Friday, March 09, 2007

New heights!

I guess by now most of us have heard about the "Heights". I saw a couple of incidents that made me realise that there is lots of scope for expanding the ‘Heights’ series. Given below are my four contributions. If you have any to share and expand this series feel free to use the comments section.

Height of cleanliness

I am working late. The housekeeping staffs as usual come in a 6 pm sharp and start their cleaning routine. A dashing young housekeeping guy comes and starts cleaning my rather longish table, stopping now and then to inspect his work critically. He is obviously a perfectionist. He then removes the orange skin on my table and cleans the area thoroughly and then...puts the skins right back where he found them ( I swear in the exact same angle)and walks away with the flourish of a magician leaving the stage after a successful performance.

Height of Annoyance

Vehicles are stopped at a traffic signal. Most drivers are honking the horn impatiently as the cop is giving the oncoming traffic too much time. Amidst the din I see another driver....an old man. The old man is also honking his vehicle horn in annoyance. The only difference between him and the other drivers was that his vehicle was a bicycle and the noise he was making was with the bicycle bell.

(The cycle bell couldn't be heard even if you were standing next to him but he showed that he was just as annoyed as the next driver. Hats off grandpa!! You have a fan in me. )

Height of obeying traffic rules

An (obviously) new driver on a brand new scooter is slowing to a stop near a traffic signal. He puts up his arm to indicate that he is stopping, 'License Test Style'. (arm bend from the elbow and held parallel to the shoulder with palms facing front) He loses control of the bike several times due to this manoeuvre and nearly falls down. But he persists and stops his bike after several attempt and looks quite proud of following traffic rules. The traffic cop in the meantime was highly impressed and was seen rolling on the road laughing. So was I.

Height of absentmindedness

Silverine gives print command for several files she is printing and realises that the printer for some reason has not printed the same. (Perhaps it has spied, through its printer eye the several times she stuck her tongue out at him).She cancels the print job and gives a fresh print command. Finally after five tries she gives up because she had other work to do. In the evening there is a mail from the Facilities Desk enquiring the name and where abouts of a certain employee who has printed 200 A 4 size sheet of papers in the 2nd floor. Silverine sits on the first floor. No one had a clue. The mystery endures to this day.

24 comments:

Praveen said...

I cant stop laughing picturing the scene of the scooter guy at the traffic signal :)

Asterix said...

Height of stupidity: Me watching a movie on a computer inspite of a tight deadline.

Even bigger height of stupidity: People casually ambling into my room, looking at the monitor, and asking --- "You watching a movie kya?"

ToOothlEss WOndeR! said...

i have one i have one - listen to this..
Heights of despair:
This is sometime way back in the college days. The girls' hostel was off campus and in the direction of our humble bachelor abode.
and hence in the walks back home from college, we would be clearly outnumbered by the female population.
Now attention can do strange things to people, and to this friend of mine, it was the ghost of Elvis presley.
No. seriously - you should see him walk!

Alright - so this guy's walking his walk, and is all happy and is talking and all, and then suddenly he has this weird look on his face, and starts to hop.
Now i get right behind him and ask him why - and the dude goes -
"Aliya, I thought that was a fart. But it was not!

Anonymous said...

Heh heh good stuff! The funny things I see go onto RigSaw :P

Jiby said...

Height of Youthfulness: Mohanlal and Mammootty in their recent and all future commercial malayalam movies!!

mathew said...

Height of laziness

While staying in mysore my roomie called me in my mobile asking me to bring a cup of water from the kitchen..He was reading a book in his room, while I was watching a movie...

The kitchen is 5 steps away from both our rooms..

silverine said...

Praveen: It was so hilarious to see that guy :p

Asterix: LOL!!!
That was indeed the height of stupidity!

toothless wonder: =)) No comments!!!

G: And they are hilarious!!!

Jiby: rofl good one!!!

mathew: :)) Man I so believe you, in fact I can write a book on the heights of laziness based on my bro alone! :p

Amey said...

A public confession about "The Mystery of Invisible Printer" (and I mean the one who prints, not the thing which prints)? Hmm...

BTW, the cleaner guy must have been told to keep all the things on the desks as he finds them. And have you thought of the point that he might have wanted to impress you with his skill?

Alexis said...

Nice list of heights. The last one was really hilarious.

Dhanush | ധനുഷ് said...

That Grandpa honking (ringing) the bell was nice. Made me feel think that how ever small the vehicle is, he wanted his presence to be felt. Was the junction, Silk Board ;)

Your company too have that printer tracking system?? My previous comp had.


#Jiby - That one was apt. May be we should have added Height of Youthful Romance, Mammooty behind Gopika ;)

b v n said...

At the fag end of our days in Bangalore, my roomie said in his unique trichur style,
"athe ishta, ee bangalore kannadathinte capital aanalle?"
the rest of us stared at him for a minute.
"athe actually njan athine kurichu innaleya chindiche"

Jive Talker said...

Something similar happened to me. Some geek from tech had changed my default printer sttings. I printed an entire performance dashboard in color on HP color laserjet. The printer is on my Boss's desk. Ouch!!

dharmabum said...

mebbe the housekeeping guy thought u might need the pels to make some marmalade? ;0) one a more serious note, i think it ought to be something to sympathise with - there are scores of such people, not just people from housekeeping, but from every walk of life - who lack the most basic common sense. i think it doesn't talk very highly of our educational system that insists on maths an physics and what not, but fails to empower our people, at whatever level.


back home, i think u'l have to revamp the heights of absent mindedness - i once took my bicycle to the 'town'. for some reason, i chose to walk back (a long walk of around 5 km) and even forgot about it all, until the next fay when mom noticed the bicycle missing. even then, i didn't realise, toying for a long time with the idea that it might have been stolen.

Neihal said...

hahahahaha
even the comments section all creative today :D

silverine said...

fleiger: hmmm or maybe he was trying to show off in front of his supervisor who was hovering closeby ;)

Alexis: I think they may start print tracking soon :p

dhanush: Very true...that was his way of showing that even on a bicycle he "mattered"!! I was impressed :) And I think my co might start print tracking soon what with me around :p

bvn: LOL!!

jive talker: That must have been a near-death experience!!! :))

dharmabum: Gosh I have done it too :p One colleague of mine was about to lodge a complaint to the police about his stolen car, then realised he had given it for servicing!!

neihal: Yes!!! And I am hoping there will be more :)

mathew said...

You cant blame ur bros all the time..I understand how hard working they are..so much that they dont have even time to blog!! ;-P

Amey said...

Have you noticed something? To wit: how many guys hover around your desk? The IT support guy, the housekeeping guy, his superviser... the list goes on ;)

Jeseem said...

height of sleepliness, reading silverline's post halfway and Zzzz...

cool post as always, or should i say height of blogposting

Anand K said...

[b]The Dizzying Heights of Indian Scientific Achievement...[/b]
Rated: SSG 21
(Sushma Swaraj Guided AND over age 21)

[i]PS: Before Silverine gets me hanged, drawn and quartered for pasting this quite ribald joke in her page, lemme just say this one was made by a well known scientist of DRDO ( got it from Raj Chengappa's "Weapons of Peace").
Reproduced in my own ishtyle, yenjoyyyyyyy....[/i]

This newlywed couple goes to Pokhran Atomic Test Site for their honeymoon. It is now midnight, pitch darkness....

Husband: Yesss, yessss babyyy...
Wife: Oye dummy, it ain't IN yet!!
Husband:[i]{Notices the error}[/i] Oops! Just a sec....[i]{repositions himself}[/i]
Wife: OOOHH YESSSSSSSSS!
Husband: [i]{Swears}[/i] Damn.... the sand felt better.

Sujit said...

Height of forgetfulness: Was reading and suddenly felt hungry, went to kitchen in thinking mode and forgot why i came to kitchen. Then came back to work.. and again feeling hungry.. was surprised why am I hungry.. i did go to kitchen.. but did not eat :(

Sachin R K said...

Loved the height of absentmindedness :)))

Ashwin Raju said...

I just happened to make a post on a height observation of my own..

Height of globalisation
-----------------------

Recently a very pretty friend of mine, who was just back from a spin around the world, got me absolutely astounded by the ease with which she used three languages in such a small line -"Tumhara Kanaku is Different".

Takes the meaning of hinglish and manglish to the next level, don't you think ?

Ajith Prasad Balakrishnan said...

I'll giv u an example of even higher level of annoyance.. A support guy from US calls me at 1.30 AM for an issue..And the first Q he asks is -- "Were u sleeping?" -- :( :( :( .

About this printing stuff, thankfully oracle is lenient on that front..There are people who renamed DaVinci code Pdf file as 'Oracle-performace-tuning.pdf' and printed it.. ( They keep track of only filenames :D ) ..

And,on a different note..Please check the latest post in my blog..

Ajith

Anonymous said...

i hope the traffic signal was red at the time. since both of u were ROTFL, as i nearly am.
and welll, lets kep the mystery of the printed sheets uintact.