Simplicity in the bric-a-brac house

Not exactly true

The cost of simplicity is sometimes not evident. You find yourself weighing options at the point of entry hoping that having others bear the cost would save you lots in the long run.

The lesson, hard as it might be is that one should be ready to face certain costs so as to avoid other incidental and unexpected costs.

It came fully furnished, at least that is what gave it the premium rate and the inventory looked like an easy task of view, count and note.

Things falling apart

Nothing could be further from the truth, first it was the scales that could not be reset to zero; it was broken. Bread out of the bag for toast and the toaster fell apart, the warning being don’t plug this in.

The dawn broke and the thirst for tea had Polly reaching out to put the kettle on, there was no point waiting for Sooty to put it off again, the screws holding the lid were out, the attachment broken and the handle far from handling the jug. Water in this would be the difference between the finesse of elocution and the suddenness of electrocution. Time for replacements.

Up the stairs, three steps in all, a rumpled shirt needed ironing. With the choice of one of four irons, you wondered which one was wired to blow the fuse, but before that, reach out for the ironing table and notice that it is a paraplegic, the legs broken off.

Suction lost

Looking down from that is the vacuum cleaner, parts everywhere and none fitting together, it might have gone to war, lost a limb and an eye, maybe more, but there was nothing to walk with this kit.

Welcome to the house of bric-a-brac, it has everything, yet nothing you can use and that list does not end there, but the quest for simplicity continues.

Their fault will cost you

What about a television? Let’s get one delivered in 1:45 hours, the offer says, and so an order goes in and money goes out. 12 hours later, you learn that you were on the unfortunate side of a computer error or technical problem.

No anger, no frustration, just perplexity as a new time is arranged for the delivery and an email lands in your inbox with all the details, only that it appears you are being changed an extra 60% for a service they did not deliver, in the first place.

The time for a torrent of expletives is nigh and no opprobrium should ensue, but calmly after 8 phone calls all before 10:30AM, everything seems to have been sorted out, or so it seems.

The cost of simplicity is simply the fact that many things are not as simple as they seem at first sight.

Words describing an interesting week

Complicated, a simple thing made more complex for reasons you are yet to understand.

Clarity, a state of having an understanding about why.

Confidence, a state of being emboldened to do something right.

Confusion, the absence of clarity exacerbating a lack of confidence.

Chaos, when clarity, confidence and confusion are leaning in the opposite direction of everything you want to do, that is really complicated.

Calm, when you walk away.

Character, when you return to bring calm to the confusion and calm by seeking clarity and acting on that understanding with new confidence by simplifying the complicated.

Concise, writing about a long week in retrospect.

Stringing a lanyard to the bus stop

To suffer, they must

I had as much as a hypothesis and experience has shown that it would never become a law. Many things are designed to be assembled or disassembled easily – well, apart from Olivetti PCs in the 1980s and 1990s, they were a conundrum of the inexplicably impossible.

Then, whoever awarded the contract for the building of bus stops in the Amsterdam and Schiphol Airport areas should be put in a perpetual motion dunking stool.

The bus stops would work in the desert but not here; a few years ago, I wrote about this but it is just getting really silly, none of the bus stops offer any shelter in the rain, they serve as funnels for the rain water – it is better to be soaked in the rain shower than stand the “protective” shelter of those bus stops.

If you are not wearing waterproof clothes, there is no point sitting down, the seats are dishes of water and the bus stop in front of my new office is so water-logged after the rains, a walk there might just be an aqua-plane cum surf – you wonder if anyone does quality control of these places as the designer and builder walks away pockets filled to the bank laughing.

Obviously, neither the designer nor the builder would ever have to try these places in weathered conditions, the design probably came off some sketch that looked aesthetically pleasing to the eye and that was all; all form and no function – one could cuss.

The riddle of the lanyard

Then my KPN mobile internet dongle came with a string lanyard to attach the cover of the connector to the body of the dongle. Everyone tried every kind of technique to string the lanyard without luck, some improvised but it did not look like in the picture.

Surely, it could not be that hard as I tried every possible permutation of stringing the thing through – this morning, I thought I had a solution of trying to string it through, taking apart the whole thing and still without success.

The more I looked at it the more I thought, it could not have been so badly designed that we could not put the lanyard on and just before the blog incubation in readiness for castigation of the thing was completed, I had an insight about the possibility of not having to string through the lanyard.

Lifting the cover that had the access to a recessed memory card, there is was, a simple hook held in place by the cover and all that aggravation ended with a sense of victory and accomplishment.

The hypothesis still finds true but sometimes you have to stop head-banging and start thinking, if only one picture were added to the manual and we would have saved us the hours of stupidity with the simplicity of the smart application of instructions and pictures.

Fashion, function and fit

Not fit for the kitchen

There was a reference in the Newsweek magazine about their online magazine pertaining to lingerie makers now being close to finding the right balance of fashion, function and fit for brassieres.

That alliteration (fashion, function and fit) tweaked something in me about things I saw so recently. Last weekend I ventured with my friend from work back to the African Kitchen where we have all agreed that the lack of competition in the Nigerian cuisine restaurant market leaves us completely robbed blind for bad food and rotten service.

However, we find ourselves returning because some of what we like takes a whole lot of time to prepare; that is not to say we, the punters, are not good cooks in our own right, but the logistics are not a walk in the park.

The codename of the restaurant has been Barawo (thief in Hausa) for the best part of 4 months – the things we suffer.

Not impressed

As we arrived, there were no tables available so we sat at the bar where this “sexy” lady took our orders. She turned around and bent down to get some drinks out of the fridge and all that should be concealed was revealed.

I am probably not as hot-blooded with a rampaging libido as many of the men that frequent that restaurant who might be excited by such views, I was utterly disgusted.

For me, I find no pleasure in voyeurism and I do not enjoy anything that leaves nothing to the imagination, nor do I fantasise about bedding such lack of sophistication – it was indecent, unflattering, dirty and debauched – I am supposed to be in a restaurant not a lap-dancing club.

In any case, she might be in fashion, but the function of the trousers she was wearing was lost as it exposed her nudity, the fit was bad and not fit for purpose – the image that lingers assaults my peace and has me in a tentative state of grabbing for a sickbag.

Seat cleaners required

Then, on the tram the other day, this boy got on and sat two spaces next to me, as I gave a side glance, my disgust with low-hanging trousers was completed with utter revulsion.

I thought, the exposure of the underwear was compensated for by longer tops, but this was not the case, he was sat with his exposed underwear directly on the seat.

That really worried me, cack-laden, stinking, gooey threadbare undergarments rubbed onto public seating that others would use unawares picking up such foreign fecal matter and what not.

I know that most public conveniences now have toilet seat cleaning facilities, would I now have to acquire seat cleaning aids for using public transport.

No doubt again, the boy was following fashion, but the function of the trousers in concealing the underwear was lost and really, the simple thing is the trousers do not fit; else they would not be hanging down.

The foolishness of this fashion is completed with the fact that the legs of the trousers seem to be long enough, but instead of folding them up, they all sweep the ground and any ground anywhere like a bridal train till the trouser hem – if that is the right phrase – looks like rags.

A short distraction

So, I shook my head yesterday afternoon as I took the long bus trip from the more salubrious 805 Restaurant on Old Kent Road – one can get a black cab there but never one back into town.

The lady got off the bus and her skirt was so short that all adjustments she made still meant it was not long enough to cover the detail and quite so short that the curiosity that might have made it interesting left one less complimentary of what any right-thinking person would call a tramp.

How people leave their homes without a double-take in front of a full-length mirror on the exit door of their houses escapes me. If you have to continually adjust the fitting of your apparel after you have left home, you are not properly dressed and you should return home and sort it out.

The things idiots do in the name of fashion.