Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Coffee Pots and Bus Bullies

Things have been ticking along nicely of late. I continue to settle into my new office. My desk is nice if a little(!) hot when the sun goes by and super heats the windows by my side. And by windows I mean walls as the walls are glass. It's a lovely toasty 27 degrees and we're not even in Summer yet.

The powers that be have even put a spanking new coffee machine in the break out area near where I sit. It's less of a fire hazard than the last one from which the smell of burning coffee would waft when someone left the pot on with nothing in it. I'm not sure where the nearest fire extinguisher is at the moment, so secretly breathed a sigh of relief when they replaced old sparky.

Unfortunately the new machine's plumbing has a bit more to be desired as it's not connected up to the main water supply and relies on a bucket of water placed underneath the work surface to operate. And I have seen what that bucket looks like at the end of a day and its not pleasant!

Also, when the milk runs low in the machine it heats up to around about fourteen degrees, so probably goes off quite quickly!

The good thing about all this is....I don't drink coffee. *phew*

Lately it's all lemon and ginger tea in the morning and peppermint tea during the day for me at the moment. I know it all sounds a bit poncey but avoiding tea and coffee's caffeine highs and inevitable lows makes me feel less tired through the day, though it could all just be psychological.

My journey in though isn't as quick as it has been over the past two weeks. The express bus that I used to take doesn't seem to turn up on time anymore and I have to rely on squeezing myself sardine-like into one of the slower buses that stop what feels like every few yards.

And today the bus had tickets inspectors on. A particularly large, Canadian sounding woman got on the bus and proceeded to fine an old Somalian woman for taking the bus 15 minutes before her pass was valid. So in front of everyone else, she got her name, address and then starting asking her for twenty pounds. The poor woman had to get someone else to translate too.

The ironic thing is that I get on that bus so many times and see people not paying only for there never to be inspectors. This time this old woman was the only person they found without a valid ticket. *sigh*

Oh well, I know that she was in the wrong and I guess she won't do it again but it definitely wasn't right to pick on her in the way that she did. I really wanted to say something but was squashed in place on the other end of the bus. Nobody else did a thing.

No comments: