1) No power from well before sunrise till several hours after.
2) Two email messages, timestamped 12:01 am so I know just how the sender celebrated '05 turning to '06. Only, the sender was me; or let's put it this way, the sender wanted me to think the sender was me. Two articles from The Hindu, I think, forwarded to me by someone who filled my email address in the "From" field.
But my policy is never to read anything I send myself. So I deleted both messages.
3) At least three "Happy 2006" SMS messages that said: "Hope this reaches you before the network breaks down!" or words to the effect of. So they reached me, but whether before or after the network broke down, or whether the network broke down at all, I have no idea.
4) At least twenty "Happy 2006" SMS messages from people who didn't use their names (and no, they didn't use mine instead). Since I couldn't recognize the numbers, I have no idea who these SMS-jockeys are. So I use this space for a general "Thank you!" note. Also to say: next time, please use your names. Or someone's. Or mine. Or not.
5) At least one email message that said "Happy 2007". Which inspired me to say the same to a friend on the road this morning. He looked at me very strangely, revved his motorbike and sped away at high speed. I believe I have lost a friend for good. Or till 2007, whichever comes first.
6) A beautifully printed booklet from the mobile-phone-service-once-known-as-Orange, titled "Hutch is here." (Well, technically this arrived a few days earlier, but I actually opened it only on the first day of 2006). Inside, "Your queries answered" lists seven questions (such as "Will my mobile number change?"). For every one of those, the answer is, essentially, "Nothing changes."
Why not a simple announcement on my monthly bill saying "Nothing changes"? Answer: gotta give those marketing hires something to do.
7) A non-working broadband connection. Helplady was very helpful on the phone, got me to type in various things and it suddenly came back to life. When I asked what I should do if this happens again, she said "Woh PVC ko 0 kar do." ("Set that PVC to 0.")
Unsure what what PVC might mean, quite apart from how I might set it to 0, I asked.
Came the reply, "Kya hai, woh PVC hai na, uska value thoda idhar-udhar ho jata hai. Usko set karneka, bas!" ("Thing is, that PVC value wanders about a little. You just have to set it, that's all!")
Will I be able to follow these highly technical instructions? Unlikely.
All things considered, a splendid start to the year.
1 comment:
hmmm googled to find out about how to change PVC values (who knows oneday it could be useful 2 me too).
but other than stuff like
A path through a network from one fixed point to another that appears to be a dedicated circuit; however, the path can be changed and rerouted if necessary. The PVC typically travels over routers and connections that are used by other traffic, but appears to be private for all intents and purposes. Also, packets are sent and arrive in order, and do not need to be resequenced.
couldnt come up with any easy instruction so its back to customer service:)
Happy 2006:)
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