The office lights shut off automatically. Eight o'clock. I knew the time because the lights out were consistent, a sort of impossibility that happened only because it didn't rely on human intervention to get working. I sighed. Yet another day had passed, and I was still no where near finishing the work that I had started in the morning.
Thankfully the mains did not shut down on their own as well. That would have been traumatic, considering that many of my colleagues were working late as well. Computers, we didn't really like them, but we couldn't really work without them. Too many things that required digital intervention. Spreadsheets, presentations, databases, reports---all of them had to be done via the computer. Except, I didn't really believe that all of them truly needed to be done with the computer. Digital age, they said, paperless workplace they said. I was there when the ``digital revolution'' happened. Frankly, I think we got even more paper now, since redrafting a report was as easy as making a few small changes and then running the entire document through the printer. Managers loved reading hard copies of everything, for some stupid reason. Totally in contradiction to the whole premise behind shifting everything to computers.
The soft ringing of my phone snapped me out of my internal monologue. I glanced at the caller ID---it was Jane. I picked up the phone.
``Hi hon,'' I said, keeping the phone between my left shoulder and ear as I packed my briefcase with the files that I needed to analyse.
``Hi sweetie, coming back yet?'' Jane replied from the other end of the line. I love Jane. She has this hard yet sultry voice, difficult to explain but very sensual to take in. She makes my day better, no matter how bad it was. And on a decent day like today, she makes it awesome.
``Yep, just packing up. I think I'll take the cab back; it's a little too late for my comfort.'' I finished loading up my briefcase and put the clasp back on, switching the handset back to my hand.
``Okay love. Dinner's ready and I'm waiting for you. I love you!''
``I love you too, Jane. See you in a bit.'' I said, giving her a soft kiss over the phone. The line clicked dead and I put the handset back on the phone cradle. I switched off my desk lamp and stepped out of my cubicle. All about me I could see random reflections of desk lamps on the darkened ceiling, a testament to its owner still being present in the cubicle and still working on something, either a report or some kind of presentation. No one ever does their analysis at night---I know because I was one of them. I sighed softly to myself and walked off towards the elevator lobby outside of the glass doors.
It was quiet. The lights in the lobby were much dimmed compared to their day-time intensity, but it was more of a soft dimming than a creepy dimming. I was alone in the lobby. I pressed the down button on the panel and waited, scouting the three elevators to see which one was coming to my floor. For tonight, it was the centre one, and this time, it didn't do something silly like skipping past my floor before coming back up again. I waited impatiently for it to stop completely and open its welcoming doors. The fluorescent lights in the elevator were startling compared to lobby. For one, they were harsher; instead of the soft yellowy orange light of the lobby, there was that uncomfortably white light glaring down. For two, the elevator itself was mirrored, which meant that the light was reflected all over, which actually made it worse.
I pushed the button to the ground floor, ignoring the light as best as I can. Glancing up from the control panel, I paused to look at the advertisement that was playing in the display panel above it. That display panel always made me feel uncomfortable. There had been many times where I had seen an operating system crash image on the display, something that I wasn't expecting to see on an elevator. I am glad though that the display was independent of the control system for the elevator---I had shuddered to think of the consequences if that were false.
The gentle acceleration was met with a quiet cruising moment before decelerating. With a soft `ding', the doors open and I found myself on the ground floor lobby. Gathering my thoughts back to the present, I boldly stepped out of the elevator and through the lobby, nodding at the graveyard shift security officers who had already taken up their post. I knew most of them by name, having come early to the office often enough that I could still see the graveyard shift. I do not envy their job. While it seemed like they did little being lobby guards of the main office tower, I had come to learn from them the need for patrolling each floor ever so often, sometimes even having to take the stairs just to check for potential loiterers and other people who have somehow managed to sneak through the security net. They weren't armed and weren't full police officers, and that made their job doubly hard because their options in dealing with an interloper were significantly limited. It didn't help also that most of those who did the graveyard shift were in their fifties or early sixties; none of those who were younger wanted to take up the graveyard shift due to family commitments or the existence of what we would commonly call as ``having a life''. There was nothing I could do, really, since the security officers were fielded by the building owner, which was not my employer, funny enough.
I walked out of the lobby and into the atrium and out of the building. The stale warm air beat against me as I stepped out of the air curtain separating the interior from the exterior. Such was the weather that was present. I had been living here for nearly a decade, and I am still disagreeable with the weather. I made my way hastily towards the cab stand where there was a short line there already waiting for the cabs to turn up. Cabs had a strange modus operandi---they were never around the fifteen minutes before the surcharge period, and when the surcharge period came along, they would suddenly appear in large numbers, as though bees in a hive. It was a strangely inefficient system but one that almost every cab driver played because it did maximise their takings for the night.
I counted the number of people before me; five. I could probably be on a cab within twenty minutes, still faster than attempting to take the rapid transit home. I stood quietly in line and looked across the street. There used to be a few factory blocks where an empty car park now stood. The factories there were mostly in the light manufacturing industry and was a pretty popular place to set up small scale manufacturing companies. But roughly three years ago, there was a government re-gazetting programme that basically re-assigned that plot of land as being for ``high-tech enterprises'', something that the light manufacturing companies failed to be categorised as and with that, the factories were demolished and the ground paved over to be used as a temporary parking area. But as I said, it had been three years. The plot of land looked as forlorn as the concrete that was slopped on it, and the entire block lost a lot of the vibrancy that it once had, where workers of the factories would come out and chat happily, grabbing their mid-day meal from the hawker centre nearby, or seek some refuge from the heat by coming to the food court in the basement of my office building.
But those days were past, like many things.
A small toot of the horn brought me back to the present once more. I was at the head of the queue, and a cab was already there, waiting for me to board it. I nodded at the driver sheepishly and opened up the rear passenger door and tossed my briefcase in before following in myself. Thus seated, I closed the door and the driver asked me where I wanted to go.
``Serangoon please, and go by AYE.''
``Okay Boss.'' The driver nodded and guided his cab out of the cab stand and on to the main road. Before long, I found myself along the Ayer-Rajah Expressway. As I looked out of the window, I saw rows upon rows of street lamps pass on by.
No comments:
Post a Comment