24 hours at LPH

From Cbf

Tales from the crypt: 24 hours in LPH

You wake up, and you wonder “What the hell is going on?!!!!” I guess it's true what they say, when it rains, it pours.... It was a dark and rainy day, as I wake up to my usual routine, switching on my computer as I start to heat some water to saturate myself with caffeine before I hit the streets of London. Checking five email accounts, facebook and a multitude of pointless forums, online communities and what have you. That is information explosion for you. I knew something was not right because I didn't receive any “enlarge your p***s” emails or 419 scams congratulating me on winning 10 million dollars. Let alone coordinating with Daniel and the rest on late (really late) cooking pasta (again) with our Italian president, Marco.

Anyway, it's the 15th, and I got an exam at 14:30. While I struggle with mobility and ubiquitous computing, refuting the “When in Rome do as the Romans do”on the basis that distributed work environments one should ask “Where is Rome?”, I get a call. It's 11:59 am, and one of the most intriguing, comedic, 24 hours of life at Lillian Penson Hall (LPH) begin. I got yet another interview for a job. Nice timing, as I go on a confidence surge and can no longer focus on studying. I walk into the bathroom, and as I lean on the shower wall to reach for the soap, I feel a small slip as the tile breaks into the wall. Backing up, I look at the wall, only to see it bulging out like the late Anna Nicole Smith's bosom. I slap myself, repeatedly. No, I am not drunk or hung over, and the wall is really fucked up. Re-capturing my composure, I gather whatever notes I had, and decide to make an exit. Mobilize this!

At the reception, I catch up with Karim, unable to withhold myself from laughing and cursing jokingly in Arabic, as he for a change, can understand. “Dude, this is unreal, my wall is collapsing.” I am basically more worried about loosing my 520 pound deposit than the shower actually. (I might end up loosing the deposit depending on the moving out party after all, but lets leave that for the moment). Laughing his head off, Karim acknowledges that I for once, am not the only one with some weird shit going on in his room. It seems some other people have had trouble with the walls. So, I leave for my exam, which went fairly well, except the minor mistake of relating a cow milking system to mobile phones, but if my argument holds, I should be fine. I knew this was gonna be some day, as I hit the pub with my Pakistani drunken friend. Somehow, when a pigeon shits on someone's bag, it's hilarious, but maybe because we were drinking beer on an empty stomach.

Anyway, I am back at LPH, exam-ed out and beer-ed in. Karim greets me with a sly smile on his face, and hands me this note : “Dear Charles etc. etc...IT IS NOT SAFE TO USE THE SHOWER IN YOUR ROOM...we have given you access to another room to use the shower facilities.” Man! I go up to my room, with two keys, 510, and my own 632 key. As usual, Murphy's law applies and I try to open my door with the wrong key (could it be the beers?).... I am in, and coordinating with Daniel via skype and marco via msn. It's a good thing i grabbed a burger on the way home, because, most probably we won't be eating before 11 since Marco is cooking his sauce (which is worth the wait though). I crash in my bed...

It's 9:30 pm, and I wake up, pretty hungry. Logging on to msn, Marco is online, so I figure we are still far from dinner time. Eating in 30 minutes, equals 2.5 hours according to Italian timing. But after all, we cant talk to the sauce in Italian and convince it to taste good so I guess we will have to wait. Meanwhile, Daniel drops into my room to use his own printer. The story behind his printer in my room, well.... It seems Samsung 3-in-1 printer/copier/scanner is not backward compatible and does not particularly like laptops that came to power the same time Tony Blair did. Don't take your laptops to pubs, trust me (we shall skip the story behind this one for legal reasons, it's in another LPH parallel universe of weird happenings.) So, he engages into scanning his papers, as we listen to BBC online radio. In the midst of the discussion, Marco rings, and there is a crisis in the 4th floor kitchen : not enough gnucchi. So, we were now men on a mission: We hit sainsbury's , only to find that they are all out. Houston, we have a problem. But according to Italian cooking, when you cook gnucchii, you cook gnucchi. So, we are on a recall mission to Tesco, only to be turned down again, and we venture deep behind enemy lines to Edgeware Road and to Sommerfield. Mission failed, and no Gnucchi. A quick crisis management , and we are back at Sainsbury's, buying tortellinis instead. We are back at the hall. The sauce and pasta were tasty, and heavy to the extent that they required a night cap (or three). Danish Vodka comes to the rescue, as we round up in my room for a small drinking session. That goes down well, and we call it a night by 1:30 am. As usual, I engage in a heated, and extremely sarcastic, discussion with my best friend in Lebanon before I sleep. I believe my neighbors have grew accustomed to my midnight laughing.

It's 9:30 am, and I am sipping coffee, listening to the morning show. The phone rings. Who the hell is calling me at this time. All my friends are either asleep or at the library. “Hello, they want to come up and fix your bathroom.” Danish Vodka tastes really good, doesn't give you a hang over, and I am pretty relaxed. Still in my pajamas, hair messed up and barefoot (my slippers got tired of life 3 weeks ago), I greet my fellow maintenance people. The big boss checks the damage, then gives his instructions to his Albanian assistant, who comes back during my second coffee with his tools to begin work on my shower. I am bored bemused, and utterly laid back. Feet up, checking my emails. Suddenly..... BANG! The cleaning lady, totally oblivious of room 632 assembly line, slams the room door into the bathroom door, which domino effects into the maintenance guy's tools. Promptly (he seems to be accustomed to this) he grabs the tools and saves us another disaster. I walk up to the scene of the crime, and look at my cleaning lady, who is polish, “Now we can have a party!” A polish, an Albanian and a Lebanese in London. Cheers! But the day is far from over. Oh no!

I am joining my friends for lunch, but I badly need a shower. I am attending a lecture by Eric Kandel, the Nobel Laureate in Medicine, whom is at LSE, and I happen to have read his book a couple of weeks ago.

I grab my towel jeans and a key, to head down to room 510 for a shower. Episode 3 is just starting! So I check out the shower in the new room, which seems cool. It's a modern plastic shower. Also, the room itself is cool, it has its own stove and microwave (i have the key, hmmm) . Anyway, I put on the water, and as it would in my shower, wait for it to get hot (which takes usually a couple of minutes). Meanwhile, I shave. Shaving creamed and all, 10 minutes have gone and the water is still ice cold. The hell with it, I am running late and a cold shower is always good. It turns out that plastic showers are good sound containers. I found that out not because of exhaling from a cold shower, but because as I decided to turn off the water, it turns out that the hot and cold water taps on the 5th floor turn in the opposite direction than the 6th floor. Well, I had a worse freezing-to-burning transition than any Finnish sonna would provide, and that's when I (and I think the rest of the 5th floor) discovered that plastic showers have a strong echo. This is unreal.

Getting dressed, I head back to my room, only to realize, yes. I only took the 510 key. There I was, topless, and knocking on my own door. The maintenance guy opens the door : “I hope you don't mind me using the red towel in your bathroom.” Me : “By all means! Go ahead..... Do you want any coffee?” He is only on a need-to-know basis, and I need not tell him that I use that towel for every possible bathroom and shoe cleaning you can think off. All this on the lyrics of Nirvana on a Wednesday morning! It's 12:30 pm and I am out of here!

Ironically, the day's lecture was on the emergence of a new science of mind, and Prof. Kandel mentioned that instances of our life that stand out, modify the genetic combination of our nerve cells. A bathroom wall is changing the genetic construct of my brain. Go figure!

Fuck Technology, I should become a comedian