A Douze-y of a View Towers Elevator Miscommunication

This happened years ago and I’m surprised I never got around to telling this story before.

I once got into an elevator at View Towers that was really packed, so much so that I couldn’t reach the elevator buttons. I asked someone to press 2. Instead she pressed 12, as I realized as we went past 2. I pointed out that we were going past the floor. She laughed and went on for a bit about how she thought I had  said “douze”.  Why she thought I was asking for a number in French I have no idea.  I noticed that while she was having a good laugh at her own expense (a healthy attitude for anyone to have to be sure), she was doing nothing to correct her mistake. That I might still want out didn’t seem to occur to her.  Finally, still unable to reach the buttons myself,  I said, “Press. The nearest. Floor.”  That finally spurred her to press 6.  I finally made it out, relieved to get out of the packed elevator and once again in control of my destiny, or at least the next few minutes of it!

The Three Times I Sprained My Ankle

I’ve never broken my ankle but I sprained it three times.  The first time was heading down the outside stairs (or which there are many) at what was then Malaspina College (now University of Vancouver Island) in Nanaimo.  If memory serves the food got wrapped up a fair bit but was mostly fine.

The second time was definitely the worse. At the University of Victoria I jumped down a 3-step staircase and my foot pivoted.  I had to wear a half-cast and used crutches that kept falling apart including once while crossing the street (a Good Samaritan wired the one crutch then). I sat in the area of the bus for the elderly and physically disabled but people kept bumping into my cast.

The third time was pretty minor. If memory serves I sprained it at yet another outdoor staircase across from View Towers in Victoria.  I was a little late for work (at the time I was a dishwasher for a restaurant).  Curiously one co-worker thought that a sprain wasn’t a big deal at all and though it was a given that people would do physical labour with a sprained ankle.

15 Things that Define Greater Victoria

Some of these aren’t unique to Greater Victoria but together they do help define it.

1.      The Fairmont Empress: the hotel literally fit for a queen

2.      View Towers: the high-rise full of crazy people

3.      Non-stop panhandlers, especially but not limited to downtown; they made the news when a conference got cancelled by attendees wanting to avoid them

4.      Government offices everywhere

5.      Numerous swimming holes in the Western Communities

6.      Three comic shops on the same side of the same block of Johnson St

7.      The waterfront buskers

8.      The Johnson St Bridge enabling travellers to commute from downtown Victoria to Esquimalt and View Royal; currently a distinctive blue bridge; it’s replacement will also be fancy looking if built according to the plans

9.      Three key shopping centres on Douglas St: The Bay Centre with its triangular tower, the large sized Mayfair Shopping Centre, and the currently being reconstructed 2-level outdoor Uptown Shopping Centre

10.  Red and blue double decker busses

11.  Related to #5 but a little different, quick access to bodies of water almost everywhere

12.  A bit of a small town mentality despite the size, with differences not very tolerated

13.  A higher percentage of Caucasian people even compared to many other Canadian cities

14.  Lots of geese and ducks

15.  Horse-drawn carriages downtown

Bonus: 4 things that used to help define Greater Victoria when I first moved here but no longer:

1.      Huge rabbit population at the University of Victoria (relocated)

2.      Excessively long rides on the busses to the ferries (Express busses now in place)

3.      No transit to the airport unless you count the Airporter (still room for improvement but there is some service there now)

4.      Cows at the airport (I don’t know what happened to them)

Impatient People at View Towers Elevators

At View Towers elevators there’s a couple fascinating recurring phenomena.  People will be waiting to go up.  An elevator will arrive letting people off, with the arrow pointing down.  Rather than letting the doors close and reopen, people will wait until the doors are about to close and then push them open again and charge in. This of course just results in the doors having to close and reopen an extra time, because the arrow will only point up once the door closes entirely (and even this this assumes it’s not going down to one of the parking levels).  So people consistently guarantee themselves a longer wait to get upstairs by pushing open doors that are about to reopen again anyway. 

A similar thing people do is sometimes they’re press the down and up buttons because they think the elevator will arrive sooner.  It doesn’t speed things up and when the elevator arrives it will usually show up first as the down elevator, thus meaning you have to wait for the doors to close and open again before it becomes the up elevator. 

The morale is, sometimes things go faster if you don’t try to speed things up.

The View Towers Flood This Morning

This morning I was woken up at (I think) 3:44 (maybe 4:45) by the sound of running water. I thought maybe my bathtub hadn’t gotten turned off the night before properly and got out of bed to turn it off.  Well, no, it was water coming down from the floor above.  I phoned security and was told they already knew about it and were waiting for the plumber. I was glad they were on it but at the same time my bathroom was already pretty flooded so I wouldn’t have minded being woken up sooner.  I grabbed whatever towels, shirts etc. were handy to soak up the water. At first I used a large bowl to catch the water but later switched to the large bucket at the bottom of my fridge.  Then I realized that a box just outside the bathroom full of travel souvenirs needed to be moved. Then I noticed comics and other books on the floor of the bathroom. Then I noticed a new book in a nearby closet was now soaked. I moved whatever I could around and phone security again about a mop. They didn’t have time for that because they were helping the plumber but he didn’t think they had one anyway.

After things were more in control inside my apartment and no new water was coming in, I opened the door and saw that the hallway was soaked.  I learned from a neighbour’s comments it was from three floors above. Also one door over so neighbours actually got it even worse than I did. I took some photos as evidence and upon a neighbour’s request took photos of his suite as well.  Not sure at this point what I’ll do with them but they’re evidence if needed. I just wish I had taken photos while the water was still coming down.

Later I checked then other floors and confirmed that there was in fact water on the carpet up to three floors above but not any higher.  In the hallway my floor got hit harder than the upper floors; in fact upon my return to my floor I noticed a hole in the hallway ceiling probably caused by  the water, which is still coming down in that location.

Last Night’s Insomnia

What to write about when you had insomnia the night before and are having trouble thinking of stuff to write about? Well, write about the insomnia.  And yes I’m aware of the irony of doing this after the previous blog post was on a disturbing dream.

When I checked my answering machine I put my bag with a book I needed to duse use for a project in a different location than I’d thought. So later I thought I had lost the bag and had trouble sleeping because I still really wanted to do that project. I e-mailed a friend I had just finished hanging out with in case she had it (it was too late to phone) and looked up lost and found info for a transit bus I’d been on. I also kept looking where it should have been. I did a partial version of the post I had wanted to type with the book in the hopes that would help with the sleep. Not really. Finally I decided to doublecheck my answering machine… whereupon I felt the missing bag. So I then typed the post I had tried to type earlier and hoped that I could finally get to sleep. Only then I was too wound up. I lay on my bed and felt like I had been awake all night, only time did pass very fast and I did later recall a short bit with Mr. T that must have been from a dream. So I must have slept, but very lightly.  Probably only three hours total if that. Oddly I felt wide awake for most of the day and fairly normal really and only just got sleepy a few minutes ago.

Strange and Disturbing Dream Last Night

A woman and I (she may have been my mom in part of the dream but not all of it) while working as an auxiliary for the police force and found a car wreck.  My partner phoned the actual police who came and investigated.  We searched the car and I think through notes and the like determined that a woman had crashed the car because she had snapped and decided to kill her husband and child because her baby was “mutated” (in the dream’s terms that mean it had deformities; no X-Men like powers). A large bodybag or garbage bag (probably more the former) was found. My partner or the cop did a quick check and confirmed it was the husband.  We found a small garbage bag which I correctly guessed had the “mutated” baby inside; a note inside seemed to further suggest that (I think there was a bag inside a bag and the note may have been attached to the inner bag). My dream made no distinction between indoors and outdoors, so, being squeamish I went into my apartment’s backroom while they checked that bag, though candy on the floor prevented me from closing the bathroom door entirely. I noticed that more time was passing than should be needed to confirm that it was in fact the baby in the bag.  So trying to look away I left the bathroom to find out if they were done yet; I think they almost were.  While little left happened in this scenario I don’t recall; I think I woke up around then.

Recent View Towers News

Less than two weeks ago I arrived at View Towers as the police were leading someone else out in cuffs.

Some abandoned garbage was in the stairwell for multiple days.

A few days ago a guy at the elevators graciously offered to beat anyone up who was so inclined. For some reason there were no takers. I did hesitate before getting in the elevator with him, but the elevators are notoriously slow and I only needed to go up a floor (the way the building is designed, I couldn’t take the stairs up).

Then yesterday the fire alarm went off.  My neighbour who keeps shouting about burning in hell, not realizing the irony of what he was saying, poked his head out the door and kept repeating “Again! Again! Again!”  I went downstairs and got some great nighttime photos of people casually entering the building either people they had a key or were being buzzed in.

A Couple of View Towers Stories from December 5, 2011

Nothing Earth shattering, just stuff I found kind of interesting that happened today.

Earlier I saw a group of people in their late teens/early 20s showing up with luggage at the door hoping to rent a room.  Very brave, not just to try this particular building, but also to show up with your luggage at hand, however minimal and hope there will be a room free immediately.  Even View Towers fills up from time to time. And of course most places want to do background checks.

Then just now the elevator doors opened at the lobby on the way up. A guy was staring up at the elevator buttons almost as if in a deep trance. I said, “Going up?” and then repeated that in a louder voice, but there was no breaking the trance. After the doors closed I remarked to the other passengers, “Well, I tried.”