I had to spend some time in the Proctor’s waiting room this week, in the company of a trio of young gentlemen who were being hauled in for a discussion about something or other (large-scale white-collar insider trading fraud, by the looks of them).
As we whiled away the minutes, one of these guys turned to his mates and asked the great existential question that occupies most students at Otago:
“How do you spell alcohol?”
“A-L-C-O-H-O-L.”
“Oh, right. I’d have put another ‘a’ in there somewhere.”
About then the Proctor called me into his office and started the interview.
• The first proper rainy weekend of the year got the Proctor thinking about the high water on the Leith. This happens every year, and most years some twerp tries to navigate the length of campus on a boogie board or something. This never works, mostly because there’s a thumping great weir right in front of the clocktower that will – will – capsize you and put you in a washing-machine spin that you probably won’t be able to get out of, with or without help. “So far nobody’s drowned,” the Proctor notes, although he had to wonder about the young dipstick who was floating towards the weir in an inflatable wendy house a couple of weeks ago.
• A couple of people have noticed odd sorts hanging about their letterboxes lately, and a couple of others have had valuable parcels not turn up. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out what’s going on, but rather than call the Police or make a scene, the Proctor suggests anyone in a similar situation should call the campus security office on 477 5000; Campus Watch will arrive in good time and ask the questions. That number also works for other goings-on, incidentally.
Dumb idea of the week
Setting fire to a chair on a wooden veranda at the front of a wooden villa in a neighbourhood full of closely-packed wooden houses that might or might not have batteries in the smoke alarms. “Someone’s gonna die,” says the Proctor.
Proctology - 09
