Words from Afterdark

I have lately been involved in three strange events on the verge of the surreal. I think that the reason for that is that the world is coming to an end. More specifically, it will end on March 24th, 2006, at 14:00. If all goes well, it will start again a couple of hours later, more or less the same as before, except that I’ll have one more certificate.

The first event: After my Ph.D., I’ll be moving out. So, I sent a letter to the rental agency telling them that I’d leave at the end of April. It seems that the letter arrived on the 18th. And they thought that this meant that I would be leaving on April 18th. I spend half an hour on the phone explaining, in great detail, how April ends on a 30th –or at least, it is scheduled to do so this year–, that I couldn’t control the date the letter reached them, and that, even if one interprets “end of April” in an approximate way, 29th or 28th would be acceptable but certainly not 18th.

The second event: A friend got the idea of asking friends for their favourite phrases in their own languages, and posting them on a paper on her door, in a dorm. She was so excited about it that she insisted on meeting me that same afternoon at my house –we were meeting two days later at a place closer to hers– so I could write it. Email wouldn’t do it. She came, carrying a sandwich, because she was so hungry. While I wrote the phrase on a piece of paper she ate the sandwich. Immediately after she left because she had another appointment.

The third event: I have to send a file to a journal. I asked them by email if I had to send a MS-Word file, or if a PDF was ok –it’s easier for me. The reply: “SUBMISSIONS MUST BE IN SINGLE-COLUMN FORMAT”.