No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Yep.

It's another one of those days.

Tomorrow, J from the office will be eating the Trinidad Scorpion pod. That should be extremely interesting.

Today I went to a Service Seminar sponsored by work.

It seems staff are not 100% knowledgeable about providing that 'Wow!' that the service industry requires (I know, I know. But Aji Chombo, you work in a LIBRARY within an 'educational institution'. It seems educational institutions are also a part of the service industry. I would feel much more comfortable if we just called them what they are: Bu$ine$$e$. Rather than sugar-coat it to the young and impressionable masses whose money we w....I mean who we seek to enrich with the knowledge and training that can only be afforded by a top class educational institution.)

But I digress.

The Seminar was all right. It was neither as bad as other people made it out to be (I was seriously thinking it was going to be happy-clappy rubbish), nor was it revolutionary enough in the knowledge it imparted to make me want to quit my sarcastic ways completely and devote my life to being the model employee.

Somewhere in the middle is fine by me for the time being.

At the end of the seminar, as I walked to the supermarket (yes, the place where they still can't tell a Spring Onion from a Tomato), I bumped into one of my colleagues from the seminar (there were people from all sorts of departments). She and her husband were helping to look for a Dalmatian pup which has somehow gotten free from the collar of their owners. I decided to walk up the street I normally walk down to (parallel to the one the dog was reported to have run up), just to see if the dog might have entered the large construction area next to it.

No biggie, I told myself. Just a fifty foot walk from the door to TESCO.

And lo and behold, in the parking lot a few feet further from the construction site:

The pup (rather large one at that).

I motioned for it to come to me, crouching down.

Predictably, the dog bolted in the opposite direction.

After running around like a headless chicken for about 5 minutes inside the little parking lot (me), the dog then ran up the road, further away from the commotion and towards a larger avenue.

I gave chase, though winded. I thought to myself:

'Surely, this dog will be disorientated and will tire easily.'

U-huh.

Dalmatians, it seems, are much like sharks. They need to keep moving constantly, or will turn a solid colour.

This one also seemed a bit deaf, since it paid no attention to me calling to it.

To make a long story short, it managed to jog (with me thirty feet behind) all the way to within a few feet of the building I live in, which is about five blocks from TESCO.

Only for it to turn and sprint back in the direction it had just come from.

:-/

I continued to give chase, albeit now with the impetus of a very old man with chronic pneumonia walking up a steep incline.

Last I saw of the bitch (it was a female dog, so I am within the correct terminology to refer to it as such) was its 'waggily' tail as it turned another corner on the maze of small streets in the neighbourhood near my flat.

I limped back to TESCO defeated, and with heavy cramps in both legs and oddly enough, in my right triceps (how that happened while running is beyond me).

I bumped into my colleague in TESCO, and told her what happened, and both had a laugh (mine was more a mask to hide the severe lack of physical condition and wincing pain I am in). As she left, she said:

'You know why we did this. It was because of the seminar.'

I replied vehemently:

'I would have still done it for a dog, regardless of the seminar.'

In hindsight, it sounded rather presumptuous, goodie-two-shoes of me, almost as if I was some sort of Acolyte of Francis of Assisi (patron saint of Animals), and if I have to be honest, while there was truth in the sentiment (I routinely find myself having to rescue animals left and right, though half the time I may not want to touch them. So maybe there is some truth to this acolyte nonsense), had I not asked what was going on when I bumped into my colleague, I probably would have been on my merry way, clueless to the missing canine.

So there you have it. Twenty minutes heavy jog with a rucksack (backpack), soaked jeans, a missing Dalmatian, and a Service Seminar.

And I complain about boring days.

I might invest in a Dalmatian snare for next time (and then the pet will probably be a reticulated python)...