when an anti-establishment hippie is established...

YES, the oldy moldy headset I unfurled from the spaghetti of wires at home works—instantly transforming this bleak, yellow grayish morning into a glorious, grandspankin’ one.

I’ve been struggling for 5 months with earphones that was busted on one end, forcing me to play music at top volume to compensate.  This arrangement worked best on days I had to be particularly functional e.g. had to hear what my colleagues were saying in order to respond appropriately.

 

Colleague: hey, we’re having a company lunch on Monday.

Me (suddenly aware of colleague hovering nearby): oh?

 

My right ear took care of such business-like activities, leaving the left free to dabble howsoever in waves of timpanic bliss.

 Not bad in general theory and application, but not good on days I wanted to cocoon in absolute musical seclusion— which was of course more than the days that I did not.

And sadly, having just one ear muffed with music doesn’t cut it.

With this dusty, lint-covered headset in my hands I can now bid adieu to that sorry existence. I’ve got two operating foam phones now. And I can shut out everyone starting NOW.

 

* * *

Our new office has a view. One whole wall is a window, granting us honorary god-like statuses. Our little team now spends many fruitful hours gazing upon the mortal world, pointing and trying to make out which structure was which, amidst noises of general wonder masked as nonchalance.

18 floors up I could see ants wearing jeans and walking on their hind legs, giant cigarette burn stains, massive yellow gray sky, shrubs of green, a horse race track with no horses (with no names?) , a cemetery, little toy houses, little tin cars, rusty warehouses, a flapping Filipino flag, a bluish gray horizon.

 We left our old building just as the ratio of people to elevator was nearing a hundred to one. We literally had to mold ourselves into the form of available space every time we squeezed inside. It did not help that 50% of the employees deemed themselves the ultimate answer to rocker ‘I am king of cool’ hip and were compelled to embody it. So we step into elevators profuse with stringy slash dreadlocked hair and weave in and out of tight, band name shirts and bored slash pained artist countenances that grunt in reply to requests for space. Thinking about that now makes me actually miss this sweaty sardine boxing-out spectacle that unfolds every time an elevator makes it wheezing to the ground floor. Here I am lucky if I get a bug to climb in with me. It’s a lonely, weird-smelling ascent to the 18^th floor.

 And around me now the men are tinkering with a giant television. The blinds have been drawn and the lights are off. The new office hasn’t an internet connection yet and to counter the rising schizophrenia the boss has decided to transform the room into a mini-theater.

 So we’re gonna be productive and watch The Ring. Then after maybe we’ll stand around and formulate kingly comments about our little kingdom below.

Posted by: Hoon at 02:11 | link | comments (2)