Category: Humor

If you are a creature known to browse the internet in your spare time, identifying (web)surfing as a hobby, there is a good chance that you have come across this picture- ”Lunch atop a skyscraper.” 

For those who haven’t, fret not; I used to be the same as you until a year ago. Why that does/doesn’t matter will soon be revealed.

Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. What they don’t say is how fast it does that. 

Unfortunately for me, this has meant moving from one apartment to another n times in as many years – approximately for six months every year, you will find me looking for apartments. I try to limit this exploration to a 6-block radius of my current dwelling. 

During one such apartment viewing, I saw the picture for the first time. Fortunately for me, the landlord and his tenants were very kind and patient. They showed me around the apartment. The tour was pretty uneventful (which is precisely how you want an apartment viewing to go) until I saw the painting in the bedroom.

The picture is unforgettable- and for the calmer, mellow ones out there – a head-turner. 

There is something dangerously exciting about it. It makes me dizzy just to look at it, and I am not even acrophobic. A bunch of guys having lunch legs dangling – only on a beam 260 meters above the ground. 

All of them seem pretty chill, some even laughing and smoking- seemingly with no awareness of the risk they are taking. It won’t come as a surprise then that Time magazine featured this image as  one of the top 100 most influential pictures of all time.

All of them seem pretty chill, some even laughing and smoking- seemingly unaware of their risk. It won’t come as a surprise then that Time magazine featured this image as one of the top 100 most influential pictures of all time.

I must have started at the picture of what feels like an eternity in hindsight until the muffled conversations of my imagination turned out to be my host saying – “…this concludes the tour. Do you have any questions?” 

I had many- but none of them related to the apartment, so I reined in my ego and superego, avoided any foot-in-mouth conversations, and politely took my leave.

The painting consumed me, but more so the location of it. For the ten minutes, it took me to walk back to my apartment, I was wondering where I would put this picture in my apartment.

Kitchen? 

That would kinda mean I celebrate risk-taking when it comes to food. But that would be a lie. I like my staples and don’t meddle with them much. I certainly don’t want to give anybody the impression that I know what I do in the kitchen- which usually means burning something or the other.

Living room? 

Maybe, if one day I can make space for it there OR have the courage to throw away one of the 200 to-do calendars I like to hang on the walls. And a big blank white chart with all the Netflix recommendations from friends, family, or anyone really that cared to share, lest I run out of shows to watch.

So I find the only available space in my tiny apartment – the screensaver on my work laptop. 

It seems like the perfect spot, doesn’t it? Hidden from the world, yet in plain sight. I feel proud that I have found the ideal solution for my world

• Prompting myself to take more risks at work, to keep turning into a zombie on remote
• Avoiding having to explain to a lunatic/dazed future tenant gawping at the picture hanging on my bedroom wall

Adrenaline or not, this picture saves lives.

Friday is the second-best day of the week. The feeling as the day comes to a close is a euphoric boost that I think I live for. Not to say that I don’t like what I do on weekdays; I very much do, but not as much as I love the weekends.

And I pride on not being alone in this preference. I have a long list of peers that report the same sentiment, and not all of them are as dull-witted as I am.

The funny thing, however, is not that I do something very interesting with my life on weekends either, other than sleeping in for at least 12 hours per day, and the other twelve hours mostly on cooking, eating, transforming my flat from a pig sty to a human habitat, random reading and/or binging on movies or TV series.

Pretty mundane.

Or so I used to think.

Until one fine day, I learned that I might be fit to enter the Guinness book of world records- at least based on the reaction I was getting from my similar peers.

Unoriginally, let’s call them A, B, and C.

A: How was your weekend?
B: Not so bad; I Went hiking with my boyfriend. How about yours?
A: Drove to the animal park with the family, spent the whole day there, Lots of fun!
C (looking for a chance to jump in): Oh yeah? That’s so cool! I went shopping with girlfriends in the morning and spent the day at the mall; it was so much fun, but God, am I so broke now!
A: How about you?
Me (oh my God! What am I going to say, what am I going to say): Nothing much actually; I stayed in, slept 12 hours though!
A, B, C (in unison): 12 hours in a day, wow, so lucky! We haven’t had that much sleep in a day for decades; this must be a world record or something!

So, as euphoric as I feel as the workday comes to a close, on Fridays, I feel the exact opposite on Sunday afternoons.

The weekend flew extra fast, being one reason and the impending work week grind, another.

But that isn’t all.

It’s also about my summary of what I did and didn’t do over the weekend compared to the high-performing weekend-ers that I am pitted against. I tried those weekend outings, but they made my weekend circadian rhythms out of whack. So much to process coming straight out of the weekend!

Talk about Monday blues!

There is a look about tourists, is there not? There is something in their manner that gives them away.

It also helps that they are usually found in ‘the spots’ of the city; which makes the art of spotting them seem effortless.

All that to say, I got a good taste of being spotted as a tourist multiple times during my three-day stay in a different city. I wondered what would have given me away.

I wasn’t carrying a map or constantly looking at my phone for directions. I spoke their language, so I assumed that language couldn’t have given me away, especially with my concerted efforts to keep my sentences short.

Here I am, casually strolling through the city, and a very well-meaning elderly lady walks up to me and goes, “ Hello there, Are you lost? I am happy to help you!”

After the euphoria of being treated so nicely settled down, I politely thanked her for the offer, said I wasn’t lost, and moved on.

I won’t be honest if I say I didn’t doubt her for a second because I did. For a split second, I was convinced she would spike me coffee at the nearby cafe and rob me or something – a result of watching too much crime drama.

I thought this incident to be a one-off and moved on, but not long after, the same day, I had another gentle reminder.

I was at the bus stop. The bus was a few minutes late, which gave me some serious time to doubt my navigation skills and my memory again. The bus arrived, and when I entered through the front door, the polite driver lady said,”‘I know where you are going dear, five bucks please.’

I must admit her politeness disarmed me. But that was not all. It’s not every day that I meet a mind-reading bus driver. I was so convinced she knew where I was going that I didn’t even mind confirming with her. She knew what she was doing.

I sat down and quickly googled to confirm that the bus stop was not an express bus. It had many stops en route. She definitely took me as a tourist, didn’t she?

On the one hand, I was highly impressed by a trip made so easy for me, but on the other, I was not super happy about exposing my ‘tourist’ identity. I had failed my one fun assignment for the day: to fake being a local, faking till I made it.

But I got ‘made’.

That superficial sulking didn’t last long. There are advantages to forgetting quickly.

I’d rather have a mind-reading bus driver every single day. If that comes at the cost of being the ‘eternal tourist,’ so be it.

For some reason, someone decided that the best way for a person to perfect English pronunciation was to hone their skill in tongue twisters. 

After all, what other way to royally mark your rite of passage to the world of fluent native speakers than:

1. Being able to give a perfect account of a lady selling seashells on the seashore.
2. Being scared of the neighborhood Betty, who loves to buy better butter.

Seashell lady and I haven’t had much trouble. She has always been very kind to my tongue and tiny brain. She is also not intimidating. She is some mysterious creature somewhere, and I have very high hopes, if not absolute certainty, of never running into her.

Betty isn’t the same, though. There is something supremely familiar about her personality. She means business. She is here to solve problems. She is also there to haunt your second language lessons for all eternity i.e., if you let her.

Don’t know Betty? Oh how I envy you! Once the dust settles, Let me explain. With a convenient rhyme, hoping you have come across at least some version of it.

Betty bought a bit of butter
But she found the butter bitter
So she bought some better butter
To make the bitter butter better.

Betty is the epitome of creativity, an innate problem solver. 

As you can see, Betty accidentally bought bitter butter. She could have stopped right there. But she is a curious soul, a butter connoisseur, so naturally, she tastes it.

She finds it bitter. 

She does have the option to discard it, But where’s the fun in that? She devises a very well-thought-out plan to solve the problem- throw good butter after bad – to make the bad mildly better than bitter. 

You can see that she is human because she gives in to the same fallacy as the rest of rational humans. She surely doesn’t abide by the golden rules of gambling – never throw good money after bad. Or maybe the rules of money don’t apply to butter.

Betty and butter get along very well.

Butter and I get along very well.

So per syllogism, do Betty and I get along well?

You know the answer.