Gas!

At approximately 11am this morning, a strange, natural gas-like odour became apparent in my office. Having checked with a colleague that I wasn't going crazy, we went to tell the secretary, but she was already on the phone to facilities following a complaint from the department chair. It turned out that they were being flooded with calls from all over the building - whatever was causing the smell was being pumped around the building's air conditioning system. So the call came to evacuate - oo, how exciting! We were allowed back into the building several hours later - after noticing that the electricity had been switched off throughout the local area, causing havoc with the traffic - yet another point in favour of roundabouts.

Current theories/rumours for the source of the smell include (a) an as yet unspecified chemical spill in the nano-technology building, and (b) a spill of the (harmless) chemical they use to make natural gas smell bad. I guess we'll know if it's (a) if we wake up tomorrow as piles of grey goo.

Although this episode was all quite exciting, and meant an extra long lunchbreak in the sun, it brought to my attention the fact that the windows of my office don't open. It seems the University are more worried about my ruining their precious climate control with a bit of fresh air than my safety should said climate control system get contaminated with dangerous chemicals (think 24 and Sentox nerve gas or scary biological agent).