The universe apparently has a wicked sense of humor.
Luck brought me here to Sydney, albeit with a little help from my own skills and talents, but in an apparent maneuver to balance things out, I had found myself locked out of my own apartment on my first night. Hilarious in hindsight now – but at the time, it put me into a mild panic.
Picture this: it’s your first night at your new apartment, and you have an order from IKEA arriving. You’ve gotten a text from the delivery guys saying they’ll be arriving shortly, so you step out of your flat.
And then, the moment you close your door, the moment you hear the spring-loaded deadbolt click shut, you realize: you’ve forgotten your keys inside. And then moments later, you get the call: the delivery guys are downstairs.
What made it even slightly worse, and a little comical, was that this all happened on the 1st of October, which happened to be a public holiday in New South Wales; additionally, my building’s front door has a security fob that you need to get in, which was on the same keyring that I had left inside the apartment – which meant that I couldn’t get into the building if I stepped out. Plus, the elevator’s are rigged so that you need the same fob to punch the button to your floor. Which means, I’d be stuck on my floor. Que horror.
Imagine my horror and panic, having to figure out how to take delivery of a bunch of stuff (including a mattress, natch) while the magnitude of my situation crashed through my brain: I thought that maybe using the fire stairs would be a quick solution to get to my floor. Or something.
Hold that thought for a moment.
I took the elevator down to the lobby to let the delivery guys in. Bit of good luck: someone else had arrived, and they were heading to the floor above mine. Let’s take that elevator, I asked the delivery guys, and then take the stairs one floor down.
Hah. In became apparent quite quickly that the stairs were also secure. Of course they would be. There was no way to exit into a floor from the fire stairs.
A bit of foresight had made me leave the door where we entered the fire stairs open, so that meant we only had to take the lift down to the lobby; I promptly just gave up a bit and told them to leave my stuff at the lobby.
Thankfully, through some more bits of good luck, I ended up with my stuff on my floor, in front of my (still locked) apartment door, when a neighbor arrived a few minutes later, and he happened to be going on my same floor.
I ended up calling a locksmith (who arrived an hour later), as well as phoning my friend Dean to assist, and luckilly I had a few other kind neighbors who noticed my predicament and gladly let Dean (and later the locksmith) in.
Admittedly, I did find it darkly amusing at the time, what with the panic and the entire incongruous and incredibly unlucky fate I had found myself in. It could have been a scene in a sitcom, to be honest.
The universe does have a sense of humor after all, albeit without a laugh track.
Previously: The IKEA Adventure