Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Rodent Solarium of Death

Okay, I don't usually do a "what am I doing every five minutes"/stream of consciousness/now I'm eating cherry ice-cream/now my car broke down/now I have bowel problems kind of blogpost, but this is an extreme case in the morbid curiosity sort of way.

This morning I was on relief, no not relieving myself, but meaning I have to teach when other teachers pull a sicky and when no-one decides to sleep in, I hang around the office and do admin stuff. Anyways, this is one of those admin days and my girlfriend came out of her class (yes, we work together) to ask me to photocopy some of her students' in-class writing seeing as I wasn't doing much.

We have two photocopy machines at work and both had the Post Man-handled Shits this morning as the paper was constantly getting jammed in the one and the other one would photocopy with this thick, faded unreadable line down the middle of each page. So I asked the IT guy Phuong (he's the closest we have to a janitor/repairmen guy at our school) to sort the one out while I sort out the paper jam one.

I managed to unjam it and about an hour later the photocopy repairman walks in with his toolkit and gets to work on the one that's fading the copies. I'm sitting at the computer when Tom, one of the teachers on his break, calls out" Hey Henno, come check this shit out!"

Nice. Inside the copier, on the big roller part that inks the paper, lies our furry little workspace friend who has tasted his last office crumb. Yes, the office mouse had got into the machine, and nestled in all snuggly probably because of the warmth, and this morning some unknowing teacher happened to tragically nuke him with some ultrahot, ultraviolent ultraviolet rays. It was really gross because the little rodent was all seared and stuck onto the roller and the repair dude at to literally unpeel him.

No wonder the photocopied papers had these funny mouse-shaped faded parts on them!

14 comments:

sarah said...

seems south africans all over the world are having photo copy machine type distasters :p

when i saw your comment, i thought `hnmm... thats a nice south african name!`
yay!

why are you in saigon? i want to go there!!!

Jon Hoff said...

haha, that's ridiculous mate!

henno said...

'Tis ridiculous, they should turn election day into national South African photocopying screw-ups day. Working here as a teacher amongst other trivial blurting out of nonesense type jobs, what you doing in the big JP, sarah??

Pham ha said...

Hi,my teacher!!Do you remember me??I'm Ha,come from Hanoi.I read many your entries and I like it.However,there are many new words and it's quite difficult for me..hehe..So now,I will become your reader..hihi

Greg_Walters said...

great story -

I reposted it on my blog,

check it out...

http://thedeathofthecopier.blogspot.com/2009/04/all-around-world-copier-mouse-trap.html

henno said...

Greg, the mere fact that there's a blog dedicated to the death of the copier fills me with immense satisfaction, shot on the reblog.

Ha - Of course I remember you, have fun reading and don't worry about too many of the words - most of them are rubbish anyway (oh and don't tell the other students about this blog)!

Anja said...

Shame, poor thing.

Pham ha said...

I know that it's just for fun but i can know many interesting thing through your trips.I really like traveling.Do u like???....and Have you ever been to Cambodia??Actully,before i have to come back to my hometown,I really want to go there.Cambodia is so beautiful.

sarah said...

i am , of course, an english teacher!!!! woah stereotype!

studied genocide at uni for too long and needed to `find myself` ahahaaa so ran away to japan half way through my masters.

(thats genocide prevention... btw... not `how to start`)

what do you do?

Annie said...

Thanks for stopping by :-). Hopefully, more posts to come ;-).

henno said...

I am...ta ta daaa...an English teacher too. Suprises all round. Dabbling in some journalism and nonsense spouting as that is what I studied. You should definitely come to Saigon, it's the place to be and be seen and choke on pollution.

On a bit of a holiday now so posts may be a bit slow in coming!

Annie - no probz, looking forward to them!

mullet said...

My condolences to your furry little office friend... What news young English teaching burg? I am bored shitless, nursing a throbbing head and remembered that hey, the headman has a blog that I haven't read in a while. good stuff...

Miss T said...

NOOOO?!! That's hilarious..and sad...and sick...and funny-lol!

henno said...

Ahoy burg, yes his end came in similar vein to the departure of our trusted squirrel Eric - for those of you who don't know, my flatmate Christoff found Eric in the murky depths of our flat toilet. Alas...