Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Okay, let’s get back up to speed then. First, an hilarious anecdote, to lighten the mood.

Something I had intended to mention about Wednesday, but obviously didn’t have the chance to, was that in our…e-business… lecture, I learnt how incredibly stupid people can be. The lecturer, a genuine Dot Com failure, was telling us about purchasing law and errors of pricing. He mentioned about some guy seeing TVs were being sold for £2.99 at Argos.com, and immediately bought 1700. In fact, he put up a slide for this, showing the fact, before he talked about it. When he finally came to reading it out, everyone laughed dutifully. I can’t decide whether this makes people incredibly stupid, or patronising. I mean, we already knew what was coming, we had just read it ourselves, and yet the erupting laughter filled the room. I just kind of sat there astonished at what idiots business students truly are. The crossover business modules I’m doing are just, filled with completely manufactured knowledge. Terms like “Reach” and “Richness” which are chosen to attempt to obscure the true conceptual underneath, and so forth. I have no respect for people studying business, and I imagine I’ll elaborate on that at some point or another.

Of course, later that day, I was just sitting down to watch a Samurai Jack and Gargoyles episode with Ian, when Nikki came and got me and pretty much explained what had happenned, and asked if I’d take her back, which was clearly not a problem. We threw together some impromptu packing and I hammered it down the M40, completely needlesly because I got stuck for an hour and a half trying to go over the longbridge roundabout. Gah. It would’ve been quicker to drive up to the next exit, nearer birmingham, and turn around. The most annoying thing is that I *almost* turned off at the A452, knowing there were roadworks at longbridge, but I could see no queue and I honestly didn’t think they’d be so bad. Next time, I’m staying the fuck away from it.

So, on to the somewhat less upbeat yesterday. We spent most of it sitting in a hospital waiting room, attempting to get some progress updates from the mostly absent staff. I took Nikki and Jo there in the morning so we could get information from the “incredibly punctual” Doctor (as described by nurses the previous day) a mere 40 minutes late. He was pretty blunt with the chances and facts, but that’s better than some kind of magical fairy sugar coated version, and after that they got to work, with scans, an operation, and post-op that lasted most of the next 11 hours. The doctor left us at about 11am, and they were allowed to see her again just after 10pm. After the operation, we got to talk to an incredibly slow-speaking doctor who described the operation and various other factors, though for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, a couple of nurses were kind of hanging around then too.

To stave off boredom, we did crosswords, I proved to Nikki that skeleton crosswords weren’t imposible, and we figured out that yes, logic puzzles are a mere exercise in futility. Nikki’s mum’s operation went well, so let’s hope things continue that way. The room we were in was shared with a couple of other families, including a group of people who were in a terrible situation. Their elderly family member had come into hospital with problems urinating, and mild kidney pain. The doctors did an internal examination with a keyhole camera, but accidently punctured his bowels, which is bad enough, but that in turn caused his kidneys to fail, effectively killing him. He was being kept on life support so that his family members could see him before they switched it off and allowed him to expire. They literally flew people in from Scotland to see him off. There was also a young child in the room who was holding out a packet of crisps to people, and then yanking them back when anyone tried to take them. I was reminded of a creature from black and white, who will occasionally repeat the same trick over and over in some kind of loop. I assume the child’s neural net needed more training.

Hospital waiting rooms aren’t really great places to stay for long periods of time. There’s nothing to do, really. We read the paper, we bought FHM, did puzzles, sat, stared, the whole range of activites, and we occasionally walked around the hospital trying to figure out which lift would take us where. I spent a lot of the day looking for the opportunity to lighten the mood with the rarely-relevant simpsons quotation “It’s not rocket science, it’s brain surgery!” Proof, if any was needed, that there’s a simpsons quote for every situation. I kind of realised that one of the reasons I find hospitals so uncomfortable (besides the stench of death) is that they’re seemingly kept at a temperature that’s just slightly too warm for me. It constantly feels incredibly tepid. This particular hospital was also filled with Coventry scavs, which isn’t especially compassionate, but by god, they’re scavs even if they’re concerned about ill relatives.

Obviously I’ll leave out the details, save that things appear hopeful, though plenty could still go wrong. I came back to Oxford today, because I didn’t bring enough stuff back for an extended stay, and because if nothing else, Nikki needs me to collect stuff from here. This morning I took Nikki shopping and we shoved it all through a robot till, which was proudly announcing in an exceptionally high volume things like “EIGHTY-NINE, PENCE.” I also take back my claims that humans are deprecated. The till kind of shut down at one point, and the operator woman walked up to it, said “ah, it does this quite often” and then proceeded to give it a good kicking, about four times, on the side, after which it sprang into life. The checkout operator of the future will be far more violent than the checkout operator of today, it seems.

So, I mean, that’s it really. Just thought I’d get a bit down before I forget everything. Speaking of which, it’s quite likely that Nikki’s mum won’t remember any of the last few days. It’s a concept I find quite strange, because it makes me feel like I’m living in a limbo period or something. It’s probably quite disorientating to wake up and find the world has moved along without you. Quite like Tom must feel, I imagine, after his 12-hour marathon sleeps…