Purchase pains strike back!

Yesterday, I mentioned all the stuff that had transpired up to the event of getting a new notebook computer for me. If you thought that was bad, that’s nothing compared to the events of yesterday :p

I call the sales guy at the computer shop around noon to find out what is going on since his boss had said that the computer should be there by about noon (but he did ask till 5 o’clock to deliver the unit in case there were unforeseen delays). The guy says that he has no idea – all he knows is that I’m supposed to get the notebook by 5 o’clock. I ask him to call his boss to find out what is going on and he promises to call me back. As usual, no call. So I call him again and we go through a weird phone-warp because they seem to be having phone trouble – I get connected to (seemingly) hundreds of other conversations. There are all these people going "hello" and trying to say stuff over each other’s voices – truly surreal. Anyway, he says that his boss had said that I’ll get the computer on time and that’s it. So I wait.

I get a call around 3:30pm saying that they’ve finally got the machine and to come pick it up. I can barely contain my excitement (yeah, right :p) and we leave after work to go get the computer. We get there, take a look at the machine and it looks fine. So I say fine, I’ll take it. Then starts the trouble :p

First, I had to pay the rest of the money. The last time we paid, they made a song and dance about paying by credit card. Apparently, their bank charges them 2.6% on credit card transactions and so they wanted to pass that on to me. I said, no. I had bought another notebook from them about a year ago and I didn’t have to pay 2.6% extra then. So how come I have to pay the 2.6% now? The guy had backed down and agreed to not charge me 2.6% and I told him that if it was easier for them, I’ll try to bring cash for the rest of the payment. Given all the back and forth we had about getting the computer, I never did get cash out and so when we wanted to pay the other half, I proffered my card again. And again, the whole drama about 2.6%. The sales guy wasn’t there this time – the one I’d dealt with before. So they call him and he’s like "we have to charge you interest". I’m like, you guys were supposed to get me the computer days ago, what about that? He’s like, "well, our boss is giving you a thumb-drive and so we can’t do that and deduct the 2.6% as well." So I said, "Fine, drop the thumb-drive and drop the 2.6%" and the guy finally agreed.

Then, they try to upgrade the notebook to 2GB RAM. I had asked for the notebook with 2GB RAM instead of the standard 1GB it came with and I had hoped that they’d get it as 2GB from the dealer. Oh no, they were going to bring the notebook down and do the RAM swap in the showroom. Guess what? The notebook had two RAM slots and they were taken up by two 512MB DDR2 sticks and they’d gotten one 1GB stick to upgrade the machine :p This despite the fact that the sales guy himself had told me that the machine had two 512MB sticks and that they’d have to put in two 1GB sticks – so it wasn’t as if they (or at least somebody there) didn’t know about this. And they say that they can’t find another 1GB stick in a hurry. I throw a fit – mostly for effect since they gave me all that hassle about the 2.6% – and tell them that I want to speak to their boss. The poor guys in the store (I feel sorry for them – I really do …. it wasn’t actually their fault – it was more of an organizational thing) are sweating by this time. They really didn’t want me speaking to their boss but I spoke to him anyway just so that he’d know how incompetent he and his whole team were – they were only interested in flinging blame elsewhere and not in getting the issue resolved. The boss assures me that the issue will be resolved soon.

The guy at the store is supposed to find out about replacement RAM but he takes his sweet time on the phone talking to another customer while we sit there cooling our heels and this doesn’t improve my mood :p The guy says that he can’t get another 1GB in a hurry and after some talking, threatening to cancel the order and so on, I finally agree that we will take the machine with the 1GB stick and that they can get us another 1GB later. Then comes the next shocker – the 1GB stick they have is DDR RAM and not DDR2! I have another fit (again for effect) and then they tell me that they will bring the 2GB over personally and replace the RAM at our house instead of us having to make the trip again. I say that I’ll agree to that as long as they throw the thumb-drive in as well :p By this time, I think they are ready to give me anything – even the whole store – just to get me out of there 🙂 So they unobtrusively wipe the sweat off their brows and agree. We take the notebook with the existing two sticks of 512MB RAM, tell them that we’ll see them tomorrow and leave. But will they have the replacement RAM? Will they actually give us the thumb-drive? Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of … purchase pains 🙂

Purchase pains

We are currently trying to get a new notebook computer for me since my current one is showing signs of age and we don’t want it to suddenly go on strike and leave me without a machine. Since this is Sri Lanka, it is not as simple as walking into the computer store, picking the model you want, paying for it and walking out. Oh, no :p

Here, most of the display models are low-end machines 🙂 If you want a high-end machine, you have to pick the model you want, talk to the store, let them know what you want, wait for them to get the pricing from Singapore or somewhere, place the order and then wait a week or two (or three) till the computer actually arrives. Yes, a lot of work to get a new machine :p All this extra waiting is compounded by the fact that my fellow Sri Lankans seem to have no grasp of delivery dates or customer service. As somebody (who is himself a Sri Lankan) put it, when they say tomorrow, you have got to ask them "which tomorrow"? For most of them, tomorrow is simply a an indefinite day in the future which is "not today" 🙂

Well, we picked the model I wanted and we placed the order last Monday (the 17th) and that brought up the another little Sri Lankan business practice – the advance :p You have to pay an advance on an order (it might be as little as a few hundred – or thousand – rupees or it might be half the value of the order) as a sign of good faith. It is also insurance against the customer saying that they don’t want the ordered item after they’ve got it down from Singapore or wherever 🙂 So, these guys wanted an advance but we couldn’t get there immediately since I had work. I said that I’d come by Saturday and pay the advance but for them to go ahead with the order since I wanted the computer fast. They said OK and that I’d have the notebook by Monday (the 24th).

We go there on Saturday (the 22nd) to give them the advance and I get the distinct feeling that while the order has indeed been placed, that I won’t get the computer by Monday. So I tell the guy that if I don’t get the computer by Monday, I’m going to cancel the order. He calls his boss and the boss says that I’ll get the computer by Wednesday "for sure".

Wednesday was yesterday. I call the salesman in the morning and he says that he can’t reach his boss. To give him 10 minutes and he’ll call back. Half an hour goes, nothing from him. I call him back and he says his boss still hasn’t called back. I give him an hour. I call back after an hour and a half. He says, still nothing from his boss and that he’ll call me back in 10 minutes. 10 minutes goes by. Nothing. I call him back and say that if I don’t hear from him by 2:30 (which was about 20 minutes away) that they can cancel the order. I call him at 2:30 and he says he’s got his boss on the other line and a few minutes later says that they’ll have the computer by 6:00pm for sure. I say "OK but if it doesn’t arrive today, I’m cancelling the order" and hang up.

About an hour or two later, I get another phone call – this time from the boss. He says that he’s very sorry but that he got delayed due to a meeting and couldn’t get all the necessary documents to the clearing agent to clear the computer from customs – could I give him till tomorrow evening to get me the computer? I tell him that I was fine with that but for every day he delays, I’m going to deduct Rs. 500 from the price. He seems to be fine with that and says that he’ll even throw in a USB thumb-drive to make up for the delay. That is where we are now 🙂

For the longest time, Sri Lankan businesses have not had any sense of customer service. I personally believe that this is because in the old days, you had one shop to an area and you had to deal with them or do without. So, the whole attitude of "it’s my shop and you can buy from me at my terms or walk out" was born and it has become so inculcated into society that people are finding it difficult to wean themselves away from that mentality. However, things are changing, albeit a bit slowly, here in Sri Lanka. I am not, overall, displeased with my dealings with the computer vendor so far – they do seem to have managed to get the notebook into the country within 10 days of the order being placed and are trying to make amends for the delay. That is a major improvement for Sri Lanka 🙂 The only thing I have a problem is that I have to keep at them to get them to actually deliver on time :p

Whine, dinner and song

I’m tired today. I’m soooo tired today 🙂 And it’s all because of lack of sleep. I am one of those people who need at least eight hours of sleep a day and I didn’t get more than six hours today. So what caused this break in regular sleeping patterns? It was a party at my brother’s in-laws :p

We were invited to dinner yesterday and I figured that it was going to be a normal family dinner which would be over in a couple of hours and accepted. Only after getting there did I realize that it was not to be that kind of dinner 🙂 It was not just a family dinner but an evening of music, dinner and company. My brother’s in-laws had invited over a bunch of friends and family and had also gotten a bunch of musician to play live music!

The musician’s played old Hindi and Tamil movie songs. Songs from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s without any vocals. It was a good trip down memory lane for some of the guests since they’d actually seen the movies when they were young 🙂 I loved most of the songs myself though I had not seen the movies when they were originally shown in theaters here. Instead, I’d heard some of the songs on radio or TV and had seen the song clips but I had not seen most of the movies myself.

The thing is, these songs are so very soothing and melodious that you can listen to them for hours. Maybe it’s just nostalgia but these songs have a quality that songs today just don’t have. In fact, my brother’s father-in-law said that a doctor known to him recommended listening to old Hindi music before going to sleep or something. Sort of a transcendental meditation thing 🙂 Whatever the case, the music kept us there till late at night and I’m still sleepy due to the late night. But I sure did enjoy the music!

The Farooks go to The Agency

Every once in a while, I do come out of my shell and the two of us manage to sneak out somewhere outside the confines of our castle …err … I mean our home :p Yesterday was one such day. Laurie and I were to go out for dinner at a new restaurant, The Agency.

Lest you fall into the misapprehension that I am in the habit of taking my wife out for dinner every once in a while, let me disabuse you immediately – this was a freebie :p Laurie does restaurant reviews for a Sri Lankan travel magazine and tonight was our night to review the cuisine at The Agency. We left home around 7 o’clock and go there just around opening time – we like to eat early 🙂 The place is situated in one of the busier parts of Colombo and usually in Colombo, restaurants tend to be tiny and crowded, even where space isn’t at a premium. This place as huge and it had a huge parking lot as well – an added advantage 🙂 I was really surprised to find such an abundance of space in an area which has so many businesses and offices and whatnot crammed together like a bunch of unruly kids at a lunch counter :p

But I won’t go into too many details since Laurie does have to write a review about this and I don’t want to come out with a long review of my own. Suffice it to say that I was really impressed. The food was fabulous! The decor was quite and unobtrusive. The food was great. The atmosphere was nice and they had a live band playing. Did I mention that the food was brilliant? :p

What was unusual about the food was the presentation. Here in Sri Lanka, people usually tend to just slap the food on the plate and serve it. There is no thought about the presentation. At The Agency, every dish was a work of art 🙂 Everything we ate was arranged to be eye pleasing as well as to be appetizing. Heck, as I told Laurie, the meal was worth it for the bread alone – it was so fresh, so fragrant, so yummy! Yes, I wax poetic :p I guess I could go on at length about the cuisine and how good it was and what a great chef they have but that would again be treading into review territory. So I guess I’ll simply say that if you are ever in Colombo, you’ve got to give The Agency a try 🙂

Tech woes

There are certain days (and even weeks) when nothing seems to work right and everything goes wrong. This week has been one such week :p First, Laurie’s notebook computer suddenly developed a mysterious Windows issue and would refuse to display folder information. She decided to reinstall Windows over her existing installation hoping to refresh the Windows installation but not having to re-install all the apps. No such luck 🙁 The install ended showing a brand new Windows installation and no installed apps, prompting her to reinstall all apps.

Then day-before-yesterday, one of my co-workers lost Internet connectivity because somebody cut a cable in her area and knocked her broadband off-line. Then towards evening, my keyboard suddenly went on the fritz leaving me with no recourse but to type everything out using the on-screen keyboard. My notebook computer already has a faulty keyboard and I was using a USB keyboard and that was what stopped working day-before-yesterday.

So yesterday, I had to run off to the nearest computer store as soon as they opened so that I could get a keyboard and get back to work. Soon, after I get back to work with the new keyboard, my co-worker gets knocked offline again, this time because her power went off and her UPS went out as well. By this time I was settling in with my keyboard and discovered that the new keyboard was crap 🙁 The left shift key (the one that I seem to use the most often) gets stuck 50% of the time and I end up with everything in uppercase till I figure out what is happening and go jump on the shift key :p I tell you, there is no winning.

These are just a few of the tech woes this week – there are many more. Some software related and some hardware related. In fact, I’m anticipating a total system crash soon. That should prove to be the icing on the cake :p

Aftermath

My brother’s wedding stuff is over – or almost over 🙂 The wedding was good and the get together of a few close family members a few days went even better. My only regret is that I didn’t get to speak to a lot of aunts, uncles and cousins that I had not seen in a long time. They say that the world is ever growing smaller and this generally does appear to be true. But at the same time, paradoxically, those close to us appear to be moving ever further away :p Or maybe it’s just me …

It’s just that there appears to be so much more to do these days that you don’t seem to find the time to talk to people or to spend time with them. In fact, I was supposed to have had a couple of more days off, spending some time with my brother and my parents but something came up at this end and so I had to get back to work a few days earlier than anticipated. But never fear, I probably will get those days off in a few days and I will disappear from the blog again for a few days suddenly :p

Things here in Sri Lanka are extremely hectic at the moment. It’s the Sinhalese and Tamil New Year when they celebrate the dawning of a new year. The streets are packed to overflowing with shoppers buying all sorts of stuff for the new year. There are vendors crammed into every available nook and cranny on the side of the roads. Traffic has to vend its way through the throngs of people overflowing off the pavements (where the vendors are) and on to the road. This really isn’t the time to be out and about in Sri Lanka. In a few days though, the New Year will actually dawn and the vendors will pack up their stuff and go home to celebrate along with all the milling shoppers. The streets will become completely deserted for a couple of days before they return to normal crowd levels. This again is a yearly cycle 🙂

Breaks and pauses

I’ve not had much time to blog in the last couple of days. In fact, I haven’t been home at all much during the last few days. Yesterday was my brother’s wedding and we’ve been at my parent’s place from morning till night getting ready for the big even. And then there was the even itself yesterday and it was all done by about midnight. But that isn’t the end of it at all :p

Now there’s the post wedding stuff. We’ll probably be at my parent’s place for the next few days as well. There’s the post-wedding recovery stuff today and tomorrow there’s a groom’s lunch thing at my parent’s place where a few of the closest family members will gather for lunch. So there’s more work and more gatherings. Hopefully, we’ll have a couple of days to rest. relax and to recuperate after that before getting back to work and the everyday humdrum stuff of life 🙂

Hirsute beauties

Laurie received a strange e-mail today. Somebody wrote to her in connection to a forum post she’d made about hairy legs in Sri Lanka :p This guy said that he liked women with hairy legs and so was wondering if he could pay Laurie to arrange a meeting with such an individual 🙂 Now everybody’s preferences are their own and I cannot judge them for what they like – or dislike, but offer to pay a complete stranger to introduce you to another complete stranger? I don’t know … that kind of seems a bit strange. Or maybe this was just a late April Fool’s prank? I have no idea 🙂

Speaking of strange things, we were watching "CSI: NY" yesterday and we came across the concept of BIID (Body Integrity Identity Disorder) – the desire to have your body parts amputated willingly. Now I’ve heard of some bizarre things in my time but this really takes the cake. This disorder, also known as apotemnophilia (now there’s a word for the day :p) has a counterpart called acrotomophilia – sexual attraction to other people who are missing limbs. So I guess that brings us kind of back to the whole hairy legs thing …

But what I found myself wondering about was whether all these disorders and neurosis and phobias and manias that people have today, did they exist before modern times? Is it just that something new that we’ve invented to obliterate the tedium of life that we have today? Are these the results of the comfortable, humdrum existence that modern life has given us? Or did these conditions exist in olden times when life was so much more harder and everybody had much more serious issues (such as how to get through that day alive) confronting them? Another question I have is whether apotemnophilia is limited to Western nations (or more developed nations) or if this is a global phenomena. I am doing some research on this at the moment but I had to put down these thoughts first …

The writing on the wall

No, yesterday’s lack of a post was not an April Fool’s joke :p I ended up having to attend a family funeral on Friday and given that it was about eight hours away from home, I was playing catch up most of yesterday. So no post yesterday.

Today, I have something interesting (or not so interesting, depending on your perspective :p) to announce. I was thinking the other day about the ancient art of graffiti :p No, not crude obscenities scrawled on a toilet wall somewhere but artistic (or near artistic) work put up on a wall by some aspiring artist who wanted a different (and larger) canvas. We have an example of that on a wall at the tennis court below our house. It is adorned with the most intricately painted lettering announcing something or other.

But let’s forget the art for a moment. What do people do in this electronic age when they need to just scrawl something on a wall to express themselves? Sure forums and message boards abound, but what do you do to express yourself graphically? Where can you scrawl "Kilroy was here" in the age of the Internet? What about those "secret admirer" columns that the newspapers here are so fond of? Where can you say "To the girl wearing the red t-shirt I saw at the mall – I love you!" on the Web?

I was thinking about this the other day and I began working on something which might fulfil this need – or not :p I call it Shout Out! It’s simply a site where you can put up a message to be read by all the anonymous millions out there on the Net. Yes, you can put up a text message as well but I would prefer it to be graphical – even if it is simply a graphic using a "handwriting" font so that it keeps true to the spirit of graffiti. So come on, if you have a message to send to the rest of the world, a secret to share with strangers or a thought to share with somebody that you’re too shy to say out loud, this is the place to go 🙂 Send me your message and I’ll put it up on Shout Out!

Family fun

It’s never easy when dealing with family, is it? 🙂 We were over at my parents place yesterday (and no, this isn’t about my parents :p) My brother is getting married soon and they are getting ready for the wedding in a major way. The invitations are going out, suits are being made, saris chosen, outfits coordinate – the whole works.

This leads me to the point of this post. The wedding is a fairly large function with about 400 people attending – around 150 from our side and 250 from the bride’s side. Now the problem is, over here you get family, extended family and the ever extending family :p You have so many people in the family circle that sometimes the ripple effects can be felt on the other end of the island :p On my Dad’s side for instance, he’s got seven siblings and on my mother’s side, she’s got five siblings. Each of these siblings has at least three (sometimes more) kids and each of those kids have kids as well. Then there are the other family members. My paternal grandfather had three siblings and each of them had eight or more kids – one of them had twenty, if I recall correctly. All of these, if not immediate family, are still family.

This is just the tip of the iceberg since I’m not counting all the other aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws and what not for about four generations. That’s a lot of people and somebody is going to feel left out no matter what you do. Of course, being a developing country, transportation is not the best and even though the island is barely 240 miles across at the longest point, it sometimes takes eight to ten hours to get from one point to another. So, some relatives are excluded by virtue of being too far away to get here. Even with that, my parents have had to make decisions as to who gets invited and who does not. They try to be fair and to make certain that there are representatives from each branch and sub-branch of the family tree. But that still leaves the question, how do you ensure that somebody does not feel left out?

I guess the answer is you can’t. No matter how hard you try, you can’t please everybody and you can’t make sure that nobody gets hurt. Sure, you can invite everybody over but then how are you going to pay for all of that? :p How are you going to find the space to house all the people? There used to be a time when weddings were simpler because it was usually a village affair. The bride and groom would be from the village, everybody gets together from the village, have the ceremony and it’s done. But no more. Now you have relatives all over the place and everybody has to be invited …. Ah the complexities of modern day life :p