Old Man and the Key

My appetite for mishaps and weird incidents reached a new level when I locked up myself in my apartment in Geneva. A story which led to me being the laughing stock of my office folks in Switzerland.

One evening, after an awfully long day at work I returned to my apartment, with my roommate still at work. This incident revolves around the two keys which were used to gain access to the building and then to the apartment.

After reaching early, I started attempting to cook dinner for the both of us. The roommate arrived below the building and called me up to come down and open the building door from inside. Tired and lazy I suggested to drop the key from our 5th floor apartment to him from the balcony. What happened next is an incident to remember!

I peeped out of the window and attempted my well practiced ‘key throw‘ towards my roommate. Little had I realized that Murphy’s Godforsaken law would pop up in the avatar of the vulgar façade protruding from the 1st floor of the building and stop its journey to the ground! The keys never reached the ground and decided to stay back on the first floor!

I realized what happened and like Robin muttered, ‘No problemo Batman I’ll come down and open the building door and then fetch the key by the help of the 1st floor apartment dude’.  With a hare like swiftness I sprung into action and ran towards my apartment door, only to realize that it wouldn’t open as I had locked myself in and had thrown the key downstairs! Yep, I could be featuring in the next episode of jailed abroad on Nat Geo! ( I did mutter a lot of F this and F that at this point!)

So now the roommate couldn’t get in the building and I couldn’t get out of the apartment. It was pretty late, we decided that he’d goto a friend’s place to stay for the night and morning will return with reinforcements.

Morning came and the roommate was on his way with a friend(the reinforcement?). I peeped outside the window to check if the key was there but the key was missing from the spot! Bollocks I say!

I had no way to figure out where had the key gone, the reinforcement suggested that the key was taken by a bird! Preposterous explanations for us! Anyways, they gained entry to the building and went to the 1st floor apartment only to find it locked. Next, they called the concierge but nobody picked.

Meanwhile I ended up calling the apartment lease broker for a spare key, they refused to help! I reminded them that the apartment is cleaned by cleaning staff which must be having a key. I then called up the cleaning people who couldn’t understand English! After a weird anglo-french conversation and they called back and promised to send someone over to open up the door!

After about 30 minutes a pretty lady opened the door, can’t express how glad I was to get out and see another human! I then ran to get a duplicate key made at the cost of around 800 INR!! But when I returned, I met this old man who had dropped a few keys and helped him by picking the keys and guiding him to the elevator. Somewhere in my heart I thought maybe those are my keys(I still didn’t have a building key!). Anyways, we entered the lift to test the duplicate key on the apartment, only to find this old man standing in front of our apartment fiddling with the original keys! He had braved all the way up to return our keys, I ran and thanked him in all languages I knew!

Background Story: The 1st floor apartment dude had picked the keys and kept them on our mailbox with a note. The old man picked the keys and left the same note behind. My roomate found the note but without the key, and had no idea who flicked it this time! Had lost all hopes and were annoyed as well…but then the old man turned up with the key!

Yes, my laziness cost us all a lot of distress :-(

Bangalored!

Yesterday, I had some urgent work to complete the final presentation for submission. I decided I shall go home; take a nap and then work late to be ready with my presentation today morning. However, Bangalore traffic knew better! The on average 1 hour bus ride ended up being a 1 hour and 45 minutes torture; it gradually ate up my nap time too!

It was during this time when I did some math assuming a few facts i arrived at a fact that if Bangalore’s infrastructure remains the same and I spend the next 30 years of my life working here (assuming early retirement!) I would lose over 332 days of my life in unnecessary travel. See the math below:

Ideally your workplace shall be 20 minutes from your home; however you end up spending 1 hour in travelling in one direction from home to work i.e. total extra time spent a day in commuting = 80 minutes

We have 22 working days a month, but we have around 21 holidays in a year too = 22*12 – 21 = 243 working days per year

Assuming we do not go to work with regular bus service and reach earlier on 43 days; thus 200 days per year during bad traffic.

Total time per year = 200 * 80 = 16000 minutes or 266 hours wasted due to extra traffic conjestion in a year!

This equals to 30 * (266/24) = 332.5 days lost in a 30 year working period!

I know the assumptions are quite simplistic and may be broken; but even if 10,000 people in this city end up living like this we have 3 320 000 days lost of their lives due to bad infrastructure!

Okay, that was the math of a useless guy in a bus cursing his luck!

 

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