Walking into a pole really gives me a new appreciation and sympathy for bugs crushed by flyswatters. I mean, I think that’s pretty painful. I just lived it and my head is still hurting. Getting swatted has to be SO much worse, although I suppose they don’t have to live with the pain because they’re dead, and also bugs probably don’t feel pain like we do. Maybe, I don’t know.
There are so many poles around where I work. MTSC us having some massive bout of building works, probably spilling over from the new campus we’re building across the road. I HAD been wondering what the deal was with that. You know, having a new campus and then leaving the old one the way it was, except it looks worse because there’s a shiny new campus right next to it. So yeah, we’re actually getting some attention! But there’s mobile scaffolding RIGHT outside my office, and the workmen keep shifting it around, so I’m walking along typing out an email to a student or a text to my mother or possibly engrossed in an academic paper I’ve just printed out, and I’ll just walk into a pole. They’re made of sturdy aluminium, so it’s not like I just bounce off. It’s giving me a headache, figuratively and literally.
Not to mention the day when they set up their planks and trestles right outside the communications building, because of some big operation to replace the satellite dish. I understand they need to get up high, but I had to climb into my office through the window, promptly landing on my cactus paperweight and almost doing myself a serious injury. Seriously! And to add insult to actual…well, injury, everyone else had gotten in just fine. Apparently the workmen had set up very obvious markers telling us to take the side-route. Didn’t even know there was one, but it bypassed the forest of ladder platforms. Melbourne roadworks are bad enough without them invading my office space! But renovations need doing…I’ll just have to be more careful while I’m walking, I suppose.
-Percival