Mad Dogs and Englishmen....

"Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun". Especially if they have to get their new car parking stickers.

Purchasing these vital pieces of coloured cellophane is an annual ritual at my place of work, and can involve a considerable amount of patience as well as sweat.

Unless you come to work via teleporter, you cannot get into our campus without displaying your parking sticker on your windscreen. It's the equivalent of trying to get into the Pentagon without a security pass. It just isn't possible.

I need to purchase two of these valuable stickers, one for each car. Normally, it's a simple procedure - you go to the security office, give them your car details and some money, and they present you with spanking new, shiny coloured parking stickers. You simply peel 'em, stick 'em on your windscreen, and you're legal.

But today, it didn't work out quite as planned. After receiving a notice from the security staff to renew our stickers, I thought I would simply breeze over and get my stickers, surely a five-minute job at most. But then I forgot Parkinson's divine law, which states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

So, my five minute sojourn turned into a half-hour sweatfest under the merciless mid-day Sarawak sun!

It all started to go pear-shaped when I went down to the security office where I was informed that the office no longer sells the stickers! I have to go over to the campus traffic police post, situated at the other end of the front car park. This was completely new to me of course, but there you are...

Now I don't know about you, but I'm a bit wary of people in uniform, especially traffic cops. I always think they are going to give me a ticket or clamp my car, just for the hell of it. I'm also a bit reluctant to carry my considerable bulk across a car park in the blistering sun, unless it's absolutely necessary.

So, by the time I arrived at the tiny traffic police post, I was huffing and sweating like a knackered horse, wondering if the policeman was going to come out towards me with a big stick in one hand, and a long list of traffic summonses in the other!

But I wasn't to worry, because he was right behind me, carrying his lunch in a plastic bag and muttering and complaining in Sarawak Malay to one of my colleagues who had got there before me. So I had disturbed the officer's lunchtime as well. This wasn't looking good....

To make things worse, not only had I stopped the traffic policeman from eating his lunch, I had apparently neglected to bring the right piece of paper with me. And I'm not talking about money paper. Apparently, under the heroic new system, I was supposed to go to the finance office (situated on the other side of the planet), buy my stickers there, then present the receipt to the traffic officer, who would then grant me my prizes. But this was easier said than done...

So, steeling myself, back I went, huffing and puffing and leaking and silently cursing everyone and everything to damnation, across the blistering car park, up two flights of stairs to the finance office, where I paid for the stickers, got my lovely little purple receipt, then trudged down the stairs again, out into Hell's Car Park, and across to the policeman's little office once again.

Luckily for me, the policeman had eaten his lunch in the time I had been away, and after some minor linguistic fumblings (another future post topic), I finally got my stickers (they are red this year)! Thank you Mr. Policeman Sir!!

I felt that all this tropical adventure deserved an ice-cream, which I duly purchased, before returning to the sweet, sweet sublimeness of my air-conditioned room.

God, I need to lose weight.......