Thursday, August 22, 2013

Iron Mountain Boxes

Recently M/s L have embarked on a harebrained cost saving exercise which requires all us teachers to relinquish our desks. It was a move that was widely met with disapproval (surprise!) from all the teachers because HEY we're teachers and our jobs involve lots of papers that need to be stored in an organised manner, lest they get mixed up or lost. Whoever thought up the idea was evidently not a teacher, nor has ever been one.

In order to facilitate this move of extreme stupidity, the office ordered cardboard boxes for us. Two boxes each, which we had to sign out for, because you know disgruntled employees would take extra boxes to resell on the black market or something. Anyway the boxes came yesterday, the same day we had our Teacher's Day lunch (COINCIDENCE?! I THINK NOT :O) So after I finished my 9:30pm class I went to look at the boxes, since some fool left them all stacked behind my desk for collection, and I was intrigued.

At a glance of all the perforation lines on the flat packed boxes, I realised that we were reckoning with not your regular sort of cardboard box, but a super-special transformer type box. Even though I didn't intend to pack many things away, I decided to grab a box and start folding it, and BOY WAS I IMPRESSED. This was a box like no other. Everything folded and tucked neatly into each other, without the need for any masking tape. It was sturdy, folded into itself, and when you had to fold it into itself the takeout tabs would just fly out with a wonderful POP. This my friends, was the Rolls Royce of cardboard boxes.

When I stayed in the UK I moved house a total of 2 times, and use normal cardboard boxes each time. Then when I went home, I packed my stuff into 6 boxes of varying sizes and shipped them all back to Singapore by cargo ship. As a result, I'll like to think I've dealt with my fair share of boxes for a 23 year old, and knew all about them. Little did I know about IRON MOUNTAIN CARDBOARD BOXES, which are a veritable feat of great design and engineering, rolled into a humble cardboard box. I SHIT YOU NOT THEY ARE AMAZING.

So amazing in fact, that I think this design is the magnum opus of someone's entire life. Like someone went to engineering school just to come up with it's ingenious design. Whoah. Too bad I forgot to take a picture, perhaps I'll do so tomorrow.

Did you know that I get amazed by very inane and mundane things?

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