Despite the advent of electronic swipe cards to pass through a door, it is still argued that the manual door knobs remain the best. Why? Because you simply don’t know when such electronic swipe card will malfunction – or go cranky.

A few hours before the New Year’s Eve of 1997, I went to the computer laboratory at the then School of Tropical Environment Studies and Geography (TESAG) at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville, north Queensland, Australia. (To provide a pictorial context of JCU, I am using publicly-available photos while trying to retrieve my own collections.) JCU is situated in the suburb called Douglas (Figure 1 and Figure 2).

I was then a first year Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) student at JCU who was preparing my dissertation proposal under TESAG, which is an academic unit that specializes on the tropics. Overall, JCU is currently ranked No.1 in the world for marine biology and No. 2 in the world for biodiversity conservation research by The Centre for World University Rankings.

At that time, I simply wanted to check my last-minute emails. I got so engrossed, however, in sending and checking emails to and from my family and relatives in the Philippines. Hence, I only noticed that midnight had already passed when I was about to go back to my hostel. When I swiped my electronic swipe card to get out of the door, the red light remained and it would not open. I tried it several times but to no avail: no green light at all. The reality was that I was locked-in.

In exasperation, I phoned the security unit at the JCU gate (Figure 3) and explained my predicament. The security officer told me not to worry, and that he would send a guard to get me out. He mentioned that since the year had already changed, my swipe card’s code might no longer be valid. When the designated guard (a rather admirable chap) came, he swiped his card, the door opened without fanfare, and he simply got in. I felt both relieved and elated. We greeted each other a Happy New Year, and chatted casually for a few minutes.

My initial euphoria, however, turned out to be short-lived. When the guard swiped his card to get us out, the door would not also open. We tried both our cards several times without any success. We were a bizarre partner: a guard and a PhD student both locked themselves in a computer room during New Year’s eve (Figure 4)! It was indeed an unfortunate – yet still humorous circumstance – to spend the traditional jovial year-end revelry.

This time, he was the one who contacted the security officer at the gate through his hand-held radio. The paraphrased response we heard made both of us blush: “I’m sorry mate, but I can’t leave the university gate unattended. You’ll have to wait until a reliever comes, in about an hour or two!”

Lessons learned: be careful in using a swipe card whose code is automatically deactivated at the year’s end!

Copyright © 2019 Michael D Pido