Creepy

Every so often, when travelling around this fair city of London, you'll happen upon something so outstandingly creepy that you think you've stumbled into some bizarre 'reality' TV thing, or that someone is playing a very elaborate practical joke on the whole world.

For example, picture a man in his 30s. He has shoulder-length, curly ginger hair, a well-groomed moustache and a sliver of a beard gracing his chin. His fashion sense hovers dangerously close to Doctor Who. He's legally blind, and carries a white stick, but seems to rarely need it ('legally blind' is far from being truly blind). He wears a monocular on a cord around his neck.

Place this man on a crowded train - standing, quite deliberately, and declining any seat offered up by other passengers - then imagine him repeatedly singing the same couple of lines and the chorus of a certain song by The Beatles ('Hey Bulldog', if you want the specifics).

Observe as, whenever a blonde appears in his field of vision, the monocular is raised to one eye, so he can check her out properly.

Really?

Did I really see that today?

I'm sorry, but I did.

And I cannot unsee it.

And just to make it worse, when one (female) passenger offered him a seat before taking it herself, he then leaned over to ask her to do 'one small thing' for him: confirm which station the train was currently in. He named the station, you understand, she merely said "yes".

Creepy? I think so.

I mean, let's face it, there are sighted people who cannot tell what station they're in... One would expect a blind person to be counting them off from memory. It's a function. It helps them live as normal a life as they can hope for.

He didn't lift the monocular for her, though. She was a brunette.

In other news, another short term, holiday-cover job came to a close today - same place as last time - and was actually heaps of fun. There really isn't enough work involved in the first three days to warrant the attention of a full-timer. Were it not for some minimal design work, some troubleshooting and the necessity to exercise my inner fascist by badgering a problem client for a sign-off, I'd have been quite thoroughly bored.

Today, I had to chase in advertisements for next week's issue, and could have called that done by about 10.30-11am. Of course, some of the copy arrived, so I was able to check and process it. There were other tasks that popped up unexpectedly during the day, best described as 'miscellaneous', and it was interesting to note that people expected me to know how to do certain 'Thursday' tasks, despite the fact that I'd only worked there once before, and never on a Thursday.

Then again, it tends to be the case that people assume I know how to do everything because I do what I do know so well.

Ah, the tribulations of being awesome.

Further to the previous entry, about Metroid: Other M... it turns out I may not be able to get a 100% rating, because I've missed a missile tank in the main sector. It's somewhere in the lift shaft that gets you to the main, inter-sector lift shaft... a room that is basically semi-circular in plan view, and the missile tank appears to be behind the lift shaft, an area which is inaccessible. So it's either above or below, and I see no way of accessing either... Troublesome...