Planes, Trains & Automobiles

I am engaging in supreme work multi-tasking:

Headset on one ear - participating in work meeting
Earphone in the other ear - listening to "American Boy"
Google Talk - chat
Writing Document - work
Blogging - to prove the point

I digress ...

This week has been rather eventful in an "I, Robot" kind of way. Thursday morning, I'm rushing to get the car started to make an early morning meeting. My car was parked outside that morning, and to give you a sense of its surroundings:- it is parked on a strip of grass that leads directly to the neighbour's house. Immediately beside the strip of grass is concrete pavement.

Before I hop in the car, I do the right thing by starting the engine - this was the previous owner's parting advice (I think he decided to keep it simple realising that I wasn't capable of up keeping his millions of fastidious care tips). With my kaya + peanut butter sandwich in one hand, I insert the key into the ignition (toot toot! beep beep!). Next thing I know, the car bunny hops and suddenly (and I mean very suddenly) gains forward momentum, heading in the direction of my neighbour's house. At this point, I'm still not in the car, rather I am hanging on to the car door with dear life trying very desperately to get in the car. The car seemed to be speeding towards my neighbours house - I really thought it was going to smash into the house blockbuster-Hollywood (or perhaps Australia's Funniest Home Videos) style with me lying unconscious still holding on to my sandwich. It could have been a disastrous, expensive outcome. Fortunately, I managed somehow to drag myself into the car and slam on the brakes. Let me tell you, very hard to locate the brake pedals when you are about to career into a house.

I breathed a heavy sigh of nervous relief, then realised that I had burned a hole around the knee caps on my favourite work pants thanks to the concrete pavement. I had not actually noticed that I was being dragged along the pavement all that time until the sting set in.

Such an improbable set of circumstances. Leads me to believe that my car has developed a mind of its own and is attempting to get away from me (by committing suicide?) a la the movie I, Robert.

Eventful morning. Missed my meeting and now have a very puss-filled knee.

I should mention the announcement on my train ride into the city the other day (this is the "train" part of the blog - see subject header). As per usual, cityrail was experiencing delays between Central Station and Wynyard. The driver was courteous enough to inform us that there was a delay and then added "But Cityrail guarantees same day service", to which some random commuter responded "Well that's a bit rich". I tend to agree.