So, I got to use one of my tools today (so wah)! I brought the laser measure into work to lend it to Dean and it turned out to be useful for something vaguely work-related as well.
One of the girls at work (Jaishika) has been given the unenviable task of modeling pedestrian traffic around the University with the express purpose of modeling how students are going to get to and from the new business school. I had already taken some pictures of the stairs for her after work but she needed to take measurements and more photos, so Tony (her boss) suggested I help her.
The task was to measure stuff and take photos of stuff. How could I refuse an offer like that?
So, picture, if you will, a guy in dress shoes, black jacket, black pants, blue shirt. Now imagine that he has three pens in his top pocket, a 30cm ruler sticking out of his top pocket, a laser measuring tool that makes sounds like a Geiger counter on one hand and a digital camera in the other. Now imagine that he is obsessively measuring the average height of steps as people walk on them, calling out things like “15.5cm, no wait, make that 15, no, hang on.. better make that 15.5 again, sorry.”
That’s what I looked like and I confess: I loved it. I have always been comfortably eccentric. Suffice to say, most students gave me a wide berth as I excitedly called out the average depth of each step.
Picture also a very short Indian girl with a notebook, a pen and a map (with arcane lines drawn on it) muttering under her breath about how she was going to have to model the underpass as five different cells. They steered clear of her too.
Did you know that most of the University’s steps are about 15.5cm high and 28cm long? Well, you do now.
Anyway, it took longer than I expected and when I got back to work I started feeling a little guilty, so I worked a little later than usual and found it difficult to stop (as usual). Workaholism is such an easy thing to lapse back into.
I made it to the last train home with plenty time to spare only to find that the train would be 20 minutes late again. Again? You see, my train this morning had been 20 minutes late. This was because the train before it has broken down.
Ok, fine, but that was then and this is now. Why was my train home late? Why did I spend 20 minutes reading about Information Architecture?
There was a car stuck on the tracks. 🙂