Today was guest lecture day, a guy working as IT project manager, head of system development for Statoil, Norway’s biggest private company had a talk about methodology and architecture at Statoil. Then in the middle of it the fire alarm goes off. And this reaction I thought was quite interesting. First of all there was no rush, no urgency whatsoever. And looking around the auditorium everyone including the guest lecturer and the two professors had this look of irritation and indifference on their faces. As if to say “oh crap not this now”. So very very slowly we start walking out of the room, going down the stairs and outside in the parking lot. On the way out we pass a janitor in the hall, he was going down to the basement. After a few minutes the fire department arrives on the scene, again no urgency in their conduct. It was a dull event, no smoke seen anywhere, the chemistry institute is right next door from us so presumably they messed something up. But just to see the reactions of the people was interesting, a universal contempt for something that would disturb their day without having any inherent significance to it other than to annoy them.

My instinct reaction was thank goodness that alarm bell they have every few doors down every hallway is not my alarm clock.