A Taste of the Life

At the request of an anonymous source,

Today, I went BACK to the Reserve Bank of Malawi. I failed to previously record the gloriousness of this institution. The RBM is the only noticeable "skyscraper" in Lilongwe. It is probably 15 stories and looks like an upside-down concrete mason's (?) wedding cake. Brutalist architecture flipped like a waffle. Imagine your life with legos as a young one, except you were deranged, all the legos were grey and you pretended to be an ostrich all the time, with your head in the ground. 

I went to acquire a document today. To give a brief description about how you do any business at the RBM. You arrive at the mammoth ode to prisons everywhere and enter through rotating doors (which are probably imported from whatever era laid claim to the first rotating doors). Arriving swiftly at the security stop, you unload your pockets into a bin to put through the metal detector. However, both all the metal detecting objects are broken, so the security guard just hands you back your stuff once you pass through the artificial security apparatus. 

Next is reception, where you state your business, the person you are meeting etc. After which, you are quickly pointed in the direction of some couches in the corner with various people waiting. 

This is where it gets good. There is a table with a phone in the middle of the group (just like the Matrix) and you wait until it rings, many times. Then someone picks it up (really whoever has the hutzpah) and listens to who is calling and then asks the group who is here to meet the telephonic person. Just to reiterate: there is a secretary desk with like ten secretaries, but instead management has decided it is more fun to group telephone tag.

On top of it, to enter into the "secure" areas of the building (right next to where you are sitting) there is a wall of glass (definitely not bulletproof, it has cracks all over it) interspersed with "portals." Each of these portals is out of a 1960's sci-fi movie with a fingerprint scanner (which I tried last time and registered me, as a first timer, as an employee) and a rotating orb of glass which you need to step into when it opens and wait for the other side to open. Think a mix of one of those cleansing stations scientists dealing with radioactive material pass through mixed with Star-Trek.

Classic. 

Finally, the man I met today's name was Grem.

I assumed it was short for Gremlin.

Live Long and Prosper,

Foxy