Friday, January 27, 2012

The relativity of it all

Just a little while ago, I was asked to attented a meeting on the start-up of a research project for my organisation. Also attending would be my nearest colleague, my boss and three researchers, one of whom is a well known university professor and a much respected expert in his field. Pondering what to wear in the morning, I decided on a dark flowery dress and a grey top underneath. After looking in the mirror, I realised the grey top was much too sporty spice, so I took off the dress in a hurry and put on a more formal black top instead. The meeting took place first thing in the morning and went quite well. After a couple of hours, we shook hands and started leaving. I was chatting with my colleague, when he suddenly noticed I'd gone quiet. He followed my gaze to my left hand, all confused because it didn't find its way into a pocket, and we both saw this:


See those seams? Turns out I had been wearing my dress inside out the whole morning, genius that I am.

The remarkable thing was: nobody had even noticed it before I did. They couldn't have cared less about what I wore. I think I can therefore safely conclude: the only person I'm dressing up for is me. Maybe I should put this theory to the test with, say, a Finding Nemo dress-up costume.

Needless to say my colleague hasn't stopped making fun of me ever since. (He also kindly told my boss while I was speeding off to the bathroom to change.)

4 comments:

  1. Hehehe those are the best moments aren't they? Last week, I managed to wear my trousers inside out (I totally got dressed in the dark. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!) out of the house, to the grocery store, to a friends house and only realized it after being there about an hour.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hah - at university I had a colleague who once tried this as an experiment. She wore her t-shirt inside out for 3 days before anybody even noticed!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah, now a 'Finding Nemo' costume for work wear, that WOULD be interesting!
    I wanted to say thank you for such an interesting and thought-provoking response to my 'travel' post. In fact one of your phrases has stuck in my head ever since: 'travel should be about time and authenticity'. I loved reading about your trip to Prague. I am a quarter Czech (my grandmother), but have never - as yet - visited the Czech Republic. So I'm really hoping to go either this or next summer and the special places I'll be hunting out will the ones from stories of my grandma's childhood in Prague

    ReplyDelete
  4. Haha. Soooo funny :) I would TOTALLY do something like this. I always get freaked out when I give someone a card, I always start to wonder omg did I actually write anything in the card? did I write some stupid grocery list instead... oh I hope I addressed the card to them and not someone else. I would totally do this.
    What do you do for a job?

    ReplyDelete