I thought you would just say a quick "hello, I'll call you back" - but then again, I think I'm getting out of sorts with this tech world : ) and am finally in some ways feeling the generation gap - this last weekend, the HR department sent me an automated birthday greeting card - I know it was automated because it went out at 4:00 a.m. on a Sunday - and it had this thoughtful note attached that said "please come to the HR department to pick up your birthday gift" - that is about as impersonal a birthday greeting as one could get, I thought. A couple of weeks ago, we were doing our student interviews (they now do group discussions of eight students with two faculty members rather than the one-on-two that you went through), and one of the topics was an article about a professor complaining about his students "multi-tasking" in class. Most of the JC/poly students thought the professor was out of line complaining about SMSing and surfing in class, and my Singaporean faculty colleague almost seemed to agree. So it is possible that I'm the anachronistic one out there, but I just thought I would let you, my good buddy, know how I felt.


My reply:

Please accept my apologies for taking the phonecall in the middle of our conversation...I'm sorry you felt slighted, I should have known better. Thank you for the timely reminder. I don't think you're anachronistic at all ;P The modern world tells us repeatedly that we have to multi-task for greater efficiency and convenience. We forsake the traditional and seemingly outdated forms of courtesy of paying full attention to the things we do at the moment. I'll be the first to admit it's not easy for me to give up my multi-tasking-loving ways heh...but yes...you're absolutely right here. I really enjoy our frank exchanges. Sometimes it's difficult to speak about another person's faults in their face. That's when email comes in handy I suppose heh...

...

It must have bothered him quite alot to write me this. I really appreciate his honesty though. I'm guilty all the time for my multi-tasking-loving ways. Especially when some friends call and I'm watching tv, I'll try to catch bits and pieces of the conversation while attempting to capture the plot of the show. Have you ever done something like that before?