I got into the lift with two men from my office floor. The lift went down a level and two other men got in. Looking idly around, I noticed with a start that all four men were wearing pink shirts.
‘Gee!’ I thought. ‘This fashion for pink shirts really has become a permanent fixture.’
As the lift neared the ground floor, I was mollified when I figured out that one of the men was actually wearing a white shirt. It had only looked pink because of the pink light being reflected off our colleagues.
For about five years, I’ve had problems with my right knee. It would lock up and felt weak. The worst was when I used to teach hiphop because I had to stand on it and dance for two or three hours without a chance to sit down. I’m pretty sure the knee problems are related to my dancing.
Last year, the problem escalated. Something in the knee ‘clicked’ while I was at Sheringham. Sharp shooting pains went up my leg whenever I put weight on it. This happened for days.
And suddenly, the knee clicked again and it was back to normal.
This ‘click’ into pain, then ‘click’ back out of pain happened another two times. I eventually figured out that I could massage my knee cap (?) back into place after it shifted like this. The only thing I had to deal with, then, was a frequent grinding and clicking sensation in the knee.
Yesterday, I realised that for the past few weeks, my knee has been behaving perfectly. I think… my knee has healed due to the leg exercises I’ve been doing at the gym. Thanks to regular lunging, I now appear to have my good old knee back!
At work, my whole team has been working long hours to meet a flurry of deadlines. At the height of our stress, Anna, our team’s PA, sent this around with the message: “This is a big warning to everyone to look out for colleagues and not to work to hard!”
Celebrity sighting!
I was having lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant when I spotted Jamie Oliver crossing Goodge Street. He didn’t see me, so I’m in the lead.
They had threatened to do it for weeks. My glasses finally fell apart during a dance lesson. Thank goodness for the back-up glasses that Damjan brought from home in Australia. For two weeks, I carried my broken glasses around in my bag, looking for an opportunity to duck into an optician for help.
On Sunday, Damjan and I made it to a Vision Express store.
The lady at the counter examined my glasses, then took them to a white-coated lab technician. After less than ten minutes with a tiny screw, the lab tech handed my glasses back to the lady, who presented them to me.
‘There you go,’ she said.
‘Thank you! How much do I owe you?’
‘Nothing.’ She shook her head and smiled.
‘Thank you very much!’
As we left the store, Damjan commented, ‘It’s nice to know there are still some things for free in the world.’
Ever since playing in the Ikea ball pool as a child, I’ve had a soft spot for the Swedish furniture store. I was excited to read on the HATS project blog that the first Ikealand has opened in the UK.
The houses come pre-assembled, so the flatpacked Bo Klok houses do not come with a giant allen key. Which, in my opinion, is a shame.
P.S. Here’s an interesting article about Ikea’s origin and philosophy.
P.P.S. Hahaha… I like this paragraph from the article above.
Over noodles at Ikea’s staff restaurant, I ask one designer whether everyone at the company is really as energetic and hardworking as they seem. Isn’t anyone lazy? “Of course there are lazy people,” she says. “There are lazy people everywhere. But they’re not…” She pauses, as if seeking the correct word in English. In fact, she’s wondering whether what she is about to say will cause offence. “They’re not Swedish,” she says at last.