More Than The 39 Steps

The lift is being replaced in our building. It's needed replacing for some time, what with random breakdowns, the doors stuttering open and closed, the general wheeziness it brings to our living situation. Because it's the only lift in a 15-storey building it's had a lot of work to do. Because we're on the twelvth floor of a building with only one lift, we're going to have a lot of walking to do for the next three months. I begin to question whether paying half rent is such a good deal after all.

You have to keep positive, but it's one thing to tell yourself it's a free workout, and it's quite another to go home after work, and know that as well as walking up twelve flights of stairs, you're going to have to walk down them again and then back up them because you're going out for dinner, and it's impossible to not go home, because that would entail standing in Wan Chai for an hour, listening to old men making small talk with hookers.

So I try to concentrate on the buttocks of steel that I'm developing, and not on the fact that shiny steel buttocks probably aren't too comfortable to sit upon, and probably make you slide off your chair. Or get stuck to enormous magnets. There may, or may not be, an enormous number of incredibly powerful magnets in Hong Kong, but I don't want to be the one to find out.

As we're moving out in a few months, the next question is how our movers will transport a bed, a widescreen TV, and a sofa down to the street. We could offer to pay extra, but we'd still end up with sweatstained, dented furnishings, and with the best will in the world, a man who has to carry a 37" television down 12 flights of stairs is likely to get a bit butterfingered before he reaches the bottom. We may have to wait it out until the lift is fixed before we move.

In the meantime, I'm trying to solve the famous Travelling Salesman problem - what's the most business trips I an take to avoid ascending twelve flights of stairs?