Stalag Luft III
Last year sometime, the University of Sydney (the SUstainable Campus ) in its asymptotic wisdom started a project to completely destroy the not unpleasant (and positively Elysian compared with the building itself, above) grounds outside my lab. This is, we are told, a necessary prerequisite to the completion of Sydney’s new $65 million0 Space Centre .
These things take some time, I’ll give you, but for the last six months the view from my tiny office window (if I could actually see through the grime) has been not unlike this:
Nevada nuclear test site
My regular readers (both of you) might remember on Monday it was my birthday I wrote that the two lifts in our building had broken . Again.
On Tuesday they were working, if you happened to use them between about 10:37 and 11:03, but today they were out of order again. This prompted one of our workshop staff to write to the departmental email list,
The University sees fit to spend millions1 on unnecessary landscaping right in front of our building, but seems unwilling to pay for reliable lifts. That is, probably, new ones.
Why do we have to put up with this misguided priority?
I wondered for a moment if someone would propose a strike (what would be the point ?), but a prof upstairs chimed in with
What’s wrong with you man! Keeping up appearances to attract all those juicy full-fee paying International students is a very high priority. Always look on the bright side…they pay our salaries, besides, walking up and down seven floors each day keeps us all fit!
Don’t you just love optimists? That was followed up by a comment from an AP (on one of the lower floors) saying
As I sit here revising my manuscript (The effects of age, birth cohort and survey period on leisure time physical activity by Australian adults: 1990-20052 ) I thought you would like to know you can expend 250kJ (that is per day if you go up and down them 3 times) – that lets you have a wine at the end of the day guilt free.
(I never feel guilty about drinking wine, by the way: at least, not if you’re offering. Thanks very much. In fact, my dad was told to drink more wine to help him lose weight. Seriously).
An hour later, we got an email saying that the lifts were working, followed within minutes by another saying that number two had stopped. Precisely sixteen minutes after that another email informed us that lift number one had gone out in sympathy.
The Assistant Head subsequently issued a decree,
For your own safety (especially after hours) do NOT use the lifts. They are not WORKING just moving up and down occasionally.
It all got a bit silly after that, with the currently hypothesis being that zombies are nesting in Level One (the floors are number 2 through 8, with 2 being the ground floor. Yes. I don’t like to think about it either) and trapping unsuspecting µstudents so that they (the zombies) can feast on their (the students’) living brains (step away from the keyboard, Gee. And you, O’Hara).
All in all, I’m rather glad I was sat at home analysing microarray data. It might not be as exciting, but it suddenly seems a whole lot safer.
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1 I seem to recall that it was about $8 million. I wouldn’t worry about converting to £sd; once you start talking ‘millions’ the actual currency is almost irrelevant (except for Lira or Yen, I suppose).
2 A catchy little tune, that.
_ don’t like to think about it either) and trapping unsuspecting µstudents so that they (the zombies) can feast on their (the students’) living brains (step away from the keyboard, Gee. And you, O’Hara)_
Damn. I was just about to type something but was awakened from my reverie by the eldritch piping of the Shuggoths, slaves of the Blind, Idiot-God Nyarlathotep [please note punctuation, Dr O’Hara]. The horror! The horror! I hear them knocking at my door! The door opens. Aaaargh! Etc, etc etc.
Etc requires a trailing period surely as an abbreviation?
[Dr Gee thanks you for your comment. Unfortunately he cannot be here in person to answer it, as he is at present being dragged into the nethermost pit of tartarus by the Great Old Ones. Your call is important to us, however, so please stay on the line. And yes, ‘etc’ requires a trailing period as surely as every third sentence in Gothick Horror requires an ellipsis, like this … Oh, my, here comes another one … ]
Odd elevator experiences… I remember at my previous place of employment – a well know publisher whose name sounds a bit like Hell severe – there was a bank of six lifts. All six enunciated the floor in a jolly male voice. But then, one day, with no warning, the western three went female. Was it political correctness gone mad? Gender uncertainties in the elevators’ minds? I don’t know.
Around the same time, one of the male elevators started commending the ‘Thirteenth basement’ level, whenever we reached the seventh floor. I still haven’t got to the bottom of it – literally or deductively.
Henry – I reckon you can weave a Gothick Horror story around these schizophrenic lifts.
The lifts in the Nature building have gone on the blink. Just now. Creepy.
Our lifts work just fine. The zombies are not amused
Attracting foreign students is big business, at least here in the UK. Once they’ve been safely absorbed into the campus and divested of their pocket money, nobody will mind if the odd few go missing between floors.
I’d say you’ll have to relax and enjoy the landscaping efforts, Richards. Maybe you can set up some sort of dirt-bike fun park in the meantime?
Mmm that might work, Jenny. Could go towards paying off the 65 million.
Apparently there’s going to be a moat. Towers, damsels, knights and dragons currently unaccounted for. Damn shame.
Yes Jenny, no harm in losing a few as you say…
Hunry, another Arnold Brown gag.
I was in a lift the other day when it broke down. I took complete control of the situation. I started the screaming"
Thanks very much, I’ll be here all week.
Boom boom!
When you’ve sorted your lifts out, can you turn your attention to our coffee machine?
I came across a video in the New Yorker. A description: “This week in the magazine, Nick Paumgarten writes about the lives of elevators, and tells the story of Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator in New York City’s McGraw-Hill building for forty-one hours. Here is a condensed look at White’s ordeal, as captured by the building’s security cameras.”
I must try to employ the delightful phrase, “asymptotic wisdom”, before sundown.
I like the upstairs optimistic prof’s writing. Hooray for the stairs!
Not if you are running with your styrofoam box for your experiment, may be.
You’ll not be getting any sympathy from this end of the campus. Honestly, whinging about non-functioning luxury items like elevators, when we don’t even have indoor plumbing, reliable electricity, or a proper tea room. At least you have a window that looks out over ‘something’. When I peer through the thick grime, all I see is the cracked and peeling paint of a drab concrete courtyard – and believe me, I am stretching my imagination by the application of that word…more resembles a prison exercise facility or maybe a place of execution. Working in such squalor, I have no choice but to marvel at the beauty of new flower beds, though I do cast an envious eye toward their irrigation systems. Ah, to not have to carry buckets of Milli-Q across my shoulders eight kilometers up an icy hill from the campus well!
@Heather – did you?
Audra, I believe the guards are letting you out for lunch today?
Oh, and the door to the only toilet on our floor mysteriously broke its hinges overnight. And since I don’t trust our lifts, I am getting plenty of exercise today.
The elevator movie made me cry.
Yes, I definitely need to get out of the building for awhile…and such a lovely day for a walk!
Wow. The movie proves one thing: Smoking is bad for you.
@Richard: nope. Tried hard, though, and meanwhile managed to do some of the other things on my list. It meant 15 hours in lab, though. sigh.
Oh stop trying to pretend you’re hard core Heather. We all know what a big softy you are.
xx
Well, I’m surprised nobody has yet come up with the same solution as our Organic Prof. Our (10 story) building has had flakey lifts for years (I trapped in one with the ‘fiercest’ academic, now our HoD, on interview day). As pro-VC for research he decided that since chemistry had the closest links to industry it made sense for the Enterprise and Innovation unit into our building. To the 9th floor. Several months later, we had brand spangly new fancy lifts that have worked wonderfully since. So just get your local admin to move into a high floor, and let their power within the University work for you …
! seems that half my text has vanished. add was and’to move’. Sorry about that.