Amateur desk surgery and other tales from the department

So I sit here in my office, thinking 'wasn't I going to write a blog post about my new office when it was actually new to me?' 

Well, anyway, here's a tour of my office, and recounting of related anecdotes.  In more detail than you want to sit through.  Why?  Because isn't that what blogs are for?


My office looks like this...or at least it did, when I took this picture some months ago.

The linguistics department is in a building called the Drostdy Barracks.  Which, as the name suggests was actually a barracks.  Like, the military kind.  Here's proof, in the form of an old picture of soldiers doing their soldiery things on what was ostensibly their gigantic front lawn.  It's from a book they were giving away to staff at the library – the history of Rhodes up to 1970.  Clearly, they found a box of books from 1970, and were like 'shit, what do we do now?'.  But I digress.  The photo:

And here's more proof from this century: the doors still say how many men can live in each room.

I have no idea how you would find space for 21 men to sleep in Nomvula's office. 

Back to my office.  See, I never had an office at Rutgers, so having one here at Rhodes is a tremendous novelty to me.  It's a room, just for me, for working!  Like some sort of powerful and influential institution has sanctioned this purpose.  I'm a very big deal, you know.
Anyway, said office came equipped with all kinds of wonderful things, like a computer (running windows XP), and all kinds of shelving, and a phone, and a desk and chairs.

And therein is a problem.  Well, herein, to be more precise.  See, my desk has a lovely feature – an unnecessary cross-bar that is specifically designed to bruise the upper-ankle/lower-shin area.  This is the problem, illustrated.

Solution: desk surgery.

Well, okay, first I tried the ritzy thing and requested a new desk.  It arrived in pieces, and then some other men came to assemble it.  I wasn't there for that, but I am told it involved a lot of hammering.
Incidentally, everyone who saw it in its unassembled state had the same exact thought: "Oh, is that your new desk?  It's in pieces, just like IKEA.  We don't have IKEA here."  Such convergence on a brand that's non-existent surely indicates a missed market, but that's a problem for Isaac Kimmelmen et al.
So here's my new desk:

Note that it still has the annoying thing at the back to inflict harm on the shins.  This being a newer desk, it is informed by subsequent advances in medical science, that tell us that the most sensitive area of the shin is about 4 inches higher, and the back-doodad is re-targeted accordingly.

Also, it's lower than the old desk.  Like close to knee-high - see?  Which is a shame, since it would be perfectly fine as a coffee table if they had just delivered it to my house.

If you're wondering what those things on the new desk are, I'll come to them now.  Actual now, not South African 'now', which means 'soon'.  Like when the waitron serving you at a restaurant says 'I can take your order now', and promptly walks away.

So, DIY desk modification.  Here's what tools you'll need:

Screwdriver: check.  Jig saw: check.  Well, sort of check.  I am told by Sally, who lent it to me, that it's called a jig saw.  I cannot imagine building a puzzle with it, but whatever.

The plan: in the absence of leg room, let's cut some pieces of the desk out to make some leg room.
And then Sally came in and said 'oh, what if you just unscrew that piece?

So, just like IKEA, you don't use all the pieces you start off with.
Here are the culprits that have inflicted untold (not great) suffering on me for the past 3-ish months.

And here's the desk now:

Muuuch better.

--> tl;dr
Desks are stupid and impose needless obstructions.  Solution: strategic breaking of those pieces.  Also, bureaucracy is the same everywhere – when they offer to get you a great new desk, it is probably too good to be true, and will be worse than the old one.

Enough about the damn desk.  Here's a bit of a tour of the rest of the department.
Let us begin with the lobby.  It looks like this: 

On the left is some kind of notice board.  When I arrived, it looked like this.  Now it has a picture of me too, but I am too lazy to go back downstairs and take a new photo of it.  I am honoured to have made the top row, though...


The door on the right is the tea room.  Yes, there is an entire room for tea.  It has its own geyser (=Amer. 'hot water heater') just for tea and coffee.

The stairs going up to the first (=second) floor are lined with nostalgic photos.  One of my favorites is this one.  Meet Bill Branford, the first head of the department at Rhodes, way back when.  We share the same initials, which I hear feels a bit odd for the other staff who were here during his reign; I like to think of him as WB the elder.

 The Branfords have a long and esteemed relationship with the department.  His granddaughter is doing linguistics here now, in fact.  Or she would be if not for a trip to Germany or somesuch.  I don't know her, but it reflects on the Branford name.  Also, apparently Bill Branford was a huge fan of bamboo, for reasons unknown to me.  This is the hallway my office is on.

 It also has this poster/painting thing.  It's a little odd, but whatever.  What's even more odd is that there's a larger, matching picture in the tea room, complete with the exact same creepy black-robed figure sitting on a tree branch.

 Down the other end of the hall, we have the 'Sound Laboratory'.

I was very excited to have this facility.  I still am, but it's abated somewhat after seeing the condition of it.
The Sound Lab consists of a recording room and a control room.  While I was thrilled at the notion of having my very own (sinister-sounding) control room, it turns out we really need that space for some of the part-time teaching staff to use, so I am renounce any kind of symbolic ownership of the place.

And then here is the recording room:

So it's not quite a sound proof room, but it's quiet enough to make pretty decent phonetics recordings.  I hope that's not a consequence of the thousands of boxes of paper currently stored in it.  Because while we have some really great equipment in there to use, there's also some stuff that's...well....not so great.  And from what I can tell, it's been there a while.

One of my goals for the next 2 months or so is to clean out the old junk in here so we can get it up and running without being ashamed of the mess.  It's gonna be great!!!  Well, eventually.  But that will have to wait a bit - this week is the mid-semester vac, and we are actually going on vacation.  See you in a week or so.  With pictures from the wine country!