9:47am. I turned the key in the lock and stepped out on our porch. The end of the world is in about three hours, according to the Mayan calendar (and the flurry of Facebook posts). What would I actually do if the world were ending? I’d be with loved ones. But I can’t, because they’re all sleeping, an ocean away. I’d call them. But who wants to go out struggling to hear crackling voices over Skype?

I look at our braai full of pigeon poop.  The algae-green pool festering in the backyard below. The parking spots. Reserved Unit 7. Unit 7. Unit 7. Unit 8. Who lives in Unit 7, anyway? I see the tips of slippers shuffling on Unit 17’s porch below as she hangs the laundry out in the fresh air. I close my eyes, feel the breeze, and open them back to the cranes towering over a building, with the metal spikes of its spine still exposed. I wonder what it would have become if they’d been able to finish it before this all ends.

And then, I know. I’d drive to ALA.

But first, I go back into the aircon and sit down to the dining room table littered with laptop chargers and Moleskines and Kindles and receipts and iPod cords. I open my Outlook, searching subject lines for “MBA Rec” and start replying. I’ve come to the realization that I can’t apply to business school this year. I need to slow down. And just like that, I’m speeding down William Nicol drive, the rush of warm morning air drying my hair into Mufasa, singing First Aid Kit's “When I Grow Up.” And it’s time to go try to change the world, just in time for it to end.