A Fairly Typical Start to the Morning, Actually.

I was preparing for my morning lecture when an associate of mine rang and asked if I could come and give him a jump. I checked the time, said, “I'll be there in a flash and then I'll jump you,” and leap into my car. I arrived 22 minutes later and saw my associate's car behind a large gate in his building's parking lot, but couldn't see him. I reached into my pants and impatiently pulled out my mobile phone to call him and received a message that his phone was off. Annoyed, I drove around the front of his building, leap out (I was in a leaping mood this morning) and pressed his intercom button at the entrance to the block of units he lives in, all the while cursing him for not having the decency to live in a house or mud hut like normal person. There was no reply and thus no way to get in. I checked my phone again and saw that I'd called the wrong number earlier, so I dialed the correct number and got a message saying that my phone was out of credit. Then I got into the building by pressing someone else's intercom button and promising the person who answered he could engage in free acts of a biological and frankly disgusting nature. (I told him he had won a free tour of a brewery.)

Once inside I dodged a man looking for free beer, made my way to my associate's domicile and knocked on his door. No reply. I looked down into the courtyard and saw his vehicle, but no actual associate. Confused, I headed down into the courtyard and finally saw him. He'd been sitting in his car all this time but I simply hadn't been able to see him from the angles I had been viewing it. The delay was frustrating for both of us, but I still had time to give him a jump and get to my lecture. I headed out to my car, jumped in, turned the key and found that it wouldn't start. Sigh.

I had my associate push start my car. Then I used it to jump start his. Rather than going to university and begging a random stranger to jump me, I headed home and started charging my battery from mains power. Unfortunately I didn't have an inverter handy to do this, so I simply earthed one terminal and while holding a live wire in my hand I timed myself using the flickering of a fluorescent light and tried to only touch the other terminal of the battery with a live wire when the electricity was flowing in the direction I wanted it to go. It worked exactly as well as you'd expect. Fortunately I was still heavily bandaged from yesterday's accident and so the sulphuric acid burns weren't nearly as bad as you might expect.