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The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in organisations going digital, though some may have found the transition to be less than straightforward.
Just ask this National University of Singapore (NUS) professor, who belatedly realised that he had been muted for the majority of his Zoom lecture.
In a video uploaded onto TikTok by a user named queen_yx_, Wang Dong, an associate professor in NUS's department of mathematics, can be seen finishing his class with a pretty standard call for questions.
Wang is currently teaching "Living with Mathematics" at NUS.
However, Wang only received silence in reply.
Slowly a few brave students intervened; "hi prof, actually you were muted all the while," said one.
"We cannot hear anything from you since 6:08."
"From what?" said Wang, subtitles in the video revealing that it was almost 8pm.
Still trying to process what had happened, Wang asked his students to clarify what they meant: "You mean how long did you hear?"
"From the first few minutes...," replies one student.
"Yeah, and from 6:08 onwards your screen froze and we heard nothing from you ever since," said another.
At this point, Wang seemed to fully realise the extent of his mistake.
He took a few quick, sharp breaths to compose himself, before telling the students that he would repeat the lecture some other time.
Students tried to contact the professor
According to one commenter, who identified themselves as a student in the class, Wang had been using an iPad to conduct the Zoom lesson.
"Students tried all sorts of things to get his attention by unmuting and even calling his phone number. However, he did not respond and continued with the lesson," wrote the commenter.
Participants in the lecture slowly left the class, with the technical difficulties seemingly insurmountable.
"What you see here are 20-plus students who waited patiently for two hours for the prof to come back."
The student said that Wang now conducts lectures with his phone beside him, to avoid wasting another two hours.
Don't worry professor, we've all been there. Kind of.
Top image screenshots from Singapore Incidents YouTube Channel
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