I once again naturally woke up at 11am this morning with the intention of getting lots of work done and being as productive as possible. It sort of went to plan. But not in the best way.
The plan for the day was to firstly hoover my room, since it's getting inspected tomorrow. I hate the hoover we have, it's very bulky. Still, I carted it up the three flights of stairs, before leaving it by Ahmit's door in case he wanted to do his. The front door had once again been left open by either Ahmit or Anil. What the hell is so hard about closing a door when you leave?
After that, I put some shoes on so I could put the rubbish out, making sure to prop the front door open with a mop. It was extremely windy and I didn't want it blowing shut on me. I was only going to put the rubbish out though, so it's not like I had anything to worry about, right?...
...wrong.
I opened the back door, which leads onto an alleyway and I put the rubbish in the large bin before pushing on the door to get back in. It didn't open.
...the bastard fucking door had shut on me.
So, there I was, standing in an alleyway in extremely windy conditions, wearing nothing but some jeans and a tshirt. No coat, no money, no nothing.
"Shit", I said.
LUCKILY, I take my phone everywhere, even if I go downstairs into the kitchen and my god was I thankful for that. However, who to call? It's not like I have the numbers of Ahmit or Anil. This was going from bad to worse.
I walked out of the alleyway onto the main street and headed to the front door of where I live. However, the front door on the main street is not the front door to my actual house. You have to go through a passageway to get there. Essentially, I was fucked.
I sigh, taking my phone out and scrolling down my phonebook. "Porters", I selected.
"Hello, Chester University reception?"
"Hi, I've been locked out of my accommodation"
"Well right now, you're looking at a two and a half wait"
"..."
"Right now, there's only two of us on and the other guy has gone off somewhere and I can't leave here. If you wanna come and get the keys, you can do that if you want, otherwise you're going to have to wait."
"...I don't know..."
"Isn't there anyone who can let you in?"
"No, I'm outside and I dont' have the numbers of anyone"
"Well, if you wanna come and get the keys, you can do that"
"Where do I go?"
"Just come to reception"
"Ok then"
"Just bring some form of ID with you when you come"
"I don't have anything! I don't have ANYTHING on me. No ID, no money."
"Oh, you're out on the street?"
"YES"
"Well, you can either wait for the other guy to get back or you can come and pick the keys up"
"I'll come and get them"
"Ok, just come to reception"
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
As I talked to him on the phone, I pondered walking for 25 minutes in some of the windiest conditions I've experienced while being here in nothing but a tshirt. It wasn't going to happen. Reluctantly (though perhaps fortunately), I walked onto the street again and went into the cab office and got a cab. Half way to the University, I realised that I had Alan's number in my phone. I could have called him and he would have let me in! I felt stupid for not having thought of it. Since I was now half way to the reception, I thought I might as well get the keys.
"You need to have these back by 6pm", the guy at the reception said, once I got there, "otherwise you'll get charged �60 because we'll have to replace all of the locks if they're lost"
"Ok"
I had told the cab driver to wait for me outside. After getting the keys, he drove me back and then I had to run to my house and up to my room to get some money to actually pay the guy �5 for the journey there and back, before running back to him, paying him and then, now pissed off, walking back once more to my room.
Fucking unbelievable. I'm just so very thankful I had my phone on me.
As I walked back in the house, Anil was outside and he had seen the mop propped up against the front door.
"Doing some cleaning?", he said to me, as I passed him.
"I've just been locked out!", I said, pissed off at the situation and at him.
"What? Here?", he said.
I didn't answer him, I just kept walking.
So, now I had the master set of keys which I needed to return to the University by 6pm. This meant I'd have to make another trip to Uni. I wasn't really wanting to pay out another �5 in cab fare so after an hour of warming up and calming down, I got ready to walk back to the Uni. I hadn't planned to do so, but I decided that since I was going there, I'd make use of D-Prod and scan a few things in. On my way there, I was blown away by the wind quite a few times. It didn't help that I had a large bag, creating surface resistance and pushing me off course, not to mention the fact once I did get to the Uni, I'm sure my hair looked a bit like Einstein's.
It was empty when I got there, which I was expecting it to be. I was happy about this. It meant I could work in peace. It's quite cool having 32 iMacs all to yourself.
The next two hours was spent using the cool A3 scanner, while I talked on MSN on another computer and had music on loud. The acoustics in there are great. Try blasting Moby out in a room filled with subtle echoes. Awesome.
The A3 scanner takes a long while to scan things in the way I want it to so while it was doing it, I decided to have a little fun. As I stood at the front of the room, looking out onto all of the Macs, I had an idea.
I counted all of the Macs that were facing me and worked out that I could form a sentence, making one word on each computer.
"Having 32 Macs at your disposal is pretty cool !!! !!!" I wanted to write.
I switched on the 11 Macs that were facing me and opened up Photoshop on all of them, before writing 'Having' on one, '32' on another, 'Macs' on another etc. After I was done, I grinned like any true geek would. It was a rather funny sight to me. I took a panoramic photo of it. The things you can do with 32 Macs...
Once all of my stuff was scanned, I decided to wrap things up. It was far too cold in there and the roof sounded like it was ready to blow off. In total, I arrived at D-Prod around 4pm and left at 7pm, before walking home.
On my way back home, I decided to do a little bit more sticker graffiti. I now have four stickers advertising my website available for all to see. Of course, I'm going to need a lot more than four stickers up if anyone's going to bother visiting the site. I'm always scared that I'm going to either be caught doing it though or get an email telling me that I'm going to be sued or something. I'm always cautious about sticking them anywhere.
Once home, I made something to eat, sighing at the disgusting state of the plates and cooker. Ahmit claims that it's all Anil's doing and I pretty much believe him. I have yet to get a chance to actually speak to Anil on his own about it though. Most of the time I either forget to mention it or just feel out of place doing it, but it's getting on my nerves. The fact that this place is getting inspected tomorrow doesn't help either because I'm worried if they see those plates in such a state, they're going to write it up and blame all three of us living here, when it's nothing to do with me at all.
After eating, I came up to my room and now I'm writing this entry, after which I'm going to do some work.
So, all in all, a pretty eventful day but not for particularly good reasons. If I'm looking for the silver lining in all of this, I guess it's that I got lots of stuff scanned in and enjoyed working in D-Prod on my own and I will definitely be doing it again if I need to.
Time to be productive...
