There must be something wrong about the way I got up this morning. But that doesn’t even begin to explain it. There must be a greater reason and a higher plan at work here. The stars must have been mis-aligned. The forces of evil must have been culminating in my backyard. There must have been a dark and evil curse at work. Something of the sort must have been at work for this sort of Harry-Potter day to occur. The last 24 hours ran something like a sort of day in the life of Jack Bauer.
10:37PM: Scalded my left hand with hot boiling water straight from the kettle while attempting to fill up the hot water bottle I carry with me to bed. I’ve been using hot water bottles for more than 6 years now every cold day when I’m in a temperate climate, and this has been my eternal fear – to pour hot boiling water from a kettle inadvertently from the kettle to my hand.
Now my greatest fear has come true, there is a sense of relief there as there’s really nothing that I’ve feared which hasn’t come true (short of having that perverse sense of wanting to stick my hand down the food grinder in the sink when it is turned on).
11:52PM: Scalded hand starts to burn like nothing I’ve felt before. Suspected 2nd degree scald happened there as skin starts to turn very red and blister. Relieved by cold water but I’m too lazy to get out of bed as I’d like to catch some sleep so put hand on cold bit of pillow and drift off.
Realised I can sleep to nearly anything. Have slept through fire alarms and 2nd degree scalds now, probably.
6:32AM: Damn. Hand still hurts. Oh well, off to work and we’ll see how that goes. Skin between thumb and index finger is swollen, red and starting to seize up. Hope this doesn’t affect my typing too much.
8:34AM: Smart card that lets me into the office suddenly decided to die and has now suffered a swift and permanent death. It fails to let me into the office, so Security needs to issue me a new one… with a horrible webcam taken picture of me from last June.
I need to seriously consider self obliteration as a means of starting the day.
9:06AM: After turning on the computer, Outlook decided not to load on me, and consequently, upon syncing up a faulty mobile phone, promptly deletes all of my Contacts and some of my Calendar, cleverly choosing this week and the last two weeks as major casualties.
I’ve not even made it to lunch.
And this is the first day of the month end close, where fiscally important journals start streaming into my Inbox after last Friday.
The rest of a good half of the day was spent with the IT Helpdesk on the phone attempting to resolve the issue through various long, tedious and painful repairs and re-installations on a machine that suddenly decided to become veeerrrryy, veeerrrry slow.
I need a miracle.
4:04PM: Suddenly, one thing that the IT Helpdesk Technician said struck me. “Calendar items don’t just disappear from the server. They can only be deleted by you.” Not trusting in a higher power at this point, I work on the hunch and click on the “Deleted Items” box. I know I should have done this ages ago, but the place you find what you are looking for is the last place you know to look. That adage is proving true.
Staring back at me after a quick sort were… 105 deleted Contacts and 87 deleted Appointments.
If there is a God, He’s up there somewhere having a darn good laugh right now.
6:10PM: My new smart card with the horrible picture is finally ready. I suppose at last, justice is served and I am finally part of UK proper, having now given up for good the last shred of Singaporean identity at work. My Singapore smart card with the nice consultant picture taken in Hong Kong replaced, I’m now officially part of the “you can look me up online and see my ugly web cam mug” group, with my very own badge and my very ugly picture printed on it.
It is a sad day indeed for humanity.
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