This ain't no tropical island.

Yesterday was the last day of exams, so at midnight undergraduate access to the building was cut off. Unfortunately Security may not have made the distinction between undergrad and grad, and when I returned to campus at 01:00 last night, I found that I was locked out of the lab building.

As I was repeatedly waving my card past the card sensor in hopes that it would suddenly decide to grant me access, my labmate S came up the stairs inside and let me in. He had been packing up to leave and made a quick trip to the bathroom (in the lobby, just outside the inner card access door), and got stranded in the lobby!

Forty minutes and several unhelpful calls to SFU Security later ("They're at the Pub Night. Call back in 10 minutes." "There was a brawl at the Pub. Call back in 15." "Okay, somebody will be over in 10." "We can't do anything about it until Monday."), my labmate S and I got let in.

We were rather concerned about this lack of access, since we both had looming deadlines and needed to work in the lab over the weekend. We ended up staying another 2 hours until almost 04:00, tag-teaming for washroom trips (letting the other back in), since we didn't know what the situation today would be.

This morning, I got a call from my other labmate N: "Are you coming up to the lab soon? My card isn't working." I told him to call Security and ask to be let in. When I arrived, N told me about how the Security supervisor wouldn't dispatch someone to let him in because "maybe [his] card access was cut off for a reason [that they weren't able to know], or maybe [he] was a bad guy."

This is not the kind of sh!t I need so close to finishing my project. Every hour counts. That said, it's back to work for me.

[ Artwork used with the permission of artist Chris Musto. ]