Thursday, May 10, 2007

Spidey , Anti Spidey ... Spiderman 3

Sometime during this week decided enough was enough and managed to catch up with Spiderman 3 . I was warned by Miss. S that this was going to be a bollywood tear jerker and emotional drama, but went with a notion that it couldn't be as bad as some of the soaps that Bollywood churns out with unfailing regularilty. This is the year when all the so-called heroes cry on screen, James Bond did , and now Spidey also followed suit. (Now thats what is called Bonding with the best. ) It was spectacularly long, 3 bad / misunderstood guys (Anti Spidey, Sandman and the other Monster) , patching up with old friend turned enemy and then watching a friend die. Similarly add in a broken relationship with a girlfriend, fights, a lot of meanness , some gyan and then the good old patch-up at the end. All in all I thought Sam Raimi had gotten to watching Karan Johar while he was in Manhattan shooting the latest Bollywood tear jerker and got influenced suitably.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Bombay trips and driving around.

Driving down the expressway between Pune and Bombay is among my favourite pastimes . On yet another trip this time to talk to a few folks about compilers and to meet my sister I decided to try the road via Turbhe to the Airoli bridge. However it looks as though the contagion of digging up tar roads and replacing them with concrete roads before the monsoons seems to have also hit our neighbours in the valley. Pune has a long tradition of doing that . This resulted in a driving time of nearly 2:45 min when I could have completed the drive to Mulund in 2:30 min or even lesser. The expressway from Dehu Road to Kalamboli was done in 50 minutes flat with a top speed of 130ks an hour.( However I have received other threats during my trip which pale in comparison to the actual threat in driving down at such speeds).


Driving in Bombay is a pleasure in comparison to Pune iff you restrict yourself to driving on the express highways and the eastern side, large 8-10 lane highways where you can zip at 80-90 kph, smooth roads, quite a number of flyovers etc etc etc.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Customer don't care and congestion free networks.

Its been an eventful week . Had fun on the first few days of the week thanks to a visit by some friends from Bangalore. Decided to back my car into a tree , the tree didn't move despite continued threats and ended up having to change the door of the boot.

Last evening, however was even more spectacular. My phone stopped working claiming that it had an inactive Sim . I tried a number of things like putting this in a cool Blackberry and in that I got an even more helpful error message which claimed my SIM card was rejected. A call to the customer care of one of India's biggest networks followed. For folks who don't know, I have a mobile connection with India's largest congestion free network and one that has had folks like Sachin Tendulkar and AR Rehman signed up as brand ambassadors. It resulted in egg on their faces with a claim that they deactivated my phone by mistake. I was surprised to say the least, having paid all my bills for the last 5 years since when I have this number but was prepared to forgive a technical glitch. After all its software, there are always bugs. There is also the possibility of a human error where someone could have gotten it wrong and gotten a typo.

Guess what happens this morning, A call from Airtel's customer care again checking for feedback happens while I am in the middle of a nice little session playing with trees and forests in gcc. The conversation goes:
CC> Sir did you have a problem with your phone ? Did you have a problem with outgoing calls or incoming calls ?
Me> Yes I had a problem , neither was working . The phone said something very helpful like SIM rejected or SIM Inactive.
CC> But sir its working now na ? I just got through to you .
Me> Thinking that he'd come 3rd in a quiz competition with just him in the fray - Yes but the problem was you deleted the line.
CC> All problems solved now ?
Me> But it took you 5 hours to connect it back.
CC> Have you paid your bills ?
Me> Yes, I have . the last one was paid yesterday.
CC> No problem sir, I will check and make sure your bills are reflected in the system.
Me> Fine please do that .
Narrators Interruption> In the middle of this the congestion free network decides to stop working and the call gets cut. So Me calls him back.
Me> We were talking
CC> No problem sir , I will get back to you.
Me> but have you realized the problem ?
CC> What is the problem ?
Me> Patiently explains again.
CC> You must not have paid the bills, thats why they disconnected.
Me> Go check it . I have paid it for the past 5 years regularly and the last one was also paid. Get off your high horse.
CC> What are you saying ? Am I speaking nonsense or are you ?
Me> You are speaking nonsense.
CC> Who's talking nonsense ?
Me> Dont' have time for this , bye.

Customer Disservice is what they seem to be about here and nothing much else.