Kuala Lumpur July 2016 “Damage Control Report!”
01/07/16 03:56
I am sure many of you will be familiar with the white shoes/slippers that are given away free in hotels. They are intended to be used to protect your feet so that you don't walk barefoot on the room carpet or bathroom tiles. I rather like them as they often are embellished with the hotel name and act as a reminder of the holiday or stay. I have or rather had collected a few pairs of these over the years and I decided I could use them in our house in Malaysia. In this country everyone walks barefoot indoors. You take your shoes off before entering a house and most of those I have visited have tiled rather than carpeted floors. I thought using these slippers around our own home would keep my feet clean (or something like that anyway) however there was a big flaw in my thinking and this experiment lasted just two days.
Our house has two floors and the staircase connecting them is made of polished wood. From upstairs there are ten steps down to a small landing where you turn 90 degrees and then another ten steps to the bottom. Upstairs the floor is wooden whilst downstairs it is made of stone. Now the key thing to note about hotel slippers is that there is no tread whatsoever on the bottom. They are designed to be used on carpet or rough surfaces and not polished wooden floors.
On this day I started my walk downstairs as I would normally do. Whilst at work in the UK we were ordered to always hold the banister or hand rail when walking up or down stairs. I am not in the UK and forgot this golden rule. I was in a bit of a hurry and had passed the small landing and I had just two more steps to take before completing my descent. The next thing I remember is staring at the ceiling because I had just slipped off the stairs and was now lying flat on my back on the stone floor. As I lay there motionless I realised this could be a very serious situation. I had no memory whatsoever of slipping or hitting the ground and no idea how long I might have been lying there. I mentally uttered the words “Damage Control Report”, a familiar phrase to Star Trek fans and then started to move my limbs very, very slowly in case one or more were broken. I appeared to have landed right in the middle of the gap between the bottom stair and the facing wall as my feet were less than 10cm from the wall and my head less than 10cm from the very sharp edge of the bottom step. I gingerly moved my legs and breathed a sigh of relief because they were undamaged. Now I tried my arms and they also moved freely! I had been worried my elbows would have been broken when I hit the floor. Finally I touched the back of my head and found it to be completely unhurt. In fact the only injury I could detect was slight bruising on both upper arms, between the elbow and shoulder, suggesting that part of my body had broken my fall.
So to recap the situation, I have slipped off the last but one step on the stairs and my body has propelled itself forward three metres as I fell about thirty centimetres onto a very solid stone floor. Well that's thirty centimetres for my feet but two hundred for my head! I find my feet have not hit the facing wall, neither has my head hit the last step nor the floor! I am lying on the floor, almost exactly in the middle of the gap between the wall and the staircase, without any significant or painful injury. Once I realised that was it I stood up without assistance and headed over to the sofa and sat down. I thanked God for my miracle and then the guardian angels he has given me. I took off my hotel slippers and threw them away along with the rest of my collection.
Our house has two floors and the staircase connecting them is made of polished wood. From upstairs there are ten steps down to a small landing where you turn 90 degrees and then another ten steps to the bottom. Upstairs the floor is wooden whilst downstairs it is made of stone. Now the key thing to note about hotel slippers is that there is no tread whatsoever on the bottom. They are designed to be used on carpet or rough surfaces and not polished wooden floors.
On this day I started my walk downstairs as I would normally do. Whilst at work in the UK we were ordered to always hold the banister or hand rail when walking up or down stairs. I am not in the UK and forgot this golden rule. I was in a bit of a hurry and had passed the small landing and I had just two more steps to take before completing my descent. The next thing I remember is staring at the ceiling because I had just slipped off the stairs and was now lying flat on my back on the stone floor. As I lay there motionless I realised this could be a very serious situation. I had no memory whatsoever of slipping or hitting the ground and no idea how long I might have been lying there. I mentally uttered the words “Damage Control Report”, a familiar phrase to Star Trek fans and then started to move my limbs very, very slowly in case one or more were broken. I appeared to have landed right in the middle of the gap between the bottom stair and the facing wall as my feet were less than 10cm from the wall and my head less than 10cm from the very sharp edge of the bottom step. I gingerly moved my legs and breathed a sigh of relief because they were undamaged. Now I tried my arms and they also moved freely! I had been worried my elbows would have been broken when I hit the floor. Finally I touched the back of my head and found it to be completely unhurt. In fact the only injury I could detect was slight bruising on both upper arms, between the elbow and shoulder, suggesting that part of my body had broken my fall.
So to recap the situation, I have slipped off the last but one step on the stairs and my body has propelled itself forward three metres as I fell about thirty centimetres onto a very solid stone floor. Well that's thirty centimetres for my feet but two hundred for my head! I find my feet have not hit the facing wall, neither has my head hit the last step nor the floor! I am lying on the floor, almost exactly in the middle of the gap between the wall and the staircase, without any significant or painful injury. Once I realised that was it I stood up without assistance and headed over to the sofa and sat down. I thanked God for my miracle and then the guardian angels he has given me. I took off my hotel slippers and threw them away along with the rest of my collection.