The Lair

This weekend was supposed to have been an eventful one. It lived upto expectations, but for phospor related reasons rather than the expected ones. That’s like – a grand way of saying I vegged out and watched TV the whole weekend. Good innit ? My flat mate of last year graduated and was due back in these parts to collect the piece of paper. This piece of paper cost him (and his parents) money and taught him very little he found useful, but was like .. a symbol. A talisman to his ability to cope in a strange country without knowing much of the language. Or something like that. It was, in his own words, also a great excuse to get drunk.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, the Great Guy (I kid you not, that’s a literal translation of his name.. absolutely no pressure there, eh ?) was stuck in a south Yorkshire town waiting for a train connection and the Bomb Squad dissolved into a series of mini bomblets. And a promise of greater things for next weekend; which may or may not transpire. By the way, the stupidity that is train travel in the UK. The latest example: it’s cheaper to travel end to end by taxi for a 20 mile round trip than take a train journey of the same distance. Ummm. And while return air tickets to Prague cost £60 (with taxes; it’s advertised for much less but that’s what one ends up paying), a train journey from York to Hatfield costs £125.

The problem with our outings, going on past experience, is that we soon degenerate into the slightly juvenile (but immensely satisfying, in a masochistic sort of way) practice of competitive drinking. The ICB is just the most recent in a long long line of such stomach churning wonders. The point, Great Guy grins toothily and insists, is to get wasted as fast as possible. Mix Baileys and cold Guinness together and the Baileys will curdle into a chewy nougat-like substance inside a couple of minutes. Which is nice, if you’re into string cheese with your alcohol. I’m not. The obvious (and intended) solution is to chug it down like a camel who’s discovered an extra hump of liquid makes him more popular with the females. Another one of those tricky drinks is the oddly named B-52 variant. You know, shot glass, light up the top layer of flammable alcohol and snort it up through a straw ? Always goes well with people who were impressed by fire-eaters in their childhood. Well, what happens if you dither around and the straw crumples with the heat ? Well, it could happen, could it not ? Not that I’ve had to deal with this problem, but you know.. Again, fast chugs are indicated.

And in other news, my South American cube mate is making his biannual appearance today. I didn’t hear about this till the morning. My supervisor had this evil grin on his face when I was informed. This obviously forced a huge cleanup operation on me. See, my filing system goes a bit like this:

1. Use as little paper as possible, make every document electronic
2. Cater to those (poor fools) who can’t read off an electronic screen by printing out sheets and sheets of paper. Try and ensure said sheets of paper stay with their intended recipient
3. In the sad eventuality that the sheets of paper return to sender (ie: me), stack them up in a rough pile on the right hand said of the desk. The left hand side is taken up by the second LCD, so no room there. Shove said stack out of the way when laptop use is required.
4. Pretend not to notice the perilously high stack till it starts tottering and/or collapses in a soft sigh of billowing papers, memos and draft versions of reports, papers and other toilet paper fodder.
5. When the stack becomes too high/unweildy to ignore, halve the stack. Sort through the bottom half and sorta dump it on the shelves behind me. An orderly stack of paper on a shelf seems neater, somehow. Well, sorta.
6. Rinse, lather and repeat as needed

At the time of notification, I was in step 4. And running out of shelf space.