Murphy’s law is the real unidentified unified string theory

Let me not get too much out of my depth here - physics not having formed an extensive part of my tertiary education, after all – but I have come across enough evidence in my meagre existence to suggest that if there is one universal truth, one inescapable inevitability, one phenomenon that can be relied upon to always hold true, it is Murphy’s Law. I should’ve done some research here to beef up my argument, but I’ll blame the lack thereof on time constraints (read: work obligations), and will rely on you to trust me blindly, good acolytes. Especially blindly since I’m only going to present one example: yesterday’s run-in with good old Mr Murphy…

Yesterday Third Roommate and I took up our morning runs again after a brief political sojourn. After our (separate) showers, I asked him whether my outfit was appropriate for meetings with senior people from our client’s clients (I’m currently conducting a face-to-face survey on our client’s behalf). This outfit consisted of 1x fabulous black pinstripe three-quarter sleeve shirt, 2x pointy black high-heel shoes, and 1x trendy pencil skirt, made from fabric emblazoned with the old Sasko logo on it (red anchor) and “Sasko” in big red letters (I picked this showstopper up for R100 at The Space sale a few years back – each skirt was made from fabric printed with a different company’s corporate identity on it). Third Roommate thought the skirt was fine, so I made the joke that it would be rather funny if one of the companies I had to interview that day was Sasko (I didn’t have the interview list on me at the time to confirm or deny such occurrence). He retorted with the more funny scenario of me having to interview one of Sasko’s major competitors. Snortles and chuckles all round. I get into the office, check my interview setups for the day, do some admin, blah blah blah, then dash off to conduct the said interviews. First client’s client, fine. Second client’s client – starts off with the male interviewee double-checking with the receptionist that I was indeed Third World Ant when I was clearly the only female waiting in the reception area (obviously he expected someone older – the large bhindi-like zit on my forehead wasn’t helping my cause, either); once that minor issue had been um, skirted, he led me through the maze of the corporation’s meeting rooms, each one named after one of the companies in their portfolio, and lo and behold, (yes, you can all see where this is going, can’t you?) one of these rooms is named after my skirt’s fabric’s boldly advertised company’s rival – the very rival Third Roommate jokingly bandied about. Blush! So that was the real reason all the male employees/visitors I had passed had been staring, it had sweet nothing to do with my breath-taking hotness! So I chuckled and said to the guy “I guess it was a little short-sighted of me to wear this skirt on today of all days” (of course I had no damn idea the rival would be one of their companies). “You’re lucky the MD of that business is not in today – you’d be out on the pavement in no time” he said, and for a moment I believed he was being serious.

The beauty of Murphy’s law is that even Murphy knows when to hold back on being gob-smackingly obvious – he could’ve arranged it so that our meeting was in the “other” Sasko meeting room, but instead, he plonked us in the room just next to it. Subtle physics, elegantly obvious, with foresight safely predictable. I like it.

And that, kids, is all for today’s lecture. Next week: time travel in a convexly curved four-dimensional universe: a DIY approach (ok, that didn’t fool anyone, did it?)