Part 8: Rock bottom

Monday June 11th, 2007.

Same old, same old. So I did nothing. Really, nothing. I can’t compile. I haven’t got my computer back from the IT department. Dr. Ananth has emailed me saying that he might not come today to the office, and seriously, that’s fine with me.

Dr. Ananth is here. Crap! Now I have to do something. I went to the IT department to check how the computer was doing.

The I.T. department is this room in the 6^th floor (2 floors below me), and it’s run by David Ha, a middle-aged, nice guy from Saigon, Viet Nam; unfortunately, being a nice guy doesn’t mean that I find him useful. I can’t understand a single word he says. I think it’s English what he’s speaking but can’t be sure. For all I know he could be cursing and yelling me to go away. Still, I made an effort and had him explain to me how to log in to the node-cluster-super-computer-mombo-jombo. It was probably not all that hard, if only I had understood a word he said.

At lunch time I had one of those depressing moments of your life, where you know you just hit rock bottom (oh how I miss those in Ft. Collins). I took the chicken I had brought, from the fridge. Dr. Adol told me the first day that there’s a microwave oven over at the other side of the corridor, inside an office. So I went there, at around 2:30. Obviously by that time everyone else had already returned from lunch and was working. So I timidly went inside the office, passed a couple of cubicles with people in them, and reached this ancient-1950’s-looking microwave oven. I assumed it was a microwave oven because there was a coffee maker there too. I opened the door, and to my surprise it opened from top-down. I mean, when have you ever seen a microwave oven’s door that didn’t open from the side? So I put my chicken in there, and closed it. Next would be to decipher how it works. I just pushed 1,0,0 and then the huge, 1950-jukebox-style button that said “start”. To my surprise, instead of the normal “Ññññññññ” sound, came out something like a “pffffffff”. For a moment there I thought it was some sort of oven for the lab’s samples (Not sure it isn’t). So after the minute was over I took my chicken with me and ran to my office. I didn’t have a fork, napkin or anything, and the chicken was half cold. So there I was, eating cold chicken with my hands, by myself.